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Group29 2011 Bowl Season picks |
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Posted by BB on Thursday, December 29 @ 04:48:39 PST (425 reads)
(Read More... | 7808 bytes more | comments? | Score: 5)
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 Here we go. The college football season is underway. Here are the Group29 predictions for the upcoming bowls.
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HTC Titan Camera |
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Posted by BB on Tuesday, December 27 @ 11:54:32 PST (434 reads)
(Read More... | 1461 bytes more | comments? | Score: 5)
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 One of the cool new things about my HTC Titan is the camera. There is a special button on the lower right side that is perfectly positioned for right index finger shutter operation. There is a saying attributed to Chase Jarvis, "The best camera is the one that is with you."
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Why AT&T Does not want to sell you a Windows Phone |
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Posted by BB on Tuesday, December 27 @ 11:49:09 PST (288 reads)
(Read More... | 991 bytes more | comments? | Score: 5)
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| It is pretty simple, really; the sales reps have no incentive. I discovered this in person a few weeks ago when visiting some AT&T stores and kiosks. The sales people dismiss the phones because they do not have apps. They do not stock them. They will tell you that they are in third place in a two-[platform] race.
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HTC Titan looks cool, but |
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Posted by BB on Saturday, November 26 @ 19:21:24 PST (793 reads)
(Read More... | 1471 bytes more | comments? | Score: 5)
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UCLA at USC preview 2011 |
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Posted by BB on Saturday, November 26 @ 19:14:46 PST (724 reads)
(Read More... | 1512 bytes more | comments? | Score: 3)
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| The BeatSC.com blogger who runs the Trojan Haters club pretty much summed it up. The UCLA Bruins football team is the scissors to the rock of the USC Trojans football team. UCLA has found itself in a very unlikely position. They are going to play for the PAC-12 championship against the Oregon Ducks in Oregon next week. USC cannot go because they are on probation. So, this game is meaningless in the title sense. Except for the fact that it the UCLA vs. USC game.
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The Palomino Blackwings, Part II |
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Posted by BB on Saturday, September 24 @ 18:08:05 PDT (722 reads)
(Read More... | 2873 bytes more | comments? | Score: 5)
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 Now that I have them (See previous Group29 article The Palomino Blackwings) I have been using the Palomino Blackwing, in preference to the Palomino Blackwing 602. I really like how smoothly it writes and draws. I have wondered about how the particular formula came to be selected. It seems the original Blackwing 602 from Eberhard-Faber was a favorite of copywriters, authors, and musicians. At 50 cents each, they were quite expensive for the ordinary consumer, nearly 5 to ten times as much as an ordinary pencil. Today, they would probably cost $2 or more because of the distinctive eraser ferrule.
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The Palomino Blackwings |
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Posted by BB on Saturday, September 24 @ 17:57:06 PDT (760 reads)
(Read More... | 7349 bytes more | comments? | Score: 5)
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Confusing Rachael Bilson Commercial |
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Posted by BB on Saturday, July 09 @ 06:27:38 PDT (914 reads)
(comments? | Score: 0)
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 While watching one of the reality TV shows. I will not say which, but it involves dancing or singing and caters to an adult female demo.
I saw a confusing commercial. A huge traffic jam on the PCH. Hot model (Rachael Bilson) jumps out of her commercial and walks barefoot over traffic to get to a tractor trailer in the jam. The trailer has a giant brown sign with yellow lettering saying "Magnum". What is in there? Guns? Champagne? No! Ice Cream! An ice cream named Magnum. Rachael starts eating and making eyes at the hunky ice cream rig driver who gave her the treat.
It did not sell.
Bare feet + hot cars = blisters
The truck side billboard ad was not selling cool treats of any kind
That must be 300 calories, or a whole weekly intake for Rachael Bilson
See the commercial here and judge for yourself.
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The 2010 Rose Bowl broadcast |
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Posted by BB on Saturday, January 02 @ 05:37:14 PST (2399 reads)
(Read More... | 4836 bytes more | comments? | Score: 5)
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The 2010 Rose Bowl deserved some serious consideration. The game featured an Oregon team that totally went off the rails. They had a new coach in Chip Kelly, and in their first game, lost to an opponent that they should not have in Boise State. Then LaGarrette Blount did a really stupid thing in going nuts and going after Byron Hout. With the video making the rounds on every sports show and the internet, as the Boise State game was the first of the season, it looked like Oregon had a major team meltdown on their hands.
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Gridview problem DataFormatString not working Visual Studio |
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Posted by BB on Monday, February 02 @ 10:24:42 PST (8789 reads)
(Read More... | 4190 bytes more | comments? | Score: 3)
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 There is a bug in older versions of the .NET 2.0 framework used for Visual Studio 2005. Even if you have a DataFormatString in your Gridview object, the column may still not format. This article has been promoted from the Group29 Forums Article Gridview problem DataFormatString not working Visual Studio
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Apple iPhone vs. Samsung Saga SCH-i770 Windows Mobile 6.1 comparison |
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Posted by BB on Monday, January 26 @ 16:53:53 PST (6382 reads)
(Read More... | 7142 bytes more | comments? | Score: 5)
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 The first question you might be asking if you found this article: Why would you compare the Apple iPhone against the Samsung Saga SCH-i770 phone? You do the comparison because, at the simplest level, this is another battleground in the Microsoft OS/any hardware vendor vs. the all-Apple solution market share competition. In the infamous Mac vs. PC advertisements, this plays out in the personal computing space. It also plays in iPod vs Zune.
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Girl Scout Cookies 2009: Salmonella and Anti-Semitism? |
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Posted by BB on Sunday, January 18 @ 09:49:17 PST (3117 reads)
(Read More... | 3680 bytes more | comments? | Score: 5)
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| This is the fourth year that our daughters have been selling Girl Scout cookies as part of their membership in Girl Scouts. Ordinarily the questions are "When do we see the cookies?" (End of February in 2009), and "Should we pay now?" ("No" up until this year). However, this year we were confronted by an unsettling statement from a neighbor who usually liked to buy thin mints.
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UCLA vs USC Preview December 6, 2008 |
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Posted by BB on Sunday, December 07 @ 15:32:27 PST (1788 reads)
(Read More... | 1051 bytes more | comments? | Score: 5)
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This is the annual Group29 preview of the upcoming UCLA / USC rivalry game to be played at the Rose Bowl Stadium on December 6th 2008. Since the previews started, the USC Trojans have been on a series of top 10 finishes. Without exception, USC has been the predicted winner. Our favorite past prediction had been "The Bruins could not win this game with machetes".
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Visual Basic to C# tricks, #Develop (SharpDevelop) |
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Posted by BB on Thursday, September 25 @ 07:55:30 PDT (5415 reads)
(Read More... | 14842 bytes more | comments? | Score: 5)
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 It is surprising how close together VB.NET and C#.NET are as
programming languages. Each uses the Microsoft .NET Framework. The classes are
addressed identically with intellisense working on both. The most obvious differences are the way code
blocks are broken, as C# is a curly brace language.
In an earlier Group29.com Forum Post, SharpDevelop (#develop) - .NET GUI IDE FREE!, there are notes about a free tool called SharpDevelop.
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Should I sign the back of my credit card? |
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Posted by BB on Tuesday, September 23 @ 13:03:46 PDT (2194 reads)
(Read More... | 987 bytes more | comments? | Score: 5)
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 Yes, it is a way to prevent credit card fraud.
See the Visa Risk Management site for merchants who accept credit cards:
http://usa.visa.com/merchants/risk_management/card_present.html
When a merchant accepts credit cards, the merchant is responsible for checking identities, because it is the merchant who loses out of fraudulent purchases. If someone steals a credit card and purchases a Snow Blower at a hardware store, the former owner of the credit card is not liable. It usually (in my experience) results in a cancellation of your existing credit card, and issuance of a new credit card.
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Fun: The Web Site is Down surface psychoanalysis |
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 Some clever folks assembled by Josh Weinberg have put together a 10-minute comedy video called Sales Guy vs. Web Dude, also known as The Web Site is Down. Although this is now classified as an Internet meme, I still thought to write about it and describe how some of the psychology works in that dynamic.
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Fun: Matchbox Superfast 2008 new models available! |
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 A new line of Matchbox Superfast branded models is appearing in Wal Mart stores for the summer of 2008. These models consist of the car outside the box in a rectangular clear cellophane box. There are 10 of these boxes loaded into a flat cardboard display box.
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Incorrect Syntax near nvarchar SQL Server VB.NET |
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Posted by BB on Monday, August 04 @ 07:59:00 PDT (5555 reads)
(Read More... | 911 bytes more | comments? | Score: 5)
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| While testing an application that uses a Gridview control to connect to
a SqlDataSource control using Visual Studio .NET 2005, I ran into a
problem.
Incorrect Syntax near nvarchar.
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How did I get the XP AntiVirus 2008? |
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Posted by BB on Thursday, July 03 @ 11:58:46 PDT (4275 reads)
(Read More... | 6041 bytes more | comments? | Score: 5)
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One of the computers in our household obtained a drive-by virus infection recently. This particular infection is one of the famous backdoor Trojans that arrive by exploiting browser security from a web site that would otherwise seem harmless. The web site in question already was infected by the server SQL Injection exploit, which was replacing the web pages with ones that framed the content and contained malware JavaScript.
The computer in question was running Windows XP service pack 2, in a non-administrative account, with a 20-day old Symantec Antivirus 7.x virus list.
Why would anyone bother? In this case, the software that was loaded had all sorts of powers. It was malware, spy ware, and blackmail ware all in a blended threat. One piece attempts to open a back door to your computer, so that it can be controlled in a botnet. A botnet can be used to send internet traffic such as denial of service attacks, spam emails, and deliver other content. Another malware program brings in other software that shows up and attempts to blackmail you into buying it so that your computer will continue to work.
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