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• Wells Fargo Advantage Funds Web Site Recognized as a Top 10 Portal » The Wells Fargo Advantage Funds(SM) Investment Professionals Web site has been named one of the Top 10 Intermediary Web Sites by kasina, LLC, a leading management consulting firm to the financial services industry
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• Re-Introducing the Real Windows Vista (Updated x3) at Tauquil’s Blog » As I watched Bill demonstrate the features of Vista a sense of deja vu washed over me. It was like I’ve seen it all somewhere before
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• Dead Spots? Use Your Cable Setup to Send Signals to Every Corner – New York Times » AuraGrid distributes the network signal over your TV cable system which bolsters the signal and eliminates dead spots. (via LifeHacker)
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• Sun’s Java(TM) Enterprise System Subscriptions Surpass One Million as American Express Chooses Integrated Software Platform for Global Deployment: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance
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  (tags: java j2ee Identity portal amex sun java+es)
• Effective Code Reviews Without the Pain
  Code reviews are a proven, effective way to minimize defects. Whatever additional motivations the organization has for performing code reviews, they are, at their core, an industry best practice.
  (tags: development code+review article tips)
• ONJava.com: Twelve Best Practices For Spring XML Configurations
  In this article, I will show you 12 best practices for Spring XML configurations. Some of them are more necessary practices than best practices. Note that other factors, such as domain model design, can impact the XML configuration, but this article focus
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• Restlet
  Bring the simplicity and efficiency of the REST architectural style to Java developers
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I have had it – I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to burn a simple f***ing DVD on my computer. Roxio and Nero and all the other DVD burning software that I have tried for Windows just suck and I’ve burnt more coasters than.. Ok. Can’t think of a smart or funny analogy here but I’ve burnt a lot of coasters.

Since we’ve had our daughter, my wife and I have been putting our digital camcorder to good use. I typically capture the movies to my computer before burning them onto a DVD with titles, transitions, pictures and music. I typically use Roxio to burn my DVD and the results are usually hit or miss. After installation, Roxio works fine for a few days or weeks and then just starts burning coasters. So I’ll download Nero and try that and that may work fine for a few weeks before it goes into coaster mode. Usually a simple uninstall and a reinstall fixes the problem with Roxio but that is such a hassle. There are times when that doesn’t work and the typical answer from Roxio support is to rebuild my machine. F*** you – Fix your software so that it works and doesn’t require me to rebuild my machine. In Roxio’s defense, I install any piece of software I can find that seems interesting. I do download a lot of software from any development tool, add-on to utility programs and I must be clobbering something but this is just garbage. Why can’t a program protect its own DLL’s or registry settings or whatever is breaking this

My burner machine configuration is a DELL Pentium 4 (ancient) 2 GHz machine with 1 GB of RAM, Windows XP SP2 and an external USB 2.0 Plextor PX-708UF DVD burner. I own Roxio v7.0 and don’t want to upgrade to v8.0 as I may be facing the same issues. This is enough of a hassle to make me want to buy a MAC. Now that Macs are running a real processor with some performance, it might be worth checking out one of those shiny new MacBook Pros. And if I can run OS X and Vista on the same laptop, that’s a pretty good deal. If only Apple made a Tablet!

Is there any other software out there that will let me burn a DVD without these hassles? There has to be an alternative to this nightmare scenario. If you have a solution that’s working for me, please drop me a line or comment below.

Roxio, Nero, Windows+xp, dvd, software, mac, osx, macbook

• No Tibet or Tiananmen on Google’s new Chinese site – Markets – Times Online
  How can you have a motto "don’t be evil" and then do something like this. Just be honest – It’s all about the money and marketshare.Tagged as: google history politics
• Business 2.0’s dumbest moments in tech – February 1, 2006
  The year in shenanigans, skulduggery, and just plain stupidity in the world of technology.Tagged as: 2005 lists technology
• Google admits online stumble
  "We made a big mistake," Mayer, who oversees all of Google’s search products, said Tuesday. "You can’t come out and launch a product like Google Video and say ‘CSI’ and ‘Survivor’ are there if they’re not on the home page."Tagged as: google google+video
• The Bug in Microsoft’s Ear
  The software giant is mulling its own digital device that adds gaming to music and video, in an effort to compete with Apple’s iPod empireTagged as: apple ipod microsoft