Author: mradwin

Economic cost of the support@microsoft.com virus

Those wacky virus people have done it again. The big@boss.com virus (W32.Sobig.A@mm) has mutated into the support@microsoft.com virus (W32.Sobig.B@mm). Ariella and I were chatting about this over lunch. She suggested that if the government simply bought the rights to distribute Norton Antivirus and legislated that it be installed on all computers, we could do the […]

TiVo upgrade

After 3.5 years of using TiVo, I’ve finally decided to crack open the case and increase the recording capacity. I purchased my Philips 14hr HDR112 TiVo (the first model ever manufactured) from Fry’s Electronics in Sunnyvale on October 22nd, 1999. Today, Ariella and I schlepped out to Fry’s in Woodland Hills to purchase a Maxtor […]

Dump the Junk Day

Today is Yahoo! Mail Dump the Junk Day in the United Kingdom. If you’ve got a friend or colleague who bombards you with joke emails and “wacky” attachments, nominate them for the The Dump the Junk Award. Apparently, you’ve gotta be a Brit to enter the contest.

Ask Yahoo! RSS release

Ask Yahoo!, a daily column that features Q&A with Yahoo!’s expert team of Surfers, is officially syndicating its content via RSS. As reported here back in April, RSS support for Ask Yahoo! had previously been available as a Beta release only. This week, Ask Yahoo! marks five wonderful, question-filled years. To celebrate this momentous occasion, […]

Ploni ben Ploni

John Doe. Joe Schmoe. Ploni ben Ploni. When the Gemara needs a placeholder name but doesn’t want to use a real one, apparently it uses the name פלוני (transliterated here as Ploni). Ploni can be used both as a person’s name as well as a name of a place. In mock contracts, sometimes the formula […]