Obviously there are applications to track all of these things already. However, they don't share pertinent information across groups. And they tend to have lots of extraneous links/information that you have to click through to get to the lists.
Plus, the application should be able to control a networked-home. So selecting a DVD (for instance) should provide external data pointing to the DVD (maybe turning on a light in your DVD shelves within the pertinent section. Or be able to dynamically change the beer available through the tap to the selected beer. Or play music in a specific Region.
All of the links should be available through the same UI, the same login, should be uncluttered and should be linked to shared actionable internal and external systems (through the use of RFID tags combined with home automation systems). I guess take the concept of a networked home and focus on hobby implementations.
One other key element missing from most lists is the ability to assign a custom ranking system (and favorite lists) to the items. Which makes sense if the assumption is only one person will be using the list - but makes less sense if you're letting Visitor's access the same list.
So let's say I have a group of friends come by to visit. They should be able to define their own list of favorite beers (so I can stock up the next time they visit). And they should be able to receive a Message when and where their favorite program is on (especially if they don't live nearby) . And I should be able to expose a shared file system only when the friends are signed in to the network. And if they want to read a book - they should be able to select it from the application and have it light up in the bookshelf (regardless of where it is).
And all of this should be defined and controlled through a single application. And the interface should be similar to a Windows Gadget, or an iPhone/iPad application. If you go through a browser then the filler space will eventually be filled by junk.
To put it simply - it doesn't make sense to go to Website A for a list of the magazines you own somewhere in the basement in a box containing 300 other magazines (along with 20 links to buy more magazines), and then have to go to another website to see a list of beers you can buy (with no way to record whether you personally like them or whether you've even tried them) - both with different login names and different passwords (because the websites have decided that your taste in beer has to be as secure as your bank account). And then your friends come over to visit and can't view any of the lists you've created anyways. And when they were looking through your magazines they changed the location.
I'm not trying to be anal - but if you want to share your collections with friends these features can be useful. And for those functions that are already supported they way they've been implemented sucks.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/01/21/campaign.finance.ruling/index.html?hpt=Sbin
Three things occurred to me:
1. It seems to me that anyone could now setup and fund a L.L.C. and dictate in their will that money/interest made by the LLC must be expended towards political commercials. So after they die, they'll still be able to directly impact politics.
2. Along similar lines, I wonder what kind of impact this decision will have on VC funding? If you're a VC and your primary goal is to change society - then you may decide that it is now easier to change society via political commercials than by funding startups. For that matter, the same issue may come up with regards to scholarship funding (does funding a scholarship meet/fit your stated goals more than funding a political cause)? I'm just saying the equation may have changed for some people.
3. How long will it take before some corporation(s) decides to pay for advertising time not to show a political commercial - but rather to keep political commercials from being shown in the same time slot. Or maybe some corporation decides to block only certain types of political commercials from being shown. Normally they may consider it a waste of money - but on the other hand they don't need to spend any money creating a commercial. And it could generate some goodwill towards their paying customers. So again, maybe the equation has changed.
Or maybe corporations subsidize traditional advertising (non-political) to the point that the broadcast company makes more money from traditional advertising than political advertising. The subsidies cost wouldn't be prohibitive, and the advertising time would still be filled by advertising. It's just that political advertising would pay less to the broadcast company.
To put it another way, what's to stop a corporation from telling a television station: "We'll pay you $50,000/day for the 2 weeks leading up to the election not to accept advertisements from Candidate A."
That's about it for now. I started out focusing on Data Sync and Databases and probably went beyond those. But I'm always hopeful someone will find this information useful.
I took some recommendations from various tech websites (http://www.anandtech.com, http://www.tomshardware.com, http://www.sharkeyextreme.com mainly) - and went through it as more of a beginner than an enthusiast. Besides which, these websites (and other similar websites) have really cut back on reviews and recommendations (if I were a pessimist I would say it's probably because they don't get as many free components to test anymore.)
Regardless, I built the following computer in about 2 days (after I found all of the components.) Besides mentioning the components I chose, I'll try to include issues that came up (that weren't pointed out elsewhere). With luck this will help or encourage someone else to build their own computer.
Generally I'm going to stay away from costs here (mainly because they fluctuate so much.) My best advice is to put together a list of all the components and see what price you can find them for on the Internet (including shipping).
Primary Goals:
To build a powerful computer without spending a lot of money. You can find cheap PCs easily, though they won't have the specific components you may want. Or you can buy a pre-made PC that has most/if not all of the components that you want - but it'll cost you probably twice as much as you would spend if you built it yourself.
Also keep in mind that I don't want to overclock for now (maybe at some point in the future I will overclock, but at the very least I thought it would make sense to get to know the quirks of my new computer before pushing it's limits.) So while some of the components I picked are normally used primarily for overclocking - those same components should provide more stability in normal usage.
I also didn't want to build something that drove me crazy - in the process you'll inevitably run into some documentation that doesn't cover everything (sometimes the English sucks, sometimes the labels on the cables are in the wrong position, sometimes it's just old/incorrect documentation and sometimes they just don't label everything they should.) Generally most of these components were doc'ed ok, though there were some labelling issues on the case cables and some missing labels on the SDD enclosure. And some of the information on the tech websites was incorrect (or most likely old).
General Notes:
With these specific components, everything fit fairly easily except for some of the cables and initially the CPU fan. But - the CPU fan didn't fit because it was installed on the wrong side. So my basic point is there shouldn't be a need for force anything into the case - if there is, then you may have installed something incorrectly.
I put the whole thing together over a couple of nights. You could probably do it all in one night, but then your stress levels will go up. And it's probably better not to try to finish everything in one night anyways (take the amount of time you think it will take, double it and break it up into twice as many sessions for half the time each). Also, by breaking the build up it gives you time between build stages to decide if you installed a component in the best location.
As sort of a related suggestion, as long as shipping costs aren't too bad you may want to ship components out in stages (which can help you break up the build):
Stage 1:
Case
Power Supply
Stage 2:
Hard Drive
SSD
SSD Enclosure
DVD Rom Drve
Stage 3:
CPU
CPU fan
Motherboard
Memory
Stage 4:
Video Card
OS
One small problem with the case is while all of the components shipped with enough screws (and the case shipped with extra screws), some of the screws didn't fit very well (don't know if the screw holes were properly cleaned, or whether the screws weren't the right size.) Not a big deal, though you may need to shop for extra screws.
And the SSD enclosure supports 2 separate drives, but they didn't bother to match the cable connections to the drive slot.
The only truly painful part of the install was attaching all of the cables - it's just a tough reach for some of them. But the good news is you have access into the case from both sides for most of the install, so it won't drive you completely mad.
I picked up everything from http://www.amazon.com, http://www.newegg.com and http://www.antaresdigital.com . Doesn't mean those are the best places to go, but I was able to find everything with them.
Unofficially it takes about 30 seconds to cold boot my computer, and 5 seconds to shutdown (I have no idea what the breakdown is between hardware components and software - but that is quite a bit faster than my Vista PC.)
Here are the Components that I picked:
Update (12/3/2009):
I've had my computer now for a few weeks, and figured I would list those issues that are now showing up in the Event Viewer (at least, those that appear to be critical), plus those issues I remember for specific applications. It's not that my system is less stable now (or even that these are directly relatable to a custom-built system). But it may give you some sense that even if issues don't stop my computer from functioning - they are still being recorded:
The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID - Permission failure. Again, not interested in debugging the issue (as long as my computer appears to function correctly, I will assume it's a bug that will be fixed.)
Portal (game from Valve) wasn't able to run over Steam
Games for Windows Live didn't seem to work. Don't know if it was a 64bit issue or Win7 (and to be honest I didn't really care - it's not like there's an obvious benefit to installing and using it.)
Windows OnLive doesn't work (I realize it's no longer a production app, or at least not available to pay money for. For that matter, I may be mistaken on the name). But since I had multiple machines running it in the past I was hoping I could use the available license for my new machine - no luck. On the other hand, the product never seemed to be configured properly anyways, so maybe it's a good thing it doesn't work anymore. Again, I don't know if this is a 64-bit or Win7 issue.
I've had occasional computer hangs that looked like they were related to Norton 360 tasks running simultaneously (like trying to shutdown my computer, or switching from a Remote Desktop Connection.) Nothing I couldn't recover from later - but they don't generate high levels of trust.
It took about 30 seconds for my computer to start today - so no change yet on the time.
On a positive note, I found the Microsoft link to XP Mode yesterday (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx)
Update (12/5/2009):
I found a decent blog that describes which settings to change in Win7 to reference the regular hard drive rather than the SSD (to reduce the number of writes to the SSD). But unfortunately, I haven't been able to find it again. I did find this blog on Vista - which appears to include many of the same tricks (http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2009/08/27/ssd-performance-tweaks-for-vista/2). Basically, these are the changes to try (if you're not comfortable with these steps then it's probably safer to skip them):
I also noticed one mistake I made (now that the new Intel Firmware is available to enable TRIM on the SSD - see the link provided above). In order to enable TRIM, before you install your OS you should make sure that your drive is set to AHCI in your BIOS. After you've installed the OS, I don't think it's possible to convert your drive (you can enable the AHCI drivers in Win7 with a registry tweak, and you can change your settings in your BIOS after installing the OS. But all that would do is let you enable AHCI on a new drive - not change an existing drive.)
There are 2 separate settings in your BIOS related to AHCI under Integrated Peripherals - and to be honest I don't know whch ones should be changed. And as happens frequently, there's no documentation on the differences (I think the difference is related to which SATA connection you use - the native connection for SATA1-6 or SATA7.)
There's no documentation on whether there are potential negative effects on your secondary drive - if it is connected to the same Interface port (and is not SSD). So I've decided it probably makes some sense for now to leave my drive settings as-is, and instead focus on limiting the number of writes to the SSD throgh my OS.
Update (12/6/2009):
I found the following link on changing the location of your Firefox Disk Cache - http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/11/26/how-to-move-the-firefox-disk-cache-to-another-drive/ - again for the purpose of moving Write requests from my SSD to my hard drive.
I also changed the title of the entry - I figured that while the steps may still be useful for someone new to the process, some of the information on SSD may not be geared towards a new builder.
Update (12/7/2009):
I've started noticing that my desktop icons are disappearing (things like the trashcan). There is a Desktop Properties item to control this (right-click on your desktop, click on View. Verify that 'Show desktop icons' is enabled.) I don't know if this is related, but I now have the following Errors in Event Viewer:
I've been trying to install Linux on a pen drive using the same machine, so it's possible some of the issues came up due to frequent rebooting without cleanly shutting down. It's also possible that (related to this) the ISO burner may not support multi-threading properly in the OS (trying to move open Windows while the Image was burning caused the machine to stutter).
And speaking of which, if you decide to try Linux - good luck. I've been trying to install any working version of Ubuntu, and all I get is an Error reading book CD when I try to do anything - which could only show up if the CD can be read from (so I get an Error message blaming my CD rom drive - which could only be reached by being able to read off the CD rom drive).
I've checked the md5 Hash Code and tried installing on multiple machines (with different hardware configurations) - all with the same Error. And the only info/help I've found on the Internet claims that it's either a hardware issue (my CD drive, specifically) or a problem with the ISO image. Since it happens on 3 (very different) machines, it's not the CD drive. And since I verified the Hash code it's not the ISO image. I'm guessing it's some shared hardware component besides the CD drive - but of course that begs the question of why the Error Message points to a CD read failure.
Update (12/19/2009):
A few more items have occurred to me:
Update (12/28/2009):
I tried to burn my first CD today off of the optical drive, and it failed miserably. No idea yet whether it failed because the default write speed causes problems, or whether some other issue occurred. Regardless, there is no reason why this task would have failed except for hardware problems in the drive or software bugs. And by failing I mean that it refused to finish, and then refused to Cancel. And closing it via the Task Manager crashed Windows Explorer. Then trying to shutdown gracefully failed, and forced me to shutdown by turning off the power. All in all, a crappy result.
Update (1/11/2010):
No real changes. Haven't seen any new types of Errors in the Event Viewer (ReadyBoot is still crashing, my Disk driver is detecting a controller error on a regular basis and IE is recording Errors on a regular basis (though none of these have stopped my computer from functioning). My SSD is showing 54.6 gb free (out of 74.4 gb - so if that continues to change I may eventually have a problem. I guess it's possible i made a mistake when originally listing the amount of space used.
I was also able to burn a CD in the past few weeks - so it appears as though the issue I ran into before was not due to hardware.