TechPerspective

Just found a terribly disturbing article about Best Buy.  

You can read about it here: http://consumerist.com/368894/leaks-best-buys-internal-customer-profiling-document 

I find it fascinating because I will pretty much never shop at a Best Buy anymore.  Let me give you a case in point.  We are in the process of buying a new laptop.  Rather than go to a store and buy it, I suggest we go to Best Buy to look at the type we may want to buy.  15.4″ screen?  14″ screen?  How about weight?  So after settling on a model, I go home and proceed to order it online, direct from HP.  Much simpler that way.  You know what you are getting without just looking at pictures.  Plus I found a huge discount for HP’s online store, too.  Much more pleasant than having to deal with those people who are already so primed and prejudiced over the type of person you are.  I mainly use Newegg and Amazon and may never look back! 

Well I thought I’d share my experience.

You Know What’s Stupid? Everything I Don’t Understand

Are you a college student who’s always looking for free stuff?   Read the rest of this entry »

Sick of Windows XP Service Pack 2?  Well I have a suggestion! 

No, it’s not to move to a different OS, but to try out Service Pack 3! 

Yup, I know it’s a bit of a lame alternative, but the new service pack (still in beta) has some interesting new features, such as the ability to be installed without a product key, just like Vista.If you want to check it out, click here for more information. 

So it looks a war has been won this week, and it certainly wasn’t the War on Terror.Nope, Sony and the BluRay camp was able to beat out HD DVD.  A shame?  Perhaps.  Necessary?  Definately.Having used both formats (with my Xbox 360 and PS3), I have come to one conclusion:  they were pretty much the same.  Sure one side could argue more disc space.  But when you look at the tradeoffs in technology advancement and overall preparedness, well HD DVD seemed to pull ahead.  Yet the lack of a good incentive to buy players killed it.  Much like DVD and the PS2 (did you know that when it debuted in 2000, it was the cheapest DVD player in Japan?), Sony did a good job of pushing a multimedia format.  They did a very good job.  

Now with the millions of PS3s in homes worldwide, I have the feeling that people will decide to discover BluRay soon, and by all means they should–the advantages are plentiful.  People move to HD, that means more movies will be in HD.  That means more features and a better movie experience, not to mention lower costs per disc.  What about my HD DVD drive?  Well I’m sure I can still watch King Kong on it.  I’m not exactly sure what I will be doing with it, but I guess I’m better off than the guys at Microsoft who put 4.7 million lines of code into the Xbox 360 HD DVD player.  More about that here.  

Well, I’m glad to see it finally happened…all of my complaints about my laptop are finally resolved.  

Yesterday, Apple finally released a firmware update for MacBook/Pro keyboards that fixes an issue where the first key press is sometimes not recognized.  With this issue fixed and the gigantic 10.5.2 update, I think that things are working just wonderfully! 

Now, let me explain why I have moved servers.  It was a simple thing really.  Being that I have RunBox mail service, I also am entitled to some hosting space.  So I figured I might as well install WordPress and move on from there.  Hopefully, I will find an agile theme I like soon, and will have the chance to work on this blog more often…but since I am learning Java, I would like to keep my focus on my programming. 

Lastly, I would like to leave you with the following link, which is for Rock Band (Xbox 360), which is only $35 (game only).  I have two guitars already and also am sure I could find a cheap USB microphone.  And if I wanted to, I could buy the $80 drum set, and it would still be cheaper than the whole package. Enjoy! 

PS: To those asking for DC++ passwords, I can be of no assistance to you, especially if you aren’t even on my campus…sorry. 

Well hello.  Yes, I did move servers.  Now I should figure out why.  Well, more to come later on.

Friday morning I woke up to a delightful scene: I had learned that Microsoft seems to be back to innovating. Read the rest of this entry »

Hi all. I have a new type of entry here…basically i was hoping for some feedback from readers on the following topic:

Does anyone have any recommended methods of note-taking in college courses?

I would like to start taking some notes digitally, and I was just wondering what others were doing to simplify this. I mean when I look at a physics course, for example, I have no idea where to start in drawing diagrams quickly and neatly. Anyone have ideas? Of course, you don’t have to be in college to answer. Thanks!

PS: One more thing…I do prefer apps that run on OSX if you would like to recommend specific programs. I don’t mind running Windows, but I like to do most everything on OSX…for consistency.

Just an article I found on digg. I never really thought about the fact that the US government is losing popularity in Europe.

read more | digg story