The Old New Thing

Windows could not properly load the XYZ keyboard layout

In my rôle as the family technical support department, I get to poke around without really knowing what I'm doing and hope to stumble across a solution. Sometimes I succeed; sometimes I fail. Today, I'm documenting one of my successes in the hope that it might come in handy for you, the technical support department for your family. (...

A modest proposal: Getting people to stop buying SUVs

I developed this modest proposal many years ago, but it looks like rising gasoline prices have done the job. But in case they don't, here's my plan. SUVs are classified as "trucks" for the purpose of C.A.F.E. regulations, and those regulations are more lenient on gasoline efficiency for trucks. As a result, the auto industry happily built...

Microspeak: Well, actually management-speak

I hate management-speak. Here's an example from an internal Web site. The purpose of this Web site is two-fold. Wow, let's look at the first stated purpose. It goes on for so long and uses blatant management-speak such as "facilitate" and "leverage" that by the time it's over, I forget how the sentence started. Going back and ...

News flash: Online drug sales are shady!

In what I'm sure is a fantastic surprise to everybody who has visited the Internet, according to a report in the New York Times, researchers at Columbia University have discovered that there are prescription drug pushers on the Internet who will sell you prescription drugs without a prescription. From what I can gather, they didn't ...