Google’s prime directive remains intact. The Securities and Exchange Commission ruled Thursday that the company’s missteps in not registering millions of options and not keeping quiet during the pre-IPO quiet period were not “evil” but “very naughty.” Practicing semi-tough love, the SEC levied no fine but extracted a solemn promise from Google never to do it again. The company’s general counsel, David Drummond, took the bulk of the wrist-slapping over the failure to register more than $80 million in employee options, a move the SEC said he knew would let Google keep a lot of financial information under wraps. The commission also let slide a big Playboy interview with founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page that appeared during the pre-IPO period in which company execs are supposed to be seen but not heard (see “ Google guys to Playboy: They’re real and they’re fabulous … no, our options, you idiots ”). Marc Fagel, assistant district administrator of the SEC’s San Francisco office, told the L.A. Times the agency wanted to give Google a public scolding to as a warning to others , but didn’t fine it because the violation did not cost investors money and company executives cooperated with investigators. And investors? Way, way past all of this . ...

Incase you have been extra vigilant you might have noticed a new category called Live and Learn. This as the name suggests is a category, where I can post my screw up of life be it technical in nature or anything else - the idea being I should be able to get back to it and reflect and hopefully learn from it! If not, then, well I would just be getting more creative in my excuses won’t I? :) For those who know me, will know that most of my entries would probably fall in this category. Oh, ya, this ofcourse in true to tradition was inspired by a true life incident - which would be up here one of these days soon. :) ...

Interestingly, there is a story highlighting the fact that all your $$$’s (or £££’s as I am in UK now), are NOT tax deductible - which came as a bit of a surprise to me. For example, the American Red Cross has received close to $152 million in donations for tsunami survivors. If you gave to them, your contribution is tax deductible. But if you donated to the International Red Cross it’s not. That’s because most international groups are not authorized by the IRS to accept tax deductible donations. To simplify things the IRS says go to the websites of US AID and the USA Freedom Corps . All the charities listed on those websites are qualified to give you a tax break. You can also check the IRS website. On the home page click on charities, then click on the “New Search Features” and enter the charities name. If it comes back with a listing you know you’re okay with the IRS. Also keep in mind that if you have donated to an eligible charity for tsunami victims this month you can still take the deduction on last years taxes. ...

If you recall my previous post on VSTS installation blues , I got an answer from MS on that. It seems like installing Yukon Beta 2 did it. Per Microsoft, uninstalling Yukon won’t also help and it is better to rebuild the OS and then go from there. You can read it on the discussion thread here . I guess, there goes another evening in rebuilding a machine. ...

I forgot how I got this, it was thru someone but don’t recall. Whoever told me this, please ping me if you are reading this so I can give you credit. Anyways Gibbons has a very enlightening read which every parent who has a computer at home, just have to read ! Here is an excerpt: As an enlightened, modern parent, I try to be as involved as possible in the lives of my six children. I encourage them to join team sports. I attend their teen parties with them to ensure no drinking or alcohol is on the premises. I keep a fatherly eye on the CDs they listen to and the shows they watch, the company they keep and the books they read. You could say I’m a model parent. My children have never failed to make me proud, and I can say without the slightest embellishment that I have the finest family in the USA. ...

Jeffrey Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat had written a very interesting paper highlighting their research in Google for Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters. Their implementation called MapReduce is a programming model and an associated implementation for processing and generating large data sets. Users specify a map function that processes a key/value pair to generate a set of intermediate key/value pairs, and a reduce function that merges all intermediate values associated with the same intermediate key. ...

Extremetech is reporting about Corsair Memory’s new XPERT Memory has one seriously distinguishing feature: It has a 10 character alphabetical LED display that snaps in place over your DIMMS. Install the RAM in your system and it automatically offers up your your memory speed, voltage, and DIMM temperature in bright red characters. Remember calculators in the Seventies? It’s that kind of LED display, and it really stands out through a case window. ...

I installed Microsoft’s Antivirus (Beta 1) over the weekend and here are some screen shots from the installation. Btw, I did not find anything on my machine, and honestly on this machine, I did not have any intentions of trying that out.

I am sure you also have played with VSTS, but not sure if you are having problems with VSTS Dec 2004 Refresh bits up on MSDN. I am installing this natively (not on VMWare/VirtualPC, etc.) running Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition with VS.NET 2003, SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 (Beta 2), and usual suspects like Office 2003, etc. During the installation process when I get to installing Visual Studio (see screen shots below), aftre going about 60-70% of the way I get an error - “Product: Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite Edition Beta 2-English – Error 1304.Error writing to file: Microsoft.VisualStudio.Windows.Forms.dll. Verify that you have access to that directory.” Now everything seems to be ok to me, I am logged as God (Domain Admin) on the box and there is enough disk space as well, so not sure what is causing this. ...

This is not a big deal, but does have me ticked, why does Microsoft have to sell ads on MSDN?? Are they running low on the cash on the coffers? Honestly this was the last place I expected it and is quite irritating. Check out the screen shot with the two arrows pointing to the ads. (You can click on the image to see in full-size).

Dave and John discuss various aspects of the .NET Compact Framework (CF) where in addition to the list belowthey cover things like the fastest way to splat text onto the screen? ExtTextOut using which you can draw text based on the currently selected font, background color, and text color. You can optionally provide dimensions to be used for clipping, opaquing, or both. It can also draw with a transparent background, which labels in the .NET Compact Framework do not support (just try to put a label over a PictureBox and you’ll see). ...

Sweet, now that Vonage has launched in the UK , I am thinking of getting it. My US one worked out pretty good for me and have been using it more than a year and a half. But, since I am still very new in the UK, for the old timers here, what do you think of their rates ? For £9.99 per month I can make unlimited local and national calls anywhere in the UK and Ireland and the rates for mobile are 15p (day), 10p (evening) and 5p (weekend). Plus the international calling rates are pretty cheap (or so I think). Thoughts? ...

I have my own favorite extensions, but Luke discusses more on his post here . Interestingly with Firefox being safer and all that (compared to IE) Spoofstick is missing from most lists. [Listening to: Chapter 2 - Unknown - (01:52:32)]

A century after Einstein’s miracle year, most people still do not understand exactly what it was he did; Economist.com attempt to elucidate . [Listening to: Tabba (Techno) - Musafir [Club Mix - CD1] - Musafir (05:49)]

As per Seattle Times, the next version of IE will ship in 2006 , but isn’t that too late already? Already Firefox is my primary browser and I love it - not to mention the millions others who are seening the light. My bigger concern is the millions of other people who don’t realize the issues with IE and all the spyware, etc and causing themselves harm.

Well, the idea of assembling a computer and making it dual boot and trying out both Media Center and Myth TV does have me tickled, and if you have been following my useless blabbering here you know I have done a fair amount of research and also swayed in the past , but after reading this excellent review by Brian , I am now not very sure. If something is wrong, sure I am quite comfortable mucking around and getting it working, but I am not sure if everyone else who comes visiting is as comfortable. Bottom line, if most people cannot use it (because you get dumped in Windows-la-la-land or some Linux shell), is it really worth it? As Brian says, “Media Center could be this stable if it started out using NT Embedded, but that would make it an appliance and not a PC”. Tells you I am still confused…. ...

As of December 2004, the Mac share as measured by online activity is 2.7 percent (Linux is 3.1), with all the rest going to various flavors of Windows, is it truely the death of Macs? John Dvorak disccuses the Grim Macintosh Market Share Forebodes Crisis . The crux of the matter he says is, the ease-of-use and simplicity of the platform is killing it, because people cannot perceive that simplicity is ever worth MORE than complexity. Simpler should be cheaper. An example that John takes, say you have two identical products on the market—word processors, for example. For the sake of argument, let’s make these two, X and Y, almost exactly the same. But product X is written in tight assembly language, fits on a floppy disk, and takes up 30K of memory. Product Y is written in some high-level language, comes on a CD-ROM, and takes up 500 megabytes on your hard drive. Which will outsell the other? I argue that the packed CD-ROM always will, because the public will perceive it as a greater value. You’re getting more for your money. ...

Here is a very chilling series of satellite images from CNN that provide a before and an after view of some of the damaged areas: ...

After a lot of research and more reading and talking to Karan and having thought I had a handle of this thing I come across this article on slashdot where the folks at Snapstream have configured a PC PVR with six tuners (yep you read it right, six)! *sigh* seems like we are back to square one. ...

Not sure if it can get any better, but this post is the perfect example of an Idiot! And please like someone else pointed out, don’t generalize on one person’s folly! [Listening to: 10 - Track - (04:54)]

The beta 5 version of VMWare adds some interesting features, especially where you create multiple snapshots by allowing the user to take an unlimited number of point-in-time, saved-to-disk snapshots of running virtual machines. This makes it easier to capture and switch between multiple configurations and accelerates testing and debugging. The Snapshot Manager displays thumbnails of all the snapshots on a single screen and makes it easy for users to track all their snapshots and revert to a previously saved snapshot. Also, when reverting to a previously saved snapshot, a new branch is automatically created so other snapshots continue to be available. You can check out the screenshots here and download the beta . ...

There is a list of aid groups which are accepting donations for the victims; which is a good one to pick? Though, all of them are doing a job that helps humanity and I am not questioning their dedication or anything, but I do want to pick one where most of the money I donate goes to the victim and as less as possible towards the overheard or administration fees (though I understand this is getting into a catch-22), what do you think? ...

If you have not done your part yet, then you can do so from both Amazon and Google , who now have links on how to contribute to the Tsunami relief on their homepages ( here and here respectively). I am not sure what kind of service would be the right one, but I am sure any kind would surely be helpful! I would be doing my bit for sure. ...

CNN is reporting that the death toll now is over 67K :(. Everyone I know is OK, but there are thousands of families who are not! Events like these does make one think, how easily we forget mother nature and take everything for granted. Does make me think even more on the delicate balance nature has for us to survive in this harsh universe.