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Low End PC Archive. February 2003

Links Low End PC

• Value and cost: With a PC, you get what you pay for, Katherine Keller, Thinking From the Box, 02.26. With the right choices, your PC can be easy to upgrade and avoid becoming a doorstop.
• Networking 101, Dan Knight, Online Tech Journal, 02.10. An introduction to ethernet, hubs, switches, routers, and wireless networking.
• Pixels and points, screens and paper, Dan Knight, Low End PC's Online Tech Journal, 02.06. What you see on the screen corresponds to what you get on the printed page. A brief history of points, pixels, and the changing face of computer displays.
• more in the January 2003 archive

Around the Web

• Rights: Is vigilante hacking legal?, Robert Lemos, c|net, 02.27. "Striking back at computers that are attacking a company or home network could be legal under federal nuisance laws...."
• Dark Side: Rivals chip away at Microsoft's dominance, Byron Acohido, USA Today, 02.27. $90,000 fine for 8 unlicensed copies of Microsoft Office leads Sterling Ball to ditch all Microsoft products.
• Advice: Creating an RSS news feed with PHP and MySQL, Dan Knight, Online Tech Journal, Low End Mac, 02.27. How we use our publishing database to automatically create the Low End Mac RSS newsfeed.
• Humor: Seven customized browsers reshape the Web experience, Jeff Adkins, The Lite Side, Low End Mac, 02.25. No need to let IE, Netscape, Safari, iCab, or Opera control things. These new programs provide real alternatives to today's staid browsers.
• Virus: Introducing the Lovgate.C trojan, John Leyden, The Register, 02.24. "Yet another mass mailing email worm is spreading across the Net today." Windows users watch out for this .exe file.
• Rights: Michigan man uses junk fax law to sue Sears over spam, Linxnet, 02.24. Key seems to be that message was received over phone lines, as with a fax, and then printed out.
• Opinion: Broadband and the boonies, Charles W. Moore, OS X Odyssey, Applelinks, 02.21. "...the fact is that there are an awful lot of Mac users who have neither access to domestic broadband nor a conveniently located Starbucks outlet or other cyber-cafe facility."
• News: PCMCIA announces NEWCARD format, Digital Photography Review, 02.21. New card format combines benefits of PCMCIA, PC Card, USB 2.0, and PCI Express, targets both desktop and portable computing.
• Tech: Understanding Moore's Law, Hannibal, ars technica, 02.20. What Moore really said, how it has applied in the fast, and what it means for the future.
• Opinion: Prioritized email: Up with the good, out with the bad, Jeff Adkins, Mac Lab Report, Low End Mac, 02.20. How smarter email software could flag what's important to you while also helping you deal with spam.
• Advice: Reliable, Inexpensive RAID Backup, Brian C. Lane, Linux Journal, 02.19. "Hopefully this article has convinced you that automated backups can be done with a minimum of hassle."
• Humor: Dell dude like busted, Jeff Adkins, The Lite Side, Low End Mac, 02.18. The headlines, the ad opportunities - the possibilities are nearly endless....
• Web: Spinning the Web: The realities on online reputation management, Nicholas Carroll, Mindjack, 02.17. Thanks to the democratic, chaotic Web, "it is . . . difficult to spread disinformation on a grand scale."
• Rights: The Penny Black Project, Microsoft, 02.15. "The Penny Black project is investigating several techniques to reduce spam by making the sender pay."
• Opinion: Death of the desktop II, Joel Davies, iMaculate Conception, Applelust, 02.14. "The death of the desktop is inevitable."
• Humor: Reefer Madness, Joy of Tech, 02.12. Steve the Dell dude busted for possession. Bummer.
• Web: Homepage real estate allocation, Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, 02.10. Nielsen says most home pages make very poor use of their space.
• Web: NTL seeks to clarify 1GB/day broadband cap, Tim Richardson, The Register, 02.10. "NTL has been stunned by the outcry from its broadband customers over the cableco's decision to cap usage of its broadband service to 1 gigabyte a day."
• Opinion: Royal standard has given way to a royal pain, Marc Fisher, Washington Post, 02.07. "Computer training has become the living hell of the American workplace, a loathsome ritual that highlights the mounting battle between the computer cognoscenti and us mere mortals."
• Analysis: Why spy?, Jeffrey Pfeffer, Business 2.0, 02.07. "If you don't want your people missing work to take care of personal business, maybe it would be better to let them take care of some of that business at work."
• Analysis: Standards: Truce pays off for rivals, W Wong, R Shim, c|net, 02.07. It's not a matter of 802.11a, b, or g - some brands are supporting all the wireless protocols.
• Web: States, stores make online sales tax deal, Eric Chabrow, Yahoo News, 02.06. "Walmart, Target, Marshall Field, Mervyn's, Toys 'R' Us, and five other retailers agreed this week to start collecting sales tax for merchandise sold online."
• Web: Breadcrumb navigation: An exploratory study of usage, Lida, Hull, Pilcher, Usability News, 02.06. Breadcrumb navigation is helpful, but Web users are just used to hitting the Back button.
• Web: Cascading versus indexed menu design, M Bernard, C Hamblin, Usability News, 02.06. Which type of page layout makes it easier for visitors to find what they're searching for?
• Rights: Patent scare hits streaming industry, John Borland, c|net, 02.06. Patent suite reaches back to 1991, appears to cover streaming audio and video - and pay-per-view movies on cable.
• News: Dell finally says bye to floppy, Peter Cohen, MacCentral, 02.06. Dell abandons the floppy as a standard feature, but keeps them available on a build-to-order basis.
• Analysis: Office surfers aren't slackers, says study, Lisa M. Bowman, ZDNet, 02.05. "A new study finds that employees may waste time surfing on the job, but they tend to make up for it by working from home in their off hours."
• Analysis: Are internauts necessarily slackers at work?, Ken Fisher, ars technica, 02.05. "...there is more or less a consensus among human resources administrators that Internet access in the workplace is absolutely a drain on efficiency."
• Web: The impact of paging vs. scrolling on reading online text passages, J. Ryan Baker, Usability News, 02.05. Study finds reading online articles by paging takes longer than scrolling, makes searching harder, but leads to greater comprehension.
• Web: Aesthetics and usability: A look at color and balance, L Brady, C Phillips, Usability News, 02.04. "...the best predictor for the overall judgment by typical users of a website was its beauty."
• Benchmarks: The great interface-Off: FireWire vs. USB 2.0, Cade Metz, PC Magazine, 02.03. Although USB 2.0 is rated as faster, FireWire is faster in the real world.
• Analysis: The spread of the Sapphire/Slammer worm, Moore, Paxson, et al, CAIDA, 02.03. Fastest worm in computing history infected 90% of vulnerable hosts within 10 minutes of launch.
• Spam: Spam deluge leads to search for silver bullet, Scarlet Pruitt, MacCentral, 02.03. "E-mail users are deluged, upset and angry about spam."
• Web: Some electric utilities offer cable, CNN, 02.02. "The good folks in Glasgow, Kentucky pay $19 a month for 70 cable channels, and for an additional $25 they can get blazing fast Internet access."
• Virus: Trojan writers exploit Outlook to get around content filtering, John Leyden, The Register, 02.01. "A feature of Microsoft Outlook can be exploited to evade content filters and persuade an email recipient that an attachment is safe to open - even when it contains malicious code."
• more in the January 2003 archive

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