"Good Enough" Counterrevolution

This post is essentially my comment to the "Good-Enough" Revolution post which I think worthwhile to be turned into separate article. Besides - I didn't wrote anything non-technical for a long time... "Good-Enough" Revolution stands that many contemporary goods are "good enough" to be used and hence consumer often do not have motivation to buy a new version of the same good (e.g. man using Windows XP wouldn't go for Window Vista as XP is good enough for most of every day tasks, like e-mail, Internet or editing some office documents). While this observation is absolutely correct I think that important point is missed - contemporary goods are deliberately created not to be durable to compel consumer to, well, consume. A silent "Good-Enough" Counterrevolution is in its high. Producers do not create goods that are designed to last any more. Almost anything you are buying nowadays is deliberately designed to last for a short, programmed time and then broke. I think that the only consumer strategy to deal with it is to buy the cheapest version of an appliance you need - it would usually serve you the same time as its high-end version, while cost a half of it. Your washing machine served you for 10 years? – I bet that a new one would not stand for more than 2-3 years. Your old electric kettle worked for 5-7 years? - Buy a new one and it would leak in a year or so. Talk to guys who are working in electronics service/repair centers and they would tell you that stuff nowadays is PROGRAMMED to work for a predefined time and then broke. A friend of mine who works in a big car repairs firm told me that every car accumulator that occasionally served significantly more than a guaranty period is sent to the lab for examination to check out why did it lasted so long and didn’t broke. An observation about "good enough" was correct, but it's not applicable to the new goods - manufacturers are not interested in you wiping yourself with the same towels till your golden years. No, you should buy towels, use them and then buy new ones. We all are squirrels that have to rotate wheels of economy. No one asks squirrel whether it wants to get our of a squirrel-wheel marathon, right?

Manually scheduling Check Disk upon next computer restart

Set following value in BootExecute key of [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Session Manager] registry entry: autocheck autochk /r \??\C:autocheck autochk /r \??\D:autocheck autochk *

How to uninstall an assembly installed by MSI from GAC

If you getting message "Assembly 'assemblyname' could not be uninstalled because it is required by other applications." while trying to uninstall an assembly from GAC - here is potential resolution: http://bytes.com/groups/net/47733-unable-remove-any-assembly-gac

Sort Team System query results by multiple fields

You can sort Team System query results by by multiple fields at once by holding the Shift button, while clicking on the desired headers. You can click a header twice in order to change the sort direction.

Today vs Great Depression

Two interesting charts I've came around:

Hard Rock Memorabilia Easter Egg

There is a nice Easter Egg in Silverlight 2 Hard Rock Memorabilia application, demonstrating power of the Deep Zoom technology. Here is how it works: open the Memorabilia Home Page and press "V". You are photo of the Beatles figures now. Start to zoom-out - wow, the photo is inside of framework, which is on the ad' desk on the Hard Rock Café, which is on the NY street, which is a postcard, which is one of the tiles on a book stamp, which is ..............................

Top N Firefox Addons/Extension

Updated: 23/7/2009 First of all - why Top N? Well, it's just cause I'm completely fatigued by all those "Top 10..", "Top 50..", "Best everyday..." and similar that became ubiquitous in the blog space. So here is just the list of FireFox addons that I found to be useful for myself and use on everyday basis. I basically gonna use this post as a book-keeping entry to myself. Here it goes: Adblock Plus - cleans out most of annoying ads from web pages you visiting. Supports update of cleaning rules set (check it in its options). Enables to create your own blocking rules for the stuff you don't want to see. BugMeNot - automatically login to forums and site, for which you were to lazy to pass tedious registration process using infamous http://www.bugmenot.com/ site. Download Statusbar - see download status and manage your downloads from a tidy status bar, rather that using default download window. FoxyProxy - easy proxies management. Video Download Helper - instantaneously download videos displayed on a web-page you visit (e.g. YouTube). FlashGot - instantaneously integrate your favourite downloads manager with FireFox. Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer - this one is especially cool. Synchronize your bookmarks between your computers (work/home/laptop/...). Don forget to set HTTPS as a default communication protocol in option to secure your information! Gmail Notifier - get notifications on new e-mails in your Gmail account, check mails and easily switch between few Gmail accounts. IE Tab - open sites in FireFox-hosted IE window by one click. Setup sites to be automatically opened in embedded IE tab. LinkedIn Companion for FireFox - manage you Linked In account and automatically get job insiders in your network for the site you've visited. NoScript- disable/enable JavaScript per site or globally for better security. PDF Download - whenever you click link to a PDF document - you may choose to either Save, Open or Open as HTML. Tab Mix Plus - improved tabs management + possibility to save sessions/lists of currently open tabs. Ghostery - show list of web trackers used by site you visiting.