Monday, June 22, 2009

Jammie Thomas-Rasset verdict: 1.92 million?!?

Heh heh, like they will ever see that money. It's ridiculous. If I were in her position I would just laugh. What are they going to do? They can't take her car, they can't keep her from renting a house. They can garnish 25% of her wages. They will never see more than a few thousand dollars of this award and the obvious overkill in the award just makes them look horrible in the public eye. I wish the entire music industry would fail, big bank style, and publish zero new albums next year. This would be of great benefit to our society, as then people would go listen to live music, or, land sakes, make their own music at home.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Problems with Vista 64bit

Problem number 1: there is no 64 bit version of Adobe Flash to use in 64bit IE. Solution? Use Firefox. Why the heck are you using IE anyhow? Problem number 2: Verizon and Palm do not make drivers for 64 bit windows for the 755p Treo. So you can not hotsync via USB cord, nor can you use VZ access manager to connect to the internet. Solution? Use USBmodem. Problem number 3: Not sure if this is a 64bit problem, but, I used Microsoft Update to get a selection of security updates, and after I was done, Windows had changed my update settings to 'update automatically'. I noticed this because the tray icon for windows update was there this morning. "Downloading updates," it said. "No, you are not," I said. I never use automatic updates, because Microsoft patches are not known for their stability, and MS often tries to slip in a new program or two when you update, like WGA or IE 8. Solution? Turn off updates. Change update settings to 'Never Check for Updates.' This means that you have to keep track of which updates are reliable on your own. I use AskWoody to get the scoop on which updates to skip for awhile. I also have a good antivirus program and I use Firefox instead of IE. Always get the updates for Windows Defender, Malicious Software Removal Tool, and Junk Mail Filters for Outlook (if you use Outlook). Problem number 4: My Razer Diamondback 3G mouse doesn't do center-click. It doesn't show up in the mouse control panel applet. There is no way to adjust it's settings except with the 3G driver applet, and it doesn't list center-click as an option. This is a problem for me, as I center-click links all the time to open them in a new tab. Solution? I discovered by trial and error, that 'Universal scroll' in the 3G applet works as center-click, instead of providing a scroll.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

My chat session with Dell sales

Horrible salesmanship. Neither agent greeted me. Neither tried to see what they needed to do to close the sale, or offered to take my order. Neither had a sense of humor. They both missed questions in my text and didn't answer them. Neither said goodbye-have a nice day when our session ended. I am literally sitting here with my credit card in hand and their doofus agents couldn't close the sale. Their sole effort to sell me was to paste a system in front of me. They didn't even extol the virtues of these systems or explain why they thought these systems suited my needs.