2005 May

Lest you think yesterday’s Memorial Day Musings were designed to present only one viewpoint on a many-faceted issue, here are some others that were either prompted by that missive or offered after the fact and, therefore, not included until today.
Gnomie John H. St. John wrote:
July 2, 2005 I will see my 84th birthday. I am [...]

We all have cookies in our computers. No, not those crumbs stuck in your keyboard but little files that store information about you or a Web site that you have visited. Don’t you wish there was a way to learn more about these cookies, who put them there and a way to delete [...]

When you get the urge to rent a movie, what do you do? To most people, heading out to the local Blockbuster or Hollywood Video location to pick up a DVD is still the normal way to go. It’s nice to go to a physical location that has a gigantic library of titles when you [...]

A user’s security access token can not contain more than 1000 security identifiers (SIDs). If this limit is exceeded a user may receive the following error message when they attempt to logon to a domain or access a network share:
During a logon attempt, the user’s security context accumulated too many security IDs.
You may think it [...]

Many people report that the Disk Cleanup tool hangs and the following message is displayed:
Disk Cleanup is calculating how much space you will be able to free on (C:). This may take a few minutes to complete. Scanning: Compressed old files.
According to this knowledge base article, this occurs because of a problem with the Windows [...]

Do you like music publishers telling you what equipment you can use to play the music you paid for? It’s like telling you that you need to buy a $500 iPod in order to play content from iTunes. Oops! Well, let’s skip the examples.
None other than PC Magazine’s VP in charge of Ziff-Davis and [...]

Dave. In reference your recent comments on .msi installation (specifically How do I install an .MSI download?). I’ve done some research and find that neither Microsoft nor you don’t reference WinXP, which is where I’m having a problem. My Dell laptop constantly tells me that .msi is required for the application to work properly. I [...]

McDonald’s is introducing, I kid you not, downloadable music and ringtones under the golden arches. The offerings, available via Blaze Net kiosks, are McDonald’s latest bid to stay current with the times. Other offerings include store-wide Wi-Fi and McLattes.
Said McDonald’s spokesperson Bill Whitman of its newly funkified locations, “It is clearly unique and [...]

VoIP is the new VoIP! Spontania is Video4Skype!
“What’s that Aunty?” you ask. “Have you had too many add-shots in your Starbucks today?”

In response to yesterday’s post: Microsoft doesn’t plan to support IE7 on Win2K, which is ironic considering the same blog entry says that Microsoft is extending supporting for Win2K beyond June 30, 2005. I heard from Tristan who explains it:
Windows 2000 is now over 5 years old, and is moving to its Extended support phase. [...]

Meeting that special person can be very difficult. In this age of political correctness; how does one make overtures and show interest in another person? I once complimented someone on how nice her new dress looked, and she complained to my boss that I was making advances. In this day and age, any comment can [...]

What are we memorializing - or who? It’s a holiday weekend here in the US, and many families have gone on a three-day vacation. Monday is Memorial Day, and some would argue that the original meaning of the holiday has been lost. I’m doing nothing other than catching up on a pile of tasks throughout [...]

A new and addictive fruit swapping game with a twist! Play normal or endless mode with the help of items such as a Broom, Hammer, and Magic Key. But beware of the Giant Spider! Presented with stunning graphics and relaxing tropical music, it’s simple to learn, but will get you hooked once you try it. [...]

How many of us have been stuck with trying to get data from a CD or hard drive, only to learn that since a portion of it is damaged, we cannot see anything that is on the storage device in question? This is not just annoying - it is a pain in the proverbial [...]

Have you ever come across a message in a bottle while walking down the beach? Me, neither. I’m sure we’ve all heard tales of people who have deposited a message into the ocean and received a response years later from the individual who found the message. I know a lot of kids still do this. [...]

When people write to me, I try to respond to every letter, and if several people write about a specific topic, I usually try to work it into a column. My reasoning is that probably more people are interested in the subject than take to time to write. With that in mind, it is time [...]

In last Monday’s column, I explained why Message Rule “keyword filtering” was useless against large scale spammers.
Spam filtering has become a major battlefield between spammers and the companies that develop tools for fighting the problem. Unfortunately, the spammers have the upper hand because they can take any of the tools and methodologies being used [...]

You can instruct Excel to sort the data in a worksheet. If the sorting orders within Excel do not meet your requirements, you can create your own sorting order. For example, if you type in Red, Green, Blue, and Black, Excel would normally sort them in alphabetical order. However, if you do not want them [...]

You can easily create a bulleted list in your document by clicking the Bullets button on the toolbar. Word will automatically insert the bullets into your document. By default, the bullets are a predefined character (small, round, black dots). However, you can customize Word to use any character you want for your bulleted lists. Here [...]

For some reason Aunty has had a lot of searches this week asking how to get rid of Internet cookies. It’s really quite easy, but to make it even easier, Aunty is going to cover it for you here.