Back to Workplace or Entrance
Page last edited: Thursday March 03, 2011
Here are a few advertisements for good books on computing, the best utilities people, and, would you believe it, but Microsoft software is not the worst material to work with. You wouldn't be using computers were it not for the arrival of the Windows 3.0 (admittedly inadequate) Operating System, that enabled home computing to take off.

IT News and related stuff
2002/05/06 Bad bosses and how to deal with them: sounds like Taima/Convergys, what? And the mention in this article about spineless jellyfish is particularly appropriate, since these "humans" are seemingly common everywhere! For other information on this subject, I have been developing pages here.
2002/05/07 AOL Time Warner dot.com nightmare
2002/05/14 Oh, how the employers will like this: work them to death, what? It won't just stay in BC, will it?
2002/05/15 Now, this does relate to IT, since the reasons for this drop relate to big business in North America. For instance, see Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser. And, Eric at Salon. Note this Cow-fired power source, which would solve a major problem made centre stage in Schlosser's work. Not IT? Cubicle grunts are installed everywhere, badly treated. And badly paid. And ill.
Hackers stealing from the pirates, what? December, 2003
Another short-sighted decision by MS: fear and loathing department.
February, 2004 in US election year: and here we have the Economist arguing for dynamic job creation in the US, and a response, in effect, from Chaos Manor, aka Jerry Pournelle.
February, 2004: Surreal stuff, boyo, as if posing was not an art. Neither CEO, of either company, looks real. It's not as if it's the normal place to take a photograph, is it, with all those lovely cables?
March, 2006: The Enigma still in the news. Google needs a nuclear power station. Article here.
Power meters coming to a house near you. Water meters in the UK. Crunch time.
2007/06/15: Outlook is giving me problems, just like it gives others that have administrative privileges and the Grand Nanny at Microsoft prevents one from helping oneself or, indeed, others.

Odd problems The need for clean code. A problem still turns up using FireFox on a newspaper site.

Do you still run Windows 2000 Server or Advanced Server?
Whenever you reinstall, or simply want to include the latest DST settings, you need to run these three items, to update the time zones and Daylight Savings Time limits:
TZedit, (the new limits are the second Sunday in March and first Sunday in November) and here is its help file; and then run TZupdate and refresh TZinfo. Click to run, or save to your computer and run from there. All of this is taken from a Microsoft page, namely http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914387/en-us. All of my networked computers now run on the correct date algorithms, although of course the XP Pro SP2 boxes updated themselves. To clarify, Windows 2000 is unsupported, sort of.

IT/Networking & Security
Canadian High Speed Internet comparison of the not so recent past, useful for an historical view.
Internet speeds: comparative rates for different technologies.
DSL Reports
Gibson's Shield's Up
SmartWHOis
Netcraft Web Site search
Network Diagnosis
Network Ice
Here can be found the Postal Code lookup to verify feasibility of access in Canada.
SANS/FBI Twenty Most Critical Internet Security Vulnerabilities: General, Windows and Unix/Linux.
Sygate
UNIRAS UK web site that showed TCP to be vulnerable, April 2004, especially for certain routers in general use.
Vicomsoft; includes Intergate
Visual Trace Route
VLAN at 3COM
ZoneAlarm
DHCP insecurity, and a discussion that will never end: Windows v Mac!! Note that this page has been edited for legibility and spelling. The links on the page will lead you to the source of the argument.

And A Few Magazines
Byte (which needs a subscription) and typical pages from Jerry Pournelle and another that mentions creeping loss of security. Direct link: Jerry Pournelle (ex-Byte, always at Chaos Manor).  The email pages on his home site contain many themes, politics especially and are not always about computing, as is clear from my criticism of one of the polemics that was posted.
Computer Paper
Dr Dobb's Journal and a recent, important editorial, referring to corruption and lobbying
HotWired
Linux Journal
SysAdmin
Windows .NET Magazine the name may change, yet again, but the contents maintain their excellence.  It's now called Windows ITPro whatever.

Publishers, Instructors, Training, Courseware
Sean Daily, senior consulting editor of Windows2000 Magazine, is CEO of Realtimepublishers.com
Ken Spencer of 32x.com for Courseware/Training/Software Development
Mark Minasi NT/Win2k/Linux author/guru/speaker & Senior Contributing Editor, Windows .NET or IT Pro or whatever Magazine
Michael Moncur: Nutshell books on MCSE, the common O'Reilly Books series. And, JavaScript and other stuff through
Sams. Something like twenty books published, generally well-written and accurate.
Daniel Petri site: has given me lots of excellent information. Good forums, too.
Warriors of the Net, the visual Internet cartoon.
Cathy Shea: Californian Internet guru: Fullfont
@Stake (security firm, tools, education, etc) 
RCFOC (weekly news on computing trends, by Jeffrey Harrow, who has left his position at Compaq)
Jon Udell (Groupware guru)
Stan Kelly-Bootle @ UnixReview.com or Sar Chek (acid humour and linguistics)
Donald Knuth (Programming Arch Wizard: author of the "Art of Computer Programming" vols I-III published; awaiting IV-VI+, although I doubt that he'll ever complete his masterpiece)
John Dvorak for maximum tech links.