Meenakshi encountered this on her laptop at home and had to install the hotfix. Be aware that after you install security update 873333 (MS05-012), you may find out that DBCS attachment file names are not displayed in Rich Text e-mail messages and you may receive a “Generic Host Process” error message (if you are on XP sp2). You may also find that File names are not displayed in e-mail messages (where the format is Rich-Text) that include file attachments when the following conditions are true: ...

I am thinking of joining up Yahoo! Music Unlimited - quickly while they still have the promotional price - and its cheaper than Napster and Raphsbody, has anyone signed up? What is your feedback?

Google Login Screen Google it seems since yesterday changed their login screen and you need to validate - is there some phishing stuff going on which is why they introduced this? Also I had to clear out my cookie before I could login to gmail, as it did not like it. Check out the screen shot.

Well it seems I stand corrected (sort of), and these are rare moments so enjoy it.. *grin*, seems like it was a user error (again sort of - in a minute on that) when I talked about the issues with ClickOnce earlier. The problem there was that the installation can only be supported via http and not using ftp (which I have chosen), once you change it to http you are golden. Moving on, why do I say a user error (sort of)? Well mainly because the Publish Wizard as far as I can see is not very explicit about this and unless you know (which now you do), you will get into this issue. ...

Last few days I have been messing around with the Beta 2 edition of Whidbey (now its called VS.NET 2005, but I still prefer Whidbey). If you recall my previous post about ClickOnce , my experience so far has not been good. I imported my clock applicaton (more on the issues importing it at another time) to Whidbey and tried to deploy it but for some reason it did not work and get a non descriptive error saying: ...

Storage is one thing which is never enough, yes even that terabyte of space you have sitting at home! (You do have that much right?). Anyways, all is not lost. Check out the Silicon Image/Hitachi Storage demo which puts 2.5TB of storage in a tiny package, connected to the system by SATA 2.0 interfaces capable of 300MB/sec transfer rate. Or how about Sapphire Technologies Blizzard , which is a liquid metal cooled X850 XT using technology developed by Nanocooling. Based on technology developed to cool nuclear reactors, the liquid metal cooler used in the Blizzard is completely sealed and uses a pump with no moving parts. Even if the metal does ever leak out, it’s non-toxic and environmentally safe. It remains to be seen if the new cooling technology enables quieter fans, but it’s certainly the most interesting new tech for cooling to come along in awhile. ...

If you saw my previous post about good free software one feature of Screamer Radio I forgot to mention is that is can save your stream you are listening to as MP3’s - and you have full control over the bit rate, file names, etc. Want to check out some samples? Well I recorded two songs from the Australian Station called Nova at 256 kbps; you can download the mp3s from here (6.4 mb). ...

These two choices for creating PDF’s and listening to Internet Radio are interesting because they are pretty good at what they do without all the bloatware from some of their competition and equally important - they are free! If you wanted to create PDF’s for your own personal use, now you can at an amazing price of free! CutePDF is a program which you can use for free for your personal use without any ads, popups, etc. Everyone cannot afford Acrobat Professional (but if you can its worth every penny), but this is pretty cool too. ...

The CLR team has a couple of slides from their roadshow where they talk about two tracks, one discusses what happens insight the CLR, if you have some of the books recommended in the presentation, none of this would be new to you. It covers things like the IL which is the abstract representation of an execution semantic and how that is represented using an abstract stack machine, where we consecutively execute each instruction, using the stack as the evaluation of that execution and how this stack abstraction works. And two, there is a discussion on perf engineering including the GC, costs and pitfalls, etc. ...

CNet is reporting that Microsoft said Thursday that it will introduce new XML-based file formats for its Excel, PowerPoint and Word applications when the company launches its Office 12 software package next year. Company officials said the move to replace Microsoft’’s traditional binary file formats with open-standards-based XML versions will allow companies using Office 12 to more easily access data across XML’’s various applications. Microsoft pledged that the shift to XML, also known as Extensible Markup Language, will decrease the size of many individual files and make documents created in its Office products more resistant to corruption. While Microsoft’’s Excel and Word programs already offer some XML compatibility, the new formats will bring those applications, and PowerPoint, into a “full fidelity” version of the standard, said Takeshi Numoto, senior director for the Microsoft Office System. The biggest advantage of the new formats, Numoto said, will be their capacity to allow workers to access data from various documents without opening individual files, and to allow workers to use that information in new ways. ...

I remember reading about this a little while ago and now ExtremeTech has a review. Ergodex has a fully programmable keyboard called the DX1 Input System. It is a USB peripheral device designed for users to arrange (and rearrange) an assortment of programmable keys anywhere on its 11-inch x 9-inch “DX1 Pad.” The concept is simple: You begin with 25 DX1 keys, place as many of them on the DX1 Pad in any layout you wish, and use the included software to assign functions to each one. ...

A tool provided by Microsoft could let people get around a check meant to prevent those with pirated copies of Windows from downloading additional software from the company, according to a security researcher. The threat is mitigated because the keys generated by the GenuineCheck tool expire “rapidly,” the Microsoft representative said. Consequently, it would not do anyone much good to put up a Web page with a list of keys. Still, somebody would be able to generate a key and use it immediately on a PC with a pirated copy, or pass it on to a friend. ...

ExtremeTech interviews Microsoft VP, Todd Holmdahl who is responsible for all the hardware development, hardware and semiconductor teams, manufacturing, and test teams for the XBOX 360 - pretty interesting insight on how MS developed this from the ground up with IBM and ATI and on what to expect from the new device on the hardware front. ...

But to get your hands on one you have to go to China … or ask someone you might know there…

At last now you can personalize the google home page - options include seeing your emails (from gmail of course), stock market, news (from Google New, BBC, NY Times, etc), Weather, etc. Interestingly slashdot features on the list - separately - which means *sigh*, more noise is now going to be generated there. Check it out here .

If you are a star wars then check out the Store Wars - hilarious. Thanks to Wai for sending this one over.

Thanks to Wai for passing this one. I think both my MS and Linux buddies will enjoy poking the penguin - you need to keep as it for a little while.

Now that Windows Mobile 5.0 is released, if you want to see how it looks then check out the screenshots . I don’t know if HP would be releasing the updates for my handheld for this as mine is a bit old now - but if they are I would surely be playing with this in the near future. ...

Two vulnerabilities in the popular Firefox browser have been rated “extremely critical” because exploit code is now available to take advantage of them. The cross-site scripting and remote system access flaws were discovered in Firefox version 1.0.3, but other versions may also be affected, said security company Secunia, which issued the ratings Sunday. One flaw involves “IFRAME” JavaScript URLs, which are not properly protected from being executed in the context of another URL in the history list. A second vulnerability exists in the IconURL parameter in InstallTrigger.install(). Information passed to this parameter is not properly verified before it’s used, allowing an attacker to gain user privileges. This flaw could allow an attacker to gain and escalate user privileges on a system. ...

Has anyone checked out Dave Mathew’s new album called Stand Up ? If so, any feedback, how is it?

If you recall my previous post , I wanted to get you a quick update since then - seems like Google has stopped this for the time. If you get to the site it tells you the following message: Thank you for your interest in Google Web Accelerator. We have currently reached our maximum capacity of users and are actively working to increase the number of users we can support. ...

Well, all I can say is enjoy…. http://madbean.com/anim/totallygridbag

I stumbled across an interesting blog - all written in Hindi - and boy is my Hindi rusty! But this is an excellent example of the usage (and limitations) of a UNICODE implementation. Not sure of the content of the blog itself as it will …. ahem …. take me a little while reading up and understanding. Flame mails awaited eagerly. ...

Well not sure what Google plans to do with this, but they just released something called a Web Accelerator that is designed to work with broadband connections and supports both IE and Firefox. What is it? Per Google it is an application that uses the power of Google’s global computer network to make web pages load faster. Google Web Accelerator is easy to use; all you have to do is download and install it, and from then on many web pages will automatically load faster than before. ...

Well, in addition to the antivirus issues with Windows x64 bit, if you upgrade in most cases you could void your computers warranty - this varies from manufacture to manufacture of course. If you know the advantages of 64 bit and are one of the early adopters (or in other words a geek), then you are OK as you probably don’t need the manufacturer’s support (except if they need to switch hardware when it gets fried). ...