So Microsoft, unable to compete in web searching by providing a quality product, is now making a deal with Rupert Murdoch to delist his web sites from Google. No doubt there will be a deal so that you can only search said web sites with Bing. The Financial Times reports that MS has entered similar talks with other online news sources.

Sure enough, reseating the DVD data connector did the trick.This means that I have a spare DVD burner to make up for my forgetting to order one for my sister's new computer, which we'll be building shortly. Yay!

From Rob Morrow's Facebook page ( Read more... )

So tonight on NCIS there's an episode that starts out with people taking out an ISP and then doing something to trigger a widespread power grid failure--and suddenly our intrepid investigators must go back to old methods ( Read more... )

I'm still amazed at how they've plummeted. I recall a coworker once who bought a hard drive that would hold a whole gigabyte! It was a SCSI drive, 5.25", full height, and cost a bit over a thousand dollars. You'd never fill that, I thought, just as a few years earlier I thought I'd never fill the thirty megabytes available on the hard drive I ( Read more... )

I did the update. So far, so good, mostly. For some reason, "switch user" in KDE is behaving as if I'd asked it to lock the screen. I did something stupid, i.e. put the 64-bit Flash plugin in the directory for 32-bit Firefox plugins, and that broke Flash on some sites in a bizarre fashion. Other than that, it's nice.

So, the Karmic Koala  release candidate install went without a hitch on the netbook, and it was time for my home computer, eeyore, to get the treatment ( Read more... )

(Posted here and on Facebook)

Sad to say, the state of Iowa has a Gatling gun pointed at its foot and is turning the crank as fast as it can, by totally freezing the Film Tax Incentives program while it investigates the abuses of a few. The film projects that are in limbo thanks to the freeze can't wait forever; they'll go elsewhere--and it's not ( Read more... )

Last Sunday, irpooh and I were trying to remember a song part of which was going through her head. ".... Beecher, my English teacher" was what she remembered. I remembered the tune, but was fuzzy on the lyrics. I thought maybe her first name was "Natalie"; to paraphrase Rodney Carrington, "hell, it scanned."

"English" was what foiled my Googling at first ( Read more... )

I'd like very much to talk sometime with one of irpooh 's friends. By all indications very intelligent, well-read, well-spoken, and creative.

Well... reading my dear wife's friends page, said friend announced getting in to the "ENO Messiah". (Excellent news indeed!) I followed the link and it turned out to be the English National Opera, but for one ( Read more... )