Friday, August 31, 2007

Model-Based Testing: Black or White?



via Google Video

Links for 8/31/07 [my NetNewsWire tabs]

flash video players

I'd get a flash video player in my rss feed, start watching, but now I can't proceed with my feed reading. Thankfully I've noticed a popout option on podtech/google video's, which opens an external window so you can continue on in the main windows.

Unfortunately, the podtech video stays on "buffering". I'll have to try it on another machine later and see if it is my machine or the podtech player.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Three Beautiful Quicksorts



via Google Video

hotkeys

I read most feeds in Google reader, but their are some feeds that I like reading less often. These are feeds that have less interesting content, or too much content (blogs.msdn.com). For those feeds I use Netnewswire (liferea on Linux, haven't found a good enough free reader on Windows though).

But Google Reader has ingrained in me the j/k keys. Unfortunately on Netnewswire the j key marks all unread articles as read. I often press the 'j' key by mistake, and all the hundreds of unread articles are gone!

Monday, August 27, 2007

Please help if you can...

Robert twitters...

Greg Stein (Director of the Apache Software Foundation) was Mugged - Accepting Donations

Based on ALL the hard work that he has given to the community I think we should start taking up a collection to do something nice for him.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

validation now works...

So I retraced my steps from yesterday, and this time everything went as it should. The system validated, and I was able to download the updates.

Just as a note, their are two vista performance and reliability though it would be hard to tell from the links that show up.

They are:
KB938979

and the harder one to find is:
KB938194

Saturday, August 25, 2007

7 Habits For Effective Text Editing 2.0

Bram Moolenaar is mostly known for being the benevolent dictator of the text editor Vim. Here he talks about "7 Habits For Effective Text Editing 2.0".

validation issues

I installed Vista x64 yesterday, and everything went fine. After windows update, I wanted to install the windows performance and reliability patch, so I went to the microsoft download site. It asked to validate your copy of Vista, and then it said it couldn't tell if my copy was geniune! Oh crap! How'd that happen!

Well apparently a lot of people are having WGA issues:
Microsoft's WGA servers are currently flagging genuine installations of Vista as counterfeit and disabling Aero and other functionality as well as a punishment. You will encounter this if you try to download any files from Microsoft's download site that require that validation to download, for example, DirectX updates. No news from Microsoft as to when they will fix the problem. Most annoying, to say the least!


Now this isn't official so...

Man, what a yucky feeling to be flagged like that. Where is my Ubuntu DVD...

There is a techmeme thread here.

From the Arstechnica article:
Microsoft is telling users who are affected that they should "try again" later, with some support techs telling readers that Microsoft is aiming to have a fix in place by Tuesday, August 28th. That would mean the outage will last more than three days, given that it started last night (and may have started earlier, we're hearing reports of some users running into this earlier in the week, on limited bases).


Looks like the problem is fixed.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Roberts back


I checked my feeds before going to sleep last night, and this is what I see this morning. Roberts not only back, but he's back with a vengeance!! Looks like he's not limiting himself to 20 twitters any more.
I can't even unsubscribe from roberts twitters, he puts interesting links in their!

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Zoho/Google gears interview



I haven't used Zoho's suite, but the way these guys keep adopting new technologies just amazes me. I might have to start using their apps, just cause I like the company so much! :)

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Microsoft Office live basics

Microsoft Office Live Product Catalog: "Microsoft Office Live Basics is the easy way to get started on the Web. If you have always wanted your own Web site, Microsoft has just made it easier — much easier. Plus, it's FREE.

Easy-to-use Web site design tools
Free domain name and Web hosting
500 MB of Web site storage space
25 company-branded e-mail accounts
Web site reports
Office Accounting Express 2007 (free download)
Microsoft Office Live adManager beta (search engine advertising tool)

FREE!"



(Via MSDN Blogs.)



I found this really interesting. I thought I'd give it a try. I'm using OS X and this showed up in Netnewswire. Clicking on the link didn't do anything. So I opened it up in firefox. The link didn't work their either.

So I followed the link to the main site, and clicked on office basics, and this is what I found:


I thought we were done with the days when a website was internet explorer only. I guess not! :(

Coding Horror on XPS M1330

Coding Horror: "But after being one of the fortunate few to receive their M1330s, I have to agree with the glowing reviews. This is an outstanding machine for people like me who think laptops were meant to be portable first and foremost."



Yes, finally somebody gets to review this awesome machine! I wonder if we can get some numbers on how fast the SSD drive is. Also, I wonder how much weight an LED display might add to the system?

Now the question is should you wait for the Latitude XT, or get the XPS M1330! :)

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Is Firefox on Mac Unusable? - O'Reilly ONLamp Blog

Is Firefox on Mac Unusable? - O'Reilly ONLamp Blog: "What are your experiences with FF on Mac? Crashes, hangs? Or is your world just peachy?"



I haven't had any problems at all. Firefox on my macbook pro just works, though their are infrequent crashes. They are rare enough that I am not irritated by them. And when you restart the browser you can just pick up from where you left off, thanks to session restore.

One thing I've learnt is not to play with the alpha/beta releases of Firefox, as they do things to your profile. Uninstalling the alpha/beta milestones, may remove the binary but the damage to your profile is very hard to recover from. Perhaps thats the problem above?

Friday, August 10, 2007

On Internet apps...

No More Hard Drive: 100 Free Apps to Go Online-Only: "Why is it that despite the fact that you can do virtually anything from anywhere through the Net, most of us are still tethered to our computer because of the need for access to basic desktop software?"



(Via Digg / Software.)



The next time your net connection goes down, server gets hacked, server hardware fails, or their is a vulnerability in a server app that gets exploited exposing your data, remember me, and why I prefer to use desktop apps!

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

On ideastorm

Ubuntu on 12.1 or 13.3 inch laptops

I like this idea. I already have an XPS M1210 and I love Ubuntu on it. But I keep having to switch between windows and ubuntu, because the webcam doesn't work in Ubuntu. Their do seem to be ways to get it working in Linux, but their is another problem. Skype doesn't work with the webcam on Linux, and thats what I use to talk to family.

Google Test Automation Conference Lightning Talks

Damn it!

Damn it, damn it, damn it!

I was so looking forward to see what she thinks of her new laptop.

And I'm completely powerless so I can't even help!! :(

YUI 2.3.0

There is a great looking Rich Text Editor. Check it out.

That reminds me. I have a gripe with the video player on YUI theater. It lets you pause just once, and then the pause button greys out. Thats weird and irritating.

Mozilla and hypocrisy

Right, but what about the experiences that Mozilla chooses to default for users like switching to  Yahoo and making that the default upon ...