Siuslaw River Bridge at Florence
Steen's Stuff
A. H. Gray, Jr. aka Steen Gray
Florence, Oregon
Click on the bridge for a map

Nothing personal on this page.  If you want that, you can go to Steen's other stuff which is even more out of date than this page.

Why should you be worried about Palladium?  Microsoft and Intel have your best interests at heart, don't they?  They even renamed it to "the next-generation secure computing base" to make it more understandable?  If you aren't aware of what Palladium is, you might want to read up a bit on it yourself.  Here are some links to start with:
 
TCPA / Palladium Frequently Asked Questions (version 1.0, 7/9/2002)

Palladium: Safer Computing or World Domination? Should Microsoft be responsible for security? (DSL report).  Best viewed with new browsers.

Can we trust Microsoft's Palladium? (7/11/2002 salon.com tech feature)

Microsoft's plan to improve computer security could set off fight over use of online materials (2/21/2003 from Information Technology section, Chronical of Higher Education)


Visit the Florence Area Humane Society and see why this page is never up to date (One website is enough to keep up to date, and that one is a bit more important).

Those lucky enough to live in the Florence area can now hear classical music 24 hours a day on KWAX's new sister station at 91.5 FM. Those who can't get it from the airwaves can get the streaming broadcasts from the KWAX web site.

is the best resource for downloading  entire text versions of an astounding number of English documents.  Complete  works of Shakespeare, the Bible, the Constitution of the US, the Book of Mormon, treaties and other political documents, books by all the famous authors.   If the copyright has expired you will probably find it at Project Gutenberg.  Note: The link here is to Project Gutenberg of Australia, since they actually have copyrights that expire.

A few warnings about why not to use  Microsoft Word email attachments

DOS users, please see my MSDOS page.

Here's an interesting quote from Cringley's 4/13/2006 Pulpit, called "Easy DOS it" relating to Apple computers running Microsoft Vista:
 
As one grizzled veteran of the PC wars recalled:
 
"One of the good things about the earlier versions of Windows was DOS.  While DOS was most definitely a limited operating system, that was part of its strength.  Since there wasn't much there, there wasn't much to break and it was easy to fix.  As the world moved to Windows, DOS was still there.  It was just hidden.  When Windows was messed up, you could always drop into DOS and fix Windows.  Over time Microsoft created the registry and a new file system, neither of which could be fixed from DOS.  DOS was the 'trusted' operating system that we could fall back on to fix problems.
 
"DOS is no longer there and today the way to fix Windows is to wipe the hard disk clean and reinstall it. That is, if you have original bootable CDs from Microsoft. Once you've reinstalled it, you get to repeat the process several times as all the security patches replace the whole OS over and over again. Heaven forbid if we could get a "clean" latest version of the OS easily from Microsoft...


Turn off what Hotmail calls rich text formatting..

For both of you who asked,  information on some of my software choices now available on the page entitled Steen's Somewhat Strange Software Selections.

Do you know where either your Outlook Express or your Address Book are on your computer?  Do you care?

Here are a couple of links to assist in removing or uninstalling Windows Scripting Host. Script Hosting Removal and Disabling Windows Scripting Host

Fed up with the bloat of Internet Explorer and/or Netscape?  Try Mozilla Firefox.  Earlier versions were called Phoenix, then Mozilla Firebird, now Mozilla Firefox 0.7.  It has versions for Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX.   On Windows I prefer it to all the other browsers I've used (IE, Netscape, Mozilla, and Opera).   I tried it on my Mac as well, but I'm undecided as to whether it beats Safari or not.


A Few Assorted Links:

 
Local Links:
CFF -Citizens for Florence
Florence Area Humane Society
Florence Events Center
Lane County Home Page
Tripcheck Western Lane
Lane County Road Closure Report
The Register Guard
Two Florence Web Cameras

Lists:
The List of Lists

Graphics:
Irfan Viewer (great freeware!)
A Few Scanning Tips
ACDSee image viewer
PIE Studio
Picture Window
ViewPrint and ViewScan

CD, CDr, MP3:
CDr FAQ (a must for all new CDr users)
RazorLame (Lame front end for MP3 work)
EAC (Exact Audio Copy for CD, best but slow ripper)
CDEX (Next best ripper for problem Audio CDs)
Total Recorder (record anything and everything)

OTR:
X Minus One & Dimension X
Mercury and Campbell Theatre (Orson Welles)

Malware (virus, worms, spyware):
Adware, Spyware and Advertising Trojans - Info
Spywareinfo
Spyware removal Ad-Aware from Lavasoft
Sircam removal from Sophos and from Symantec
Magistr-B removal SWMAGISB  from Sophos

Information and intelligent commentary:
The Thinking Man's Minefield
Free Inquiry (Council for Secular Humanism)
Skeptical Inquirer (Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal)
Slashdot (news for nerds, stuff that matters)
The Register (biting the hand that feeds IT)
I, Cringely (Caught on a planet of peril, he dared challenge its monster rulers...)

Romeo meets a visitor, 6/5/06.