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,…
VIRUS UPDATE
The “MyDoom” virus is getting lots of headlines. It’s the worst virus in history! 100 million infected messages! Large companies brought to their knees!…
MSN TOOLBAR
Microsoft gets irritable when anybody else dominates anything related to technology, so it’s no surprise that it is planning an assault on Google. The first bullet was…
PAPERPORT 9.0
Much to my surprise, I had a good experience with the new version of Paperport today. Many of its prior failings have been cured. Paperport is an inexpensive document manager….
BROADBAND UPDATE
When Comcast turned on Internet service in Sebastopol, it looked like a maneuver to put pressure on its negotiations with the city of Santa Rosa. It must have worked –…
AOL INSTANT MESSENGER ANNOYANCES
AOL’s new 9.0 software continues to underwhelm me – I have yet to meet a computer that seems happy about having it installed. Too many times I’ve seen slowdowns…
SIGN OF THE TIMES
Kodak announced it will stop selling traditional film cameras in the United States, Canada and Western Europe, a startling sign of how quickly consumers have adopted digital…
ADS, POPUPS & BROWSER HIJACKING
For several months, the most frequent complaint from my clients concerns programs surreptitiously installed on their computers that have hijacked their browser home page, taken…
COMCAST HIGH SPEED INTERNET IN SEBASTOPOL
Comcast turned on its high-speed Internet service in Sebastopol a couple of days ago. I called yesterday afternoon and a rep dropped off the installation kit at 9am this morning….
CURRENCY IMAGE DETECTION
From the “Interesting Things To Know” Department: According to a post on the Adobe forums, the latest version of Adobe Photoshop has the built-in ability to detect…
REALPLAYER 10
Real announced a heap of new products and services today, including enhanced quality audio and video streaming and a new player, RealPlayer 10. They promise that it is less…
GOVERNMENT VIOLATES PRIVACY PLEDGE
Here’s a chilling article about a government agency deliberately violating a promise not to publish e-mail addresses of people commenting on a proposed government…
NEW BRUCEB CELL PHONE NUMBER
Late last year, the cell phone carriers implemented “number portability” in one hundred cities across the country. Sonoma County is number 114 on the list. We…
APPLE GRIEF
The Press Democrat’s business pages frequently feature fawning coverage of Apple’s press releases, while attacking Microsoft at every opportunity. Today it was a long…
CHEAP DVD PLAYERS
The Seattle Times has an interesting article about the ultra-low priced DVD players on the market. No-name DVD players were available on sale before Xmas for under thirty…
TOM’S NETWORKING
Tom’s Hardware has long been an important source of information and reviews about computer hardware. Tom’s has now opened a new site devoted to networking,…