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February 2005 - Posts

What keeps people away from blogging?

I was looking recently to our OPML list and I noticed that many people I know haven't started a blog. Or at least... not yet. Which got me thinking: what are the most common reasons people don't start a blog? Is it too intimidating? Or it would be too Read More...
Posted Monday, February 28, 2005 11:42 PM by AdiOltean | 10 Comments
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Tricks around the "copy" command...

The copy command can be very useful for quick operations. However, there are a number of tricks that are not widely known. 1) Copying the contents of a source directory into the current directory: just specify the source directory! y:\privates>copy Read More...
Posted Friday, February 25, 2005 9:19 PM by AdiOltean | 6 Comments

Wireless security is (unfortunately) not for dummies...

I'll try to keep this post short, but the main idea is that apparently wireless and security don't really mix well. At least if you are not an expert in this area. While I started learning about this stuff, I got really worried on how easy is to setup Read More...
Posted Tuesday, February 22, 2005 7:15 PM by AdiOltean | 5 Comments
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0.3 Petabytes of storage available free of charge?

I always wondered where should I store my backups... A regular backup of my Windows box takes around 13 Gigabytes. Where should I store this stuff? Should I burn DVDs? Or buy a tape drive? Well... let's see. I recently got 50 Gmail invites. That makes Read More...
Posted Friday, February 18, 2005 8:23 PM by AdiOltean | 1 Comments

Is Microsoft serious about security?

If you don't know already, here is an indirect answer. I'll quote directly from Bill Gates latest speech : Now, in terms of delivering on more secure systems, I think there are three general things that we do. The first is advancing the technology. We Read More...
Posted Wednesday, February 16, 2005 2:23 PM by AdiOltean | 8 Comments
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Script Recipe: How to evaluate numerical expressions in the command line

Here is a little known feature of our beloved CMD.EXE. It is extremely easy to evaluate an arithmetic expression! All it takes is a five characters. Just type set /a followed by your expression . Here is an example: E:\>set /a 1+1 2 Or, if you want, Read More...
Posted Wednesday, February 16, 2005 3:32 AM by AdiOltean | 2 Comments

One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge

During my more-or-less brownian surfing I stumbled across this challenge : The Foundation is committed to providing reliable information about paranormal claims. It both supports and conducts original research into such claims. At JREF, we offer a one-million-dollar Read More...
Posted Sunday, February 13, 2005 4:31 AM by AdiOltean | 4 Comments
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Is there anybody else using Visual C++ 6.0?

Andy Pennell noted a really interesting post from a Mozilla Firefox developer. It looks like people out there are still using Visual C++ 6.0 as the debugger of choice. And, guess what, I also use Visual C++ 6.0 occasionally, but not for debugging (I switched Read More...
Posted Thursday, February 10, 2005 6:13 PM by AdiOltean | 7 Comments
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Nerd score

It seems a little high, but, hey, I'm working with computers more than 10 hours per day, and so on :-) Read More...
Posted Wednesday, February 09, 2005 9:30 PM by AdiOltean | 10 Comments
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Using XSLTProcessor programatically in IE to minimize client-server bandwith

jgwebber pointed out that the new maps.google.com is using the XSLTProcessor at the client side. This is interesting... while I always thought it is possible, I didn't saw too many cases where this approach is actually useful beyond academic exercises. Read More...
Posted Wednesday, February 09, 2005 5:20 PM by AdiOltean | 6 Comments

Cameron Purdy on distributed caching

Especially if you live in a pure .NET world, it's a good exercise to see once in a while what's interesting in the Java land. There are some things out there which do not have (not yet, I would add) an equivalent implementation in .NET. So, if you have Read More...
Posted Wednesday, February 09, 2005 4:18 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments
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Quick Puzzle: what does this program print?

You have 30 seconds left... just kidding :-) using System; using System.Collections; using System.Reflection; class Hello { Type Unknown { get { return World.GetType(); } } object [] Knowledge() { return Unknown.GetProperties(); } string [] Library() Read More...
Posted Tuesday, February 08, 2005 3:59 AM by AdiOltean | 5 Comments
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Trick of the day: How to compress long URLs into very short ones

Go to tinyurl.com. It's a wonderful idea - you get a simple, quick service that converts very long URLs into very short ones. For example, one of my permalinks got converted into a very short URL which looks like this: http://tinyurl.com/45z4e Update Read More...
Posted Monday, February 07, 2005 7:12 PM by AdiOltean | 3 Comments
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Gosling: Huge security hole in... Java?

I am reading now an article in which James Gosling claims that .NET has a huge security hole. The problem seems to be that .NET allows execution of both safe and unsafe managed code in the same process: [...], Gosling is concerned about "unsafe" code, Read More...
Posted Monday, February 07, 2005 12:15 AM by AdiOltean | 8 Comments
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Warning: Shadow Copies for Shared Folders are not a replacement for backup

Shadow Copies for Shared Folders are a great feature that can give your users access to previous files in minutes, as opposed to hours or even days (as it is takes normally to reclaim a file from the tape in an corporate environment). One word of caution Read More...
Posted Saturday, February 05, 2005 8:55 PM by AdiOltean | 3 Comments
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Google Suggest

I love Google Suggest. Here is a little experiment: 1) Go to http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en 2) Type "msn search" 3) Check out the last suggestion at the bottom... :-) Read More...
Posted Friday, February 04, 2005 3:50 PM by AdiOltean | 6 Comments
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Where are all my iPods?

Leander Kahney publishes an interesting discovery : "About 80 percent of Microsoft employees who have a portable music player have an iPod," said one source, a high-level manager who asked to remain anonymous. "It's pretty staggering." The source estimated Read More...
Posted Wednesday, February 02, 2005 2:40 PM by AdiOltean | 12 Comments
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