BRUCEB NEWS
Location Tracking: They Know Where You Are
You carry a beacon twenty-four hours a day that broadcasts your location. We are being tracked wherever we go by dozens of companies, mostly unregulated. It is an unparalleled surveillance system, but it wasn't created by sinister forces in an authoritarian...
GATEWAY WOES
Gateway is struggling more than you realize. Its business plan is a mess - there's no money to be made from consumer PCs, but it's had no luck figuring out what else to sell. It...
NEW CELERON PROCESSORS
On Friday, Intel will release new, faster Celeron processors, which will show up in PCs in the $800-$1,000 range. For that price, you'll get a 1GHz or 1.1GHz processor, 128Mb of...
INTERNET EXPLORER 6
No rush, but if you're interested Microsoft released Internet Explorer 6 today. It addresses some additional privacy concerns, supposedly including a cookie manager of some sort....
INTEL CUTS PRICES
I've been distracted by Windows XP for the last week. Sweet stuff! Watch for prices to take another sharp plunge this week. Intel is slashing processor prices today - more than...
WINDOWS XP
I wiped out my hard drive and did a clean install of Windows XP over the weekend. This is just dynamite stuff, folks - every place I look I'm finding new things to like about it....
SATELLITE UPDATE
New software, new hardware at the network operations center - slowly but surely the DirecPC two-way satellite service is coming to life. July was dismal but August has been...
CHEAP COMPUTERS
There's good reasons to spend a bit extra on a Dell computer - better quality, better support, and better software choices (including Microsoft Office XP and a free upgrade to...
PONG
If you've got your Shockwave plugin all spiffed up and ready, go play 3D first-person pong. A remarkable bit of programming.
DUTTON-GOLDFIELD WINEGROWERS
Take a look at the web site for Dutton-Goldfield, Russian River Valley Winegrowers. The opening graphic is one of the most effective introductions to a web site that I've seen -...
KODAK AND MICROSOFT
Kodak got a bunch of publicity last month when it attacked Microsoft for not giving its photo finishing software fair treatment in Windows XP. (See my link and comments on July...
BIRTH OF THE PC
Lots of tech sites are celebrating the twenty-year anniversary of personal computing. Here's a bit of nostalgia from my distant past.
GATOR
When you're downloading software, watch for an innocuous item named 'Gator" that will appear checkmarked in the list of items to download. It's an evil piece of software that...
DSL COLLAPSE CONTINUES
In the old days - a year ago or so - DSL was available from many Internet service providers. DSL wholesalers - Covad, Rhythms, and Northpoint - installed and maintained the...
DEFENDING MICROSOFT
I've had an odd feeling of unreality reading the news reports about various politicians, competitors, and special interest groups calling for delays or changes in Windows XP. The...
SATELLITE BLUES
The DirecPC/Pegasus two-way satellite connection has been virtually unusable for a month now. Hughes was stonewalling for most of that time, refusing to acknowledge that there...