Posts Tagged ‘few days’

Abbot and Costello with new style ‘Who’s on First’

You have to be old enough to remem­ber Abbott and Cos­te­llo,
And too old to REALLY unders­tand com­pu­ters, to fully appre­ciate this. For those of us who some­ti­mes get flus­te­red by our com­pu­ters, please read on…
If Bud Abbott and Lou Cos­te­llo were alive today, their infa­mous sketch, ‘Who’s on First?‘might have tur­ned out something like this:

COSTELLO CALLS TO BUY A COMPUTER FROM ABBOTT
ABBOTT: Super Duper com­pu­ter store. Can I help you?
COSTELLO: Thanks I’m set­ting up an office in my den and I’m thin­king about buying a com­pu­ter.
ABBOTT: Mac?
COSTELLO: No, the name’s Lou.
ABBOTT: Your com­pu­ter?
COSTELLO: I don’t own a com­pu­ter. I want to buy one.
ABBOTT: Mac?
COSTELLO: I told you, my name’s Lou.
ABBOTT: What about Win­dows?
COSTELLO: Why? Will it get stuffy in here?
ABBOTT: Do you want a com­pu­ter with Win­dows?
COSTELLO: I don’t know. What will I see when I look at the win­dows?
ABBOTT: Wall­pa­per.
COSTELLO: Never mind the win­dows. I need a com­pu­ter and soft­ware.
ABBOTT: Soft­ware for Win­dows?
COSTELLO: No. On the com­pu­ter! I need something I can use to write proposals,

Track expen­ses and run my busi­ness. What do you have?
ABBOTT: Office.
COSTELLO: Yeah, for my office. Can you recom­mend anything?
ABBOTT: I just did.
COSTELLO: You just did what?
ABBOTT: Recom­mend something.
COSTELLO: You recom­men­ded something?
ABBOTT: Yes.
COSTELLO: For my office?
ABBOTT: Yes.
COSTELLO: OK, what did you recom­mend for my office?
ABBOTT: Office.
COSTELLO: Yes, for my office!
ABBOTT: I recom­mend Office with Win­dows.
COSTELLO: I already have an office with win­dows! OK, let’s just say I’m sitting

At my com­pu­ter and I want to type a pro­po­sal. What do I need?
ABBOTT: Word.
COSTELLO: What word?
ABBOTT: Word in Office.
COSTELLO: The only word in office is office.
ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Win­dows.
COSTELLO: Which word in office for win­dows?
ABBOTT: The Word you get when you click the blue ‘W’.
COSTELLO: I’m going to click your blue ‘W’ if you don’t start with some straight answers.

What about finan­cial book­kee­ping? You have anything I can track my money with?
ABBOTT: Money.
COSTELLO: That’s right. What do you have?
ABBOTT: Money.
COSTELLO: I need money to track my money?
ABBOTT: It comes bund­led with your com­pu­ter.
COSTELLO: What’s bund­led with my com­pu­ter?
ABBOTT: Money.
COSTELLO: Money comes with my com­pu­ter?
ABBOTT: Yes. No extra charge.
COSTELLO: I get a bundle of money with my com­pu­ter? How much?
ABBOTT: One copy.
COSTELLO: Isn’t it ille­gal to copy money?
ABBOTT: Mic­ro­soft gave us a license to copy Money.
COSTELLO: They can give you a license to copy money?
ABBOTT: Why not? THEY OWN IT!
(A few days later)
ABBOTT: Super Duper com­pu­ter store. Can I help you?
COSTELLO: How do I turn my com­pu­ter off?
ABBOTT: Click on ‘START’…

Visual Representation of 1 Petabyte of data

A few days ago I pos­ted an entry How Much Data is that?.  The entry broke down how much data was truly sto­red in each quan­tity of bytes.  Today I found this great visual break­down of a petabyte on Giz­modo.

I Love this utility

One of my favo­rite web­si­tes to look at daily (ok many times a day) is Life Hac­ker.  Today as I was going through some of their archi­ved pos­tings I found this.

A few days ago I tal­ked about a pro­gram called smart ins­ta­ller, but I must say I am over the top impres­sed with life hacker’s ver­sion.  The uti­lity itself is ultra tiny (292k) with an xml file.  The Smart Ins­ta­ller is in excess of 200 megs.  The size dif­fe­rence is due to Smart ins­ta­ller having the ins­ta­llers inc­lu­ded whe­reas life hacker’s ins­ta­ller auto­ma­ti­cally down­loads the latest ver­sion from the net.

Another great fea­ture, to me at least, is that the Life hac­ker Pack has an XML file that you can add or remove appli­ca­tions in.  So if there is an app you like to ins­tall, modify the file in any text edi­tor, get the down­load path, and away you go.  With Smart Ins­ta­ller, you have to hope they add it.

Please don’t get me wrong, Smart ins­ta­ller is very good for a machine that you do not have on the inter­net.  But for size and fle­xi­bi­lity, I will be adding the Life Hac­ker pack to my arse­nal.  You can down­load the pack here. Other users have crea­ted some addi­tio­nal XML files:

PC Res­cue Pack

The PC Res­cue Pack’ll come in real handy in a few weeks at Thanks­gi­ving when Mom and Dad ask you to fix their com­pu­ter. Down­load the Ins­tall­Pad PC Res­cue Pack list, which includes:

• Ad-Aware (mal­ware scan­ner and cleaner)
• CClea­ner (sys­tem optimization)
• Clam­Win (anti-virus)
• Spy­bot Search & Des­troy (spy­ware scan­ner and cleaner)
• Spy­ware Blas­ter (spy­ware prevention)

Media Pack

Oh, you free-loading, Bit­To­rren­ting, DVD-ripping, MP3-sucking, pod­cas­ting, remi­xing, iPod-trading media whiz, you! Down­load the Ins­tall­Pad Media Pack list, which includes:

• Auda­city (sound editor)
• Azu­reus (Bit­To­rrent client)
• Democ­racy (Inter­net TV player)
• iTu­nes (media player)
• Picasa (photo manager)
• Quick­Time (media player)

VLC (media player)

• Do your­self a favor and give it a try