About two and a half years ago Battery Centre sold me me a silver calcium battery for my car. According to them silver calcium batteries are the best thing in lead acid battery technology since Gaston Planté made the first one in 1859.
They are probably right and most new cars will be fitted with one and the battery should last 3 to 5 years. If you have an older car things are not that simple. If your older car was fitted with a “hybrid” or plain lead acid battery originally, you will find that a silver calcium battery will probably not give you the life expected from it.
Continue reading ‘Battery Centre needs the Battery University’
If you are an IT professional providing customers with Internet connectivity solutions you know that the internet is a scary place. Back in the dark ages (before 1993) when things started out everyone using the internet trusted each other. Unfortunately things changed drastically and trust is a thing of the past on the internet.
When you set up an internet connection for a customer you do everything you can to protect them, you set up a restrictive firewall, you have a proxy that enforces policy for web surfing as far as possible. You also use all possible means to block spam and viruses in e-mail before they reach the lusers that still believe Bill Gates will give them free Nokia cellphones.
After you did all the technical stuff, you tell everyone (you know it falls on deaf ears, but you have to try) that they must not visit those porn sites, that they must copy links in e-mail and paste them into their browser rather than simply clicking on them etc. So what happens when one of the lusers that actually listened goes to a legitimate website and still have his windows computer exploited? Or if they are lucky the lusers get a warning from their anti-virus software and the site gets blocked.
Continue reading ‘The internet is a scary place!’
The big media companies and their cronies are getting more and more desperate to try save their totally outdated business model. Modern computers make it ridiculously easy and cheap to copy and distribute any media. The media companies are however trying very hard to overcharge people for what they can do very easily themselves. Most people know that it is illegal to make unauthorised copies of copyrighted materials, but if the holders of the copyright charge way too much and chances are that you will not get caught people will simply copy the material illegally.
Continue reading ‘Will they ever learn?’
I have written about my favourite mail client Mutt before and still consider it the best around. There is another contender around that I heard about on the linux-elitist mailing list. It is also console based and is called “Sup” short for “What’s Up”
Continue reading ‘Whatsup! – There is another decent mail client on the block’
On every Mac you buy you will find iLife bundled with it. When I bought my first Mac in 2004 I immediately fell in love with iPhoto the photo management application in iLife. I looked at the other parts of iLife i.e. iMovie, iDVD, iWeb and Garageband but never really started using them.
Continue reading ‘ILife – Apple’s killer app’
About two weeks ago I googled for info on “Saturday Voices” (Saterdagstemme) at “Die Boekehuis” in Johannesburg. “Saturday Voices” is a regular event at “Die Boekehuis” where well known (and not so well known) authors, poets, critics or academics launch and discuss their work.
Continue reading ‘Do you need the web to sell 4000 year old technology?’
I get lots of e-mail, about 300 messages a day (excluding spam). Ok admittedly I don’t really have to deal with all of it immediately but if you let it go you very soon have thousand of e-mails waiting in you INBOX. more....
I guess everyone that has an interest in matters internet related already know that there is a new kid on the block in the search engine market. Go have a look at http://www.cuil.com if you haven’t done it yet. more....
