BRUCEB NEWS
The Claude Crisis: AI And The Presumption Of Regularity
It’s Anti-AI week! Protests and petitions and boycotts and resignations , oh my. OpenAI (ChatGPT) is the villain. Anthropic (Claude) is the hero, topping the download charts after a burst of headlines about AI and the Pentagon and are you kidding me,…
WINDOWS SEARCH 4.0 – FINAL
Microsoft released Windows Search 4.0 today in final form. It is a free upgrade to the search features built into Windows Vista. It adds indexed searching to Windows XP; this…
ACROBAT ONLINE
Adobe has launched an online suite of software and services, along with announcing the July release of Acrobat 9. It’s all interesting but I have a sense of overload…
IE HOME PAGE
The battle for your home page has been raging for years, and it shows no sign of dying down. The home page is the first page that’s displayed when you open Internet…
GETTING RID OF AN IE ANNOYANCE
When I’m online with Internet Explorer, I frequently see this warning before a page is displayed: Some security measures – like Vista’s UAC – are…
LITTLE BROTHER
Cory Doctorow is one of the most interesting science fiction authors working today, as well as an editor and frequent contributor to Boing Boing, one of the most popular blogs in…
FLASH PLAYER SECURITY WARNING
Adobe Flash Player is installed as an add-on to Internet Explorer on almost everyone’s computer. It’s become the ubiquitous way to display online videos from YouTube…
AT&T DSL & MAIL WOES
AT&T has a special place in my heart. One of my clients is a small business with its own domain name and several users receiving POP3 mail addressed to that domain name…
VISTA vs. XP
I’m starting to get annoyed when I sit down at a Windows XP computer because it’s missing so many things that I take for granted in Vista. I just reformatted a hard…
DELL LAPTOPS & POWER MANAGEMENT
On a Dell laptop, it is crucial to DISABLE one “power-saving” feature guaranteed to drive you mad. In Vista’s “Power Options” panel, the bottom item…
VISTA POWER MANAGEMENT
Vista is very smart about power management! Use the default settings, you might be pleasantly surprised. As always, the goal is to make a computer more like other appliances…
NORTON ANTIVIRUS & XP SP3
A number of people have had the same problems after installing Windows XP Service Pack 3: Device Manager is empty System Restore is empty the Network Connections screen is empty…
GOOGLE WEB HOSTING
If you’re looking for a quick way to get something online, take a look at what Google is doing. There’s no shortage of ways to get started online with a web site, a…
USB HD PREVENTS BOOT
The same problem has now turned up twice in two weeks. So far I’m not aware of any recent update or change that makes this happen, but keep this in the back of your mind in…
GRANDCENTRAL GOES OOPS
GrandCentral is a phenomenally useful service for some people. The service assigns you a free phone number; you can route calls so when that number is dialed, the phone rings at…
ADWARE – NOT DEAD YET
The best security software will not protect you if you click “OK” and install something from a web site. Adware/spyware was at epidemic levels until a couple of years…