You can take a look at the release of Vista’s Wallpapers here, bit one wonders why the max resolution is just 1280 x 960..what’s up with that?

There’s a total of 92 wallpapers.

Enjoy!

Tech Support: “How much free space do you have on your hard drive?”

Customer: “Well, my wife likes to get up there on that Internet, and she downloaded ten hours of free space. Is that enough?”

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No, the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system.
- Bill Gates

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Customer: “My computer crashed!”
Tech Support: “It crashed?”
Customer: “Yeah, it won’t let me play my game.”
Tech Support: “All right, hit Control-Alt-Delete to reboot.”
Customer: “No, it didn’t crash-it crashed.”
Tech Support: “Huh?”
Customer: “I crashed my game. That’s what I said before. Now it doesn’t work.”
Turned out, the user was playing Lunar Lander and crashed his spaceship.
Tech Support: “Click on ‘File, ‘ then ‘New Game.’”
Customer: [pause] “Wow! How’d you learn how to do that?”

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - –

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
- Rich Cook

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Customer: “So that’ll get me connected to the Internet, right?”
Tech Support: “Yeah.”
Customer: “And that’s the latest version of the Internet, right?”
Tech Support: “Uhh…uh…uh…yeah.”

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - –

One Liners:

“Unix is user-friendly. It’s just very selective about who its friends are.”

“Programming is like sex, one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life.” — Michael Sinz

“There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t.”

“640K ought to be enough for anybody.” – This is not humorous by itself; but in the context it’s a classic by Bill Gates in 1981

Microsoft: “You’ve got questions. We’ve got dancing paperclips.”

“Microsoft is not the answer. Microsoft is the question. NO is the answer.” – Erik Naggum

“Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus. Computers are from hell.”

“SUPERCOMPUTER: what it sounded like before you bought it.”

“Windows95: It’s like upgrading from Reagan to Bush.

“People say Microsoft paid 14M$ for using the Rolling Stones song ‘Start me up’ in their commercials. This is wrong. Microsoft payed 14M$ only for a part of the song. For instance, they didn’t use the line ‘You’ll make a grown man cry’.”

“I’m not anti-social; I’m just not user friendly”

“A printer consists of three main parts: the case, the jammed paper tray and the blinking red light”

“The best accelerator available for a Mac is one that causes it to go at 9.81 m/s2.”

“A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history – with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila”

“1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d”

“To go forward, you must backup.”

“I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code”

“A Windows user spends 1/3 of his life sleeping, 1/3 working, 1/3 waiting.”

“My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.”

“Better to be a geek than an idiot.”

“Windows isn’t a virus, viruses do something.”

“Geek’s favorite pickup line: Hey, does this rag smell like chloroform? ”

“Be nice to geeks when you’re in school, you might end-up working for one when you grow-up.”

“Difference between a virus and windows ? Viruses rarely fail.”

“Evolution is God’s way of issuing upgrades.”

“The only problem with troubleshooting is that sometimes trouble shoots back.”

“It’s a little-known fact that the Y1K problem caused the Dark Ages.”

“The box said ‘Required Windows 95 or better’. So, I installed LINUX.”

“Computer are like air conditioners: they stop working when you open windows.”

“once upon a midnight dreary, while i pron surfed, weak and weary,
over many a strange and spurious site of ‘hot xxx galore’.
While i clicked my fav’rite bookmark, suddenly there came a warning, and my heart was filled with mourning, mourning for my dear amour,
” ‘Tis not possible!”, i muttered, “give me back my free hardcore!”
quoth the server, 404.”

“Mac users swear by their Mac,
PC users swear at their PC.”

“Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.”

“Dating a girl is just like writing software. Everything’s going to work just fine in the testing lab (dating), but as soon as you have contract with a customer (marriage), then your program (life) is going to be facing new situations you never expected. You’ll be forced to patch the code (admit you’re wrong) and then the code (wife) will just end up all bloated and unmaintainable in the end.”

“Real men don’t use backups, they post their stuff on a public ftp server and let the rest of the world make copies.” – Linus Torvalds

“There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that understand trinary, those that don’t, and those that confuse it with binary.”

“If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day; if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime.”

“It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.”

“I had a fortune cookie the other day and it said: ‘Outlook not so good’. I said: ‘Sure, but Microsoft ships it anyway’.”

“The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.”
“The term reboot comes from the middle age (before computers). Horses who stopped in mid-stride required a boot to the rear to start again. Thus the term to rear-boot, later abbreviated into reboot.”

“Programmers are tools for converting caffeine into code.”

“The great thing about Object Oriented code is that it can make small, simple problems look like large, complex ones.”

“Hacking is like sex. You get in, you get out, and hope that you didn’t leave something that can be traced back to you.”

It turns out that Miss Dewey is the more attractive part of Microsoft Search.I was just talking to a friend on Gtalk and he pointed out to me some keywords to ask Miss Dewey, some of these words produce hillarious outburst by Dewey and some were a little more serious. i’ll share a few words i found that have attracted some attention, if you have anymore words please do comment below so i can add them to the list.

Who is the real Miss Dewey?

In real life Miss Dewey is Janina Gavankar a classically trained pianist, vocalist, and orchestral percussionist.

Type in this words in the search field at Miss Dewey :

Gmail

Google

Linux

You Are Beautiful

I Am Sexy

President Bush

Deviant

Art

Gun

Yo Mama – this has to be the best..click ‘search’ again and she will be cursing

aggreg8 allows IT Pros to “mix-n-mingle” and a forum for developers to share scripts, tools, or best practices, or even to just connect with others within the profession.

Kevin Remde, an IT Pro evangelist for Microsoft, wrote in a blog post announcing the service.Aggreg8 has no relation to the RSS reader project that carried the same name. Philip Roche, the creator of that program, was approached in July by Microsoft if he would sell the domain names. Both Aggreg8.com and Aggreg8.net were sold for $5,000, he said in a blog post.

Visit aggreg8

Priced at around $250 to compete with Apple’s 30 gig iPod, Microsoft will launch a digital download store à la iTunes, where Zune owners can buy songs for about $1 each and albums at prices comparable to iTunes’.

JONATHAN SILVERSTEIN of ABC writes:

With Apple in firm control of more than 70 percent of the digital media player market, Microsoft has its work cut out for it, even though close to 70 percent of Americans don’t even own a player yet.

David Pogue at New York Times writes:

“Competition is good and all. But what, exactly, is the point of the Zune? It seems like an awful lot of duplication — in a bigger, heavier form with fewer features — just to indulge Microsoft’s “we want some o’ that” envy.

While Walter S. Mossberg over at Wall Street Journal writes:

Overall, the iPod and iTunes are still the champs. Still, I expect the Zune to attract some converts and to get better with time. And this kind of competition from a big company with deep pockets and lots of talent is good for consumers in the long run.”

Full Rerviews:

ABC News

New York Times

Wall Street Journal

In a previous statement Microsoft announced that the number of times that Windows Vista can be transferred to a new computer is just once in an effort to slay wide-scale piracy.

However today Microsoft has changed its position and relaxed the restriction for retails copies of Vista.

Microsoft attempted to brush off the negative response by saying it was simply updating its licensing terms in Vista to be more clear, noting that Windows XP had the same restriction. But a number of industry pundits and bloggers poked holes in that claim, noting that Microsoft’s own documentation said nothing of the sort.

Source

The brand spanking new Miscosoft Firefox browser may just be the thing you need come 2007.

The new award-winning browser from Microsoft is now faster, securer and quicker anything else on the market. Why use anything else?

Firefox 2007′s new TakeOver(TM) technology protects the Windows Kernel by automatically recognizing all McAfee and Symantec programs as viruses. Downloading has never been safer.

A truly hillarious take, find more at Miscosoft Firefox

Pirated copies of Vista will have a reduced functionality mode that is enhanced, Microsoft said on its Web site on Wednesday.This feature is already at play in the current Windows XP, displaying a persistent statement in the lower right hand corner of the desktop that reads: “This copy of Windows is not genuine.”

Windows Vista, five years in the making, has been postponed by Microsoft several times.

Microsoft Windows sits on more than 90 percent of the world’s personal computers and the Windows business accounts for about 30 percent of the company’s $44 billion in revenue.

All i know is someone out there will learn how to manipulate this, i am however not advocating piracy.
source

Chris Stephenson, general manager of global marketing for Zune let the cat out of the bag yesterday, telling Reuters that “a Zune phone is definitely part of the future of this brand.”

source

Samsung plans to complement their store with their renage of MP3 players much like what Apple does with iTunes.

Samsung has tapped MusicNet to provide the library of songs for the store, which will likely offer both a monthly subscription and individual downloads. MusicNet currently powers Yahoo! Music Unlimited and MTV Networks’ URGE, which was developed with Microsoft and will be the primary service in Windows Media Player 11.

Do we really need another music store? what are they gonna offer that others haven’t?
Quiet a dumb idea if you ask me.

source

Among the software listed are:

Inkscape

Inkscape is a Vector graphics application tool and suprising enough it also works with Linux and MAC.

HandBrake

Handbrake is a DVD to MPEG-4 ripper/converter tool.

You can view the full list of FREE softwares at Open Source Windows

enjoy!

I sincerely think it was just a matter of time before people could create their own video games, as the advances of Technology makes the “hard to understand” sound and look simple.

Microsoft has stepped in and is set to release the consumer version of their professional software tools used to create video games for its Xbox 360 console.

The XNA Game Studio Express program, an offshoot of the company’s more robust XNA Framework, will be available August 30 for a $99 annual subscription, the company announced Monday.

“It’s our first step of creating a YouTube for video games,” Moore said, referring to the wildly popular free online video sharing Web site. “It will give you everything you need to bring your game to life on Xbox 360.”

The program would be a first for consoles, which traditionally have been the exclusive domain of skilled programmers, artists and designers.

Moore said the program is basic compared to the pro tools, which cost tens of thousands of dollars.

……..and did i mention that it will only work with Windows PC’s?

more via CNN

This is the excerpt from AMD & ATI’s site:

On July 24, 2006, AMD and ATI announced a plan to join forces, in a transaction that will combine AMD’s technology leadership in microprocessors with ATI’s strengths in graphics, chipsets and consumer electronics. The result is a processing powerhouse: a new competitor, better equipped to drive growth, innovation and choice for its customers in commercial and mobile computing segments and in rapidly-growing consumer electronics segments. The transaction, valued at US $5.4 billion, is expected to close in Q4 2006 subject to approval by ATI shareholders, court approval, regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

more…

Source

LARGE files

Yes…ever experienced sending a 4GB file through e-mail? how was your experience with that?!
most probably if was frustrating and time consuming, even made worst if you experienced “time out” as i did

What if you could split that big piece of a file into 4 smaller components so that each component will now be 1GB….that would be fantastic ain’t it?, or maybe split it even more so that each component is just 500MB?

Thank goodness for Partridge Software that has created a really cool software – the FileSplit 2.34.

FileSplit is a utility that splits large files into smaller files so that they can be easily copied to floppy disks or transferred via e-mail. Files can be split directly from Explorer by right clicking on any file and selecting Split File. FileSplit has an easy to use interface that makes splitting files fast and painless.

However this is NOT a free software (though you can try it for 30 days FREE), it is infact in my opinion fairly priced at $10.

Download Now

It was on the cards for some time now. Microsoft’s ‘iPod Killer’ as the rumors were has now become official and is called Zune.

This is what Microsoft had to say about Zune:

“Today we confirmed a new music and entertainment project called Zune. Under the Zune brand, we will deliver a family of hardware and software products, the first of which will be available this year. We see a great opportunity to bring together technology and community to allow consumers to explore and discover music together.”

So..expect to hear alot of “Zune” this and “Zune” that in the next couple of months.

Source

WinRAR is a 32-bit Windows version of RAR Archiver, an archiver and archive manager.

RAR files can usually compress content by 8 percent to 15 percent more than ZIP files can. WinRAR’s main features include strong general and multimedia compression, the ability to process non-RAR archive formats, ZIP compression and decompression, support for long filenames, programmable self-extracting archives (SFX), repair of damaged archives, authenticity verification, embedded file comments, and encryption. Unicode is supported in archive filenames, allowing non-English filenames to be handled painlessly. You can manipulate the parameters of many archives at once and view a volume sequence as a single archive.

WinRAR can convert other archive formats to RAR and search for specified text and files in archives.

Download Now -FREE

The USB Wireless Security Desktop & Notebook Lock is yet another nifty product from ThinkGeek.It’s a two piece gadget,one USB receiver dongle connected to the computer & a battery-powered access transmitter, which is to be carried by the authorized user.

It’s quite simple to operate,just plugin the USB dongle to your PC and keep the access transmitter with you (e.g your pocket), once you walk away from your PC either to chat with someone or to attend to nature’s call ( – 2 meters range),the devices automatically locks your PC,thus preventing people from accessing your PC.

It also has a 5-level password system in place just in case you drop your access transmitter somewhere in the toilet…God forbid!.

Ok,why did i say potential?

What if people just remove the USB dongle? I didn’t find my answer to that..hopefully they will address it soon,and it doesn’t work for other operating systems besides Windows 98/SE/ME/2000/XP…bummer!.

Also has these great features.

* Automatically locks PC when the user is physically away from the computer
* PC resumes automatically when user is within range (2 meter range)
* Grant access to authorized user within 2 meters of the protected computer
* Requires zero user interaction to initiate/release security protection, eliminating user error
* Password override can unlock PC if transmitter is lost
* Reliable Radio Frequency wireless technology
* USB interface, compatible with USB 1.0/1.1/2.0
* Easy to install and use
* Transmitter uses 3V/CR2032 battery (included)
* Operating frequency: 315 MHz
* Includes: PC Lock transmitter, PC Lock USB receiver, battery, software CD, 2″ leash
* Software works with Windows 98/SE/ME/2000/XP

Get your today for $25.99

ZuneLive.com follows in the vein of previous Microsoft domain – Live.com.

Looks like Microsoft’s stance is to add the word “live” in their products as Apple adds “i” to it’s range of products eg. “iPod”.

Some technical people decided to do a whois on the domain and found that the owner of ZuneLive.com was a certain man named Jack Spurr from Nova Scotia,that prompted many to disregard it from Microsoft because they never did register a domain under a person’s name instead they would always register a domain name under the Microsoft Inc banner.

But ZuneNation did a little research and found out that at least two other previous Microsoft domains were under the name Jack Spurr (Live.com and MicrosoftGadgets.com).

Full Article

“Updating your computer is almost complete. You must restart your computer for the updates to take effect. Do you want to restart your computer now?”

Ahhhhhhhhh…

Anywayz i was really sick of this and began a little Google search to find the remedy..and voila i found it,if you are of the same mind as me and you too hate those pop-up box than click here to solve your problem.

** It will only work for Windows XP SP2 Professional

Enjoy

It has MANY improvements, among those being improved download/upload speeds, better handling of BitComets in the swarm, and a totally revamped disk caching system to protect your hard drives.

Download

A trademark or trade mark[1] is a distinctive sign of some kind which is used by a business to uniquely identify itself and its products and services to consumers, and to distinguish the business and its products or services from those of other businesses. A trademark is a type of industrial property which is distinct from other forms of intellectual property.

Quoted from Wikipedia

The list of trademarks registered by Microsoft is growing,among the registered trademarks are:

ActiveX® -technologies, platform, controls, scripting, server framework

Direct3D® – application programming interface

Halo® – video game

Full List

“Microsoft, Encarta, MSN, and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.”

Source

Microsoft Inc’s Founder, Chairman and the world’s richest man – Bill Gates,says he will from July 2008 onwards devote more time to charitable works,mainly working with his wife,Melinda Gates,through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,which focuses on global health and education..

In almost a “spiderman” theme quote,Gates said:

“I believe with great wealth comes great responsibility - the responsibility to give back to society and make sure those resources are given back in the best possible way, to those in need,” he said. Gates added, “It’s not a retirement, it’s a reordering of my priorities.”

This,of course, wasn’t thhe first time Gates has come up with some witty quotes,he did it many times in the past,among them are:

1983:

“There’s really a lot of dirty software on the market now; we’ll have to educate the developers about how to write better software.”

1999

“The digital world can do better… We have got to make [technology] simpler, we’ve got to make it cheaper, and we’ve got to make it relevant.”

more quotes via PCWorld

Source & More :Money @ CNN

Well at least Microsoft thinks so.

New features for those with disabilities take into account three years of research by Microsoft, and is being led by Rob Sinclair.

Sinclair is the new director of Microsoft’s Accessible Technology Group. “Developing new ways to make technology easier for people to use has always been one of my passions,” he says. “I’ve really been pursuing the same goals throughout my career.”

Source & More: BetaNews

Version 1.0

Windows Media Photo is a new file format for continuous-tone still images that surpasses the limitations of existing image formats. Windows Media Photo supports a wide range of features including:

Multiple color formats for display or print

Fixed or floating point high dynamic range image encoding

Lossless or high quality lossy compression

Extremely efficient decoding for multiple resolutions and sub-regions

Minimal overhead for format conversion or transformations during decode

more