Software utilities

Poor poor thing. I almost feel like singing him a lullaby and rocking him ever-so gently ‘til he falls asleep with his thumb in his mouth and a drool a mile long.

But I won’t.

‘cos …well….I think he’s got a gazillion million millions stuffed in his pillow for company.

You made the decision to leave, Billy Boy, so what’s with the choked-up speech and the misty eyes? You’re not dying, you’re just leaving, moving on. Change is necessary as you very-well know, Billy. All you have to do is look at all the different versions of Windows, Office, yadda-yadda-yawn, you’ve piled out to know that what I’m saying is true. One minute, it’s Windows 2000, then it’s XP, then it’s Vista. If we can live through those dramatic versions/changes, then you, my friend, can live with the almighty big one you’re about to embark on.

Imagine all the things you’ll have more time to do now. You could go on a holiday. Ever heard of that, Billy Boy? Hol-i-day?

No, not the song by Madonna, dufus.

Well, a holiday is when you jump on a plane (erm, in your case, I guess it would be one of your private jets) and go to a place where you can leave the world behind, relax, reflect and have fun. I heard the mangoes are really good in the Caribbean. Greece is heaven on earth. And Brazil will make you smile all over.

So how about it, Billy Boy? Go on a holiday and thank the heavens that you still have enough of your life (and your money) to enjoy the journey ahead (whichever path you choose to take).

It’s not the end, old man - it’s just the beginning.

You’ll be fine, Billy Boy. We’ll miss ya, but you’ll be fine.

Just fine.

.

While trying to transfer an application created using VS2005 to an embedded PC (VIA C3 M 10000 embedded PC), I run into this very annoying problem. First, I got a slightly different exception, which was due to the msvcr80.dll file missing. So, I used the VS20005 redistributable to deploy the application. But my journey through the DLL hell was only at the beginning, because I got this very strange error. I got this only in the release version of the application, while the debug one worked fine. Using dependency walker, I could check that all the necessary DLLs were there, so I didn’t know what was this. After a couple of days of googling, and an incredible number of rebuild and solution clean, I finally found out that it was due to a DLL (created by me) being compiled in release mode with support for SSE2 istruction set, which was not available in the VIA CPU (it seems that it only supports 3DNow! ones). After removing the SSE/SSE2 optimization, everything worked fine!

Aaagh! What is up with Microsoft? Do they perhaps need a technical equivalent of a shrink? No sooner did they withdraw their billion-dollar takeover bid for Yahoo, and now they go ahead and change their minds. On Sunday afternoon, they announced that they’re putting in a fresh bid for Yahoo, but apparently this time, it’s not for all of Yahoo’s assets, just some (whatever that means).

How is Microsoft to be taken seriously with the back-and-forths? I wouldn’t. Especially as they were the ones that pulled out of the negotiating table in the first place.

Maybe it’s best for different parts of Yahoo to be owned by more than one company, anyway. It might be healthier that way. I hear Google are working on a deal with Yahoo (for Yahoo to utilise Google search ads on their network).

In other news, did you know that a fifth of Americans, over 20 million of them, have never used email? Ever?

I find that amazing.

Maybe it’s ignorant of me as I’m so used to using the web / emailing, but I do find the findings intriguing especially coming from a developed country, an apparent super power.

My immediate hunch was that age plays a factor in this. And I was right. According to the survey, half of those surveyed were over 65 years old. Education also comes into play with 56% not having gone beyond high-school level. (It’d be interesting to find out the breakdown of the other 50%.)

There were other findings such as 30% of Americans never having created a document on a computer before.

I expect that a lot of this isn’t necessarily down to age and education. Some people who’ve never touched a computer or have never been online might simply be scared of the unknown.

The era of all for free is almost finally dead.

Dozens of programs are issued free of charge, but you must accept advertising, which rewards (and pays) the author of the Software.

MSN Messenger and the Banner
Microsoft MSN Messenger works like this, but using a particular technique you can block and completely remove Banner Ads.

You need to edit the HOSTS file of Windows.
Go to the folder:

C: \ Windows \ System32 \ Drivers \ Etc.

and edit the file.

Add the following line at the end of the file:

127.0.0.1 rad.msn.com

The address rad.msn.com corresponds to an address that sends banners to MSN Messenger. With this technique, we determine that this address must be resolved with the IP 127.0.0.1 which corresponds to the localhost IP. The result is that MSN Messenger, unaware of this, trying to connect to its servers, will look for the banner in our computer, but not finding any active service, will not receive any banner, thus leaving the ads space empty.

Ethics and problems of this solution
Although it is not an illegal move, it could be wrong. We use a useful service but at no cost; a little advertising is a way to repay the activity of those who built the software and therefore in future we can expect improved versions. Commercial television has always adopted this model.

Any problem stems instead from the fact that this address may vary over time, and then at some point the banner could reappear. Following a thorough investigation, however, it could again be traced back at once and added to file HOSTS to restore the situation.

A more effective solution might be to activate a firewall and block outbound packages that have as destination the IP addresses of advertising servers to obtain the same effect.

TV shows? Now watch them on Messenger TV. The project has just been launched through the creativity of the Italian team of Microsoft, which has united in a single instrument the two main activities of most web users: online videos and Windows Live Messenger chats. With the new TV, more than 12.5 million Italian Msn users, can experience a more “social” web tv on-demand, based exclusively on high-quality video. The range of content available includes the entire catalog of clips from MSN Video, the free video channel of the MSN portal.

For the occasion Microsoft has close some strategical partnerships.