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 activity resumes here. I will continue to drop by once in a while. You can also check out the other sites on the b5media Technology Channel and the favorites I linked to in the sidebar below for news and nuggets.

I thank b5media for this opportunity. In particular, I thank Kori Ellis, the Technology Channel Editor, and Rachel Segal, the Content Director, who were always there to listen to my problems and made it easier for me to blog here.

I will keep in touch.
Sravan

Post from: EveryJoe

Bidding Farewell

Post from: EveryJoe

The Pirate Bay Trial Begins

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 Microsoft appears confused by what an application is and what is not. A program running as a background process is always termed a process, but some programs are considered as applications (plus processes) when occupying the taskbar and as processes only when minimized to the system tray.

Whatever be the terminology, capping it at 3 is tying hands tightly. So that performance is optimal, just like a tied man who probably runs faster, at least for his life.

Thankfully, Microsoft assures that all Windows 7 editions can be run on netbooks. But the dilemma lives on. Which edition should I buy?

In the mean time, people are already getting creative at making fun of these editions. Like the Windows 7 editions that Microsoft forgot.

Post from: EveryJoe

Those Damn Windows 7 Editions

Post from: EveryJoe

Read My Guest Posts

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.

Post from: EveryJoe

Please Help My Fellow Blogger

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 requirements. It may not be a good experience to try it on my netbook which just meets the minimum requirements and my laptop which is old enough to even miss the minimum. But if anyone is interested, you can get the Windows 7 look into Windows XP. He also found a couple of amusing videos, one called “how to say i love you.” and another a confirmation of love, a marriage at Taco Bell. Recession, aye?

Jason found a few websites that can assist you in unique ways: one for helping educate your kids, one a calendar to help others, and another to scan your computer online. He covered a lot of Windows Powertoys, a mobile media browser and found another reason to continue loving Zune. He also has a couple of how-tos for selecting non-linear text in a word document and sharing Outlook calendar availability. One bad news, I mean another one, is that Microsoft is shutting down MSN Groups.

Claire thought out loud about the gap between Linux and mainstream users, learnt something new about less (which all you Cygwin users may find useful), discovered a wonderful browser called Kidzui which attempts to make the Internet a more kid-friendly place.

Juan wonders whether the Mac is not invincible anymore and whether Apple really needs to make a netbook. He is glad to find a symbol cheat widget and an app that can save his day with a bunch of drawings. The latter isn’t my cup of tea. He along with Jayvee found out about Apple’s stand on piracy.

Post from: EveryJoe

A Massive Tech Channel Roundup

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 other category names in it.

‘/’, the root directory, is considered the parent directory under which all directories fall, like /usr, /bin, /lib, /tmp, /var, etc. /A/B/C/D/E/F.txt would mean a file F.txt present in E, a sub-directory of D, which is a sub-directory of C, which is a sub-directory of B, which is a sub-directory of A, which is a sub-directory of /, the root.

If you look at the contents of / (ls / or dir /) in your Cygwin terminal, you will notice a sub-directory called cygdrive. This contains all the Windows drives in it. Your C: drive can be got to through /cygdrive/c.

For convenience, we can remove this /cygdrive prefix in the following ways:

1. $ cd /
    $ mkdir c e
    $ mount c: /c
    $ mount e: /e

2. $ mount –c /

In this way your main Windows drives will be direct sub-directories of /.

PATH
Check what your path is using echo $PATH command. It should have at least the following: /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/c/WINDOWS/
system32:/c/WINDOWS:/c/WINDOWS/System32/Wbem:/c/SysinternalsSuite

Using this path setting, we can run even those programs that we could run from the MS Command Prompt. If you have any other files which can be run from command line, add them to the path using your .profile. We’ve already seen that.

Good to go from next week.

Post from: EveryJoe

POSIX and PATH

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 culled spam by 70% in Nov, 2008, but it has been growing at a rate of 156% ever since. The highest spam last year, however, was on April 23rd, where one undisclosed customer reported receiving 100 emails per minute per user. The unsurprising bad news is that, “All indicators suggest this trend (read increase) will continue as virus, malware, and link-based attacks become both more frequent and more ingenious.” Sigh.

What I observed in my inbox is backed by the report as another growing trend: “emailing spoofed news alerts with URLs that would link to a website hosting the virus.”

Watch out and defend yourself.

Post from: EveryJoe

From Those Who Welcome Spam

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 website is one of the rare treasure troves of the Microsoft Website that is rich with learning resources and regular updates.

The suite at 9.6 MB includes close to 70 tools and every PC user should own them. Download the Sysinternal Suite now. Why not, when they are freely available?

I will try to give you a detailed overview of various of these tools regularly from now on, so keep watching this space.

Post from: EveryJoe

Sysinternals Suite For Troubleshooting PCs

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

Post from: EveryJoe

Happy Holidays