As of 2016-02-26, there will be no more posts for this blog. s/blog/pba/
Showing posts with label Microsoft. Show all posts

I love this ad:


It's time for a phone to save us from our phones.

But I don't understand how could you not be trapped in this phone again? You still need to use it and you still get caught up.

I always hate phones, not just mobiles. They are so annoying, well, that's what they are for. They have tiny screen, tiny buttons or keyboard. It doesn't matter if it's real buttons or on-screen keyboard, they are just too tiny to type. It doesn't matter if the system is smart enough to correct your typo or any mistakes, because there is no such smart system. If there is, you don't need a phone.

I can't understand why so many people are willing to type or finger scrolling that awkward thing, and think "This is so cool! I could do XYZ on my phone!" Alright, it's cool but it's waste of time. When it's not a time waster, you don't need a phone.

Someday in the future, an ads would be with such tag line: "It's time for not using a phone to save us from our phones."

It does not mean you don't use phone anymore, it means you do not need a phone to do things you used to do on your phone including phoning someone. You do not need a phone to phone. That's really the saver, not having another phone. Another phone, it's just another iteration of an endless loop. You would never be able to get out.

For now, I would rather carrying a 15.4-inch, 6+ lbs laptop with me other than using a light and tiny so-called {smart,i,[insert here yours]}phones.

Please let phone be just phone! You know pressing numbers and hit the call button. That's all you need for a phone.

Remember history often repeats itself! We don't need recreation, we need innovation deep from the foundation.

Google announced their latest creation: Google New.

Nice but still missing a couple of things I would like to see:
I think a simple feed is a huge plus for Google New. You can manually subscribe to every product's blog feed. But you wouldn't be interested in all Google products therefore it's unlikely that you would find all feeds and subscribe to them, not to mention it's not easy to subscribe to all and even get to know if there is a new product.

So, if there is a feed for this, I might unsubscribe all Google feeds and use it only.

There is another a couple of interesting thing in the source code of Google New:

    <script src="/newproducts/js/modernizr-1.5.min.js"></script>

    <script src="/newproducts/js/main.js?10"></script>
  </head>
  <!--[if lt IE 7 ]><body class="ie6"><![endif]-->
  <!--[if IE 7 ]><body class="ie7"><![endif]-->
  <!--[if IE 8 ]><body class="ie8"><![endif]-->
  <!--[if IE 9 ]><body class="ie9"><![endif]-->
  <!--[if (gt IE 9)|!(IE)]><!--><body><!--<![endif]-->

It uses Modernizr library and includes a messy code for IEs. IE always is so special, even within between its own different versions.

This is another not so useful script of mine. It is a Bash script and it gathers the search results counts via Google/Yahoo/Bing APIs to make an historical chart of specified keyword using the Annotated Timeline (with no annotations, :-))of Google Visualization API.

I made this script, search-result-count.sh, because I wanted to have a historical chart of this keyword livibetter. Yep, I searched my nickname regularly, I admit it! I like watching the number of result climbing up, which would make me feel better. :-D

I wasn't planning of using Yahoo and Bing because their APIs require AppIDs, the IDs will be out to apparently public if I use Bash to write this. I don't like it, but I couldn't resist to see the result counts from them.

Because it is still new, I could not have much data to show you. The following chart was collected about two weeks. (Bing results was not included)



The following is the screenshot of rendered HTML page:

I googled myself and made a chart. on Twitpic

Please aware of few things if you want to use this script:
  • You can use cron to run it regularly, several times a day. Don't worry, it will only update the data file once a day.
  • It will only update when three counts from three search engine are available. If any of them couldn't return the result, you may have a missing data. But it should be okay, the counts do not change much from day to day.

I downloaded the Windows 7 Ultimate Beta from Microsoft. The hardwares of the machine I used, you can read it here. It's kind of old. I have an ATI Radeon X700 graphics card, but it seems to be broken, that is bad that I could not see the Aero theme. By the way, I have never used Vista, Windows XP is my last experience of Windows operating systems.



The setup runs in 800600 resolution, I can now hope Windows supports old GeForce4 MX and gives me 16801050 after installation. The setup is weird, it gave Upgrade and Custom installation types, but I didn't have any Windows on this computer. I deleted all Linux partitions and create new one. It automatically created 200MB for System type, the rest for Primary type.



The installation needs to restart twice, which I don't understand why would it needs to. At second time reboot, you can set up a new account and enter the product key. The whole process of installation takes less than 30 minutes, this is quite fast.



I am still stuck in 800600. I tried to set up Internet connection, but it kept saying it couldn't. So I checked up the Device Manager, and found out Ethernet Controller doesn't have driver. I manually installed NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller. I thought this will be working, but it doesn't. Windows 7 has proved me that it's a Windows descendant by a royal Windows tradition when I tried to configure the NIC, I got a Not responding window. The End Process button doesn't work, the only way seems to restart or shutdown. But it just showed me Shutting down... Thankfully, this machine has a Reset button. Good job, Microsoft.



So I downloaded a Windows XP driver for nForce2 from nVidia website (it's categorized as Legacy), it doesn't have Vista version. However, this still doesn't work for NIC (other devices seem to work). I found nf123xp stuff, which has newer drivers than from nVidia's website. The file I downloaded is NF123LR1.0. While installing these newer drivers, boom! BSOD! Another royal tradition. I then tried again, it happened on installing audio driver. I resolved it by manually installing.



Now, finally, I can connect to Internet. I installed Kaspersky software from the three suggestions on Windows 7 website, also updated the system. I tried to install nVidia GeForce4 MX (Integered using 128 MB shared memory) 93.71 driver for XP/2K, which I downloaded from nVidia, but installer said this is not Windows! How hilarious! But I can still install it manually.



Oh, yeah! I got 16801050 after rebooted. I just downloaded Steam, and Kaspersky warmed me that it detected Worm.P2P.generic. So, I uninstalled Kaspersky. However, the games are not playable, I guess that is driver problem.



I feel Windows 7 is just a pretty Windows XP, nothing more except you have to keep click on Yes and Allow buttons to make sure your system is more Secure. I encountered troubles with driver issues, they are not supported officially, even though they are working. If you want to try Windows 7, make sure you have a sticker on your hardware. Buying a pre-installed computer might be a better way.






Hooray! I am using Microsoft Word!

Here is how I install:
- Download the Microsoft Word.
- Move or unpack the package to ~/Desktop/word_package/ with your Archive Manager, that package is a PKZIP+SFX. If your Archive Manager can't unpack it, you can run it in DosBox to unpack.
- Install DosBox. If you are using Fedora, you can install by yum install dosbox.
- Run DosBox.
- You need to mount your ~/Desktop, please run: mount c ~/Desktop
- Switch to C Drive: c:
- Enter the directory: cd word_package
- If you haven't unpacked it, you can run the Wd55_ben.exe (No ./, it's DOS!)
- Then run setup.exe and follow the instruction on screen. I didn't update any system things while installation. If your arrow keys do not work, please read the next; if they do work, skip next.
- On Fedora 10 or Ubuntu 8.10 (maybe some others), you need to create an configuration file for keycode issue. Use your favorite editor to create ~/.dosboxrc with:
[sdl]
usescancodes=false
- After you done installation, the Word should be at C:\WORD. Switch to it cd C:\WORD and run word.
I got the link via CLICK and read the resolution of keycode issue in this thread.
This post is written in Microsoft Word 5.5 with DosBox on Fedora 10, saved as RTF, uploaded to Google Docs, then copy-and-paste to Blogspot. However, some styles are applied on Google Docs for readability.


You can download the original DOC and RTF.

Original Paint

I am a GIMP user, wouldn't try Paint or Paint-like before. I read a tweet today about this, so I give it a try.

First of all, let me quote this:

Original is the best -- Yu-Jie Lin.

Yes, I couldn't agree with this any more because that is said by me. Anyway, if you are the MS Paint fan, then run it with WINE. I have done this, the steps is quite easy:
  1. Installing WINE
  2. Copy paint.exe and mfc42u.dll from installed Windows system. Or, extract them from Windows Setup CD. You will need cabextract to uncompress the paint.ex_ and mfc42u.dl_ files.
  3. (Optional) Copy gdiplus.dll to ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32. I don't see this on Windows Setup CD. If you don't have gdiplus.dll, then you can only save/load BMP format.
  4. Running paint.exe.
Here is the screenshot of my recent masterpiece :) created in MS Paint:

You can download this PNG image, I wonder if is anyone interested. I run Paint on WINE-1.1.5 and Fedora 9. The dlls are from Traditional Chinese Windows, the paint.exe is from Dell Windows Reinstalling Setup CD. Both are Windows XP. I extracted paint.exe from Setup CD because the Chinese characters can't be display, they all are displayed as blocks and I don't know how to fix that.

Paint-alternative on Linux

Here is a list of Paint-alternative applications on Linux, maybe they are not really like MS Paint. Just give them a try.
None of them I tried, so you are on your own to discover.

Lastly, when I searched for those alternatives, I found this testiminal video via this Uncyclopeida page:



Enjoy it!
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