David | 
13:48| 
David’s links of the week January 10th through January 15th:
- Why Vista’s DRM Is Bad For You – quot;Windows Vista includes an array of quot;featuresquot; that you don#039;t want. These features will make your computer less reliable and less secure. They#039;ll make your computer less stable and run slower. They will cause technical support problems. They may even require you to upgrade some of your peripheral hardware and existing software. And these features won#039;t do anything useful. In fact, they#039;re working against you. They#039;re digital rights management (DRM) features built into Vista at the behest of the entertainment industry. quot;
- http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/01/09/tweetbacks-plugin-for-wordpress/ -
- The Ever Expanding Universe in Modern Cosmology – Since 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy, here is something I thought I’d pull out of my personal archive. It is a dissertation I wrote for the third year of my MPhys, reviewing achievements in cosmology between 1916 and 1999. I invite everyone who reads this to add any achievements in cosmology since then in the comments!
- Laying Schrödinger’s Cat to rest – We’re talking about Quantum Physics today, and how one of the most difficult to understand concepts is made twice as confusing as is necessary by one of the most poular popular-science gedankenexperiments (that’s German for “thought experiment”). If you don’t know about Schrödinger’s Cat, then this post probably isn’t for you. Although if you are a fan of physics or popular science (for which I applaud you), then read on.Firstly, I’m going to outline what the “Schrödinger’s Cat” gedankenexperiment is actually meant to demonstrate, then once we understand that, I’ll look at what’s wrong with how the gedankenexperiment is presented to the public.
- Turn your thumb drive into your digital lifeboat Part 2 – Last time we ended with showing you how to encrypt your thumb drive. Now we’ll resume and show you how to make using encryption a little less inconvenient.
- Top five Security #038; Privacy extensions for Firefox – Following on from last week, this is my top five security amp; privacy extensions for Firefox.
- Turn your thumb drive into your digital lifeboat Part 1 – This is a series showing you how you can load up a basic USB thumb drive with some practical tools which will ensure you can keep your data safe from theft and hard drive failure.
- Top 5 most useful Firefox extensions – If you’re not already using it, hopefully you’ll be aware of the Firefox web browser. One of it’s killer features is that you can add “extensions” to expand it’s functionality. For the next two weeks I’m going to post a list of extensions that I think you should use. This week, I’ll post up extensions I use that are just generally useful. Next week, I’ll post up extensions that are for your privacy and security.
- How to become an e-mail ninja – Part 3 – Okay this is due to a Google video I watched of a talk given by Merlin Mann, about “Inbox Zero (Google video)” (which I’ll show you at the end of this series), you can download the audio here (MP3 59Minutes 40MB). I’m not going to rehash the whole talk, but listening to this really changed the way I have looked at e-mail. (He talks a lot more about time management than I do).
- How to become an e-mail ninja – Part 2 – Picking up from where we left off last time. If you use POP mail and need to access old messages when you’re away from home, you can’t because it’s all stored inside your home computer!So, if you need to access your e-mail when you’re not at home, the alternative of web mail would seem to be the solution. However, if you want to have a home copy of your e-mail for back up purposes and for off-line access too, then web mail is no help.
- How to become an e-mail ninja – Part 1 – We all depend on e-mail these days, most of the world runs on it. It’s definitely something we all take for granted, although it’s a lot more complicated than most of us realise. This series of posts will cover the pro’s and cons of whether you should download it to your home computer or keep it in the cloud and also how to keep on top of your e-mail, and not let your e-mail get on top of you!Part 1 discusses the good and bad points of getting your mail downloaded to your home computer. Part 2 goes into more sophisticated methods that allow you to have your e-mail stored at home, but still accessible from anywhere. Part 3 then talks about how you process your incoming e-mail and keep your inbox from overflowing!
