Ted Leung on the air

Ted Leung on the air
Ted Leung on the air: Open Source, Java, Python, and ...

Thu, 09 Oct 2003

Everybody is carrying the story of Intuit's apology over Turbotax. There's a copy of their apology on the Turbo Tax website (I'm not linking them). I've been a faithful Turbo Tax user for years. Last year I heard about the DRM scheme and voted with my feet. I used TaxCut last year, and it did the job admirably. I'll probably be using it again.

Intuit broke both my confidence and my trust by assuming that I'm a software pirate that needed to be contained by DRM. When companies treat honest customers like that, the honest customers quit and find somebody else. Good thing that there was TaxCut. The RIAA folks should be paying attention. CNN estimates that Intuit lost $100M in revenue because of the DRM scheme. I can guarantee that $39.95 of that revenue, plus my personal recommendation, is gone for good.

[14:04] | [computers] | # | TB | F | G | 0 Comments |

Multiple Monitors

Slashdot has a story on a study that shows that multiple monitors improves productivity. In the personal computer space, this idea has been around since at least 1987, when the Macintosh II with NuBus slots was announced. Once you've used a machine with multiple displays, you just won't want to go back.

Right now I'm running a Cornerstone p1650 at 1800x1440 attached to an ATI All-in-Wonder 8500DV as the primary display and a Hitachi CM801 at 1600x1200 attached to a eVGA GeforceMX PCI card as the secondary. That's one display for code and one display for output, server consoles, IM, media players and whatnot. A pair of these guys would be the bomb, but I'm plenty happy with what I've got.

[13:52] | [computers/hardware] | # | TB | F | G | 2 Comments |

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