www.ramonddevrede.nl

Today the judge in The Netherlands decided The Pirate Bay has to be blocked for users of NL. My opinion is simply that it’s ridiculous but also a curious decision. There are many (more!) websites who have worst content on their sites than TPB, actually content which can harm people and businesses. I’m not speaking for piracy, but the way how they do fake solutions. A little bit naive and stupid if you think piracy will be gone if TPB is not accessible for Dutch users. People who want to download illegal can always find a way… Yes, really intelligent to push this further into illegal circruits in the background. Strange policy.

Google and Youtube.com have more references and links to illegal content than TPB. Even more users who actively search to find and get illegal software.. what is the technical difference between Google and TPB ? Strange that the people who cannot send a SMS decide on this big issues… pity for internetusers in the Netherlands…. censoring has not only hit China… it’s here too. They measure with 2 different systems.

Internet 2.0 only for us Dutchies postbus51.nl (governmentsite) and some Dutch newspapersites which are  owned by Dutch companies… Can you imagine what COULD happen if you read text on those sites which led you to illegal activities… come on!

I do not say google and youtube are illegal, neither I say TPB is legal. Technical they are in my opinion the same. Gving information. You don’t have to visit TPB, neither Google. It’s your decision.

People who create a lot of documents have experienced closing program wrong or that a program did not respond anymore which resulted in loss of the data of the document till your last saving point.

You will are looking puzzled why the automatic save option in Word or Excel this time didn’t do a thing or your document is even lost and you cannot find it anymore.

You can save yourself for this kind of situations by learning yourself a good habit. Every now and than (after some minutes) you use the following keyboard combination : CTRL + S.

In most Windows programs CTRL + S (hold at same time) means that you save the current document.

If you learn yourself this habit you are experiencing less surprises if you by accident close a program. You only can loose some minutes of work. I use it often. Make it a habit. You can react more relax when experiencing a spontaneous reboot (if this happen often please search an expert and not your nephew or neighboor) or a program that does not respond anymore.

CTRL + S !

1. Billie Jean (beat and videoclip)
2. Ben (emotion)
3. Beat It (rythm)
4. Bad (videoclip)
5. The Way You Make Me Feel (lyric)

Several people who installed the Technical Preview of Microsoft Office 2010 noticed after 30 days activation will not succeed. This is related to the fact the activation servers of Office 2010 not yet are published via DNS, simply explained to the fact they don’t exist yet. How you can re-activate for another 30 days? I give you a brief procedure how to do it :

First you have to stop the service : Office Software Protection

Then run x:\Windows\System32\OSPPRUN.exe (x can be your C: or other driveletter you have installed windows on)

You will have a prompt.

Enter these command followed by an enter like shown below, go to next step

>Initialize (enter)

>Open (enter)

>GetInstalledSkuIds (enter)

   0. 128a057a-7e95-4063-b296-c54c5f3d3f3a (deze is het ID van Office 2010)

   1. 26adec89-edf3-4adc-a3fc-c865f1a9f71f

OK.

> GetInstalledAppIds 128a057a-7e95-4063-b296-c54c5f3d3f3a (enter)

   0. 59a52881-a989-479d-af46-f275c6370663

OK.

(You will get something that looks like this)

> GetLicensingStatus 59a52881-a989-479d-af46-f275c6370663 128a057a-7e95-4063-b296-c54c5f3d3f3a (enter)

SkuId            = 128a057a-7e95-4063-b296-c54c5f3d3f3a

eStatus          = SL_LICENSING_STATUS_IN_GRACE_PERIOD

dwGraceTime      = 1D 23:37

dwTotalGraceDays = 30 days

hrReason         = 4004F00C

qwExpiration     = 2010/10/31

OK.

(What you are now going to do is set AppID and SkuID for Office 2010 to enable again 30 days before activation. That gives you another 30 days to test. Mostly the IDs are the same, if not please copy and use yours

> Rearm 59a52881-a989-479d-af46-f275c6370663 128a057a-7e95-4063-b296-c54c5f3d3f3a 1 (enter)

OK.

>close (enter)

>Initialize (enter)

>open (enter)

You can enter the command below to check out how many days you have left (See dwGraceTime): 

> GetLicensingStatus 59a52881-a989-479d-af46-f275c6370663 128a057a-7e95-4063-b296-c54c5f3d3f3a (enter)

SkuId            = 128a057a-7e95-4063-b296-c54c5f3d3f3a

eStatus          = SL_LICENSING_STATUS_IN_GRACE_PERIOD

dwGraceTime      = 29D 23:37

dwTotalGraceDays = 30 days

hrReason         = 4004F00C

qwExpiration     = 2010/10/31

>quit (enter)

You are able to use it again for 30 days. Have a lot of fun with testing Microsoft Office 2010…

Coming year will be a good one for ICT.

Look what for beautiful things are coming soon :

Windows 7 (replacing Vista)
Office 2010 (replacing 2007)
Windows Mobile 6.5 (replacing 6.1)

Bing (new engine for their search solution) (replacing msn live search)

Microsoft is really active in 2009 to prepare everyone to a good ending of 2009 and start of 2010.

Grab these opportunities. These new applications have nice features and create opportunities.

Again back with an useful tip.

Imagine you have to do research on an specific subject. To collect the information and have this well organised is a big challenge.

Quotepad solves this problem easy and effective.

You copy all information by using a shortcut key (default CTRL-SHIFT-Q, you can change this) and Quotepad will keep track of when and from which URL you have copied the content. Very handy.

It’s is freeware. You can download it from their own site : Quotepad.

I tested it on Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 32-bit.

If I see handy utilities on the internet I will now and than post an article on my blog when I also use it.

The honor to be the first tip is an easy and simple program what exactly does what it promises. Most of the time these are the most fun tools.

The program is called ‘Timed Shutdown’. I was searching for a programma which could shutdown my PC at a certain moment.

Timed Shutdown gives you 4 options in the way you want to shutdown your PC :

1. Countdown (For e.g., 15 seconds, 10 minutes, 2 hours or a specific time)
2. Time
3. CPU usage for a certain time
4. If you are disconnected from internet during a specified time

I only use option 1 and 2. If you set the program your PC has to shutdown in 10 minutes, the program wilt countdown from 10 minutes till 0 and will shutdown your PC. I use this program on Windows Vista Ultimate (32bit). You can also use this program in batchfile as it supports command-line options.

You can download Timed Shutdown by clicking on the link.

Today it’s common that people use so much specific terms that a regular user does not understand it anymore, even people who consider themselve as expert are getting every day terms which they don’t understand.

Technical terms are commonly being used by sales persons as if it’s normal everybody would understand it. In a lot of cases the sales persons use the terms in the wrong context. I’m going to give you an example of someone who was going to buy a new LCD TV together with a friend who was not an expert but knew more than the buyer. You can see that communication between the sales person, the buyer (the user) and the assistant (friend, helper) important is.

The friend went with him to buy the LCD TV and asked the simple question: What do you want? The answer was : minimal 42″. They went to the shop and this is what them is told :

1. “Do you want FullHD or HDReady?”
2. “Do you need HDMI and how many?”
3. “Do you need any component connections?”
4. “Do you want to view Digital broadcasts?”
5. “Do you want plasma or LCD?”

The answers on these questions were easy :”What is that?”

The salesperson gives answers but the buyer and the assistant are overwhelmed in the more complex technical terms than the initial question. Instead of making it more clear it’s now not understandable for both. For every unknown term there are now 2 unknown term added.

1. It’s easy, FullHD has 1920×1080 pixels and HDReady has 1280×720
   (buyer ask himself what those numbers are and what the heck pixels are)
2. HDMI is a new connection which is based on DVI but with integrated sound, but also better than component
   (they wonder what DVI is, what about the sound and what is component)
3. Component provide better quality than a scart-connection
   (scart connection, sounds familiar, component not, they don’t know if their equipment has component connections or not)
4. Digital broadcasting is more clear than your current television broadcast.
   (This will confuse the people. Can I see my ‘old’ channels? But HD is better, why do I need digital broadcasting?)
5. The biggest difference is that plasma has a better refresh rate than LCD.
   (the what? refresh rate… ahhh ofcourse (now you lost them completely)

What you see is that the sales person what to show-off with his knowlegde. The buyer does not come to the shop for this. He/she wants to buy a new good television. The assistant does not say he also doesn’t understand the half of the terms and is going to say ‘yes’ on some sentences to not look dumb.

The same happens every day as a new ICT project is started. What the customer wants should be communicated with the customer on the level he/she understands.

You could use explain those complex terms in easy language without technical terms. Instead of saying ”1920×1080 pixels” it’s maybe more clear to say ”4-5x sharper image”.

Try to speak clearly to the customer. Nobody is well served by someone who his ego is so big that he wants to show-off with complicated term, nobody is served with that. Clear and easy is the way to go.

In 2008 Windows operating systems less exploit/leaks were found than in other systems as Linux and Mac OS X.

Before I have indicated that it’s not so bad with the insecurity of Windows than some would like to believe us.  It appears that exploits in Linux or Mac OS X are more awful or just awful. 

Now X-Force did a research and came to the following conclusion: 

Apple Mac OS X had more than 14% of the leaks.  Linux had more than 10% of the leaks. 

Amusingly is also that Windows XP (5,5%) comes on the 5th spot and unsafer is than Windows Vista (5,1%).  I did not expected otherwise because Microsoft do well know what they should do.  You can read the original article on:  http://www.zdnet.nl/news.cfm?id=97972&mxp=221

You can see it’s not easy to claim a safe operating system because a lot of time the least secure are saying Windows is unsecure.

It is commonly known exploits are normal in operating systems. 

You have to install more patches under Linux or Mac OS X than by Windows operating system. This saves again money for maintenance for businesses which use Windows as operating system, yet to be silent about  the safety risk.

1. Al Pacino

2. Colin Farrell

3. Robert De Niro

4. Alan Alda

5. Andy Garcia