So the whole time we had no power and were exiled to a place with power and internet access and hot running water, we kept wondering… Is the power back on at our house yet? That question could only be answered this time by a drive out to our house to see in person. So […]
There are some very interesting developments in the news regarding the Stuxnet virus. I confess that I mostly ignored this virus, like most computer viruses, when it came out as it appeared to impact only computers running the Windows operating system. It turns out I was wrong, it actually uses Windows to spread itself, but […]
Tagged Computer Security, globalism, nuclear weapons, warA few weeks ago I decided to disable Adobe/Macromedia Flash on all my Macintosh computers. I am here to tell you I do NOT regret it at all, and now recommend it highly. Flash was an extremely useful extension for many years; it made it possible to view videos on the web without specialized software […]
Tagged Computer Security, flash, HTML5, Laptop Battery Performance, Web SecurityYears ago, when relatively few people were using Mac OS X, and Apple was struggling to get people to migrate from Mac OS 8 and 9 to OS X; Apple ran a free website that listed OS X software applications by 3rd parties and themselves. It was for several years a fabulous way of finding […]
I have been having a lot of VideoLAN (VLC) crashes on several Macs running Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5.8). It turns out NOT to be related to any ~/Library/Preferences settings as most of the forums and blogs imply, but it is a well known bug with the newest 32/64bit versions on Leopard. It takes effort, […]
We found one culprit… using Transmission (Mac OS X BitTorrent client) to grab latest Linux ISO images slows down all web traffic. Turn off or pause Transmission and web gets a little faster, but it is still crazy slow… I noticed something new today though. When I connect to my work provided VPN and visit […]
The last few days my internet speeds for actual usage seem like 1989 with a 2400bps MODEM over noisy dialup lines… I am measuring 2Kbps most of the time using scp and web sites are essentially unusable. The really strange thing is that all the speed test websites, once they’ve loaded the speed test (which […]
Tagged broadband, internet speedsThis little home server makes my old nOrhtec MIcroServer GP look huge in comparison… Guru Plug Server Plus, 512MB memory, 512MB flash storage, two Gigabit ethernet ports… I could run caching DNS, MediaWiki, Router/Firewall and openVPN services on this little guy and only burn 5W of power… Amazing. The old MicroServer GP has only 256MB […]
Tagged low power computing, microserver, plug computingI think that the new iPods look great, but that the best news out of Apple today was the price reduction on the classic AppleTV devices… only $149 while supplies last… Classic AppleTV (160GB) The new AppleTV also looks pretty cool, and at $99 it will likely be a market success, but it does not […]
Tagged Apple, AppleTV, media centerA lot of us have Linksys home routers. They are cheap, effective, and easy to use. I’ve have a BEFSR81 8 port fast ethernet broadband router/firewall for many years… it recently started locking up when anyone in the house shops Amazon.com using Firefox (started in early May we think). Frequently the router will lock up […]
Tagged home networking, Linksys BEFSR81, router