Crucial 8GB RAM Upgrade for Dell XPS M1530
Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB SSD for Dell XPS M1530

Samsung UN46D6400 46-Inch 1080p 120Hz 3D LED HDTV (Black)
Price $1,259.00

The UN46D6400 supports 3d.

I would recommend purchasing the UN46D6400 or the UN46D6300. Both are super slim at 1.2″ and both have the thin .5″ perimeter. The only difference is the UN46D6300 does not support 3D, but has a builtin web browser.

What started off as a way to meet women in college with his friend (who of course, had a natural Jean-Claude Van Damme impression), quickly turned into a handful of viral videos on YouTube and FunnyOrDie, and ultimately a legitimate career.

After doing some recent online work with Disney as “Tom Cruise”, which was packaged with content for the Twilight series, Ferrante says his career took off with corporate gigs and commercial work at home and abroad (apparently the Tom Cruise impersonation business is huge in Australia). His next move: an upcoming HBO documentary, Teenage Paparazzo, a project he co-produced that will apparently not include any Cruise cameos. Our brief backstage interview with Ferrante is below.

What does this have to do with TechCrunch’s Fifth birthday? Absolutely nothing, but it is a gold mine for TechCrunch readers who’ve always wanted to see a slightly amused, slightly confused Arrington bombarded by a barrage of Tom Cruise-isms.

Original article…

Pretty funny, makes a good ringtone.

The short version: pants-on-the-ground.mp3
The full version: pants-on-the-ground-full.mp3

Video

Lyrics

Pants on the ground, pants on the ground Lookin’ like a fool with your pants on the ground
With the gold in your mouth, hat turned sideways Pants hit the ground, call yourself a cool cat, lookin’ like a fool
Walkin’ downtown with your pants on the ground. Giddy-up!
Hey, get your pants off the ground. Lookin’ like a fool Walkin’, talkin’ with your pants on the ground. Giddy-up! Hey, get your pants off the ground. Lookin’ like a fool with your pants on the ground.

If you have them host your DNS, you can not make simple changes such as modifying the TTL of your domain.

I just had a conversation with a tech, “Alex”.  He was adamant that TTL settings are set across the board to 1 day (86400), and that it is their policy that this can not be changed.  They run Linux Bind DNS systems, which means this is about as simple of a DNS change as can be made.

It seems they just resell godaddy domains, so if nothing else just get your domains through godaddy and use thier DNS management interface.

Please be kind and review a couple of the advertising links.

• The notebook does not detect wireless networks and the wireless adapter is not detected in the Device Manager. [sporadically]

It was not until recently, when I read about this, this and this, that I started to search on HP’s website and found a Limited Warranty Service Enhancement for my laptop.  I thought this was a good thing, but I didn’t want to go through the ordeal of replacing my laptop for something that was a minor inconvenience. 

But as of last week, I am also experiencing another symptom:

• The notebook does not start.

I decided to finally call HP and request service.  They happily agreed that this was a defective unit and are sending a package to ship the laptop back in.

Now, onto my issue.  I will be without a laptop for about two weeks. I own a business and provide 24×7 server monitoring / management and require a laptop at all times.

I suggest that HP should send me a loaner laptop (or the laptop they will already be replacing mine with) because of a defect in thier product line.   Why should I have to pay double (by purchasing another laptop) for a manufacturing issue?

I spoke with Stephen M. of HP’s customer complaint division, and he said that it is simply not possible, they will not provide me a loaner laptop.  I believe that HP should be required to send me a replacement laptop and let me swap the hard-disk / battery / RAM and send them the bad shell. The will likely send me a new machine anyhow.

Because of this experience, my next laptop will not be coming from HP.

I am ranting a bit here, but I think of how short-sighted HP is for not considering how much direct influence many people have over millions of dollars per year in hardware equipment purchases, and how a simple laptop replacement could effect these decisions.

I believe that all companies need to stand behind their product and name, and need to understand how much they inconvenience and cost their customers in terms of time and dollars.

I downloaded the Desktop ISO image, and burned the CD. I placed the CD into the drive and rebooted my computer. My plan was to overwrite all existing information on the machine, and not be concerned with migrating data.

On boot up, I was presented with a screen asking me for the preferred language. I selected english and was then asked how I wanted to proceed. The menu options were quite clear for the initial install: Try ubuntu without any change to your computer, Install Ubunu … I chose Install Ubuntu. For the next 1 minute 58 seconds, I watched an ubuntu splash screen boot into the install section.

Install

1. Welcome screen. Simple enough, select forward.
2. Where are you? Choosing a timezone, I am in Detroit. Click Forward (note: the map selection could be a little smoother or maybe zoom in as you click a region before starting the magnification mouse movement process).
3. Select a keyboard layout. This is easy, but maybe it should default to USA/USA (or localized based on language selection on the boot menu) and the provide an advanced option, to reduce any confusion for the less knowledgeable users.
4. Prepare disk space. Well, this would likely confuse a non technical user. My options were: Guided – Resise IDE2 master partition #3 (hdc3) and use freed space, Guided – use entire disk, Guides – use the largest continuous free space or manual. I know what I would choose, but thinking as an normal user, this should also be simplfied or the text should be more readable with terms like: Save my existing data, and install into free space. I chose guided use entire disk.
5. Who are you? Enter your name, and login details. This seems pretty straight forward, and most people are used to logins now a day.
6. Ready to install review. Click Install.

Well, 6 total steps is impressive. Just a few minor comments, but so far so good.

The installation finished, and the machine rebooted in 25 seconds before asking for the password, and was completely ready for use in under 1 minute! Thats nice and helps people think it to be OK to shutdown the computer. I often don’t shutdown my windows desktop, as I hate the boot up time when I just want to check something quickly (weather, directions, movie show times, email, .. ).

Next thing I wanted, was access to my network based printer, and HP Photosmart C6180 — Wow, setup was a breeze and just worked like you would expect.

Then I applied the updates that were waiting to be applied. A small window popped up alerting me that updates were available. I clicked installed, and waited while 256 updates were downloaded (5 minutes) and applied (20 minutes).

Then to top it off, I added my Linksys wireless card to the machine, and without an issue it was detected and up in running. This was a nice change, as I had to custom compile drivers in the past to get this working.

All in all, this has been my best Linux desktop installation and use experience to date.

The next part of this article will follow up with daily usage, after my wife notices I changed her desktop (she was a Fedora Core 6 user).