Bill Gates as Frustrated with Windows As the Rest of Us -- in 2003!!

TheInternetPatrol.com has a copy of an email Bill Gates sent to various Microsoft personnel six years ago itemizing his frustrations with trying to download Windows Movie Maker and beign made to jump through hoops only to find after numerous s-l-o-w downloads and at least one reboot that the one program he wanted is not there, though plenty of other unwanted stuff was.

Stupid Zune software making decisions for me!

I've been trying hard to like my Zune 80, but it's been a hassle almost out of the box. The battery life can be measured in minutes, the software is pokey, and often when I try to sync it with my computer the software refuses to add media when it's supposed to (with "unknown error" as the only offered explanation). How am I supposed to identify and fix the problem if the software just shrugs and says "I dunno"? Some websurfing finds that I'm not the only one that feels that way. This CNet article was written a year ago, saying the same things in much more detail: 5 Reasons Why My Zune is Dead to Me

Now the question is, iPod or Archos? Ipod is snazzier, smaller, and has loads more accessories and software, but for the same money I can get much more storage space with an Archos PMP. For instance, the new(ish) 32GB iPod Touch costs just a bit more than an 250GB Archos 5 "Internet Tablet." I have a feeling if I get an Archos I'll opt for the slightly older but less breakable 605 Wi-fi.

It's been a long time...

...and I've had lots going on. But this one bit, I had to share today. It's now official: you can now find any piece of information that might remotely interest somebody on the Internet. You might not even have to look for it; it might leap out at you.

Microsoft is launching what it's promoting as a "new" Web search tool, Bing.com. It' s really just a relabel of its Live Search. In an article I got in my email from About.com, Jen Hubley compared the responses that Bing and Google provided to the query "what should I do?" She said that the third result in Google's list was an explanation of what she should do "when my eyeballs fall out of their sockets," which I took to be her usual exaggeration.

But just to be sure I did a Google search on the same phrase, and the fifth result in my search was an article on Slate.com titled "My Eyeball Just Fell Out of Its Socket: What should I do?"

No joke. Here's the URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2137959/ The article details an incident where Villanova basketball star Allan Ray had his eyeball literally poked out of its socket by an opposing player in a game. But apparently it doesn't have to happen as violently as all that.

Or, if you would like to check out the search yourself, just Google "what should I do." Here's the URL to my search results page, which may actually turn up different results this time: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22what+should+I+do%22

Possible demerit to the value of Google search: this was third in Jen's search results, and fifth in mine, but the incident happened three years ago - the article is dated March 2006.