Technology
New Life For An Old PC
I confess to being a packrat. In the dark recesses of my basement are a number of antiquated PCs (and a couple of original MACs) waiting for a ressurection day that—realistically speaking— will never come.
Or so I thought.
As it turns out, there is new life for a couple of my old computers, thanks to a new Linux distrubution called Ubuntu. An article on the operating system in a recent issue of Maximum PC prompted me to get an old computer out of the closet and give it a try.
I hadn’t used the Dell computer in years because it was a 400Mhz Pentium II with just 512MB of memory and a 10GB hard drive that ran on Windows 98. In other words, the operating system made it useless, and it didn’t have enough power to justify purchasing a copy of Windows XP.
But after reading the article, I thought I’d Ubuntu give it a try.
Posted by The Editor on 11/10 at 08:22 PM
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Michigan Alerts Thousands To Data Loss
The Michigan Department of Community Health has lost a flash drive containing personal information for as many as 4,000 Michigan citizens participating in a long-term health study. Among the information on the drive were names, addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth and Social Security numbers.
Given the news over the summer about the theft of a flash drive containing the personal information on US military personnel, and other, similar incidents, you have to wonder what the Department of Community Health was thinking. This sort of data should NOT be on a flash drive and it should not be out of the office. And if for some reason, it has to be on a flash drive, the data there should be encrypted or have some other security measures. Even the flash drives you can get at Target have security measures that would make this theft a non-story.
Once again, our government makes our state look bad.
Posted by The Editor on 09/18 at 02:02 PM
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TiVo Rules
I’m sitting here watching the Mercedes Golf Championship on ESPN, and one of my sons distracted me while Tiger Woods was taking a shot. The bad news is that, unlike other sports, Golf doesn’t do replays. The good news is that I have TiVo. I just hit the back button a couple of times and watched it again.
My television viewing has been revolutionized since we got DirectTV and TiVo. I watch what I want, when I want. The “season ticket” function—which sets the machine to record particular shows whenever they air—is especially useful. I now get to watch shows that I’ve always wanted to see, but missed because they were on at awkward times.
It may seem like I’m watching more tv, which is definitely NOT a good thing. What I’m doing is not watching as much junk filler. When I’m ready to chill, I don’t have to flip around to find the best of the bad things on at that time. I can to to the “Now Playing” list and watch something I wanted to see, but didn’t have time to watch at the time.
Posted by The Editor on 01/09 at 11:01 PM
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