crazyskillsbloginitiative

Lifted from slashdot comment

Helicopter Problem

A helicopter was flying around above Seattle yesterday when an electrical malfunction disabled all of the aircraft’s electronic navigation and communications equipment.

Due to the clouds and haze, the pilot could not determine the helicopter’s position and course to steer to the airport.

The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, drew a handwritten sign, and held it in the helicopter’s window. The pilot’s sign said “WHERE AM I?” in large letters.

People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign, and held it in a building window. Their sign said “YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER.”

The pilot smiled, waved, looked at his map, determined the course to steer to SEATAC airport, and landed safely.

After they were on the ground, the co-pilot asked the pilot how the “YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER” sign helped determine their position in Seatle.

The pilot responded “I knew that had to be the MICROSOFT building because, similar to their help-lines, they gave me a technically correct but completely useless answer.”

Technet members can download R2 of Windows Server 2008 here:

Windows Server 2008 R2 for Itanium Based Systems (ia64) - DVD (English) [technet.microsoft.com]
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, and Web (x64) - DVD (English) [technet.microsoft.com]
Windows Server 2008 R2 Language Pack (x64) [technet.microsoft.com]

Of course, we prefer running ubuntu [ubuntu.com], but for those interested, here you go!

Hahaha! I’m joking. No - actually I’m not. So… The company that probably believed by some “invented” word processing on computers is no longer able to sell its flagship product Word in the US?

bink.nu/news/judge-microsoft-can-t-sell-word-anymore.aspx [bink.nu]

Is it April 1? No? Has this judge ever used a computer?

I’m not particularly anti-Microsoft… though I am sick of people who credit them as originators, particularly of languages, software and operating systems. That said, they have some great products out there and have had arguably more impact on computing as we know it today than anyone else - especially in bringing computing to the masses.

If they’re really smart, they’ll GPL it. We’ll see.

This is ridiculous.. I don’t know quite where to start. I am not a big fan of the .NET framework to begin with, but that is another rant for another time.

The Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant is - get this - a Firefox addon, which “adds to Firefox one of the most dangerous vulnerabilities present in all versions of Internet Explorer: the ability for Web sites to easily and quietly install software on your PC.”

The worst part is that it is being distributed to anyone using the Automatic Update service of various Windows platforms. Or maybe the worst part is that it cannot be uninstalled, at least not without modifying your registry manually.

Makes me at least think twice before trusting Windows Update. Smooth.

Available on torrents near you… and a very good collection of screenshots available as well.

A few days ago, I posted [donetblog.com] that you could use Windows 7 for free for a year.  It seems now that wasn’t entirely accurate:

“The release candidate for Microsoft Windows 7 will expire June 2010, and the software giant will let users know they need to pay to upgrade by shutting down the system every two hours [itpro.co.uk] for three months. According to Microsoft: “The RC will expire on June 1, 2010. Starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Windows will notify you two weeks before the bi-hourly shutdowns start. To avoid interruption, you’ll need to install a non-expired version of Windows before March 1, 2010. You’ll also need to install the programs and data that you want to use.”"