SAFER COMPUTING

J.D. Lasica, who usually muses about New Media, has done readers of his blog a huge favour with a rundown on how to protect your computer against viruses, trojan horses, spyware and all the other nasties that crawl the wires of the World Wide Web.

His advice is all aimed at Windows users ('cause there are so few of us Mac users that those evil hackers pretty much leave us alone), and it all seems sound.

Worth reading to keep your stuff secure.

11:55:24 PM    

HAPPY NPD

National Punctuation Day that is (and, again this year, I didn't get my shopping done on time).

I'm not sure why we need a National Punctuation Day, but the Web site is kind of cool. You can click on all those dots, dashes, curly things and such to get a brief lesson on how they should be used, and some suitable quotations, such as this one:

"Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes."

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Nice resource for those not sure when to use a dash instead of a comma, or for those who want to know what a semi-colon is for. And be sure to check out the section on "How to celebrate National Punctuation Day," which starts: "Sleep late."

11:41:02 PM    

IT'S NOT THE COMICS

Ken Layne, who has earned a spot on my daily-read list, takes newspapers to task their continuing misunderstanding of young non-readers.

Riffing on a NY Times article, he writes:

Once again, newspaper publishers mistake the sad comic strips they print for something young people might read. Young people do not read newspapers -- I'm not young, and I don't even buy newspapers.

Note to Newspaper Publishers: ...Just shut up about those ancient, horrible, unfunny "comics" luring new customers to your dead industry. You know it's not true, and you just sound extra-dumb when you claim otherwise.

Read the whole piece and, when you get some time, check out some of Layne's other writing. He's a gas.

11:00:35 PM