Entries from January 2007The Posts You Asked For

So I installed Vista on Monday evening, and have been puttering around with it since then. There will probably be dozens of people writing about their Vista experiences, so I figured I would join the fray.
Everyone has different needs when it comes to their computers and operating systems. Some people are dazzled by the look [...]

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I’ve upgraded to the latest version of WordPress. As a result, some things might not work right away while I tweak things.

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I usually love the Washington Post — great reporting, good writing, in-depth investigations, and so on. But the paper really blew it with it story on January 29, “Can Food From Cloned Animals Be Called Organic?”
First and most blatantly, it gets a basic fact wrong in the headline and the very first paragraph — the [...]

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Naturally.

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So here comes the hyperbole and incorrect information. The thread on Slashdot is titled, “Microsoft PR Paying to “Correct” Wikipedia” and says in part that Microsoft was “looking for an intermediary to make edits and corrections favorable to them” and would pay for this.
Trouble is, that’s not exactly true. But who needs truth when it’s [...]

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Huh? you say. Let me rephrase.
Information about digital photos is stored in the photos themselves, and there are two kinds. One is EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format), which consists of various camera settings — aperture, shutter speed, lens, etc.
The other is IPTC (named for the International Press Telecommunications Council). It allows the photographer to add [...]

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Song for Three Soldiers (1940)
By Stephen Vincent Benét
- – -
Oh, where are you coming from, soldier, fine soldier,
In your dandy new uniform, all spick and span,
With your helmeted head and the gun on your shoulder,
Where are you coming from, gallant young man?
I come from the war that was yesterday’s trouble,
I come with the bullet still [...]

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Every now and then I’m struck with the desire to get a little more detail on something that I’m sure a lot of people already know backwards and forwards.
You’ve all seen the ribbon block that soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines wear on their dress uniforms. I knew, vaguely, that each represented some event or citation, [...]

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Cool! Cool!

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“Are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?” — Delegate Frank Hargrove, Hanover County, during discussions over whether Virginia should formally apologize for slavery. He added, “[B]lack citizens should get over it.”
Oh, and when a Jewish delegate, David Englin, Alexandria, said he was offended by the comment, Hargrove responded, “I [...]

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USDA Forest Service Reins in Freewheeling Woodsy the Owl

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It’s huge, but it may not be obvious for a while. In June, Netflix will allow subscribers to watch any of 1,000 movies on demand through their broadband connections. (The library will expand — it has the support of most major studios.)
I’m going to cover this in my column in more detail, but this certainly [...]

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Well, there are a lot of things. But at this moment I’ll point out one.
Reporters do not write headlines. Neither do their editors, usually.
Headlines are written after the reporter and editor are done, by someone at the copy desk — the person who is correcting any style errors and worrying about libelous statements.
I mention this [...]

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I usually leave it to my wife to post great sales and freebies on her blog, but here’s one worth pointing out.
We print a lot at home, and had been using an inkjet, like I think most people. Problem is, they’re hideously expensive — that is, the ink cost means you pay a lot [...]

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Not long ago, I wrote a column about how Microsoft had screwed up the new versions of both Internet Explorer and Office. I won’t go into details here — read the column for that — but let’s just say that I’ll stick with Office XP or 2003 as long as I can, or switch to [...]

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Oh my gosh, I dared to criticize something Apple in my column, and out of the woodwork, as always, come the Mac fanboys, with their ever-so-polite and mature commentary. I save some of the mail I get, and the folder structure shown below should tell you all you need to know. (And yes, it’s real [...]

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From the BBC:
Police hunting mystery swordsman
Police on Tyneside are seeking a man carrying a sword who came to the aid of plain clothes officers during a burglary attempt.
The officers were threatened by a man with a knife after they discovered armed men trying to break into a house in Laygate, South Shields.
Another man armed with [...]

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Here’s my idea: Any legislator who votes against stem-cell research should be banned for life from every receiving any kind of treatment that results from it.
It’s going to be done, either by private industry, by states, or by other countries. But the people who would rather see embryos destroyed than be used to potentially [...]

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You may already know that Cisco is suing Apple over the iPhone trademark, which Cisco owns. The two companies had been negotiating Apple’s potential use of it, but no documents were signed when Steve Jobs made the announcement Tuesday.
Some people are saying, incorrectly, that Cisco registered the trademark to “squat” it — that is, to [...]

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