I bought a laptop with Windows XP media center last October from Amazon. Two months later Amazon sends me an email with a discount code amounting to $150 towards a copy of Vista Home Premium upgrade. I used the code and ordered Vista upgrade from Amazon before its official release date (Jan 30th). Amazon shipped the upgrade right on dot on Jan 30th. The upgrade was $154 bucks at the time I ordered, but on shipping date it dropped to $152 bucks and Amazon even promptly redfunded the 2 bucks back to my account. I now have the upgrade, purchased for $2, lying on my desk, reading all Vista reviews on the net and comments on Slashdot to determine if I should play with it on my Intel Centrino/1gb memory experimental second PC....
The best part was I was not even entitled to the $150 discount since it was offered by Microsoft and expired a few days before I purchsed my laptop from Amazon. But Amazon "graciously extended" the offer to all folks who purchased any machine during that month at their expense (or that is what they imply).
I walk down the aisle in a grocery shop. Beside the name brand tissues, theres also the store brand tissues. Is the store owner unfarily leveraging his shelf space to sell his product and shut out competition? Let the analogy wars begin...
What if the company decides that the "beta" version was not a viable product after all and decide it close it down after three years? If I scream, the company is going hide behind its "oh, but we told you, it was only a beta" line, while all my emails get flushed out...will they atleast give me all my emails in a cd before they shut down? Just an example...
What an Idiot this guy is. I saw your first link to his Slate article on google:
Search for "apple" on Google, and you have to troll through a couple pages of results before you get anything not directly related to Apple Computerand it's a page promoting a public TV >show called Newton's Apple
Hell, if you come to me and say "Apple" - how the hell will I know what the context is? I cannot have a meaningful conversation with you without first establishing the context especially since the word is ambiguous. I'd ask you, "Do you want an apple to eat?", or perhaps "Are you talking about the computer company?", or "Do you want want to know how to make an apple pie"?. Just saying "apple" does not display your intentions. Nut. Try saying "Apple Pie Recipie" and see if Google is able to make you happy instead.
From Wikipedia:
"Doohan's first marriage to Judy Doohan produced four children. He had two children by his second marriage to Anita Yagel. Both marriages ended in divorce. In 1974 he married Wende Braunberger, and their children were Eric, Thomas and Sarah, who was born in 2000, when Doohan was 80."
It was not like he desparately tried to have kids and was not successful till he was 80. He already had 6 children from 2 previous marriages.
Still, who am I to comment on the private lives of admired celebrities....
5 year old Sony 3-cd changer stops abruptly - wont play cds anymore. Tried cleaning the "laser" with one of those "cleaning cds" but no luck. Meanwhile the built-in cassette player continues to play all my old cassettes like a gem....
Consider yourself a recipient of a mod point that I unfortunately dont have to award to you.
Grind your teeth for the first 5 or 10 mins patiently. Its painful I agree, but take a deep breath before the call, meditate for a few minutes if you must then dial. You may be pleasantly surprised at the end. Does not work all the time but hey it preserves your sanity this way and *may* end up solving your problem.
Two computers. One running all corporate stuff. The other, a single, quiet, solo linux machine with nothing but terminal windows open. You put the corporate PC in the corner, out of your peripheral vision. You check it occassionally - like every two hours. Respond to emails, send emails, check meeting schedules..the whole drill.
Then its back to the deep dark dungeon where you can really be productive.
Sigh, if only mgmt would sanction the additional computer. Actually a few folks in my company did that and were amazingly productive. As for me, I used to turn off Outlook whenever I was going to get into a deep coding session. Yea, close down instant messengers too - better still dont even have them up in the first place. If you desire a desparate need to chat with that buddy of yours, fire it up, chat with him/her then exit the damn thing. Keep your desktop simple. It aint that hard.
I have tears in my eyes. This is awesome....seriously. Note how the map expands and slides smoothly to the "start" when you click on a landmark and then select "to here" to get directions and enter your start point. You can then see the entire sketched direction coupled with that smooth slide...
For some random bizzare reason I headed over to the HP site about an hour before this article was posted and spec'ed out their top of the line system with what I would have wanted (the pavilion series). I managed to reduce their recommended configuration (which was $1800+) to about 1000 (cut out the 3 year HP extended warranty among various other things). It was there that I was quitely dazzled by their "LightScribe" writer that they were giving as an upgrade.
Then I hit slashdot and see this article posted. Now thats what I call Extra-Slashdottery-Perception.;-)
Definitely agree with the last sentence!
Ok. Broad classification might help here. The trick is to not go more
than one level deep when classifying something. I can come up with two
broad categories: "Creative stuff", and "data".
1. Creative stuff includes your writings/pictures/anything with
human memories attached to it.
2. data is just that - data. Receipts/Statements/Tax data -
anything that has a finite useful life time. If you really need this
data at a later date, after it has been destroyed, it must be easily
obtainable from an external source. (Most of the times it is?)
Item (1) above goes into cold storage while (2) is subject to the
archive/delete/destroy scheme.
An alternate way would be to assign expiry dates to documents. Just
like milk in your refrigerator. Creative stuff never expires, while
data expires in the amount of time you assign to it. Receipts? 1 year.
Utlity bills? 6 months. Tax Returns? 7 years. You get the general
idea.
Like an MP3 juke box software that scans your media folder and assigns
attributes to all your media files, have this backup software do
something similar and ask for expiry dates for your documents. It then
periodically archives your documents according to set rules (n days)
and removes them from your disk. It also scans your back up and
destroys data older than y days. It does not touch your non-expiry
items.
The above scheme may result in your data set (cold storage) growing
slower than it normally does but you will now only have stuff that you
really really think you need. Couple this with a desktop search tool
which searches both your desktop and your backup and you have a
manageable data storage and retrieval scheme?
My simplistic solution from what I have observed personally, would be two steps:
1. Archive data older than n days to backup/removeable storage, delete backedup data from your main field of view (desktop/folders etc from wherever they came) so you now have a fresh slate to begin with. This ensures less clutter.
2. Destroy backedup data after y days. Yes, quite simply destroy it. Make y sufficiently large that you can always get something back if you really wanted it. Of course y is >> x (significantly larger than). If you want something put in cold storage forever, explicitly move it into a "cold storage archive" in step 1 above. I'm guessing there will be very little stuff deserving this status so storing it will be manageable. This step ensures that unneeded data does not last forever and ever.
A lot of clutter is built up by having the notion that you will "need it *someday*" - thats a fallacy - you mostly end up never touching 80% of your stashed stuff so they can be safely deleted.
>Is seven different 8 character passwords (with numbers and mixed cases) really too much to ask?
No. Its asking for a similarly strong kind of password in twent five different websites that eventually becomes the overkill. And people slack out and try to use whatever they can remember easily.
Was perfectly happy prior to SP2. After SP2, when I connect via VPN to my company, after a random number of minutes (10-15) the machine reboots, without warning, just like that. DAMN YOU SP2! Searched high and low on google for this symptom and its cure, found none that worked. Anyone else in the same boat?
Other than that SP2 is ok - when I dont use the VPN, that is. No BSODs for the last couple of months which is how long ago I installed it. The PC is a home PC.
Confession: Im Indian, born/brought up/studied/worked there, now a permanent resident in the USA. Your child will have to compete against a million others and the only way one child is differentiated from another is the way they perform in school. A 0.0003% score difference between and the guy next to you in high-school can determine if you make in into a decent college or not. The amount of presssure the children have to take from family/scociety/friends is immense. Of course, there is no doubt about the quality of the professors etc once you are inside the reputed colleges - they are top class. But you have to be brilliant AND lucky to to even see their shadows.
>is already there for those who know how to find it
And that is what makes a world of a difference here I believe. I could go to the market, get a lock pick and pick a lock if I really wanted to. GDS seems like hanging the lock pick right next to the lock. Rough analogy...
Anyway, I love GDS - its one heck of an innovative solution thats been seriously lacking on the desktop till now. Just that some jagged edges need to be smoothened out...
"With default security on Windows XP, each user's cache is accessible to the other users."
The problem as I see it is in the startlingly easy way google desktop search makes intrusion possible, sometimes even without the person searching intentionally looking into other user's data. Any keyword I type is an instantaneous hook into the world of the other user who used the pc before me. That is what I find scary.
Agreed this is a non-issue inside a household where one or two people use a PC, yet the potential of this sends a slight tingle down my spine...
"But the problem stemmed not from the installation but the design, by Lockheed Martin, based in Bethesda, Maryland"
Installation problem, I can understand, but design? Doesnt one validate a design on a serious project like this before manufacturing/installing something based on that design?
And dont tell me this little contraption was not validatable in a lab.
I just upgraded my home PC to Windows XP Pro on one hard disk and Mandrake 10 on the other hard disk and I dual boot. The first thing that hit me - XP is so much more "crisp'! I upgraded from Redhat 7.2 to Mandrake in the hope that it will look visually better - it did, but its not quite there yet. The default fonts on some web pages for eg, suck, making me never to want to go to that website again, or visit it only when Im inside Win XP Pro.
On the other hand I notice how much farther Linux has come since I first installed Slackware back sometime in 1997. Its made some large strides especially in peripherals recognition and configuration - kudos to that.
But out of the box, if you ask me which is prettier, Id have no doubt what the average user would choose. Also, XP is a step further in the direction of stability (former Windows ME user speaking!) so thats quickly becoming a non-issue as well. The only point that Linux probably has over Windows is probably "security" right now, but sadly its not something that jumps right out at you when you open your new Windows box, so the average user gives it secondary consideration.
The whole focus of the SpaceShip One effort now seems to be like it was to auger only space tourism and give the rich men (and kids) something to brag about and make more money with. What about its scientific value/benefits and existing as a complement to the govt's space program aka NASA? I mean, crusing at 360,000 feet is cool but surely this effort meant more than just that?
for an airport, ram in through the gates and just tell the cops you are going to circle the runway till the gas runs out... sheesh..do these things even need to be said?
Slashdot Mirror
Since they like breaking things anyway...
The best part was I was not even entitled to the $150 discount since it was offered by Microsoft and expired a few days before I purchsed my laptop from Amazon. But Amazon "graciously extended" the offer to all folks who purchased any machine during that month at their expense (or that is what they imply).
I walk down the aisle in a grocery shop. Beside the name brand tissues, theres also the store brand tissues. Is the store owner unfarily leveraging his shelf space to sell his product and shut out competition? Let the analogy wars begin...
What if the company decides that the "beta" version was not a viable product after all and decide it close it down after three years? If I scream, the company is going hide behind its "oh, but we told you, it was only a beta" line, while all my emails get flushed out...will they atleast give me all my emails in a cd before they shut down? Just an example...
>up to 10 times optical zoom by changing its shape similar to the human eye
I had a zoom lens built into my eye socket and I learn about it now?
"Doohan's first marriage to Judy Doohan produced four children. He had two children by his second marriage to Anita Yagel. Both marriages ended in divorce. In 1974 he married Wende Braunberger, and their children were Eric, Thomas and Sarah, who was born in 2000, when Doohan was 80."
It was not like he desparately tried to have kids and was not successful till he was 80. He already had 6 children from 2 previous marriages.
Still, who am I to comment on the private lives of admired celebrities....
Just change the original one to search Amazon or something else for eg :-)
5 year old Sony 3-cd changer stops abruptly - wont play cds anymore. Tried cleaning the "laser" with one of those "cleaning cds" but no luck. Meanwhile the built-in cassette player continues to play all my old cassettes like a gem....
Consider yourself a recipient of a mod point that I unfortunately dont have to award to you.
Grind your teeth for the first 5 or 10 mins patiently. Its painful I agree, but take a deep breath before the call, meditate for a few minutes if you must then dial. You may be pleasantly surprised at the end. Does not work all the time but hey it preserves your sanity this way and *may* end up solving your problem.
Then its back to the deep dark dungeon where you can really be productive.
Sigh, if only mgmt would sanction the additional computer. Actually a few folks in my company did that and were amazingly productive. As for me, I used to turn off Outlook whenever I was going to get into a deep coding session. Yea, close down instant messengers too - better still dont even have them up in the first place. If you desire a desparate need to chat with that buddy of yours, fire it up, chat with him/her then exit the damn thing. Keep your desktop simple. It aint that hard.
... GOOGLE IS GOD!
GOOGLE IS GOD!
I have tears in my eyes. This is awesome....seriously. Note how the map expands and slides smoothly to the "start" when you click on a landmark and then select "to here" to get directions and enter your start point. You can then see the entire sketched direction coupled with that smooth slide...
Oh. My. God.
Then I hit slashdot and see this article posted. Now thats what I call Extra-Slashdottery-Perception. ;-)
1. Creative stuff includes your writings/pictures /anything with
human memories attached to it.
2. data is just that - data. Receipts/Statements/Tax data - anything that has a finite useful life time. If you really need this data at a later date, after it has been destroyed, it must be easily obtainable from an external source. (Most of the times it is?)
Item (1) above goes into cold storage while (2) is subject to the archive/delete/destroy scheme.
An alternate way would be to assign expiry dates to documents. Just like milk in your refrigerator. Creative stuff never expires, while data expires in the amount of time you assign to it. Receipts? 1 year. Utlity bills? 6 months. Tax Returns? 7 years. You get the general idea.
Like an MP3 juke box software that scans your media folder and assigns attributes to all your media files, have this backup software do something similar and ask for expiry dates for your documents. It then periodically archives your documents according to set rules (n days) and removes them from your disk. It also scans your back up and destroys data older than y days. It does not touch your non-expiry items.
The above scheme may result in your data set (cold storage) growing slower than it normally does but you will now only have stuff that you really really think you need. Couple this with a desktop search tool which searches both your desktop and your backup and you have a manageable data storage and retrieval scheme?
1. Archive data older than n days to backup/removeable storage, delete backedup data from your main field of view (desktop/folders etc from wherever they came) so you now have a fresh slate to begin with. This ensures less clutter.
2. Destroy backedup data after y days. Yes, quite simply destroy it. Make y sufficiently large that you can always get something back if you really wanted it. Of course y is >> x (significantly larger than). If you want something put in cold storage forever, explicitly move it into a "cold storage archive" in step 1 above. I'm guessing there will be very little stuff deserving this status so storing it will be manageable. This step ensures that unneeded data does not last forever and ever.
A lot of clutter is built up by having the notion that you will "need it *someday*" - thats a fallacy - you mostly end up never touching 80% of your stashed stuff so they can be safely deleted.
You could also try KimDaBa here
No. Its asking for a similarly strong kind of password in twent five different websites that eventually becomes the overkill. And people slack out and try to use whatever they can remember easily.
Other than that SP2 is ok - when I dont use the VPN, that is. No BSODs for the last couple of months which is how long ago I installed it. The PC is a home PC.
Confession: Im Indian, born/brought up/studied/worked there, now a permanent resident in the USA. Your child will have to compete against a million others and the only way one child is differentiated from another is the way they perform in school. A 0.0003% score difference between and the guy next to you in high-school can determine if you make in into a decent college or not. The amount of presssure the children have to take from family/scociety/friends is immense. Of course, there is no doubt about the quality of the professors etc once you are inside the reputed colleges - they are top class. But you have to be brilliant AND lucky to to even see their shadows.
And that is what makes a world of a difference here I believe. I could go to the market, get a lock pick and pick a lock if I really wanted to. GDS seems like hanging the lock pick right next to the lock. Rough analogy...
Anyway, I love GDS - its one heck of an innovative solution thats been seriously lacking on the desktop till now. Just that some jagged edges need to be smoothened out...
The problem as I see it is in the startlingly easy way google desktop search makes intrusion possible, sometimes even without the person searching intentionally looking into other user's data. Any keyword I type is an instantaneous hook into the world of the other user who used the pc before me. That is what I find scary.
Agreed this is a non-issue inside a household where one or two people use a PC, yet the potential of this sends a slight tingle down my spine...
Installation problem, I can understand, but design? Doesnt one validate a design on a serious project like this before manufacturing/installing something based on that design?
And dont tell me this little contraption was not validatable in a lab.
I just upgraded my home PC to Windows XP Pro on one hard disk and Mandrake 10 on the other hard disk and I dual boot. The first thing that hit me - XP is so much more "crisp'! I upgraded from Redhat 7.2 to Mandrake in the hope that it will look visually better - it did, but its not quite there yet. The default fonts on some web pages for eg, suck, making me never to want to go to that website again, or visit it only when Im inside Win XP Pro.
On the other hand I notice how much farther Linux has come since I first installed Slackware back sometime in 1997. Its made some large strides especially in peripherals recognition and configuration - kudos to that.
But out of the box, if you ask me which is prettier, Id have no doubt what the average user would choose. Also, XP is a step further in the direction of stability (former Windows ME user speaking!) so thats quickly becoming a non-issue as well. The only point that Linux probably has over Windows is probably "security" right now, but sadly its not something that jumps right out at you when you open your new Windows box, so the average user gives it secondary consideration.
Maybe that will change in the future.
The whole focus of the SpaceShip One effort now seems to be like it was to auger only space tourism and give the rich men (and kids) something to brag about and make more money with. What about its scientific value/benefits and existing as a complement to the govt's space program aka NASA? I mean, crusing at 360,000 feet is cool but surely this effort meant more than just that?
for an airport, ram in through the gates and just tell the cops you are going to circle the runway till the gas runs out... sheesh..do these things even need to be said?