Category Archives: Software

I recommend the Better Privacy Firefox Add-On

I thought I worked hard to block unwanted cookies. bit this thing found between 140 and 160 flash-based cookies on the various machines I use. Scanning the list, I told it not to delete the Pandora cookies, and eat the rest. It's possible that I deleted something I'll miss, but I rather doubt it.

I really wish there were a best practices norm that people who use cookies have to make them human-readable, so you know what they say about you. Failing that, they should at least be expected to deploy a tool on their homepages that would explain to you what their cookies say about you.

Anyone tried Windows 7 RC1 in a virtual box under XP?

And then, the next question, can you run XP under that?

(I answered the inevitable third question in the title.)

Did Microsoft sabotage its much-vaunted ODF compatibility in its latest patch release to Microsoft Office so that it could claim to be compatible with other vendors' products (and OpenOffice) but in fact be utterly unable to share documents with them?

That's the thoroughly documented implication of An Antic Disposition: Update on ODF Spreadsheet Interoperability.

Of course, it's hard to believe that an ethical company would do anything of the sort, damaging its own customers in order to inflict pain on its rivals. No, no ethical company would do that on purpose. Must be an accident ….

Some time ago my (fully patched) XP desktop contracted the dreaded Random Calculator Popup, although in my case the calculator only pops up a few times a day, usually when I'm typing furiously.

I've scanned for viruses with Symantic Endpoint Protection, run Spybot, and they didn't find anything. There is no shortcut assigned for the program in the Start Menu under accessories. (I searched the hard drive and there is one other copy of the calc.exe program in the i386 directory. It doesn't seem to have a shortcut that I could see.)

This post suggests it could be a keyboard hardware issue, but I find that a little hard to believe.

Maybe Ed Bott will ride to the rescue again.

Or maybe I really need to find a machine on which to test Wordperfect X14 in an xVM virtual box under Ubuntu or SUSE ….

Openwith.org offers Free programs to open any file extension! — something so useful I'm linking to it in this post so that I can find it when I need it.

(spotted via sexist pigdogs at Lifehacker: OpenWith.org Tells Your Mom How to Open That File (For Free))