It is time to say good bye.
I started blogging for That Damn PC four months ago and I have now decided to leave because of personal reasons, especially related to time management. I hope at least a few of my posts have helped someone sometime. They have helped me learn a few things so as to share them here, and I know one place where to look for specific tips that I may forget in the future.
That Damn PC will soon get another blogger, so keep coming back. Even better, subscribe to the site and you will be notified once …read more

We have all heard of the Pirate Bay, the bit torrent search engine site. It was sued by some biggies of the MPAA like MGM Pictures and Sony BMG, and the case began its trial yesterday in the Stockholm district court.\r\n\r\nA police investigation took place way back in 2006 and the current trial is considered a consequence. The trial is being closely observed by the world because its judgment has the power to determine the future of the Internet regarding copyright infringement laws and rethink where cyber law stands.\r\n\r\nThe Pirate Bay is a Swedish site that facilitates users by providing …read more

Microsoft has done it again. After six Windows Vista editions, now it has decided to continue with six Windows 7 editions. The editions are going to be called Home Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate.
The list differs at one item from Windows Vista: Business became Professional. Is it because Windows Vista didn’t do good business, Business edition or otherwise, and because Windows XP Professional did?
I am disappointed.
The Home Starter edition is supposedly designed especially for netbooks. One of the edition’s stark defining startling features is that not more than 3 applications can be run simultaneously. Duh! Already …read more

Jason was kind enough to accept my guest posts for his blogs Microsoft Weblog and Uncover the Internet. These are my first guest posts ever: one about Microsoft’s involvement with Open Source and another about watching movies legally on Youtube. I hope you enjoy them.

We are all aware of the terrible Australian bushfire. Today I came to know about another recent fire accident.
My fellow b5media blogger Cheril Vernon lost her home and her pets about ten days ago when a fire broke out at her home in Palestine, Texas. Cheril writes three blogs for b5media: NewToTV.com (twitter), MischaNews.com and GossipGirlReport.com. She is also Community Editor for The Palestine Herald.
Read more about the fire and what you can do to help Cheril. Thank you for reading this. Kindly spread the information to everyone.

I’ve realized that my last Tech Channel Roundup was nearly a month ago and I’m guilty of it. So, bear with me as I overload you with a number of interesting links that I found in some of the sister blogs.
Milo discovered a product especially useful for enterprises of all sizes called Nightwatchman, a good news that Microsoft didn’t lay off anybody in the Vista team. I knew that they didn’t touch the Silverlight team, but frankly I’m surprised about this because Vista hasn’t been very profitable to Microsoft. Or has it? One bad news is the Windows 7 minimum …read more

It has been nearly two months since I introduced Cygwin. We’ve seen how to install Cygwin, customize the terminal, a few text editors and a tabbed terminal emulator. Enough with the playfulness. One final configuration and let us move on to the geekier fun.
Directory Structure
Cygwin uses the POSIX notation standard in paths. That is, instead of ‘\’ as in Windows, it uses the more convenient ‘/’ as in Unix. The web follows the same notation. For instance, take http://thatdamnpc.com/category/cygwin-unix. On the web host, one might find a directory called “category” in the main directory and a sub-directory “cygwin-unix” along with …read more

Gmail is a pretty good mail service provided by Google which strives towards accurately catching spam, and is very successful in catching the phish. One thing that empowers the people behind Gmail is the volumes that Google sees.
The Google Enterprise Mail is apparently a much-in-demand service too and it has a Google Enterprise “spam squad” who welcome spam so as to analyze and counter them. Nearly a month after the new year started, they have posted a retrospective post “2008: The Year in Spam” which you may go through if you have time. Otherwise this summary will suffice.
Closing the McColo Network …read more

Microsoft offers a suite of utilities called Sysinternals for free for troubleshooting your PC. The suite is far superior to many of the alternate freewares that are available.
Mark Russinovich, now a Fellow in Microsoft, originally developed them along with Bryce Cogswell when they were in the company Winternals Software. The company subsequently was acquired by Microsoft in mid 2006. Initially, many of the tools were not just freeware but were also accompanied with the source code. No longer, of course.
The utilities are categorized under File and Disk utilities, Networking utilities, Process utilities, Security utilities, System information, etc. The Windows Sysinternals …read more

That Damn PC wishes you all a merry christmas, a happy hanukkah, and any other holiday you are celebrating.
In case you are taking a vacation, have a safe one and forget all your worries including those about the PC. When you come back, I will be here waiting to help you in any way I can.
Cheers,
Sravan