Top 87 bad predictions about the future

2Spare has a list of the top 87 bad predictions. Here are a few of my favorites:

  • “It will be gone by June”
    Variety, passing judgement on rock ‘n roll in 1955.
  • “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad”
    The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903.
  • “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home”
    Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big business mainframe computers, arguing against the PC in 1977.
  • “The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys”
    Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1878
  • “Television won’t last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night”
    Darryl Zanuck, movie producer, 20th Century Fox, 1946.

Rats nest of a registry

I’m always shocked at how many program leave remnants in the Windows registry after I’ve uninstalled them. Some Microsoft programs like Office are some of the worst offenders. Many uninstallers save your program directory, but that’s usually easy to delete by searching your folder structure under C:Program Files. I only do this if I’ve already run the program uninstaller found under Start/Settings/Control Panel/Add or Remove Programs.

mrfixit.gifBut if you want to see all the crap these programs leave behind in the registry you’ll need a dedicated registry cleaning like CCleaner or Abexo’s Registry Cleaner. If you’ve been running the same version of Windows for a while, run one of these programs and you’re likely to find hundreds of left-over registry entries that’s just bloating your registry and slowing down your system. I run both of these programs weekly and have removed thousands of unwanted entries left over by programs that should have been uninstalled.

But what I’ve noticed lately is making me wonder if companies are getting lazy when writing a good uninstaller or if the Window registry is such a rat’s nest that it’s next to impossible to extract unused entries without manual effort. This require diving into the registry by running ‘regedit’ from the command line which I strongly advise against unless you understand what you’re doing.

Is it time for Microsoft to replace the registry with a more sensible, understandable approach that allows 3rd parties to fully remove every file and entry when the user no longer has need for that particular program? I haven’t come across anything pertaining to Windows Vista that leads me to believe we’ll be any better off once it arrives.

Things I hate to spend money on

Ramit Sethi has a great list titled, “Things I hate spending money on” that gave me a good laugh. I’m in agreement on organic groceries and dry cleaning. I don’t remember the last time I’ve had article of clothing dry cleaned, although that’s probably more a statement on my wardrobe than thriftiness.

A couple more items I’d add to the list are software updates, stamps, co-pays, insurance of any kind, membership fees (Costco, Sams Club), and automotive work that includes the word, “Flushing”. I don’t know why my car needs anything “flushed” but I’m told it does whenever I take it to one of those quick lube joints.

dryclean.jpg