Aren’t assistants supposed to be useful people? Maybe also discrete and non intrusive? I suppose so. I wonder how Microsoft got the idea of the infamous assistants for their Office 97 suite. That gizmo-clip is plain disturbing and until now I haven’t found anyone who likes it. Eventually Microsoft realized it and removed the annoying thing from more recent versions of Office. Nonetheless, even living today, you maybe still constrained to use an old version with the bouncing-blinking-wobbling-barking-clip. In the (unlikely) case you don’t like it, too, you may already have discovered that there is no official way to uninstall it.
The assistant seems there to stay, offending you intelligence and concentration. Luckily I found these instructions on how to blow it out of sight forever. Simply locate the directory “%ProgramFiles%Microsoft OfficeOfficeActors” (yes, there is a space within) and then remove every file with a “.ACT” extension.
This causes no problem whatsoever to Office, just enjoy the silence.
In the case you want back later the assistant, just resist the temptation, shouldn’t be hard.

I dream of a Xmas… I know, that’s not what you may call an original start, but rather than aiming for high goals such as peace, no more hunger or hate, my dream is about something closer and less noble. I dream of a Xmas where you can eat just what’s enough for a day and not the amount of energy required to deliver an orbital payload.
I dream of a Xmas lunch where people has not to say, overblown by the food, “that’s the tradition, we have to”. Why? Isn’t it enough to spend good time with parents, family, friends and/or relatives? Isn’t enough a 3-course meal? Xmas was once celebrated and sanctified by bringing something unusual, expensive and plentiful to the table. Starving the rest of the year, that was a right and proper thing to do on holidays. Todays there’s no meaning in doing this way.
According to Terry Pratchett this is going to stay just a dream since “You couldn’t stop Tradition. You could just add to it” (from “The Last Continent”).

Best wishes to everyone, may your dreams come true, even if you don’t read this.

Before entering in the main theme, I’d like to state it clear – it happened sometimes I downloaded some AVIs or MP3s via eMule for personal use, though I am far from being addicted to this practice. Usually I prefer to spend money on these stuff either by rent or by purchasing the real thing, or to label it as too expensive for me (the same label I tagged with, over the time, a great deal of stuff). Despite of what the supporters of the free-download-for-all say, I am not convinced that it has to be a right the downloading of a recent movie for watching.Movies, musics, games, programs cost money to produce, a great effort that needs to be paid back. I don’t see any viable way of sustaining these industries but buying their goods (Scott Adams explains why much better than I could ever aspire to… at least in English).
The outcome of the recent Radiohead’s experiment about spontaneous payment for music stresses this point – many of those downloaders wouldn’t buy either at a much lower price.
There are good alternatives, even for item with the “too expensive for me” label – consider renting, borrowing from a friend or from the public library, wait for the item to reach the budget price range.
What I see is that in the name of freedom to spread other people IPs the Internet is more and more constrained, inspected and our freedoms of speech, opinion and thought are more and more restricted. Take for example the recent news from France or the recently adopted DMCA-like ruling in Switzerland and Canada. That means that some sort of filter thoroughly analyzes everything goes to and from your Internet pipe.
It is true that wouldn’t be illegal downloads, the same kind of deep inspection could have been ascribed to terrorist threats or any other form of crime prevention. The problem is that the former contributes to the idea that privacy for sure (and maybe some other rights) have to be sacrificed in the name of any kind of crime prevention – how trivial or grave doesn’t matter.