I finally did it: we are now a (more or less) Windows free household. I got the smaller Mac Mini last week, refitted the hard drive from my dead Windoze box into a USB enclosure and went off to the races.

I did purchase VMWare Fusion, and I did load a copy of Windows XP into the virtual machine, but that's only so I could access my Microsoft Money files, and keep up with the checkbook. Always a good idea...

The virtual machine is a bit too slow to run my favorite Windows DirectX 9 pinball games(s), but otherwise works flawlessly. Mail was a pin to set up, but given the way I get mail around here, and the volume of SPAM that shows up, it's always a pain. And I still like Firefox more than Safari...

I'll tell you one thing - it's damn nice not to have a big, roaring box that sucks power running on my desk all the time. This little box is so quiet and efficient they should pass out carbon credits with every purchase. I think I could get used to this ...

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:54 /Home | 0 writebacks | permanent link

My family didn't get a color TV until the very late 1960's - I grew up in "dead black and white" as opposed to "living color".

Color-TV sets go into production, with dreadful quality at a dreadful price.

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:25 /Technology | 0 writebacks | permanent link

The idiots that filed this patent in 1999 had to be aware of the existing art - and they filed anyway, hoping to cash in, no doubt, when that art became ubiquitous.

Which, no coincidentally, is the very definition of "patent troll".

A patent scheduled for sale next month in San Francisco could threaten some of the biggest players on the internet leading Web 2.0.

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 06:13 /Copywrongs | 0 writebacks | permanent link