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December 2004 - Posts

Thursday, December 30, 2004 7:24 PM

Paul Thurrott on GIANT AntiSpyware

As you've probably already heard, Microsoft acquired GIANT Company Software, Inc. so that it can "provide Microsoft® Windows® customers with new tools to help protect them from the threat of spyware and other deceptive software" (from the press release
Posted by mswanson | 6 Comments
Tuesday, December 28, 2004 11:14 PM

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8

About two months ago, I ran across a blog post by Jon Udell of InfoWorld about his experience with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 . Like him, I toy with speech recognition technology every few years to see how it has progressed. After reading his post and
Posted by mswanson | 9 Comments
Friday, December 24, 2004 2:44 PM

Visual Studio 2005 CTP for December 2004 Available for Download

According to Rob Caron , you can now download the Visual Studio 2005 Community Technology Preview (CTP) for December 2004 at the MSDN Subscriptions site . The download is an ISO image for the English version of the DVD and weighs in at a whopping 3.16GB.
Posted by mswanson | 3 Comments
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Thursday, December 23, 2004 11:56 PM

Cardamom Bread and Pepparkakor Cookies

I thought about titling this post, Man Found Dead with Cardamom Bread Recipe Stuffed in His Mouth . However, after considering the situation realistically for a moment, I realized that my grandparents probably wouldn't knock me off for sharing two of
Posted by mswanson | 19 Comments
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Tuesday, December 21, 2004 9:04 PM

Revised: Ripping DVDs for Media Center

It seems that the legality of my original article was in question, so I've decided to play it safe and replace it with this text. Although I thought the issues of fair use and the court cases surrounding 321 Studios DVD copying software had been resolved,
Posted by mswanson | 9 Comments
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Friday, December 17, 2004 4:03 PM

Changing Jobs

I became a Microsoft employee in May of 2000, and I've been a consultant in our Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) organization for the past 4½ years. Although I've thoroughly enjoyed my time in the field, I've always wondered what it would be like to
Posted by mswanson | 21 Comments
Monday, December 13, 2004 6:17 PM

Improved Search with the MSN Toolbar Suite Beta

To-date, I've been very happy with the improved search capabilities that Lookout provides for Outlook users. I've also played a bit with Google Desktop Search , and I've found a number of documents on my computer that I thought I had lost. With the explosion
Posted by mswanson | 4 Comments
Friday, December 10, 2004 2:47 PM

Macro Wallpaper 4

I needed some new wallpaper for the upcoming holidays, so I grabbed the camera and snapped a few shots around the house. As many of you know, my new monitor has a 16:10 aspect ratio (1920 x 1200), so you'll find those in addition to the 1280 x 1024 images
Posted by mswanson | 5 Comments
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Friday, December 10, 2004 1:30 PM

Failing at Vacation

As Microsoft employees, we're allowed to carry forward the same amount of vacation time that you would normally accrue in a single year. Since I get three weeks of vacation each year, I can carry forward no more than three weeks into the next year. So,
Posted by mswanson | 10 Comments
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Friday, December 03, 2004 1:24 AM

Microsoft Fingerprint Reader

For a couple years now, I've been happily using a DigitalPersona fingerprint reader. It was given to me at one of our internal events, and I had let it sit on my shelf collecting dust wondering why I'd ever need a biometric security device to logon to
Posted by mswanson | 198 Comments
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Wednesday, December 01, 2004 1:06 AM

Media Center and the Universal Remote Challenge

A few posts back, I mentioned that I installed Media Center 2005 on my old P4 1.8GHz computer. Since I've now fallen in love with it, I figured it was time to assimilate its remote control functionality into my 2-year-old Marantz RC9200 universal remote.
Posted by mswanson | 12 Comments
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