T11M

You’ve got to watch this.  It’s hilarious, but holds a very valuable point.

Check out these links I’ve found!

• Landmark study: DRM truly does make pirates out of us all –
• 40 Exceptional “CMS Enabling” WordPress Plugins –
• Nesson speaks: Inside P2P’s “David v. Goliath” story –
• Linux Limit CPU Usage Per Process –
• Nielsen: Mobile, Online Video Hasn’t Put A Dent in TV Viewing –
• Doom + Heretic + Hexen (in your browser) = Epic Win – Time Waster –
• Conficker Keeps Growing And Growing –
• Lawyer: RIAA must pay back all $100M it has collected –
• Copyleft v. Copyright: FSF, RIAA face off in court –
• CSS3 Exciting Functions and Features: 30+ Useful Tutorials –
• Big Content appeals Pirate Bay case—damages were too low –
• 15+ programs you don’t have to miss when you switch to Linux –
• Zilla PDF to TXT Converter Plain-Texts Your PDF Files in Bulk [Downloads] –
• Another 6,400 workers to lose jobs at HP – Maybe why the quality of their computers is tanking?
• Harvard prof tells judge that P2P filesharing is "fair use" – I didn't see that defense coming…

Adium is an outstanding application.  Unfortunately it is currently Mac only.  However, for you Mac users, if you haven’t downloaded Adium you need to right now.  It is the only chat application to support multiple chat protocols including AIM, MobileMe, Google Talk, IRQ, IRC, Twitter, Facebook, and a number of others.  At any one moment I am logged in to 6 different chat protocols and am able to communicate with my contacts on each of them from a single client.  The user interface for Adium is very efficient and user friendly, allowing for quick chatting with multiple contacts.  Adium is also extensible with plugins, emoticon packs, and scripts.  In my opinion Adium is the casual users perfect client and the power users dream.  Check it out here.

Check out these links I’ve found!

• France Passes Three Strikes Net Piracy Bill – One more reason to despise France…
• OffiSync mixes Microsoft Office and Google Docs –
• Fake Windows 7 Creates Botnet –
• Norwegian ISP: dig your own fiber trench, save $400 – I love my ancestors. They're so damn innovative. I would dig the trench with my bare hands to get fiber and save $400!
• Web designer opposes France's "3 strikes" law, loses job – This is outrageous! I guess free speech isn't a right in France.
• MPAA: teachers should videotape monitors, not rip DVDs – The MPAA once again shows its STUPIDITY. They only make me hate them more.
• Botnet master hits the kill switch, takes down 100,000 PCs – Wow, its not every day your computer just dies…
• ISPs' costs, revenues don't support data cap argument – I HATE ISPs!!!
• Five Best Free Data Recovery Tools [Hive Five] –
• The Pirate Bay verdict goes English, and we dish the dirt –
• Study: pirates biggest music buyers. Labels: yeah, right –
• Why no one should be shocked by The Pirate Bay verdict –
• Appeals court: no webcast for Joel Tenenbaum –
• Stimulus: Stanford's president on the $800 billion question – A very compelling read.
• Congressman: there should be a law against Internet caps! – Nice work Congressman!

I thought this was a great article describing the process I try to go through every time I work on a computer.  Obviously depending on the client and my history with them certain steps get overlooked or have already happened, but this step by step workflow is critical to good computer problem solving.  Many times I will be on the phone with a client and I will be thinking so far ahead that I don’t realize the obvious – like they have forgotten to connect to the network via VPN.  This workflow is critical when assisting clients over the phone.  Nothing is worse than walking someone through 15 steps and then realizing that you could have solved the problem had you simply asked enough questions to get the full story from them.  I was assisting a client the other day (via phone) and she said that her computer would not come on, or when it did the screen would blank in and out.  I immediately jumped to conclusions about bad hardware or OS problems, but 3 minutes of me questioning her to get the full story and I had her tighten the screws on the VGA cable.  Problem solved!