600 000 Macs infected by a trojan I'm not going to go fanboy here, because I have relied on Linux's relative intrinsic security, rather than investigate anti-malware options. It's a lot less clear to me what I have to do to firm up my anti-virus state on Linux. I've got some reading to do.

Between Jan 18 and Feb 17, I used 253 KB of data (inadvertantly, at various points, I was setting up my new Android phone, and figuring out how to turn off network data). For this, I got charged $3. Ridiculous!

At work, I rely heavily on Windows 7 System Restore to reset my system to a certain state to test a product we offer. Today I discovered that certain drivers were not being removed, which I thought were being removed (my fault). So I wanted to run System Restore again to roll back to a previous system state. Normally when I run System Restore, ( Read more... )

As a small personal celebration, I decided to splurge a little on some computer equipement. My on-motherboard ATI Radeon HD3200 just wasn't cutting it, especially since it was using a quarter of my RAM and it didn't have a second output for my recently acquired second monitor my sister isn't going to be using when she moves down to the States for ( Read more... )

I just got saved by GMail. After pressing "Send", it said, "Did you mean to attach something? You used the words 'I have attached'."

Mind, it was a glitch in the first place that they disappeared when the message saved; I had attached two things already, but the recipient wouldn't have known that and thought me careless.

or How I Stopped Trying to Reinvent the Wheel ( Read more... )

In looking up some information preparatory to a job application, I looked up The Triboelectric Effect on Wikipedia and learned several things:

It's the basis for the term "electricity" since Thales of Miletus discovered tribocharging (and static electricity in general) by rubbing amber and wool, and named the effect after amber, "ēlektron", in ( Read more... )

I was given a nice two-phase halogen desk lamp years ago for my birthday. I don't remember when exactly but I know it predated my first learning about programming because I remember when I was first trying a major TurboPascal project in my bedroom (furthest from the furnace, once measured at 16º, I used to hold my hands under it while thinking to ( Read more... )

This is a fascinating talk (available in mp3, but the slides are important), but this guy makes the chronic error of assuming linear behaviour. I think it should call this conclusion into serious question, when one sees what Japan did, when it reached the level of the US and Britain ( Read more... )

Is it just me, or do other people experience this as well? It seems to me that Google doesn't work as well as it used to when it comes to finding what I'm looking for. It still does fine, and produces predictable results, when I search for basic things like historical figures, places or definitions (though I still prefer Onelook.com for that). ( Read more... )