Google closing Aardvark

Google has decided to close Aardvark.
I hope that they wouldn't.
Aardvark is a service that allows you ask a question and the system would refer it to a person (volunteer) that reported to have knowledge about the subject.
This system works best for question that a human would answer better than any Google search.
Let's hope that Google would use this technology in their searches someday, if they kill the project after all.

New GWT Tools

Google has brought out some very elaborate tools for web development. Developing these tools must have required considerate effort and money. Why would a company develop these tools and deliver them for free?
My guess is that these tools are designed to come in complement with Chrome Apps store and intended for the coming Chrome OS.

Sharing a printer from Windows 7 to Vista/XP

Many people encounter a problem, when trying to share a local (USB) printer from Windows 7 to it's older cousins, like Windows XP, or Vista.

The problem is that many manufacturers (HP, Canon, etc.) have decided to package their printer drivers into executable installer file, instead of using Microsoft's "inf" file format with libraries.
Windows printer sharing service allows to provide drivers for others versions of Windows for the guest computers, however it requires drivers in the "inf" file format. On the other hand, the guest system can use it's own drivers, if the server (host) doesn't have the correct version, then again it requires the "inf" format. So, apparently, we are in a deadlock.

Fortunately there is a trick that helps to avoid this deadlock.
You will need to:

1. Install the printer locally on the guest and host machines.
2. On the host machine to share the printer
3. On the guest machine
1. Go to the printer's preferences (right click ->  preferences)
2. Go to port tab
3. Add port -> Local port -> enter the shared printer's network path (eg. \\PC\Printer).
4. Confirm
4. Check that it works.

This way we make Windows to use the installed drivers, even if the manufacturer didn't provide the "inf" files installer (probably on purpose).

Hat tip to user kgo08 on Tom's Hardware forums.

New Mail for Exchange breaks Google Sync support

Nokia has never officially supported Mail for Exchange for use with Google Sync, however even without the official support, it worked. Unfortunately with the introduction of Mail for Exchange 3.0, syncing mail does not work anymore with Google Sync.
Google, obviously do not use MS Exchange, rather they provided with their own implementation of the protocol, possibly buggy and/or incomplete.
Nokia on their side point at Google that their implementation is incompatible, meanwhile made the previous working version unavailable, probably wanting to favor their Symbian over Android and crappy Ovi service over Google's.
Google on their side, do nothing, and being Google, probably do not care too much, and/or do not want to promote Symbian.

So here, users of Google services with Nokia devices are left out in the cold, without support from neither company.

Good work, Nokia and Google.

P.S.
My  local Nokia representative was kind enough to provide me with a last working version (2.9.158) of Mail For Exchange for my device.

eviL swodniW

I keep getting disturbing messages from Microsoft about this mysterious "eviL swodniW".

Apparently Microsoft are unable to send an email correctly when using RTL.

Update:

Apparently is it a bug in Windows Live Mail desktop application.

What’s the fuss about bing?

Seriously, what is the fuss about bing?

What are the killer features that could sway customers from using Google? I can’t see a single one.

Results accuracy is quite similar, search features, I think are better at Google, with a little nicer visual design at bing.

Will bing become a Google killer, or Microsoft great success? I really doubt that.

Annoying issue with FireFox 3.x and FireBug 1.2.x

There is an annoying issue with FireFox 3.x and FireBug 1.2.x.
When trying to parse XML you get:

Error: Permission denied to get property Element.childNodes
Source file: http://www.w3schools.com/XML/tryit_view.asp
Line: 24

Apparently it is an issue with FF itself.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=434522
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=385676

Hopefully, since both issues are recently marked as solved, this issue would be resolved in the next FF update.

Update:
This issue was solved in FF 3.0.3

Update 27 Jan. 2009:
This is finally solved with Firebug 1.3

Maybe this year Linus Torvalds is right

Lets place some facts together:

• Dell is successfully shipping desktops and laptops with Ubuntu Linux for quite a while, and recently has updated it's line.
  
• Asus EEE PC is a huge hit in US and it is shipped with Xandros Linux.
• Everex Green PC is one of the bestsellers at Wal-Mart and it is shipped with modified Ubuntu Linux (gOS) .
• Acer is starting a pilot in Australia, shipping it's low end laptops preinstalled with Linux.
• Shuttle introduced an Everex Green PC competitor for similar price. Also running Ubuntu.
• Everex is expected to start shipping their Cloudbook laptops with similar characteristics as Asus EEE PC and also at similar price. Will be shipped with gOS.
• Lenovo has announced , that it would ship R61 and T61 Thinkpad laptops with SUSE Linux.
• There are small companies like System76, ZaReason that, for quite a while, offer Linux based systems.
• There are companies that offer Linux based thin clients as products (Koolu) or as service (Zonbu).
• There are OpenMoko and Google Android projects providing Linux in cellular phones.

Update:

• Mirus are selling another sub $200 desktop, with Linspire Linux at Sears.
  

Do we have a trend here?
I think that we do.
Perhaps it is not long for Linux to go mainstream.

Useful Eclipse key shortcuts

I've collected some useful Eclipse key shortcuts:

	Key combination	Effect
	Ctrl+Shift+C	Comment/Uncomment selection
	Ctrl+Shift+/	Comment selection
	Ctrl+D	Delete line
	Ctrl+Del	Delete next word
	Ctrl+Bksp	Delete previous word
	Ctrl+Shift+Del	Delete till EOL
	Alt+Shift+M	Extract method
	Ctrl+F	Find and replace
	Ctrl+K	Find next
	Ctrl+Shift+K	Find previous
	Ctrl+L	Go to line
	Ctrl+Shift+D	Go to matching bracket
	Ctrl+Shift+enter	Insert line above
	Ctrl+Enter	Insert line below
	Ctrl+Shift+F	Auto format selected code

Enjoy :)

Business first, logic later.

Our beloved OEM's keep stuffing their product's hard drives with all that annoying bundleware. It even comes to an absurd situations:
Lenovo tech support advises to remove Norton Antivirus in order to improve the appalling performance it causes, while Lenovo keeps bundling Symantec products with all of their consumer and many of the business products.
Pure genius.
This is where money dictates the logic.

Pricey future

I'm so glad that Steve Ballmer saw that the future is in advertising. That's why Microsoft is loosing $1 billion on MSN.
Lucky them, to have deep enough pockets (on our expense).

Raw Trerapee

Thanks to Linux Action Show podcast, I've learned about Raw Therapee - a cross platform raw image file editor.
It is free (as a free beer) and clearly based on open source projects, unfortunately it is not an open source project itself. Too bad.
On the bright side, it has a nice set of features, and a solid GUI.
Anyways it is a great piece of software.

A wish granted

Remember me hoping for SCO filing for bankruptcy?
They are!
Not completely destroyed thou, but I hope that investors lost enough money to teach them a lesson.

Apple stubled upon Firefox's bug

The new iPods are out, but I wont be writing about them, there are just too many who already do. ;)
I want to notice that Apple online store site manages to hang Firefox.
They have probably an undiscovered Firefox's bug since the site does load in both IE and Opera, very sluggishly however.

SCO "You are stealing from us, but we won't tell you what" looses legal battle

Happy day to all!

Well, one idiotic, yet dangerous legal battle is over.
Court has stated that all rights for Unix and UnixWare are property on Novell and SCO can't claim any right on it. Furthermore, SCO can't sue anyone for "stealing" something that they don't own and must transfer all the royalties collected by SCO from Unix licences (often by using intimidation) to their rightful owner - Novel.
As a result SCO shares dipped 71% in a single day. I'm waiting for the day that SCO would file for bankruptcy.

Read Groklaw for more.

Fedora 7 impressions

I'm by no means a Linux guru. I do know how to make some thing done or how to setup some servers, but not building a Linux system from scratch.
I'm telling you all this since I'm about to tell about my user experience with Fedora 7.

The whole impression, that I have to work harder to get simple tasks done.

At a glance it appears to have more professional flavor than Ubuntu, great artwork (unlike Ubuntu) and a more security driven approach. Here, however the benefits that I've seen end.

For starters, YUM sucks. It is slow, unresponsive with a lot less packages than Synaptic.
Next the tools that were made for ease of administration, the one that would benefit a lot to the overall impression of the distribution, wouldn't work because of some security settings, even with root privileges.
I couldn't make VNC to work for no obvious reason.
Apache wouldn't serve any pages even thou the setup seems to be just fine.

My encounters with Fedora have always been brief. Perhaps it has something to do with the thing that I'm accustomed to, yet neither Debian nor Open Suse weren't as much frustrating as Fedora as has been.

So far, I'm stuck with Fedora because of some hardware manufacturer for a specific, project. It means that I'll have to give it another chance. Who knows, perhaps I'll change my mind?

Name your true reasons

Everybody are concerned about the air pollution and the global warming.
One of the sides of this concern is many government's stimulation of more modern and less polluting vehicles. Newer and more economical cars, use less fossil fuels meaning less air pollution. Meanwhile the politicians and automobile industry are happy either, more new cars are sold more money pours, more jobs for the people, while less mechanical related accidents.

Well there is a pit fall that I wanted to mention. What about the pollution caused in the production of all the new vehicles? What about pollution from all the old cars needed to be recycled? Has anyone calculated the benefits of making new cars versus keeping the old? If someone did, who did get to see the results?

I have no issues with all the benefits to economics and traffic safety, just don't expect me to blindly believe that it is done for the ecological reasons and definitely not about global warming. You couldn't care less.

Thank you Novell, very much

Novell - Microsoft deal goes according predicted path. After signing patent swap agreement they started their FUD attack on Linux.
This time Microsoft claims that Linux and other open source software violates about 230 patents owned by Microsoft.

Thank you Novell, very much.

Update:
The responses to MS FUD from Linux Torvads, Sun and Open Source Foundation.

Laughing at M$ Zune expense

An oldie, but nevertheless.
Enjoy!

Microsoft Executive: If You're Going To Steal Software, Steal From Us

Pirating Microsoft's software actually helps Microsoft, this is what many smart people said in the recent 15 years.
This time Microsoft's executive admits it. And this comes from a company wasting millions on DRM technology research, and infesting their products with it to the core.

While buying Microsoft's products is way worse then pirating it, pirating is a bad thing as well. Because in both ways there is only one looser, the consumer.