A few nifty tricks for Windows and Office users

This has been passed on to me, so I have no idea if this is old stuff but here it goes.

Truth 1: One cannot save a 'CON' folder in Windows - sans the apostrophe. Well I tried this one and really why can't I save a folder named con? What if I'm an ex-con and I want to remember all my buddies inside the jail, and I want them all to have a special place in my Windows OS? Ohh I get it, Con stands for convict and we do know that con-victs shouldn't be near a computer. So Microsoft may have decided to save their OS a few lines.

Truth 2:
open notepad
type "bush hid the facts" without quotation marks
don't press "enter" save the file
close notepad
open the file again

And byah! You'll going to see scribbled writings, as if bush really 'hid' the facts. And what are those facts? That bush hid the fact in notepad.

Truth 3: One MS Word, type in rand(1,1), press enter. That magical phrase will soon appear.

If you have any nice tricks for Windows, then share away.

Seven Wonders of the IT World

CIO.com has compiled a rather interesting list of the Seven Wonders of the IT World. Some are very interesting while others are not.

The first one is the computer closest to the North Pole, and that title belongs to Webcam #1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory takes care of this floating eye at the top of the world.



The second one is the computer farthest from Earth, and that title belongs to NASA's voyager satellite. It is three times farther away from Pluto.




The third one is the world's most intriguing data center, and that title belongs to Googles' The Dalles, Oregon data center. It has a hydroelectric dam for power, two four-story cooling towers.






The fourth one is the world's largest scientific grid computing project, and that title goes to the E-sciencE II (EGEE-II) project. It is a large-scale scientific research projects in fields from geology to chemistry.




The fifth one is the world's fastest supercomputer, the IBM BlueGene/L (BGL). It helps researchers answer physics questions about stockpiled nuclear weapons and materials like Plutonium.




The sixth one is the world's smallest PC to run Windows Vista, the QOQ Model 2. Such a small and stylish device that runs the latest OS from Microsoft.




And lastly, the seventh one is the biggest paradigm change in enterprise software, that title belongs to the Linux kernel. One of the biggest name in free and open source software revolution.





Disclaimer: All images from CIO.com. Please click here to view the entire article.

SUNW to JAVA, MSFT to ?

Sun Microsystems Inc. has changed their ticker symbol from SUNW to JAVA. According to their CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, "JAVA is a technology whose value is near infinite to the internet, and a brand that's inseparably a part of Sun (and our profitability). And so next week, we're going to embrace that reality by changing our trading symbol, from SUNW to JAVA."

Is it a smart move or a dumb one? But some people over at slashdot wants Microsoft to change their ticker symbol from MSFT to ...

 

Picturerror: %Firewall

What's wrong with my Firewall? I don't have an internet connection and this thing suddenly was turned off and presented me with a funny status report.

Bill Gates Open Letter to Hobbyists

Even way back then, Bill Gates was a strong believer in software as a business economy.

Read and enjoy.

--------------

An Open Letter to Hobbyists

by William Henry Gates III

February 3, 1976

To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?

Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.

The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.

Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?

Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.

What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.

I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write to me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108. Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.

Bill Gates

General Partner, Micro-Soft

Video of the Week: Unknown Zune Commercial

Nice ending.

Set Your Documents Free!

Red Hat announces the new ODF artwork for us to share and spread.

What is ODF?

ODF is a file format for electronic office documents, such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations, databases and word processing documents (e.g.: memos, reports, letters). [wikipedia]

It's main competitor is the Microsoft Office formats. The key differentiator here is that ODF is backed by a standards committee called Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS).

What's the reason for ODF?

The reason for the existence of ODF is that OASIS believe that file formats should be free and open source, in that way when you open ODF files you don't need the expensive Microsoft Word to create, edit and view document files, rather you can use any document viewer program as well.

Final note from Red Hat

What can you do? Download, print, and hang the poster. Spread the word. And liberate your documents with ODF.

A Funny Parody Letter from Bill Gates

I got this one from Slashdot. This is very funny. This is a parody on Linus Torvalds' (creator of Linux OS) famous declaration of the birth of Linux.


From: William Gates [email blocked]
Subject: Costly kernel for IBM PC
Newsgroups: comp.os.cpm
Date: 5 Oct 81 05:41:06 GMT

William Henry Gates III

Do you pine for the nice days of CP/M-1.1, when men were men and wrote
their own device drivers? Do you have too much money in your pocket? Are
you much too free to do what you want with your computer? Are you
finding it frustrating when everything works on CP/M? No more rebooting your
computer every 10 minutes? Then this post might be just
for you

:-)

As I mentioned a month(?) ago, I've purchased a version of QDOS for a song
and I'm busy cocking it up and I'm going to sell it to IBM (suckers) for their
new PC. It has finally reached the stage where it's completely unstable and
most of the cooler things in CP/M have been removed.
I am willing to put out the binaries, for a price, for wider distribution. It is
just version 0.02 (+1 (very small) patch already), but I've successfully
run BASIC/lunar-lander/COMMAND.COM etc under it (oh boy!).

Sources for this pet project of mine are all mine mine mine! Unless you talk
to Tim Paterson from SCP. Full kernel source is most definitely not provided, as
I have swiped a lot of code from CP/M and QDOS, and anywhere else I could find it.
The system is able to compile "as-is" on alternating Tuesdays and when the moon is
full or on a spring tide, and has been known to work. At least once. Heh.
Sources are locked away in my underground lair, I mean a shack I just bought in a
small town in Washington called Redmond.

I can (well, almost) hear you asking yourselves "why?". The Amiga will be
out in a year (or two, or next month, who knows), and I've already got
CP/M and the Apple ][. Well, this is a program for business people by a businessman.
It's been real work and I expect to get paid for it!
Plus hackers and students can't really create anything worthwhile.
I'm going to hire really smart kids who don't know jack about computers
and give them a lot of stock options. It won't matter if they create shit.
We'll market the crap out of this thing! Once I get the hardware vendors to bundle it,
we're golden! It is the beginning of my plan to dominate the world!
Muwhahahaha! If you have any comments, please direct them to the guy
over there holding the chair in a threatening manner.

I'm also interested in hearing from anybody who has written any of the
utilities/library functions for CP/M. I'd like to steal them, I mean embrace/extend/extinguish,
I mean purchase them for a song, so I can add them to the system. If you
send it me, it becomes mine! And I'll patent it! Drop me
a line if you are willing to let me use your code.

Bill

PS. to STEVE BALLMER! I'm unable to get through to you, and keep getting
"forward error - hermanmiller unknown domain" or something. I think I've got
a job for you.

PPS. to the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto -- I'm going to bury you guys!

Being a thesis-for-hire person

Patrick was out of luck. He badly needed some money for the reason he himself only knew. So there he was, in front of the PC chatting hoping to find some idea online. And then it struck him, why not become a thesis-for-hire person, he was excited about the thought, I will earn extra money at the same time I can gain additional programming experience. Having that idea, he quickly chatted dozens of people around the IRC channels, hoping to sell his "product". And luckily, a girl from one of the new schools in the city inquired about it.

With a potential customer at hand, he quickly bargained about the price. He asked the girl what she wanted for a thesis. The girl said I want an online registration form written in classic ASP. Patrick smiled - I know ASP, this is going to be a walk in park. Patrick asked for PHP 3,000 for the application to be finished in a month. The girl was satisfied, it fitted her meager budget.

A week gone by and still Patrick has not started the thesis project. He didn't predict that this will affect his studies. But he amassed enough will (money plays an important role here) to create the program during weekends. Three weeks have gone and Patrick finally finished it. He presented it to the girl and lectured her about the code and how to defend it. He even gave the ASP book for the girl to read. It was all spoon fed and the girl can graduate easily. Patrick received the money and he was delighted at the same time stressed out. This is the last thesis I will create for someone, the money isn't worth the hassle. But alas, as fate would have it, after a week the girl went back to Patrick's house and asked him one more time to explain the flow of the program. And with a clinched fist, Patrick obliged, I hate this.

Video of the Week: Gates vs Jobs

A very funny video featuring two of the most respected icons in technology. Enjoy the video!

Who wants Pownce?

Today I received an invite to try out the new Web 2.0 app by Kevin Rose - the guy that founded Digg. The new web app is called Pownce. According to their site "Pownce is a way to send stuff to your friends. What kind of stuff? You can send just about anything: music, photos, messages, links, events, and more". Basically when you think about it, it is just a glorified FTP client with a slick graphical interface. You can use their web-app or download the Pownce desktop software.

How it was created

According to their site, Pownce was created using Django which is Python powered. The database is MySQL running on Linux Debian servers and web servers powered by a combination of Apache and Perlbal. Well, it is good to know that all of these are Open Source software.

The desktop client is written in Flex from Adobe's AIR platform. Which might be a deal breaker for some because as of now it only supports Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X platforms.

Invites

I have 4 invites remaining to be given away. So anyone who wants to try it out, just post a shout out. And don't forget to add me up.

Do you want to work at Google?

There was supposedly a leaked internal memo by a Microsoftie that details life at Google. To read about it click here. It generally states the good and the bad side of working in Google and what Microsoft needs to adopt to improve. If you already read the article, it gave you an insight about the workplace demystification at Google. Everyone, I mean EVERYONE, who loves Google's products loves to work there. With the promise of liberal working area, liberal working schedules, be a colleague with some of the brightest mind in technology, and not to mention all the free foods, it will surely get you thinking on submitting a resume there. But alas not all companies are the same.

To Summarize

1. the author praises Google for the free meals, dental, laundry, gym and free Google T-shirts every week.
2. the author also took notice about the 80-20 in Google. Basically it means that you are allotted 20% of your time to do whatever you want to do as long as it is approved by your superiors. He said that this system is highly flawed and poorly implemented.
3. the author pointed out that health care, the salary, the office space and career development path in Google is actually worse than Microsoft's situation.
4. the author said Google likes to hire newly-grads and offer them cool perks, while if you're a mid-timer it provides job stability at the same time competition with the newly-grads and lastly those that enjoy the most benefits and perks are the old-timers.
5. and lastly he offered things that Microsoft can adopt from Google and reiterate that Microsoft's condition is better than Google.
   

Conclusions

One unseen reason why this study was even conducted is that there are many high profile Microsoftie that defected to Google, and maybe Microsoft just wants to know why those people chose the latter. And it is good to hear that the company is actually listening to its employees.

Every company has there issues to deal with and it will be much better if those same company realizes its shortcomings and improve upon them. Always remember that people are the best asset that any company can have, and it is much more harder to recruit new people than to retain old ones.

So, if given a chance, do you want to to work at Google? Microsoft? or stick with your company?

A Baby named Vista

Microsoft is not known for its fanboys but this is the most over-the-top fanboyism I have known. Bill Simser is a Solutions Architect and has named her daughter Vista Avalon Simser. Vista as we all know is the newest Microsoft Windows operating system and Avalon, well for the geeks is the former codename of Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (or WPF) - the graphical subsystem feature of the new .NET framework. And not only that he named his other child, a son, Dev Orion Simser (or DOS). Well I kinda like his son's name, sounds really cool, but with that initial, hmm I'll past.

Take a look at here for the Flickr photoset of Vista. And not only that, Vista is wearing an iPod shirt! *gasp* That goes to show you how popular the iPod is - compared to Zune - even to the Microsoft fanboys. Well that makes it the first Vista inside an iPod. Corny jokes aside, seriously? Why the Vista name? Maybe I should name my future child as applinuxsoft.

Vista Avalon

The Vista Charm

Yesterday I chatted with my girlfriend and she showed me a screenshot of her cousin's desktop that features Microsoft's new operating system, Windows Vista. Here is the excerpt of our conversation.

• Chi: I wanna share a photo with your (using YM here).
• Jan2x: Cool, what is that all about?
• Chi: It's kuya ryan's new desktop, I love it! I wanna have Windows Vista!
• Jan2x: Really? I thought you like Mac? Here go to www.apple.com and take a look at their new OS.
• Chi: Wow! I also love Leopard, but I couldn't afford it, I can only afford Vista.

Well done Microsoft! This is not the first time I heard someone liking Windows Vista by its look alone, there are other of people who also wanted to have Vista and these people are the techie types. Aesthetically, Windows Vista is not the doom and gloom that many people wanted to portray, it actually looks good. From the new and improved Start button, to the Gadgets and to the glossy effects of Windows, people are liking it.

I have never tried full-time Windows Vista (my laptop only has the Windows XP MCE) but judging by the satisfaction of my housemate who uses Vista exclusively in his laptop - although there are minor driver issues - he feels that it is a better than Windows XP.

Microsoft's Surface is hot!

Microsoft just unveiled its Surface, a ground-breaking technology and a new user-interface evolution. It's a touch-based screen that lets users use hand gestures, touch, and/or physical object to interact with the surface computer. Sounds too good to be true right? And coming from Microsoft? All I can say is wow! Great times for technology indeed. Now Apple has the multi-touch digital phone and Microsoft has the surface computer, whats next? Well the next level should be, how we can all benefit from this technology.

What does it bring to the table, no pun intended, for Filipinos especially local programmers? The answer is - it will bring tremendous opportunity for all of us! One of my friends reaction when he first saw the video is "thanks Microsoft! invent more technologies so that programmers like us have future jobs". Well its a bit stretch, but he did raised a good point. And Philippines, being one of the countries where technology is being applied in a rapid pace, from cellphones to televisions to computers, it will just be a matter of time before touch-based devices will flood the market. I say, good times indeed.