| Ten years ago today! |
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| 2009/12/15 16:04 |
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It was on this date back in 1999 that Microsoft released Windows 2000 to business partners after being RTM'd on the 7th of December 1999. The product would eventually make general retail availability on 17 February 2000 only to be hit with more than 63,000 bugs. Despite the bugs, the product was marked as one of the most seure versions of Windwos ever released at the time! Still as the decade came to a close, the product received security patches, but going into the new decade, the product won't be supported forever.
Last Tuesday, Microsoft decided to disable a 17-year-old video code in current and older versions of Windows rather than patch multiple vulnerabilities for it. Microsoft says that by blocking the codec from being used in Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player, it's only designed to protect users against the known attack vectors and that it would rely on duping people nto visiting a malicious website. The software giant also said that they created defense-in-depth changes that reduce the attack surface and removed the functionality of this codec rahter than addressing individual vulnerabilities, because it provided more comprehensive protection for an older, less used codec: http://www.pcworld.com/article/184515/microsoft_abandons_an_old_windows_bug.html
Windows 2000 is the product that is effected by this and Microsoft is reminding users that support will get canceled next Summer and the firm already declined patching security flaws this past September. |
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| It's official now! |
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| 2009/12/7 14:42 |
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I'm officially getting the GRiD 2270 Tablet PC for Christmas! I made a offer for the product for $219.99 instead of $279.99 (I saved 21.43%) and box_tops officially accepted the offer! I always though that it would be a joke that I was getting another PC to play with, but my dreams have finally come true! I expect to try out the product to see if it works or not before it gets wrapped up. I'll explain the details about my Christmas shopping online at eBay in my next journal on dA.
All of the products that I ordered cost $354. Now, I'm gonna try to finish up on my Mikala Sarai drawing and what what happens over the next 18 days. |
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| What I'm getting for Christmas this year... |
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| 2009/12/3 12:41 |
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mood:  stressed
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Well...in light of all of the talk of getting a vintage laptop, subnotebook or a tablet PC for Christmas as well as looking at old articles from InfoWorld...it has came down to this.
I'm getting vintage stuff this year. Four of them are from eBay, the other two are from NeoSoftware and Amazon.com. First of all, I'm getting a vintage GRiD Convertible 2270 Tablet PC. The product was made in 1993 and it is listed as a 25 MHz 486 SLC processor with a 200 MB hard drive and only 4 MB of memory (expandible to 12 MB). The product features a 9" monochrome display with 256 gray scales. The used item is in great condition and powers on perfectly. Unfortunately, there is a design flaw that the right hinge is broken, but it does not affect the functionality of the unit.
The product comes with a external floppy drive, a battery pack, AC power cord, DC power cord, printer adapter cable and a GRid user guide. The product is located in Indianapolis, Indiana. The used unit costs $280, but the price can be lowered by negociating with box_lots. I'm gonna have to put up with a good fight over getting this unit before you end up saying "you are not getting another laptop regardless of age or how much it costs".
Also, I'm getting two more operating systems that I'm trying out. They are Windows NT 3.51 Workstation and Windows NT 4.0 Workstation. Windows NT 3.51 is a fully internet capable OS, but it's the last OS to be based on the Windows 3.0 codebase. Windows NT 4.0 Workstation contains the same features as Windows 95, but with additional features. Both of these unsupported OSes are based on the Windows NT kernel. Windows NT 3.51 costs $50 and Windows NT 4.0 costs only $18.
I used to have Microsoft Space Simulator but not anymore and I found it for just $20 off of Amazon.com. NeoPaint for DOS should be a fun vintage product to play with and it's worth $30. Lastly, I'm getting Norton System Works 2001 for $12...this comes after neither NSW 2003 nor NSW 2004 works at all. The contents of NSW 2003 could no longer be read and it got defective. NSW2004 had to be thrown away because, Symantec says that I can't activate the product anymore. NSW 2001 should work under Windows 95 OSR2, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98, Windows Me and possibly Windows 2000.
I already canceled two products that I found elsewhere that was originally worth $532 total, but now, I narrowed it down to $410.
If I end up spending only $62 or not even getting any of the products listed above, this Christmas will be downright very disappointing. |
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| 40 years ago today! |
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| 2009/11/10 15:52 |
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Did you know that it was on this date back in 1969 that the very first episode of Sesame Street aired on the Public Broadcasting Service? It is currently one of the longest running children's televisions programmes to date. The show is produced by the non-profit organisation Sesame Workshop, formerly known as the Children's Television Workshop (CTW) founded by Joan Ganz Conney and Ralph Rogers. Sesame street was created by Joan Ganz Conney and Lloyd Morrisett. So far, 4,187 episodes have been aired.
Sesame Street is a pioneer of the contemporary educational television standards that combine both education and entertainment. The series is well known for its Muppets characters created by Jim Henson.
For more on Sesame Street, read this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame_Street |
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| 20 years ago today: The Berlin Wall falls down! |
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| 2009/11/9 21:52 |
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It was on this date in 1989 that then Communist-controlled East Germany opened checkpoints in the Berlin Wall (Berliner Mauer) allowing its citizens to travel to West Germany. People start demolishing the Berlin Wall. During its existance from 1961 to 1989 the Wall stopped almost all such emigration and separated the German Democratic Republic (GDR) for more than a quarter of a century. Around 5,000 people attempted to escape over the wall, with estimates of the resulting death toll varying between around 100 to 200. The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for the reunification of Germany, in which it was fomally concluded on 3 October 1990.
For more information about the Berlin Wall, read this Wikipedia story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall |
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| 49.7 day barrier looming... |
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| 2009/11/7 21:51 |
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Software that stubbornly rely on the GetTickCount() function only havea few hours left. The figure is expected to roll over to zero at approximently 5:13:31 AM tomorrow as I can tell by the Speedfan utility that I still have. That means, I have about 5 to 6 hours to kill and get some sleep. If Windows Vista continues to operate without any problems and if so, it would be a miracle!
Edit: The 49.7 day barrier has came and went, I have now been operating this notebook PC continously for almost 51 days now. The next GetTickCount() rollover will occur on Sunday, 27 December 2009 at 10:16:18 PM. |
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| New York Yankees: 2009 World Series Champions! |
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| 2009/11/4 23:51 |
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mood:  cheerful
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The New York Yankees have finally done it! They have clinched their 27th World Series championship and the first one since 2000 when they won the World Series against it's National League counterpart, the New York Mets.
The Yankees win the World Series against the defending World Series champion, the Philadelphia Phillies in six games. The final score in Game 6 was 7 to 3.
Hideki Matsui (松井 秀喜) becomes the first Japanese player and first full-time DH to received the 2009 World Series Most Valuable Player award. With free agency and a possible departure from the New York Yankees looming in the 2009-2010 offeason, he went 3-for-4 with a home run, a double and six RBIs. The game and the series ended when Shane Victorino grounded out to second base.
This is also the Yankees first championship at their new ballpark. The franchise has gone eight seasons without a championship and it was the third-longest stretch for the Yankees since their first one, following gaps of 14 (1963-1976) and 17 years respectedly (1979-1995). Joe Girardi won World Series titles as a player in 1996, 1998 and 1999 and now his team has won the World Series as a Yankee manager.
The World Series started last Wednesday, the 28th of October 2009 in which it was the latest start in history and it's regularly scheduled to end in early November. Game 7 took place tonight at 7:57 PM and it ended at 11:54 PM. Although, it was one day short of breaking the latest end date of the World Series, it lasted about 37 minutes longer (as late as 11:54 PM EST) than the 2001 World Series between the Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks. That game lasted until 11:18 PM EST at the time. This was also the first time since 2003 that the World Series went for six games when the Yankees lost the Florida Marlins.
Congrats to the New York Yankees, the champions of the baseball world! |
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| Daylight Savings Time Ends Tonight! |
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| 2009/10/31 17:12 |
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Incase, you haven't noticed already, Daylight Savings Time (DST) ends tonight at 2 AM. That means you will need to set your clocks one hour back. As there will be a extra hour tomorrow, the amount of daylight will start getting shorter until mid-December when it bottoms out completely. If you do not get DST in your area, setting the clocks back won't be necessary.
Daylight Savings Time will return on Sunday, 14 March 2010 at 2 AM local time.
In the meantime, I hope that you have a happy and safe Halloween. I will be back on dA next week when either the Phillies and the Yankees are three innings away from winning the World Series. |
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| This notebook PC is running much better now! |
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| 2009/10/30 18:20 |
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Well what do you know. My new Zaiman Notebook Cooler is seriously helping this notebook PC that has been prone to overheating issues and lockups. Going to day 41 without a reboot, I'm running Windows 95 guest OS under VMware Player and CPU temperatures max out at around 69°C to 72°C while the GPU temperature maxes out as high as 72°C to 74°C. This is a fair improvement from the previous CPU/GPU temperatures between 82°C to 86°C thus significantly reducing the risks of CPU/GPU related lockups caused by the stress on the software that use a lot of resources. This is a very good and durable product that will fit on notebook PCs as big as 20"!
Currently the CPU temperature is running at 70°C without any problems so far! |
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| 80 years ago today... |
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| 2009/10/29 16:20 |
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It was on this date in 1929, that the most devastating stockmarket crash and economic downturn took place on Wall Street. Four famous phrases, Black Thursday, Black Friday, then Black Monday and Black Tuesday. They were used to describe this collapse of stock values and it wasn't a one day affair.
The inital crash occured on Thursday, 24 October 1929, but the catastrophic downturn of Monday, 28 October and Tuesday, 29 October 1929 triggered widespread alarm and the onset of a unprecedented and long-lasting economic depression for the United States and the world. The stock market collapse continued for about a month.
After a six-year run when the Dow Jones industrial Averaged icreased in value by fivefold, it peaked at 381.17 on 3 September 1929. For a month, the market feel sharply, losing about 17% of its value on the inital leg down. Over the next week, stocks recovered half of their losses only to turn back down immediately afterwards.
On Thursday, 24 October 1929, the DJIA lost 6.38 points to close at 299.47 (-2.09%), after recovering from the closing low of 272.32, a loss of 33.53 points (-10.97%). Volume on that day traded at a then record 12.9 million shares. On Monday, 28 October 1929, the DJIA plummetted a then record 38.33 points (or -12.82%) to close at 260.64; the intraday low was 256.75 (a loss of 42.22 points or -14.02%). The damage didn't stop there. On the next day, Tuesday, 29 October 1929, the DJIA dropped another -30.57 points (or -11.73%) to close at 230.07. At intraday levels, the DJIA bottomed at 212.33. If it closed at that level, the DJIA would have made a catastrophic loss of 48.31 points (or -18.54%). The market lost $14 billon in value (or $177 billion, inflation adjusted) on that day, bringing the loss for the week to $30 billion (or $379 billion, inflation adjusted).
Volume traded on that day was a historic 16.41 million shares. A record that was not broken for nearly 40 years until 1 April 1968 when volume traded at 17.73 million shares. Volume on Black Monday 1987 was as much as 38 times higher than the previous record volume generations ago.
The Dow made a interim bottom when it closed at 198.6 on 13 November 1929 and the market eventually stablised when the 1920s came to a close. the market recovered for several months from that point when the Dow reached a secondary closing peak of 294.07 on 17 April 1930. On the previous day, the DJIA peaked at 297.25. The long-term consequences of the stock market crash were realised when the market embarked on a steady slide for a couple of years until 8 July 1932 when the DJIA bottomed at 41.22. The DJIA was established on 26 May 1896 with a base value of 40.94 for 12 stocks. The DJIA was .28 points short of closing below the base value for the first time in decades and the lowest intraday bottom in the 20th century was 40.56. On 8 August 1896, the DJIA closed at a all time low with a loss of -.18 points (-.63%) to 28.48 or 30.4 below the base value. The decline from 3 September 1929 resulted in a 89.19% drop from its peak.
It took almost 22 years (and World War II) before the DJIA would return to pre-1929 levels. On 23 November 1954, the DJIA closed at 382.74, a gain of 3.27 points (or .86%) and the intraday high was 384.29, a gain of 4.82 points (or 1.27%).
For more information on the Wall Street Crash of 1929, read this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929 |
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