Moving numbers top story
With the holidays on a crescendo, it's time to look back on the highlights of 2003.
Spam hard to conquer
We might have named it after tinned meat, but e-mail spam isn't much like what's sold in the store. It may be ubiquitous, but it certainly isn't dull. Computer spam is more like the gooey purple creature known as the Blob. In the 1958 film that inexplicably launched Steve McQueen's career, the Blob terrorized the teenagers of a small town. It was a seemingly unstoppable mass of protoplasm that seeped under doors and flowed through window screens. It slimed its way through any filter.
Making calls via e-mail
Thinphone provides a way to leverage Internet communications into a multiperson telephone messaging service.
Wi-Fi requires caution
The arrival of wireless technology has become a cultural challenge, demanding a new kind of etiquette from all of us.
Web guide beats all
Paging through a new Internet guide called "Online! The Book" tells us much about how computing has changed. There was a time when a general-interest book about the Internet wouldn't have included things like a breakdown of computer memory, from SRAM (static RAM) to EDO RAM (extended data output RAM), or an explanation of hard-disk spin rates and seek times. But John Dvorak, Chris Pirillo and Wendy Taylor realized when they put this volume together that even the novice computer buyer buys on the basis of Net capabilities. From sending mail to buying antiques, it's an Internet world, and your PC had better be able to handle it. "Online! The Book" (Prentice Hall PTR, $29.99) helps newcomers make sense of these issues.
Think outside Office
There are less expensive alternatives for Microsoft Office.
Hackers enter via Window
Enough people wrote in after my recent column on viruses and e-mail that I want to say a few more things about Microsoft Windows and security. The point of that column was not intended to be about Microsoft. Instead, I wanted to say that, given their effect upon business and home, virus writers needed to be handed severe penalties. But my correspondents insisted that I let Microsoft off the hook too easily, by making it appear that Windows was no different in security terms than any other operating system. Their criticism was reasonable. So let's take a look at Windows, and discuss why these things keep happening to Windows machines instead of Linux or OS X.
Putting brains in dust
Chips no bigger than grains of sand are coming down the road.
E-mail often empty
Is e-mail worth the trouble? There are times I wonder.
Linux widens its range
I'm anxious to get Red Hat Linux back on my main machine because a new version of Gnome has just been released. Gnome is a desktop interface for Linux that I've used for years, and the new version includes, among other things, a Web browser written specifically for it. I'll download and update my Gnome settings using a program called apt-get that automates upgrades for my system. But what a strange time this is for Linux. As growth looms on the corporate side, an outfit called the SCO Group has sent letters to 1,500 companies that use Linux, demanding that they purchase SCO licenses or be sued. SCO claims to have legal rights to much of Linux's code. The action has caused apoplexy among Linux developers, who see it as an attack against the entire idea of open source.
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