Protect Yourself from the Conficker Worm

You may have heard about a new threat to your computer: the Conflicker worm. Over 3 million computers are infected, and the scary thing is, you won’t know if you’ve got it until it’s too late. By too late, I mean tomorrow, when the worm “activates” and starts making a real mess of things. What [...]

Download Internet Explorer 8 (Please!)

Image via Wikipedia

Now don’t get me wrong, I still think everyone should be using Firefox as their default web-browser. But I’m a realist, and sometimes you just need Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE). And if you’re going to use Microsoft, then you should really definitely immediately download IE8, released today at noon.
There are a whole [...]

Saving Money with Open Source Software

The times, they are a changing. One interesting, and in my opinion welcome, change is a new push by businesses and institutions to move to Open Source Software. Aside from the fact that most open source software is free, there are a whole host of other advantages worth considering. Two that stand out: (1) interpolability [...]

Old Institutions, New Media

Several stories have caught my intention of late. We all know, of course, that the proliferation of computers, and especially the Internet, has changed the way we communicate, shop, talk, think, and research. What’s interesting to me is the trickle-up trends that have been occurring more recently. Old and stalwart institutions are often the slowest [...]

A Great Wireless Card for Linux

This is a post I wrote awhile back, but now includes a significant update (see below) that makes the whole thing worthy of re-purposing. Windows and Mac users should stop reading now lest their heads explode.
A Great Wireless Card
Switching to Linux from Windows is no longer as difficult as it used to be. I hope [...]

Desperate Times: Reinstalling Windows

One of the real difficulties with Windows (at least versions prior to Vista) is the reinstall problem. After about 2 years or so your computer starts getting too slugish to be productive, and no amount of tweaking, defragmenting, or otherwise coaxing your computer to behave normally seems to help. Or perhaps something else has gone [...]

Politics and Technology

Obama was hailed by supporters and detractors alike for his tech-awareness (Twitter, Blackberry, a very well put-together web site, etc). It seems, however, that Obama has the same problems with technology that everyone else has. He may have to give up his Blackberry, for example, over security issues.
More interestingly, Obama’s “Open for Questions” website, [...]

Setting Up Zotero: Link by Link

The following is a set of links that will be useful for those trying to set up Zotero on their computers. (Not sure what Zotero is or why you would want it? Check out their site, and don’t miss the demo video).
Initial Setup

Firefox Web Browser. Zotero runs as a plugin within this excellent browser.
The Zotero [...]

Windows Shutdown Problems

Tiny application ShutdownGuard puts Windows automatic restarts back into your control.
I run an automated backup program on my Home computer (Vista) every night at 1am. Well, almost every night. Well, about every other night. The problem is that I have Windows set to download and install all those security updates, and it often decides [...]

Time to Upgrade your Security

Or at least think about it.
While not yet fully “cracked,” WPA is now officially cracking. WPA is a security technology that many businesses, churches, seminaries, and home-owners use to secure their network traffic. It encrypts all data that is sent from your computer to your router so that others cannot read it or tamper with [...]