tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13940398819427151472024-03-12T20:56:13.009-04:00crash/rebootTECH MUSINGS BY MATT LAKEcrashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-67160465794230004502015-07-29T15:41:00.001-04:002015-07-29T15:45:18.424-04:00Thanks for that, Windows 10 installer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's new. It's here. It's better than the previous version. But if the install goes wrong, as it did on the fourth machine I tried it on, the pop-up alerts aren't quite ready yet.</div>
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Thanks for that, Windows 10!</div>
crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-51294668735953170962015-07-12T16:25:00.001-04:002015-07-12T17:02:12.591-04:00The Week of the SSN<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Social maybe. Security, less
so. Numbers…very very large.</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s been a curious week here
at the Crash Bunker, my place in cyberspace during times of technical fallout.
I took the express elevator down here from Reboot Central on Wednesday and I’ve
not surfaced since. That’s mostly because the Bunker maintains a cool 65 degree
temperature year-round, and is unaffected by the humid storm weather up aloft. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But watching news feeds down here, I’m glad I went underground.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like most owners of private
information, I’ve been hacked off about some recent news events. I’m talking
mostly about the<a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/09/421502905/opm-21-5-million-social-security-numbers-stolen-from-government-computers"> results of an investigation </a>mounted by the U.S. government’s
Office of Personnel Management, which became public on Friday. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yes, the OPM (which by now
should have become the Office of Human Resources, surely?) announced “with
great confidence” that a data breach on June 12th resulted in the theft of more
than 21 million social security numbers--along with other personal data, such as
fingerprint records, addresses, mothers’ maiden names, and other grist for identity theft mill. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">It’s a beautiful thing that
the OPM should have such confidence in the findings of its investigation. Too
bad that it didn’t have the same level of confidence in, oh, I don’t know, the strength of its data security systems. And a security system worthy of confidence.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Be that as it may, retribution proved to be swift and terrible, as the director of
the office, </span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16pt;">Katherine Archuleta, offered her resignation,
and got a presidential thumbs-down in the Coliseum of Career Sacrifice. Blood in the sand makes people feel better, apparently. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16pt;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-size: 16pt;">But it doesn't take data out of the hands of criminals. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As far as I can tell, only
two people have come out of this debacle ahead: The hacker responsible for it,
and Kevin Mitnick. (Lawyers take note: I’m not saying they are connected in any
way other than the one in the next paragraph. Keep those lawsuits in your
pants!)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The real star of the whole
event was my old prison pal Kevin Mitnick, whose company profile describes him
as “the world’s most famous hacker.” NPR went through its Rolodex, found Kev,
and called him to conduct a guided marketing pitch for his security company.
The segment was so interlaced with many phone pings and system alert sounds
that I’m sure that Kev had hired one of the old prison posse as a sound effects editor for
the hour.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is some reason for
optimism, here: Like most people, I should be safe from this attack, because
have never applied to work for the government, and I don’t associate with anyone who does. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Besides, with any luck, millions of those social security numbers may not be valid:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The office of the Inspector General of the
Social Security Administration had audited active SSNs back in March and
discovered that either a staggering 6.5 million Americans are over 112 years
old, or somebody at the Social Security Death Index has a lot of overtime ahead
of them. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A spokesperson for the Social
Security’s <a href="http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=3693">Death Master File </a>could not be reached for this article. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And now for an update…<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So much for data security.
Anyone fancy some good, old-fashioned bugs? Whaddaya say, New York Stock
Exchange? Care to give us the lowdown on the <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2015/07/08/new-york-stock-exchange-halts-trading/">mystery malfunction </a> that disrupted trading for more than three hours
on Wednesday? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nobody’s saying what caused the outage, but
we’re betting on the same kind of thing that brought down NYSE in 2001—a
software update. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ah, how well I remember the chuckling at Reboot Central when the
then-VP Bob Zito described the problem fourteen years ago...</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>“When we brought the system up in the morning, we
only realized then that the software upgrade did not take.”</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When the collective “Well, DUH!” from every IT
guy in the universe died down, we just about made out the follow-up--</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background: white; font-size: 16pt;">“<i>When we tried to revert back to the old
system, that wouldn’t work and we needed time to reboot”</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;">--before collapsing in
laughter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Surely the NYSE can’t have
made the same mistake twice—especially after the news that even Samsung d<a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/2941348/patch-management/samsung-to-stop-windows-update-shenanigans.html">oesn’t trust system updates</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But frankly, the markets
could have used a few brakes in the middle of the week. This is the kind of
technical problem the <a href="http://www.wgem.com/story/29500687/nyse-shutdown-upends-an-already-tough-day-for-markets">Asian exchanges</a> and
could only have prayed for, as the Shanghai composite shed 4 percent, and Hang Seng 1.1 percent, of their worth on the same day.</span></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’d fly a million miles…if the damned plane would take
off<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="background: white; border: 1pt none windowtext; color: black; font-size: 16pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As if the NYSE glitch wasn’t enough, Wednesday
morning also saw United Airlines grounded its flights due to a network
connectivity issue. Too bad for United that network connectivity wasn’t a
problem for delayed passengers. Snidest Tweet Award goes to John B. Hammer for
the following gem: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; border: 1pt none windowtext; color: black; font-size: 16pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; border: 1pt none windowtext; color: black; font-size: 16pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ve been
using @united as my primary air carrier for quite a while. Why? I like to live
life on the edge. #groundstop.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Two days later, in an
unrelated incident, a lucky <a href="http://thepointsguy.com/2015/07/uniteds-million-point-bug-bounty/">bug-swatting United customer </a>was awarded a million
bonus points for submitting a bug report. Jordan Weins’ Twitter-ready analysis?
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wow. @united really paid out! Got a
million miles for my bug bounty submissions! Very cool. </i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But where were your bug
bounty reports two days earlier, Jordan? And just how do you know so much about
the flaws in United’s systems, eh? Thousands of disgruntled non-flyers want to
know.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, things could have
been worse for the airline: A United pilot could have brought live ammunition
on board a flight from Texas to Germany, and tried to dispose of the
evidence down the pressurized blue cyclone of an airplane lavatory. Oh, wait a
minute…<a href="http://www.people.com/article/united-pilot-flushed-bullets-down-airplane-toilet">that actually happened</a>. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Never mind. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-15947294079779937432015-04-09T12:49:00.002-04:002015-04-09T13:03:50.091-04:00Instructions for Windows and Mac and Life<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
1. Click the picture to see the instructions.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
2. Do what they say. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1UvvUrKdSLc/VSatSoeIHUI/AAAAAAAAB-I/ejvKHeMBsG0/s1600/!!Doitn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1UvvUrKdSLc/VSatSoeIHUI/AAAAAAAAB-I/ejvKHeMBsG0/s1600/!!Doitn.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-74527995989465160202014-10-26T08:41:00.003-04:002014-10-26T08:41:29.099-04:00Switch fast between extended and mirrored screens: An OSX godsendYou plug an external monitor or projector into your Macbook Air or Pro, and what do you see? It's anyone's guess. It could be an extension of your desktop or a reproduction of what's on your laptop. And it might not be what you want to see on the big screen. Don't mess around with System Preferences. Learn this keyboard shortcut:<br />
<br />
COMMAND + F1<br />
<br />
Holds down the Apple command key and press that chiclet F1 key above the 1 and next to Esc.<br />
<br />
This toggles between display modes: If you were mirroring, it'll extend your desktop. If your desktop was extended, it'll mirror.<br />
<br />
This is a handy trick to have up your sleeve when you're presenting to a group and you don't want them to watch you cue up what you'll show them next. Use extended desktops to do work behind the scenes and hit Command+F1 for the big reveal. Then Command+F1 again to hide your work. crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-5285741043252018092011-03-23T10:27:00.004-04:002011-03-23T10:57:20.440-04:00Dredging Dying DisksCrash Central deals with dying disks daily. Now there's a line that belonged in The King's Speech. It's also a truth universally acknowledged. Several times a day, someone will come in with a disk that's either so crusted with malware or so pockmarked with bad sectors that it can't boot. Naturally, the data's not backed up. So the race is on to get the data off the drive before it screeches its last. <br /><br />I usually slip the hard disk out of the old machine and into a USB drive reader hooked up to my production machine. Then I get all the personal data off the machine. It's usually stored in three locations:<br /><br />The three folders are stored (in Vista or Windows 7) under Users or (in XP and before) Documents and Settings, in the profile of whoever uses the machine. They are Favorites (for Web sites bookmarked in Internet Explorer), Desktop, and My Documents. <br /><br />Copy these three folders and most of the time, you've got everything people want. <br /><br />Unless, of course, they don't use Internet Explorer. This morning, I got a dying disk from a fellow who uses Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox and has a unique set of bookmarks for each. Gee...thanks Will! Anyone who knows these browsers well knows you can back up and export bookmarks and other settings...but that's not much help when you can't boot into Windows and launch the programs. <br /><br />Here's where these browsers store their bookmarks and other settings:<br /><br />Chrome:<br /><br />%APPDATA%\Google\Chrome\<br /><br />Firefox:<br /><br />%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<br /><br /><br />In Windows 7, %APPDATA% is the folder \Users\<username>\AppData\Local<br />In XP, %APPDATA% is the folder \Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data<br /><br />Mozilla bookmarks are stored in a file called places.sqlite. If you can't find it in the Profiles folder, do a diskwide search for it.crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-58791995222595360372011-02-23T15:20:00.004-05:002011-02-23T15:40:27.227-05:00Skype fix is in!Except that it isn't.<br /><br />To revisit this issue again: The otherwise excellent Skype service really lets itself down in its public support forums. Starting around January 20th, their boards were abuzz with problems surrounding Skype 5.0's Facebook integration feature. A server setting they instituted around then caused some <a href="http://crashreboot.blogspot.com/2011/01/skype-facebook-failure.html">very irritating behavior</a> for Skype users in some corporate networks. <br /><br />After helping dozens of people at Crash Central to turn off the rain of cascading error messages, I mentioned it to an editor at PC World who asked me to <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/220349/skype_and_facebook_when_social_media_collide.html">write it up for the PC World BizFeed site</a>. <br /><br />I did, and within hours, Skype claimed to have fixed the problem. <br /><br />Here's what Raul said on <a href="http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=791749&view=&hl=facebook&fromsearch=1">the Skype support site</a>: <br /><br />==========<br />This error has been fixed by us.<br /><br />You do not need to upgrade your Skype for it, we did the fix on our infrastructure side.<br /><br />Thank you for raising it here. <br />==========<br /><br />...and here's what I say in response: How come nothing's changed, then? <br /><br />Before getting ready to tell the 100-plus people I support that they can now turn Skype's Facebook integration back on if they like, I tried it out myself. The windows continue to cascade when content filters block Facebook. The CPU usage jumped to maximum. Everything slowed down. In short, things are no different from how they were a month ago.<br /><br />I'd love to say what Skype wants me to say--that it's all cool, guys, just go ahead as usual--but I can't. That's because I'm the guy they come to when things don't work. And guess what? They still don't work.<br /><br />Ball's back in your court, Skype. Show them you're as brilliant as I know you can be.crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-2434228283126571222011-01-24T10:28:00.003-05:002011-01-24T10:37:23.663-05:00Skype Facebook Failure!At Crash Central, we've been overwhelmed with complaints of never-ending Internet Explorer windows loading when people launch Skype 5 (which happens automatically on startup in a lot of cases). It's not a virus, we've discovered. It's a case of poor programming. <br /><br />In a laudable attempt at making your social networks merge into a monolith, the latest iteration of Skype integrates nicely with Facebook. Except when it doesn't. Corporate filters that block social networking sites prevent Skype from getting to Facebook. Skype 5 hasn't been programmed to handle that, so it tries again. And again. And again. <br /><br />Here's how to stop it: <br /><br />1. Brace yourself for multiple browser windows.<br />2. Launch Skype<br />3. Use Alt-Tab to get through the spawning windows to Skype.<br />4. Click on the Facebook tab in the right pane of the Skype window.<br />5. Click on the link labeled Don't Show Facebook In Skype. <br /><br />This will halt the flow. You'll probably want to restart your system to flush the detritus. But you'll be golden.crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-17798432443039741512010-10-20T11:24:00.003-04:002010-10-20T11:25:32.744-04:00Tech Haiku #2Screwdriver? Check! Patch<br />cable? Check! Now nobody<br />Will dare to stop mecrashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-85040232473068533072010-10-05T08:46:00.003-04:002010-10-05T11:20:52.832-04:00Just Finish This For Me: Outlook's AutoComplete functionJust when you think you have configured a new PC to suit its new owner, along they come and say "My email addresses don't just pop up anymore!" Gah! Of course they don't, I curse myself, that's because they're stored locally in the intuitively named AutoComplete File, which has the unintuitively named extension NK2.<br /><br />This file stores all the email addresses you use regularly, so that when you start to send an email to one of your friends called Dave, for example, you only need to type the first few letters, and up comes every Dave you send email to. <br /><br />Unless, that is, you get a new PC. <br /><br />Here's how to move the email autocomplete data to a new PC. First of all, make sure Outlook is NOT running, then follow these steps:<br /><br />1.On your old PC, the one with the saved AutoComplete names, hold down the Window key and press F. This brings up the search box. Enter *.NK2 as a search term. It'll find a file called Outlook.NK2, or a file with your login name.NK2, probably in the \Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook folder, or the \Users\user name\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook folder in Windows 7.<br /><br />2. Copy the file to a memory stick or email it to yourself. <br /><br />3. On your new computer, repeat the process in Step 1 to locate the sparsely populated NK2 file. If in doubt, navigate to the folders in Step 1 and see what you find. The AutoComplete file may not have the same name as on the old system, but the extension is the giveaway. <br /><br />4. Rename the new system's NK2 file (outlook.NK2.bak, for example). Then copy the one from your old machine into the same folder. <br /><br />5. Power up Outlook to check it works alright. <br /><br />Presto! The deed is done!<br /><br />Potential problems:<br />Guess what? If your file settings are in the default "Microsoft nanny" mode, the Outlook folder may be hidden ("for your protection"). To unhide hidden folders in Windows XP, hold down the Window key and press E to bring up My Computer. On the Tools menu, click Folder Options. Click the View tab, and then burrow through Advanced settings, Hidden files and folders, and click Show hidden files and folders.crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-83429301942711221562010-09-24T08:51:00.003-04:002010-10-20T11:26:54.951-04:00Friday Limerick #1A corporate man in a suit,<br />Came and told me his laptop won't boot<br />I saw what was wrong<br />It's the same old sad song<br />"That's a briefcase, you dozy old coot!"crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-31015835977312605572010-09-24T08:49:00.001-04:002010-10-20T11:26:31.675-04:00Tech haiku #1PC Load Error<br />I think I can fix that one<br />Pass the sledgehammercrashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-1071444370890796972010-09-09T07:18:00.004-04:002010-09-09T07:33:21.280-04:00It's Debugging Day! When an editor I've worked with for a decade mentioned she wanted an article on software bugs last spring, we decided to publish it on September 9, because it's the 63rd anniversary of the "moth in the relay" incident.<br /><br />Back in 1947, a team working with Harvard's Mark II computer pulled a dead moth out of the machine, and with a flash of engineer humor, taped it into the log with the caption "First actual case of bug being found."<br /><br />People who don't know how to read properly assumed that this incident introduced the term "bug" to the computing world--but this old word for a monster had been used in engineering for more than a century before anyone pulled a moth out of a machine at Harvard. But even though it's not a significant day in terms of etymology (or entomology), we thought that September 9 was a good day to celebrate software errors.<br /><br />We settled on 11 massive failures and a few notable mentions. Check out the article at Computerworld.com. It's called <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9183580/Epic_failures_11_infamous_software_bugs?taxonomyId=18&pageNumber=1" target="new">Epic Fail</a>, for obvious reasons.crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-66583492788365967232010-08-25T10:46:00.002-04:002010-08-25T10:51:27.048-04:00Bugging out!I'm in the throes of writing a feature article on computer bugs at the moment. It gave me the chance to revisit an old favorite of mine from 1994. The Pentium floating point flaw was in the news at the time, and it overshadowed this little snippet.<br /><br />Windows Mis-Calculator<br /><br />In the four years leading up to the great Pentium flaw scandal, the not-so-great Windows Calculator scandal was flying under the horizon. It came to light in 1994, but it had been kicking around since Windows 3.x first appeared in 1990. CALC.EXE came up with a joke answer that was even funnier than punching 07734 into a handheld calculator, turning it upside down, and saying "hello" to people in leetspeak.<br /><br />Propeller-heads tried the following math exercise instead:<br /><br />0 - 2.11<br /><br />Windows Calculator got the right answer: -2.11. But adding 2.1 to the result yielded an interesting result that broke new ground in mathematics. Instead of -0.01, it introduced the baffling concept of -0.00. We're not entirely sure what minus zero to two decimal places means, but it was fun to geek out to back in 1994.<br /><br />Yeah, we know how lame that sounds. Remember that this was six years before the millennium. Even geek entertainment was simple back then.crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-16258630548483220032010-08-25T10:21:00.003-04:002015-07-12T20:39:43.169-04:00Murky BucketIt seems that my nation needs me. I left Britain 23 years ago, and now, according to an article in today's <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7959915/Britons-abandon-thank-you-in-favour-of-cheers.html">Daily Telegraph</a>, people there don't want to say "Thank you" anymore. Of course, they are prepared to render thanks, but they believe that the actual words "thank you" are too formal. So they use informal and even foreign terms instead: Top of the list of informal thank-yous is "cheers." They'd even use the reviled language of French and resort to "merci" rather than saying "thank you." Really!<br />
<br />
This goes to prove one thing: I'm an early adopter. "Cheers!" was almost my exclusive way of saying "thank you" back in 1985-87, my last two years on British soil.<br />
<br />
You may offer whatever thanks you wish for my blog today in the space provided below. Use whatever terms you choose. For those in need of a thesaurus of colloquial terms of gratitude, the Telegraph provided the following, sorted in order of preference according to their opinion poll:<br />
<br />
TOP 20 WAYS TO SAY THANK YOU<br />
<br />
1. Cheers<br />
<br />
2. Ta<br />
<br />
3. That's great<br />
<br />
4. Cool<br />
<br />
5. OK<br />
<br />
6. Brilliant<br />
<br />
7. Lovely<br />
<br />
8. Nice one<br />
<br />
9. Much appreciated<br />
<br />
10. You star<br />
<br />
11. All right<br />
<br />
12. Fab<br />
<br />
13. Awesome<br />
<br />
14. Wicked<br />
<br />
15. Merci<br />
<br />
16. Danke<br />
<br />
17. Gracias<br />
<br />
18. Super<br />
<br />
19. Ace<br />
<br />
20. Thank youcrashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-48620720263739455322010-05-14T16:42:00.004-04:002010-05-14T16:56:26.531-04:00How low can you go?Just when you thought you'd found the cheapest domain registrar...someone goes and lowers the bar. This is getting ridiculous! Lots of people offer free domains if you buy into their hosting packages. But <a href="http://www.kqzyfj.com/click-409675-10564939" target="_top">1&1 Internet</a> is taking it too far! For the month of May, they are giving one dot com away per customer. No charge. And their renewals are among the lowest in the cosmos too--a good two bucks less than GoDaddy's.<br /><br />And if you want to load up on a couple of extra hosting features, their beginner package is $3.99 a month for a ridiculous amount of features--a blog, RSS, phone support, 600 email accounts (IMAP, POP and Webmail, no less), 10GB of site space...I mean, let's get serious here! Nothing for a .com domain? Goosed up for less than fifty bucks per year? Are you making any money for yourselves at all there, guys?crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-24742756164071200012009-09-29T10:21:00.001-04:002009-09-29T10:22:59.367-04:00Spot the errorCare to guess what kind of error Cisco Clean Access Agent is reporting here? Cisco does offer a few clues along the way...<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BMeOJRvDVG0/SsIX-akE1WI/AAAAAAAAACQ/fQSgZfneWpU/s1600-h/stringerror.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5386894465338496354" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 293px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BMeOJRvDVG0/SsIX-akE1WI/AAAAAAAAACQ/fQSgZfneWpU/s400/stringerror.JPG" border="0" /></a>crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-31984392770017873042009-08-07T10:43:00.002-04:002009-08-07T14:17:16.120-04:00Win 7 : Win Users 31Like every other journalist who's been writing about technology for a while--and anyone else who could be bothered to download 2.6GB of beta code--I have been working with Windows 7 for six months. For the past couple of weeks, I've been working with the final code, the release-to-manufacturing code, the thing that'll be appearing on upgrade discs and new computers in a couple of months.<br /><br />The verdict? It's a tale of two operating systems. The one you want, and the one you don't want. The best of upgrades, the worst of upgrades. It's not a far, far better thing than Microsoft has ever done before, but it's not a bleak house either.<br /><br />Okay, I had a dickens of a good time reviewing it for Computerworld. And 31 feedbacks at computerworld.com seem to indicate that it's a flashpoint for people to throw in their two cents'-worth.<br /><br /><br />Throw your own barbs into the ring <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9136162/Windows_7_Four_reasons_to_upgrade_four_reasons_to_stay_away">after reading the article.</a> And feel free to be as nasty as possible. I'm thick skinned. I have had to be: I've been working with Microsoft beta code for six months now...crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-73588589658397808142009-07-20T10:39:00.003-04:002009-07-20T11:16:45.657-04:00CompuServe...site u like?<div>RIP CompuServe, my old stamping ground. This venerable online community was my introduction to online world, and once made my pockets jingle with loose change, since I was someone who actually earned money by moderating a forum there. It was quite possibly the only online venue I fully understood--at least from a financial point of view. </div><div><br /></div><div>Let me start out by explaining that the reason I didn't get a postgraduate degree is that I failed economics. Multiple times and by a wide margin. I thought it was because I didn't understand money, but I do understand money. At least, I understand it at a household and personal level, and paradoxically, I learned it not in Econ 101 but in scripture classes at school. From the story of Joseph, to be exact (and to be more exact, mostly from listening to songs about his amazing technicolor dreamcoat so I didn't have to reread the book too often).</div><div><br /></div><div>The lesson (drawn from Joseph's interpretation of the Pharaoh's dream) was this: There will be seven years of plenty during which you should save up your surplus, followed by seven years of famine during which you'll need to draw on your savings. This nugget of wisdom sprang Joseph from jail and made him powerful in the Egyptian court, making Joseph the first and probably only financial advisor in history to (a) begin his career in jail, instead of ending it there and (b) issue conservative financial advice that rich people took seriously. </div><div><br /></div><div>The number of years fluctuate--especially on Internet time--but the principle remains the same: Don't squander your surplus because it won't always be there. </div><div><br /></div><div>Most of my income of the past two decades has tracked the vagaries of the computer world. It was economics at its most Marxian: Back in the 1980s and 1990s, I exchanged services (writing) for money (which came from two sources--magazine subscriptions and print advertising dollars). Later, I earned money managing online communities. I spent vast tracts of my early career on CompuServe and other <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9135292/CompuServe_Prodigy_et_al._What_Web_2.0_can_learn_from_Online_1.0?taxonomyName=Networking+and+Internet&taxonomyId=16">old-school online communities</a>. The experience earned me money from sources I could understand (visitors paid for every minute of their online time, and CompuServe shared a cut of that with forum operators they called SysOps, of whom I was one). </div><div><br /></div><div>This easy-to-follow money trail is one reason I took my time getting my head around the whole commercial Internet thing. Content is what keeps people coming back, and if people aren't paying for sites, where will the quality content come from? </div><div><br /></div><div>As it turns out, sites did find money to pay for content providers (like me) to write articles, such as my most recent one about CompuServe and other <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9135292/CompuServe_Prodigy_et_al._What_Web_2.0_can_learn_from_Online_1.0?taxonomyName=Networking+and+Internet&taxonomyId=16">old-school online communities</a>. But I'm still not sure where that money is coming from. Readers aren't paying--at least, they're not paying anyone except their ISP, and ISPs aren't paying content sites anything. </div><div><br /></div><div>Initially, I assumed the money came from venture capital, but are venture capitalists really so nice as to subsidize the world's click-and-read habit indefinitely? Of course not. And after fifteen years of it, surely they would have stopped by now. One of these days, I'll figure out the source of my online income, which dates back to early 1995, the year I first became a Web columnist. But for now, I'm just cranking it out...often writing about CompuServe and other <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9135292/CompuServe_Prodigy_et_al._What_Web_2.0_can_learn_from_Online_1.0?taxonomyName=Networking+and+Internet&taxonomyId=16">old-school online communities</a> that made sense to me...from an economic perspective at least. </div><div><br /></div><div>And until the next seven-year cycle of plenty, I'm spending the money I earned during the Web bubble years. I have had to: I already sold my amazing technicolor dreamcoat on eBay. </div>crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-64035654703167694632009-07-18T09:40:00.004-04:002009-07-20T10:38:45.862-04:00Camera actionYouTube addiction and parenthood are the twin engines that drive the digital video camera industry. Billions of bytes of wobbly-handed footage no longer languish on hard drives; they're all put video servers and linked to on Facebook. <br /><br />Don't try to fight it. Just accept it. And if you need to jump on the bandwagon, do it with a decent quality camera with a decent microphone, not the tinny, blocky, jumpy cellphone footage that comprises most of the embarrassing teen postings.<br /><br />Here's how to get decent video quality at high definition: scope out these <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135206/Review_3_personal_HD_video_cameras_offer_high_def_at_low_cost">reviews of three HD digital video cameras</a>, which I worked up for a Computerworld article. <br /><br />These cameras are decent quality, low-budget tools; the quality and content of the footage is up to the cameraman and editor. Or as they say in YouTube, you.crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-75416486936477160612009-05-26T13:54:00.003-04:002009-05-26T14:07:04.593-04:00Domain stepsSome people have accused me of "confusing" domain registration with hosting. It's one of the less valid responses to my latest article for Computerworld, a review of three budget domain registrars, tucked away on Computerworld's site at<br /><a href="http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9132959">http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9132959</a><br /><br />I certainly cover more domain hosting issues than domain registration issues, mainly because there's more to write about. You register a domain, it's registered. What you do with it after that...well...there's the rub.<br /><br />I registered my first domains back in 1996, shortly after Network Solutions started charging some exorbitant amount for what had previously been free. Back then, Network Solutions billed you for $100 for two years' registration. The price later dropped to $70 for a two year period. Then in 1999, more registrars came on board--first Register.com, then a flood of them--and the whole business changed.<br /><br />The first change was the standard billing period: It became annual instead of biannual. Another result of the competition was that pricing dropped to a "standard discount" rate of fifteen dollars per year per domain, and registrars started to lard on features to attract customers. It's those features that have changed and lowered the barrier of entry to becoming your own d0t-com entity.<br /><br />The thing that prompted me to pitch this review to Computerworld is that you can now get a domain for around ten bucks a year--with POP email and some kind of site hosting thrown into the bargain.<br /><br />I'm still amazed by this economy of scale. And if it leads to some confusion between registration and hosting, well, so be it. I'm no McDonald's corporation. I don't need heavy duty hosting. And I don't have a big budget for my online projects either. If I can get satisfaction for the price of a Happy Meal...I'll do it.crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-46771425464625776032009-05-12T07:54:00.005-04:002009-05-15T09:19:03.211-04:00Space age technologyLike most people who have seen the latest Star Trek movie, I naturally think of space age hardware as the pinnacle of modern technology. To blast ahead at warp speeds, the systems in space must surely be at the cutting edge. A random conversation I had on Friday has totally changed my view of the world--or at least of what's orbiting the world.<br /><br />Oh, how wrong I was before Friday.<br /><br />I was chatting with one of the scientists who has been working on the Hubble telescope for his entire career, since long before it went up. In the course of a ten minute conversation, I found out a few things that would make earthbound IT pros shudder:<br /><br />First, the space shuttle mission that blasted off on Monday, May 11th, 2009 was delayed by seven months because of a data router failure. Up in space, a NASA-style Ethernet box went into remission--the kind of thing that IT folk like me could fix a quick trip over to Office Depot and five minutes on site. That pushed back a schedule from October 2008 to mid-May, 2009.<br /><br />Secondly, the computer systems on Hubble are, to put it mildly, a little behind the times. It went up with a system based around the 386 Intel processor, for one thing. Of course, this was in 1990, when the 386 wasn't quite so prehistoric as it seems to be now. And they did upgrade it later...to a 486, which is what's in there now.<br /><br />Why the pre-Cambrian technology and glacial repair speeds? It's all about location. To see if they'll survive in orbit, CPUs and routers destined for space need to be tested in harsh conditions--real vacuums, space cold, and cosmic radiation. This takes time. And what takes more time is a tendency to be conservative: The huge distances and cost involved with repair missions in space means that you don't do anything unless you're sure it won't fail quickly. That's why the fastest CPUs in permanent space objects are typically 10 years behind what we earthlings have on our desks.<br /><br />The third and most significant thing: When anything at all goes wrong on Hubble, it shuts down. At first blush, this sounds pretty inefficient, but it makes sense when you look at the big picture. You've got a massively powerful lens system. You've got a sun nearby with no cloud cover. You've got an expensive space station. And you've got a planet below. Typical childhood experiments with lenses, sunlight, and ants or dried leaves or paper lead to one inevitable conclusion: You don't want that kind of focused energy beaming into the space station--or worse, down to the planet's surface.<br /><br />That's one kind of cutting-edge technology that you really don't want in orbit around the earth.crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-60602210600399427572009-05-07T10:25:00.003-04:002009-05-07T10:42:17.281-04:00Mac says "Where's the Active Directory?"Here's the scenario: You're working in an Active Directory network and somebody starts to bring Macs into the workplace. Slowly but surely, you have a cluster of them, and you need to get them onto the network. You set up a Mac server with Open Directory gluing it together. Congratulations: You now have a golden triangle. <div><br /></div><div>But...your PC users expect to find network folders on the Mac they've always seen on the PC. Your networking experts don't know the Mac and your desktop Mac enthusiasts don't know about domain-based networking. Here's the missing piece of information for both those groups. </div><div><div><br /></div><div>1. In Finder, press command+K. </div><div>2. In the server address box, enter smb:// followed by the fully-qualified domain name of the drive (eg <span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:13px;">smb://walnut.yourdomain.org/ or smb://oak.yourdomain.org).</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:13px;">3. Click on Connect and select the specific volumes you want to mount. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:13px;">4, They'll appear in the desktop as mounted volumes. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:13px;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:13px;">Congratulations. Like the triangle, you're golden. </span></div></div>crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-20652010490194230292009-04-27T22:59:00.004-04:002009-04-27T23:17:46.602-04:00Setting up PCs for multiple users<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Arial;font-size:12px;"><p>For the past six years, I've been dealing with Windows XP machines that get a lot of use from a lot of people. They sit in school tech labs. They sit in libraries. And they sit in classrooms. Some of them get three hundred people on them in the course of a month. That's three hundred different users logging on multiple times, looking to run different programs and print papers on networked printers. And the way XP works (and it's the same with Windows Vista), that means that there are 300-plus profiles on these computers, tucked away in a folder called Documents and Settings (or in Vista, Users). </p><p>If you don't set up the default profile right, you'll spend hours each week dealing with frustrated clients. There are no printers installed. They can't find a program they need, even though you know it's installed. Double sets of icons appear on the desktop. Items in the Startup menu run twice. I know administrators who have struggled with these issues for 18 months or more, and still don't quite have a protocol in place.</p><p>Here's the protocol I use for my labs. And trust me...I keep my volume of frustrated clients down to an absolute minimum.</p><p>The first step in setting up a new corporate machine is to create a new user. Installer is a good name for him, as an administrator for the local machine and for the domain-based network it will hook up to. </p><p>When logged in as Installer, you install all the programs you want each user to have. You set up the icons, desktop pattern, screensaver, Internet Favorites, and Startup menu options that you want every user on the computer to see. And set up all the network printers you want the machine to be able to print to. <br /></p><p>As a final step, run all the new programs once to see if they kick up registration or other configuration windows the first time you use them. If you see such a pop-up window, make sure it won't appear next time (because if you don't, every new user on that PC will suffer). When that's out of the way, you've completed the time-consuming but obvious steps. But your job's not over.</p><p>While you're still logged in as Installer, open My Computer and disconnect all the network drives (select them, and open Tools, Disconnect Network Drives). Your network log-in scripts will map the drives again, but if you don't remove them, network users without access to these drives will be able to see them but not connect to them. It's tidier and more secure to make sure this doesn't happen.</p><p>After disconnecting the network drives, restart your computer using a local administrator account. Go into My Computer, and navigate to C:\Documents and Settings. You should see a few folders there, including Installer, Administrator, All Users, and maybe Default User (this last one's a hidden folder, but you'll see a faint outline of it with the right settings.) These folders contain the files that set up user profiles on this system. If you see any other profiles, delete them.</p><p>After this, you need to copy the Installer settings to Default User. To do this, right-click on My Computer, select Properties, click on the Advanced tab, and then the Settings button. Click to select the Installer profile, then click on Copy To. In the Copy To dialog box, click on Browse and navigate to C:\Documents and Settings, then click on Default User and click on OK. If you do it right, you'll see a warning about overwriting a profile. Click OK.</p><p>Theoretically, your work should pay off now. But just to be absolutely sure, log on to the computer and the network as a regular user (don't use your regular log-in if you're a network administrator, just to be thorough.) Windows XP should create a new profile for you that's exactly the same as the one you made under Installer, except that your network rights and the drives you can see will be different.</p><p>The next just-to-be-sure step is to fire up a program. Anything from Office 2003 or 2007 is good, since it's a particularly finicky program for multiple-user systems. If you're not asked to register or set up the program as a new user, you're golden. If you are, you need to log back on as Installer and rerun the Office installation. Then you must delete the user profile you had the trouble with and try again.</p><p>Confused yet? Don't blame the messenger. It's just another day in the life of a system administrator dealing with Windows XP Professional. And we all have days like that, don't we?</p></span>crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-23586466832447978902009-04-27T22:53:00.001-04:002009-04-27T22:55:52.531-04:00Your word processor is no typewriter<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; ">I learned how to type before I had a computer. In fact, I traded in my quill-sharpening kit for a manual typewriter and learned how to type at night school. I was a graduate student at the time, and yet the bun-wearing schoolmarm in charge actually shouted at me in front of the class. My crime? Typing Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" from memory when I'd finished the repetitive exercises she'd given me.<p></p><p>So it is with some pleasure that I state that all typing teachers in that era were irredeemably wrong. In fact, they have caused more trouble and expense to computer users than anybody will ever know. As someone who's spent the past 20 years digging up digital documents and correcting them for publication, I can state this with some authority. Without exception, well-trained typewriter typists make messy digital documents. Oh, their documents may print out all right, but their redundant spaces and tabs make any attempt to edit or change a font an exercise in frustration.</p><p>These are the top four typewritten crimes against word processing:</p><p>Crime 1: Entering two spaces after a period. Typewriters couldn't adjust letter spacing, so typing teachers taught students to hit the spacebar twice so it was easy to see the end of a sentence. Word processors handle spacing automatically, so there is no good reason to do this anymore. In fact, it looks terrible.</p><p>Crime 2: Hitting the Tab key to indent a line. This terrible habit was the only way to do it with a typewriter. It's a waste of effort now that you can pre-format your document. If you have a document with a hanging indent (where each line except the first one is indented), it's a labor-intensive nightmare, especially when you need to make corrections.</p><p>Crime 3: Using combinations of tabs and spaces to line up text. Ever heard of word processed tables? You will. Read on.</p><p>Crime 4: Hitting the Enter key twice to space out paragraphs. Once again, a waste of effort. One that I occasionally commit, but really shouldn't.</p><p>So how do you do it right?</p><p>When you open your document, set the page layout right away. In Microsoft Word, press Ctrl+A to select the entire document, then pick Format, Paragraph. In the Indentation section, under Special, select First Line. Under Spacing, select the Auto option under Before. If you need to double-space, select that here too.</p><p>When you want to make two or more columns, don't use tabs. Instead, create a table with the right number of columns. In Word, select Table and Insert, and make the columns right. Then when the table appears, drag to highlight the whole thing, and select Borders and Shading. Click on None to ensure you won't see the lines on the table when you print it out.</p><p></p><p>How to Clean Up a Mistyped Document</p><p>Of course, if you correct a document that's already messed up, it will look even more of a mess. So you need to know a few clean-up tricks using the search and replace tool. In Microsoft Word, you open the dialog box with Ctrl+H or the Edit, Replace menu. Tidying up the two-spaces-after-a-period crime is easy: In the Find What box, enter a period and two spaces. In the Replace With, enter a period with one space. Presto!</p><p>Tabs and paragraph returns are harder to replace automatically, because you can't hit a Tab or Enter key in a search-and-replace box. But you can enter the code for these characters: ^t and ^p. Hold down the Shift key and press 6, and you've got that caret symbol (^). Follow it with a P for paragraph return or T for a tab.</p><p>Undoing the tabbed indent crime becomes easy, then. In Find What, enter ^p^t. In Replace With, enter ^p and click the Replace All button. Undoing the double-return crime is also easy: replace ^p^p with ^p and click Replace All.</p><p>Now, inspect your document. You may find a few indents made up of spaces. These can be removed by replacing ^p followed by a space with plain ^p and hitting Replace All several times, until Word tells you there were no changes made.</p><p></p><p>About the only residual problem I've ever found after going through these steps are blocks of data that used to look like tables and weird page breaks because people hit Enter five or more times to get over the page.</p><p>Page breaks are best handled in Word by holding down the Ctrl key and pressing Enter. This inserts a page break symbol.</p><p>Copying blocks of data out of "tables" made up of tabs is requires a little-known Alt key trick: Hold down the Alt key and use the mouse to draw a selection box around a column of text. Once you've selected what you need, cut it and paste it into a real Word table.</p><p>Now you've unlearned all the bad habits you learned from typing teachers, make sure the next generation doesn't commit them: Buy your kids a $30 copy of Type To Learn 3 from Sunburst Software (www.sunburst.com). In fact, if you still hunt-and-peck, buy it for yourself and try it out for a while. It's better for your wrists than online gaming, and it's kind of fun too. Best of all, it's guaranteed not to shout at you for typing poetry when you're done with your exercises.</p></span>crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1394039881942715147.post-36084254067483555672009-04-06T18:15:00.005-04:002009-04-14T10:23:46.218-04:00Easter Eggs we have loved: The Hall of Tortured SoulsIf you were ever a fan of the exploration and FPS game Doom, there's something tucked away in Excel 95 that you will flip for. It's called the Hall of Tortured Souls.<br /><br /><br /><p><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BMeOJRvDVG0/SbW0pnpYL1I/AAAAAAAAAA4/8inX8YsDWQ0/s1600-h/HTS.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311349962663538514" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 331px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 228px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BMeOJRvDVG0/SbW0pnpYL1I/AAAAAAAAAA4/8inX8YsDWQ0/s400/HTS.jpg" border="0" /></a>The Hall is a 3-D walkthrough environment, where the arrow keys control movement. These instructions will get you into the hall:</p><p> 1. Open Excel 95 with a blank worksheet<br />2. Go down to row 95 (that Windows 95 branding strikes again)<br />3. Select the whole row<br />4. Tab over to column B<br />5. Go to Help/About<br />6. Hold down Ctrl + Alt +Shift and click on the Tech Support Button.<br />7. The Hall of Tortured Souls window appears. </p><p>Once you're there, The C and D keys tilt the point of view down and up. You can walk through walls, but you need to be careful, as walls without windows can trap you inside the wall when you plough into them.<br /><br />There are three levels, each with four rooms, and three pools you can walk across. On the bottom level, you appear to reach a solid wall, but behind it is a a zig-zag path. You get to the path by typing a cheat code, excelkfa, a nod to the Doom all-power cheat code IDKFA. </p><p>But there are no demons to blast into oblivion, so to many gamers, it lacks punch. When you're done exploring, X out of the box and quit Excel. You can always go back another day.</p>crashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16490581953819438334noreply@blogger.com0