There is a Free Open Source alternative to MS-Office. Open Office is a professional quality application suite unlike most of the open source projects I've seen. It has all the features of MS-Office and you can even open and save all the MS Document Formats. Open Office even has a couple really neat features that MS-Office doesn't have: Writer can save to PDF and Impress can save SWF (Macromedia Flash). It is currently at Version 1.1, and 2.0 is currently in development. I haven't looked very indepth at the features of this suite, but I am very impressed with it being Free Open Source and all.

Flash Introduction to Open Office: http://www.digitaldistribution.com/samples/openofficeintro11en.swf

For more information or to get Open Office: http://www.openoffice.org

Apparently, to reduce the spread of worms like Sasser, Windows XP Service Pack 2 will limit the maximum number of TCP connections your computer can have at one time. I can see what they are thinking, but I wont mind unless some of my applications (like my multi-threaded port scanner) wont work correctly with this new setting. I guess I'll hold off on increasing the max. untill an application generates an error because of it.

Here is a registry edit you can do to increase the max:

TcpNumConnections
Key: Tcpip\Parameters
Value Type: REG_DWORD - Number
Valid Range: 0 - 0xfffffe
Default: 0xfffffe
Description: This parameter limits the maximum number of connections that TCP can have open at the same time.

TCP/IP and NBT configuration parameters for Windows XP: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=314053

As you all probably know, XBox is priced at $150, has a hard drive, built in Ethernet, and it has x86 architecture with a P3 cpu. There is a Linux distribution that is being ported to run on the XBox architecture. You may be thinking why does it need to be ported if it uses x86 architecture and uses a P3 cpu. Well, the reason is that it is only about 99% x86 compatible. There are some extra things (mostly copy protection stuff) that Microsoft added to it. That 99% compatibility is also the thing that keeps you from being able to run Windows on it. The controller ports are even USB, you have to get an adapter to plug in a keyboard and mouse but they are still USB.

You may also be thinking, how can I have an ASP.NET web server, if I'm running linux? The answer is... Mono!! Mono is an open source implementation of the .NET Framework. All the necessary parts of the framework to run ASP.NET applications with Apache web server are complete.

Wow, what an idea! A $150 computer that I can use to host an ASP.NET web application. Granted there is only 64MB of ram in the XBox, it will be able to host a small website just the same. Now, all I need to do is buy an XBox, put Linux and Mono on it, and host my website on an XBox.

Linux on XBox: http://xbox-linux.org/

Mono: http://www.mono-project.org/

Note: I have not seen anyone confirming that Mono will run under the Linux distribution for XBox, but it just seems fitting that if it will run on Linux/x86 then why wouldn't it run on an XBox since it has 99% the same architecture.

Dell Inspiron 8x00 fan control utility by Christian Diefer

I don't know why DELL doesn't have a utility you can use to read the CPU/Fan Temperatures of you DELL Laptop. I have an Inspiron 1100 and this little utility works perfectly. It even allows you to control the Fan speed.

Get It Here: http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/index.html

He even has a command prompt version you can use. There is a full compatibility list of all the DELL Notebooks that this utility will work with.

I have to say, Great Job Christian!

Last week a man charged with stealing proprietary technology from AltaVista search engine two years was arrested. No big deal right, well this man also is an employee at Microsoft and has been working on Microsoft's new MSN Search technology. Lets see how long till AltaVista presses charges against the software giant Microsoft.

A Kirkland man arrested last week on allegations that he stole proprietary technology from the AltaVista search engine two years ago is a Microsoft Corp. employee who has been working on the Redmond company's MSN Search initiative. Federal authorities allege that Laurent Chavet, a former AltaVista employee, illegally accessed the California company's computer system in March 2002 and June 2002, after he left AltaVista and well before he went to work for Microsoft. Chavet, then living in California, copied to his home computer source code that was used by AltaVista "to perform the function of scouring the World Wide Web," according to an FBI affidavit.

Chavet's arrest was announced by the U.S. attorney in northern California last week without reference to his current employment. Microsoft acknowledged yesterday that Chavet is a Microsoft employee but declined to name the team on which he works. However, three other people with knowledge of Chavet's Microsoft employment confirmed that he has been working on the MSN Search effort. A brief biography attached to a paper Chavet co-wrote on text analytics described him as an expert "in all aspects of search technology." He worked at IBM's Almaden Research Center after leaving AltaVista and before joining Microsoft.

Original News Source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/181377_msftsearch09.html

After a message on the Windows Update V5 newsgroups regarding a possible interim build being released, Microsoft have back tracked and denied that there will be another interim release. Mike Brannigan (MSFT) called the posting "Untrue and inaccurate" and stated that the next public release is the RTM. According to reliable sources at Microsoft the scroll build (RTM) is due to be finished as early as next week or within the next 2 weeks. Current builds stand at 2161.

After the RTM date OEMs have 90 days to ship SP2 pre-installed on their XP machines. Within those 90 days they're required to ship the XP SP2 update CD with machines. CDs will be made available at support outlets (PC World Support) and on frontpage magazine covers. Microsoft are aiming to make sure everyone gets this update and will be spending just as much time & money promoting it as developing it.

Once Windows XP SP2 has hit RTM this will provide room for more development on Longhorn. Currently there have been only 8 builds since the WinHEC build in May. 8 builds in 2 months shows how Microsoft is focussing on XP SP2 at the moment. Build 4088 is the latest build internally and as of yet there have not been any reported changes since WinHEC.

Around the October time frame we will see "XP Reloaded" in action. The marketing campaign will kick off with the availability of Windows XP SP2, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2004, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 and Windows Media Player 10. Interestingly Microsoft is changing the way Media Center Edition works. Media Center Edition was always based off the Windows XP Professional version of XP and not the home edition. Current MCE builds lose the ability to add the machine to a domain after setup is complete (you can still add the machine during setup). Microsoft are trying to convert MCE so it's stripped of professional features so it's cheaper for OEMs and for a possible retail on the product. If they could package MCE alongside OEMs and produce a "Media Center Kit" that would combine a TV card/Remote and Media Center Edition software it would sell very, very well.

For now though lets look forward to Service Pack 2 reaching the final stage of development and focus on Windows XP Service Pack 3, lets face it SP2 is SO last week

Original News Source: Neowin.net

One of my clients has a web application that automates updating their clients sites with the latest ASP pages, DLL, and SQL scripts on their databases. This week the idea came up of having that web application grab the latest version of the appropriate ASP pages from SourceSafe during this automation process. We figured it could be done, since Visual Studio can automate SourceSafe, and it also wouldn't be like Microsoft to not make that sort of thing automatable. Below are two links to documentation and example code.

VSS 6.0 Automation Documentation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnvss/html/vssauto.asp

VB and VB.NET Examples: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/previous/ssafe/downloads/samples/

You are all probably thinking, Is 'Automatable' really a word? According to Dictionary.com it is: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=automatable

Download.Ject
Microsoft teams have confirmed a report of a security issue known as Download.Ject affecting customers using Microsoft Internet Explorer, a component of Microsoft Windows. (Download.Ject is also known as: JS.Scob.Trojan, Scob, and JS.Toofeer.)

http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/download_ject.mspx

Important  Customers who have deployed Windows XP Service Pack 2 RC2 are not at risk.

Shaweet, I'm not affected!! I have WinXP SP2 RC2 installed. There may seem to be the most security flaws in Internet Explorer, but you have to remember that it is the most widely used web browser and that means it gets attacked the most.

Paint.NET is a senior design project aided by a mentor at Microsoft.  It is a paint program designed entirely by students and written using Microsoft's .NET Framework.  The program makes it easier to create and edit photos. It maintains some of the best features of the original MS-Paint application and includes new, powerful tools. Such new tools include a history storage for undos and redos, and powerful multi-layering which is often seen only in high-quality, expensive photo-applications. This product was engineered with the latest in graphics and coding technology such as the new C# language from Microsoft, and the GDI+ graphics libraries. These programming frameworks allowed for the creation of a speedy, responsive application with an amazing array of graphic capabilities.

http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/~cs423/423spring04/Team2/

XAML is just plain awesome. XAML will allow you to configure the user interfaces of you applications using an XML based language. Just think of how easy it is to create a web interface with HTML, and that is how XAML will be for Windows applications. It's just too bad that it wont be supported by Windows until Longhorn ships. I can't wait to start using it.

The following example demonstrates that all you need to do to write a "Hello World" application in XML is to initialize a window class and add a button with text.:

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>
<Window>
    <Button>Hello World</Button>
</Window>

Go to the following link to read more about XAML: http://longhorn.msdn.microsoft.com/?//longhorn.msdn.microsoft.com/lhsdk/core/overviews/about%20xaml.aspx