Warning: squirrels.

Fark 2007 headlines of the year

For the past five years I have been a daily reader of Drew Curtis' Fark.com,

a community website ... allowing users to comment on a daily batch of news articles and other items from various websites. Links are submitted by Fark members, which are then approved for posting on the main page ("greenlit") by administrators. All links, approved or not, have threads associated with them where users can comment on the link. (Source: Wikipedia)

In addition to posting links to various weird and interesting news articles and websites, Fark members write pithy, one- or two-sentence summaries that are often more interesting—and significantly funnier—than the links themselves. To see what I mean, check out http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=3301587 to see the winners of Fark’s 2007 headline of the year award.

A few of my favorites:

• Bear attack victim had 'tender heart,' according to friends, family, bear.
• Man who beat his girlfriend with a flashlight charged with assault. Flashlight charged with battery.
• Skiing champion killed after sudden encounter with a tree, the great white shark of the ski slopes.
• CSI team currently at Anna Nicole Smith residence in the Bahamas. After turning on special light that illuminates semen, the house could be seen from space.

Windows Vista: How much RAM is enough?

A reader recently took me to task for something I said on last week's Website Wednesday Night, noting that

I do however have to differ with you when your talking to a lady who is looking for a laptop for standard use and you recommend Sony and could not agree with you more. On the other hand to tell her she needs 2 gigs minimum 3 gigs recommended is a bit out of line. The big boxes are selling the Sony's right now with Vista Home Premium with 1 gig and for basic use that is fine. You tell her different and next thing she knows shes going to be taken by the Geek Squad for another 200 bucks.

Since the listener did not provide me with his real email address, I thought I'd post my reply here.

As for the Vista Home Premium RAM requirements, 1GB is Microsoft's recommended system requirement (Microsoft, 2006). Many people, including me, believe that that amount of RAM is insufficient.  For example, the latest issue of Laptop Magazine recommends that users "can get away with 1GB of RAM when running Vista Basic. If you want to step up to Vista Home Premium and get the most out of its Fancy Aero interface, then you'll want to upgrade to 2GB of RAM…" (Spoonauer, 2008). OEMs like Dell and Samsung agree (Thibodeau, 2007).

My upper limit recommendation of is more 'gut feel' than science. While the cost up upgrading from 1GB to 2GB is between $50 and $150 (Spoonauer, 2008), upgrading to 4GB as recommended last year by an IBM Global Services consultant (Thibodeau, 2007) would cost between $400 and $500 (Spoonauer, 2008). Dusting off my economics degree, I ran a cost/benefit analysis and decided that 3GB was an optimal ceiling.

Of course, I could be completely wrong. Any additional information you can send me on this matter would be gratefully appreciated.

References

Microsoft, Inc. (2006, November 8). Windows Vista Home Premium. Retrieved January 19, 2008, from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/homepremium/default.mspx

Spoonauer, M. (2008, February). Notebook spec cheat sheet. Laptop Magazine, p. 112.

Thibodeau, P. (2007, February 20). Buying a new PC? 'Windows Vista Capable' barely hits the mark - IBM'er says Vista's RAM sweet spot is 4GB. Retrieved January 19, 2008, from Computerworld: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9011523

Bert and Ernie cover Last Days of Humanity's "A Divine Proclamation of Finishing the Present Existence"

Videos like the following make me thankful that the Internet exists.

Steve Jobs Macworld 2008 keynote in 60 seconds

If you missed yesterday's Macworld keynote, or if you would rather not spend 90 minutes watching the full video, the folks at Mahalo Daily have condensed Job's presentation into a much more time-efficient 60 seconds [well, one minute and 49 seconds if you include the intro and outro]:

Bonkian Youtubian Researchian

If you have been to an educational technology conference in the last few years, you’ve most likely seen a presentation by Dr. Curt Bonk. Bonk is a Professor of Instructional Systems Technology and adjunct in the School of Informatics at Indiana University (IU). One of the topics he’s currently researching is YouTube, in particular

why people post, view, share, comment on, or subscribe to a YouTube video. Areas of interest include motivation, engagement, instructional design, and learning or educational value in a YouTube video.

So, Bonk and his colleagues at Indiana University recently created a survey that asks about 40 questions ranging from “how often do you watch YouTube videos” to “have you ever shared a YouTube video link with a friend?” If that sounds like something that interests you, point your favorite web browser to http://trainingshare.com/video/ and click on the link at the top of the page to start the survey.  You can preview all of the survey questions before you participate and you don’t have to enter any personally-identifiable information other than your email address ... and even that’s optional. [You only need to enter your email address if you want to be entered into a drawing to win an Apple iPhone.]

If you don’t want to participate in Bonk’s survey but would like to view the results when they are published, that’s cool too.  Just make sure to bookmark Bonk’s “Bonkian Youtubian Researchian” page at http://indiana.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6703696942 or his blog at http://travelinedman.blogspot.com/ because I am betting that Bonk will post the results to either or both of these pages in the not-too-distant future.

We have a winner!

In my Crispen's Guide to What's New and What's Next presentation, I strongly recommended that you stay away from next generation DVD players until the HD DVD/Blu-ray format war is over.

It's over. Blu-ray won.

Last week Warner Bros. announced that they would exclusively support Sony's Blu-ray format, leaving only Paramount, Universal, and Dreamworks aligned with the HD DVD camp.

There's more. According to the Financial Times [via Gizmodo], Paramount has

a clause in its contract with the HD DVD camp that would allow it to switch sides in the event of Warner Bros backing Blu-ray, according to people familiar with the situation.

Without Paramount, Blu-ray now has 70% of Hollywood's next generation DVD market. That's without Paramount. And don't forget that Paramount distributes Dreamworks Animations films, making it hard to imagine that Dreamworks won't follow if Paramount abandons HD DVD in favor of Blu-ray.

Folks, It's over. Blu-ray won. The HD DVD camp may not realize it yet, and Universal may drag its feet for a few months before finally throwing in the towel and following 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Sony, Walt Disney, and Warner Bros. and the rest of the Blu-ray camp, but Blu-ray won.

Time to upgrade Ad-Aware

I've been a huge fan of Lavasoft's free Ad-Aware for the past three years and have strongly recommended that people download, install, and use the program frequently. Ad-Aware is a program that scans for and removes spyware and malware from your Windows-based computer.

In his most recent Washington Post Security Fix blog entry, Brian Krebs points out something that I forgot to mention on WGN Radio and here on my blog: It's time to upgrade from Ad-Aware SE to Ad-Aware 2007. Lavasoft stopped shipping updates for Ad-Aware SE on December 31.

Fortunately, the upgrade process is relatively painless.  Just download the free Lavasoft Ad-Aware 2007, install it, and ... well ... that's it.  The installer removes the old version and installs the new version. 

That's the good news.  The bad news is that if you're still running Windows 95, 98, or 98SE, or ME, you're kind of stuck. Your old version no longer works, and the new version only works on Windows 2000, 2003, XP, or Vista.  Fortunately, Spybot Search & Destroy still works with legacy versions of Windows.

Rocky Top

As an alumnus of the University of Alabama, I did not think it was possible for me to hate the song "Rocky Top" any more than I already do.

I was wrong.