Can Windows 8 do what 7 and Vista failed to do?

Read and judge for yourself (below). I personally am divided in assigning it either way. Competition is good and that's what we should aim for.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/eight-windows-8-features-that-could-save-microsoft/

Bing Got Served

The Colbert Report
Tags: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

New X Men - First Class

10 Free Software to Mount CD or DVD ISO Image File as Virtual Drives

Mounting CD, DVD images can save you a lot of time...by not burning the content.
XP has a nice toy tool for that, but unfortunately people have move on in terms of OS.

So, quickly, www.raymond.cc does come up with a list of top 10 free utilities to mount an image. There are not all free however, worthwhile going through the list, and finding popular names at a certain point in time in my life.:))

Hat off, www.raymond.cc:

The list below are arranged based on the file size (from small to big) of the installer. Reason is I am looking for a simple software to mount the Windows Automated Installation Kit ISO image.

1. Microsoft Virtual CDRom Control Panel
- There is no official page for this tool and you can’t even search for it in Microsoft website. What I like about this tool is it doesn’t require installation and the whole package is very small in size. The only drawback is it can only run in XP.

2. WinCDEmu
- Mounting an ISO image file using WinCDEmu is really easy. Just install and all you need to do is to double click on the ISO image file to automatically mount it to a drive letter. If you want to unmount, just right click on the drive and select Eject.

3. ISODisk
- Very straight forward interface for you to mount an image file. However this tool is unable to mount ISO-13346 (UDF) images. It can create ISO images from disc though…

4. MagicDisc
- MagicDisc is created by the same developer of the popular MagicISO. It can mount a wide range of CD/DVD image formats and can also create CD/DVD image from disc. Supports from Windows 98 to Windows 7!

5. Virtual CloneDrive
- Supports XP and Vista. Mounting a CD/DVD image is as easy as double clicking the file.

6. Pismo File Mount
- This tool works a little different by mounting the image file like a network mapped drive.

7. Phantom CD
- Phantom CD supports XP and Vista 32-bit. This software installer is quite huge in size compared to the above and it can only mount 1 drive letter plus cannot create image from disc.

8. DAEMON Tools Lite Commercial
- The “Commercial” keyword for the title of the software is a little confusing. Usually commercial means shareware but for this one, it is a freeware. Be careful during installation because it will ask to install Browser Toolbar and also set DAEMON Tools default Search Provider. It can create image from disc. Supports XP and Vista.

9. Gizmo Drive
- This is the only free virtual disc emulator that can create image from both disc and folder. Support both 32 and 64 bit of XP, Vista, 2003, 2008, and Windows 7.

10. Alcohol 52%
- Can create image from disc. You have to go to Virtual Drive option to set the number of virtual drives before mounting an image because by default it is set to 0.

Austan Goolsbee Show

Austan Goolsbee made a (ridiculous, in my humble opinion) appearance on the Daily Show. Is this the way an economists talks about deficits, productivity and something else, innovation or something?:))

I was seriously disappointed. Have a look.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Austan Goolsbee
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Not So Merry New Year

After 8 days of serious battling the flu, I was feeling better and ready to enjoy my trip across the pond to land of the stars and stripes. So, I went fully confident to a New Year's eve party close to Rockville, MD, a Romanian party that was. Unfortunatelly, nothing really went the way was supposed to. The delicious Romanian specialities were not delicious at all, scarce as hell and modified compared with the original menu. Around 2 AM I was feeling bored and hungry (?) despite a table full of food (which it did not really appeal to my senses). However, things would only get worse. Around 3 AM a nose bleed started and things started to precipitate. I never had a nose bleed before and this was pretty bad, couldn't stop it no matter what I did and I started to panic in the bathroom after i lost quite a lot of blood. Eventually, after I swollen a lot of this blood, I started also the feel light headed and almost fainted because I was getting sick to my stomach. Fortunately there were a couple of nurses in the party that took care of me and waited through the three bleeding episodes I had until 6 AM, when finally I was on the move again. Moreover, one of them (Ms. Luminita) was nice enough to invite us to spend the night at their house (10 min away) instead of driving back to Lothian (1+ hrs) which was the best alternative. A big scare that was. White, lightheaded, hungry and frustrated I was. But at least I was not bleeding anymore. Just hope that this is not a pattern for the NEw Year's.

Back in a NBA arena

Getting back to a bball arena was nice regardless of the quality of the game. Obviously, the Wizzards are not doing well for some number of seasons now (and they don't seem to have good rebounding perspectives either). On the other side, the Bulls are an up and rising team leaded by one of the best point guards in the game (D.Rose) and with some spectacular additions in the off-season (Boozer) that should give them the contender status desired. All in all, it was a good game; I was surprised that the Wizards stayed ahead for three quarters, considering Chicago's pretentions. However, they came on top at the beginning of the fourth and remained there until the end. Number 7 at the hosts (forgot his name) supposedly a center like player couldn't even dunk on a fast break (besides missing all types of shots) which makes me wonder why he's a starter in this team (now that they got Lewis and Carter?) but probably this will change soon. All in all, was a nice game, a lot of people around and a good atmosphere in the 4th quarter. I enjoyed it.

Office 2011 versus Office 2008

Well..in my opinion there is no comparison.
Hated Entourage and the whole mess with migrating data from Outlook 07 to it (painful) now it is back to Outlook 07 format for mac as well. Plus all the Word Excel and Communicator (hmmm???) you want (the buffet is open gents). What I liked especially is that now the bright and yellow people at Microsoft actually made it easy to migrate data from Entourage to Outlook ( I am currently waiting for my 7,000+ gmail account to migrate there and all my other IMAP accounts are there already). Also, let's see if it actually works, and all the other stuff there (signatures, agenda, prefs etc)..Working now on syncing the Calendars (but dehh...that was cruel with Thunderbird..so I guess it cannot get worse, but will update if necessary). Other than that an awesome first look. However, if you need more info check this out.

Zeitgeist - a new tool from Google

Something that I have seen also on Euronews powered by Google: stats on what people search (within Europe/US/etc). While it makes little sense in analyzing the top 10 for our "collective" search conscience (I cannot really identify that much with the latest Lady Gaga fetish video perhaps?) if this can be customized in terms of searches and coverage would make an interesting tool for cultural comparisons that are so loved in the international business literature. So perhaps I should have posted this on my research blog not here. well, whatever, I just thought it might be interesting, and still have a long time to become professional on these things.:) Cheers.

Cambodia Travel Guide - Siem Reap

What I did in two and a half days:

day one:
visit the rulous group
had dinner khmer traditional restaurant (chicken amok+ palmtree wine)
good nice hike intro to the temples

day two:
sunrise, small circuit bayon, tam prohm etc dinner with roy traditional khmer BBQ
lost driver

day three:
big circuit, angkor wat but no sunset

After a while the temples and ruins start to look the same even for the trained eye.
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Angkor Wat - DOs and DONTs -- a short travel guide

- PACK LITE: you can get t-shirts and other crappy touristic stuff to wear for 2-3 $ a piece; you can wash clothes (no undies) for 1$-2$ a kilo/24 hrs return

- Search HOTELS: deals run from 3-4 $ to XXXX...but i am talking backpacking stuff and budget...for a whopping 13$-15$ you should get something decent clean and good service. i paid 16 and had to share it with a tiny gecko for a couple of hours until i successfully hunted it with my slipper.

- do not trust blindly your hotel reps, or tuktuk drivers; explore..while it might seem risky but there are many GOOD places where you can grab a bit to eat and a beer and for a fraction of the recommended places. Obviously it comes with the usual warning to do your homework and have a trained eye for such things. But for example, all the "recommended" places charged me 8-9-10 $ for a meal with a drink, while a traditional khmer kitchen meal (w kitchen) at a regular place should not surpass $5 probably, and I had dinner at one place with 2.5$ out of which 1$ was the Angkor beer. it even came with a tiny desert!!!! all was the same quality as the recommended places, for which probably the owners have agreements with hotels and tuktuks (btw social networks are far more advanced here than facebook, once you get there people know most things about you, they remember them and mulage themselves after it aka your behavior, typing schemes etc)

- do not go for the sunset at ....; it is a huge tourist trap with people climbing and getting down desperately the pyramid to see the sun set ...not even AW but the SR plains. So, still if you like type type of adventures/events... go there at least around 4:30 pm and leave before 6 so that you don't catch the rush hour on the steep steps of the pyramid. anyways, all your pics will have much more than the sunset and yourself in them so might as well think it through.

- DO the sunrise at Angkor wat; although is crammed with tourists you should do it. it is a grreat view and totally worth your while getting up at 4 am. Also, do the Angkor Wat ( a bit) aftewards, although your guide / book tells you to come back in the afternoon. i did it (not enough) and it was my only chance to see it in the warm colors of the sun (the next day it was cloudy all day) and I regret not spending at least one hour over there.

- DO not get "instant" guides. poeple will glue to you and then ask a lot of money. i got two of these guys..students or not I felt that 10$ would be enough for their 30-40 min tour of AW but apparently they felt that only the police bribes would sum up to that, so although they took the money, not sure how happy were they. either way, that's how much i felt it was worth it (to get a full day guide is somewhere 27-30$, so you should do that if you must) myself I tend to move in my own pace..what i like i gave it 2-3 hrs...others I skimmed through. with a guide you will spend probably a decent amount of time in your visits.

- Tuktuks (15 a day max). Get a good map. Deal the tours if you can. They will again skip some temples, saying that they are closed, too far or who knows what. Be inquisitive. BTW, get the best english speaking driver if you can. Although Cambodians have a funky way of pronouncing English (i couldn't get 50% of what they were saying) you might get lucky. Guides on the other hand seemed great. Profi ones that is. I even saw Russian speaking ones (/??) damn..

- BETTER YET: have time? aka 5-7 days to roast it in SR? Go for the bike man..there are regular bikes (sometimes free from your hotel courtesy) or electrical ones (for people that have less than the required will to bike around for 20 km or so a day, which in Netherlands is next to nothing btw). Most temples are not as far as your trusted new friends let you know. you can easily do them.

- Another myth: heat. I had no problem walking around and climbing the temples in a scorching 30 C. to be honest I was expecting something more humid. But again, I went there in November almost....so yeah, might be very different in the season (April-July). Moreover, I didn't feel that I need to getaway at noon (do people actually do this?? you loose then an extra hour to get back and forth + the time to have your siesta or whatever...:):..)

- Fun: night market and pub street. both loud cowded with gringos and people trying to sell you stuff from t-shirts and other take-home-crap to fish massage (no happy ending there) and coke and meth (was offered many times during my short 3 hrs interlude on the pub street) --could be the can of mirinda i was holding in my hand :))??

- pack extra picture cards (SDs, CFs, etc) and AN EXTRA BATTERY. I will surely drain out, especially in the day you do the sunrise.

- bring an laptop or better yet, a smart phone or an Ipod. would be great to relax yourself on the flights and transfers etc. Moreover, would provide a light way for you to stay connected with your friends and family and let them know that ALL IS GOOD here in the Kingdom of Cambodia an that the KHMER ROUGE are no longer around. :) nothing to laugh at here, but the people's ignorance. But again, NOBODY has heard of, or meet a Romanian before, so it is a two-way street ("MANIA.., wat?? ROMANIA/// RUMANIA...you know...Hungary, Poland..etc..ROMANIA"