Happy Fourth of July!
This is Independence Day weekend and there's no program this week—just my sincere wish that you enjoy the anniversary of our nation's founding. Wait! Wait! There is a program. Sort of. See below.
Image source: www.pulsarmedia.eu
Does Europe Have a Fourth of July?
Yes! Every country has a fourth of July. In the United States, we celebrate the day as Independence Day.
Other Topics, NEC
No, NEC is not National Electrical Code. Well, it is, but not in this case. This time it means not elsewhere classified. I realized that I had several oddball thoughts and comments lying around. These are what Paul Harvey would have called potpourri. This seems to be a good mix for a holiday weekend.
Technology-Corner.com and techbyter.com Go Away
The last year that Technology Corner was on 610 WTVN was 2006. Since then, it's been TechByter Worldwide. This month, the old domain names (technology-corner.com and techbyter.com) become history. If you're still using either one of them, please update your link to www.techbyter.com.
The 2 old domains will be picked up as soon as they are available by someone who may hope to sell them. They probably won't be available for a few weeks, but they also won't point to TechByter.com as they have since 2006.
The more things change, the more things change.
E-Mail Fraud
Question: It seems that somehow my e-mail addies (both Yahoo accounts) have recently been spoofed (?) to send out spam. That is, I've seen spam messages with my addie attached, and in one account I'm getting a lot failure notices from spam that apparently didn't go through (not that I've opened any of these messages as I know I haven't sent anything from that account).
Is there anything I can do?
Answer: There's not much you can do. On the off chance that someone has actually used your Yahoo account, you could change the password. That's probably not a bad idea regardless.
But somebody is probably just using the address. It's easy enough to make a message appear to come from some other address. That's the common MO of spammers. The good thing is that this usually burns out over a day or so.
An acquaintance once received more than 1000 bounces per hour when his address was used this way. His ordeal went on for the better part of a week. Or maybe the worse part of a week.
Disk Drives Are Free
The weekly advertising "flyer" from MicroCenter was remarkable for not being remarkable. Is it still a "flyer" if it arrives by e-mail? But that's not what's remarkable, or remarkable by not being remarkable.
The thought of a 500GB hard drive for $40 might once have been remarkable and that's what was in this week's MicroCenter mailer. "This Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 is a 500GB, standard hard disk drive. Its burst transfer rate (which is how fast the drive moves data already in its cache into your computer) is 300 MBps. This is a 7200 rpm drive and comes with a 16MB buffer."
If I could have bought this drive for $400 in 1985, I would have bought 1000 of them and I would easily have sold them for $4000 each (and probably a lot more). But today disk drives are cheap. I've seen 2TB drives from second-tier manufacturers priced under $100 and 2TB drives from manufacturers such as Seagate around $100.
I wanted to be amazed. Astounded. Flabbergasted. But it's no longer a big deal. Really. A drive that's 5000 times larger than the original IBM PC's hard drive at about 40% of the price of the original IBM PC hard drive is no big deal.
Big Screen Makes a Difference
This week I replaced a 1400x900 17" monitor (once it seemed huge) with a 1920x1080 24" (well 23.6" really) monitor. The extra resolution really makes a difference. If you need to run a lot of applications simultaneously and be able to see more than one at a time, you have 2 choices: More than 1 monitor or a large high-resolution monitor.
If I'd had the money and the space, I would have upgraded to a 27" monitor or a 30" monitor, but those check in at $1000 more. My 24" Viewsonic cost one fifth of that and it fits in the space I have available.
When it's time for you to buy a new monitor, keep this in mind. Size does matter. The larger the screen you buy, the higher the resolution you can use.
The difference is worthwhile.
Just Answers
Recently I had a question about an electrical concern in my younger daughter's house. In the process of researching the question, I came across Just Answer, a website that promised me an answer to my question for a few dollars. And I could specify how much I wanted to pay.
This is an interesting idea. My question was answered by a licensed electrician in Boston. The site is careful to point out that "answers on this site are to be used for general information purposes only, not as a substitute for in-person evaluation or specific professional (medical, legal, veterinary, tax, financial, etc.) advice. The laws, regulations, other governing authorities, standards, practices and procedures that apply to your particular question may differ depending on your location and information typically discovered through in-person evaluations or visits. Experts in some categories may be licensed, certified, educated, employed by or have experience in only particular jurisdictions." OK. Got that.
The information I received was reasonable, accurate, and generally on the mark.
Just Answer seems to have participants in many areas of expertise. I would treat the site as the equivalent of a call-in show on a radio station. The person answering the question may have the knowledge needed to answer your question, but it's important to keep in mind the fact that the responses are for "general information purposes only".
Free Music from Your Library
I've mentioned occasionally that I'm a fan of libraries (socialist that I am) and this week the Grandview Heights Library announced something new: Free music downloads that are legal and free for you to keep. That got my attention.
According to the announcement from GHPL, this is the first library in Ohio to offer the service from "Freegal". Other participating libraries include: the Princeton (NJ) Public Library, Maricopa County Library District (AZ), Orange County Public Library (FL), Nashville Public Library (TN) and Fairfield Public Library (CT).
If you have a Grandview Heights Public Library card (I do), you can search a large collection of music and download songs permanently at no charge. Freegal is the online database that GHPL uses. It provides access to many tracks from Sony Music Entertainment artists.
There's one "gotcha": You get 3 downloads per week, but the downloads may be stored permanently on PC or Mac computers, smart phones, and other devices, including Ipods. If you try to download more than 3 items per week you should get a "wish list" that will become available at 12:01 am the following Monday. I say "should" because this doesn't seem to work properly.
The notice from the library says that "clean" versions of songs have been selected. Songs labeled "explicit" by the music label have been filtered out. However, the library says, "there will be some songs [that] contain some explicit content."
The Freegal Music Site is owned and operated by Library Ideas, LLC, of Fairfax, Virginia. The organization supplies music, movies, language learning, and other products to libraries. Some participating libraries include games and videos in their offerings, but GHPL limits its offerings to music.
As you drill down, you can listen to about 30 seconds of individual selections. The best bets are for classical music lovers. The individual tracks are longer so the number of selections per CD is smaller.
Even so, 3 items per week is limiting. To download a classical CD with even the longest tracks will take several weeks. And the fact that the "wish list" seems not to be working will make the process even more problematic. That's not to say it's not a worthwhile endeavor; it is and I salute the Grandview Heights Public Library for adding the service.
Did You Sign Up for WikiMedia or a Blog?
The latest nonsense from the people who want to enslave your computer looks like a legitimate notice from WikiMedia, Wikipedia, or any of several blogging services. The message says you've signed up and that you need to click a link to confirm your address. If you didn't sign up, the message says, you should click another link to cancel the action.
WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! Legitimate operations don't require following a link to cancel the operation. If you signed up, you click the confirmation link. If you didn't, you ignore the message and the operation will be cancelled automatically.
The same is true for any message from just about any site. Did you request a password change? If you did, click the link to accept the change. If you didn't delete the message.
Both of the links (confirm and cancel) are not what is shown above and both go to the same dangerous location. Remember my motto: Before you click it, check it out!
The author's image: It's that photo over at the right. This explains why TechByter Worldwide was never on television, doesn't it?
