Author: Amit Schreiber

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Scott Adams And His Voice

The author of the famous comic figure Dilbert and author of many books, Scott Adams, lost his voice 18 months ago due to an exotic condition, of which no one has ever been known to recover. Amazingly, Scott Adams did manage to recover, and he describes it in an inspirational post in his blog. Those of you who read his book “The Dilbert Future” (Amazon link), specifically the last chapter, know that Adams has a unique way of looking at the world and would not be surprised by the way he tried (and succeeded) to recover from a seemingly non-recoverable condition. (via Slashdot)

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I don’t know why anyone would want to do this…

… but if you have an illegal version of Windows and you really Really REALLY want to install the all new Internet Explorer 7, there are instructions here.

Disclaimer: This procedure messes with system files. I did not try it for two reasons: I use Firefox and I have a legal copy of Windows so I don’t have to do this even if I decide to install IE7 someday (probably out of curiosity and the need to see if my website functions properly).

(via Digg)

p.s.

Use Firefox, use Opera. Both are free and better the Internet Explorer, and anyway, I gave you a good reason to use Firefox a long time ago.

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I suck at explaining computer-related issues to other people

When I try to explain computer-related things to other people I usually fail at bringing them to the understanding level that I hope they will have following the explanation. The problem is that I can’t figure out what’s wrong with what I say.

I guess one thing is that I want people to understand what they’re doing instead of just following my instructions until the next time they need to do the same thing again. It’s hard for me to accept the fact that sometimes people simply don’t want to understand what they’re doing with a computer but just get it done. Surprisingly I was the same with math – although I wanted to understand things when I studied math, many times I gave up and just asked for a way to solve problems without understanding.

Another reason is that things seem pretty obvious to me. Of course they weren’t so obvious when I first had to learn them, but now I find it hard to explain because I can’t recreate in my mind the learning process that I had to go through. It’s probably a different process for me and for others, anyway. I guess I’m not such a good teacher – good teachers can relate to the student’s state of mind to see how they can bring the student to a level of understanding.

Anyway, the outcome of all this is usually that I get upset as things I say don’t help the person I’m supposed to help and it becomes very apparent, making the entire process a pain for both me and the other side.

So to anyone I tried to help and made it into an unpleasant experience – I’m sorry.