Daily Bits

Online Quizzes To Kill Some Time

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If you have some time to spare, here are online quizzes that I came across this week. The first one is about how much money you could take in a bank robbery. Weird huh? Apparently I could take as much as $3 million…

Now robbing a bank is risky right? Why not find the chances of you ending up in prison then? You can do that on the Are You Going to Prison? quiz. (I have 7% of chances of ending behind the bars).

Finally, we have some vocabulary, spelling and grammar quizzes on Daily Writing Tips. On those you might at least learn something!

Understanding Arithmetic is Key

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There is this video on YouTube called “The Most IMPORTANT Video You Will Ever See.” One would think that it reveals some secret about our life right? Well not quite, the video is in fact about arithmetic!

The old professor is basically trying to convince us that “the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” Crazy as it sounds, the guy almost convinced me! Worth watching.

Vista Owners Mass Downgrading to Windows XP

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I am really not sure how Microsoft is still trying to argue with people, defending that Vista is a very good operating system, and that it is only problem is a bad reputation. They even tried to do a “blind taste test” with Vista, making users experiment it without knowing that it was Vista. Pathetic!

Anyway to confirm the fact that Windows Vista sucks (period!), there is an article on The Register claiming that around one third of all Windows Vista equipped machines have been downgraded to Windows XP (some by the PC manufacturers directly…).

Vista’s death march picked up some pace yesterday, after a metrics researcher revealed that nearly 35 per cent of PCs built to run the Windows operating system have been downgraded to XP.

In a survey of more than 3,000 computers, performance testing software developer Devil Mountain Software estimated that more than one in three new machines had either been downgraded by vendors such as Dell, or by customers once they bought the PC.

One third is a really big number, especially if you consider that downgrading an operating system is not a trivial task, and most users would think twice before going through that.

Windows fans, let’s hope that Windows 7 will hit the target. Or give Ubuntu a try, as I have been recommending for a while.

Best Online Flash Games: The Bowman Game

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I am pretty sure you have already played an archery or bowman game once in your life. This online flash game is probably not what you are expecting though. There is no target. The objective is to throw your arrows directly at another opponent!

bowman game

Good thing about the game is that it is not very addictive. Once you kill the computer a couple of times it gets boring. You can spice it up by aiming at specific body parts…

How Cloud Computing Is Changing the World

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There are good chances you already came across the term “cloud computing” once or twice, even if you don’t completely grasp the meaning of the term. If that is the case, check out this article on Business Week titled How Cloud Computing Is Changing the World. It gives some good examples of how cloud computing is starting to shape the way companies do business, and individuals interact with IT. Here is a small quote:

The term “cloud computing” encompasses many areas of tech, including software as a service, a software distribution method pioneered by Salesforce.com about a decade ago. It also includes newer avenues such as hardware as a service, a way to order storage and server capacity on demand from Amazon and others. What all these cloud computing services have in common, though, is that they’re all delivered over the Internet, on demand, from massive data centers.

A pit-stop on the Wikipedia article for cloud computing can help also. This is probably one of the most important shifts that we will see on the coming years, so make sure to understand it.

20 Weird USB Gadgets

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Over at TechCult there is a list with 20 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Stick In Your USB Socket. You think you saw them all? A USB Ghost Radar? A Barbie USB Driver?

Man, these people are either cretive geniuses, or they have nothing better to do. Probably the second option…. Anyway head to the full article and check out the 20 items. I am considering buy a couple of them. the laser guided rocket launcher would rock on if I was still working inside an office.