You probably know about social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook and blogging services like Blogger.com and WordPress but have you heard of microblogging?

Services like Twitter and Plurk let people post very short messages (140 characters or less) to their friends and acquaintances. Founded in 2006, Twitter has attracted millions of users who keep people posted about what they’re doing and thinking. It can be as simple as “I’m standing in line at the grocery store” to as profound as a quick comment about a political candidate, a world event or a new book. There’s even a video spin-off of this concept called 12 Seconds that allows people to post video clips no longer than 12 seconds.

These sites aren’t nearly as popular with teens as MySpace and Facebook. Twitter says it’s only for people 18 and up — but it doesn’t ask your age when you set up an account. Plurk is aimed at people 13 and up.

While there is nothing inherently dangerous in the sites themselves, there is the risk that teens could use microblogs to reveal personal information or engage in a relationship with someone whose intentions are less than honorable. And like any other form of communication, the door is open for a teen to take risks such as talking about sex with strangers (albeit in relatively short bursts) or getting together with someone they meet through a microblog.

By default, Twitter messages can be seen by anyone, so if you want privacy you need to go into Settings and click “Protect my updates” to make sure only people you approve can see what you type. Otherwise anyone can “follow” you and see what you enter. You can always see a list of your followers and block anyone you wish. Likewise, you can only see posts from people you follow and can search for these people by name or location.

In some ways, microblogs are like chat rooms. What you type is posted instantaneously and it can be seen by anyone. But it also lingers so people can see it later, even when you’re offline — so always use common sense.

I use Twitter but, as with any public forum, I only post information that I’m comfortable anyone knowing. Click here to follow me (twitter.com/larrymagid) on Twitter.

by Larry Magid
Reposted from San Jose Mercury News

In 1968, pop artist Andy Warhol promised that “in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” Forty years later, his prediction is sort of coming true. While most people will never become a household name, millions of people are achieving a certain amount of notoriety thanks to social networks, blogs and mini-blogs like Twitter.

There are people using these sites who have tens of thousands of “friends,” “followers” or whatever the particular site calls those who consume their musings and look at their pictures and videos. It’s not uncommon for a blogger to have more readers than a columnist from a daily newspaper or for podcasters to have more viewers or listeners than some broadcast personalities.

Some videos on YouTube attract more viewers than network TV shows. Some online stars, like Arianna Huffington, were famous before they started blogging, while other “online celebrities” have achieved their notoriety through the Internet.

Then there are those — often teens or people in their early 20s — who achieve notoriety on MySpace or other sites based on provocative photos and posts. Young women who look great in photos can sometimes attract thousands of “friends,” and the more outrageous their online behavior, the more people will visit their sites. I don’t know what they get as a result of all those visitors to their page, but I guess it’s what Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears get from all their publicity, minus all the money these real-life celebrities get from movies, albums and paid appearances.The issue of online fame became a bit personal last week after a friend gave me some career advice. He said that if I want to stay relevant in technology journalism, I needed to start Twittering. Not only does Twitter provide you valuable information and insight, but also extends your influence, he said.

That was a tantalizing comment. As journalists go, I’m not exceptionally egotistic, but I admit that one reason I write and broadcast is to exert some influence. It doesn’t get me better treatment at restaurants or admiring glances from adoring fans, but it does make me feel “relevant.” And it feels good to know that some people appreciate what I do. So, if writing for newspapers and Web sites and appearing on radio and TV is good, then having a following on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and who knows where else might be even better.

To help me figure out what this all means, I used that oh-so-20th-century communications tool, the telephone, to consult a colleague who is a prolific Twitterer and who also has a following in print, online and on local radio in Houston. Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle (http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/) says he uses Twitter “not just to raise my profile, but also to tap into a community that is knowledgeable, passionate and responds quickly.”

Silverman, who has 2,200 followers on Twitter, said Twitter allows him to participate in an ongoing conversation. He also interacts with readers on his blog, but says the instantaneous nature of Twitter is both intimate and rewarding. In fact, he finds himself sometimes using Twitter instead of his blog when he wants to say something short and concise.

When you sign on to Twitter, you can “follow” other people, which means you can read what they write but they don’t necessarily see what you write unless they follow you.

It’s not uncommon for well-known Twitterers to have far more followers than people they follow. For example, from his Twitter profile (twitter.com/leolaporte) I can see that podcaster and tech radio personality Leo Laporte has nearly 53,000 followers, yet he follows only 486 other people on Twitter.

I haven’t been Twittering long enough to understand how it might enhance my career or keep me abreast of what’s going on. But after a few days, I do see the value of engaging in a conversation with an extended group of friends and acquaintances. Like having a Facebook profile, it allows you to express yourself and engage with people who interest you — a little like what I sometimes get in the real world when I have coffee with friends in the morning at the Palo Alto Cafe.

But if you let too many people into your online circle, it becomes more like hanging out in a crowded mall than huddling with your friends at an intimate coffeehouse. And engaging with people on Twitter is time-consuming. While I’m enjoying it at the moment, I’m not yet convinced it’s worth the time. I guess I’ll figure that out over the next couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, if you wish to follow me, you can do so at twitter.com/larrymagid. That way, maybe I’ll get 16 minutes of fame.

Georgian government websites have been under attack, making it difficult or impossible for users to access several sites - including that of the country’s president.

The attacks, according to the New York Times, started “weeks before physical bombs started falling on Georgia,” and the Georgian president’s site was difficult or impossible to access on Tuesday afternoon, even though the site moved from the country of Georgia to an Internet service provider in the state of Georgia, in the United States.

“This is a classic denial of service attack (DOS),” said Steve Gibson, president of Gibson Research and a leading security expert.

In an interview, Gibson said it has all the marks of a “zombie” or “botnet” type of attack. “Botnet” is a hacker term for a network of robots - machines that are surreptitiously recruited to attack other machines.

“Essentially what happens,” explained Gibson, “is a large number of computers that are under the control of some entities - presumably someone with a grudge - can be recast for various purposes.”

“Sometimes they’re used to generate spam, sometimes to generate fake clicks on advertisements and sometimes they are told to simply flood a site with traffic,” said Gibson.

These zombie machines can bombard a server with enough requests in a short period of time to simply overwhelm it. It would be like putting thousands of cars on the freeway, making it impossible for normal traffic or emergency vehicles to get through.

Such tactics are sometimes referred to as distributed denial-of-service attacks because the computers used in the attacks are distributed all over the Internet. It’s often difficult for the attacked machine to distinguish between legitimate requests for service and the bogus request from the zombie machines.

DOS attacks can also be carried out by disrupting configuration data such as routing information so that traffic to a server is re-routed, or simply sent nowhere instead of the server that users are trying to reach.

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CBS News Podcast: Security expert Steve Gibson explains to Larry Magid how hackers can turn your computer into a malicious “zombie”.

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The machines that wind up carrying out the attack “are typically owned by regular computer users who have no idea that their machine is now serving two masters,” said Gibson. “It’s serving them, and some remotely located criminal that is able to take the resources of their machine and their Internet connection for some malicious purpose.”

Malicious software to carry out these attacks can come from websites, via email or as part of spyware people download to their computers. Most Internet security programs can protect PCs against being infected by such software, though security is - and has always been - a cat and mouse game between the good guys and the bad guys so there is always the possibility of botnet software slipping past the defenses of even up-to-date security software.

Still, if you use up-to-date security software, the chances of your machine being infected go way down. Also, security software such as Symantec’s Norton 360, TrendMicro’s Internet Security Pro, Zone Labs ZoneAlarm Security Suite and Kaspersky Lab’s Kaspersky Internet Security all do a good job at repairing infected computers along with preventing infections in the first place.

It’s also important to be sure that your operating system is up-to-date. For example, Microsoft issued updates Tuesday for various versions of Windows which fixed 26 flaws, including six what were considered critical. These flaws could put your computer at risk of being taken over by a hijacker who could use it for virtually any purpose - including attacking other computers or web servers.

Once Microsoft identifies and issues a patch for a security flaw, machines that have not be updated are particularly vulnerable so it’s very important to make sure your operating system is up-to-date. If you have Vista or Windows XP Service Pack 2 your software should automatically check for updates but you can help it along by running the Windows Update program or using Microsoft Internet Explorer (doesn’t work with Firefox) to visit windowsupdate.microsoft.com.

Even though Mac users hear less about security problems than Windows users, Macs are not exempt, so it’s also important for Mac users to stay up-to-date. Mac users can learn more at support.apple.com/kb/HT1222.

In addition to the commercial programs there are also several free security programs you can download, according to this 2006 article from CNET’s Download.com

I’ve been thinking about John Edwards’ predicament and realize that what bothers me is neither the affair nor the fact that he lied about it but his comment to ABC’s Bob Woodruff that he did it because he was “egocentric and narcissistic.”

The idea that a politician is egotistic and narcissistic is hardly news but it is a bit strange for him to blame his indiscretions on those characteristics. But what’s been bothering me ever since watching Edwards on Nightline last week is the implications of what it means for a politician to feel this way. Along with egotism and narcissism comes a sense of entitlement and the sense that one can do no wrong. Edwards’ fidelity is between him and his wife but I worry that that same arrogance could apply to other matters, including decisions that affect how a politician governs once elected.

In Edwards’ case it’s kind of moot since he didn’t hold public office during this period but one can only assume that he was narcissistic when he was a member of the U.S. Senate. And while Edwards may be the first to admit these traits on national television, my guess is that they are all too common among politicians and elected officials. So, the question the bothers me most is not who officials are sleeping with but how this narcissism may be effecting the decisions that affect the rest of us.

When Congress voted for the Communications Decency Act of 1996, most members thought it was just about pornography, says U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren. But one section of CDA had much broader implications, the San Jose Democrat told the Internet Education Foundation’s second annual State of the Net Conference at Santa Clara University last week.

The CDA, which would have prevented the posting of material deemed “harmful to minors” was mostly struck down by the Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds. But the court let stand Section 230, which immunizes Internet service providers from being held liable for what their members post by stating that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

The section was designed to protect service providers — at the time mostly dial-up services like AOL and Prodigy — from prosecution under CDA for distributing content posted by their members. It’s analogous to holding phone companies harmless for obscene phone calls made by their customers or shielding the post office from liability for illicit material sent through the mail.

But Section 230 has also been used to protect social-networking companies and other Web sites with user-generated content whose business plans weren’t even on the drawing board when the law was written back in the mid-’90s.

MySpace, for example used it to successfully defend a case in federal court brought by a teenage girl and her mother who claimed that the social-networking site failed to take adequate precautions to protect the daughter from being assaulted by a 19-year-old man she met on the service. She claimed to be 18, but was actually 13.Thanks to Section 230, Craigslist won its case against the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights over housing ads that included such terms as “no minorities” and “no children.” Even though such ads in some cases violate the Fair Housing Act, the judge ruled that Craigslist “is not the author of the ads and could not be treated as the ’speaker.

JuicyCampus.com also can rely on Section 230 to protect itself against lawsuits and prosecutions stemming from the potentially libelous statements that are all too common on this gossip site, according to Michael Fertik, CEO and co-founder of ReputationDefender. When I visited that site last week, the second most prominent post read “paul (his last name was included) is a ####### piece of #### who is a closet gay that gets drunk and fools around with other guys secretly.” As mean and possibly libelous as that statement might be, Fertik said JuicyCampus can’t be touched.

In theory, “Paul” could try to take action against the person who wrote the statement, but he’d be hard pressed to count on the owners of JuicyCampus to help find that person. The company promises that posters are “100% anonymous” and even advises people “particularly concerned about your online privacy” to use Google to search out services “that offer free IP-cloaking.”

Fertik, whose company helps people manage their online reputations, thinks there needs to be a mechanism for people who have been defamed or libeled to order the removal of offending content. His idea is to “take a page from the playbook of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows copyright holders to issue a takedown notice to services that are hosting material without permission of the copyright holder. According to the U.S. Copyright Office, “upon receiving proper notification of claimed infringement, the provider must expeditiously take down or block access to the material.”

Fertik would like to see a similar procedure for people who feel they have been defamed or their privacy rights have been violated. His proposal would “require a person who is saying that his or her rights have been violated to sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury so you can’t just say it lightly. You have to go through a process formally that says it’s harmful in a real way.”

At the conference, Fertik made the point that “Viacom can send one letter to YouTube to get 50,000 videos removed but if your daughter is on YouTube kissing a boy, you’re out of luck.”

Another panelist, Dan Dougherty of eBay, defended CDA Section 230, saying it is “effective and useful for its intended purpose of encouraging diversity and honest discourse on the Internet.” He expressed concern about Fertik’s notice-and-takedown proposal, saying that defamation is different from copyright, where there is registration and other evidence of ownership.

Dougherty expressed concern about the possibility of eBay being held liable for comments made in the company’s feedback program, whereby users can leave comments about buyers and sellers. He fears that “people would use notice and takedown to manipulate honest feedback in ways that would not support or benefit the community.”

I’m not ready to scrap the one provision of the CDA that actually encourages free speech by preventing service providers from being forced into becoming speech police. While I think it’s appropriate for services like MySpace, Facebook and others to prohibit hate speech and other offensive content, I’d like it to remain an issue between the services and their members.

It’s OK by me if Facebook or MySpace want to ban hate speech or nudity because they think it’s inappropriate on their services. But it’s quite another thing for them to do it because of fear of government or even civil prosecution.

On the other hand, I feel for people like “Paul” and anyone else who has been defamed, ridiculed, bullied or libeled on an Internet site. This type of speech can not only be emotionally harmful but also could hurt Paul’s chances of securing housing or attracting a mate. While I’m not ready to endorse Fertik’s idea, I do think it deserves consideration.

Is Kate a web addict?

As you may have heard, the Justice Department, on Tuesday, indicted 11 people for hacking into nine major U.S. retailers networks which resulted in the theft of 40 million credit and debit card numbers.

If you or your family shopped at TJ Maxx, BJ’s Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, Forever 21 or DSW your information could have been included in this online heist. The thieves broke into the stores’ wireless networks using a technique called “war driving” whereby they simply drive or walk by the store using special equipment to detect vulnerable wireless networks. Once in they planted “sniffer” software which harvests credit cards and sends them to the hacker’s own off-shore servers. It was an international effort involving criminals in the U.S. and Eastern Europe.

As a consumer of these stores there is little you can do to protect yourself other than perhaps only using cash. But cash has an even greater risk of loss or theft so I’m not suggesting you shred all of your plastic to protect yourself. Besides, federal law limits your liability if your credit card number is misused as long as you report the loss.

It’s kind of scary when you think of it. You do everything you can do to protect your own PC and your own information and then you hand over your credit card to a store whose network inadvertently makes it vulnerable to thieves. You can’t control other people’s networks but it is a good idea to check your online credit card and bank statements regularly to see if there is any loss and to get your free annual credit reports from all three major credit bureaus. The only free credit service authorized by the Federal Trade Commission is AnnualCreditReport.com.

How to Secure Your Network

Of course there are things you can do to protect your own wireless WiFi network including using the encryption such as WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) to require users to enter a password before accessing your network. The older WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) is not as secure as WPA and its newest iteration, WPA2. The WiFi Alliance has a tip sheet on wireless security that recommends you use the WPA2 standard.  You can also turn off the broadcast of your SSID network name to make it harder for thieves to find your network.

In an podcast I did for CBS News, TrendMicro security expert David Perry said that stores with highly sensitive customer data such as credit card information should avoid wireless networking completely and use a more secure wired network. Kaspersky Lab’s David Emm agreed “I guess you would see wireless networking as almost inherently more promiscuous so to speak than regular networks”

A lot has been written about how Apple added support for Microsoft Exchange to help the iPhone better compete against BlackBerry and Windows Mobile in corporate environments. But the reverse is also true. BlackBerry maker Research In Motion as well as companies that make Windows Mobile phones are setting their sights on the consumer market.

That’s old news when it comes to Windows Mobile. There are numerous vendors who use Microsoft’s mobile operating system, and it has long been easy to find models with media players, still and video cameras, GPS and other features designed for non-enterprise applications. But BlackBerry maker RIM, which got its start in the decidedly pinstriped world of big business and government, has been relatively slow to, metaphorically speaking, loosen its tie. But that’s changing.

By the end of September, AT&T will start offering RIM’s new Bold phone, which is expected to support both WiFi and AT&T’s 3G network with plenty of consumer-friendly features as well as a higher resolution screen, GPS, more storage and faster performance than existing BlackBerrys.

RIM hasn’t yet sent out evaluation loaners of the Bold but the company did loan me one of its relatively new Curve 8330 models ($150 with activation and after rebate) which I activated on the Sprint network.

Like other BlackBerrys I’ve used, it has all the business tools that big enterprises expect, including push e-mail and support for Microsoft Exchange, as well as personal e-mail accounts. But like the Bold and the Pearl, the Curve has a 2-megapixel still camera with a built-in flash. And unlike the new iPhone, it also records video (video requires an optional MicroSD card).

It has GPS and a voice recorder, and comes preloaded with BlackBerry maps. But it also supports other navigation tools, including “Sprint Navigator,” which is Sprint’s version of the excellent Telenav service. And, like the iPhone, there are plenty of applications you can download from RIM, Sprint, Handmark and other vendors. Like the iPhone but unlike most smart phones, It also has a standard (.35 mm) headphone jack so it can be used with any headphone or plugged into a car stereo with a standard input jack. I loaded some tunes on a microSD card so I can listen to music at the gym.

I’m more of a BlackBerry fan than a Windows Mobile fan because of its ease of use and generally faster response when loading and running software. But I have to admit that the new Palm 800w ($250 after rebate and activation), which runs Windows Mobile 6.1, is an impressive device. Like the BlackBerry Curve and Pearl, it works as well for consumers as it does for corporate users.

The Palm has the usual business features, including Microsoft Exchange e-mail and Microsoft Office Mobile Suite. But this device, which currently runs only on the Sprint network, has a lot of nice consumer features, including WiFi, which gives you fast Web access when you’re near a WiFi hotspot even if you don’t have cellular access. It has a good keyboard but also a touch screen.

Sometimes it’s easier just to touch the screen with your fingers or the stylus to make a selection but, when typing messages, I prefer using physical keys. Like the BlackBerry Curve, the 800w has a 2-megapixel camera. It also has GPS and available navigation software and, of course, Windows Media player for video and audio media.

Unlike the Palm Curve and Pearl, it does not have a standard headphone jack. You can use Bluetooth headphones, and it comes with a wired stereo headset that you can plug into the proprietary jack. But I prefer the ability to use whatever headphones I have around and appreciate that consumer BlackBerry devices, and the new iPhone, support standard headphones and ear buds without having to use a special adapter.

What I like about both the new Blackberrys and the Palm 800w is that they innovate without imitating. These are not iPhone clones but phones built in the tradition of Palm, RIM and Microsoft with no apologies for their business acumen and no attempt to simply mimic Apple. Good for them.

There are, of course, plenty of other consumer-friendly smart-phones on the market from HTC, Samsung and other vendors, but few are also as business friendly as BlackBerry, Palm and Windows Mobile.

Now, thanks in part to the success and innovation of Apple’s iPhone, there is pressure on the entire industry to make phones that serve both office and personal tasks. As Google’s hardware partners ready their Android phones, we can look forward to even more choices in both hardware design and software implementation.

My hope is that as the smart-phone industry matures, it doesn’t mimic the PC industry with almost nothing but me-too products.

You may have heard about the security flaw that affects the entire Internet. It’s actually a problem with the software behind just about all domain name servers – DNS for short. A domain name server is a computer that acts like a phone book or switchboard operator that takes a web address – like cbs.com and translates it to an Internet Protocol (IP) address like 170.20.0.24. Since IP addresses are as hard to remember as phone numbers, none of us bother to use them. Instead we rely on the DNS servers to look them up for us.

But on July 8th, security researcher Dan Kaminsky found a flaw in the software used on most DNS servers that make it possible for a hacker to re-direct a DNS. If exploited, that flaw would allow a criminal to re-direct people to the wrong site. Imagine the scenario – you type the correct URL of your bank but instead of going to your real bank’s site you to a criminal’s site that looks just like it. You type in your user name and password and that information gets into the wrong hands. And don’t confuse this with phishing. A phishing attack tricks you into clicking on a link that takes you to a bogus site. If you were a victim of a DNS attack (sometimes called pharming) you could get to a bogus site even if you typed in the correct URL.

You can listen to my interview with Kaminsky on CBSNews.com

No need to panic

There is no need to panic or stop using the Internet. Kaminsky has been warning security professionals about this flaw for the last few weeks and most major Internet service providers have fixed their DNS servers to protect users. But not everyone has. There are thousands of DNS servers out there in companies and smaller ISPs that may not have been fixed. And, now that the word is out, there is a greater chance that hackers will attempt to exploit this flaw because more of them know about it.

You can find out if the company that provides your DNS server has a security flaw by using a DNS checker. There are three that I know of. Kaminsky has one on his blog, there’s another at  DNS-OARC and one at the lower left corner of DNSstuff. If your system passes these tests, you’re OK.

If you’re not OK contact your ISP or, if you’re at work, your system administrator. Or you can bypass your ISP’s domain name server and use a free alternative. Kaminsky recommends opendns.com which allows you to use their domain name server instead of the one provided by your ISP. You can to spend a few minutes configuring your computer or router to work with opendns’s name server but there are clear instructions on that site. Because my ISP (Comcast) passed the tests, I didn’t bother changing mine and you shouldn’t either if your system tests out OK.

The good news about this is that the problem is being fixed around the globe. Next week Kaminsky heads to Las Vegas for a security conference where he plans to lay out more details to help experts fix their own servers and prevent these attacks in the future.

My editor at the Mercury News has a right to be angry at me because my column is late. But I have an excuse. The very technology I write about is the source of my tardiness. Instead of writing my column on time, I spent the better part of Wednesday and Thursday dealing with a variety of technology meltdowns.There were no disasters this time. Unlike some past experiences, my computer didn’t grind to a halt. My hard drive is just fine. But I’ve been dealing with lots of little problems trying to get Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Outlook and my BlackBerry to work while at the same time dealing with annoying software that keeps popping up and demanding my attention.

At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, it almost makes me want to dust off my typewriter, four-function calculator and rotary phone, and once again get my news and information the old-fashioned way - from print, radio and TV.

It all started when Mozilla Firefox failed to load on my Windows Vista machine with the message “Error:App:Name not specified in application.ini.” Hoping to find a clue as to what that meant, I entered the message into Google but got only three results - all of them aimed at Firefox developers rather than end-users. Not exactly the user-friendly response I hoped for from the non-profit Mozilla that so often stands out as a refreshing alternative to Microsoft’s fare.and even going through the risky and nerdy exercise of deleting references to Firefox from the Windows Registry (something most Windows users should never do without expert supervision).I reinstalled Firefox and it still didn’t work. On a whim, I created a new user account in Windows (as if I were logging on as a different person) and for reasons I can’t explain Firefox worked just fine. But Outlook, Thunderbird, the BlackBerry synchronization program and the software I use to transfer my radio segment to CBS News stopped working. After a couple of hours of reconfiguring these programs, I had most things working.

But then the BlackBerry Desktop Manager suddenly failed to sync my BlackBerry. I finally came up with a work-around after two hours on the phone with a BlackBerry senior tech support person, though even he couldn’t figure out why it didn’t work. The same software works just fine on my laptop computer. It’s as if my desktop PC is haunted.

Speaking of haunting, one of the things users typically have to do when troubleshooting software problems is to reboot their PC - in my case many times over the past few days. Rebooting a Windows PC is never fast, but it was taking a ridiculously long time because I had recently installed AOL Instant Messenger and, by default, AIM loads every time my PC starts. AIM is a great service and I appreciate AOL making it available at no charge. But that doesn’t give AOL the right to hijack my computer to start the service when I don’t want it. Nor - in my humble opinion - does it give it the right to launch my browser to an AOL page every time I start AIM.

I accept the fact that I have to look at ads within the program while I’m using it, but that’s different from taking up permanent residency in my PC’s memory. In fairness, there is a disclosure in the fine print presented to you when you install the program with instructions on how to later configure the software not to start automatically. But you have to scroll through legalese to find this information before clicking on obligatory “I agree” icon to install the software.

When I finally decided I had enough with computers, I retired to my living room to watch a Blu-ray DVD. But suddenly the sound quit coming through the speakers attached to my audio system. After 20 minutes of trial and error, I traced the problem to a setting in my new Pioneer receiver that gives you onscreen control over the many inputs on the device. Seems as if the DVD setting was associated with an optical digital input rather than the coaxial digital cord I was using.

Finally, between all this technological troubleshooting, I decided it was time to get some badly needed exercise. So I took a walk. That went just fine because, unlike those Nike shoes with the built-in iPod interface, my shoes don’t have any chips in them.

I did everything I could think of, including uninstalling Firefox, obliterating all of the files left behind