I recently needed to come up with a good domain and came up with some tips for choosing a good domain name:
The key is to get something simple.
1) get a .com. No remembers all the other domains.
2) Domain name should be short. Ideally it should be a single word with around six characters. (think ebay, yahoo, amazon)
3) It should be easy to spell and unambiguous. Don't use "the" at the start or hyphens. (imho da-jump-offz.us would be a bad name)
4) Most real words are taken, so consider making up a word (think google, napster, blogger).
blogger is an interesting one because it is presumably a "contraction" for web logger.
This creates a unique brand and it avoids having to possibly buy the domain.

- register typical misspelling, probable typos and other domains (like .net, .org, etc)
For instance google.com owns gooogle.com (notice 3 o's)
-also consider registering domains that people might mistakenly associate with your name.
For instance dripcafe.com also owns drip.com.

You can always break the rules. For instance, I think http://www.menwholooklikekennyrogers.com is a good name because it is funny and easy to remember even though it's not short.

Software companies should choose unique names for their products so that it is easy to search for info on search engines.

In windows drag and drop moves a file. Holding down control will make it copy, and holding down shift control will make it a shortcut. If you use the right button to drag and drop it will prompt you on a context menu to move, copy, or create shortcut.

hello world humor

today i had to break into a red hat linux 7.2 machine because we forgot all the passwords.
-on the red hat screen hit ctrl X
-then hit tab to display kernels (default will have star)
-type "kernel_name 1"
you are then logged on as root.

I downloaded an avi file and when I tried to watch it in windows media player it said "error downloading codec." I found out that all codecs have a four letter code. The easiest way to find out what the code for a file is to open it in notepad, and look for it on the first few lines. I realized mine was DX50. After googling for info on DX50, I downloaded the codec from http://www.divx.com/divx. I had to scroll down a little to find the download for just the codec, not the viewers that divx offers.

the commercial database market is dominated by three players:
ibm db2
oracle 9i, 8i, etc.
microsoft sql server

in the open source world the major players are mysql and postgres.
the pros/cons of mysql:

previous versions of mysql did not support transactions, and only supported table level locking (didn't support row level locking). however that is no longer true if you use the correct type of table.
http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Locking_methods.html
http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Table_types.html
mysql doesn't support subqueries

mysql doesn't have a procedural language or support triggers.

here is how to switch domains and keep your desktop in Windows 2k pro.

1)switch domain:
right click "my computer" -> properties -> Network Identification tab -> Properties button -> change domain.
You will be prompted to login to the domain and you will need a user/pass for that domain *not for your computer*

2)the trick to keep your desktop and settings is to login under a third username and change the "Document and Settings" directory for the newUsername to be the one that was the old username you used.

C:\Documents and Settings\newUserName to C:\Documents and Settings\newUserName01
C:\Documents and Settings\oldUserName to C:\Documents and Settings\newUserName

It is important that you are logged in as someone besides the old or new usernames.
Also any shortcuts will be lost that used C:\Documents and Settings\oldUserName in them.

*another way in xp:
system properties-> advanced tab -> user profile settings button -> copy profile button

Don't use floats for money fields

On my current project we are getting slammed by rounding errors from using floats. look at this code:

double x = 426.39 + 834.20;
System.out.println("x: " + x);

Surprisingly it prints:
x: 1260.5900000000001

JAD is a sweet java decompiler. There is also a plugin for jbuilder called JADClassFileNode that allows you to use the find definition command and drill down into the decompiled source from the jar file. This is nice, for instance if you are using an open source project you don't have to download the source if you want to check something simple.