I frequently visit the Hot Deals Club, and eventually paid to join.
Run by basically one guy, it's a great no-frills bargain hunter site. The Hot Deals Maniac is honest in his appraisals of the "heat" of each deal he posts, warning especially against counting on rebates to be honored. Always has all the current coupon codes, plus lots of other random deals and discounts.
You make it sound as though that's a trivial task. It can be as long as everyone who used the spreadsheet was disciplined about how they entered data. The problem is that that is rarely the case, and the spreadsheet doesn't enforce any data types etc.. Converting a series of data from a spreadsheet to a database can be a huge PITA.
The DigDB Excel Add-in Toolkit can help enormously in this task. It helps you find and remove duplicates, convert cell data types, merge tables, clean up broken links, etc.
Their tools are so powerful it can actually backfire and encourage people to continue in Excel when they really should cut bait and import into Access. That is actually the company's stated claim--allowing you to perform Access-like functions without having to learn Access...
Whenever I buy alcohol at my local Safeway, especially big quantities for parties, I use my old phone number which tracks to my old roommate's loyalty card. The account is at least 5 years old, so I doubt he even has the actual card anymore. Someday I'd like to see his customer profile: "Well, according to the computer this guy only goes shopping a few times a month and just buys booze. I don't think he's a good loan risk."
There should be a warning on these cards like there is on the Slashdot Poll: "This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Cross-linked accounts, false identifiers, vengeful former roommies. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane."
When these boys grow up, they'll probably turn into these guys who blackmail companies into paying "protection money" to avoid getting DOSed. The advent of digital communication has made all kinds of behaviors more anonymous, including these two. Now you don't even have to confront your victim personally. If the addage that "bullies are the real cowards" is true, then they now have the opportunity to be even more cowardly still.
Why would you bother keeping a credit card with a zero balance on it
Also for credit card rebates and rewards. Small potatoes, but they add up. My visa gives me 1% cash back at the end of each year. My other visa accrues mileage points for free Southwest Airlines tickets (which are transferrable in an eBay type way...) It's probably a few hundred dollars back each year, which beats paying with cash.
I have also used Omsoft for over three years. They are great! Even when I moved out of their DSL service area I kept my shell account for my webspace and email. Customer service is top-notch and reliability is fantastic.
I wasn't familiar with Gator.com's little spyware gems, and initially had them confused with thirty4 interactive, the makers of Napigator. Thought maybe Napigator had been spying on my P2P habits all this time, or something. Unfortunate similarity in names and logos.
I carry this with me on a disk, but on my windows machine I use Tera Term Pro. It is old (pre-Y2K) but unmatched on the Windows side. Best feature is that it is scriptable. It also has an SSH extension.
Three other essential freeware Windows apps that I always give to people:
Irfanview image viewer. Reads almost every image format known to man, and so much better than having IE pop up every time you want to view a JPEG or GIF! Also performs most every basic image edit (rotate, crop, sharpen, resize) that a basic home user would need, short of PaintShip Pro or Photoshop.
CDex MP3 ripper. IMO the best MP3 ripper out there. Uses the LAME codec. Also encodes to OGG, VQF, APE... And completely open source.
Editpad text editor. A replacement for the terrible Windows Notepad. Opens unlimited numbers of documents into a tabbed format. And has some nice little features, like header and footer options for printing, timestamps, ROT-13, etc. Also available for Linux...
I love the ZebraRubber 2-C. It contains two different color inks in one standard sized pen, each accessible by twisting the barrel in either direction. The entire barrel is "rubberized," though it is not overly sticky. The pen has a nice heft to it, and I find the ink flow to be very smooth (though it does have some trouble on certain paper textures, especially when writing at an angle...) The reason I bought it initially is that the barrel clip goes all the way to the top of the pen, so that when it is clipped into my breast pocket, none if the pen is sticking up and out of my pocket. This lets me comfortably close the flap over my uniform pocket without an inch of so of pen trying to protrude!
I can't find the 2-C for sale very many places anymore, but Zebra also makes a very similar "Sharbo combo" which has one ink and one pencil lead inside.
Remember in late 2001 when the US Department of Interior was ordered by the court to take more than 100 of their web servers offline due to abysmal security? Hired white hats were easily able to gain access to the US Indian Trust database and found no security measures or even audit trails in place. Worried that this could be contributing to the agency's continuing mismanagement and loss of allegedly billions of dollars belonging to Native Americans, Judge Royce C. Lamberth ordered the DOI to "immediately shut down Internet access from any computer, server and system in the department that has access to individual Indian trust data."
The defense counsel noted that the fact that they took down over 100 mostly unrelated servers "...just shows you how inept they are. They don't even understand how these systems relate to each other so they just pull the plug on the entire system."
And now last month they were ordered to disconnect their servers again after refusing to let a court-appointed special master test the security measures they've supposedly put into place since then.
Sounds like an endemic problem for government agencies, at least at the federal level.
Slashdot Mirror
"Kids, you tried your best, and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try."
- Homer Simpson (episode 1F16, Mar 14 '94)
Run by basically one guy, it's a great no-frills bargain hunter site. The Hot Deals Maniac is honest in his appraisals of the "heat" of each deal he posts, warning especially against counting on rebates to be honored. Always has all the current coupon codes, plus lots of other random deals and discounts.
The DigDB Excel Add-in Toolkit can help enormously in this task. It helps you find and remove duplicates, convert cell data types, merge tables, clean up broken links, etc.
Their tools are so powerful it can actually backfire and encourage people to continue in Excel when they really should cut bait and import into Access. That is actually the company's stated claim--allowing you to perform Access-like functions without having to learn Access...
There should be a warning on these cards like there is on the Slashdot Poll: "This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Cross-linked accounts, false identifiers, vengeful former roommies. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane."
Breathed was also interviewed in Salon last week, and in The Onion's A.V. Club in 2001. He gets to swear in these interviews, too.
When these boys grow up, they'll probably turn into these guys who blackmail companies into paying "protection money" to avoid getting DOSed. The advent of digital communication has made all kinds of behaviors more anonymous, including these two. Now you don't even have to confront your victim personally. If the addage that "bullies are the real cowards" is true, then they now have the opportunity to be even more cowardly still.
Also for credit card rebates and rewards. Small potatoes, but they add up. My visa gives me 1% cash back at the end of each year. My other visa accrues mileage points for free Southwest Airlines tickets (which are transferrable in an eBay type way...) It's probably a few hundred dollars back each year, which beats paying with cash.
I have also used Omsoft for over three years. They are great! Even when I moved out of their DSL service area I kept my shell account for my webspace and email. Customer service is top-notch and reliability is fantastic.
I wasn't familiar with Gator.com's little spyware gems, and initially had them confused with thirty4 interactive, the makers of Napigator. Thought maybe Napigator had been spying on my P2P habits all this time, or something. Unfortunate similarity in names and logos.
I carry this with me on a disk, but on my windows machine I use Tera Term Pro. It is old (pre-Y2K) but unmatched on the Windows side. Best feature is that it is scriptable. It also has an SSH extension.
Irfanview image viewer. Reads almost every image format known to man, and so much better than having IE pop up every time you want to view a JPEG or GIF! Also performs most every basic image edit (rotate, crop, sharpen, resize) that a basic home user would need, short of PaintShip Pro or Photoshop.
CDex MP3 ripper. IMO the best MP3 ripper out there. Uses the LAME codec. Also encodes to OGG, VQF, APE... And completely open source.
Editpad text editor. A replacement for the terrible Windows Notepad. Opens unlimited numbers of documents into a tabbed format. And has some nice little features, like header and footer options for printing, timestamps, ROT-13, etc. Also available for Linux...
31 02283 665
Which can be "decoded" into the following U.S. telephone number: (310) 228-3665
(am I now in violation of the DMCA for cracking this encryption scheme?)
This phone number traces to Beverley Hills, CA.
Call it (on your own dime) and listen to The King's answering machine...
I can't find the 2-C for sale very many places anymore, but Zebra also makes a very similar "Sharbo combo" which has one ink and one pencil lead inside.
Remember in late 2001 when the US Department of Interior was ordered by the court to take more than 100 of their web servers offline due to abysmal security? Hired white hats were easily able to gain access to the US Indian Trust database and found no security measures or even audit trails in place. Worried that this could be contributing to the agency's continuing mismanagement and loss of allegedly billions of dollars belonging to Native Americans, Judge Royce C. Lamberth ordered the DOI to "immediately shut down Internet access from any computer, server and system in the department that has access to individual Indian trust data."
The defense counsel noted that the fact that they took down over 100 mostly unrelated servers "...just shows you how inept they are. They don't even understand how these systems relate to each other so they just pull the plug on the entire system."
And now last month they were ordered to disconnect their servers again after refusing to let a court-appointed special master test the security measures they've supposedly put into place since then.
Sounds like an endemic problem for government agencies, at least at the federal level.