Computer Technical Support

January 31

We lost a visionary exactly 58 years ago.
Edwin Howard Armstrong gave us modern wireless communications. L ast month I mentioned Mr. Armstrong in an article about Edgar Villchur. Edwin Armstrong predated Villchur (he was born in 1890), but they shared a lack of awe for accepted wisdom. Both men, when solving problems, returned to first principles and found unique solutions. Edwin Armstrong [...]

4:54 AM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

January 30

The System Restore tango
Windows’ System Restore feature helps save a Windows installation. One step back. One step forward. R ecently I was asked to resurrect a very sick Windows XP computer. Someone had installed an unauthorized copy of Symantec Antivirus whose license had expired. I had to remove it. Conventional removal methods didn’t work, but I found a [...]

4:30 AM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

January 18

Both sides of the IP war gird for battle.
graphic: Editor at Large But who will win the war? T he conflict over SOPA and PIPA is heating up. This is a symptom of the sea change that’s underway. I sympathize with both sides of the argument. At one time, the reproduction of content (or “IP” – intellectual property) was very labor-intensive. Before Guttenberg’s [...]

5:56 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

January 09

That’s it: I’m replacing Google.com with Yandex.com.
logo: Yandex.com I’ve grown to hate google.com’s obnoxious auto-complete and Instant scripts. S ince 2010, Google has been loading more and more scripts and useless sidebars on their google.com front page. I’ve tried using Firefox with NoScript to turn off the scripting, but that brings along its own compatibility problems. I find that google.com’s stupid [...]

2:54 PM GMT  |  Read comments(5)

January 08

Google.de still has a cached option.
logo: google It just isn’t available to US-based users. Try Google’s German site for cached pages and report back, please. B ack in November, I wrote an article (Have you noticed that Google’s cached link is missing?) about Google.com’s sudden hiding of the cached option. I just discovered that the cached option is still in [...]

3:45 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

January 07

Google SMS Search has broken again.
logo: google My guess is that Google programmers are working on SMS Search. G oogle’s SMS Search service resumed working for a couple days, only to stop working again. The lack of an SLA (Service Level Agreement) from Google reminds us that building a mission-critical commercial operation on Google’s free services isn’t the way to [...]

5:01 PM GMT  |  Read comments(1)

January 05

Kodak considers chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Logo: Eastman Kodak This is what happens when your business model stops working. Y esterday’s Wall Street Journal reported that Kodak was preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection if it couldn’t raise cash by selling 1100 of its digital imaging patents. This caught me by surprise, but it shouldn’t have. I lived in [...]

10:56 AM GMT  |  Read comments(7)

January 03

Whew! Google SMS Search resumes working.
logo: google The recent outage of Google SMS Search reminded me that Google giveth and Google may taketh away. G oogle introduced their SMS Search service in 2008. I wrote an article about it (Receive answers from Google on your cell phone.) shortly afterward and have been using it since then on my dumbphone (a [...]

6:12 AM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

December 28

Lesson 1: Don’t assume anything. Lesson 2: Repeat Lesson 1.
Intercooler to throttle body hose The universe keeps teaching me the same lesson: “Don’t assume anything”. Why haven’t I learned this lesson? F or about a year, my car’s engine has been running worse and worse. Cold starts, warm starts, hot starts . . . all became progressively harder. Engine idle degraded to the point [...]

6:36 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

December 26

Why some programmers confuse Christmas and Halloween
image: docstoc.com 31 oct = 25 dec Credit to Steve Gibson’s Security Now podcast. Visit my website: http://russbellew.com © Russ Bellew · Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA · phone 954 873-4695 Filed under: Entertainment, Mathematics

9:38 AM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

December 18

In praise of a quiet genius, Edgar Villchur
Edgar Villchur c 1960s Book: Reproduction Of Sound by Edgar Villchur(It’s an excellent reference.) Edgar Villchur revolutionized sound reproduction several times. I admire anyone who, based upon reflection and research, throws away conventional wisdom, returns to first principles, and invents something totally new. In the world of sound reproduction, Edgar Villchur did this throughout his [...]

8:59 PM GMT  |  Read comments(1)

December 12

Streamingradioguide.com returns from the deadpool.
I’ve been using tunein.com, but I’ve missed streamingradioguide.com. Now I have a choice. Choice is good. My favorite site for linking to radio station streams was streamingradioguide.com. It shut down operations in April (Streamingradioguide.com has entered the deadpool) so I’ve learned to like tunein.com. Sometime recently (I don’t know exactly when) streamingradioguide.com was resurrected, with these [...]

3:58 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

December 05

FCC opposes AT&T takeover of T-Mobile
The FCC  (Federal Communications Commission) has released a draft staff analysis of the proposed AT&T “merger” with T-Mobile. Happily, it opposes AT&T. I expressed my misgivings about this proposed “merger” in October: AT&T wants the whole telecom pie (again). This report certainly throws cold water on the proposed $39 billion deal, but ultimately the outcome [...]

10:04 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

November 24

Keep an eye on LightSquared.
NAVSTAR-2 (GPS-2) satellite Lawyers who can’t even define “frequency spectrum” are making decisions about frequency spectrum use. Last week, the fifth annual Symposium on Position, Navigation and Time was held at Stanford University. The “father of GPS”, Professor Brad Parkinson, warned of threats to GPS systems, including the threat from LightSquared. As I feared, LightSquared has [...]

2:49 AM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

November 14

Caveat emptor: AT&T Advertising Solutions
AT&T Advertising Solutions uses the tactics of used car salesmen. Within the past week my suspicions about the way that AT&T Advertising Solutions handles SEO (Search Engine Optimization) were confirmed by the experience of a new client. When AT&T Advertising Solutions creates and hosts a website, they deliberately request that Google not add that website’s pages [...]

7:38 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

November 11

DOJ indicts 7 very clever Internet crooks.
This scam rewarded hard work with huge income, while it lasted. I’m not smart enough to have dreamed up this scam: hi-jack millions of users’ clicks and redirect them to ads that pay the crooks for each click. Allegedly, over 14 million dollars of income was collected since 2007. Six of the 7 indicted people reside [...]

12:12 AM GMT  |  Read comments(1)

November 09

Court allows warrantless search of cell-tower records.
drawing: Daniel Roca ES Court rules that police may track cell phone locations without warrant. US District Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the District of Columbia ruled several weeks ago that investigators don’t need to obtain a warrant based on probable cause to access a suspect’s location history that’s logged by cell phone towers. The [...]

3:30 AM GMT  |  Read comments(4)

November 06

Microsoft scrambles to thwart Duqu worm.
Source: The Hacker News Duqu flow and Execution Diagram From eastern Europe with love. In September, a new worm, dubbed Duqu, appeared in Hungary. It shares some characteristics with the Stuxnet worm. It spreads via infected Microsoft Word documents and then exploits a vulnerability in Windows’ TrueType parsing engine. It appears that Duqu captures keystrokes and [...]

4:38 PM GMT  |  Read comments(0)

November 04

Have you noticed that Google’s cached link is missing?
photo: Evawen photo: Jakub Mosur Larry Page · 2010 Paging new CEO Larry Page. Please don’t fix what isn’t broken. I have no idea why Google moved the handy Cached link from beside each result to Google’s annoying “page preview” display. Maybe Larry just wanted to change something to announce himself. Oh well, not every software [...]

6:26 PM GMT  |  Read comments(11)

November 03

Thailand’s floods cause hard drive shortage.
photo & notation: DigitalGlobe-Imagery Flooding in Bangkok, Thailand-October 24, 2011: This is a satellite image showing flooding near Bangkok, Thailand. Locals are parking their vehicles loaded with belongings on overpasses on highway ramps to protect them from being affected by flood waters. This stretch of highway is the Sapan Nonthaburi Ban Bua Thong Highway # [...]

11:48 PM GMT  |  Read comments(2)