Tools I like:

Express Notes Card File Software for Windows
http://www.nch.com.au/notes/index.html

IrfanView
http://www.irfanview.com/

CutePDF
http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp

Squeezebox produces a unit that takes your wireless signal, translates the digital to analog, and hooks up to your stereo amp. Now you have access to all of radio stations, local and international. All of them.

Even better, you subscribe to Rhapsody for $13/month and get access to all record label catalogs(but no Stones, Beatles, Led Zep). How many versions of Beethoven symphonies do you need? I don’t know, but Rhapsody has more than I’m going to ever get through.

The remote control of the Squeezebox is the ticket into Rhapsody musical nirvana. Or you can have access to any radio station or specific radio program for free, if you want to let reality intrude on the music experience.

Reverting to the topic again – I wonder if a lot of people who have been pushed out of corporate employment aren’t working around to work as independent contractors, or to start up a small specialty business. In which case, the suggested tools are as truly as useful as the other commenters suggest.

I read an article in the WSJ about people who are being forced out of the financial/investment industry and are turning to other jobs. An example given was teaching.

I was surprised to see in the article that the financial industry was so exciting and lucrative that people who were not even taking business admin or accounting but instead getting technical degrees decided to go into the field. And the Lord knows how many lawyers must have gotten into it.

And I think this explains a lot. Stupid govt policies like the CRA, activists like Obama and Acorn, and political top cover from the likes of Bwany Fwank drove loans to those who could not pay. And faced with that problem, the entry of thousands of innovation-seeking workers drove the creation of new and complex ways to invest money.

Add to the engineering, scientific or medical workforce and you get more capability and innovation. Add to the financial industry workforce and you get more innovative scams. And they are leaving now, Thank God. Let’s just hope they don’t screw up something else.

Now, I would say never put any sensitive on google’s servers. They have some of the most aggressive cookies, bots, and terms of service of the major players.

When you write a document and spell check its key words are gathered and added to google’s massive data base for Advertising. The Doubleclick Dart cookie is very long lasting and good at data mining.

Even if you delete a document from google’s servers they remain for a time. Then there is the issue of true ownership of information. Sure, you may own your own service mark or have a copyright but that’s about it. You material can seep into the web and stay for years. Then somebody can copy and make minor changes and claim it is his.

Here is a look:

[google site on their cookies]

..Google records information such as account activity (e.g., storage usage, number of log-ins, actions taken), data displayed or clicked on (e.g., UI elements, links), and other log information (e.g., browser type, IP address, date and time of access, cookie ID, referrer URL).

Content. Google Docs stores, processes and maintains your documents and previous versions of those documents in order to provide the service to you.

Uses

Files you create with Google Docs may, if you choose, be read, copied, used and redistributed by people you know or, again if you choose, by people you do not know. Use care when including sensitive personal information in documents you share or in chat sessions, such as social security numbers, financial account information, home addresses or phone numbers. Information you disclose using the chat function of Google Docs may be read, copied, used and redistributed by people participating in the chat. Use care when including sensitive personal information in documents you share or in chat sessions, such as social security numbers, financial account information, home addresses or phone numbers.

Google adheres to the U.S. Safe Harbor privacy principles (For themselves).

http://tinyurl.com/278o62

Why are [Server] logs kept…?

Google is a reflection of the content and information that is available on the Internet. Search engines do not have the ability to remove content directly from the Internet, so removing content from Google or another search engine would still leave the original content that exists on the Web. The best thing for users who want content removed from the Internet to do is contact the webmaster of the page…

…Gmail uses software to scan emails for viruses and to filter out spam. Google uses this same kind of software to scan for keywords in users’ emails which we can then use to match ads. When a user opens an email message, computers scan the text and then instantaneously display relevant information that is matched to the text of the message.

DoubleClick’s DART cookie is used by its ad-serving and search products, on the Google content network and certain Google sites…

If you select a DART opt-out cookie, ads delivered to your browser on behalf of clients using DoubleClick’s ad-serving technology will be targeted based only on the non-personally identifiable information that is automatically transmitted in the Internet environment when an ad request is received by our ad servers, and your DART cookie will not be uniquely identified. The non-personally identifiable information that is automatically transmitted includes your browser type, Internet service provider, information about the general content of the site or page displayed on your browser and other non-personally identifiable information provided by the site.

http://tinyurl.com/2dyekr

What really happens when you “opt-out” of the doubleclick Dart cookie? Well, not much (you actual IP location will not be disclosed. But, here it is:

DoubleClick Dart Cookie
Before Opting out:

Cookie Value Unique, e.g., id= 8000002cd6f0880
Targeting Criteria: Cookie-derived information:
Ad frequency limitation
Ad sequencing
User list
Ad Tag information:
Site name
Web page
Key values
Header fields information:
Operating System type
Windows version
User’s local time
Location information from IP address
Will You Still See Ads? Yes

After op-out No difference except Change in Ad frequency limitation, Ad Sequecing, User list (that is it).

http://tinyurl.com/yhhq8g3

Also, I would look carefully at the terms of service TOS. You will see reversing clauses at the tail end – and the TOS can change at any time.

Google spends time in front of Congress

http://tinyurl.com/cfnryk

and:

http://tinyurl.com/yl3zexv

So, check it out before putting something sensitive on Google.

Given the high rate of unemployment, my question is, “where are they going?” How many “masters of the universe” or “CEO of a motor company” jobs are out there, really, to make it so easy to leave your current job in a fit of pique of Obama wants to cut your bonus in half?

Does anyone actually have the name of a person they know who did this?

If there is any interest in the subject, I will put up a web site with some tutorials and white papers on building web sites and/or ecommerce sites.

Please. I am always interested in what others have to say and idsplay to learn from it.

I recommend Skype. Remember, it calls computer to computer for free. If you have broadband it is as good or better than most international phone lines. Also, the cost to call from your computer to a land line in another country is cheap, cheap. Skype will also provide you a phone number for a small amount.

tech for less is a great web site that offers open box, return and factory refurbished tech components for low prices. I have purchased from them and they are very good. Laptops are sometimes one gen back but good enough and you can get a good one for less than $500. Get factory refurbs as you know they have been repaired – IOW, the bugs are worked out.

wretchard wrote:

When the history of this period is written, they are going to ask we were thinking, what we might have been smoking to account for this disconnection. The gap between what this civilization is capable of and what it is allowed to do or even think has never been greater.

Ain’t that the truth. Occam’s Razor tells me that we truly are our own worst enemies these days. The level of stupidity leaves me habitually shaking my head. Someone mentioned above that those in their late 50′s might never work again? Why waste the talents of your most knowledgeable and productive? I think some days that the society is undergoing some collective psychosis these days. Millennial disease?

Today, BHO declared a ‘National Emergency’ around the swine flu debacle. My better half works in child care and the kids who are getting sick and visit their doctors or emergency rooms are told they have this swine flu bug if they have flu symptoms BUT without being tested to see if they truly have it. (The test does exist and is definitive.) This is significant and alarming. If the public health authorities are misreporting then that seems criminal.

Also, there was a piece on the “news” on the idiot box that showed hordes of people queued up to get the swine flu vaccine but it was being doled out to the ones most at risk. Now, it seems to me, if there is a contagious disease out there the last place I want to be is around lots and lots of people some of whom may be ill or getting ill.

Was at dinner tonight at a friends house and the man of the house had gotten the seasonal, regular flu shot a couple of weeks before and he reported that he felt badly for days. Now what is wrong with that picture? Of the four of us around the dinner table, none was planning on getting the swine flu shot because of the risks the vaccine seems to carry.

When the history of this period is written, they are going to ask [what] we were thinking, what we might have been smoking to account for this disconnection. The gap between what this civilization is capable of and what it is allowed to do or even think has never been greater.

Lord Monckton in his Minnesota speech last week said what I’ve been warning for about a decade; and still — for what one may be forgiven for concluding must be diplomatic reasons — he felt obliged to add the parenthetical hedge that I will emphasize in bold

“this … faction that does not care how many children it kills … wants as much of humanity (it sometimes seems to me) to be wiped off the face of the planet.”—- see 13:30 of this video.

For all our wit and superiority — and Lord knows I’ve been as guilty of this as anyone — we cannot abide other individuals with their flaws both petty and large as much as we need so that we can prevent the despots from enslaving us all.

They who would rise to rule us may appear to be stupid, but they know how to divide us time and again.
So which caste is really the stupid one?
——————————
If you have not read it before, I recommend the following series by my old friend Fran Porretto: http://www.eternityroad.info/index.php/weblog/single/the_death_cults/