| Monday
January 9, 2005 I am home from Las Vegas and
the Consumer Electronics Show. The first CES Reports, and the first
installment of my annual Orchids and Onions column for 2005 (meaning part
one of the January 2006 column) are up at
www.byte.com. It will take me a while to catch up from a week in Las
Vegas, but I'll get there.
CES is best characterized as information overload: it is row
after row of yet another this or that, and you have to keep reminding
yourself that these are yet another miracle, something we all hoped for a
few years ago: now these marvels are here, competing on price and color.
The best gadget of the show hands down was the Celestron
Star Scout, which is a GPS and gravity sensor box about the size of a JVC
Camcorder: point it at a star, and it tells you what star you are looking
at. Alternatively, tell it what star you want to see and it will guide you
to it. Amazing. Also I have the new Kodak EasyShare V570 dual lens shirt
pocket camera that takes 5 megapixel photographs from wide angle to
telephoto, and will stitch wide angle shots into a panorama. I think I am in
love.
There are dozens of show reports from different magazines
and services, and the press were out in full force. My reports are similar
to my columns, mostly my impressions of what was going on -- I am told this
style is called "informed opinion" in journalism schools but since I never
went to j-school I don't know -- there will be four of them, with pictures,
over at http://www.byte.com/
where you will also find my columns. One of my "informed opinions" is that a
subscription to the on-line BYTE, which includes access to Dr. Dobbs and a
whole bunch of other CMP publications, is about the best deal on the
Internet. And don't worry, I won't be doing pitches for BYTE subscriptions
very often. This week's column is the first installment of my annual Orchids
and Onions parade with User's Choice Awards, and if you were thinking of
subscribing to BYTE anyway, this would be a good week to get around to it.
==========
Today's BYTE column at
www.byte.com contains a favorable reference to an anti-virus program
called Avast! which is available for free download and use. I was using it
when I wrote that part of the column and I rather liked it. I have since
found problems: it's rather annoying and when I finds a virus in a mail
attachment you can't just tell it to ignore it on the theory that you will
delete the whole thing; it stops Outlook from downloading until you do
something; and for some reason Outlook kept closing down and had to be
restarted.
The second problem may be due to improper settings, since I
was (as I usually do when I begin evaluations) simply using Avast! in its
default settings. I can't prove that the third problem, Outlook closing
down, was due to Avast!, but last night Outlook closed over a dozen times;
this morning I uninstalled Avast!; and I have had no problems with Outlook
since, so the diagnosis seems positive. Of course I'm now operating with no
anti-virus at all (having become disgusted with Symantec's Norton) but that
will change shortly.
There is a WMF vulnerability fix out from Microsoft; it
seems to have come with the weekend Microsoft Update package. As always, if
you're running Windows I strongly recommend that you check for updates and
install them. I use Automatic Update and that works. I am fearful of someone
hijacking Windows Update, but friends inside the Microsoft programming
community tell me they worry about that more than I do, and it would take a
conspiracy of several people inside Microsoft working with outside bad guys
to do it. I sure hope that's right.
================
The Founders'
Constitution
Jerry
Below is a link from the University of Chicago which
opens into the complete text of the five-volume reference, "The Founders'
Constitution," edited by Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner. It's $475 for
the hardbound set, $60 for a reduced-format and $45 for a CD-ROM version.
I have the first volume in a trade paperback
8.5x11-inch format, apparently no longer published. It's a mere 713 pages of
print that is smaller that that in paperback novels, but very clear.
What's it all about? Only all the essential references
to the sources from which the Constitution sprang. Not only do we have all
the various philosophers, but court cases, laws, bills of rights and
legislative debate (the debate on the Second Amendment in the House of
Representatives is highly illuminating, for example).
It is the most important sourcebook for studying our
Constitution. And all of this hugely expensive work is available free
online:
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/
I am extremely grateful to the University of Chicago.
The link is now in my Bookmarks. Don't miss it.
Ed
=======================
You may or may not find this amusing:
http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2667497?htv=12
You may also hate it.
====================
Jerry
A quick look throught the Avast! support site finds
http://www.avast.com/eng/faq-email-problems.html#idt_6940
This suggests that YES there is an issue with Outlook
and the MSN Toolbar.
Peter
I suspected as much. I have had no problems since
uninstalling Avast!
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