Vista sinks the Presentation

Vista can be counted on to fail at the most inopportune moments. During an important presentation I could not use Office because I did not have internet access. I did not need the internet and nothing I was doing needed the internet. But Vista was home sick and would not work until it was allowed to call home to Microsoft. I was at a complete loss at why I kept clicking yes I want to stay offline and the message would not go away. Too bad help is online. The problem is User Account Control which protects you from internet viruses while you are offline. Once you know the solution it is easy to turn User Account Control off. There is a great page on how at http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/12/19/turn-off-or-disable-user-account-control-uac-in-windows-vista/ You could pay thousands of dollars for a training class to help you think on your feet in stressful situations or buy Vista.

When copy is not copy

In Internet Explorer the HTML command oncopy and oncut trigger no event if the input box is empty. This causes no problem if you are relying on the traditional response of the browser. But then why would you be asking if there was an event if you did not need to know? But then if Microsoft made it easy why would you need developers?

Explaining Away the Recession

The Recession is Here has some good points to confirm a recession, but some can also be explained. 1. Decline in tax receipts. That is mostly from the decline of home values and may not extend into the general economy. 2. A weak transportation industry. Summer is usually the lows for transportation stocks and the US recently opened the border to Mexico trucks. 3. Apple cut the price of their iPod by 30 percent because inventory was building up. Apple does extensive price and customer research. With Christmas coming up they determined what parents would pay. An initial profit margin of over 50% was not sustainable in such a competitive market. 4. Auto manufacturers who are offering 0 percent financing, again, for 60 months. Auto manufacturers have been struggling for a long time. 5. Over 150 mortgage companies have either shut down or filed for bankruptcy. Yes this is a lot of people out of work. 6. Real estate agents could really begin to feel the effects of a downturn. And these workers can not seek unemployment along with the many undocumented construction workers. 7. The Bureau of Labor Statistics ("BLS") household survey showed a drop of 360,000 jobs in the September report for August. Not a lot of jobs available for the mortgage brokers or real estate agents. These workers could weigh on the economy but are not enough to confirm a recession.

The Next Big Product?

Seeking a Niche, Companies Try New Web-to-TV Technologies Are web TV boxes going to replace cable boxes? I watch movies on my computer using Netflix and Vongo and when I saw this article I realized how easy it will be to make the transition to TV. The quality is not as good as DVD, but if you can surf the web in addition to watching the entertainment value greatly increases. I realized I could build such a box. Vista has the built in program to display on the TV and I was able to connect my laptop and watch an online movie. But the setup was a pain and the cables and laptop sitting in front of the TV was a disaster waiting to happen. The software would be most of the work. That is if you want a cable channel like experience using social networking sites. On my own it would take about two years to have a product that could compete with a cable box. So maybe we will see many competing products in the next few months. I wonder if cable companies see this coming. This could explain the fight between Apple and NBC. NBC leaves Apple for Amazon

Dry Aged

In The Search for the Perfect Steak article in the WSJ the biggest key to a better steak is to let the steak sit at room temperature for an hour so that the center is not cold when it is put on the grill.

Would you buy government bonds yielding 10%?

An article The Bond Matrix has an interesting take on interest rates. Foreign investors own much of government debt in the form of bonds. The yields are low and do not compete well with other domestic investment opportunities such as stocks. There are many government programs on the table such as national health care that would require borrowing money. But foreign countries are reluctant to loan that money. Baby boomers have hundreds of billions in savings in the form of 401k, stock and home equity. They would be willing to buy bonds at a higher yield. This article suggests that rate of return may be about 10% about double current rates.

Inventor Gets Nothing

The tangled history of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg the founder of Facebook, which has been valued at 1 billion US, has been sued by two fellow Harvard classmates who claim that Zuckerberg stole the idea from them. The problem is that all three liberally took their ideas from Aaron Greenspan who created houseSYSTEM a site for Harvard students. Without a patent does the idea have any protection beyond copyright? Maybe Zuckerberg should ask Microsoft for help.