The Web Book

The Web Book v1.0 - 10216 KB
How to create Web sites and applications with HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and MySQL.

A full-length book, free for personal use.

The Web Book is a complete 330-page book that tells you how to create a Web site from scratch. It covers everything from registering a domain name and renting some hosting space, to creating your first HTML page, to building full online database applications with PHP and MySQL. You can download The Web Book as a PDF file completely free of charge for personal use.

[via frwr_news]

Did You Know?

Did You Know?

[via chucks_angels]

Googling. I see this is an adaptation from Shift Happens.

comparing HDMI cables

While I don't even have a HD TV, one day I probably will.

And so I'm not looking at getting an HDMI cable and saw this guy reviewing cables at Amazon. But come to think of it, the HDMI cable will probably come with the cable box and/or Blu-Ray player, so the following will probably be useless, but since I've written this far, WTH, here goes.

* * *

Explanation of technique used for Review (actual results are below with accompanying title).

My first inclination when I received this cable, was to attempt to do a side-by-side comparison of various HDMI cables to determine what benefit, if any the various cables provide. To make such a test fair however, I had to find identical televisions, input devices, (cable box, blu-ray, standard dvd, etc), and a place to put them; as you may imagine this proved to be way more effort than it would be worth.

After contemplating the issue I came to the conclusion that such a test would be pretty worthless anyways. Since I (like most people) never watch identical televisions side by side the real question lies in whether one HDMI cable improves the picture enough that it is discernable without viewing the pictures simultaneously. After all, if a viewer cannot discern a difference between the two without looking at both together, then there is no justifiable reason to buy one over the other.

With this in mind I used the following equipment to test the cables:
Television: Sony Grand WEGA KDS-55A2000 55-Inch SXRD 1080p Rear Projection HDTV

Cables:
1. HDMI Cable 6ft 6 ft 1.3 1080P FOR PS3 TO DVD LCD HDTV
2. Cables To Go 98035 Premium HDMI v1.3 Digital Audio/Video Cable (8 Feet, Black/Grey)
3. Mediabridge - 6ft Ultra-High Speed HDMI Cable - 120 Hz - Version 1.3 Category 2 - 1080p - PS3 - Blu-Ray
4. Monster M Series M1000 HDTV HDMI Cable (8 ft. / 2.43 m.)
5. Sony 5mm High speed HDMI cable ver. 1.3 (White)

Inputs:
1. PlayStation 3 80GB
2. Optimum HD Cable Box/DVR (not sure of the model number)

**The Test**
To conduct the test I had my wife label each of the cables with a number, the cables were mixed then piled together behind the television. With my wife assigned as the operator. I and two friends sat on the other side of the television. We watched pieces of Planet Earth on Blu-Ray, as well as Transformers on Blu-Ray and Standard Def. In addition, we watched the same song from American Idol in both HD and SD, and portions of an NBA playoff game.
Each of us had a card numbered 1-5 with space for comments on image quality, sound, etc., for each cable. The test was, as aforementioned, blind. This was to ensure that one of my friends (one of whom provided the $200 monster cable) and I, owner of the .01 + shipping no name cable (and most of the other ones) would not be biased by knowing it was our cable. If you shell out $200 for something you really want it to outperform, which creates bias.

And now:

**The Results**
All three of us agreed that there were no conclusive differences in the test. After a lot of switching between various inputs the conclusion was that while we occasionally perceived slight differences it was never clear and would be impossible to tell if the two pictures were not side by side.
Thus I must conclude that these 5 HDMI cables are, for all practical purposes, identical. Which means that they all had average performance and the main purchase determiners are price, aesthetic quality and build quality.
So to sum up, taking into account my opinion of the different cables, the HDMI Cable 6ft 6 ft 1.3 1080P FOR PS3 TO DVD LCD HDTV is the cheapest and feels it, it will probably need to be replaced soonest as well but at .01 cent plus shipping you can afford to. The Cables To Go 98035 Premium HDMI v1.3 Digital Audio/Video Cable (8 Feet, Black/Grey) and Mediabridge - 6ft Ultra-High Speed HDMI Cable - 120 Hz - Version 1.3 Category 2 - 1080p - PS3 - Blu-Ray were pretty similar but I like the design and build quality of the Cable-to-Go a little more, it feels more solid, I feel like this one would last a while longer than the first cable but I didn't do any endurance tests. My least favorite of the bunch in terms of feel/price was the Sony 5mm High speed HDMI cable ver. 1.3 (White) which I felt, was very thin and cheap feeling considering its price tag, I wouldn't bet that it would outlast either the Cable-to-Go cable or the Mediabridge. The Monster M Series M1000 HDTV HDMI Cable (8 ft. / 2.43 m.) is well made and aesthetically pleasing and looks as if it will last you until something replaces HDMI, I cannot however recommend it because the price tag is simply preposterous, as it provides no visual or auditory improvement.

temperature rise not explained entirely by carbon

A team of scientists led by a University of Hawaii oceanographer had a big surprise when they looked to the ancient past for clues to global warming.

Atmospheric carbon increased 70 percent during the period known as Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum 55 million years ago, said Richard Zeebe. Yet it was less than expected to explain a rapid increase in temperatures, he said in an interview.

"This constitutes an enigma because carbon dioxide released cannot account for the entire warming. This means something else contributed significantly to the warming," he said.

"We're not saying carbon dioxide is not important," he emphasized. "It is very important. Current and future warming is almost entirely due to carbon emissions. There is no doubt about this."

However, his team believes other mechanisms could have contributed to the rapid heating during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum period, which they said represents "a possible analogue for the future."

"The question is still open by how much the global temperature will increase until the end of the century, depending how much carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere," Zeebe said.

a coin flip isn't a coin flip

We use coin tosses to settle disputes and decide outcomes because we believe they are unbiased with 50-50 odds.

Yet recent research into coin flips has discovered that the laws of mechanics determine the outcome of coin tosses: The startling finding is they aren't random. Instead, for natural flips, the chance of a coin coming up on the same side as it started is about 51 percent. Heads facing up predicts heads; tails facing up predicts tails.

Three academics—Persi Diaconis, Susan Holmes, and Richard Montgomery—through vigorous analysis made an interesting discovery at Stanford University. As they note in their published results, "Dynamical Bias in the Coin Toss," laws of mechanics govern coin flips, meaning, "their flight is determined by their initial conditions."

We choose the moon

BOSTON (AP) — Families crowded around black-and-white television sets in 1969 to watch Neil Armstrong take man's first steps on the moon.

Now, they'll be able to watch the Apollo 11 mission recreated in real time on the Web, follow Twitter feeds of transmissions between Mission Control and the spacecraft, and even get an e-mail alert when the lunar module touches down. Those features are part of a new Web site from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum commemorating the moon mission and Kennedy's push to land Americans there first.

"Putting a man on the moon really did unite the globe," said Thomas Putnam, director of the JFK Library. "We hope to use the Internet to do the same thing."

The Web site — WeChooseTheMoon.org — goes live at 8:02 a.m. Thursday, 90 minutes before the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla. It will track the capsule's route from the Earth to the Moon, ending with the moon landing and Armstrong's walk — in real time, but 40 years later.

Internet visitors can see animated recreations of key events from the four-day mission, including when Apollo 11 first orbits the moon and when the lunar module separates from the command module, as well as browse video clips and photos and hear the radio transmission between the astronauts and NASA flight controllers.

The site also connects the mission back to Kennedy, who first set the goal to have a man on the moon by the end of the decade during a May 25, 1961, speech before Congress.

* * *

And, of course, we all know, it was faked anyway..

* * *

[7/17/09] NASA could put a man on the moon but didn't have the sense to keep the original video of the live TV transmission. In an embarrassing acknowledgment, the space agency said Thursday that it must have erased the Apollo 11 moon footage years ago so that it could reuse the videotape. But now Hollywood is coming to the rescue.

Smithsonian Institution space curator Roger Launius, a former NASA chief historian, said the loss of the original video "doesn't surprise me that much."

"It was a mistake, no doubt about that," Launius said. "This is a problem inside the entire federal government. ... They don't think that preservation is all that important."
Launius said federal warehouses where historical artifacts are saved are "kind of like the last scene of `Raiders of the Lost Ark.' It just goes away in this place with other big boxes."

The company that restored all the Indiana Jones movies, including "Raiders," is the one bailing out NASA.

As part of the moon landing's 40th anniversary, the space agency has been trotting out archival material. NASA has a Web site with audio from private conversations in the lunar module and command capsule. The agency is also webcasting radio from Apollo 11 as if the mission were taking place today.

developing nations unspecific on emissions

L’AQUILA, Italy — The world’s biggest developing nations, led by China and India, refused Wednesday to commit to specific goals for slashing heat-trapping gases by 2050, undercutting the drive to build a global consensus by the end of this year to reverse the threat of climate change.

As President Obama arrived for three days of talks with other leaders of the Group of 8 nations, negotiators for 17 leading polluters abandoned targets in a draft agreement for the meetings here. But negotiators embraced a goal of preventing temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, and developing nations agreed to make “meaningful” if unspecified reductions in emissions.

The mixed results underscored the challenges for Mr. Obama as he tries to use his first summit meeting of the Group of 8 powers to force progress toward a climate treaty. With Europe pressing for more aggressive action and Congress favoring a more restrained approach, Mr. Obama finds himself navigating complicated political currents at home and abroad.

If he cannot ultimately bring along developing countries, no climate deal will be effective.

url shorteners

On the short-messaging service Twitter, space is at a premium: You've got 140 characters to make your point, and you probably don't want to waste half of it on a super-sized link to your latest YouTube obsession.

There's an increasingly popular quick fix: a free URL shortener. On one of these Web sites, you can plug in a long Internet address, known as a URL, and it will assign you a much shorter one that is easier to post in e-mails, on Twitter, Facebook or anywhere else. Some link-shrinkers let you personalize the new address with a unique phrase such as your name, or show you how many people click the link after you've posted it.

URL shorteners have been around for several years to offer alternatives to long Web links that were too unwieldy to paste into e-mails. Perhaps the oldest and most popular is TinyURL, a free service started in 2002 by Kevin Gilbertson, a unicycle enthusiast from Blaine, Minn., who was tired of seeing URLs get split up in e-mails related to his online unicycle forum.

Now the rise of Twitter and other social Web sites that encourage users to share small bursts of information has spawned several TinyURL followers, whose names run the gamut from the very short — tr.im — to the not long — notlong.com.

Twitter has directly contributed to the prominence of two services in particular: TinyURL and bit.ly, which began in July as a project at New York-based Web media incubator and Twitter stakeholder Betaworks.

Until recently, Twitter automatically shrank lengthy links by running them through TinyURL. But this spring Twitter switched its default link shortener to bit.ly after finding TinyURL unreliable, said Alex Payne, one of Twitter's lead engineers. (Gilbertson said Twitter didn't contact him about the issues or the change.)

Bit.ly is seeing growth that Betaworks Chief Executive John Borthwick called "pretty amazing." About 100 million bit.ly URLs are clicked on per week.

steering with your brain

TOKYO (AP) — Toyota Motor Corp. says it has developed a way of steering a wheelchair by just detecting brain waves, without the person having to move a muscle or shout a command.

Toyota's system, developed in a collaboration with researchers in Japan, is among the fastest in the world in analyzing brain waves, it said in a release Monday.

Past systems required several seconds to read brain waves, but the new technology requires only 125 milliseconds — or 125 thousandths of a second.

The person in the wheelchair wears a cap that can read brain signals, which are relayed to a brain scan electroencephalograph, or EEG, on the electrically powered wheelchair, and then analyzed in a computer program.

Research into mobility is part of Toyota's larger strategy to go beyond automobiles in helping people get around in new ways.

The new system allows the person on the wheelchair to turn left or right and go forward, almost instantly, according to researchers.

New Cancer Treatment Shows Promise in Testing

A new method of attacking cancer cells, developed by researchers in Australia, has proved surprisingly effective in animal tests.

In one striking use of the method, reported online Sunday in Nature Biotechnology, mice were implanted with a human uterine tumor that was highly aggressive and resistant to many drugs. All of the treated animals were free of tumor cells after 70 days of treatment; the untreated mice were dead after a month.

The lead researchers, Jennifer A. MacDiarmid and Himanshu Brahmbhatt, say their company, EnGeneIC of suburban Sydney, has achieved a similar outcome in dogs with advanced brain cancer. “We have been treating more than 20 dogs and have spectacular results,” Dr. Brahmbhatt said. “Pretty much every dog has responded and some are in remission.” These experiments have not yet been published.

Cancer experts who were not involved with the research say that the new method is of great interest, but that many treatments that work well in laboratory mice turn out to be ineffective in patients.

EPS declares carbon dioxide an endangerment

The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday (4/17/09) formally declared carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping gases to be pollutants that endanger public health and welfare, setting in motion a process that will lead to the regulation of the gases for the first time in the United States.

The E.P.A. said the science supporting the proposed endangerment finding was “compelling and overwhelming.” The ruling initiates a 60-day comment period before any proposals for regulations governing emissions of heat-trapping gases are published.

Although the finding had been expected, supporters and critics said its issuance was a significant moment in the debate on global warming. Many Republicans in Congress and industry spokesmen warned that regulation of carbon dioxide emissions would raise energy costs and kill jobs; Democrats and environmental advocates said the decision was long overdue and would bring long-term social and economic benefits.

cow gas

One contributor to global warming — bigger than coal mines, landfills and sewage treatment plants — is being left out of efforts by the Obama administration and House Democrats to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Cow burps.

Belching from the nation's 170 million cattle, sheep and pigs produces about one-quarter of the methane released in the U.S. each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. That makes the hoofed critters the largest source of the heat-trapping gas.

In part because of an adept farm lobby campaign that equates government regulation with a cow tax, the gas that farm animals pass is exempt from legislation being considered by Congress to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

The EPA under President Barack Obama has said it has no plans to regulate the gas, even though the agency recently included methane among six greenhouse gases it believes are endangering human health and welfare.

* * *

Vermont dairy farmers Tim Maikshilo and Kristen Dellert, mindful of shrinking their carbon footprint, have changed their cows' diet to reduce the amount of gas the animals burp — dairy cows' contribution to global warming.

Coventry Valley Farm is one of 15 Vermont farms working with Stonyfield Farm Inc., whose yogurt is made with their organic milk, to reduce the cows' intestinal methane by feeding them flaxseed, alfalfa, and grasses high in Omega 3 fatty acids. The gas cows belch is the dairy industry's biggest greenhouse gas contributor, research shows, most of it emitted from the front and not the back end of the cow.

"I just figured a cow was a cow and they were going to do whatever they were going to do in terms of cow things for gas," said Dellert. "It was pretty shocking to me that just being organic wasn't enough, actually. I really thought that here we're organic, we're doing what we need to do for the planet, we're doing the stuff for the soil and I really thought that was enough."

She learned it wasn't. The dairy industry contributes about 2 percent to the country's total greenhouse gas production, said Rick Naczi, a vice president at Dairy Management Inc., which funds research and promotes dairy products. Most of it comes from the cow, the rest from growing feed crops for the cattle to processing and transporting the milk.

To satisfy consumers' demands for sustainable production, the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy in Rosemont, Ill., is looking at everything from growing feed crops to trucking milk to reduce the industry's greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020. That would be the equivalent of removing about 1.25 million cars from U.S. roads every year, said Naczi, who manages the program.

One way is by feeding cows alfalfa, flax and grasses, all high in Omega 3s, instead of corn or soy, said Nancy Hirschberg, head of Stonyfield's Greener Cow Project. The feed rebalances the cows' rumen, the first stomach of ruminants, and cuts down on gas, she said. Another way is to change the bacteria in a cow's rumen, Naczi said.

System Security Virus

6/18/09 Mary C computer HP Pavilion a1213w

Upon booting into Windows XP, the following pops up

System Security
Protect Your PC
Open File Security Warning
Nintendo WFCReg.exe
C:\program files\Wifi Connector

Looking up on the web for a solution.

download MBAM (MalwareBytes Anti-Malware) (had to dl w/ ie since Firefox locked)
run setup, says can't run, infected
boot up into safe mode
install MBAM
run quick scan
found 37 infections
remove selected

restart computer
system security message doesn't show up
run antimalware again
check for updates
run full scan 52 minutes, 48 seconds
no malicious items detected

disk cleanup

download avast
install avast (play freecell while waiting)

scan on reboot
delete files in temporary internet files
HP\9972322\Program\Interop.SHDOCVS.dll
infected by Win32:Adware-gen [adw]

9 - ignore (might be false positive?)

c:\windows\temp\skynet ... temp
etc.
infected by win32.Alvrem.BH [rtk]

1 - delete

remove spyware doctor (out of date)

turn on Windows Defender
quick scan

Suspicious files found (by avast)
c:\windows\system32\drivers\skynetnlxbttvp.sys
delete

search being redirected in ie
virus detected in memory

reboot & scan on boot (twice)
detected and deleted

file windows\system32\SKYNET ... infected
delete


Fri 6/19/09

IE seems OK
Firefox errors out on first run
locks up on retry

Thunderbird reads email ok

uninstall firefox and install latest version
install SP3

run Windows Update until no more updates

Internet Explorer on desktop

install Chrome

install and run ccleaner


Makana's account

slow starting up
deactivate HP Organize from startup (was making startup slow)
deactivate myspace IM from autostartup, put shortcut on desktop
deactivate googletalk from startup, put on desktop
remove wkcalrem from startup
register avast

The Climate Change Climate Change

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

recycling plastic bottle caps

“Like cigarette butts, people toss aside bottle caps because they’re small and seem insignificant,” says Suzanne Frazer, co-founder of Beach Environmental Awareness Campaign Hawaii (B.E.A.C.H.).

B.E.A.C.H. launched a new campaign on Earth Day raising awareness of the impact plastic bottle caps have on marine life. Volunteers say plastic bottle caps are one of the top 10 items found during beach cleanups and are the second most-littered item after cigarette butts.

“In just three events since launching this new campaign we’ve collected more than 2,000 bottle caps,” says Frazer. “It’s going really well and those caps won’t end up in our landfills or harm marine life. It’s an ongoing problem. At one cleanup at Kokololio Beach in 2008, volunteers found 1,232 caps and lids.”

“This activity has brought to light what’s recyclable and what’s not,” says Frazer. “A lot of people with blue bins are not sure what to put in them. Many don’t even know why they’re asked to remove caps and lids from the bottles, and when they do, they don’t know what to do with them.”

Frazer recalls a recent incident at Hanauma Bay that highlights the confusion.

“I picked up 20 bottle caps in a just a few minutes then noticed a guy with a bag bulging with plastic bottles,” she recalls. “Turns out he was just throwing caps on the shoreline. People go through garbage cans and take recycled bottles and dropping bottle caps because they know they don’t get money for the caps.”

Frazer says caps are made from a different type of plastic from the bottles and have a different melting point. Any twist-on plastic cap or lid that is made of rigid polypropylene plastic (recycle symbol No. 5) is accepted for recycling, including caps from beverage, shampoo and food product bottles. However, pump, sprayers, plastic lids from margarine containers and any caps that are made of multi layers of plastic resins or metal are not accepted. “In just three events we found more than 3,000 caps, but about 1,000 of them could not be counted,” says Frazer. “It can get confusing, but we’re happy we’re off to a great start and pleased schools are asking how they can help.”

unconventional global health research

Can tomatoes be taught to make antiviral drugs for people who eat them? Would zapping your skin with a laser make your vaccination work better? Could malaria-carrying mosquitoes be given a teensy head cold that would prevent them from sniffing out a human snack bar?

These are among 81 projects awarded $100,000 grants Monday by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in a bid to support innovative, unconventional global health research.

The five-year health research grants are designed to encourage scientists to pursue bold ideas that could lead to breakthroughs, focusing on ways to prevent and treat infectious diseases, such as HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia and diarrheal diseases.

reduce your environmental impact

Reduce Your Environmental Impact

Yes, you can save money, energy and help save our planet in just one month - without giving up modern conveniences. Just make one of these following small (and easy!) eco-changes each day this month for major environment-friendly results. Feel free to share your progress and ideas for ways to make a difference in the fight to save our planet at countryliving.com/gogreen.

~~Fluorescent Lightbulbs

Use soft-white compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs), not traditional incandescents.

BECAUSE: If every American household replaced one standard bulb with a CFL, we could save enough energy to power 3 million homes a year.

~~Place potted plants (like Boston ferns, peace lilies, or English ivy) on windowsills and tables.

BECAUSE: Fifteen plants can absorb most of the average home's airborne toxins within 24 hours.

~~Switch your computer display to go to sleep mode after five minutes of inactivity.

BECAUSE: Sleep mode consumes 90 percent less energy than an animated screen saver - which requires as much energy as normal use.

~~Return wire hangers to the dry cleaner.

BECAUSE: More than 3.5 billion hangers reach landfills each year, amounting to 200 million tons of steel that could be put to new use.

photo credit: kemie/istock

Keywords:

~~Tighten your gas cap until it clicks three times.

BECAUSE: Each year in the United States , 147 million gallons of gasoline literally evaporate into the atmosphere because of loose, damaged, or missing caps.

~~Register to get your name off junk-mail lists.

BECAUSE: Printing junk mail wastes 100 million trees a year. Canceling can reduce your intake by 35 pounds a year. Sign up at proquo.com or at dmachoice.org.

~~Choose natural soy candles over petroleum-based paraffin.

BECAUSE: Paraffin emits 11 toxins; soy doesn't.

~~Scrub down your wheels at a car wash, not at home.

BECAUSE: A drive-through uses less than half the water per car than the typical do-it-yourselfer - and many establishments recycle their soap water.

~~Build a fire with an artificial, petroleum-free log made from wood fibers and biowaxes.

BECAUSE: Man-made logs, surprisingly, burn longer than wood and emit 75 percent less carbon monoxide.

~~Drive with cruise control on the highway.

BECAUSE: Keeping a steady pace burns gas at a constant rate, which lets you drive as much as 10 percent farther on a single tank.

~~Keep your freezer's temperature at 0 degrees F and your refrigerator between 35 degrees and 38 degrees.

BECAUSE: Adjusting a too-cold freezer by five degrees can cut its energy use by 20 percent.

~~Eat meat-free once a week.

BECAUSE: Producing a pound of beef consumes 145 times more fossil fuels than a pound of potatoes.

~~Bar Soap

Leave bar soap by the sink.

BECAUSE: Most liquid soap comes in nonrenewable plastic packaging. Substituting one bottle with a bar in each U.S. home would keep 2.5 million pounds of plastic out of landfills.

~~Organic Cotton Clothes

Wear organic cotton clothes.

BECAUSE: Organic cotton's low-impact production methods - which employ fewer pesticides - generate less than a fifth as much greenhouse gas as standard cotton.

~~Stash a pitcher of water in your fridge.

BECAUSE: A faucet releases a gallon a minute. Letting the tap run while the water cools wastes a resource that's often in limited supply.

~~Submit your taxes electronically.

BECAUSE: We would save 660 million sheets of paper - almost 80,000 trees - if every taxpayer filed electronically. Internal Revenue Service: irs.gov.

~~Donate your old cell phone to charity, or return it to the manufacturer for recycling.

BECAUSE: Electronic trash amounts to 70 percent of America 's toxic waste.

Information on donating can be found at sharetechnology.org and recycling at mygreenelectronics.com.

~~Plug your devices into power strips, and turn off the strips when you're not using them.

BECAUSE: Some plugged-in appliances and strips use electricity even when they're turned off. But one 6-outlet strip, when shut down, uses 87 percent less energy than devices left in six individual outlets.

~~Place a recycling bin next to the wastebasket in your home office, to make conserving paper as easy as discarding it.

BECAUSE: Producing one ton of paper from recycled pulp saves 7,000 gallons of water (and 17 trees).

~~Check the water meter. Then wait an hour, without using your faucets or toilets. Now check again. If the number rises during that time, call a plumber.

BECAUSE: A dripping tap wastes five gallons of water a day. Fixing a leak can save at least $50 a year.

~~Use your dishwasher's air-dry cycle, or switch the machine off after the final rinse and crack open the door.

BECAUSE: Skipping the heated-dry cycle can cut your per-wash energy use by up to 50 percent.

~~Use Reusable Shopping Bags

Stow a reusable bag in your car for errands.

BECAUSE: If every American stuck with cloth totes, we'd waste 380 billion fewer plastic bags this year.

~~Car Maintenance

Have your car's air filters cleaned and tires inflated.

BECAUSE: A yearly tune-up can improve your car's efficiency by 15 percent and keep more than one ton of carbon dioxide out of the air.

~~High-Efficiency Showerheads

Replace traditional showerheads with high-efficiency, 2.5-gallon-a-minute models.

BECAUSE: Your shower will consume 30 percent fewer gallons of water every time you wash.

~~Wash with Cold Water

Wash laundry in cold water, or use warm-wash and cold-rinse cycles.

BECAUSE: Most detergents work equally well regardless of water temperature. Using cold washes in every U.S. household would save the equivalent of 100,000 barrels of oil a day.

~~Use a toaster oven for simple baking tasks.

BECAUSE: The countertop appliances consume half as much energy as electric ovens (and keep the whole kitchen cooler)

With Many Thanks,

Mother Earth [forwarded from Donna]

saving flv files

I saw there were some episodes of Quantum Canine at the Fact TV Media Gallery.

The video files are in flv format and at first I couldn't figure out how to save them. Keepvid didn't work. But I finally was able to do it in IE using these instructions. Though I had to increase the space allocated to the temporary internet files. I tried uploading to youtube, but the file was too big. They only take video 10 minutes long and these are 30 minutes.

The next problem was how to play it from my computer. Apparently I didn't have any program on my computer that could play flv files. Windows Media Player didn't work. So I tried flvplayer and vlcplayer both among the most popular video players on download.com. I liked vlcplayer better.

[via kimodog]

a giant gulp for mankind

HOUSTON (AP) — At the international space station, it was one small sip for man and a giant gulp of recycled urine for mankind.

Astronauts aboard the space station celebrated a space first on Wednesday by drinking water that had been recycled from their urine, sweat and water that condenses from exhaled air. They said "cheers," clicked drinking bags and toasted NASA workers on the ground who were sipping their own version of recycled drinking water.

"The taste is great," American astronaut Michael Barratt said.

Earth 2100

It's an idea that most of us would rather not face -- that within the next century, life as we know it could come to an end. Our civilization could crumble, leaving only traces of modern human existence behind.

It seems outlandish, extreme -- even impossible. But according to cutting edge scientific research, it is a very real possibility. And unless we make drastic changes now, it could very well happen.

Experts have a stark warning: that unless we change course, the "perfect storm" of population growth, dwindling resources and climate change has the potential to converge in the next century with catastrophic results.

In order to plan for the worst, we must anticipate it. In that spirit, guided by some of the world's experts, ABC News' "Earth 2100," hosted by Bob Woodruff, will journey through the next century and explore what might be our worst-case scenario.

But no one can predict the future, so how do we address the possibilities that lie ahead? Our solution is Lucy, a fictional character devised by the producers at ABC to guide us through the twists and turns of what the next 100 years could look like. It is through her eyes and experiences that we can truly imagine the experts' worst-case scenario -- and be inspired to make changes for the better.

...

In the history of Earth, there have been five mass extinctions in which at least half the species on the planet disappeared. Scientists believe the extinctions were brought on by natural disasters -- massive volcanic eruptions, rapid climate changes and meteors hitting Earth.

Today, scientists say we are in the middle of a "sixth extinction" -- and for the first time, it's being caused by one species -- us. It seems inconceivable that we could do so much damage to our planet that we actually cause society as we know it to collapse. But historical precedent shows that it is, in fact, a very real possibility.

"Every society that collapsed thought it couldn't happen to them," says Joseph Tainter, an expert in anthropology and societal collapse. "The Roman Empire thought it couldn't happen. The Maya civilization thought it couldn't happen. Everyone thought it couldn't happen to them. But it did."

These populations grew too much and exhausted their resources -- and their climate suddenly changed. People were forced to fight each other for what little was left or face starvation. Entire societies broke down.

"Civilizations in the past have lost the fight," says climatologist Heidi Cullen. "They have collapsed as a result of the inability to deal with several different events going on at once. I think the takeaway is that honestly, we are not that special."

international fuel bank

VIENNA – Buffett's bankroll, Obama's clout and the partnership of a savvy ex-Soviet strongman may turn the steppes of central Asia into a nuclear mecca, a go-to place for "safe" uranium fuel in an increasingly nervous atomic age.

The $150 million idea, with seed money from U.S. billionaire Warren Buffett, must still navigate the tricky maze of global nuclear politics, along with a parallel Russian plan. But the notion of such fuel banks is moving higher on the world's agenda as a way to keep ultimate weapons out of many more hands.

Decisions may come as early as next month here in Vienna.

The half-century-old vision, to establish international control over the technology fueling atom bombs, was resurrected in 2003, when Iran alarmed many by announcing it would develop fuel installations — for nuclear power, it insisted. Mohamed ElBaradei, U.N. nuclear chief, then said the time had come to "multinationalize" the technology, to stop its spread to individual countries.

Last month, the new U.S. president gave the idea its biggest boost.

In a historic speech to tens of thousands in Prague, the Czech capital, Barack Obama detailed an aggressive plan for arms control, including setting up an international fuel bank, "so that countries can access peaceful power without increasing the risks of proliferation."

5-Dimensional Discs

"Five-dimensional" discs with a capacity 10,000 times greater than current DVDs could be on the market within 10 years, researchers reported on Wednesday.

A team from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia said that by harnessing nanoparticles and a "polarisation" dimension to existing technology, storage can be massively boosted without changing the size of a current disc.

The researchers, who have signed a deal with Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), said the technique had allowed them to store 1.6 terabytes of data on a disc with the potential to one day store upto 10 terabytes.

One terabyte would be enough to hold 300 feature length films or 250,000 songs.

"We were able to show how nanostructured material can be incorporated onto a disc in order to increase data capacity, without increasing the physical size of the disc," Min Gu, who worked on the research, said in a statement.

"These extra dimensions are the key to creating ultra-high capacity discs."

Discs currently have three spatial dimensions but using nanoparticles the researchers said they were able to introduce a spectral -- or colour -- dimension as well as a polarisation dimension.

-- via spearl (chucks_angels)

Earth Day in the comics

Sally Forth (04/20/09)

Sherman's Lagoon (04/22/09)

ipod connectivity problems

5/14 troubleshooting computer with problems connecting to ipod
Windows XP
error loading c:\windows\system32\lndrcasq.dll (googling brings up nothing)
loads Super AntiSpyware 4.15.1000 (which actually seems legitimate)

Windows Defender installed
can't check for definition updates
error found Code 0x80070422
try manual update
scan
got error message again

dl AdAware
reboot
scan

restore to April 30
cannot be restored
try May 1
cannot be restored

try msconfig
cannot be found

update Super AntiSpyware

5/16
found a whole bunch

still getting error loading dll message
try backup itunes to dvd-rw - not blank

try restore all the way to 2/16

find msconfig in c:\windows\pchealth\helpctr\binaries
deactivate lndrcasq

try restore to Feb 16, nope
Feb 18, nope
Feb 21, nope

uninstall
Windows Defender
Ad-Aware

back up songs to DVD (took 5 DVDs)

ipod charged on my computer, but still not recognized

uninstall AVG
uninstall superantispyware

beeped when I plugged it in
then got do not disconnect message (which stayed there)

try Arlene's computer
what do you know, it's detected and shows up as F: drive

Sun 5/17
install itunes on my computer
ipod still not showing up
suspect bad battery?
(meanwhile d/l and listen to Mad Money podcast)
Windows errors loading device driver

Mon 5/18
had it plugged into my computer
suddenly got a message that it was recognized and is charging
hours later, ipod is charged now, but Windows still doesn't see it
but plugged it into Arlene's computer and it's detected! hmm.
uninstall itunes on my computer, nope still not recognized
try system restore to May 16 - successful
reboot - get "the system has recovered from a serious error message" (again)
looks like a driver problem
try Dell Driver Reset Tool (as suggested by the message)
restart
nope, still not working
Add Hardware Wizard
Portable Device
Windows could not find the installer for WPD
try Windows Installer Cleanup Utility
got of list of installs and can't figure out what to clean up

restore to May 13
The system has recovered from a serious error again
(which tell me device driver is still screwy despite restoration)
message about updating usb drivers, but device (ipod) doesn't show in usb section of device manager

liutilities Apple Ipod USE Driver by jung
Uniblue driverscanner
detected three outdated drivers, but ipod driver not one of them

now ipod not recognized by Arlene's computer
wait it is, on second try
now it's not again :(

maybe the problem is with the ipod after all since the computer recognizes the flash drives which uses the same driver as the ipod (USBSTOR.SYS)

Wed 5/20
tried booting up into Ubuntu on Arlene's computer
but still no sign of the ipod
now the ipod looks dead again, though it's plugged into Arlene's computer

Thu 5/21
hey ipod connected this time (to the original computer)
then died
battery charging

Fri 5/22
ipod looks charged now and connected
don't know why. I did uninstall AVG and SuperAntiSypware and Ad Aware and Windows Defender
Installing Avast and will see if it still works
suspect something's wrong with ipod since battery seems to be dying too fast

could Nano be the catalyst?

On March 23, 2009, India's Tata Motors launched the world's cheapest car, the Nano. Originally priced at $2,500, the strong dollar has effectively re-priced it at $2000. The launch was six-months behind schedule, and the company has a smaller production capacity than originally envisioned.

Wags in the skeptical Western press have greeted the news of the Nano with jewels like, "but, will it blend?" Comparisons with lawn mowers abound, and there is a great deal of concern about its crash-worthiness, emissions and even the ability of its single windscreen-wiper to deal with the monsoon. Such criticism misses the point: Nano's impact on the world is not about what it can't do, but what it can.

According to the World Resources Institute, the annual energy consumption per U.S. resident was about 340 million BTU (British Thermal Unit) in 2005. This number represents all energy consumption (industrial, residential, commercial, etc.), divided by the population. The average American consumes about twice the energy of the average European or Japanese, 10 times the average Chinese and about 25 times the Indian. Between them, China and India constitute about 40% of the global population and their low per-capita energy consumption is changing. Industrial activity was the first to move the graph. Now, there are massive highway construction and expansion programs enabling automobile proliferation in both of these countries. The Nano could well be the catalyst that pushes global emissions to completely unsustainable levels.

[via investwise, 4/9/09]

ExxonMobil's Outlook for Energy

The Outlook for Energy -
A View to 2030

Energy - in all its forms - is critical to economic growth,
development, and social welfare. Meeting the projected
increase in energy demand to support growing
populations and expanding economies poses many
challenges, and will require an integrated set of solutions.

To help us prepare for the future energy marketplace,
each year ExxonMobil develops The Outlook for Energy,
a broad, in-depth look at the long-term global trends for
energy demand and supply, and their impact on carbon
dioxide (CO2) emissions. The results of this comprehensive
study provide a foundation for ExxonMobil's business
planning and are shared publicly to help build under-
standing of the world's energy needs and challenges.

The Link Between Economic Growth and Energy
Energy and economic growth have long been entwined: The
availability of energy supports long-term economic and social
progress; economic growth drives increased energy usage.

Despite current economic conditions, global economic
output, as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP),
is expected to increase by close to 3 percent on average
annually through 2030.

Importantly the global economy is becoming more energy
efficient. From 1980 to 2005, "energy intensity" - the amount
of energy used per unit of economic output - improved by
1 percent per year on average. Going forward to 2030, we
expect the rate of improvement will be 70-percent faster
than in the past.

Even with significant energy intensity improvements, global
energy demand is expected to increase approximately
35 percent from 2005 to 2030. The majority of new energy
demand will come from Asia Pacific, reflecting strong
economic growth. Oil, natural gas, and coal will remain the
predominant energy sources through 2030, but renewable
sources such as wind, solar, and biofuels will increase rapidly.

Transportation Demand Driven by Developing Economies
Transportation provides perhaps the most visible use of
energy. Moving people and goods requires tremendous
amounts of energy worldwide, and that will not change
in the foreseeable future. In fact energy demand for
transportation is expected to increase by 40 percent from
2005 to 2030.

The global growth in transportation demand will be met
primarily by oil, which is expected to provide almost
95 percent of all transportation fuel in 2030.

Electricity Demand Increases Need for Power Generation
As economies grow and access increases, global demand
for electricity is projected to increase 75 percent by 2030
versus 2005.

Consistent with this projection, energy for power generation
is expected to remain the largest and fastest growing
segment of global demand, driven in large part by strong
growth in Asia Pacific.

Meeting the expected worldwide growth in power demand
will require a diverse set of energy sources. Today coal is
dominant and will retain the largest share globally through
2030; however, natural gas, nuclear, and renewables will all
gain market share.

Worldwide Liquids Demand
Liquid fuels derived from oil, condensates, and natural gas
liquids provide the largest share of energy supply today, due
to their affordability, wide availability, and ease of transport.
By 2030, global demand for liquids is expected to grow to
approximately 108 million oil-equivalent barrels per day or
close to 30 percent more than in 2005.

This demand will be met by a wide variety of sources.
Conventional non-OPEC crude and condensate production
is expected to remain relatively flat through 2030. However,
growth is expected from a number of supply sources,
including oil sands, natural gas liquids, and biofuels, as
well as crude oil from OPEC countries. While the world's
resource base is sufficient to meet projected demand,
access to resources and timely investments will remain
critical to meeting global needs.

LNG Import Market Will Grow
Increases in natural gas demand in major markets will
require new sources of supply. Unconventional natural gas
resources (e.g., tight gas, shale gas, coalbed methane) will
contribute more significantly to supplies over time, enabled
by technology advances. In addition new technologies
are spurring development of a global market for liquefied
natural gas (LNG), which is expected to more than triple in
volume from 2005 to 2030 and help meet growing demand
in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

Global Energy in Perspective
Viewed globally, it is clear that the world's energy mix is
highly diverse. Today, oil, natural gas and coal provide
approximately 80 percent of world energy. By 2030, oil
will remain the largest source of energy supply at close to
35 percent. Natural gas will grow the fastest of the fossil
fuels and will overtake coal as the second-largest energy
source. Nuclear power will increase significantly, surpassing
coal in terms of absolute growth and becoming the fourth-
largest fuel source. Hydro and geothermal will also grow,
but they are limited by the availability of natural sites. Wind,
solar, and biofuels will increase about 9 percent per year on
average, the highest growth rate of all fuels.

In developing this Outlook, we assume significant efficiency
improvements over time. Compared to 2005 energy-intensity
levels, these improvements translate to energy savings of
approximately 170 million oil-equivalent barrels per day by
2030 - about double the corresponding growth in demand.
Achieving these gains will be critical to helping meet global
energy challenges.

Growing Energy Demand and CO2 Emissions
The outlook for energy-related CO2 emissions is linked
directly to projections of the amount and type of energy
Looking globally we do not expect CO2 emissions
to peak by 2030. While the United States and other
developed countries will reduce emissions, the economic
growth and associated energy needs of developing
countries will drive global CO2 levels higher. This highlights
the challenge ahead for the world - how to continue to
provide the energy necessary to bring billions of people
up the economic ladder while mitigating the growth of
CO2 emissions.

Conclusion
This Outlook makes clear that the world's energy challenges
are formidable. We believe that meeting these global energy
challenges requires an integrated set of solutions that includes:

* Moderating demand through new technologies that improve
energy efficiency in our vehicles, homes, and businesses

* Expanding access to all economically viable energy
sources - oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, and alternative
and renewable sources such as wind, solar, and biofuels.

* Mitigating the risks of climate change through technologies
that advance energy efficiency, enable widespread use of
renewables, and capture and store CO2 emissions.

Looking to 2030 and beyond, we realize that the scale of our
global challenge is enormous, but so too, is our commitment
to succeed and our capacity to innovate. ExxonMobil is
confident that by pursuing this integrated set of solutions -
while working with governments to create reliable policy and
investment environments for these solutions to thrive - the
world can achieve both energy and environmental security to
support growing economic prosperity.

-- ExxonMobil 2008 Summary Annual Report

***

[6/18/10 from my XOM file] An interesting chart (on the front cover fold-out of the 2009 Annual Report) on how energy sources continue to evolve.  In 1850, it was mostly wood.  In 1900, it was mostly coal.  In 1950 it was about half coal and half oil with some natural gas.  In 2000, coal had decreased, oil was nearly the same, natural gas had slightly increased, and nuclear was making an impact.  As time goes on to 2030, Exxon sees natural gas increasing slightly, oil decreasing slightly, coal decreasing with nuclear taking up much of the slack, hydroelectric remaining a small impact, and renewables increasing but still a small percentage.

The chart is also here.

Wolfram Alpha

A web tool that "could be as important as Google", according to some experts, has been shown off to the public.

Wolfram Alpha is the brainchild of British-born physicist Stephen Wolfram.

The free program aims to answer questions directly, rather than display web pages in response to a query like a search engine.

The "computational knowledge engine", as the technology is known, will be available to the public from the middle of May this year.

"Our goal is to make expert knowledge accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime," said Dr Wolfram at the demonstration at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

The tool computes many of the answers "on the fly" by grabbing raw data from public and licensed databases, along with live feeds such as share prices and weather information.

People can use the system to look up simple facts - such as the height of Mount Everest - or crunch several data sets together to produce new results, such as a country's GDP.

Other functions solve complex mathematical equations, plot scientific figures or chart natural events.

"Like interacting with an expert, it will understand what you're talking about, do the computation, and then present you with the results," said Dr Wolfram.

[found when browsing google news]

telephone manual

I wanted to program my cellphone number into our GE cordless phone, but couldn't find the manual.

But I was finally able to track down the manual online

*** [update 11/20/09]

(model 27923GE2 bought from Walgreen)

Press Memory. Press number (0-9). Press Memory again. Key in phone number. Press Memory again. Phone should beep.

To dial the save number, press Memory, then the number (0-9).

BYD is a buy

Warren Buffett is famous for his rules of investing: When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is usually the reputation of the business that remains intact. You should invest in a business that even a fool can run, because someday a fool will. And perhaps most famously, Never invest in a business you cannot understand.

So when Buffett's friend and longtime partner in Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB), Charlie Munger, suggested early last year that they invest in BYD, an obscure Chinese battery, mobile phone, and electric car company, one might have predicted Buffett would cite rule No. 3 above. He is, after all, a man who shunned the booming U.S. tech industry during the 1990s.

But Buffett, who is 78, was intrigued by Munger's description of the entrepreneur behind BYD, a man named Wang Chuan-Fu, whom he had met through a mutual friend. "This guy," Munger tells Fortune, "is a combination of Thomas Edison and Jack Welch - something like Edison in solving technical problems, and something like Welch in getting done what he needs to do. I have never seen anything like it."

-- via chucks_angels

transferring from Outlook to Vista Windows Mail

My next task was to transfer email and address book from Microsoft Outlook (running on XP) to Windows Mail running on Vista.

Sounded easy enough. Mike had backed up to a .pst file but strangely there was no option for importing Outlook. It turns out the option only exists if Outlook is installed on Vista (so what's the sense?)

Next I read that you should export to Outlook Express then import into Windows Mail. But I could see no option in Outlook to export to Outlook Express. The trick was to go to Outlook Express and import the Outlook messages into there. That worked. Then I think (I don't remember exactly -- after all it was yesterday!) I found where the Outlook Express messages were and copied them to the flash drive. Then I went to Windows Mail and imported [see ali_jane] them.

Then it was time for the address book. I couldn't figure out how to import from Outlook, so I wound up (from another tip on the internet - I can't find the link now) [see Michael B on previous link] to export the address book as a CSV file. I copied that file to the flash drive and imported from Windows Mail.

Note: I believe all this was with Outlook 2003 and Outlook Express 6.

Vista to wireless router

CliffH called me about his sister's company. They changed to a new computer running Vista (with Media Center it turns out) and had trouble connecting to their wireless router (which the old computer had been connected to).

When they called for support, they were told to lower security on the router. And it turned out they could only connect with the security turned off.

My turn to try. The router was a D-Link DI-624 and I found the documentation at Scribd. First of all I had to reset the router because the admin password was changed.

I set WEP back on, but when I tried to connect from the Vista computer, I got the message "the settings saved on this computer do not match the requirements of the network".

So I had to change the configuration on Vista, but it still didn't work.

Then I read that Vista doesn't like WEP, so I changed it to WPA-PSK. On the Vista side, I changed it to WPA-Personal, encryption TKIP. And to my surprise, it connected!

recycling computers for fun and profit

Scott Belford is on a mission.

The lanky Savannah, Ga., native recently donated a revamped PC to Lama Wangchuk, who uses it to surf the Web, communicate with his family in India, and operate a Tibetan Buddhist nonprofit organization out of his tiny Kaimuki apartment.

The lama is not the lone beneficiary of Belford's largesse. Belford's organization, the Hawaii Open Source Education Foundation, refurbishes and gives away hundreds of computers a year to schools and homeless shelters, as well as the Honolulu Department of Parks and Recreation.

Software designer Curtis J. Kropar, founder of Hawaiian Hope, also specializes in recycled technology, in particular by building computer labs in homeless shelters on Oahu. Kropar says he encourages the homeless to keep the computers once they move out of the shelter.

Another long time IT philanthropist is Ken Goldstein, founder of Hawaii Computers for Kids, who recycles computer gear and distributes it to grade schools and high schools statewide.

Also, Kevin Hughes, of software startup Sprout, has long contributed used hardware to nonprofits, and encourages others to do the same.

He says he's found it easy to coordinate his tech philanthropy through Tech Hui, a nonprofit composed of IT and life sciences entrepreneurs.

Project Puma

GM and Segway jumped the gun on the beginning of the 2009 New York International Auto Show to announce the Project P.U.M.A. (Personal Urban Mobility & Accessibility) prototype. The joint venture is a two-person vehicle that can travel up to 35 MPH and can travel from 25 to 35 miles on a single charge.

sell your old gadgets

Instead of just throwing away or recycling your old gadget, make money off it. There are websites out there that will buy your old stuff and put money in your pocket (with free shipping) - buymytronics.com and gazelle.com, to name a couple. To give you an idea, my still-functioning first generation iPod nano (4GB) came back around $15. You won’t receive a huge bundle, but every little bit helps!

creating a pdf

Here's a cool way to create a pdf that I just discovered.

Create [or upload] your document in Google Docs. Then go to print it. Google Docs converts it to a pdf ready for printing.

[4/25/09 frwr_news] On the other hand, if you want to convert a pdf to text file, you might try Simpo PDF to Text.

Here's another one: PDF2Text Pilot

[5/3/09 from frwr_news 10/30/08] PDFUNdo.net
PDFUNdo.net is a free online PDF to Word converter. It's real simple to use and doesn't require your email address or registration. You just upload your PDF document and when the conversion is complete, download your Word document. Password protected PDFs not supported [9/4/09 - installation errored]

[9/3/09 frwr-news] PDF Text Reader v1.1 - 3193 KB
Open Almost Any PDF Extract the Text 100% FREE
Features:
- Convert PDF files to text.
- PDF to TXT
- 100% FREE
- Easy to use
- Uses same conversion process as PDFconverter
- Preserves PDF layout in text
- Reads and displays info tags from PDF files
- Built in text viewer
- Works independent of Acrobat and all Adobe products
- Complete and comprehensive help files
- Distributed only by CTdeveloping
- No limitations or time expiration, this software is free as long as you have it installed
[9/4/09 - couldn't open protected file - i.e. file that doesn't let you copy and paste]

[frwr-news 4/3/10] Ease Pdf to Text Extractor is a free software designed to extract text from Adobe PDF files. It does NOT need Adobe Acrobat software.It processes at very high speed and you can convert multiple PDF files to text files at one time.

It started in 1990

in 1990, the very first web page was created at http://info.cern.ch/. By late 1992, there were only 26 websites in the world so there was not much need for a search engine. When NCSA Mosaic (the first widely used web browser) came out in 1993, every new website that was created would get posted to its "What's New" page at a rate of about one a day: http://www.dejavu.org/prep_whatsnew.htm. Just five years later, in 1998, web pages numbered in the tens of millions, and search became crucial. At this point, Google was a small research project at Stanford; later that year it became a tiny startup. The search index sat on a small number of disk drives enclosed within Lego-like blocks. Perhaps a few thousand people, mostly academics, used the service.

Fast forward to today, the changes in scale are striking. The web itself has grown by about a factor of 10,000, as has our search index. The number of people who use Google's services every day is now in the hundreds of millions. More importantly, billions of people now have access to the Internet via computers and mobile phones. Like many other web companies, the vast majority of our services are available worldwide and free to users because they are supported by ads. So a child in an Internet cafe in a developing nation can use the same online tools as the wealthiest person in the world. I am proud of the small role Google has played in the democratization of information, but there is much more left to do.

-- Sergey Brin, 2008 Founders Letter

Spyware Protect 2009, Windows Installer problems

neighbor Jeannie asked if I can fix computer

error loading
c:\windows\system32\spool\DRIVERS\W32X86\3\LXBStime.dll
(I recall that was a lexmark driver which was no longer needed)

Spyware Protect 2009
Windows Security Alert
Windows reports that computer is infected
Antivirus software helps to protect your computer against
viruses and other security threats. Click her for the
scan you computer. Your system might be at risk now

end task

2-spyware.com had instructions to remove it

remove registry entries

Windows update

install Windows Defender

still starts up

delete spyguard.exe

install/update spybot

Windows Installer
Microsoft Office Basic Edition 2003
Installation Error: file not found
A required installation file SKU113.CAB could not be found

try Windows Installer Cleanup Utility

Windows Installer runs
when INternet Explorer starts

system restore to 3/20

Spyware Protect seems to be gone
but Windows Installer still runs when starting Internet Explorer

Windows Update
not enough room for SP3
documents and settings 8.57GB
program files 1.63 GB
Windows 5.03 GB

Windows Installer Cleanup
remove Office 2003
Office 2003 doesn't run, but Installer doesn't pop up on IE

system restore
installer still runs, but doesn't ask for CD now

try uninstall Installer
nope, Windows Installer still runs

try Office Service Pack 3, already installed

avast
move music to D: (to free up space)

try Windows XP SP3 again
errored out

other updates
unable to remove Office 2003

Windows Installer Cleanup
remove Office 2003

IE starts w/ no problem now

Windows Defender

double-clicking doesn't open Word document
re-register Word (regserv)

run avast

Windows\softwaredistribution\download OK to delete (to make more room)

[3/30] return computer

[3/28-3/30, posted 5/10/09]

tips from Bill Husted

This week, Bill addresses these common questions

My computer is slow. How can I speed it up?
I’ve just installed a new computer with Vista on my home network, but it can’t find my other computers.
Should I turn off my computer at night or leave it on 24/7?
Other common problems

CyberLife PC

CyberLife PC partner Danny Lawson says his company offers free diagnosis for computer problems.

“We are really pushing the tech services,” Lawson explains. “In other computer-repair businesses, because of some corporate policies in place, a repair person is not allowed to do certain repairs. Because we are a small business, we do what it takes to make customers happy.”

For example, some companies don’t deal with AC/DC jacks, but CyberLife PC does. The shop offers a variety of services for both Macs and PCs, including computer rentals, selling used computers and on-site service. Data retrieval, data backup, and installation of hardware and software are among the services offered. For customers who have warranties on their computers, CyberLife PC can handle details so customers don’t have to go to the manufacturer.

“Instead of buying a new computer, let us check it out,” says Lawson. “If it is not worth it, I’ll tell you to just buy a new one and the reason why. Just give us a chance to look at it. If we don’t do the legwork, we do not charge you for it.”

***

[11/22/09] I found this quite disturbing.

It took only four minutes for thieves to crash a Jeep Wrangler into the glass doors of the Cyberlife PC store on Liliha Street and grab 20 laptop computers.

Owner Danny Lawson said security camera video showed the Jeep smashing through the door at about 2:40 a.m. on Sept. 14, and two men with flashlights on their foreheads scooping up the laptops.

"I was beyond shocked that they would use a truck," he said.

Last week, thieves used a similar tactic to break into the Moanalua 99 shops in Mapunapuna, the second time within four months, the property's management said.

Police say there's been an alarming increase in these types of crimes and are investigating if some of them may be connected.

Woz can dance?

The new season of “Dancing Season with the Stars” will feature three couples and — with the show’s touch for the improbable — one computer guru. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is among 13 celebrities who will compete on the ABC series’ eighth season that begins March 9, the network said Sunday.

Romantic relationships may be put to the test this time around, with couples taking to the dance floor with and against each other. Pop star Jewel and her husband, rodeo champion Ty Murray, will compete for bragging rights, ABC said, while country singer Chuck Wicks will take the floor with his girlfriend, two-time “Dancing with the Stars” champion Julianne Hough.

Last November, Hough had said she planned to focus on her newly launched country music career and didn’t plan to return to the show.

Professional dancers and series regulars Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Karina Smirnoff, who are newly engaged, will be waltzing in the arms of others.

Olympic gold-medal gymnast Shawn Johnson gets to make her mark just by showing up: At 17, she’s the youngest competitor to date, ABC said. Another star athlete in the field is Lawrence Taylor, the former New York Giant and Hall of Famer.

The other celebrity hoofers are Go-Go’s lead singer Belinda Carlisle; rapper Lil’ Kim; actress Denise Richards; actor-comedian David Alan Grier (Comedy Central’s “Chocolate News”); Gilles Marini, who played the neighbor ogled by Kim Cattrall’s Samantha in the “Sex and the City” film; Steve-O (MTV’s “Wildboyz”) and TV host Nancy O’Dell of “Access Hollywood.”

“Dancing with the Stars” is hosted by Tom Bergeron and Samantha Harris, with Len Goodman, Bruno Tonioli and Carrie Ann Inaba judging the contestants.

* * *

Posted: 03/30/2009 12:00:00 AM PDT

America has questions about the mystery that is Steve Wozniak and "Dancing with the Stars." We have the answers — sort of.

To recap: Over the past two weeks, Wozniak — Woz to one and all — has managed to survive on "Dancing" even though his footwork is more reminiscent of Fred Flintstone than Fred Astaire. The Woz has emerged as a fan favorite who finished at the top of the leader board last week even after being eviscerated by the judges. The trio awarded him a 10 following his worm move that was more Squirm than Worm. That's 10 combined — not 10, a perfect score, from each.

So, as Woz prepares to dance again tonight, you might ask, what's going on here?

Q Is Woz the worst dancer ever on "Dancing"?

A NOT. EVEN. CLOSE. Master P., the rapper without rhythm, holds that dubious distinction after his "performance" in season two. He set two records: the lowest total score (8) and, the lowest score from a single judge (2) for a Paso Doble that was Paso Doughboy.

Q Still, how can Woz still be around entering week three of the competition?

A Let's start with the scoring, not quite as Byzantine as figure skating, but close. The judges — Len Goodman, Carrie Ann Inaba and Bruno (the Woz Wacker) Tonioli — can each award up to 10 points on each dance. But the key is the judges' "shares," which are calculated as the percentage of the total number of points awarded for all the dancers that evening. So if Woz and his partner, Karina Smirnoff, should miraculously score a 20 and if all the teams had a combined score of 200, they get a 10 percent. This is then combined with the percentage of the viewer votes scored by the team to get the final score.

Q The Woz secret?

A Woz, a god among geeks, must have scored really big numbers with the folks at home. We will never know how well the Woz did on that front. Reality competition shows — "Dancing," "American Idol" — have long-standing policies of keeping the vote totals secret. A source with "Dancing" did reveal, however, that the gap between the judges and the viewers on Woz's performance was the biggest anyone on the show's staff could remember.

delete item in firefox history

I remember I found this on the internet somewhere, but now I can't remember.

If you want to delete a particular item saved in the drop down box of the address box, press control-delete and the item will be erased. Doesn't work in internet explorer though.

One day I'll find it again.

Actually, now I see you can just press delete. I still don't think that's the link though.

My Deskjet 812C

I tried hooking up my old Deskjet 812C and it kept printing garbage though the printer was supposedly supported by XP.

Then I changed to a new printer cable (it supports the old parallel cables as well as USB) and XP auto-detected the printer and it printed fine. I think the new cable was bi-directional but the old one wasn't.

I suppose this is one way to test whether the printer cable is bidirectional or not.

[2/26, posted 3/9]

R.I.P. Cable TV

[3/9/09] A growing list of places to find free or cheap TV shows and movies has more people than ever cutting the cord on premium cable and satellite services.

Only one in four people age 18 to 29 says cable or satellite TV is a necessity, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. (Americans age 50 and older, incidentally, are much more attached.)

Members of the YouTube generation are open to getting entertainment in nontraditional ways. And thanks to the Internet and other resources, it's easier than ever to get what you want without a hefty price tag.

Since ditching cable, I've discovered plenty of places to get free or supercheap TV shows and movies -- many of the same ones I had watched before -- but for a fraction of the cost.

[3/21/13] Cable TV is feeling the heat.

ST. LOUIS (AP) - A TV antenna maker wanted to use the competition's own medium - cable TV - for its anti-cable message. Now, officials at Antennas Direct say Charter Communications' refusal to air the ads is evidence of the cable industry's growing concern over antennas.