So yesterday my wife and I got onto the #6 train at Spring Street. The train was very crowded (as seems to always be the case lately), and this little Chinese lady with gray hair exclaims: “You, close your legs so the pregnant lady can sit down…. Lady, you sit down there!”
Lately, I’ve been a little sour on NYC, but there are times when I love this city.
So I got this direct mail today from Blockbuster Video, promoting some “New Deal”.
I think Blockbuster is horrible.
It’s not something they’ve ever done to me, I’ve probably rented videos from them less than 10 times in my life. The reason I hate Blockbuster is because it’s a company whose annual cash flow has historically depended heavily on late fees and penalties. In other words, this company’s business model is fundamentally predatory and dare I say usurious when you consider how a few days of late fees cost more than buying the damn movie.
I’m tickled silly that Netflix has beat the living snot out of blockbuster with an innovative and consumer friendly business model. In fact, check it out OnLine: NFLX is soaring and Blockbuster is in the crapper. Yes, it really stinks for the people who will be out of work once blockbuster takes its last gasp, but something tells me that working there doesn’t make for a career path with growth potential. If only money could be made shorting the few pennies left in blockbuster stock.
</rant>
Osama Bin Laden
As a patriot I’m happy there is closure.
As a New Yorker I’m elated the murderer of thousands has been taken down.
As a strategist I hope this demoralizes Al Qaeda.
As a realist I know someone else will assume his leadership position.
As a human, the revenge killing of a fanatic is a hollow victory in an ideological war that is unfortunately far from over.
So if you know me, you know that I’m a fan of the MAC operating system and I’ve moved my entire professional and personal lives to this platform. I’m also a big fan of Open Office. Unfortunately, in order exchange documents with people standardized on Microsoft Office, I’ve found that I actually need to use Office on MAC. *sigh* There is actually no substitute for template integration and collaborative document editing.
I recently had problems installing MS Office 2008 on a MAC due to a serial # issue… I had to re-enter my product key. There are many documents available on the internet that explain the process; however, I found the most usable rundown at this blog, and of course I wrote this post to fit that bill as well 🙂
See, here’s the catch – if you buy MS Office for MAC, the software will regularly talk to the network in the background. It basically calls home to the Microsoft mother ship all the time. In all fairness, Microsoft does this is to protect its revenue stream. If someone on the internet has Office with your product key, then the key will be red-flagged and instances will be disabled when you check for updates. To be honest, MS it well within its rights because the above is piracy. However, if you have a laptop and a desktop and you run the same MS Office install on both, technically, you’re supposed to buy two licenses. Yup, that’s right, you thought you bought the software, and you thought you could use it on all your computers, but no. You bought a license to use the software on one single machine; you’ll have to pay again if you expect to use it concurrently on two machines. I, for one, think that’s ridiculous.
If I haven’t already made myself clear: don’t steal software. If you use it, pay for it. There are ways to get discounts… google it.
The default root password for VMware Data Recovery in vSphere 4.x is: vmw@re
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