IT Professionals
Protect PDF Documents For Generations To Come
Sure, you can easily view your created PDF documents today. But, what about in 15, 25, or 50 years’ time? If your PDFs are important business or personal documents, this may be something you want to ponder. Fortunately, a new type of PDF, called PDF/A, aims to help solve this potential problem.
Is EBay A Haven For Liars And Cheats?
It’s official, eBay is a haven for liars and cheats. No, I am not speaking of those who choose to sell honestly. While they are few, they do still exist.
Data Breaches – Why I'm Shocked And Angry, And Why You Should Be, Too…
A coworker sent me a link to a news article today, yet another one about a data breach from – you guessed it – a stolen laptop. This one was an auditor working for Ernst & Young and doing an audit of Hotels.com, and apparently the auditor (and I can’t believe this) left it in [...]
The Heat Is On
One of my business clients called me in dire straits – his two-year-old 12″ PowerBook G4 wouldn’t boot up. Turns out if you let it sit for a while and cool completely down, you could boot it up, but it would run only for about 10-15 minutes before just freezing up. It sounded like it [...]
O'Reilly Releases "MCSE Core Required Exams In A Nutshell"
Microsoft offers multiple certification tracks for IT professionals. Those that are most likely to interest administrators and engineers are the Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP), the Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA), and the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE). The certification process for each level involves rigorous training and testing, with each level growing increasingly more difficult. [...]
Migration Elation
This past Wednesday was a big day for me. I’ve been building up to a big network migration for a business client for several weeks, and Wednesday was the day I pulled it off. OK, not really that big, it’s only a four-person office. But heck, it’s big to me. Let me ‘splain. I’ve already [...]
No Display On The Monitor
One common problem that occurs is that the operating system, such as Windows XP, never appears. In other words, the computer starts up but nothing appears on the monitor. Assuming that you have already ruled out the monitor as being the source of the problem, your next step should be to take a look at [...]
A Golf Simulator?
A golf simulator? Yes indeed, I have a client who wants me to advise them on locating and installing a reasonably priced golf simulator for their son. What has proven to be a challenge thus far, is locating an option that I can feel comfortable in recommending.
Decision Theory Unbound
Last time around I featured a simple scheme that could be used to fool investors into thinking they had found a genius at predicting the stock market. For some reason, in looking for examples of statistics, probability, and decision theory, it is relatively easy to find examples of how to use a bit of knowledge [...]
Hard Drive Upgrades
Over the years, I have certainly used my fair share of converters. From POST test cards to PCI-based IDE controllers for people who did not wish to spring for a new motherboard, I’ve used them all.




