Regular readers know I don’t have much use for Microsoft. They dominate the desktop through marketing and inertia, not technical merit. But I’ve been thinking about the relative positions of Internet Explorer and its competitors, and I think we should be glad it’s out there. Internet Explorer is a classic case of how Microsoft behaves [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Technology category.
Telstar and the optimism of the space age
For a week or so I’ve been listening to the 1950s radio channel on XM. I don’t listen to this a whole lot, but once in a while I’ll do something like this out of nostalgia. It never lasts very long because no matter how deep your 1950s playlist goes, you’ll eventually come to the [...]
Wireless router, part II
Well, the D-Link wireless router didn’t last long. After about two days it suddenly started losing its ability to control the DSL modem, and internet connectivity was dropping out for two and three minutes at a time. Back to the store it went, and I got a Netgear WNDR3700. The Netgear has been in use [...]
Wireless router tech support – Linksys vs. D-Link
Recently my Linksys wireless-N router became flaky. It would forget it was a wireless device and stop accepting wireless connections. Sometimes this would solve itself after a while, other times it required a reboot. As a stopgap measure I hooked up a second cheap-ass wireless-G router I had on hand and configured it as an [...]
Google Encrypted Search plugin for Firefox
Google has just made encrypted search available. Basically it’s just like the regular Google search but over a secure https connection so that no one can spy on your searching (in theory, anyway). Here’s a Google encrypted search plugin for Firefox: http://www.dwasifar.com/google-encrypted.zip This plugin puts Google Encrypted search in the drop-down list of quick search [...]
Yesterday’s laptops, today’s lessons
Recently my old laptop, a Dell Inspiron 600m, finally expired. It died on the operating table, as I was trying to repair some physical damage incurred when someone (not me) knocked it off a counter and onto a concrete floor. It survived that drop in working order, but the internal frame was broken, and when [...]
More broken Windows
In the last couple of weeks I’ve had the task of transferring three different systems to new hardware platforms. Two of them were my servers, web and file; I was given a couple of IBM boxes that were more suitable servers than the consumer-grade Compaqs I’d been using. The other was a system I built [...]
Motorola Droid: How to delete a bluetooth device
This was the first issue I hit with my Droid phone, and I hadn’t even left the Verizon store parking lot. I was trying to pair the phone with my car’s built-in bluetooth hands-free, and the car’s phone pairing process crashed before it finished, leaving the phone thinking it was paired and the car not. [...]
Dell redeems themselves. Mostly.
I posted on Monday that my support call to Dell for my XPS m1330 laptop resulted in a commitment to come out for my “Next Day Onsite Service” possibly as late as a week later. Here’s how it actually went down. On Tuesday, I got a call from a man named Radu, a service technician [...]
168-hour days at Dell
Last night I turned on my Dell XPS laptop to a rude surprise. Instead of the normal Dell logo followed by bootup screens, I got a black screen that slowly grew a weird streaky rainbow of colors, then abruptly blacked out again and stayed that way. I could hear Ubuntu booting, and see the lights [...]
