It happens every few years, and it’s happening again right now. A bunch of spambots are spewing forth thousands of emails about fake Gucci handbags, and each message has my email address in the “From:” field. The result: I’ve been receiving hundreds of mailer “bounce” messages for the last few days, filling my inbox and…
Read More It's not from me… honest!With help from The Vicar, here and here, I was able to get the Time Capsule up and running. I elected to create a brand new WPA2 network, using the TC as the router; my old (non-“n”) Airport Express is now sitting next to the HP printer/scanner, acting as a print server. I used the…
Read More Clue: The Vicar, in the Living Room, with a Time Capsule!The MBA continues to delight. The keyboard is the best I’ve used in years. My PowerBook suddenly came back to life. Sigh…. The Time Capsule is a great disappointment. I set it up, and before I could actually use it, the Airport Utility suggested that I should upgrade the firmware from 7.3 to 7.3.1. ((Why…
Read More New Mac update (in brief)I received lots of advice from blog readers, friends, and colleagues at Amazon about the choice of a new laptop, and the general consensus was: The MacBook Air is the way to go, unless you’re doing serious video work or game-playing. Getting iTunes set up on a network drive is a royal pain, but it’s…
Read More Got the MacBook AirWhile I was in California last week, I found myself deep in the reality distortion field induced by the presence of MacBook Airs. Alec bought himself one, and several of the speakers at Stanford were using them. The weight, screen, and keyboard are pretty damn near perfect… I’m looking at two basic options for my…
Read More Tough choicesAs I noted recently, the sci-fi publishing house Tor has started making some of its “classic” books available for free download. Obviously they hope that people will read the freebies and pay for more, and if I’m at all typical the strategy is working. First I downloaded “Spin” by Robert Charles Wilson, transferred it to…
Read More Tor's strategy seems to work… with me, anywayMust-read piece by Bruce Schneier on what he calls The Security Mindset. Security requires a particular mindset. Security professionals — at least the good ones — see the world differently. They can’t walk into a store without noticing how they might shoplift. They can’t use a computer without wondering about the security vulnerabilities. They can’t…
Read More Schneier on "The Security Mindset"I’m not sure which would be worse: hearing a gun going off on the flightdeck, or having a chunk of the wing coming off and smashing against your window.
Read More Bad weekend for US AirwaysLike a number of other bloggers, I’ve pretty much stopped postings about the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Re-reading my blog entries from three or four years ago, the most common tag was “Politics” ((I didn’t add the “Stupidity” and “Violent world” categories until recently.)), and there was a constant stream of new outrages to get…
Read More Seeing red in the Green ZoneLast Saturday I was staying in Palo Alto ((I spent Thursday and Friday in business meetings in San Francisco, and Monday to Thursday at Stanford University. But that’s for another post.)) and I decided to drive down to Carmel Valley to visit Merry’s parents. As I headed over to 101 for the drive down, I…
Read More How KKUP brought out the 60s in me