A recent post on the forum stirred up some debate.

It's about a new tool/sdk from a company called OpenCandy, which is designed to allow a developer to add code to their application installer that can show some advertisements or opt-in recommendations to install other software.

The forum thread contains some interesting debate and a long explanation from a member of the OpenCandy team.

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After over a dozen years of non-driving, i've reacquired the skill and discovered an amazing car sharing service that is in my town and in many other big towns/cities, called ZipCar.

As someone who grew up in a city that where the most common means of getting around is mass transport, not driving was no big deal.. But in most places, having a car is important.  Still, even where I am now i get to most places on public transportation, and having a car of my own seems overkill and way too expensive, especially with insurance costs.

But this ZipCar thing is perfect for people like me who would still like to do some occasional driving, to go shopping or pick people up at airport, etc.

Basically it's about $50 a year, and then you pay $8/hour or so for when you actually use a car.  This cost includes good insurance coverage and all gas costs.

All reservations can be done online, and you get a key card that unlocks the car during your reservation -- so you never have to deal with an actual human.

Pros:

• Completely automated system.
• Cheap if you very rarely drive.
• As a member you can use zipcars in any state.

Cons:

• Useless unless ZipCar operates very near you -- within walking distance; so only useful to a small fraction of people on planet.
• They are strict about reservations (since others may have it reserved after you); so when you say it will be back by a certain time, it MUST be back by then.
• Expensive if you need to use the care for a full day (then a standard car rental becomes cheaper)

http://www.zipcar.com

I'm soon upgrading my XP 32bit system with two new 2GB sticks of RAM. Together with my two previous 1GB sticks I'll then have a total of 6GB.
But from what I've read XP can only make use of a bit above 3GB for regular RAM for some complex reasons.

So I'm looking into the possibilities of using the leftover memory as a RAM-disk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_disk

I'd like to brainstorm a bit about that.  Things I'd like to get feedback on:

1. This RAM-disk program claims to use the memory XP can't use as regular memory for a RAM-disk:
"RamDisk Plus 9 has a most unique feature. Our patent pending technology can access memory beyond the limitation imposed by a Windows 32-bit operating system! In other words, RamDisk Plus 9 can use "unmanaged" Windows' memory e.g. above 4GB. It can also use the stubbornly inaccessable memory between 3.2GB and 4GB."
http://www.superspee.../desktop/ramdisk.php 

Has anyone tried that? Does it work well? Any drawbacks? (Note: even if there are great problems with that I'm still interested in the RAM-disk questions below -- 3GB is still a lot of memory for many cases so I could still test to devote a bit of that for a RAM-disk)

(The Ramdisk Plus software was brought up in this older thread that didn't catch on https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=10979.0 )

2. putting the XP page file on a RAM-disk: one (possible) benefit would be non-recoverability. Are there also noticeable speed benefits?

3. putting the cache of Firefox or other programs on a RAM-disk: speed benefits?

4. putting all of Firefox on a RAM-disk (via a script that copies Portable Firefox to the RAM-disk at each system start): would I get additional speed benefits, especially when starting Firefox?

5. Downloading: I sometimes use Flashget Classic to grab video streams. With many parallell streams Flashget easily freezes and seems to strain the harddrive. Would I avoid those problems by saving the downloads (and perhaps also Flashget cache or all of Flashget) to the RAM-disk and then only later, once all parts are save, move the saved file to a harddrive?

6. Are there any other good RAM-disk applications for XP 32bit (especially freeware/FOSS version that are actively developed)?

another partly related older thread:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=10348.0

A DC forum member asks:

"Occasionally when I load a large program or a huge data file  from a file server the omnipresent hourglass appears and spins away and away .....

IDEA: A program that displays as a tooltip or message box a line from a text file instead. A text file containing a  quote, joke, reminder, any little tidbit of information.  It shouldn't slowdown the loading but just replace the hourglass only when it is on the screen, with the ability to click on it to freeze the display."

Another edition of Ehtyar's Tech News Weekly is hot off the presses!

Table of Contents:

• 1. UK Spy Effort in Trans-Atlantic Surveillance Syndication Row
• 2. Researchers Hijack Botnet, Score 56,000 Passwords in an Hour
• 3. EU to ICANN: Ditch the US Gov Ties and Become More Global
• 4. Windows 7 Public RC is Available Now
• 5. Botnet Master Hits the Kill Switch, Takes Down 100,000 PCs
• 6. Microsoft Teams Up With US Gov On Double 'ard XP
• 7. Hackers Breach UC Berkeley Computer Database
• 8. Researchers Find Missile Defense Data On Used Hard Drive
• 9. The Android Netbooks Cometh
• 10. Mozilla Ponders Policy Change After Firefox Extension Battle (Thanks 40hz)
• 11. Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'