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In their press release on this new version of the old threat, the FBI said:

“The spammers spreading this virus are preying on Internet users and making their computers an unwitting part of criminal botnet activity. We urge [all] citizens [of every country] to help prevent the spread of botnets by becoming web-savvy.”

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“…Oscar I can’t hold her; she’s breaking up!…” – Not Steve Austin’s aircraft as in the Six Million Dollar Man this time;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Six_Million_Dollar_Man
rather it’s the Apple iPhone 3G.

A number of people have noticed cracks appearing in the casing of their (IMO waste-of-money) iPhones.
http://www.ehphone.ca/2008/07/white-iphones-are-cracking/
Seemingly only in the white ones.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7741878

All people who have reported this claim have only subjected their (cr)Apple iPhone to normal use without any abuse. The damage is mainly hairline cracks appearing in various places; but just like an eggshell if these get long enough and plentiful the case will come off, and the wheels might come off Apple as a result.

Hey Steve Jobs: ‘See where greed gets you? : Rush rush rush – Crash! Bzzzzzzzt: Fail!   http://kkomp.com/archives/203

Apple has replaced a few phones; but staff will probably start to refuse, as numbers of returns swell, on the grounds that the damage is only cosmetic: That will lead to many pissed-off customers, loss of cred for Apple, and many of these heaps ending up where they should IMO have been put in the first place, namely the dustbin. Apple rely on the cosmetic appearance of their product to distinguish it from the competition.

Once again though, it hasn’t taken long to crack it! Now do you wish you’d invested in an LG Viewty?

http://kkomp.com/archives/214

 http://kkomp.com/archives/166

Addendum 31.07.08 :-

Today I’m seeing reports of black iPhones cracking also:

chris Says:
July 30th, 2008 at 2:15 pm

“I have been searching online because my 3G will be here in a few days, and i found that there are also people with the black 3g that have had cracking, but its alot harder to see on the phone.”

“this concerns me as well as what kind of durability does the phone have incase i drop it?”

It appears that all the Apple iPhones are easy to crack.

If you happen to live in the UK and happen to use Virgin Media, BT, Sky, Carphone Warehouse, Orange, or Tiscali; then at some point you may be receiving a warning letter from your ISP saying that you’ve been making illegal downloads, and threatening to suspend or possibly terminate your internet service.

These ISPs are on a three-month trial scheme, instructed by the British government, clamping down on pirating software and music, and notifying suspected repeat offenders that their actions are under scrutiny.

It’s still a mystery exactly which people these “suspected repeat offenders” could be: No doubt the ones they’ll watch are people who use P2P: So if you use LimeWire, BearShare, or any of the other P2P software for whatever reason then watch out. You don’t really imagine that they’re actually going to monitor traffic do you? That would use huge resources and cost millions – A simple P2P signature will probably activate a printer to dispatch a letter to you automatically; guilty or not.

There are currently no plans of disconnecting those who persist. The ISPs are seeking a unified code of conduct on what to do with those who continue to do so in talks with Ofcom; the UK Telecoms Regulator. One of the proposed options is to disconnect someone after sending them 3 of these warning letters. My question is: Where’s the proof? You can’t punish someone on suspicion. Just imagine if the law behaved like that: Half of the world’s population would be in jail.

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UK business secretary John Hutton believes that this is an “intelligent approach”. The ISPs agreed to this trial following the warning from the UK government that it would impose legislation if they didn’t do something to discourage illegal filesharing. If the powers that be imagine for a second that this has any relationship whatsoever with intelligence then I think the UK Govt. should have a motion drafted against it for having none.

It is believed that six million people in the UK are involved in such activities. If they know this then why don’t they just issue six million warnings straight away? It would be so much easier and consume far less resources. Also I’m just wondering: What if you happen to be an innocent party who’s never done an illegal download in their life; and you get one of these letters – Then what? Do you phone the ISP and argue your case? I doubt they’ll even listen: You’re guilty because a computer decided that you should be sent a letter – End of story. No doubt after letter 1 you’ll be put on a “watch list”, and a computer will have no hesitation in deciding that you should receive letter No.2. Use your imagination from this point onwards.

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Addendum 01.08.08

It appears that something positive is happening about this matter, and that once again the fascist UK goverment has introduced an unworkable proposal that won’t stand up to European Law.

For more on this subject go here.

It won’t be long before sophisticated advanced computers are scrutinising your every move online – Just you wait and see if I’m not right.

As for the Carphone Warehouse; well it’s hardly “Your phone your way” is it?

More like “our service, our rules”.

No I haven’t been posting since 1958; although sometimes it feels like I have: This is post number 50 on this blog, and it calls for a celebration.

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So break out the bubbly; fire up the fireworks, and P-A-R-T-Y.

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A great excuse for a party; as well as a fairly good way to get a few ads in too.
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“Please give us an o/s that works when you release Windows 7. We, your customers, don’t mind waiting a little longer for a product that has no bugs and no massive security vulnerabilities – Although we would like you to bring it out ahead of schedule ready for Xmas 2009 if possible.”

“You see, Microsoft, you’ve announced a new operating system and we want it; but we want it to be better than XP: You haven’t come up with anything better than XP yet; and Vista was a joke. Even your bosom buddies at Intel won’t switch to Vista – Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

“Are you actually aware that KACE found that 50 percent of people who responded to their survey last November won’t upgrade to Vista? Worse still for you, Microsoft, is that in their recent survey that figure has gone up 20percent of the whole to 60 percent!

http://www.kace.com/about/releases/systems-management-appliance/computer-management-software-alternative/07_23_08.php

 SP1 only made most things Vista work properly; but even then still not quite as well as XP.”

Whoever is running the mess that you’ve turned Microsoft into should get a medal from Apple: Thanks to Vista, Mac sales have risen dramatically. People are switching to Linux despite all its bad press: They use Vista and say “I’m downloading Ubuntu; it can’t be worse than this!”"

“Yes I know that you’ve sold 180 million licenses. How many of those downgraded to XP I wonder? …And the choice was use Vista or have a computer without an operating system: Even Vista is better than no operating system.”

“Yes I appreciate the fact that Bill’s taken a back seat and now all the top execs want a piece of the pie; yes I know they all want to take Microsoft individually in a particular direction and are all pulling against each other; but Bill should have forseen that. He probably did; but just wanted out, having made enough money to buy a small country for his retirement.”

“So come on Microsoft; get your act together and give us something good: We’re not asking for miracles; we just want something better and more suited to today’s climate than before. I realise you’ve made boobs like this in the past, such as ME; but at least ME didn’t force the user to get new hardware to run an operating system that wasn’t as good as the last one.”

“You know all about bootstrapping – If you’ve forgotten ask Bill for a reminder – So it’s time for you to pull yourselves up by your bootstraps and smell the coffee again: I don’t mean have a tea-break either. It’s down to you to carry on without Bill at the helm. Can you do that? I’m watching that space.”

Kind Regards from Sharron. x

“P.S. You shot yourselves in the foot when you stopped all the big companies from selling XP. You hoped it would force people to change to Vista; but people didn’t want Vista; they wanted a change to something better, so they had 2 choices: Mac or Linux.

If Windows 7 isn’t a gem of an operating system that works first time and is better than XP then I’m buying a Mac.”

Today I  took the wrapping off of and opened up the September edition of Custom PC http://www.custompc.co.uk/ : I’d received it in the post some days, maybe even a week ago; but I hadn’t had time to study it or even look at the cover yet. It flipped open in the “Hands On” section; and there was this article on how to make a PC monitor from an analogue meter.

I have reproduced page 1 of their article. Not intending to break their copyright I have deliberately made it hard to read; yet clear enough to be able to see their circuit and get some idea what the page looks like. I’m afraid if you want to see the article properly you might just have to purchase the magazine, unless they have featured it on their website.

Let’s face it though; there’s probably not a lot of genuinely old-ish analogue meters around; and a decent one can cost anything from a few £s upwards. What’s more an analogue meter is so hard to read if it’s moving at all.

My brain engaged in design mode at this point: Why use a meter at all? Yes it’s maybe nostalgia and “geekracy”, but why not instead have an LED bar-graph? Just for the purpose of being ultra-creative why not make it from individual LEDs rather than a prebuilt bar-graph?

OK easy enough; but first that circuit – Theirs is so basic it sucks:

Their circuit has a signal-diode connected cross-path without anywhere to dump the current passing through it except into the diode’s semiconductor itself: That’s a recipie for disaster if the input signal has a large amount of gain: The signal-diode’s semiconductor material will overload and burn out: In their circuit that diode is connected as a half-wave short circuit.

My remedy is to add a 100 nanofarad capacitor in series with the diode on one side to block any DC component of the signal, and a LED in parallel with the capacitor to indicate any DC component’s presence as well as to act as a partial sink. The greatest current sinkage, though, comes from series pair resistors 6 and 7, which I’ve rated at 1/4 watt just to be on the safe side: Those should sink any remaining AC component of the signal and not get too warm.

Resistor R7 is connected as a current sink and limiter for the entire circuit.

The main deviation from the original design comes where I’ve replaced the analogue meter with 4 resistors and 4 LEDs. It is possible here to have as many series resistor/LED pairs here as you like to a certain extent; bearing in mind the current drain this will cause with respect to the current gain of the input signal.

I really don’t want to get too technical here or I might end up drawing bode plots and nyquist diagrams; whatever.

This isn’t a final circuit, I’ve not built it, and it would be an idea for you, if you’re an electronics hobbyist, to play around with it, adding more LED/resistor series pairs whilst experimenting with the values of individual resistor – Even going into the specialist series with fractions of an Ohm values if you like. Also experiment with the value of R7 and see what effect a higher resistance has on the overall performance of the circuit. An 8 LED bargraph would be excellent and in my opinion would look much more geeky than an analogue meter.

Having looked at this again after publishing I think I might have actually negated the original function of the diode to some extent by removing the DC component from its circuit. Removing or short-circuiting C1/LED1 will reintroduce this DC component back into the equation; in which case now that we have resistors 7 and 8 in circuit they will help sink the DC as well as the AC waveform component, but with the result of a little more heat. (Negligible.) In an ideal world it would be an idea to use two inverting buffers incorporating an op-amp such as a 741; one on each input terminal. These could be powered from the 5V USB supply – But now I run the risk of getting overly technical if I were to go any further; and I see why they used the circuit they did: Not so much built to last as built to work, on a KISS principle: Keep It Simple Stupid. The full redesign required to make this piece of kit perfect as I’d like it to be would need a lot of components, and would further complicate what started out as a simple circuit.

So yes build the circuit and leave out R6 and C1/LED1. It’ll work; but if the input gain goes really high it could end up damaging D1 as I said. Also there’s the added factor that D1 won’t pass a current if the voltage-gain on the input drops really low. (Below Approx. 0.35 volts, which IIRC is the threshold voltage of that particular diode.

OK here’s a better solution: Disonnect D1 and connect it in series with the 10 microfarad capacitor. cathode to its + terminal. Connect another capacitor’s + terminal directly to the common anode of the LED bar display and via an identical series-connected diode with its anode to the – terminal to the in-circuit side, (Bottom) of R7: Now we have two properly polarised capacitors storing the full wavelength.

I’ll alter my circuit diagram for the purpose of clarity. I’ve crossed out the bit of circuit we no longer need and I’ve drawn in the second series diode/capacitor, connected as I said:-

Revised Circuit Diagram

Ok; you get my drift? We added another diode and a second 10uF capacitor; each stores half of the incoming waveform and is kept polarised by its series-diode in both cases: I should have thought of that first time round. There’s no stress whatsoever on either diode now, and the need for a cross-path diode has been eliminated. Consequently this circuit will last much longer because none of the components are stressed in any way.

Forget all previous designs; build this: Experiment with different values for all the resistors, and enjoy the display.

Imagine a computer…

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I once tried a 10 watt resistor in series with the exhaust fan – I forget the value in Ohms that I used – which seemed to do the trick: The only problem being that a 10W resistor is fairly large, (I think the one I used was a wirewound ceramic out of the EHT circuit of an old TV.) not really cost-friendly if bought new, and can also generate more heat too depending upon its resistance.

I’ve also tried two fans in series but that was virtually a non-starter.

An idea I’ve just thought up this second, is to have a separate transformer with a 15 Volt or higher: 15 to 20 Volts should do the trick, secondary winding – It only need provide 500mA of current Min. – and use the AC half-wave potential to drive 2 fans at a lesser speed thus:

Connect a rectifier diode (I suggest a 1N4002) in parallel with small 10 nF capacitor across each fan opposing the polarity of the fan’s motor. e.g. connect the anode of the diode to the fan’s negative connection and vice-versa in each case.

Now connect both fans, including the two components that you’ve just connected in parallel with the fans as described above, in series so that the two negative leads from the fans are connected together/the two diodes’ anodes are effectively connected to one another via the fans’ series connection.

Connect both positive leads from the series-connected fans with the extra components added across the secondary winding of the transformer; it doesn’t matter which way round.

You should see that on power-up that both fans spin slowly and quietly. 15 Volts may not be quite enough voltage depending upon the type of fan used; so I would use an 18V secondary if possible.

How it works:

What you have flowing directly out of the transformer’s secondary winding is AC or Alternating Current. Alternating current changes polarity a given number of times per second depending upon its frequency – In this case 50 or 60 Hz.

When the polarity is one way round current flows through one of the diodes thus bypassing the fan that the diode is connected across. However since current can’t flow through the diode in series with it, due to it being against its own polarity, it flows through the other fan and causes it to start to turn. When the polarity is the other way round on the following AC half-cycle the opposite happens: The diode that was conducting no longer conducts, causing the electricity to flow through the fan; however the diode across the other fan that was previously not conducting and bypassing that fan is now able to do so, thus bypassing the fan that was originally active. The capacitors are just for interference-limiting, decoupling, and smoothing in a small way. Their reactance in this circuit is so miniscule as to be discounted and no effective alternative path is provided.

So basically the circuit that has just been constructed is sharing the entire available power between the two fans; thus causing each to run at half-power, effectively sharing the 18V between them at roughly 9V each.

As I say I’ve only just thought this up just before I wrote all this, so there are no guarantees: If you’d like to build the circuit and power up then please do: I’d be interested to hear your experiences.

If it works well and you like it then please feel free to describe my idea as FANtastic. (No fanny comments please.)

The italics above are to indicate a piece of text that has been altered: There was an editing error which left the text not making sense. This has now been corrected. Apologies.

Yesterday, while participating in the PC Mech Ustream discussion (Recorded)  http://www.ustream.tv/channel/pcmech-live , I said, as a joke, in response to Ded Ryzing’s  http://twofourtech.com/ comment that he blogged about a thermometer and received loads of hits as a result, that my next blog would be about my stapler.

OK I have since posted another blog which wasn’t about my stapler, so I have lost out as far as the next blog goes; but low and behold I now present, for your ultimate pleasurable delight, this article on the fascinating and provocative, nay scintillating and wonderful, subject of … My Stapler.

(And you thought I was joking, lol.)

There it is; in front of my spare computer, just in case you thought it was powered by an AMD Athlon 64. A throwback to the 1970s, battered, beaten, and almost worn out; but nevertheless still in satisfactory working condition.

I know it’s a lousy photo. Try again:-

There; that’s a bit clearer, although it still leaves much to be desired. From the loose rubber baseplate I can inform you that it is a Rexel Saturn, Registered “des.” (Designation? description? – Design; that sounds more fitting.) number 945957. Made in England.

In those days products made in England were made well and made to last: hence the fact that this 20-something-year-old; maybe even older, example, is still working, despite general physical abuse such as dropping, throwing, treading on once, even lending it out and not getting it back for months.

The rubber baseplate also instructs me to use only genuine Rexel No.56 staples. Fortunately I have a rather large stock of just that staple left over from when I used to trade in that type of thing some years back:-

Voila! Un staple le No.56

So there you have it: The promised, although nevertheless short, article about my stapler – And no doubt thoroughly enlightened and fascinated you are from it too!

Well I suppose I should give you a break from all this incredibly illuminating mental stimulation; so I’ll end the article here, as I realise that too much wonderment at once will probably have some sort of detrimental effect.

Therefore I end here with great sadness that I was unable to tantalise your senses any longer on this intriguing topic; so until my next post I bid you all farewell; and I hope you’ve found the topic most riveting – or should I say, most stapling?

“Is that the name on the account?” She asked.

“Well if it’s anything else I’ll get free telephone calls.” I replied.

“OK; and can I take your name please?” She asked.

“Oh for.. OK Listen very carefully: I shall say this only once.” I was starting to get annoyed. “My name is Sharron Field. MY account number is *********. The name on the account is my name. Capiche?”

“I am solly could you repeat that please.”

I checked my blood which was rising up from my body to my head. “No I won’t say it a third time.” I stated forcefully.

“I cannot help you unless I have your details.” She said.

“I can’t give you my details because you’re not listening.” I replied “Are you intending to pay me for my time that you’re wasting?”

“Hold on a minute please – Please be on the line – I am going to hand you over to my colleague.”

Another two minutes passed; I could hear a lot of Urdu being spoken. Eventually a different woman’s voice sounded:

“I am sorry about that.” She said. “My name is Bhruphiada Harinami [Another made-up Indian sounding name, but you honestly don't expect me to remember the real names do you?] and you are again through to BT. May I take your name please?”

I was starting to give up hope. “Please do me a favour and write this down.” I noticed the anxiety in my own voice. “I don’t care if I have to speak to everyone in India before someone understands me; but I don’t intend to answer the same questions every time. My name is Sharron Field: That’s Sharron with 2 “R”s.”

“How do you spell that please?” – I felt the words “Fuck” and “off” forming in my mouth, but somehow restrained myself.

I spelled out my name; in phonetics just to be on the safe side, as I knew the Indian staff were trained in phonetics by BT, and I also gave my account number again in an extremely pissed-off voice when asked. After 5 minutes I’d answered the same 2 questions 4 times and got nowhere. Progress was imminent or I was going to be ending the call and making a complaint I decided.

“How may I assist you today Miss Field?” She asked. YES! I was getting through at last!

I explained that I’d accidentally cancelled my Direct Debiting instruction and that to set it up again I needed the details of the account that I should pay in to.

“You want to set up a Direct Debit?” She asked. AARRRGH! I was becoming rapidly annoyed. I explained again.

“You want the details of your account?” She asked. I bit my tongue.

It was quite obvious that I wasn’t going to get anywhere like this; so I changed tack:

“No no no. Forget it.” I said “Start again. I’m now setting up a Direct Debit on my computer via Internet Banking, OK. I have all the details I need except that I need to know which account to pay in to.”

“I’m not sure.” Came the reply. “I will pass you on to our Finance Department…”

“You’ll do no such thing!” I interjected abruptly. “I’ll just try something. Don’t go away or pass me on to anyone. Wait a minute: Now I’m clicking Bill Payment and typing in BT; that should do the trick. OK I have been given account number GB 305*****. Is that the correct account?”

“That is a GB account yes? I don’t have any details of GB accounts available here.”

I was starting to lose it: “So you’re the public face of BT for the UK – In India of all places – And you have no idea as to which account UK customers pay their bills into?”

“Please wait. I will go and ask someone. Stay on the line please. I will not be long.”

I silently muttered several blasphemies mixed with Anglo-Saxon phraseology in the following 2 minutes until she returned:

“I am solly Miss Field but my call was cut off and I cannot get back through to the department I need to ask. You could always try to ring them yourself. I will give you their number. Do you have a pen?”

I considered this a good option as I badly needed a break and was rapidly approaching the end of my tether.

“I have a pen. Fire away.” I said.

“Hello Miss Field. Do you have a pen?”

“What’s up with you? I just told you I have a pen. What’s the number?” I replied

No answer: “Hello; can you hear me?” I asked.

Miss Field. Hello. Miss field are you there?”

“Hello I’m here. You obviously need to replace your hearing-aid battery.” I snapped.

“Miss Field I am sorry but I will have to terminate this call as you are not answering. I will suggest that you attempt to ring again on    0800 800 150   . Thank you. Goodbye.”

The Line went dead.

‘Watch BT if you do business with them: They’re very shrewd and snide: But they can be utilised in an overall cost-cutting strategy nevertheless.

I’ve had these hanging around on my desk for a few months now: I call them my “Real fags”. I see some of my American readers asking ‘Eh? WTF is she on about?’

Well for the benefit of those who don’t know; in England “fags” is a slang term for cigarettes – Which is exactly what these are; cigarettes.

My friend Sue bought them for me from the gay area of San Francisco when she was on holiday in the United States and Mexico last year.

I’ve only smoked one; and they taste appalling! Nevertheless they are very pretty, yes I’d go as far as to say very gay, fags – I mean cigarettes.

Does anyone have any more information on these cigarettes? – Like are they sold anywhere else? internationally even? I can see that they were manufactured in Belgium exclusively for Kretek International Inc, of Moorpark, California, USA – It says so on the back of the packet; but there’s no other info on it.

What’s that? You want to see a pic of my office? OK then:-

This is my green office: I’m saving energy by not turning the lights on.

It’s about time I advertised again come to think of it. I’ve been running an almost ad-free blog up until now; with just a single advertisement appearing on the index page and in a few posts. The news is that this will change soon and I’ll be going much more commercial: The ad-free days are numbered – Well something has to pay for this blog and I don’t see why it should be me. I just write the posts and pages.

I wanted to concentrate on getting a decent number of posts and pages up before I advertised for real; otherwise if the blog’s all ads and nothing else there’s no point looking at it in the first place from a readers’ perspective.

OK that’s it for this post: I need a coffee; the geek elixir of life.

Keep watching out for new entries; which appear on a rather regular basis. Why not subscribe to the RSS feed? You’ll find it at http://feeds.feedburner.com/kkomp/kzOS
Also check out the index page and get with the social networking scene. I look forward to seeing you at Twitter, identi.ca, FriendFeed, and all those mentioned.

Enjoy.

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§ Detects and removes: adware, spyware, pop-Up generators, keyloggers, trojans, hijackers, and malware

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§ Automatic definition and feature updates

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§ Protects against identity and credit card theft

 
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After a pleasant-ish May and a below-average but reasonable June; July’s weather in the UK started out wet and continued that way – With low-pressure trough after cyclonic front piling into the islands and bringing precipitation after downpour – Added to which the developing lows running in from the Atlantic were sometimes so deep at the centre that the isobaric representations of them on weather maps were resemblant of something usually occurring from late October to April over the British Isles, with gale-force winds uprooting trees in places – We seem to now at last have a respite: Sunny skies and warm temperatures are forecast for the immediate future – Although a possibility of the odd heavy shower triggered by the heat is predicted towards the end of the week in the South.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/ukweather/

Every subsequent raindrop began evoking memories for some of July 2007, where an entire month’s worth of rain fell in hours in a number of places in England, leading to flooding and massive property damage -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_Kingdom_floods

http://tinyurl.com/6jw4xd

- Not made any better by the inaction and unpreparedness of incompetent local authorities – Who were neither standing by for the forecast disaster nor able to cope with the aftermath. Hundreds of households, mainly in the Midlands, and upper Southern counties, watched in horror as roads turned into rivers and swathes of water, topsoil, vegetation, and raw sewage flowed through their properties.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/629/629/6911778.stm

England – July 2007 

So what of the rest of this year? Will the UK be basking in sub-tropical heat or swimming in torrents of mud?

I haven’t seen any predictions of expected weather trends as yet; but for what it’s worth; here’s my own long-range weather forecast based on the signs I see in nature:-

July will end with a warm and sunny climax in the South and Wales; although showers – Some heavy and thundery – will occur towards the end of the month. The North and Scotland will continue overcast with sunny periods and a Westerly breeze.

Early August will see the high pressure  system currently affecting southern parts building over Scotland and Northern France; bringing a south-easterly and settled air-stream to the entire UK: however another low-pressure from the Atlantic will threaten thundery periods of rain in the South.

As the high pressure system trundles north-easterly a second anticyclone will develop off Devon and build across the entire UK; bringing fine, sunny, settled conditions throughout the middle of August. Towards the last week of August and into September that anticyclonic area will fragment allowing another series of Atlantic lows to infiltrate the UK’s atmosphere – Bringing a return to unsettled conditions and longer periods of rain.

 
Picture taken near where I live in May 2008

Based on my forecast, (I can’t see much further than what I stated.) the message is to enjoy August – “Summer 2008 Part 2″ – as I feel a rather wet, although at times warm, September looms. (With possibly severe gales in October?)

How accurate or reliable is this forecast? Well I’m usually more right than wrong on this type of thing: It’s a combination of Witch’s intuition and female intuition. Nevertheless I could still be quite wrong: Keep your eye on the Met Office and BBC’s weather forecasts for more. http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather http://www.metoffice.gov.uk

Addendum 31.07.08

Well I got the July forecast right to a greater degree; but the signs have changed and I no longer expect August to be quite as summery as I’d expected. Overall I’m expecting a settled, sunny, and largely dry month with occasional short periods of rain or showers; but I can’t currently be any more informative than that I’m afraid, as I’ve become a little confused myself to be honest: There are signs in nature right now indicating both excellent and lousy weather, and it’s hard to know what to make of it.

I’m not and never was a trained meteorologist; I rely more on the “country girl” forecasting method. Maybe it could be a mixed bag of weather for August; or maybe the signs will change again in the next week or so? Who knows?

I won’t be updaing this particular article again; but if I notice anything marked I’ll return to the subject in anoher post.

Since its US launch in March 2006, preceding its European launch in November 2007, Amazon’s Simple Storage Service has now hit the buffers twice at time of writing; affecting sites such as Twitter, a fast-growing micro-blogging social-networking site who use S3 for static file hosting. This is also affecting Twitter clients such as Twhirl.

When working, the scalable storage infrastructure stores over 14 billion files of differing types for a variety of users including small start-ups and enterprise clients, who use the S3 service as a web-hosting service as well as a file-backup service, among other uses.

Amazon’s S3 Service last went down in February 2008, only around 5 months before this outage: Could this indicate an ongoing problem arising within the infrastructure? No such reports have been generated by any sources as far as I am aware; and if any such internal reports are circulating within Amazon then none have been leaked as far as I am aware.

The latest update on the situation that I have read at the time of writing; posted at 2:35PM PDT on this Sunday 20th, indicates that Amazon have the situation under control and that they are making good progress towards a resolution:-

“2:36 PM PDT We have restored all internal communication across Amazon S3 hosts. We have started the multi-step process to begin accepting requests across Amazon S3 locations.”

With luck it won’t be too long before the problem is totally eradicated, at least for the time being and the foreseeable future – But will there be a third outage this year? Any such further downtime would indicate serious problems and severely affect customer confidence in S3. Keep watching that space for maybe more downtime…

Another thing is that Intel will soon be facing antitrust charges for allegedly using unlawful methods to keep ahead of AMD in the marketplace. European regulators could bring the charges forward according to the Wall Street Journal.

“We are continuing to cooperate and really don’t know what the commission will do,” Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloytold the Journal. “We believe we operate within the law.”

Intel was accused by the Europen Comission of illegal practices last year; selling chips below cost and offering huge rebates to customers.

The company is also facing a formal investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission.

Intel has already been fined over £12 million by the Korean Fair Trade Commission. Intel are set to appeal; but all this litigation can’t be all that good for the chipmaker.

I was going to really make someone’s day and do a blog article to get this someone recognition and open up opportunities for her…But it wasn’t to be: Rather than seizing the opportunity and escaping at last out of the closet where she’d been stifled, through the door which I held open for her, into the freedom of space to manoeuvre; she found a board, blocked her own exit, and said she couldn’t come out because there was too much in the way.

She wanted the fame: She revelled in the little bit of recognition that she already had, and she wouldn’t have said no to any money that such an opportunity might have landed her with eventually as a direct or indirect result.

Hopefully most of us recognise this as a bad case of NMA – Negative Mental Attitude – Or to give it its correct title; Failure Mental Attitude. Yes it’s a way of thinking that will cause an individual to fail.

In itself there’s nothing wrong with failure: Every small failure is a rung on the ladder of success; and without failure there cannot be any success – But there’s failure and there’s also self-induced failure: Failure is normal, it’s a part of life that is the negative partner of success; but self induced failure is terminal: It is negative but it has no positive partner.  It is unnatural – It wastes and destroys life and its benefits.

Maybe the hunter’s trigger-finger or gun-hand was cold and needed a glove on it, but that doesn’t stop them pulling the trigger and is no excuse for not firing their weapon. Perhaps there was a rare plant growing in the vicinity, but why should that stop the hunter from doing their job? That can be sought out and studied another time. The target is lined up in the sights: Take the final step and pull the trigger. Yes the sights might be off-line; but there’s two barrels: pull the trigger…NOW.

In the same way if we – You, me, anybody – let life get in the way of our dreams and goals, then we’re inducing our own failure. There’s nothing wrong with failure provided that it is balanced with success, or neutralised by an excess of success. When a catalogue of consecutive failures is added together, without success, it makes one huge failure. If we let life get in the way of all ambition then we fail to achieve anything.

As the world economy continues to slide in a generally downward direction there is an area still in growth:

Gartner, an information technology research firm, released figures on Tuesday that indicate that worldwide PC sales for the second quarter of 2008 went up by 16 %. 71.9 million units were sold, compared to only 62 million sold in the same quarter last year; IDC, another information technology research firm, calculated a 15.3% increase and 70.6 million units sold.

Unit sales were up worldwide: Asia/Pacific was up 18.1%, Latin America was up 23.2%, and Japan saw sales increase by 8.2%. The gains were mainly the result of lower average selling prices which has left any gain in revenues fairly static despite the increase in volume, according to a Gartner analyst.

Dell dominates the U.S. market, though surprisingly HP is the world-wide market leader, with an 18.1% share compared to Dell’s 15.6%. The other three positions out of the top five globally on the Gartner or IDC charts, are held by Acer, Lenovo and Toshiba.

I had a couple of appointments in England’s capital city today.

The weather forecast which I heard yesterday sounded fairly OK: Rain was forecast to hit Southern England by 1PM and would probably get as far east as London by about 4PM, by which time I’d be on the London Underground and wouldn’t get any chance of getting wet until I got home – By which time the rain would have cleared. Perfect.

Having planned the day thus; I expected some heat with rising humidity before the rain, so a thin top and a light cardi were in order, and a cotton skirt was a good idea. It was rather grey and cool when I left home; but that was early in the morning and I expected it to warm up somewhat – Especially in London which of late has always been a degree or two warmer.

I got talking to a girl on the train- Hi if you’re reading this (I won’t mention any name as I didn’t ask for permission to do so anyway.) The PO Box number on the card I gave you is wrong BTW because it’s an old card; I’ve just realised that, but all the other information is current. The correct PO Box number is 2191 if I’m going on a Christmas list . I hope you enjoyed the day more than I did. All the best.

(At this point I think I’ll have a small-print rant regarding a totally unrelated issue to do with completely different people:-

Since that PO Box is Kustom Komputa’s box I’ll just state here that I notice that a few tards from the newsgroups have caused Google to be filled with a load of negative crap in relation to Kustom Komputa by making derogatory comments online whilst using the name “Kustom Komputa”: Listen tards; Kustom Komputa is a small personal enterprise knocking out the odd unique computer to a number of customers. All I get from it is pocket money if I’m lucky, as well as the joy of creating a new computer and making another customer happy. It’s not Microsoft or Dell; and don’t think that you can make yourself look big or better by openly criticising it. OK so some Lintards are better web designers than me: Good for them. End of issue. Also nobody has phoned Kustom Komputa regarding the matter of “AquireCredentialsHandle on Vista”, as stated in some of the Linux forums. (I have absolutely no idea why the author stated that they did.)

To cut a long story short I emerged at Waterloo Station to the same dank and dismal overcast weather as I’d left at home. As the day continued it seemed to start raining every time I emerged into the open and stop every time I went indoors. London seemed to lack that feeling of life in the fast lane today: In fact it seemed dead and uninteresting. I’m not sure if it has something to do with me getting old(er) but the “zing” has gone out of a lot of things and appeared in others which I never used to have much interest in at all.

Eventually I did a bit of window shopping, since I was quite wet anyway, and had to drag myself away by the ear from several items of clothing and jewellery that almost had me reaching for my purse, and probably would have had me reaching for a wardrobe extension and a larger overdraft facility had I purchased them.

So all-in-all the day could have been worse, but it was rather non-descript and it won’t be going down in my personal history record as anything worth going on about. So why am I going on about it here? I’m not. End of story.

—

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You may or may not be aware that I run this blog on WordPress; a ready-made php blogging suite available free from WordPress.org. http://wordpress.org/

Yesterday I opened the admin account to discover that a new version of WordPress had been released. It was emblazoned across every page (Not on the public blog but on the pages I use.): “A new version has been released – Upgrade now” or some similar linked wording. I ignored it for the time being, and went to Windows Live Writer to write up yesterday’s scoop. Having uploaded that to my blog I returned to WordPress the edit screen within WordPress to give it a final edit and proof-read prior to publication pending addition to the RSS feed. Still nagging me in my vision were the linked words “Upgrade now”.

After I’d published the scoop I decided to click the link in question: The manual upgrade instructions looked fairly straightforward and none too baffling but it was a case of getting it right first and only time: ‘Not one of my specialities. I decided to leave it for now and clicked the back button in my browser. “…Upgrade now” was the first thing I saw. Nag , nag, nag. OK it needed doing. but can I please turn the notification off until I reboot or something?

No. Upgrade NOW…NOW…It was starting to make me feel guilty for not doing so. I read a few other blogs – Words like “I upgraded my WP install today without any problems – ‘Piece of cake…”.

F..k this! I am not going to be made to feel guilty for doing my upgrade in my own time. I will not bow to pressure. I’ll do it tomorrow for definite. Close Page, make more coffee.

Today I log in. ‘First thing I see: “…Upgrade now”: Oh for f..k’s sake! Yes I’ll do it NOW – All right?! (Redhead part of me activated.) I’d heard or read somewhere that there was an auto-upgrade plugin. I know it’s NMA (Negative mental Attitude) but I knew I was going to make just the one mistake with a manual upgrade that would send the whole thing tits-up and lose everything: Murphy’s Law in action.

I Googled and found the plugin:-

http://techie-buzz.com/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade-plugin.html

Save to local machine – done – unzip- done -ftp up to the correct directory on kkomp.com – done…”This is too easy: Whatever you do don’t start panicking. Hold it together girl”… log in to account – done – activate plugin – done – run plugin (Hovers mouse over link; closes eyes…and…) – done:

Five self-explanatory steps or so later and – Yes: Target neutralised! (I sooo wish I’d captured the screens – but I was too emotional to care at that point.) Success!

My experience with the auto-update plugin was a happy and positive one. The plugin’s creator, Keith D’sousa, has put a lot of time and effort into making this plugin and fully debugging it to enable it to work flawlessly. If you use it either now or in the future please please do donate: Even $5USD is a minimum amount as a thank-you for all the effort that’s been put into it.

The new Apple iPhone: Probably the most popular and well-known product around in today’s market. What will cause an ongoing problem with the iPhone; both the old model as well as the latest offering, is the buggy software platform developed by Apple which is currently being used as an operating system in all Apple iPhones.

Although many people swear by the iPhone and think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread; there is a better product out there; and one which Apple both fear and beat into submission by gazumping the market with an early release, causing a buggy and underdeveloped platform to be issued to users ahead of the intended release date.

I discovered this fact today in the strangest and most unexpected of ways: The story goes like this:-

Today I went to town to buy a few things and tie up a few loose ends: It was a sweltering hot day with broken cloud and extremely high humidity. I so longed to be back in my air-conditioned office with a cool breeze from the fan; but right now I had several carrier bags tied to my handbag and was trapsing through the hot streets toward the chemist’s (Pharmacy). As I sat on the waiting bench in the shop in lieu of my prescription being assembled I thought I’d try out my new mobile device on the wi-fi hotspot nearby by posting to Twitter: That was easier said than done. I got through and was told that I was on a 30-minute session and that I had to sign up to The Cloud via McDonald’s which was where the nearest hotspot was located. This I did and was then shown hundreds of screens giving information on The Cloud. I emerged from the maze confused and bewildered to a web browser sponsored by McDonald’s that required me to log in again and provide loads of personal information, fill out a survey regarding my customer experience with McDonald’s, and give my impressions of their internet service. Having answered everything with the word “crap” I was sent back to The Cloud’s index page: Nowhere could I find a decent web browser and I just gave up.

Later on; sweating like a pig in the humidity and heat, whilst laden with carrier bags I made it to a taxi-rank and got into a taxi cab. Somehow I got talking to the driver about the Apple iPhone. I explained that I was a blogger and that I’d written an article or two about the iPhone; particularly regarding the buggy platform software that Apple had issued as an operating system, and although people were trying to blame the App developers for the failure of the software from the App store; it was the fault of Apple themselves. It was at this point that that the driver gave me the scoop:-

Evidently his brother-in-law was a manager at Apple and had revealed that Apple had rushed the platform development through to be out ahead of the release of the LG Viewty (Pictured above.)

 http://viewty.lgmobile.com/uk/ 

- A MUCH BETTER cameraphone with software that works properly and which would have wiped the floor with Apple.

In order to get their inferior product into full sale ahead of a decent much more user-friendly and higher-quality competitive product, Apple employed some dirty tricks at the expense of both customers and quality.

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39030107,49292601,00.htm 

http://www.mobile-phones-uk.org.uk/lg-viewty-ku990.htm

Had Apple not been such a big name, and had they waited until their platform was properly de-bugged, the LG Viewty would have been incredible and quality competition against the iPhone: It’s similar-looking, more functional, and runs totally bug-less software. In the dog-eat-dog world of business however it’s no longer the better product that makes it; rather it’s the better-known producer with the snidiest tactics that gets the top spot regardless of the product.

So it is with (Cr)Apple: Dirty tricks and concentration on sales volume rather than customer satisfaction – The mark of greedy Steve Jobs, who somehow manages to sell a load of bad jobs for a fortune. Hola cowboy!

Just a cotton-pickin’ Apple-pushin’ gazumping cowboy. Yee-haah!

I haven’t seen this featured in any other how-to guides; so I’m posting it here on this blog in the hope that somebody will find it helpful. Yes I know it’s a bit late for XP tips and tricks; but better late than never. (I have published this before elsewhere BTW.)

In the XP Menu which comes up when you press the Start button there’s a Run command-box with which you can summon a command prompt by typing “cmd” and pressing return.

That’s all very well but the operation can be uncomplicated further: For the sake of speed and efficiency it may be an idea to have an icon on the Desktop which you can simply click to open a command prompt, without all the extra hassle. Secondly to this there’s also times when you’d prefer to run the command prompt from a different root-directory than the default.

The solution is simplicity itself: Copy the file C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\cmd.exe and paste it to your desktop: When you click on the cmd.exe icon a dos window will appear with a command prompt running from directory %Systemroot%\Documents and Settings\<username>\Desktop. If you want to run the command prompt from the C: directory then copy and paste the file cmd.exe to C:, create a shortcut to C:\cmd.exe and place it on your desktop – You can copy and paste cmd.exe to any directory, therefore you can run a command prompt from any directory on any level; so if you want to run it from root-directory D: (Assuming you have a permanent local D: drive.) just copy and paste cmd.exe to D:, create a shortcut to D:\cmd.exe and place it on your desktop – or indeed anywhere else you may prefer to have the shortcut.

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Don’t be alarmed if everybody starts getting crabs in August.

Hexbug crabs to be exact, can be contracted from Innovation First .

The Hexbug crab is the latest in the line of Hexbug microrobotic toys of Greenville, Texas; that will sell in the USA for about $9.99. It’s been developed mainly for the amusement of children; which therefore means (male) geeks worldwide will be flocking to the stores for one of their own. Possibly it’ll even get used in offices as a gimmick; although I see a much more useful employment of it around the home clearing up mess from the floors; or an army of them blitzing a house from top to bottom saving large amounts of time on housework; like an army of huge nanoids; each with its own specific program. Development so far, however, has only gifted it with a basic intelligence and no practical purpose other than to get under the feet of those who are actually trying to be properly productive. It roams every available space and interacts with the environment to a limited extent; with touch sensors on its legs with which it can negotiate its way around obstacles. It has light sensors also; and is programmed to find the darkest recesses and hide away in a similar way to a real crab.

In my opinion it would be better to attach photoelectric cells to its shell-top and program it to find light when it was idle or running short of power from its chores so that it could recharge a small lithium battery or similar. This would increase its independence  and allow it to complete any function assigned to it more efficiently without the need for constant recharging.

But it’s been designed as a boy’s toy; so therefore it is no more than essentially a waste of resources which serves no useful purpose other than to eventually add to the growing piles of electromechanical garbage for recycling into whatever when it gets damaged beyond reasonable repair or wears out.

—

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Come along; it’s all wrong: get ripped off at the Apple App Store:

We have software – that isn’t working; – and we want to sell it all to you.

We are snide; and we lied: Have a ride on our faulty platform;

Because your money – is what we’re after: Steve Jobs wants to be a bill-i-on-aire.

- Yeah yeah yeah yeah.

“CUPERTINO, California—July 14, 2008—Apple® today announced that iPhone™ and iPod® touch users have already downloaded more than 10 million applications from its groundbreaking new App Store since its launch late last week. Developers have created a wide array of innovative mobile applications ranging from games to location-based social networking to medical applications to enterprise productivity tools. Users can wirelessly download applications directly onto their iPhone or iPod touch* and start using them immediately. More than 800 native applications are now available on the App Store, with more than 200 offered for free and more than 90 percent priced at less than $10.”

““The App Store is a grand slam, with a staggering 10 million applications downloaded in just three days,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Developers have created some extraordinary applications, and the App Store can wirelessly deliver them to every iPhone and iPod touch user instantly.””

Inside the iPhone  

Take a look inside (Don’t) 

Full of bugs

You pay your fee; you download the application you’ve just bought from the Apple App store to your new iPhone, you open the application, get a blank screen, and are returned to the home page; or the phone resets. Great: Thanks for nothing. Thank you Apple for making developers rush to meet your deadline with buggy progs.

…And the developer community say it’s Apple’s fault also: it turns out that it’s not the applications that are buggy after all apparently: From the crash logs it appears that the problem is with the 2.0 firmware’s instability; therefore although Apple made developers rush to meet a deadline; didn’t even build a solid platform on which developers could build.

People who have seen the crash logs in question themselves appear happy with the developers’ opinion; although there are reportedly some not-so-excellent applications in the App store it appears: It doesn’t matter how great the hardware; if the software’s not up to scratch you’ll have problems.

I foresee a game of buck-passing coming up; with Apple blaming the developers who in turn blame Apple – And then I expect to see large firmware updates appearing and being downloaded: All this has the whiff of Microsoft to my mind!

As I checked this recently-started blog today I was wondering at the continued lack of visitors and subscribers. OK so I’ve rushed out a number of articles up until now simply to give my blog some content as a base or foundation on which to build. Some of the articles may lack content in themselves or be short on page-formatting admittedly: OK I call that my green blogging credentials; hell I’ve only been at this game a few weeks and I’m trying to establish a reputation and an online presence.

Links links links: Nobody links to me – OK very few people know me as such online as yet; but I’m there in Google somewhere at the back-end of the results. Of course if more people linked to me I’d rise up the table somewhat. I’ve already started to feel like a social pariah in a way: There are very few bloggers in the UK; and those that there are are invariably male – Which surprised me to some extent; as women are generally much more communicative than men – But as I was soon to learn it’s not so much a case of a desire to communicate amongst men but more of a testosterone-driven ego-thing:

I looked at my email. Something had arrived from the desk of Tara Hunt who runs ::HorsePigCow:: marketing uncommon (http://www.horsepigcow.com/), and who I subscribe to. I read down and clicked a few links: and somehow found my way to a blog by Shelley Powers and a very fitting article http://burningbird.net/connecting/guys-dont-link/ called “Guy’s Don’t Link”.

Now please do read that; (If you don’t you won’t know what I’m on about from hereonin.) it says one hell of a lot; and quite frankly I believe, no matter how tongue-in-cheek the article was intended to be, that she has hit the nail squarely on the head. Freudian in nature it may well be; but a link as a guy’s penis extension makes sense to me. The internet is becoming a great big men’s room, with male tech-nerds turning to cyberspace to show off their prowess and compete in a virtual-male-bonding- exercise.

It therefore follows that the more their links are used the more their virtual organ perpetrates its flow of seed onto the net, and when bonded males link to each other’s sites…hmm I don’t want to get into the subject of virtual male-link-homosexuality in this article – The scenario is becoming far too complicated and heavy for my liking. But following that line – It makes sense for guys to link to women’s blogs as we girls are quite fertile in imagination and in verbal dexterity: With a little encouragement we could make product together: Fertilise ideas and spawn baby-blogs that grow into adult proportions and become objects of adoration for us and status symbols for the men: Oh yes they have no idea of the huge chances they are missing out on due to their chauvinism! – Online dating will never be the same. Cybersex will take on a whole new meaning; with a growing collective of blogfathers perpetrating the blogosphere by means of putting their links around and increasing the seed of the internet, traffic, to flow through their link-tools.

The Alpha-blogger and ruler of all blogging tribes will one day stand on high at the top of his mighty domain; draw his autolinker from its embedded cyber-sheath, hold it aloft above his head and declare in a loud voice to all the online community

“By the power of html – I have the power!”

And what of those males with linkage dysfunction? What of the cyber-dykes who accept no links from men and block all such attempts?  What of the male bloggers who prefer to stay in the men’s rooms and link to one another in a cybergay clique? Who amongst the girls will end up with virtual cystic fibrosis? What if there were an online AIDS epidemic? Would male bloggers indulge in the act of bloggery? Would there be a population explosion? Is the planet destined to be a world  only of servers after significant advances in artificial intelligence; hardly able to sustain the blog population? What of the real human race: Will it be replaced by IT?! :-

The skeleton of the last Alpha-Blogger lies in an open sarcophagus next to his statue outside his crumbling abode, ravaged by the passage of time -The only piece of available land no longer occupied by a building containing millions of servers, each hosting hundreds of blogs. Planet earth is almost barren apart from the server complexes stretching out into infinity and seeming to vanish on the horizon. The maintenance-droids occasionally wander through the corridors between buildings in the cool of the evening; each assigned a new task to maintain another server unit. Here and there uncleared vegetation takes a hold on a patch of ground between the vast walls of the giant complexes, as termites; one of the few surviving lifeforms, aerate the soil and attempt to construct their partially above-ground accommodation.

Inside a beautifully-furnished house in the Northern hemisphere of the newly-terraformed Mars there’s an all-girl party going on. Men had all but died out save for the few that travelled to Mars before the accomplishments of masculinity finally ruined the planet which they had once taken charge of. The situation is now reversed as it should be, with women – The most prolific and intelligent gender of the human species in charge of the new planetary home. Any men that are on Mars are selected by the leaders for breeding duties to perpetuate the human race. The tables have turned, and at last by bitter experience the men have discovered that the macho ways are counterproductive.

Deceptive as always, however, in an underground cellar hidden from view of the new civilisation, a group of men meet under the name “The Cult of Open Source”. The speaker, known only as Linux User 1, engages a switch and the monitor traces expand out from the point of origin as the seeds of revolution are sown. A voice crackles into existence on the audio:

“This is Linux User 256 : Remote – Linking to your blog…”

Perhaps to be continued…

Picture: I think the Linux Users have just found some real technology.

The Windows Live Services can be somewhat of a conundrum in themselves. Microsoft appear to be producing everything and anything under the handle “Live” in the way of services; some of which are scrapped virtually as soon as they’re off the production line: “That was a stupid idea; put it in the trash.” Others seemingly last and remain in circulation within a specialist market: Some even hit the bigtime; such as Windows Live Messenger – MSN messenger with a redesigned GUI under a different name, or Windows Live Spaces; which has taken off in a major way amongst the freeloader amateur bloggers. One Live application which hasn’t been overly recognised, however, is Windows Live Writer; Which I’m using  right now, and I’m going to tell you a bit about my impressions whilst doing so…

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Although this picture (Left) has absolutely no relevance to this article whatsoever; I just thought I’d include it for the hell of it. It’s of a computer undergoing testing on the bench at Kustom Komputa’s workshop. (http://www.kustomkomputa.co.uk)

I’m a relative newcomer to the world of professional blogging: You’ll notice that, even though I’ve been churning out articles on an almost daily basis over the past weeks; they’ve tended at least at first to lack presentation style and appear very basic: Text upon text with very little if any proper formatting, and maybe an illustration centred top and bottom of text. Whilst the retro style may be nice in the eyes of those viewing the Internet from 1999 through a time-portal; it’s legibility may leave something to be desired by readers in the current time-stream.

Windows Live Writer extends the limited functionality of the normal blog editing interface; which in my case is WordPress, by allowing a full manual pre-formatting using functions that you’d find in programs like M$ Word; but that WordPress just doesn’t have. The article called “CRT Conundrum” was edited in Microsoft Word 12 and I was rather comforted by the extra functionality that Word provided, even though I didn’t use it much as I was experimenting to see if I could transfer from Word to WordPress, and I made a bit of an untidy job of it at the end of the day. The problem appeared after the article was finished and I wanted to transfer the draft from Word to WordPress for finalisation. Solution: Save the .rtf or .docx file  as a .html or .htm document; then copy and paste it into a new blank post created in WordPress. Yes it works and it works well. The associated issues are: 1) Too much hassle. 2) Too much mess left behind: a .rtf file, a .htm or html file, and a <filename>_files folder full of graphical images etc left behind cluttering up the desktop and using up more HDD space. Yes these can be deleted or stored but it is really too much hassle.

<Windows Live Writer>; A lot of the functionality of Word, combined with a direct interface to one’s personal blog: For example you can create tables, change the colour of the font, change the font, font size, italicise, bold, both if you like, and everything else that Word can do. unlike Word 12 in Office 2007 it’s not possible to see the changes as they will be before you make them; but who’s complaining? The functionality increase over WordPress standard is colossal when pre-editing using Windows Live Writer…And when the editing is complete just upload it straight from Writer to your blog – And this is where I find a slight conflict appears: In Writer; no matter how exactly perfectly and whatever degree of precision one formats it with; when it’s uploaded to WordPress it just ain’t the same – Ever. There’s always at least one minor correction I find I have to make after transfer; so I’ve found the answer to be that I don’t take ages formatting it perfectly in Writer; rather I do things that WordPress can’t do; like draw tables to put text and pictures in for formatting purposes and justify text within the table framework, in Writer: (I know: I boobed.) I make it look as good as it’ll ever be with emphasis upon those things that WP just doesn’t have the functionality to do…And then I upload it to WP from Writer. having done so I can adjust the formatting in WP and eradicate that extra line-break that mysteriously appeared. or add the paragraph formatting in the html window of WP to a piece of text that looked fine in Writer but appears all cramped in WP.

Probably as new versions of WP appear these bugs and compatibility issues will be ironed out. Maybe they’ll also introduce the functionality of Writer to WP; in which case this subject becomes a whole new ball-game

Another minor, or maybe major, incompatibility that I’ve noticed is causing all that space to the right of this text to be wasted, is the default table sizing in Writer: Now before we continue any further I will admit that there is a certain degree of laziness on my part involved here: But look at it this way: That space can be taken up by widgets. I know it’s not this far down the page but it can be. I’m writing inside a table to stop the text flowing into the widget space – So why don’t I just fence off the text inside a table until the widgets run out and then use the entire page? That may on the face of it appear a logical conclusion to draw; but guessing exactly where the widgets end in Writer without being able to see them is dodgy stuff. Also the table width may change just slightly on upload, as may the font sizing; and what if I want to add more widgets at some point? Oh dear I’ll have to go and reformat my article(s). The theme that I’m using may have some bearing upon this also; but I like this theme; it very “me”; and I’m not going to change it. A positive point of this formatting style using near the default Writer 1Row x 1Column as a margin is that it’s better for mobile devices. If you haven’t viewed this blog through a mobile device I suggest you give it a try and you’ll understand what I mean. Of course the default table size can be dragged to slightly larger as I’ve done herein. It’s also a lot easier to create links and link text and images in WL Writer.

Then of course there’s always the option of splitting the table to divide the written area between text and illustration: Bugs here can be incorporated into the main text area and annexed off into his own little partition, which is something that simply can’t be done using WordPress alone. (If it can then either I’ve missed a biggie or I’m using an old version of WordPress.)

If I was using WP alone I’d have to place Bugs (Above) between lines of text which span the entire page and end up with something with a retro-feel to it once again.

I could ramble on ad-infinitum with an in-depth analysis of Writer vs WordPress issues, and no doubt bore you, my readers, to tears – So save to say that I’m getting quite familiar with WL Writer and using it in conjunction with WP, I’ll say no more.

The title of this article may appear familiar to some of you as I did attempt to write on it before and posted an incomplete article by mistake in June of this year. When I noticed my error I took it down again and it remained in WL Writer Drafts section until now, when I thought that I may as well have a go at rewriting it rather than waste it: hence what you’ve just read.

Right I’m saving this into the Drafts and I think I’ll publish. I may as well do so as not… Actually I think I might make Bugs into an icon.. But that’s something of no vast consequence as yet which may or may not be in the pipeline.

I wasn’t too happy with the way the first draft of this item was going; and I’m still not too happy with it now to be quite honest – But I’ve gone ahead and published before in such a case so in for a penny – It’s something to read after all. David Risley has a much better and more detailed article on the subject at PC Mech, so I’ll do him a favour and link it here:

http://www.pcmech.com/article/how-to-manually-edit-blog-styles-for-windows-live-writer/

It might be and probably is in the members-only section, so you’ll have to buy membership – Which is well worth it for the price believe you me. I have no advertising contract with David Risley or PC Mech, so it makes no difference to me whether you do or not; but I reckon it would be a good idea; especially if you’re a geek and even more so if you live in the USA.

I’ll doubtless be back with something equally; hopefully a lot more fascinating, in due course. For now that’s yer lot.

So just in case you were wondering exactly what fancy equipment I use to produce this blog on I’ll give you a quick rundown:-

None of it is in fact that ultra-hot as in “Wow look at that!” It’s pretty bog-standard run-of-the-mill stuff:

My Computer

The computer that I’m editing this post on is in fact a Kustom Komputa INXPense which is one of the older models from the days when Kustom Komputa did baseline ranges. (OK there is currently the g1RL-p0W3R range: but that’s a limited promotional range.) What Kustom Komputa used to do is to offer several stet designs which were then “Kustomised” – Which means exactly the same as customised; the same word spelled with a “C” – to the individual customer’s specifications and their requirements based upon their usage data supplied on the Quotation Request form. These days Kustom Komputa gain only a preliminary basic set of data from that form, and follow that information up by communication with the customer by email to gain a more specific idea of the customer’s requirements and required specifications.

So the INXPense model that I built for myself (I actually run Kustom Komputa : http://www.kustomkomputa.co.uk) has a SATA 40GB Hitachi HDD containing the C: drive; a SATA 160GB Seagate HDD containing the removable D: drive in a plastic caddy, and also has a 500GB LaCie external HDD connected via USB. If you look at the picture you can see the INXPense computer in the background with the beige-coloured locking-caddy; which was what I had in stock at the time – It’s all built from new components but I cleared a bit of old stock by using it in the construction of this machine. The DVD drive I used was an IDE Samsung SH-S183A. These are in fact very nice drives and Samsung constantly upgrade the firmware and supply a program which automatically upgrades it for you as they release a new update. Moving inside to the guts of the box: It’s running a dual-core AMD Athlon 64 x 2 4200+ 2.2GHz CPU, utilising the standard AMD cooler supplied with the CPU, with 2GB 533MHz DDR2 RAM and a 256MB Asus nVidia graphics card driving a 17″ CRT from a VGA port. (I still prefer CRT monitors no matter what anyone says.) ‘ Not forgetting a fitted floppy drive: I still find a use for floppies to this day. It has 2 NICs; a gigabit ethernet NIC on the Asus motherboard and a second 10/100 card in a PCI slot. The keyboard is an older PS2 Microsoft Natural Keyboard and the mouse is an optical mouse run from USB. I’m using the onboard sound which is Realtek High definition Audio in 4 channel mode fed from the Front channel into a pair of stereo speakers and from the back channel into a 2.1 surround sound setup with a pair of stereo speakers and a very heavy bass speaker. (Music; when I ever get time to play it, sounds absolutely fantastic, as the speakers, despite being cheap, have really good performance.) I also have 2 webcams, a desk microphone, a bluetooth dongle, a  rather old Canoscan FB620U scanner, and a Samsung ML-2010 laser printer; all running from USB.

BT Home Hub – A VOIP Ripoff

What you see in the foreground is my BT Home Hub router complete with BT VOIP phone, which is good to use after work as it’s free between 6PM and Midnight, but the savings over and above a BT landline made during working hours are so negligible as to be ignored: Therefore for normal purposes I have a BT line routed through an external carrier that charges me a 5p connection fee for every UK landline call and nothing else no matter how long I stay on the line; therefore I can be on the phone for 2 hours and it’ll cost me only 5p: That’s about 11 cents US.

Money-Saver

I am going to tell you who this carrier is so that you too can make huge savings if you live in the UK: What you do is you go to

 http://www.18185.co.uk

in your browser, sign up using your Credit Card, Debit Card, or Direct Debiting mandate, specify the number(s) you want to register with the service, and as soon as you’ve been verified you’re away – It really is that simple. What you do after you’re registered is dial 18185 before every call you make to a landline or a mobile and benefit from zero pence a minute with a 5p connection charge for landline calls, and currently 4.5p a minute for calls to mobiles.

UPS

For business purposes I have a dedicated non-BT line…But that’s another matter. The router is sitting on top of one of my two UPS units: Basically this UPS feeds this computer box and the other (spare) computer box. The other UPS feeds everything else, such as router. monitor, external HDD, desk-light – Oh you’d be surprised how few people think to wire a light into a post-UPS circuit. My desk-light consists of an 11Watt PL-11 fluorescent, which uses so little current (4mA at 240V) it’ll even work after the UPS starts beeping out that it’s empty.

US UPS

(I often wonder about American UPS units: It follows that since the voltage used is half that used in the UK then the current drawn by a computer running on 120V would be twice that used by an identical computer running on 240V: Which means that an American UPS has to handle twice the current of an equivalent UK UPS and therefore must by necessity have double the rating; making it larger, bulkier, and hotter-running.)

The Other Comp

The next piccy is my “spare” or second comp: this is an even older baseline model; namely the first baseline model ever built by Kustom Komputa and known as “Exel”: Now this is so dated it actually has a single-core Athlon 64 3500+ CPU running at 2.2GHz, has a 10/100 NIC on the Shuttle motherboard; but all the same it still has 2GB 533MHz DDR2 RAM and also a 512MB Asus nVidia graphics card. It has a single 160GB HDD partitioned into 2 drives, it has a 2 DVD-RW drives; one is a Samsung SH-S182D, the other is some generic heap salvaged from the spares box. It also has a 7 drive card-reader. Also there’s an external floppy drive too. Currently I don’t even have a monitor connected to it; if I do use it I connect through the network and use the CRT screen to view it via my usual comp.

I Still Love CRTs

Finally here’s the old Orion CRT monitor: Which has a better picture than any TFT/LED screen I’ve ever seen, even in its 9th year of life. – No word if a lie; it was built December 1999 and has been working fully efficiently ever since. Beat that if you like/can. Oh sorry; there’s no picture of that, so instead here’s my Sony Ericsson z750i flip phone. (Below).

I’ll eventually try to get some better pics; but these will have to do for now.

You are reading the third edition (Final Retail) which has replaced all other editions. Each edition is extremely similar to the previous edition but with added content.

Ok here’s my first thoughts about the whole damn thing:-

Today everywhere has been alive with iPhone buzz: FFS it’s only a phone! Networks are overcharging, Apple are overcharging, but the crowds just keep charging up to the counters for the pleasure of getting ripped off so they can say “Ooh look at me; I’ve got the latest gadget -Just like everyone else!” Pfft!

Big deal! Clever you with your new toy – Moving on: In a case of perfect timing WordPress have announced WordPress for the iPhone: Now you can blog with your new toy too if you know how to read and write. Remember that thing called school that you tried to avoid? At school they taught you how to read and write…Oh never mind; go play with your iPhone.

Don’t hold your breath on wpiPhone though. (That’s WordPress for the iPhone for the benefit of iPhone owners.) I have a weird premonition that it might just go to pot as they try to make it bloom. Keep watching for nipples and if you see more than one then wpiPhone has probably gone tits-up.

I just cannot credit the hysteria about a phone – Holy carp!

I set out to be brief on this article; and brief I shall be. When the hype has ceased to have any residual effect and networks send people their bills for using the phone.

(Phone is what it is and it’s not mine and probably never will be, so why call it an iPhone? Information – pah! Try reading classes first. ROFL. I wonder; can Chris Pirillo’s followers read the instructions? PMSL!

Google – Help; I’m in hysterics!

Chris Pirillo <—Yay! AVG 8. 

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=pirillo

I always and without fail crease up every time Pirillo announces an apology in his posts that certain things may involve reading. I bet Apple never thought to include a text-reader in their new phone though did they? – Hey don’t take it personally; you got great advertising out of it.)

The new iPhone – The perfect escapism for the cyber-escapist – Until the first bill arrives: You just wait. <chuckle>

iPhone, iPhone, folla-diddle-i-phone; iPhone, iPhone, folla-diddle-i.

iPhone, rip-off, overcharged by networks; goon-fad, boy’s toy, I will never buy.

I could be wrong; I have been known to be so before; but I reckon it’s all a big hyped up load of trash and people will end up regretting the day they ever set eyes on an – Oh I’ll utter it then. – iPhone. <shiver>

That’s all; that’s my twopennethworth.

No it isn’t: I lied: ‘Still same day and already the problems have started!

“Software problems bug Apple’s launch of new iPhone” Friday July 11, 1:59 pm ET

My thanks to David Risley of  PCMech for providing the following link via Twitter

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080711/apple_iphone.html?.v=27

And so it begins:

“”Steve Jobs knows what people want,” Web developer Lucinda McCullough told the Christchurch Press newspaper, referring to Apple’s chief executive. “And I need a new phone.”"

-Quoted from that linked site.

Then why the hell am I trying to sell unique quality desktop computers? If Steve Jobs really does know what people want I’ll get a few old wrecks that no longer work properly out of the spares cabinet, give them a quick identical case mod, and sell them at an exaggerated price: Who cares whether they work or not provided they all look the same and are the latest fad eh Mr Jobs? While we’re at it Steve Jobs; perhaps you’d inform me why it is that you’re named after a polite english slang term for crap?

Brilliant Headline from Gizmodo.com:-

“Apple and AT&T Stores Having Difficulty Activating iPhones (UPDATE: It’s the iPocalypse)” (Linked)

“Even the iTunes link on Apple is gone. “

Throughout the entire United States and Canada; in fact seemingly worldwide, Apple’s servers have crashed or are over-capacity

“So How Did This Happen:
The source of the iTunes crash/slowdown seems not be those buying iPhone 3Gs from Apple/AT&T stores at all but the millions of people updating to the new firmware at home. Firmware 2.0 isn’t like other firmwares in that it needs to update the phone and reauthenticate the service. And in turn, when the servers are slammed and the phone reaches for reauthentication, the server isn’t always there to reactivate the service. This is how some of those newly bricked iPhones are occurring, and a source tells us that even first gen iPhones are susceptible.”

Unacceptable: There is no other word for it. The internet isn’t to blame: The wiring isn’t stretched to capacity, the isps are taking the load without trouble. The problem is Apple – Nobody else: Sheer incompetence!

“iTunes activation servers go down, iPhone 3G customers being sent home unactivated, first-gen iPhone customers stuck with dead iPhones.”

From http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/11/itunes-activation-servers-go-down-iphone-3g-customers-being-sen/

“Update: Apple has confirmed to us that activation is down, and that customers are being asked to take the phone home and activate via iTunes later. We’re not sure what good that’ll do, since the servers are down no matter where you are, but Apple says it’s “working on a solution.” In the meantime, it looks like the new SIM works in first-gen units, so at least upgraders aren’t totally phone-deprived. Oh, and remember that updating a first-gen iPhone to 2.0 requires hitting the server as well, so if you haven’t taken the plunge we’d say hold off until this all gets sorted.”

“Update 2: In related news, those updating their first-gen iPhone to 2.0 are also getting caught in the activation shuffle, leaving some with bricked iPhones. In our test case, the activation servers came back up after about 45 minutes just long enough to get 2.0 running on our first-gen iPhone, but not all have been so lucky.”

<Fits of laughter>

“This does not look good. Apparently people at home can’t even upgrade to firmware 2.0 and the problem is afflicting iTunes on an international scale.”

This is the end of my coverage for this article: Follow this link for the continuing saga:

http://gizmodo.com/5024187/apple-and-att-stores-having-difficulty-activating-iphones-update-its-the-ipocalypse

The Joke is on Apple.

Why not go buy a Mac?… ROTFLMAO!

 I just have to add this: It had me in stitches:-

From Steve Rubel on Flickr:

Can a successful UK company advertise by word-of-mouth only and thrive? If the Utility Warehouse is anything to go by of this then the answer is YES.

Back in the 1980s a new business model was pioneered in the UK, at times by less-than-ethical entrepreneurs. It involved an interested party promoting a product through a tiered structure of affiliates, and became known as the pyramid scheme. Initially it usually involved new people in the “downline” purchasing a quantity of product and retailing this whilst at the same time building their own “downline”. Many unscrupulous types quickly cottoned on and used this method to retail cheap low quality products through their downlines with themselves at the top of the pyramid, raking in a fortune in exchange for very little work in return. The first sign of trouble, such as a trading standards officer sniffing around, or an investigation of any kind, and our shady character at the top would vanish into oblivion with their fortune and leave their downlines to carry the can. As people became wise to the recruiters offering unlimited income from this method, having either known others who had been stung as a customer or a downliner, so this type of business system developed a nasty reputation and went largely out of vogue. Eventually the British Government restricted and regulated this practice with legal constraints and enforcement to such an extent that it became impossible for unscrupulous traders to earn a fast buck from it, added to which the words “Pyramid Scheme” had virtually become a swearword. Certain more-ethical, sometimes reputable, entrepreneurs and businesspeople did try to continue to attempt to use the system, this time fully legally and ethically, under statutory regulation, even renaming it to Network Marketing; but it appeared that due to the bad reputation it had gained initially there was no future for it, and most of the schemes collapsed.

There was one man, though, who saw a massive potential in the regulated network marketplace; now “multi-level marketing”, and decided to take those ideas further despite the residual prejudice. This person was The Hon. Charles Wigoder:

The following quotations are taken from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoples_Phone)

Biography

“The son of The Right Honourable Lord Wigoder, QC PC^[1] (his children are entitled to use The Honourable title), Charles studied Accountancy and Law at University of Kent^[2].”

“Wigoder qualified as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG in 1984 and was subsequently employed by Kleinwort Securities as an investment analyst in the media and communication sectors – where he met Michael Green. Green later hired Wigoder in 1985 as head of corporate finance and development at television services company Carlton Communications, to accelerate growth of the organisation; whilst he was there, turnover grew from under £5m to over £200m. He subsequently moved to Sangers Photographic, a USM listed wholesaler of photographic equipment, where he spent a frenetic 9 months taking the business to a full stock market listing and expanding the group’s activities to include a wide range of photographic, video and communications services.”

Peoples Phone

“Wigoder left Quadrant to set up Cellular Communications in March 1988, initially providing a mobile phone service to business customers through both a direct sales team and third party distributors. Demonstrating great vision and foresight, he was the first entrepreneur in the industry to recognise how consumers would transform the market, successfully positioning his company to take advantage of this opportunity by creating the “Peoples Phone” brand and establishing his own national High Street retail presence (a model subsequently imitated by all the Network Operators). By opening over 180 showrooms in just 12 months, Wigoder helped drive the expansion in mobile phone usage within the United Kingdom, gaining around 10% of the UK market – the biggest non-network owned business in the industry and the UK’s first true Virtual Network Operator. Within 4 years he had a built a market leading position, having overtaken all the other independent resellers who had started several years prior to his entry into the market, including substantial multi-national companies such as Thorn-EMI, Granada, Nokia, Marconi, Phillips, and Motorola. The business was highly cash generative, however a decision to write off all customer acquisition costs directly against profits meant that the company reported a loss after taxation of £10.6m on turnover of £175m for the financial year ended 31 October 1995. Following a disagreement between the major shareholders on the future strategy for the Company, it was acquired by Vodafone in November 1996 for £77m; however Wigoder only collected £6.5M from the deal, as most of the company was owned by Venture Capital investors. Vodafone followed this deal with further acquisitions within the sector (namely Astec and Talkland in December 1996) giving it greater control over the customers using its network. According to Vodafone’s 1997 annual report and accounts, Peoples Phone made £4.1M in the period to end 1996. “

With a good and successful previous record under his belt; Charles Wigoder was certainly not lacking in either resources or experience in business. For the purpose of employing his new concepts in multi-level marketing he bought a recently-formed company called Telecom Plus in 1988; which has been going from strength to strength thereafter. Taking up the commentary from Wikipedia again:

Telecom Plus/Utility Warehouse

“Wigoder joined Telecom Plus in 1998, investing heavily and listing it as a Plc on the London Stock Exchange (ticker = TEP). Its initial flagship product was the Smart Box, a free gadget that plugged into a phone socket and hunted out the best telephone call rates^.”

“Wigoder believed that a low-cost route to market would prove to be a critical element in successfully promoting services to the residential market, and established a multi-level marketing system of agents across the United Kingdom. In just over 7 years, the business amassed over 200,000 domestic and small-business customers, 15,000 of whom were also Distributors, signing up new customers in return for a residual income and cheaper utilities themselves. Trading as the The Utility Warehouse, Telecom plus is a “virtual” retailer, with no shops and no advertising – just a highly effective Head Office with 200+ staff, most of whom are dedicated to providing award-winning customer service. Wigoder says: “The secret of our success has been our unique business model. We also have the ability to move quickly to take advantage of opportunities.””

“Low costs allow Telecom Plus to offer competitive tariffs to their customers, which has driven sales growth by an average of more than 20% pa over the years to 2007. Since 2003, the Company has been highly profitable and cash generative, although in November 2005, Telecom Plus warned that high energy prices had resulted in significant losses in its gas business. In February 2006, the Company entered into an agreement with npower under which they took responsibility for purchasing the energy used by UW customers although UW remain responsible for all customer management activities, such as billing, customer service, metering, debt collection and administration. As part of the arrangements, npower have an option to acquire the 29.9% of the equity held by the Board during 2009.”

“On 6 June 2006 the group said losses experienced in its gas business during the first two months of 2006 reached almost £8m, off-setting the profits of £5.5m achieved during the first half-year. As a result of the losses, the group posted an overall pre-tax loss for the year of £1.6m, compared with a £10.5m profit the previous year. Turnover rose 33% to £136.3m. For the following year to 31 March 2007, Telecom Plus reported turnover had increased to £175m, with record pre-tax profits of £11.5m, and cash balances of over £25m with no debt. The latest year to 31 March 2008 saw a further increase in pre-tax profits to over £16.5m with cash balances of over £30m.”

Telecom Plus/The Utility Warehouse has continued to go from strength to strength since Charles Wigoder’s takeover at the helm in 1988, despite a hiccup in 1996. (See above.) Although growth could at times be described as slow compared to some other PLC’s, the level of such growth has by no means been sporadic but rather a steady gain over time, despite prevailing national and world economic trends and recessions, indicating good leadership on the part of Charles Wigoder – who appears to have an ability to weather and rise above any economic turmoil whilst driving on towards the target of continued growth. According to Mr Wigoder in an internal communication “This strong performance is being fuelled by increasing numbers of consumers looking for better value on their utilities, as they see their energy bills from other suppliers increasing on a regular basis.”

As household utility prices in the UK continue to rise, the quality of a lot of suppliers’ customer service continues to fall due to their decision to use badly-trained cheap labour; staff based in call-centres on different continents. the Utility Warehouse understand that their customers have a choice and realise the importance of good customer service. Their excellent standard in customer service was recognised in the UK’s Consumer Association’s Which? magazine, in which they were runners-up for the award of “Best Broadband Supplier” in their 2008 consumer awards. This was quite an achievement on the whole, considering the number of such suppliers available in the UK market as a whole.

The Utility Warehouse still maintain the networking structure, with a continued growth in downliners, known as “Distributors” on a weekly basis according to an internal company source. These recruits are attracted by the company’s opportunity to build a secure residual income, paid on a monthly basis, in what amounts to a profit-sharing scheme between the company and its multi-level Distributors, in which these Distributors are rewarded with a percentage of the nett spend of any customer that they introduce to the company for as long as that person continues to remain as a customer. – That’s how the company advertises: No advertising budget required, no glossy magazine ads, no in-store demonstrations, nothing – Saving the company a fortune – Any such promotional work that a Distributor decides to do has to be approved by the company and funded by the distributor themselves – But it’s not really necessary to do that as it seems personal recommendation and word-of-mouth are much more effective tools in this company’s case. It really is a rather good system from the point of view of a Distributor as once a customer is introduced to and begins to do business with the company by purchasing their household utilities through the company, the introducing Distributor gets paid a percentage from that client’s spend for a considerable time thereafter, even maybe into infinity if they recruit a particularly loyal customer.

Distributor opportunities are available in the UK only, as is the same with the customer base. The great thing about it all is that unlike the case with the earlier networking structures of the Twentieth Century, there is no need to buy a supply of product to sell on: Rather than Distributors supplying the finished product to their customers, the central company themselves cater for that on the individual Distributor’s behalf, meaning that any necessary initial financial outlay is minimal. Basically the role of Distributors is as customer gatherers, although “Distributor” sounds somewhat more professional than “Customer Gatherer”, besides being a component in an automobile engine. There are at this time and for the foreseeable future no plans to extend this business on an international level as far as I am aware.

UK investors are also beginning to realise and appreciate the strength of the company’s business model, driving the share price on the UK FTSE generally upwards despite market analyst’s fears of a recession. Since the company allows its Distributors to purchase its shares, many such Distributors have seen their total financial value increase as a result. This is also good news for the long-term future of the business as a whole.

In addition to the above, which is what I refer to in a kindly manner as “sharemongering”, the company also rewards successful Distributors with holidays at company expense, share packages, and gift vouchers, among other awards. They hold training seminars at various venues throughout the UK and have regular company meetings to which Distributors are invited.

Overall this is a growing company with a successful business-model which is proven to be working. In light of the vision and foresight of its Chairman in turning a dying concept with a stinking reputation into a glowing business model that exudes success from the very pores of its being; it is my opinion that this company has proved its worth to all concerned; consumers, Distributors, and investors – The marketplace as a whole.

If you’re resident in the UK and would like to discover more about this company; from the angle of just looking at becoming a customer and saving money on your household utilities, or from the desire to become involved in the business end and make yourself extra income by recruiting customers and other Distributors as a Distributor yourself, then the following links will direct you to the company’s sponsored affiliate sites which will provide you with all the information you need.

I may as well state at this point that I am involved with this company, and I will benefit in a small way from any business which you decide to transact with them through the links which I have provided. I will also state that whichever alternate way in which you choose to go about transacting with the company, should you choose not to use the links provided, the same tiny percentage commission of any financial transaction you choose to undertake will go to somebody - Therefore since you heard about it all here first; it’s only fair that any such percentage goes to me, and you may as well use the links provided to save yourself time and effort anyway.

Oh yes I almost forgot – You also get your own online store if you sign up as a Distributor – No word of a lie – Selling everything from books  to electricals: I’m going to post quite a few banners below leading to many individual aspects of the business, so please do enjoy clicking on as many as you can if not all of them:

My apologies to anybody who has clicked all of them; I’ve just discovered myself that the amount of destination pages has “shrunk” and some of them go to exactly the same place. I wasn’t aware of the revised system that the company has instituted with regard to this.

(I really do apologise to my US and international readers that none of this is available outside of the UK. ‘Sorry; nevertheless I hope it inspires new ideas for you if nothing else.)

I had been intending to get in touch with The Utility Warehouse for their additional comments; but after thinking about it having completed this article I decided that it would just hold up publication as no  additional comment is really necessary in my opinion.

©KKomp 2008

At this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere; when it’s supposed to be the height of summer, it’s easy to feel somewhat depressed and be a bit inactive when it won’t stop damn raining like it keeps doing in the UK. Another sodden July! Wasn’t last year enough? What with the credit crunch and lack of finances due to the rising cost of living to worry about too it can all get on top of everything. : So if you’re feeling down and in a negative frame of mind it’ll spread, not just into your life but into your house also. Vibes are powerful things, and they leave huge imprints on the surrounding environment. Vibes are the external byproducts of emotions, thoughts and actions; a kind of psychic residue left behind by the psychological’

Have you been on a low ebb recently? Your house may be down in the dumps with you: Switch everything off so that all is quiet – dead silent – and look around your rooms: Feel the energies with your entire being. Sense the energies resonating from the fabric of your abode with your inner being. As you become accustomed to the quiet and the pervasive tranquility, look deeper into the atmosphere, beyond the physical. What do you feel? Power, positivity, life, a “buzz” – or stillness, silence, negativity, darkness, death? If the latter your house has a case of residual polarity shift: it contains low frequency vibes and negative energies to whatever extent.

First open all the curtains, windows and doors as wide as you can and aerate the place completely. Let the light and fresh air flood in and the darkness and stale air dissipate to the outdoors. If you know anything of Feng Shui ensure that objects are correctly positioned to allow the correct inward flow of positive and outward flow of negative Chi.  Next go around your room/house and make noise in all locations: Happy cheerful joyous sounds. Disturb the ether with energy, move things, shake them, wake them, and replace them. Sing happily, shout joyously, clap rhythmically, dance merrily, think positively, tell the energy to come alive, disturb the stillness. Stand on the threshold of the home; the front doorstep perhaps, and will the natural energies from outside into the house. Replace the sleeping dormant negativity with the renewing positive earth energies. Stand in the centre of the room and cast light from your soul around; be vigorous and tell the place to wake up. Most importantly absorb the renewal into yourself, ground yourself and see the light above you flowing into your head and filling your entire body, displacing the remaining negativity within which flows downwards, out through your feet, and back to earth to be replenished by the planet. Take a broom; ‘doesn’t have to be a Witch’s broom; any broom will do, and symbolically sweep any remaining darkness from the corners and cubbyholes, out from your house and back to repolarising Mother Nature. Do it happily, do it energetically, do it with a song in your heart and a skip in your step. Go on – Clear out all that darkness that’s built up over the weeks. – Buzz the place up some more with fuchsia, honeysuckle, jasmine, or lavender incense and/or flowers. Give it a blessing why not? :

“Blessed be this home, of Air and of Fire, of Water and of Earth. Let all things within be filled with the love and the light of the Goddess, and may all that occurs within its walls be productive, happy, overflowing with love, and cause harm to none. In the name of the Mother Goddess reincarnated and Her Consort reborn so mote it be.”

Playfully and happily with the new mood glide about your rebuzzed home; closing those windows and doors, and don’t forget to switch your electrical units back on or the ice in the fridge will melt and the central heating won’t come on when you need it.

That was a welcome break from the chores eh? ‘Feeling a bit whacked after all that? Have a sit down with a cup of refreshing green tea for a minute. – Doesn’t the place feel so much better? Look around you: It’s light, it’s fresh, it’s happy and bright: A pleasure to live in.

I’ve heard many people saying it’s a Second Life replacement, others that it won’t last. Some people even say that it’s awful: Me; I like it – Yes it’s Google’s virtual reality online social-networking service “Lively”.

My first impression was 32-bit IRC in 3D; but after I’d got a decent wardrobe together I checked out a few rooms. There was some black guy looking like a pimp who tried to beat up on me – Well there’s always one isn’t there; one born every minute or so they say. Another room saw a crowd of girls checking it out on the dance floor: Being the type of adventurous hussy I am I sidled over and asked a brunette whether she liked girls; but got not really much of a reaction there – So after a change of room I kind of relaxed fully into the swing of it and had a generally good experience.

—->

——————————————–

I had started thinking of Doll Wars earlier as I selected my wardrobe; but I somehow managed to look something like sexy despite the fairly gross avatars on offer, and found that there was no war other than with that virtual male psycho who was just playing out his weirdo fantasy: Better in cyberspace than on the streets of Brooklyn after dark I suppose. In cyberspace I could just tell him that he was an asshole and I was immortal.

What opportunities does Lively open up then? Well definitely word of mouth advertising and online computer help in a virtual reality social environment are two things that instantly spring to mind; although not paid help: Obviously not going straight in like a bull at a gate canvassing everybody with a pre-prepared spiel from a .txt file – Although thinking about it there could be quite a buzz started if Google would allow ex-salespeople to open up a sales-force room and go door-to-door-canvassing for appointments in virtual reality – Or what about an iNASA Cyber-Space Program? : Send a virtual Internet-rocket into space.com… OK enough of this flight of fantasy; but Google take note if you ever do read this.

—->

It felt a bit like I was Alice in Wonderland (Despite having chosen chestnut-brown hair.) in one room: There was a guy who was stuck in a weird creature avatar and we talked computers after he asked me to help him change appearance, although his computer was totally unresponsive to anything he did: I suggested a reboot, as mine had been a bit dead when I first installed the program thus I gave it a restart. I then went to chat with something that looked like a mouse in a raincoat but was totally unresponsive to anything – It appeared the person behind it had left their PC logged in and fallen asleep: I asked whether it was deactivated or regenerating, but to no avail; and I looked around in case I saw a disappearing Cheshire cat, or the White Rabbit scurry past with a pocket-watch before vanishing down a very deep burrow.

——————————————

Will Lively last? I don’t know. Opinion is varied at this time, and we’ll have to wait a another week or so at least for the initial hype to settle down before assessing the situation further. There’s probably room for improvement; but this baby hasn’t been a stillbirth and there’s some life in it yet. Time is a great revealer in addition to being both a great healer and an opportunity for people to lose their enthusiasm; so keep watching that space if there is a gap that needs to be filled.

Second Life will not be silent while all this happens: It  has been working with IBM to develop enhancements to its functionality. Could it be possible that there’ll be Second Life/Lively interaction at a future time? As Eve said when she first saw Adam; “That’s a hard one.” – But you never know; stranger things have happened in the past. – Another instance of “Watch this space” perhaps?

ScreenHunter 5.0 Free is an incredibly versatile piece of software; and as a freebie is also great value: Download it from http://www.wisdom-soft.com/sh/sh_free.htm .

Operating the program is simplicity itself: Just click the “Capture Now” button, find the top left corner of the piece of screen you want to capture, hold down the left mouse button and select the full area of the screen you want to capture.

Next just release the left mouse button and the selected area appears on your desktop in a .gif icon. Insert the .gif into your document and drag the borders to the size that you require: It really is that simple – And it all costs nothing, nil, nada, zilch. There is a paid-for version but I really don’t see the point of it as the freebie version does everything needed from what I can tell from a few days trial of it.

The top three screen captures were taken using ScreenHunter.

©KKomp 2008

If you were attracted to this post because you thought you’d find a scheme to make you an instant millionaire/ss overnight you’re out of luck: There is no such scheme; not from kkomp.com, nor from anywhere else. There are many schemes that claim to be such; but that’s utter piffle to get you and a few thousand others to part with your money so that the person who runs the scheme can vanish with it eventually: Yes it’s a one-person get-rich-quick scheme; and that one person aint you.

So why call this post “Get Rich Quick”? Is it a plan to attack Rich Menga of PC Mech? Is it a conspiracy to commit the ultimate cyber-crime? What is the point?

Options

The point is that you have 2 main “get-rich” options: The slowest of those being to work for someone else for less than 1% of their nett income whilst giving your complete mind, body, and soul to them for up to 8 hours or maybe more, at least 5 days a week, ad infinitum – aka “Get a job.”. How slow is that as a “get-rich” option? Very slow; and incredibly so: In fact it’ll most likely never happen. It pays the bills for as long as it lasts, yes. It’ll keep you ticking over, maybe it’ll even get you the occasional luxury, possibly you might even manage to save some of it up, but you’ll never get rich doing it: Your employer or your employer’s boss probably might well do so though; at least to a greater extent than you ever will.

That’s a complete non-starter then – But I did say there was another option. No there isn’t a guarantee with it – There’s not even a guarantee that you’ll be better off than with the first option initially; but if you’re prepared to stick at it in a positive and self-motivated way then the sky’s the limit – Allow me to restate that in a different light: You’re the limit: If you put only a little in you’ll get even less out of it – But if you put a lot in you’ll probably get even more out of it. (Notice I did say “probably”: There is no guarantee as I said; and there are losers – There have to be losers for there to be winners: Fact of life; yin and yang, swings and roundabouts, call it what you will, whatever, but the thing is with this method you have to be in it to win it.) What am I on about? Self-employment.

No Streets Paved With Gold Here

So all self-employed people are rich? No; but show me an employed person who is rich. Yes they might well be comfortably off and living well as long as they do their job and make someone else rich, but could they stop what they’re doing and stay that way? Can they decide when and for how long they take a break from the job? In short no – So they’re under the boss’ thumb and they’ll have problems if they don’t keep working to the boss’ dictates or they lose their comfortable salary: They’re not rich then.

What benefits will self-employment bring? You want the honest answer to that? Good; because that’s what you’re going to get, and I’m not going to give you any bull: If you’re totally serious about the self-employed venture and are wanting to go for it in a big way then the initial benefits are nothing, nil, zero, zilch, sweet FA: There aren’t any. In fact at first the opposite will be the effect: More going out than coming in, expenses appearing from places you maybe didn’t even know existed, and all the possible demotivating influences imaginable in your face. You’ll be seemingly investing all your time and money and reaping no result whatsoever other than losses at first: that’s the truth and that’s the major make-or-break time – Probably the biggest drain on your resources that you’ll ever experience; and pretty it is not. If you’re going to go under then that’s when it’s most likely to occur. If you’re serious about the venture then you’ll want to put all your resources into it; so before doing so you need to know that you have sufficient resources to weather the storm that you’re about to create for yourself. You’ll need:

1) Investment capital. This can be generated by either making (a) part-time, “on-the-side” venture(s) previous to going for the “big-one”; by working for someone else whilst living frugally, and saving every available penny over a period of time; by building up your assets from nothing gradually by investment and/or by partial enterprise over time, or by any combination of those.

2) Self-motivation, positive attitude, and determination. You’re lacking on any or all of these? Stay with the smaller side of enterprise for now in that case. In the meantime build up these personal qualities to a point where you’re confident that you can and you know you can. Self-doubt and a lack of motivation will kill your efforts off from the start otherwise. Believe in yourself: To do so you must grow self-confidence, you must like yourself, you must become your own best-friend:  You must believe totally in yourself and in your own abilities. Don’t bullshit yourself though: If you don’t have the necessary abilities first then you need to develop them before you go ahead and make an investment in them; otherwise you’d do far better giving your hard-earned investment capital to a charity.

3) A plan. I once needed an audio amplifier in a hurry when I was at college; so I switched on my soldering iron and I built one. It worked and it got me out of a tight spot. In doing so I wasted a large number of resources, mainly physical components, and I dismantled it afterwards; as it was, to be honest, an abomination to my eyes: Had I tried to get anyone else to buy it I’d have wasted my time – I probably couldn’t have even paid someone else to take it off me. Why? Am I that awful a technician? Not at all: The thing was I had no plans to build it to; and yes it worked for what I needed it to do right then and there, but other than that it was virtually useless. I later built a very similar amplifier to a plan as part of my City and Guilds exams and it helped me to pass them. The moral of this story: No plans = no good.

Draw up your business plans from day one and adjust them with the passage of time to accommodate current trends.

4) Goals. Especially good if your business is a soccer team, but realistically you must sit down and contemplate exactly what it is that you want to achieve. Example: Your ultimate goal is a million dollars/pounds. Your current status is what you have now. Define every stage between now and your ultimate goal and write it down in proposed chronological order. Having done that set yourself realistic targets of achievement leading up to and including the ultimate goal. Be positive, stick to the schedule, make sure you do it exactly as planned: Write your goals down: eg. I will make another $4000 by next Monday by such-and-such a method – Note the “I will” and make sure you do; by the deadline, to the plan with any necessary minor adjustments: Setting a goal involves knowing what you wish to achieve and when you wish to achieve it – Anything less just doesn’t work: “I will make another $4000″ without setting a deadline means you’ll still be making it for the rest of your life.

It’s hard, it’s tough, it’s mean, it’s a lifetime’s work, and it doesn’t always either go as you planned or work as well as you’d hoped, and sometimes both. At least it does (normally) make some kind of progress, towards not only enriching the individual’s character and resolve, but also enhancing one’s personal financial position, with varying results from case to case – Which is a hell of a lot further than a 9 to 5 job can ever get anyone.

And Finally…

Back to the title – Get Rich Quick: You might get temporarily wealthy quickly if you’re running a get-rich-quick scheme and you happen to attract enough gullible individuals. Let’s just hope you can vanish into exile even faster when the authorities pick up your scent. Other than that you can’t: As we’ve seen though, you can probably get somewhere or you can definitely get nowhere,depending upon which option you choose. Strangely most people would rather choose the latter; which is good for those who choose the former as it does reduce the level of competition to some extent, making it a bit easier to be a winner because there are people who are determined to lose, as well as those who don’t make it anyway try as they might.

Me? I haven’t made it yet; and I’m seemingly making steady, though not as fast as I’d like to, progress forwards… But I’m still alive so I’m still getting there. Can I make it? Yes. Will I make it? If I can – And if I can then what’s stopping you? Like me you were hopefully born with 2 arms, 2 legs, and 24 hours in each day. If so then you were born with everything I was born with: We started from the same starting line – In fact you were born with everything Bill Gates was born with too: Use it wisely.

To Bill Gates…Born like most of us with 2 arms, 2 legs, and 24 hours in each day…Who made it.

©KKomp 2008

 I’m going to use this opportunity to republish the original article that was originally published last month, whilst at the same time introducing another, at least equally valuable computer troubleshooting resource; that being http://kadaitcha.cx

The Author

This resource is created by  Australian Rick Mathers aka Kadaitcha Man; emphatic tech guru and Usenet kook who doesn’t endure fools lightly in any way whatsoever. Renowned for at times having a verbiage in common with a backyard dunny when dealing with idiots, and known throughout the Usenet community for his extreme technical prowess and contemptuous distaste for what he describes as “fuckwittery”; the K-Man has survived “death” twice through a clever piece of trolling, and has played a part in dispelling the useless or incorrect advice so plentifully available on Usenet. He was renowned for creating the infamous “Peanut Gallery”, into which he would “cast” those advisors on Usenet who were guilty of extreme technical ineptitude and dispensing incompetent advice. He’s an extremely male type of man, and this may appear in some ways evident from his site: Nevertheless it doesn’t detract in any way from the useful content therein.

The Site

Kadaitcha.cx is a well-designed website with good graphics and a thoughtful layout. Its greatest achievement is in indexing most of  the Microsoft.com website into easy-to-find links indexed into well-designed individual help sections complete with additional technically-informative commentary. The site is aimed primarily at XP users, but also has some sections and commentaries designed for those using or thinking of moving to Vista.

Overall…

Overall the site is a gem of competency and accuracy in a cyber-world of dodgy and unhelpful, even at times counterproductive “advice”. I myself have used this resource on numerous occasions and would recommend http://kadaitcha.cx to my readers.

I’ve read a very interesting article on “Ask Leo” recently that I thought was extremely perceptive and in pretty much every way spot on – So much did it strike a chord with me, in fact, that I’ve decided to feature a link to the article on this site. The introductory words below are Leo Notenbloom’s (Microsoft MVP and ex-employee.) words quoted from the first paragraph of the article.

If you like what you see on Leo’s site then I would suggest that you subscribe to his newsletter, which raises some useful points of interest, tips, and help articles. I personally get nothing from your subscription or lack of it: I don’t know Leo personally, don’t have a contract to advertise his site, and am simply another subscriber. The motivation for advertising his site here is for information purposes alone, in the hope that it might assist readers in their computing experience:

The Plight of the Average User

“Over the course of the last four years of doing Ask Leo! I’ve also learned a lot about computer and technology myself. The old adage about learning something by teaching it is very, very true.”

“But I’ve also learned a thing or two about you, the people trying to use computers, too.”

And these are things I wish a lot more people would realize and understand. People from the executives at my former employer, to some of the people that comment on my answers.

“The “average computer user” is not who you think.”

Continue reading: “The Plight of the Average User”

Addendum

“Isn’t that cheating;” You ask.”republishing an existing article alongside a new article?”

Well it is true that it does add to the page’s content somewhat using previously published information; but I felt it would be an enhancement to bring together these two useful resource commentaries so that Windows users are able to benefit from links to both in one place. Convenience and interoperability being buzzwords in cyberspace lately it does little if any harm to reduce the number of clicks a user must make to find the information that they need. Bearing this in mind the resultant compilation and semi-repost is surely nothing less than beneficial.

With that in mind I’ll go on to advertise, although completely off-topic for this posting, that I now am subscribed to identi.ca and FriendFeed in addition to Twitter; Username = kkomp: Your following would be greatly appreciated, and I will return the favour and follow you too, therefore we all benefit.

ALSO:-

PC Mech Live streaming on kkomp : You can watch, listen, and learn, by viewing the streaming video feed, or if you want to go interactive and sign up/sign in just click the link at the top of the page. (Most of the content is pre-recorded.) PC Mech Live

If you want to go straight to PC Mech.com then just click here.

Immediately after posting the Free Screensaver post I saw a link to this on Twitter; so I thought I’d have a look.

I haven’t tried any of the software he recommends yet at time of writing; but it sounds like good stuff: Here’s his video.

Of course I tweeted back to him via twitter to have a free screensaver on me; well one good deed deserves another. and since he presented himself so charismatically I included his vid on this blog.

(For some reason I’m not doing too well with the html on this entry; so rather than spend ages messing with it I’ll just republish with this apology included for any sloppiness in the design/layout of this post.)

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/kkomp

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This screensaver is animated.

It’ll make a change to the usual on your monitor. So why are you being offered a free screensaver; and who are Kustom Komputa? Kustom Komputa supply unique desktop computers built to suit the individual user’s requirements, to the UK mainly. Since it is my company, and because it’s involved in promoting Xara software, there’s a free screensaver, built using Xara Screenmaker 3D installed on almost every individualised computer produced: But why limit it to products? To further advertise Xara  graphics software, Kustom Komputa are giving a screensaver built using Xara software away to anyone who wants it. Click here to download the file to a location on your computer. When the download’s finished simply right-click the file’s icon and select “Install”. That’s it – You’re done.

If you’d like to easily make your own screensavers too, then click here and scroll down to Xara’s advertisement at the foot of Kustom Komputa’s index page, which will open in a new window when you click the link above.

If you’d prefer something a little more arty you might like this one. You’ll need 7zip to unzip it; but it’s well worth any extra hassle.

There are a lot of explanations doing the rounds; and a lot of them are part of the reason; but only part of it.

This is sometimes true and sometimes not: It depends on the type of disk, the manufacturer, and the age of the unit. You’ll find that firmware written to the disk in this way mainly occurs on some brands of external hard-drive. Even if there is firmware on the disk, though, that’s not the whole answer to the question.

File Allocation Table

The file allocation table is a part of the disk reserved by the disk’s file system, (Usually FAT32 or NTFS) when the disk is formatted.

In short the file allocation table keeps track of what data is stored where on the disk so that the integrated electronics can consult the listing to report the data’s location to the operating system should it be queried or to be able to almost instantly access the data when the operating system requires it – But again the file allocation table is only part of the story.

The Main Reason

The main reason is to do with the method used to measure the total number of bytes: The computer’s algorithms use binary (Base 2); while the manufacturers use denary (Base 10 or decimal). A basic unit for measuring the capacity of any storage device is the kilobyte: In the binary system used in the computer’s algorithms a kilobyte is 1000 bytes expressed as a power of 2; in this case 2 to the power of 10 or 1024 bytes.

Manufacturers, on the other hand, define a kilobyte as 1000 bytes expressed as a power of 10; in this case 10 to the power of 3 or 1000 bytes: Therefore a manufacturer correctly labels their disk as containing 100,000,000 kilobytes of 1000 bytes each, or 100 gigabytes; yet the computer reads it as 97.65625 gigabytes, or 97,625,250 kilobytes of 1024 bytes each.

So there we have it; by using different methods of counting based upon binary and denary respectively, the manufacturer and the computer both arrive at different answer; although both are technically correct.

Technology continues to advance at a fast pace: Ten years ago a 233MHz single-core processor which wasted as much energy in heat as it used for work was the considered norm. Floppy-drives were still the thing, and CD-ROM drives were fitted to computers as standard: CD-Rs were on the horizon. PCI graphics cards were in vogue, and AGP slots were being introduced on the latest motherboards. Microsoft were developing Direct X 7 and Windows 98  was becoming the most popular OS: We’ve certainly come a long way since then.

Processors have advanced in leaps and bounds since; with Intel pioneering Hyperthreading technology in the later models of the Pentium 4 range, AMD introducing the rise of dual-core processor technology with their Athlon 64s, then Intel rising as market leaders again by bettering AMD’s dual-core performance, followed by stapling two dual-core wafers together in a single package to produce the first quad-core processors… Despite the lag by software writers in utilising multi-core technology there are currently plans for eight, twelve, and sixteen-core processors; largely thanks to miniaturisation of the transistor from work pioneered by Intel since the 1990s: 32 nanometer transistors are now being built, 28 nanometer transistor production is on the horizon, and scientists have even succeeded in building a transistor with a single atom if obscure reports are to be believed.

So let’s look forward a few years: We see millions of single or dual-atom transistors being packed into advanced-level processor cores; 64 to a wafer, making up a unit only slightly larger than an Athlon 64×2 chip and with a few more pins. With advances in core architecture, core-interfacing, and cache-data-interfacing technologies these latest chips provide quite a punch in processing power and performance. Software is being written to allow from 2 to 128 core operation, and things have, in a way, hit the buffers: Transistors are as small as they can get; marginal performance gains are still being made by using new semiconductor-doping techniques to slightly improve the switching-speed of the millions of tiny transistor-arrays within each core, constructed across double gallium-arsenide molecules doped onto the silicon wafers; but other than that it’s a virtual stalemate: There’s no point in stapling wafers together, as since the component-miniaturisation limit has been reached, that’ll just lead to big packages which waste room on the motherboard – So where to go from there?

In this future-world there’s always the chance of multi-chip motherboards being manufactured: Motherboards with sockets for up to eight of these packages, but motherboard miniaturisation has almost reached critical mass too. Well when you’ve expanded outwards as far as you can the only way is up – Literally: Wafer upon wafer. The problem now is cooling. These latest packages, despite the huge technological advances, still produce as much heat as the old Athlon 64×2 chips did; and that’s with only a single wafer. Stacking wafers without an advanced cooling system would lead to conflagration and component failure.

The answer: Liquid cooling using high-pressure non-inflammable isobutane-based refrigerant running at low-velocity through tiny flattened spaces between wafers and in coolant-tubes between cache-interfaces within a solid-state cube-shaped chip with connection-pins on all but two sides: One of the unused sides is a tiny TFT monitor displaying real-time performance-statistics for the “cube-chip”; This monitor can be viewed in magnification from the side of the outer-casing on a small screen by means of lens-imaging technology. The other side lacking electrical connections has connections for the refrigerant pipes from the tiny compressor/refrigerator pump installed inside the case. inside the “cube-chip is a miniature power-plant which converts a proportion of the waste-heat into electricity which it uses to help power itself; thus saving energy from any external source once the chip has reached its thermal-equilibrium.

In this way a matrix of 64 x 64 2.8GHz hyperthreaded processor-cores can be utilised with a single motherboard; giving a total of 4096 cores in a single unit no bigger than 6cm cubed…And then someone manages to stick two of them together, then four…