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,…
VIRUSES EVERYWHERE
Be careful! There seems to be an odd sort of war between two sets of virus writers. Virus-laden e-mail messages are flying everywhere. Don’t open ANY e-mail attachments…
MP3s AND COPY PROTECTION
The mp3 file format is not free. Manufacturers of software that can create mp3 files pay a royalty to Thomson and Fraunhofer, the companies that license and own the patents…
AOL AND SPAM-BLOCKING
Everybody complains to their ISP about spam, even though it’s not really the ISP’s problem. They’ve responded with spam filters and message blocking which…
DIGITAL PHOTOS ON THE ROAD
A friend just pointed out a device that fills a need in an elegant way. When you travel with a digital camera, it can be hard to know what to do with the images you accumulate….
SETBACK FOR DVD COPYING
After eight months of deliberation, a San Francisco federal judge ruled that popular DVD-copying software from 321 Studios has to be yanked off the market within seven days….
MORE DVD FORMAT WARS
There continues to be chaos in the world of recordable DVDs. The blur of acronyms has not changed in the last year or two – DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-Ram and the rest. There is…
OUTLOOK ADD-INS
Here’s an interesting collection of add-ins for Outlook that might solve some issue for you. I don’t have any experience with them so I can’t vouch for their…
BRUCEB VACATION
Bruce and his loyal staff will be out of town during the week of February 16. Now, now, don’t panic – but as always, don’t take any unnecessary chances. To be…
AOL INSTANT MESSENGER ADWARE
There’s a new irritant spreading in the AOL Instant Messenger network, pretending to be a web-based game named “Night Raptor” from a service named…
SBC DSL & FIREWALLS
The software supplied by SBC for its DSL customers makes me angry. I’ve described some of the reasons on this page – the sole purpose of the software seems to be to…
SHOULD YOU SHUT THE COMPUTER DOWN AT NIGHT?
A new article addresses the perennial question of whether it’s better to leave the computer on all the time, or shut it down at night. In the past that question has focused…
MYDOOM REMOVAL TOOL FROM MICROSOFT
Microsoft released a small, free tool that will remove the MyDoom and MyDoom.B viruses from computers running XP and Windows 2000. According to the company, “the tool…
JUNK MAIL FILTERING
Outlook 2003 continues to do a good job of filtering out spam. There’s so much spam coming in to my mailbox that I simply stopped looking in the Junk Mail folder. I just…
IMPORTANT WINDOWS UPDATE
Microsoft released an update today that should be installed at your earliest convenience. Go to Windows Update and apply all Critical Updates. (Some of you will see the…
VIRUS SPAM
You’re probably getting confusing messages in your inbox. They’re a side-effect of the MyDoom virus, but they’re not directly generated by the virus at all….