What I don't like about this list is that two (maybe three) of them are tied to specific devices. Of course Amazon.com is the best e-book store, for Kindle owners. And BN for Nook owners. If it's actually possible to buy books from the Kobo store are portable to other e-readers, that gives it a huge, huge advantage…

I've been waiting for an e-reader that will let me read old. obscure books that Google digitized, like old genealogies and turn-of-the-previous-century how-to books. I won't be standing in line waiting for Target to open on the 17th, but I'll bet I get one of these this year.

I'm sorry about the delay in replying. Under normal circumstances you're right, permissions will keep malicious entries out. The trouble is if you get infected with a rootkit, the rootkit can do whatever it wants since it's able to secure admin rights.

Seriously, if you feel RSI coming on, start taking the following twice a day, at lunch and at dinner: 200 mg Vitamin B6, one tablet of B complex, and 1000 mg of either Fish Oil or Flax Seed Oil. You can get all of the above at any pharmacy, including discount-store pharmacies. And before you ask, yes, the B complex…

I advocated this in a book I published in 2000. The biggest downside I see to it, though, is that certain malware will insert entries into the hosts file in order to prevent you from getting rid of it (blocking antivirus vendors and search enginges, for example). The smaller your hosts file is, the easier it is to fix…

Sorry about the double-submit.

I agree completely. You won't have a lot of competition, but you won't have a lot of traffic either.

Since they are produced by the government, they are free for public consumption because your tax dollars paid for their production. But there's nothing top-secret in here—it's stuff that any experienced IT professional would assume is set.

I had several writing textbooks from college give the advice not to use a 12-dollar word when a 10-cent word will do. Or some variation of that. The key is knowing when the 10-cent word will do, but the quoted step 7 will go a long way. I'm pretty sure that over the course of getting my journalism degree I wrote…

+1 on Bestine. It's the very best stuff I've found for this, even removing sticky labels and price tags off paper (like the title page of a book) with no damage. Lighter fluid can do that too, but it's more likely to stain. Bestine won't stain.

I would suggest first defragmenting the drive with mydefrag, at mydefrag.com, to free up some contiguous space, then run contig on your mft. Mydefrag is very good at defragmenting both your files AND your free space, which makes for less fragmentation in the future too.

A few months ago I talked this over with a guy who goes to Defcon yearly to talk about wi-fi hacking. He said hiding the SSID doesn't slow a hacker down much at all but makes connecting to the network more difficult for you. So he said to broadcast the SSID, and be careful how you name it. Don't make the name anything…

Yeah, it's annoying. They waste screen space because 20% of the people don't know how to right click. And the ribbon will waste even more screen space. I'll be using a command prompt even more than I do now if they do this.

Basically it comes down to it being illegal to use one monopoly to get another one. That's why Microsoft gives away antivirus software but doesn't include it with Windows. Otherwise, who would buy antivirus software? They'd kill that revenue stream for those other companies.

I read that too. And for the life of me, I can't figure out why it needs it.

Simple reason: Market share. When you're a monopoly or very close to it, bundling software is an anti-competitive practice. When your smaller competitors do it, it's called competition.

There are more of us than one would think.

I can believe this. I see a similar side effect when I run my model trains. A little bit of crud accumulates on the track and on the wheels, and if it gets to be too much, you get arcing, which leads to more crud, which leads to more arcing. Clean the wheels and the track, and the arcing goes away and the train's…

It's interesting to read what they have to say about various makes/manufactures. They recount the problem Fujitsu had in 2002 that drove them from the desktop market (fauly Cirrus Logic chips on the drive's PCB) and lament that they exited, because mechanically, the drives were very good. They say even less about…

@Tony Kaye: It works. Several years ago I heard the trick, and I happened to have a mostly-full bottle of cola handy that had gone flat, so I tried it. I left it overnight, and the part of the toilet below the water line ended up cleaner than the part above. No problem with staining at all.