PinoyTux Weblog » Microsoft

Hide Files Inside An Image File

Rai — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:05:20 +0000

Did you know that you can hide files inside an image file like jpeg? A simple image when opened or previewed looks like an innocent JPEG or any image file, but when uncompressed using any archiving software, it extracts files that were hidden from plain view.

However, in this video, Windows was used. I have yet to discover if this is possible in Linux.

Unpopular But Useful Windows Shortcut Keys

Rai — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:45:26 +0000

I may be a Linux user but from time to time, I use Windows since I have it as my workstation OS and my Linux runs as VM. Then I found these tips from technotraits.com that should make my work in my Windows machine a little faster and more efficient.

The best thing about these shortcuts? Some are also applicable to Linux machines.

Windows Explorer

1. F2
Rename files by highlighting the file and pressing F2. Same goes to Linux.

2. F6
Lets you move across various panes of Windows Explorer.

3. Alt + Enter/ Alt+Double Click
Highlight a file in Windows Explorer and hit Alt+Enter or Alt+Double Click to view the file properties.

4. SHIFT+Right Click
Show the right context menu listing alternative commands.

5. SHIFT+Double Click
Runs the alternate default command (the second item on the right context menu).

6. BACKSPACE
Move one folder up.

7. Ctrl+Double Click
Open a folder in a new explorer window.

8. SHIFT+Click Close Button
When using Shortcut #7, pressing Shift while closing the window will close the parent windows as well.

9. SHIFT
Autorun will not start if Shift is pressed while inserting CD/DVD.

10. F3
Hit F3 in Explorer and Search will open to search for files and folders.

11. Ctrl
Press Ctrl Key and drag files to another folder to copy the selected files.

12. Ctrl+Shift
Press Ctrl+Shift and drag a file to another location and shortcut will be created.

13. ALT+SPACE
Open up the active window’s system menu.

Windows Management

14. CTRL+ESC
Open the Start Menu.

15. Windows Key+M
Minimize all open windows.

16. Shift+Windows Key+M:
Maximize all open windows.

17. Windows Key+D
Same with Shortcut #15

18. ALT+F6
Press F6 to switch between windows of the same program.

19. F5
Refresh. Same with Firefox, IE and Linux

20. CTRL+TAB/CTRL+SHIFT+TAB
Switch between tabs of properties window.

Miscellaneous

21. SHIFT+F10
Opens up right context menu. Similar with right click.

22. Windows Key+Pause/Break
Open System Properties Box.

23. Windows Key+L
Lock your current screen.

I tried most of the commands here and they work! If you find these shortcuts useful or otherwise, you can use the comment form below.

Bundled Windows OS is Refundable

Rai — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:19:01 +0000

Choosing notebooks is becoming difficult to do because of so many choices and options to weigh. And if choosing hardware is not hard enough, notebook manufacturers bundle their products with softwares that are usually junk or something that you do not need.

One very common example is Windows Vista OS. Vista comes with every notebook, or computer for that matter, and buyers usually have to pay for it even if they do not want it. Some prefer to downgrade to Windows XP while some just have no other choice but to purchase the OS license only to wipe it off from their notebooks and replace it with Linux.

As a consumer, we have the right to choose which products we want to buy. And in some cases, notebook manufacturers do not seem to give buyers to choose if they want to buy OS or not. That really sucks because Vista OS licenses can cost at least $100, and customers are only paying for the license, therefore do not own the software. Why would you want to pay for something that you do not, and will never, own?

Fortunately, there are some people who actually read the End User License Agreement or EULA of Windows licenses and use it to their own advantage. Take for example uncle_benji, the author of equiliberate.org, who bought an HP notebook bundled with Vista. He chose to waive his purchase of Windows Vista license in favor of using Linux, and got his money back, almost the same amount of the retail price of Vista.

Read his full story here.

Home Server: An Illustration

Rai — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 02:12:53 +0000

Source: http://flux.tastylime.net/server/

Microsoft Vista for $1,632 Only

Rai — Sun, 25 May 2008 12:07:41 +0000

consumerist.com writes about a customer who got charged for his Windows Vista Upgrade for $1,632!

Apparently, Bill, an IT Manager, used the Windows Live Marketplace to purchase the Windows Vista Ultimate upgrade worth $233.15. But each time he tried to enter his payment information, he got the error “please try again” later. And so he did. Unluckily, Bill got charged each time he tried to enter the payment details, which he did 7 times!

Again, that is $233.15 * 7 = $1,632.05. Totally a rip-off!

Bill tried to contact Microsoft support again and again and again to get his money back but only four of the transactions were returned. The remaining three transactions are yet to be refunded.

Steve Ballmer Egged at Budapest

Rai — Thu, 22 May 2008 04:21:46 +0000

This is a little snip from YouTube when Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer was thrown with eggs by a protesting student in Budapest.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was thrown with eggs in BudapestBallmer was giving a talk titled, You Can Change the World, to Hungarian university students when someone from the audience stood up, demanded that Microsoft should return money it has stolen from Hungarian people and threw eggs, right in front of Ballmer’s face. Ballmer scrambles for cover as he dodges the eggs, and luckily, he still has a clean face when stood up from behind the podium.

The angry student, sporting a tshirt that says, “Microsoft Corruption”, was escorted out of the room immediately after the disruption.

It is still unclear to me if the protester is an Open Source advocate, with too much MS hate inside, or maybe an Anger Management therapy is in order. Either way, Hungary is now as popular as Microsoft itself.

Ballmer was lucky enough to dodge the eggs, but not Bill Gates, who got a cream pie to his face ten years ago at Brussels, Belgium.

Windows 7 Preview

Rai — Tue, 13 May 2008 04:33:41 +0000

This a short preview of Windows 7, yet another version of Windows set to be released in 2010, three years after Windows Vista official release.

The preview shows some of the new and improved features of Windows like the Explorer. Personally, I am curious about the blog/website designer since I am a blogger myself. Though the features are pretty at this point, expect Windows 7 to be more hardware resource hungry than Vista. I am not expecting my stone age desktop to run Vista, much less Windows 7. But hey, three years is a long time. Maybe I’ll think of upgrading my desktop sometime in three years.

Watch this short preview of Windows 7 and see for yourself if it is worth the wait.

Microsoft Courtship Gets Aggressive

Rai — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000

Apparently, Microsoft means serious business when it puts its $44B of its money in exchange for Yahoo’s cooperation. The software giant just won’t take no for an answer.

As a matter of fact, Microsoft sent an open letter to Yahoo’sÂ Board of Directors claiming that their offer was nothing short of 62% premium over Yahoo’s closing price on January 31, 2008. However, unwilling to give in to the temptation, Yahoo refused the offer.

Microsoft then released an ultimatum for Yahoo to make a decision in three weeks , and then promises to try and start a proxy contest to elect an alternative set of directors to the board.

Creative Labs Threatens Third Party Driver Modder

Rai — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 19:31:10 +0000

A post from Creative Labs Forums delivers a message from Phil O’Shaughnessy, Corporate Communications VP, to Daniel_K, an individual who modifies the sound card drivers of Creative to unlock functionalities that are not usually available for Windows Vista users.

According to Phil O’Shaughnessy, Daniel_K is making the drivers run on unsupported hardware and Creative Labs feel that they should be compensated for this. Daniel_K is also earning via donations from users who use his modified drivers.

Here is the message from the forum:

Daniel_K:

We are aware that you have been assisting owners of our Creative sound cards for some time now, by providing unofficial driver packages for Vista that deliver more of the original functionality that was found in the equivalent XP packages for those sound cards.Â In principle we don’t have a problem with you helping users in this way, so long as they understand that any driver packages you supply are not supported by Creative.Â Where we do have a problem is when technology and IP owned by Creative or other companies that Creative has licensed from, are made to run on other products for which they are not intended.Â We took action to remove your thread because, like you, Creative and its technology partners think it is only fair to be compensated for goods and services.Â The difference in this case is that we own the rights to the materials that you are distributing.Â By enabling our technology and IP to run on sound cards for which it was not originally offered or intended, you are in effect, stealing our goods.Â When you solicit donations for providing packages like this, you are profiting from something that you do not own.Â If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make.

Although you say you have discontinued your practice of distributing unauthorized software packages for Creative sound cards we have seen evidence of them elsewhere along with donation requests from you.Â We also note in a recent post of yours on these forums, that you appear to be contemplating the release of further packages.Â To be clear, we are asking you to respect our legal rights in this matter and cease all further unauthorized distribution of our technology and IP.Â In addition we request that you observe our forum rules and respect our right to enforce those rules.Â If you are in any doubt as to what we would consider unacceptable then please request clarification through one of our forum moderators before posting.

Phil O’Shaughnessy
VP Corporate Communications
Creative Labs Inc.

Torvalds: Microsoft is bluffing on patents

Rai — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 22:51:55 +0000

www.networkworld.com writes:

Microsoft’s aggressive defense of its intellectual property, which includes claims that Linux violates a number of its patents, is nothing more than “a marketing thing,” according to Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel.

“They have been sued for patents by other people, but I don’t think they’ve — not that I’ve gone through any huge amount of law cases — but I don’t think they’ve generally used patents as a weapon,” Torvalds said. “But they’re perfectly happy to use anything at all as fear, uncertainty and doubt in the marketplace, and patents is just one thing where they say, ‘Hey, isn’t this convenient? We can use this as a PR force.’”

Torvalds made the comments during the second half of an interview conducted by the Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin on Oct. 16. The foundation is expected to make the rest of the interview publicly available on its Web site Monday. The foundation released the initial portion of the interview in January.

“Another reason why I don’t think Microsoft really seriously would go after patents is when you’re a convicted monopolist in the marketplace you really should not be suing your competitors over patents,” Torvalds continued. “I think that most Microsoft lawyers would say, ‘You know, let’s not do that; that sounds insane’.”

VMware: Failed to Open Sound Device

Rai — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 02:51:10 +0000

When using VMware for virtualization, you might encounter an error related to your sound device:

Failed to open sound device /dev/dsp: Device or resource busy

If you see this error, this means the sound device in your host machine is currently in use and the VMware client is not able to access the device. Here is also a little bit of information from the vmware knowledge base:

Some other program is using the sound device. You must quit that program first. While every virtual machine on a host can be configured with a sound device, only one virtual machine at a time can actively use the device. If another virtual machine is currently using it, simply terminate the application inside it that is producing sound.

Another possible cause is that the Enlightenment Sound Daemon is running and using the sound device. VMware recommends you turn off the Enlightenment Sound Daemon.

Though I have not found a way to fix this yet, there is a workaround that might help if you want to use sounds in your virtual machine. You might want to kill all esd processes:

# killall esd

You might need to restart your VMware service for the changes to take effect. This method will get the sound device available for your guest OS.

I have tested this on my machine running Fedora 7on my host machine and VMware Server 1.04 with Windows XP as guest OS. Works like a charm.

Vista vs Ubuntu: Who’s Got the Killer Desktop Effect?

Rai — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 11:36:48 +0000

This is a cool video of Vista and Ubuntu desktop effects comparison.

Enjoy!

PinoyTux Weblog » Microsoft

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