Before you begin, gather your Windows and application CD-ROMs. Back up your data files (just to be safe), and then clear two days off your calendar. If everything goes smoothly, you can reinstall Windows in a few hours. But you have to assume something will go wrong: You may not be able to find a necessary CD, or data won't be where you thought it was, or something will simply refuse to work.

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If your restore CD is reformat-only, back up your data files to a network or a removable medium before reinstalling Windows. If you use Windows 98 or Me, back up C:\My Documents, plus the folders inside C:\Windows discussed in the 98/Me section below. If you have Windows 2000 or XP, back up C:\Documents and Settings. Also back up any other folders in which you store your data files.

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Once you're back in Windows, reinstall your graphics card driver. If you have Windows set up for more than one user, you'll also have to re-create each account. Select Start, Settings, Control Panel, Users to do so. It's important that the user names match those in the old installation. If you're not sure, open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:\oldstuff\profiles. There you'll find a folder for each registered user name (see FIGURE 2). Don't worry about passwords. Log off and log back on as each user. When you're done, log off and back on one more time, but instead of choosing a user name and a password, press Esc to enter Windows without being a specific user.

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Select Start, Programs, Accessories, Command Prompt. Type cd "\documents and settings" and press Enter. Then type xcopy administrator\*.* administrator.computername /s /h /r /c, replacing computername with the last part of that folder's name (after "Administrator.") in Documents and Settings. Now press Enter, and when you're asked about overwriting files or folders, press a for All.

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Now you've got Windows going, but not much else. You may have to reinstall your printer, sound card, and so on. Luckily, if a driver for the gadget came on your Windows or vendor restore CD, it was probably reinstalled automatically.

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You've probably guessed that the final step is deleting the c:\oldstuff folder--and the Administrator folder in Windows 2000. Make this the very last step, however. Wait a couple of days, weeks, or even months until you're confident that all of your needed files are accessible.

"I was ecstatic they re-named 'French Fries' as 'Freedom Fries'. Grown men and women in positions of power in the US government showing themselves as idiots," he told Stern.

Oh, and...

Pardon my ignorance, but-- Set Program Access and Defaults? What the hell kind of intuitive menu option name is that? What, was Define Runtimes Parameter and Set Access Group of Leval taken already? How can any company that even pretends to have its hand in good user-interface design practices come up with a name like this for the function of specifying which applications are used for common Internet-related tasks?

And of course, what's the window called that it brings up? Add/Remove Programs. When what you're doing is clicking little radio buttons.

Jeezum crow, Bill. Were you mistreated by a human being in a previous life, and that's why you're taking it out on us now?

UPDATE: Funky.

On several people's advice, I ran Ad-Aware 6.0 on the machine, and it found a number of cookies from doubleclick.net and such sites. I let it clean them out for me, and the pop-up ads went away.

Now, before yez let loose with the congenial smiles and half-lidded eyes and conspiratorial side-glances, I think I can say that I had good reason to believe that Windows Update incorporated the ads on its own. First of all, whenever I've used this machine to browse to any other site on the Internet, I've never gotten pop-up windows. CNN, everybody on my blogroll, somethingawful, all the crucial stuff-- nary an ad to be seen. All was sweetness and light. But the minute I reach for the Windows Update button-- whoops! Up pop the ads.

On top of which, this machine is my personal test rig; it's behind a NAT, and I certainly don't use it for everyday surfing-- and I absolutely don't go recklessly installing Bonzi Buddies and pornographic weather applets and other prime candidates for populating the agarose dish that is my hard drive. I've been using and maintaining Windows machines in lab and support environments for some eight years now, and I like to think I have some understanding of responsible surfing habits. I've seen lots of weeeeeird crap in my time. But this was a new one on me.

Lessee here... Looking in my history books from College... Ah, here it is. Che Guevara: Argentinian of Irish descent... Trained as a doctor... Murdered hundreds of Cubans that wanted someone other than Castro to be in power... Murdered a couple hundred more in the La Paz Massacre... Extreme left-wing radical... One of the "spriritual founders" of the Shining Path which has killed more than 40,000 people... He was fond of tying people up, blindfolding them and then popping a cap in the backs of their heads while their wives and children were forced to watch... Executed by the Bolivian government on 48 proven counts of capital murder... Just the kind of guy that deserves to have his face on a t-shirt. Him and Bob Berdella.

OCTOBER 18, 1965: A CIA Intelligence Memorandum discusses what analysts perceive as Che Guevara’s fall from power within the Cuban government beginning in 1964. It states that at the end of 1963, Guevara’s plan of "rapid industrialization and centralization during the first years of the Revolution brought the economy to its lowest point since Castro came to power." "Guevara’s outlook, which approximated present -day Chinese--rather than Soviet--economic practice, was behind the controversy." In July 1964, "two important cabinet appointments signaled the power struggle over internal economic policy which culminated in Guevara’s elimination." Another conflict was that Guevara wanted to export the Cuban Revolution to different parts of Latin America and Africa, while "other Cuban leaders began to devote most of their attention to the internal problems of the Revolution." In December, 1964, Guevara departed on a three-month trip to the United States, Africa, and China. When he returned, according to the CIA report, his economic and foreign policies were in disfavor and he left to start revolutionary struggles in other parts of the world. (CIA Intelligence Memorandum, "The Fall of Che Guevara and the Changing Face of the Cuban Revolution," 10/18/65)

Che certainly was responsible for the executions of many following the revolution. A dirty job that Castro gave him. About 500 were killed.

Shining Path are Maoist. If anyone inherited the mantle of Che in Peru it was Tupac Amaru.

He was executed by the Bolivians (alongside the CIA) but not on any 'proven' counts of murder. In fact they denied executing him for a long time.

He was erudite, led a successful revolution, inspired countless numbers, never gave up, and happened to be drop dead gorgeous to boot. I don't think it's any mystery why he's a hardy perennial.

These vulnerabilities and exploits are not new, and unfortunately were predictable. CCIA believes it is critical to maintain secure systems to protect homeland security, and so CCIA has asked the Department to reconsider its decision to promote Microsoft as the default software for DHS. Reliance on a company that distributes products known to have such serious vulnerabilities will not provide adequate security and stability to protect of our nation's most important computer systems.

UPDATE: Speaking of the WeHaveTheWayOut.com site... notice that cute little animation on the left, of the bedsheet rope being lowered out the window? Kris points out that it wriggles the wrong way-- the end of it jiggles before the rest of it moves, like a snake.

Know what I think happened? I'll bet some Flash guys originally animated the rope being pulled up into the window; and then Microsoft said, "Hey, no, we wanted it going the other way"; and the contractor said, "Yeah, but like, it's already done and paid for, and the animators already went to Vegas"; and Microsoft said, "Okay, well, just run it backwards, then. That's good enough."

Oh, and Chris noticed that the rope doesn't descend all the way to the ground, which is out of sight below. So Microsoft and Unisys will help you start to escape, but they won't provide more than ten feet of bedsheet-- and then you've got that inconvenient plunge to your death to contend with.

An Iraqi couple has named their 6-week-old baby boy George Bush (search) to show their appreciation for U.S. efforts to force Saddam Hussein (search) out of power.

"He saved us from Saddam and that's why we named our son after him," the baby's mother, Nadia Jergis Mohammed, told the Associated Press Television News. "It was George Bush who liberated us; without him it wouldn't have happened."

Baby Bush was born July 11 to Mohammed, 34, and her husband Abdul Kader Faris, 41. His full name is George Bush Abdul Kader Faris Abed El-Hussein.

If the couple had had twin boys, the father wanted to name the other baby Tony Blair (search), because he said both the U.S. and Britain liberated Iraq.

As the woman did the interview, little George Bush screamed in his crib.

* Hamas is a big part of the "cycle of violence". They blow up innocent men, women, and children, and then Israel is like, "Hey, don't do that." And thus the cycle of violence continues.

The long-time Photoshop users said, effectively, "Well, duh, of course there's a difference between Save As and Save For Web". Obvious to you, of course, but based on the people who have been emailing me, saying "Oh, so that's what's wrong with my site!" plenty of folks are actually using the inappropriate save option for web purposes. That's a user behavior problem and I'm not sure what the best solution is for that. Adobe could add warning dialogs until they were blue in the face, but they'd still fall victim to [Frank's First Law of Documentation].

All available information suggests that XMP data is a documented, accepted extension to the jpeg standard. Without any evidence to the contrary, my perception is that Adobe has committed no crime, and the onus is on Microsoft to fix Windows IE's jpeg decoder. Hopefully someone read my bug report. Nobody from MS has contacted me.

In the meantime, what can web developers do to avoid the problem?

Well, first and most obvious, if you are creating static graphics, use Save For Web. And (hopefully you're already doing this) test your site on as many platforms as you can.

For more dynamic sites, such as snapclub.com, which accept jpeg file uploads from arbitrary third-parties, there is at least one solution; ImageMagick's "mogrify" command can be used to remove the metadata from the jpeg like so:

mogrify +profile iptc image.jpg

By the way... is it just me, or was Microsoft's current slogan written by Yoda? "Hmmm! Do Amazing Things You Can. With Windows XP, Yes!"

UPDATE: Chris Adams has been down this road before, and he has the answer: jpegtran, which is part of libjpeg (a package that ImageMagick has as an installation prerequisite anyway):

jpegtran -copy none -outfile nometa.jpg meta.jpg

And the resulting file has no meta-data and has not been recompressed. Yes!

So all I gotta do is jpegtran all my uploads, then copy the resulting files back over the source files, and all will be well...

After removing its predecessor MSBlaster, the new worm, which -- just to add to the confusion -- has been dubbed WORM_MSBLAST.D, Nachi and Welchia by various security and antivirus firms, then politely patches the machine against the vulnerability that MSBlaster exploited.

"My computer hasn't been right since it was infected last week," said Nadine Lovell, a Manhattan textile designer. "This afternoon it's working perfectly again."

A scan of Lovell's system confirmed her machine had indeed been infected with the new Blaster variant.

"Thank you, worm!" said Lovell.

Music creates vibration in the body and this is conveyed to all the parts of the body through the nervous system. As a result of it, indigestion occurs. Music affects the heart in such a way that the heartbeats becomes irregular. The blood pressure goes awry. All such ailments make a person permanently ill. Consequently, even the modern medical science, in spite of its astonishing progress, fails in such a situation. Sometimes, the music is so intense that the listener loses his sanity. He becomes dumb and various kinds of mental diseases occur. In places, where music is more prevalent, we find that there are more neurotic illnesses. It is for this reason that most of the mental hospitals are to be found in Europe and America.

Dr. Adlen writes against music, "Even though it seems pleasant, the effect of music is profound upon the nervous system. Specially, when the temperature is high, the ill-effect of music is more. This is the reason that ill-effects of music are more in the hot areas of Iran and Saudi Arabia. The American people are so disgusted with the bane of music that they have united to demand from the senate a permanent ban on music. It is a pity that the whole world perceives the evils of music yet is adopting it as entertainment."