Life, New Google Desktop and Netflix

I have been even more into work and writing lately because of my shoulder separation (it has popped out twice in 8 days - ouch). I usually divide my time equally between friends and family, work, and wilderness hiking. Being sidelined from hiking for a while, I am depending more on social activities and work to keep life interesting.

I have been following the EFF's and other warnings about activating the multi-PC search and file sharing for Google Desktop version 3. If Google supported this functionality also on Linux and OS X (not just Windows) I would absolutely use it for my own stuff (book projects, free web books, design and implementation artifacts for open source and my own fun programming projects and research, etc.) but never for directories containing customer projects. I think that Google will likely support some features of the Google Desktop on Linux and OS X - and when they do sure I will enable saving my stuff on their servers.

Netflix has been getting some negative press for "throttling" (slowing down deliveries to customers who get many movies a month) but I think that they provide a great service for a small fee. Not only do I only pay a dollar or two per DVD, but I save lots of time not visiting the video store. So, they save me money and time. With Netflix and being able to purchase movies and TV shows from the iTunes stores (and from Google Video when they support OS X) I almost feel like canceling cable service (which I think provides poor value).

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