BRUCEB NEWS
Windows Tip: How To Stop The Disappearing Scroll Bar
Have you noticed that scroll bars in Windows 10 get squeezed to a thread or disappear? It's one of those small annoyances that the authorities slip into our lives to keep us on edge so we can't concentrate but we're not sure why. Allegedly. You're working in a program...
RECORD COMPANIES: FEAR OF MUSIC
The recording industry continues its relentless campaign to prevent us from actually hearing any of its products played out loud. The latest is the proposal floated in a cover...
ANTIVIRUS VENDORS AND SLEAZY PRESS RELEASES
The news from McAfee is alarming: a new virus can infect .JPG picture files; potentially no file type is safe to exchange in e-mail; maybe we should never share .JPGs by e-mail....
NAPSTER AND ITS PROGENY
For those of you that want a refresher, here’s a perfectly nice short article about Napster’s rise and fall, the record industry’s horrible online offerings to date, and the...
FRY’S ELECTRONICS AND OUTPOST.COM
This isn’t new, but I just discovered that Fry’s Electronics acquired Outpost.com late last year and is running the Outpost.com web site. Fry’s is famous for low prices, huge...
XO, STARBAND, AND OTHER BAD NEWS
The extraordinary collapse of the telecommunications industry continues apace. XO Communications has been trying to engineer an infusion of capital from two lenders that would...
CHINA BELIEVES EVERYTHING IT READS
In case you missed this in the paper a couple of days ago, here’s a story that’s absolutely priceless. The Beijing Evening News (circulation: 1.25 million) printed a...
THE END OF FREE E-MAIL
The days of free e-mail are drawing to a close. Yahoo, Lycos, and Hotmail have all started to change their free e-mail accounts to make it more likely that users will pony up a...
CONTROL OF BROADBAND
Salon is doing an extensive series of articles about the consolidation of power and ownership in the media world. This week’s article is particularly interesting. It describes...
KAZAA SHARED FOLDERS
If you’re using Kazaa, Morpheus, AudioGalaxy, or any of the other file sharing programs, make sure you’re not sharing more than you intend. A study released today concluded that...
VERISIGN DOMAIN REGISTRATION SCAM
I got a piece of junk mail that was more slippery than most. Keep an eye out for it. In a plain white envelope was a plain white piece of paper that was formatted to resemble an...
REPLAYTV SPYING ORDER OVERTURNED
A federal court overturned the order entered last month that required Sonicblue to write and install software to monitor what its customers were watching and report that...
MEDIA JUKEBOX VERSION 8
During the last year, not much has changed about the software designed to play .mp3 files. The market leader is MusicMatch Jukebox, which has such a quirky interface that I find...
UMAX PIONEERS NEW PRICE GOUGE
Umax is one of the leading manufacturers of scanners. A week ago, they began charging for driver updates that previously had been available as a free web download. And prices are...
THE FBI, PROUD GUARDIANS OF OUR RIGHTS
Gotta love this story. In 2000, the FBI apparently used Carnivore electronic surveillance in an attempt to collect information on Osama bin Laden's network. Unfortunately they...
ADVERTISING ON TIVOS
A nasty surprise lies ahead for users of personal video recorders. TiVo and Replay market devices that are godsends to serious TV hounds. They connect at night to a program...