The disco classic ‘I will survive’ performed by a violin and a piano.
It’s pretty funny too.

As I was listening to Dvorak’s 5 minute rant this morning (Tech5 at PodShow) he mentioned this article. He stabbed the life out of it and he was right too. It’s an amusing read, certainly if you keep one word in the back of your mind: FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt — as quoted by Michael Horowitz); utter gibberish spread to lure people away from XP in order to sell more Vista copies. I’m not saying moving to Vista isn’t a good thing (I, for one haven’t seen too many bad things about it, not more than I’ve experienced with XP), but it’s obvious they’re pulling the whole thing out of context here, as an advertising stunt.

First of all, running an XP machine with SP1 deserves death penalty. Second: who the heck doesn’t run any form of security app on this kind of machine?! This is beyond me, really. Nonetheless, it’s worth a read, even if it’s just for the sake of a good laugh.

From ZDNET.com:

… Connected a machine running Windows XP with Service Pack 1 to an unsecured wireless network. The machine was running no antivirus, firewall, or anti-spyware software …

“You can download attack tools from the Internet, and even script kiddies can use this one,” said Mick.

…

And blah blah blah. Funny. Ignorant.

I’ve added the card-game ‘Hearts’ to my ‘fun distractions’ page.
Read all about it there.

IdeaList is a wacky website where average Joes - like you and me - can post prototype ideas or inventions. Of course there’s voting involved and I must say I’ve seen some remarkably smart ideas. Silly ones aren’t lacking either, but who doesn’t like a good laugh?

 The Idealist Website

I must’ve encountered this link before, because it struck me as very familiar, yet still made the effort to fill out the questionnaire in order to find out what kind of accent I have.

While filling out the questions, it makes you think about how you pronounce certain words and based on that it gives you an approximation of how Yankee or Rebel you may be. Makes you realize some people say some words in some pretty weird ways

Take the test at AlphaDictionary.com

Click image above for a bigger view of my Reliability Monitor

A few days ago I remembered Paul Thurrott mentioning the Vista Reliability and Performance monitor and since I had purchased a new laptop a month earlier, I was curious to see how things we’re holding up.

The result in the image above is mainly a downhill graph, starting at 10 out of ten and dropped to as low as 1.82 on October 7th. Vista’s running on a new Dell XPS M1710, so it’s pretty astonishing. As of late, the graph has gone up again and is currently at 5.5.

Find out at isitchristmas.com.