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Opinion: Screw Microsoft by matt

I saw this on a forum this evening and I have to concur: I walked into Incredible Corruption this weekend keenly eyeing the Windows Vista stand they had setup displaying the different versions. Then I saw the price of Ultimate... R5,399.95 (See the rest of the editions here ) WTF?! This is the retail price, but are they insane?! It's a good OS, but not _that_ good. Digital Planet is cheaper; but still insanely pricey at R3,562.04 . Please put your hands up if you're going to/willing to pay this for...
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Vista Weather Gadget for South Africa by matt

If you've been looking for an alternative to the default weather gadget that comes with Vista, and doesn't work in South Africa, check this one from the Gadget Gallery. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
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Zune advert by matt

W T F ! ! ! Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
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WMF vulnerability actually a backdoor? by matt

In the latest SecurityNow podcast, Steve Gibson reveals that the recently patched WMF vulnerability could be a deliberate backdoor in Windows. He reveals his initial findings in the podcast, so take a listen. He also makes some very interesting remarks about the benefits of an open source operating system model: ...one of the advantages of an open source system is, you know, and I'm finding myself gravitating more and more toward open source solutions because of their transparency. And so, you know...
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StaxRip - .Net Video Ripper by matt

StaxRip can easily convert your DVD's, DVB or DV captures or almost any other source format. Get the binaries here. Requires .Net Framework 2.0 ( linky ) Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
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Windows OneCare Public Beta by matt

Today Microsoft announced the public beta of their OneCare product. Here I'll give a short review of it. click for larger image Microsoft Windows OneCare is meant to be the one stop shop for keeping Windows up-to-date and virus free. It includes: Protection Plus : A combination of already available Windows Firewall and Automatic Updates and a new Microsoft anti-virus engine. Performance Plus: Enables scheduled disk defrags; disk cleanups and anti-virus checks. Backup and Restore: A neat schedulable...
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Windows Vista Beta 1: A Reminder by matt

I've just installed Windows Vista Beta 1 on my IBM Thinkpad R40 (Centrino 1.4Ghz; 1GB RAM). (I can't get “Aero Glass” to work, BTW - even with TweakVista ) I'm not going to regurgitate all the other reviews ; but I will add this: Please remember this is still definitely a beta OS. It unpolished; clunky and you tend to do a lot of waiting. Believe Microsoft when they say that this is a preview for developers and IT professionals... it's just that, a preview. You cannot dump XP and load...
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July 27 is Longhorn Beta 1 Day! by matt

Beta 1 will be made available to testers on the 27th July 2005. MSDN subscribers can expect it soon too! This means I better start backing up my notebook and mentally preparing myself to run a BETA OS for about a year until Windows Vista RTM's. (I wonder what compatibility will be like?!) Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
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SpamBayes by matt

Since we're all getting spammed to death by our blogs; I thought I'd share what I'm using to cope with spam. SpamBayes is a Bayesian anti-spam filter plugin for Outlook which, based on what you tell it is Spam or Ham (not spam); will filter the incoming mail and dump it automatically into your Junk EMail folder in Outlook. Just train it on some spam/ham mail and it builds a database (which can be backed up and restored in case of inevitable Windows re-installs) of what is good and bad. I have found...
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Microsoft adding XML file formats to Office 12 by matt

CNET reports : “ 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. “ Brilliant! Finally Microsoft are...
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HOWTO: Setup HTTP Compression on IIS6 by matt

I just got asked by Danie how I had setup IIS 6 HTTP compression for one of my sites and I thought it might be useful to post the guide I used here . This works brilliantly; I just enabled it on my shared webserver and I'm feeling the difference! :) Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
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Operation Honeypot by matt

StillSecure, a Louisville-based network security firm, connected six computers - with six operating systems - to the Internet for a week without any virus protection. The results: 4,892 direct attacks by viruses, worms and other types of malicious code, and 46,255 scans by remote computers looking for weaknesses. Here's what happened: Windows XP Service Pack 1 Attacks: 4,857 Results: Attacked successfully within 18 minutes by the Blaster and Sasser worms. Within an hour, the computer was taken over...
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MSN Messenger 7- "Listening to" feature by matt

Cool! I just noticed that the latest beta of MSN Messenger version 7; which sports a feature which adds the current playing song to your message window when chatting; also supports iTunes! Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
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XBOX OWA Theme by matt

Here's a cool tutorial on how to create customized themes for Exchange OWA 2003. There's also a link to download a ready made XBOX theme ! Here's a screenshot ( larger version ). Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
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Opendoc by matt

A friend and I have been chatting about the OpenDocument format and why it is a great thing. It is interesting to note that Microsoft is claiming to have opened their Office 2003 XML formats; however there seems to be a lot of doubt (rightly so) about how open it really is . Makes interesting reading... Comments? Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
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