Bill Bosacker

This is just my normal user blog for things that don't fit in the other blogs, but are tailored for the open source C/C++/C# and .NET communities.

November 2008 - Posts

The Thanksgiving Story: in about a minute

Posted Thursday, November 27, 2008 12:00 AM by Bill Bosacker | with no comments

Gift cards: A bad idea gets even worse

Hey Guys,

You're propbably going to see my post frequency go up over the next couple of months for various reasons.  I'm sure that everyone is aware of all the crap that is going on with Wall Street.  There is an excellent post by Liz Pulliam Weston entitled, Gift cards: A bad idea gets even worse.  It warns about the fact that a gift card could be absolutely worthless in our current economy.  Make sure that you are giving a gift to some one you care for, and not bailing out a company.

Take it easy,
Bill

Posted Tuesday, November 25, 2008 2:10 PM by Bill Bosacker | with no comments

DirecTV support in Windows 7

Here is a post on ZDNet:

DirecTV’s HD tuner set to debut with Windows 7?

I've been wondering when this was going to become available and I'm 100% certain that it is on the way.  Why?  Because the last firmware update to DirecTVs HD DVRs adds support to allow PCs to download and view programs stored on the HD DVR.  This support is only for the HD DVRs and is not available for STD DVRs.

If you subscribe to DirecTV and have a Media PC like I do, this is something that you will definitely be interested in.

Posted Monday, November 24, 2008 2:59 PM by Bill Bosacker | with no comments

Fun Stuff: Kitties and Armageddon

While checking out some news videos today, I came across the following videos.  Enjoy...

Roomba Kitty
Roomba Kitty
Kitty Thirst
Kitty Thirst
Cat Gets Into Yogurt Box
Cat Gets Into Yogurt Box
Office Nerf War
Office Nerf War

Posted Monday, November 24, 2008 10:45 AM by Bill Bosacker | with no comments

Google's twist on the AJAX AutoComplete tool

I'm sure that you've been to sites that are using the new AJAX tools, one of them being the auto complete text box with a simulated dropdown list.  The tool basically sends the contents of the text box to a search engine to help predict what you are typing.  This in itself doesn't sound bad, until you find out what else Google is doing with this information:

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/corporateering/corpact4/

Last night, our local CBS news affiliate asked Google exactly was they are doing with this information and confirmed that they are logging the information obtained on their servers.  It's rather interesting how the most helpful of tools can be misused.

Posted Thursday, November 06, 2008 1:04 PM by Bill Bosacker | with no comments