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July 2005 - Posts

The most human looking robot?

The psychology of human-robotic interaction is a very interesting research area. Japanese scientists just created a robot that can could pass for a human - for a few seconds at least. So, whatever happened to the uncanny valley ? Read More...
Posted Wednesday, July 27, 2005 11:20 PM by AdiOltean | 1 Comments
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SecureEasySetup - the holy grail of Wireless security

Recently, Linksys , a division of Cisco and Broadcom joinly announced support for the SES technology ( SecureEasySetup ). These are fantastic news! What SES allows is brain-dead, risk-free wireless security configuration of your network, with a very simple Read More...
Posted Wednesday, July 27, 2005 9:31 PM by AdiOltean | 1 Comments

Script recipe: how to query a HTTP/HTTPS web page

It is sometimes hard to diagnose browser problems. For example if you have problems loading a certain page, you don't know whether this is a browser problem or an web server problem. Maybe you have the wrong browser settings (for example bad certificates Read More...
Posted Wednesday, July 27, 2005 9:22 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments
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Neural networks used to improve relevance in web search

Did you know that the most recent version of the MSN Search engine uses neural networks to improve search relevance? The ultimate goal is to have near-perfect relevance. The algorithms were developed in collaboration with Microsoft Research, with help Read More...
Posted Tuesday, July 19, 2005 1:49 AM by AdiOltean | 2 Comments
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Worst-case scenario: How to survive a hurricane

Of course, everyone knows the Worst-case scenarios survival series . But, as an IT administrator, you also have to seriously think about wild natural disasters when you design your IT infrastructure (including replication, backups). After all, you don't Read More...
Posted Sunday, July 17, 2005 6:38 PM by AdiOltean | 1 Comments
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Not enough neons and LEDs in your computer?

Some can't get enough blinking lights in their computer. So, then why not have LEDs even in the screws? Here: http://www.sunbeamtech.com/PRODUCTS/LED%20screw.htm Read More...
Posted Sunday, July 17, 2005 6:16 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments
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Open source and proprietary software

An interesting article from CNET.com confirms what I always thought of open source: The fact that you have a business based on proprietary software is somewhat orthogonal with the fact that you participate to the open source movement, whether by publishing Read More...
Posted Saturday, July 16, 2005 2:57 PM by AdiOltean | 1 Comments
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Bubble Fusion reconfirmed?

It seems that we have another experimental confirmation of bubble fusion . From PhysicsWeb.com : Physicists at Purdue University in Indiana claim to have found new evidence for nuclear fusion in a tabletop device. Yiban Xu and Adam Butt say that firing Read More...
Posted Friday, July 15, 2005 1:30 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments
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Interview with Anders Heljsberg on the next version of C#

(No, I didn't mean Whidbey. I meant C# 3.0) The interview appeared on Microsoft Watch. Here is the link . I like the new approach on dynamic/inferred typing for database queries. The problem is this: whenever you have to mix highly declarative languages Read More...
Posted Friday, July 15, 2005 12:59 PM by AdiOltean | 2 Comments
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Water cooling technology for server racks

Dissipating the heat in a rack full of servers can be a real problem given the extreme power consumption. IBM introduces a new technology that attempts to fix this problem: Officially called the IBM eServer Rear Door Heat eXchanger, Cool Blue is filled Read More...
Posted Thursday, July 14, 2005 1:08 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments
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Managed Speech APIs and other cool utilities...

New speech-related utilities here . A new addition is BuildAppLex: BuildAppLex Speech Utility for Microsoft Speech Technologies BuildAppLex.exe is a command-line tool that allows you to create an Application Lexicon, using the Speech API. It takes one Read More...
Posted Wednesday, July 13, 2005 3:33 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments

Price Guides, July 2005: Storage

AnandTech runs a very nice comparison between the various deals that you can get today for SATA/PATA/SCSI harddisks. I was amazed that several SATA drives went down so much in just a few months - as some of them went below the psychological 50 cents per Read More...
Posted Monday, July 11, 2005 12:44 AM by AdiOltean | 1 Comments
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Article: Service Level Agreements explained

Acronyms like SLA are often confusing. To quote the article: What’s this buzzword really about, and what does it take to do SLAs right? http://www.cio.com/leadership/buzz/column.html?ID=8000 Read More...
Posted Saturday, July 09, 2005 8:48 PM by AdiOltean | 2 Comments
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Data Protection Manager closer to shipping...

The new Data Protection Manager is almost done! From Infoworld : Microsoft has completed production of its disk-based data backup and recovery system and will release the product to manufacturing in the next 30 days, said Ben Matheson, group product manager Read More...
Posted Friday, July 08, 2005 3:27 PM by AdiOltean | 3 Comments
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Steve Ballmer: the interview

Robert Scoble , our unofficial blogging vicepresident here at Microsoft, interviewed Steve Ballmer yesterday morning. Here is the link . I really liked this interview. First of all, I was surprised to hear Ballmer's stance on blogging at Microsoft, and Read More...
Posted Friday, July 08, 2005 2:34 PM by AdiOltean | 2 Comments
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Hanford Site: now open for public tours

I am not sure how I became fascinated about nuclear engineering in the last months. But, anyway, in the Washington state we have a unique nuclear reservation - the Hanford area, where the first nuclear reactors were put in operation more than fifty years Read More...
Posted Saturday, July 02, 2005 12:38 AM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments
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Puzzle: When everything goes wrong

During war, two spies (Jack and Arnold) are being parachuted in a hostile country. But during their landing, their plane gets intercepted by the special forces. Things started to go out of control: they both lose all their equipment, and Ann, the person Read More...
Posted Friday, July 01, 2005 3:30 PM by AdiOltean | 10 Comments
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New feature in Windows Server 2003 R2: directory-level quotas

If you are an IT administrator that has to manage file servers, you are probably familiar with Windows Server 2003 code-name R2. It's not shipped yet, but you can already download the Beta2 trial version from this location. A new feature in this release Read More...
Posted Friday, July 01, 2005 3:09 PM by AdiOltean | 4 Comments
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Be careful with that keyboard!

OMG. This is by far the most expensive typo in history... http://news.com.com/Bad+keystroke+leads+to+251+million+stock+buy/2100-1030_3-5772264.html?tag=nefd.top A Taiwan stock trader mistakenly bought $251 million worth of shares with a misstroke of her Read More...
Posted Friday, July 01, 2005 3:05 PM by AdiOltean | 4 Comments
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