A number of interesting announcements from Microsoft recently that seems to allude at the giant more explicitly returning to one of its earlier principles, ‘everyone gets a piece of the pie’ and by extension with have more pieces of the pie form which to monetise.

When MS was an application company, they had an interpreter that would run their applications on the target platform. So msword.com was actually the ‘loader’ for the interpreter and the subsequent code. One of the rationales was protection of the code from being decompiled, the other to minimise the code development. If there’s a new platform, just update the interpreter for the target OS/hardware. MS word was released for DOS and Xenix? using this interpreter?

I remember when COBOL support was in Windows 3.1 ? There were sample codes around that apparently worked for someone, but it never worked for me. And I remember trying to get some peoples Microsoft Pascal code to work with the GUI in OS/2? Don’t even think about what MS was trying to do with Fortran (geezz GUI programming in Fortran, let it die!!!)

Microsoft tried doing single source code for Excel between Windows and Mac OS, there was the attempt to get the Ruby/Access/VB Engine multiplatform between Windows/Mac OS. There was the Visual Studio cross platform development between Windows/Mac OS.

The Agnostic nature of the company has been more explicit recently with the Silverlight directions (i.e. it runs on Windows, MAC OS, Linux through mono, FreeBSD through …) and to some degree with the Dot NET framework.

When Live Space allowed external desktop blogging tools to update data on its service (i.e. so you can blog etc.) they used an adaptation of an existing ‘standard.’ But soon after Microsoft released another tool Windows Writer –> Windows Live Writer that not only allowed you to post to Microsoft sites and a few major sites but quickly grew to adopting most formats out there.

More importantly, the extensibility of Windows Live Writer meant that it soon had the capability to post and extract multimedia from a number of different services including flickr, youtube, msn soapbox.

Move forward into late 2008 and the embracing all, has thankfully extended to a number of tools.

Windows Live Photo Gallery now lets you push photos to Flickr, Picasa, smugmug, Facebook. There goes my interest in Picasa, which was really about it’s better integration with the online version than Photo Gallery.

Azureus to be supporting COBOL.

Microsoft has already shown it believes a new range of ‘developers’ exist with her Expression series of developer tools. The content developer has long ago extended, on the web, to the prolific web users. Making it easier for these users to create their content for the web (through their personal web sites, blogs) increases the use of your tools and platforms.

Now, the dilemma remains on how is this thing to be monetised?

OK, so the reason we’re talking about AVG Antivirus is because we’re back in the Windows Desktop support role and have to look at what’s currently out there for gratis for some of my cheapo friends.

Unfortunately, you’re medicine is only as good as you make sure to keep them up to date (all things go stale when you leave them alone for too long.)

• Antivirus – AVG
• Firewall – Microsoft
• Spyware – SpybotSD, and SpywareBlaster
• Internet Browsing – Internet Explorer 7.0x and Firefox 3.0.x (‘cause I still visit sites that are broken in FF, FF 3.1beta, IE 8 beta, Chrome, Opera etc.)
• Email Client – Mozilla Thunderbird

If you value your time, then just go ahead and pay for a quality product that has the automated update services (and pray that the updates don’t break your machine.)

Diagnostics ?

• Ultimate Boot CD 4 Windows – just download and configure it and it will configure most of the tools you’ll ever need for diagnosing/fixing a Windows Box problem.

Read the screens for the install, you can upgrade or the virus signatures et. al during the configuration (so you don’t need to do it with every launch of the tool.)

You can create a USB Memory Stick ‘install’ which allows you to launch most tools on a ‘running’ Windows XP box without having to boot from the CDR or USB Stick.

Now, back to installing these things.

My dad watched the Fiji –vs- Australia Semi Final game, and enjoyed himself.

The Rugby League World Cup is more Amco Cup than World Cup.

Tonight we were supposed to watch and enjoy a delayed broadcast of a semi final of the RLWC.

Read More… 

The Rugby League World Cup is a joke
LeftArmSpinner
Sun, 16 Nov 2008 21:24:25 GMT

I personally found it hard to comprehend what was the whole point of pitting a side of $100K professionals against part-time workers?

Oh yeah, the entertainment value of listening to those wonderful comments from broadcasters who begin the show by saying how much the Australian side have to be wary of the flamboyance to later turn around saying that “this is going to hurt.”

Oh yeah, and it really advances Rugby League in those minnow countries ? No. The last time Rugby League grew in Tonga was when the ARL and SuperLeague were throwing money around. How long ago was that ?

But if the US can have World Championships for sports only they play, who says we can’t hold similar moments of delirium.

I get enough people asking and my current antivirus of choice is the AVG Suite (and we went for the family pack) but the free edition is over at:

http://www.avg.com/product-avg-anti-virus-free-edition

The 3^rd Annual “Battle of the Bands” is a music festival of ethnic youth and young people within Victoria. The night will include ethnic action dancing, sway of the pacific, the glitter of Asia, Bands from the church groups will range from heavy rock to gospel country.

Many of the stars of the music festival will be “Second Generation” Australian born children of immigrants and refugees as performers.

Everyone is welcome to come and join in the fun and audience members are encouraged to come in costume of your ethnic heritage which include Anglo, European background.(Dutch, German, Scottish, English, Wales, etc)

It is proudly supported by the Uniting Church in Australia.

Date 22 November 2008.

Location Box Hill Wesley Uniting Church in 2-6 Oxford Street, Box Hill, Melbourne.

Times 3pm to 9.30pm

parking details Street parking

Tickets secretary. Tee Makoni - talaheumakoni@hotmail.com

Adults $5.00

Young people 12 to 25 Goldcoin donation

Children under 12 free.

Food stalls will be available

New Performers wishing to join in should contact:

Don Ikitoelagi (03) 9251- 5287 email Don.Ikitoelagi@victas.uca.org.au

Thinking out of the box, and greater experience always helps to finding short-cuts to getting that work done. In this case, the GBM team gives us tips on how to make it easier to access those Inking tools in the Microsoft Office suite.

The following is a re-post from an earlier article we published on customizing the Quick Access Toolbar so that the pen is easier to access in Office 2007:

One of the frustrating things about Office 2007 is how the inking tools are hidden under the Review Ribbon button. The ink options are harder to find, further sending the message that ink is a second-class citizen in Office products, and breaks that flow of “thinking in ink”. When I want to ink, I don’t want to hunt and peck for my pens. I just want to start inking.

…

Now you have one-click access to your pens and they are no longer hidden under the obscure “Review” tab. Unfortunately, the Editor Options do not apply system wide in Outlook. You’ll need to make the same changes to the Calendar, Contact, and Journal screens. Just create a new item for Calendar, Contact, and Journal, and then go to the Editor Options for each type to customize the Quick Access Toolbar. Follow the same instructions for customizing Word, Excel, etc.

GBM How To: Add Pen Options to Quick Access Toolbar
Rob Bushway
Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Now, all I need is a shortcut to keeping the battery in my mobile phone charged. (? whatever ?)

After church on Sunday we stopped over Uncle John’s house because we haven’t totally destroyed someone else’s house in a long time.

Now, we feel better so it’s time to go home.

Isn’t it sweet that the Australian Government would like everyone to realise that we hold the moral high ground.

Time to end Bush’s wretched war. (excerpt)

Yesterday, the Australian Government, via the Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, reiterated its opposition to the death penalty. "We urge countries who continue to apply capital punishment not to do so," he told the ABC, adding that Australia would co-sponsor a resolution in the United Nations General Assembly calling for a moratorium on capital punishment.

Just as we hold the moral high ground on all those other International Treatise signed on the rights of children, or the rights of asylum seekers, after which we close the doors from any critics and go ahead and literally drive people to self-harm, suicide, mental illness.

But we are white, and white is might, so it must be right.

The Pacific Solution.

Feb 2008: As promised prior to the 2007 Federal Election, the ALP on assuming government, quickly moved to shut down the Australian-run detention centre on Nauru in the remote South Pacific. However, it has not withdrawn the controversial September 2001 legislation that created the offshore detention and processing system that came to be known as the 'Pacific Solution'. Instead of transferring asylum seekers en route to Australia to Nauru, it now transfers all asylum seekers to the detention centre on Christmas Island off Australia's far North-West coast. They still have have no rights under Australian law and are processed separately.

Oh, and they didn’t get the chance to enact a new legislation with greater powers similar to what allows the above ‘solution’ because those fool citizens didn’t give the ALP a majority in the Senate.

Commenting on the announcement, James Thomson, spokesperson for the National Council of Churches’ refugee program, which coordinated the statement, said that if it were not for the sustained pressure that churches and community brought to bear in the debate, and the pivitol role played by key parliamentarians who stood their ground against the Bill, it would have been passed.

Flight from Nauru ends Pacific Solution

"The Pacific solution was a cynical, costly and ultimately unsuccessful exercise introduced on the eve of a federal election (in 2001) by the Howard government," Senator Evans said.

He said the department had spent $289 million between September 2001 and June 2007 to run the Nauru and Manus centres.

Mark Getchell, from the International Organisation for Migration, which ran the Nauru facility, said there were now no asylum seekers left on Nauru.

"It is the end of an era," Mr Getchell said.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) welcomed the end of the policy.

"Many bona fide refugees caught by the policy spent long periods of isolation, mental hardship and uncertainty - and prolonged separation from their families," UNHCR's Richard Towle said in a statement

Do yourself a favour and get used to using this tool before you install your next favourite ‘tiny’ app from the Internet.

Just type "perfmon" in the Vista search box to run the Reliability and Performance Monitor and then select Network.  The resulting pane will reflect all running programs that are actively talking to the Web.  This will give you a heads up if there are programs there you don't think should be talking to the WWW.

Are your programs tapping the Internet? Here's how to find out
James Kendrick
Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:47:57 GMT

When your system begins to slow down like crazy, give the above app a run and see if it helps identify the culprits.

One of the wonderful things about Open Source software is that there is a continuum of upgrades where users and developers find things that are broken and fix them.

Unfortunately, some of the fixes cause more breaks than existed in the system.

Gallery 2.1 upgrade to 2.3svn failings

Posted by: Samiuela LV Taufa on January 11, 2008 2:56:59 PM (821 Reads)

The regular problems taking for ever and a day to resolve happened again when I tried upgrading (due to security warnings) to a more current version of Gallery2.

Unfortunately, the upgrade coincided with Tonfon deciding to give me a hard time with Internet connections.

Clear problems from the upgrade.

it’s a good thing I’ve wandered this space often enough that my own records are augmenting poor memory, such that I can fix the new problem with the old fix.

Upgraded my Gallery to the current release as there were a number of documented security reasons to upgrade. Unfortunately, the update broke my Gallery and I haven’t been able to dedicate the time to fixing it, until I decided to google nomoa.com!!! Way to go nomoa.com.

Leave it to Dare Obasanjo to finally make a decent summary of what is the Windows Haze.

Disclaimer: What follows are my personal impressions from using the beta version of Windows Azure. It is not meant to be an official description of the project from Microsoft, you can find that here.

…

What is it?

Before talking about a cloud computing platform, it is useful to agree on definitions of the term cloud computing. Tim O'Reilly has an excellent post entitled Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing where he breaks the technologies typically described as cloud computing into three broad categories

…

To try out Azure you need to be running Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista with a bunch of prerequisites you can get from running the Microsoft Web Platform installer.

…

…, I find the Live Services piece (access to user data in a uniform way) and the SQL Services (hosted storage) most interesting. I will likely revisit them in more depth at a later date.

…

It would be interesting to read [or write] further thoughts on the pros and cons of Platform as a Service offerings when compared to Utility Computing offerings. … it would be informative to look at the topic from more angles…

Windows Azure from a Developer's Perspective
Dare Obasanjo
Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:04:04 GMT

Sometimes Microsoft can be at fault for not even understanding their own message, and then there are the times when even the fanboys and detractors just don’t have a clue.

The Free Press failed democracy in Australia when it kept silent and did not dig into the Howard Government exploitation of asylum seekers for political (let alone all the other nasties of that situation to maintain the facade), and it again looks to be failing Democracy. This time the failing is in the US Presidential elections where for some reason the ‘free press’ is conveniently forgetting the atrocities of this financial melt down brought forth by one candidate’s party politics.

Orson Scott Card, a noted author et. al. pulls the details in his treatise …

I  remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism.  You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere.  It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan?  It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

Seems similar to the existing two party system in Australia. One side has great economic nuance and atrocious concept of humanity, while the other side is all hugs and kisses and kiss economic stability goodbye.

There’s little worst in life than to live a lie and to be ignorant of it. It seems the ‘Free Press’ really isn’t that ‘free.’

From: Orson Scott Card, I love you.

For a light hearted fun flick:

http://alanbecker.deviantart.com/art/Animator-vs-Animation-34244097

It’s 2008. Every other month I go over my Internet bandwidth limit at home because Ubuntu needs an update, …, and the update just wants to bring home the neighbours kitchen sink.

The update process in Ubuntu has …. well it has gotten out of control. There is no doubt that updates are a necessity for security patches and bug fixes…no argument there. However, Ubuntu seems to want to build the operating system as they go… having you download huge numbers of updates, often daily.

read more

Ubuntu…Please Don’t Release on Time!
mogyweb
Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:50:28 GMT

But that is the life of a wannabe techo, bleeding edge bleeding pocket book.

If you want to really screw up things … you really have to be part of the largest institutes, and in most cases they happen to be national or multinational, including straight national states.

From the UK Telegraph.

The Department for Work and Pensions last year admitted that seven in 10 government IT projects fail.

So it is hardly surprising that progress on the NHS’s “Connecting for Health” computerisation scheme, already running at least four years late, has almost ground to a halt.

What is particularly concerning about this case, however, is its sheer cost - £12 billion.

All well to glorify the doom scenarios, but what can we do to find a solution? There’s a short ‘prescription’ in the above article. But, as it also ascribes things on paper don’t always become effective implementations.

As the most dangerous part of a car is the nut loose behind the wheel so is IT deployment. Fix the ‘nut’ and you’re more than half-way to your solution.

It looks like if you’re not moving to 64bit, then Microsoft is going to give you a gentile big shove.

Announcing Windows Server 2008 R2" href="http://www.activewin.com/awin/comments.asp?HeadlineIndex=45308">Announcing Windows Server 2008 R2

Oliver Rist: Windows Server 2008 R2 showed its pretty face at the Professional Developers Conference today, here in Los Angeles.

Hi there, my name’s Oliver Rist and I’m a new technical product manager on the Windows Server team. … pre-beta Windows Server 2008 R2. …, there are several items of note with R2:

First and foremost, 32-bit is done. History. Archives. Windows Server 2008 R2 is the first Windows OS platform to go 64-bit only, and frankly it was high time. Customers have been unable to purchase a 32-bit server CPU for over two years now, and the advancements in CPU architectures really dictated that we squeeze as much performance out of customers’ hardware purchases as possible. The move to 64-bit is a first step.

Announcing Windows Server 2008 R2
Wed, 29 Oct 2008 06:34:53 GMT

I’d go towards 64 bitness me-self except for that one little app that is the sole purpose of this machine (OneNote and OneNote print driver.)

I’d go 64bitness on my Ubuntu box, except that I downloaded the 32bit version and couldn’t be bothered after I finished the install (since it’s not a dev machine, it’s a *Nix word-process machine.)

But I probably would have bought the 64bit upgrade if Microsoft’s Upgrade site was anywhere easy to walk through. Windows Vista gives you a link to Upgrade Anytime, and the only place you get sent is trying to sell you a full version?

Looks like it’s Tonga week over at Cumberland Newspapers with news through again through Glenn Mitchell.

1st Up: Royal Touch from the Mt. Druitt Standard

King George Tupou V (left) enters the church grounds in traditional style. He is accompanied by an unidentified security official. Picture: ARMEN DEUSHIAN

MORE than 2000 people turned up at Glendenning last week to witness the official opening of a new $7.3 million church by the King of Tonga.

King George Tupou V ushered in a new era for the Australian-Tongan community when he opened the King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV Memorial Church.

Head on over to see the rest of the dialogue, including finding yourself in one of those kai polas?

2nd Up: Williams to fire up for Tonga from the Manly Daily, of all places?

Tonga's Tony Williams in action against Ireland on Monday night.

TONGAN World Cup coach Jim Dymock believes Sea Eagles 2009 recruit Tony Williams could be the “X-factor” in securing a win over rivals Samoa on Friday night. Williams will be named in Dymock’s 17-man squad on Wednesday.

I guess since William’s is running on for Manly next year, it’s appropriate that the locals there want to know what’s happening with their players (and we’re all ‘locals’ when it comes to news of the Tonga boys.

Local representation, national presence. Thanks to Cumberland Newspapers, so read you local daily/dairy.

p.s. I think they need to water-mark their photos, ‘cause we know how you young un’s love to share your favourite pics …

A change of pace with the train ride last night (Tuesday.) Monday nights ride was on an old clunker with a certified Buddhist Nun (a name we give her because we couldn’t be bothered to use the foreign tongue accurate title.)

Tuesday night’s ride was on a freezer car, which leads me to believe that CityRail has an advanced system for cooling/heating the railcars where extreme effort and technology have been expanded to ensure that the system as a whole is at  the perfect human habitable temperature.

This means, that the State Raile service detects when the train to Woy Woy’s air conditioning system starts going on the blink and the carriages are heating up. To ensure an equitable distribution, the system automatically finds another train that can compesate, so the train to Penrith is adjusted to ensure the increase in cooling directly meats the increasing in temperature for Woy Woy.

Advanced technology doesn’t replace advanced intelligence, or just some intelligence.

Back to my ride.

This old guy gets on the train and asks me if I’m Arabic, which is a first. i’ve been questioned whether I’m Hispanic and other stuff, but not Arabic.

We finally make it to Bankstown station and there’s the mad scramble up the stairs for the sheep to be pushed through those pedestrian ticketing aisles. The old wanders through like everyone else but then squeezes in close behind the person going through the gate.

Woooop.

He successfully gets through without a ticket, because the gate doesn’t close while it still thinks that a fat person with a huge elongated butt is still squeezing through the gate.

Woo hoo, way to go old guy. Riding the rails at will.

Dude, if old guys can do this kind of stuff, there’s still hope for us to find bugs in our systems and security holes. And, I guess it’s never too old to learn some new tricks, or get up the gumption to see things through.

Shell Programming and Scripting

There’s always Google and Live Search, but the Shell Programming and Scripting forums look just like the place to wander around to learn more about that scripting environment called unix shell.

We won, and there were free tickets at some of the sports stores (although free is as in spend $100+ dollars and get a free ticket?)

Rugby league world cup match between Ireland and Tonga at Parramatta stadium. Picture Brent McGilvary

 

http://parramatta-advertiser.whereilive.com.au/photos/gallery/tonga-vs-ireland/

 

A few pics for you!

 

cheers,