(geek) ever wondered...
...what life would be like without regular expressions?
http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/Just_in_Case.aspx
2007-04-04
2007-03-08
Linux: immune to large doses of whackiness from the US Congress :-)
As some people know, the US Congress mandated new rules for DST (Daylight Savings Time), such that instead of DST starting on the first Sunday in April, it starts on the second Sunday of March. In the fall (or autumn), DST will now end on the first Sunday in November rather than the last Sunday of October.
This has predictably caused a lot of operating systems to update various bits of software to accommodate this change.
On Linux, you just need to upgrade one package (usually called the "timezone" package) and that's it. The rest of the system, and all applications simply use the new information.
Apparently things are not so simple in the so-called "user-friendly" operating system :-)
[ stuff below was extracted from comments in http://lwn.net/Articles/224794/ ]
One comment said:
One thing that surprises me is that, for Microsoft Windows, you don't just need an update patch for the OS, you need patches for applications like Outlook as well. In *nix/Linux systems as far as I'm aware, all the apps just use the common zoneinfo data, so you only need one update for that to fix all your apps. Why doesn't Windows do the same?And here's the explanation from another comment, of which I have extracted the best parts:
Microsoft products tend to do their internal calculations and storage formats in local time. This simplifies display, as there isn't any knowledge of time zone required. That was fine when DOS asked you the current time and date every time you booted, and was *somewhat* liveable after the advent of CMOS clocks. The OS just needed to know what DST algorithm to apply. [...] [But it] also gets weird when you have users from multiple time zones on the same machine.Yet another reason to love Linux -- immune to large doses of whackiness from the US Congress :-)
UNIX and its derivatives tend to do those same things in GMT. This eliminates much of the clock twiddling mess and so on. Also, file date stamps are never ambiguous. What changes is time display. That needs a notion of the current time zone. The plus side is that you can have two dozen users logged in, each in different time zones, and each can see their own local time, just by setting TZ.
So if you don't patch Windows, it'll *use* the wrong time. If you don't patch UNIX, it'll just *display* the wrong time.
2007-03-06
(USA,funny,quote) love this one...
There's free as in speech, free as in beer, and free as in range. Americans are free in the latter sense.
...found it somewhere on slashdot, of course!
2007-02-26
(malware) Microsoft apologises for serving malware | APC Magazine
http://apcmag.com/5382/microsoft_apologises_for_serving_malware_to_customers
"We have learned that Microsoft was notified of malware that was being served through ads placed in Windows Live Messenger banners."
Don't they make enough money already? Why do they need to ''serve ads'' for God's sake...?
2007-02-22
(geek) The Command line marries the GUI?
http://www.zicorp.com/QixFunctions.htm
Take a look at the illustration at the top, and the simple description below.
Ignore the fact that this website is about mobile phones. The fact is, any interface that has grown too complex and unwieldy needs something like this, period. This is the only way to keep frequent users happy (which means productive) while simultaneously keeping it "friendly" for new users...
...and the faster we all realise it the happier mankind will be :-)
2007-02-18
2007-02-15
2007-02-14
Dealing with telemarketers
Tired of credit card/personal loan/real estate solicitations?
The primary purpose of any response to a telemarketer should not be anger or criticism. It should be to waste their time without wasting yours!
The most effective way of doing this is to simply express interest, ask them to please hold for a minute or two, press the mute button on the phone, and then ignore the phone for some time. And if you can come back once in a minute or so and say "just 1 minute more please...", all the better!
If enough people do this, we can make a big impact on their moronic employers. Please pass the word.
Alternatively, you can trade time for entertainment and actually talk to them. Ask them about themselves. Their job. What do they get paid? Does their family like it?
Be genuinely curious and interested. And friendly. Don't get angry or insulting. They'll just hang up and move on to the next victim. You have to keep them busy.
Sometimes you get a real idiot. My favourite is when I confused the heck out of one poor girl by asking her to punch in her ATM pin code in order to be able to speak to me about my (non-existent) credit card! I told her until she does that I cannot believe that she is who she claims to be. [She punched in something but then she hung up.]
But all these methods require you to be engaged actively, instead of just letting your telephone be busy for a few minutes. For calls while at work, nothing beats telling them to please hold on...
:-)
2007-02-08
why is...
the Times of India, with a history of not getting along with the Tata group, sucking up big-time to Ratan Tata?
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