ZAY Blog

Here is the proof that it is not:

This picture is not PSed by any means and is from the original test server from SpeedTest.net

And it seems that UW has the fastest network around!

I did the test again just now to make sure, and here is what I see:

Thanks for those IST guys, you people rock!

This is the third time in my less-than-a-year experience dealing with Servage.net as my host.

First time it was disk failure, second time was unknown, and this time, according to the customer service representative:

And that was more than 2 hours ago….

Ironically, I just saw this on Servage.net:

So I guess it is either me who is really unlucky, or this client is simply too lucky

A friend of mine just bought a refurbished Thinkpad X41, which I am trying it out as we speak.

The first impression I have on the unit is that it is really tiny with the 12 inch screen. However, as what my friend has already told me, the laptop is relatively slow and the boot up time to Windows XP takes about 20 seconds.

Furthermore, due to the size of the laptop, the keyboard feels a little crammed even though I am used to the keyboard layout on my T42 laptop.

The specification of the system is as following:

Product: ThinkPad X41 2526-WEY [change]

Operating system: Windows XP [change]

Original description: Based on 2526-CTO: P M 758(1.5GHz)LV, 512MB RAM, 40GB 4200rpm HDD, 12.1in 1024×768 LCD, Intel 900, DVD, 802.11abg wireless(MPCI), Modem(CDC), 1Gb Ethernet(LOM), Secure Chip, Fingerprint reader, 8 cell Li-Ion batt, WinXP Pro

As the specifications have shown, the model uses a Low-voltage 1.5GHz processor, which is a definite plus in extending the battery life. I’ve played the unit for about an hour now with less than 15% battery loss. The RAM is a little too small, however, my friend has obviously added in another 512MB RAM to make it to 1GB. The hard drive has a disappointing size of 40GB, and the hidden IBM Recovery Partition has simply compounded the problem by taking away another precious 5GB.

The graphics chipset is Intel 900, which is insufficient to run the Windows Vista, however, the ultraportable is built with the business users in mind and the laptop is obvious more than enough to cater the normal operating usage of the business users.

Finally, the price. My friend bought is on EBay and it costed her 700. Obviously, judging from the price today, half of that would give me a decent EEEPC to play around. However, EEEPC is still quite insufficient in even serving the relatively more CPU-demanding applications such as running Access queries.

Overall, the unit has definitely impressed me with it tiny size and therefore, portability. However, the unit is barely enough to serve for basic daily usage and not for hard-core gamers or professionals demanding high computing power.

Probably the biggest news in the IT industry is the recent takeover proposal of Microsoft to Yahoo!.

Yahoo!, not surprisingly, rejected the offer from Microsoft on Monday, and it seems that they have engaged in active discussions with News Group to prevent a hostile takeover from Microsoft.

It actually reminded me of a Chinese movie that I’ve just watched last weekend.

In the movie, a lady quarrelled with her husband and moved out, and she regretted later on. In order to win her husband back, she actually asked a colleague of her who have absolutely no interest in her, to pretend to be her new boyfriend and showed off in front of her husband. Eventually, her husband got jealous and they two become a happy family again.

I am pretty sure that is not the only movie that talked about a scenario like that, in fact, it is pretty typical in many movies that I’ve watched. And right now, this is analogous to the takeover battle between the largest IT enterprises in the world.

Yahoo! was once the best search engine in the world, and ten years ago, many Internet-savvy users (such as myself), dig stuff that we need from Yahoo!. Unfortunately, Yahoo! eventually lost its focus, and when it finally, after many acquisitions and attempts to figure out what this company should do, it it already far behind the new born Google.

As it was mentioned by many information sources, the largest problem with Yahoo! is on its corporate culture, where, just like many other MNCs, does not really foster a sense of creativity. Many wonderful ideas were buried in the bureaucracy, and the company itself has not realized the fact that putting eggs into too many baskets is just as bad as putting all eggs in one basket.

On the other hand, the reason why Bill Gates is the wealthiest person in the world is pretty much because of the fact the Microsoft enjoys a certain degree of monopoly (although everyone in Microsoft would deny that, but how about like 80% of all PCs sold worldwide have Windows in them?) in the operating system and productivity suite. For years, despite the rise of many companies whose unwritten ambition is to take down Microsoft, no one could done that.

Not until Google, who has a search engine algorithm that even other big players in the industry admit that it is at least “one decade ahead of us”, and who have been very successful in providing the GMail services, online productivity suite as Google Docs, Google Spreadsheet and Google Presentation, and with the birth of the Android platform, it is directly putting itself into challenges with Microsoft’s Windows Mobile.

However, Yahoo! is still the second most used search engines in the world with five million Yahoo! accounts, and Microsoft still enjoys the de-facto monopoly in the operating systems.

And I do not think it takes too long for both Steve Ballmer and Jerry Yang to figure that the only way to survive is to be able to combine their strength together.

However, no one wants to sell themselves cheap, and particularly for companies like Yahoo!, who still carries the memory of their glorious past. On the other hand, Microsoft is more like a 30-year-old man who is pursuing a 50-year-old woman, no disrespect, but I think Microsoft will still consider every single penny it pays on top of the 31 dollars per share it offered would be too much for the marriage.

News Group is by no means interested in Yahoo!, although it has acquired companies such as MySpace and so on, because it does not make any sense for Rupert Murdoch to step in the hot battle zone between Microsoft and Google at this point of time, when he does not have the expertise nor the experience after the purchasing Yahoo!.

On Thursday, Microsoft announced the big senior management shuffling to get ready to take over, and rumours is that Microsoft is ready to go again with another proposal of about 35 per share.

So, time for Micro-hoo? Or Ya-soft?

OMG, this is probably the most expensive PC that I’ve ever seen:

• GIGABYTE 3D Mercury GZ-FW1CA-AJS Silver Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case – Retail – $399
• Custom Case Painting by Gary Berg – $1500
• Asus P5N-T Deluxe Motherboard – NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI, Socket 775, ATX, Audio, PCI Express 2.0, Gigabit LAN, S/PDIF, USB 2.0, Firewire, eSATA, RAID – $299.99
• Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 Processor BX80569QX9650A – 45nm, 3.0GHz, 12MB Cache, 1333MHz FSB, Yorkfield XE, Quad-Core, Retail, Socket 775, Processor with Fan – $1,199.99
• 2 CORSAIR 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory – $228
• Ultra X3 ULT40070 1600-Watt Power Supply – ATX, SATA-Ready, PCI-E Ready, Energy Efficient, Modular – $499.99
• 2 SUPER TALENT FSD28GC25M 2.5″ 128GB SATA Internal Solid state disk (SSD) – $6,259.00
• Adaptec RAID 3405 – $390
• 4 Cheetah® 15K.5 SAS 3Gb/s 300-GB Hard Drive – ST3300655SS – $3,931.20
• SimpleTech Duo Pro Drive – $259.99
• 2 SUPER MULTI BLUE BLU-RAY^TM / HD DVD^TM READER – 1,999.98
• Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Fatality Platinum – $179.99
• EVGA GeForce 8800 Ultra Video Card – 768MB DDR3, PCI Express, SLI Ready, (Dual Link) Dual DVI, HDTV, Video Card – 629.99
• 2 NEC LCD2490WUXi-BK 24.1″ Widescreen LCD Monitor – 16ms, 800:1, WUXGA 1920×1200, DVI-D, DVI-I, VGA, Black, Height Adjustable, Swivel, 16:10 Aspect Ratio – $2,577.98
• Ultra Internal 3.5″ Floppy Drive w/Multi Card Reader Black – $29.99
• Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 – $629.99
• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate – $379
• Adobe Master Collection CS3 – $2,750.99
• EA Crysis – $49.99
• Microsoft Flight Simulator X Deluxe – $59.99
• Call of Duty 4 – $59.99
• Half Life 2: Orange Box – $61.99
• Battlefield 2142 Deluxe Edition – $30.99
• Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0 – 73.99
• Canon Pixma MP970 Printer – $299.99
• Logitech diNovo Edge Keyboard – $199.99
• MX Air^TM Rechargeable Cordless Air Mouse – $149.99
• Logitech Z-5500 THX Certified 5.1 500-watt Dolby Digital & DTS Hardware Decoding Speaker System – 209.99
• Tripplite Isobar / 12 Outlets / 5700 Joules / Power Center – 290.99
• Cables Unlimited UV Reactive Mode Kit with Dual Tube UV CCFL Lights, Fans, Floppy Cable and ATA133 Cable – $26.99
• Vantec UV Reactive Motherboard Slot Protector – Green – $4.99
• Labor for building and troubleshooting — 100 hrs at $50/hr – $5,000

TOTAL ESTIMATED RETAIL VALUE: $30,666.91

If you want to make it yours, details are available here:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141628/article.html

I watched this video 3 times, and just could not stop loving it.

Truly brilliant speaker, speaking about a simple idea that often programmers missed: simple is the best!

Earlier last month, I made a purchase on Paypal (yes, I did make it), and it turned out to be that Paypal thought anyone but not me was making the transaction:

As a result, my account was being disabled and I can not purchase any stuff on EBay, which is something I used to use on a daily basis.

It took them two weeks to finally sent me the location confirmation mail, to enter the code that verifies I am, well, me. Since I do not have a landed line.

The only thing that I was thinking about is: during this whole process, I can still change my address, phone number and even email. Using the theory from Paypal, if someone has already had access to my account and made purchases, why can’t they be smart enough to alter my profile information so that all verification details will match what they have??????

With one whole night of work and thinking I almost lost all my data, I am gladly announced here that my website, www.anyizhu.com, has completed the upgrade into the latest WordPress version of 2.3.1. Several things from my upgrade experience:

1. Backup the database. I was trying to get things done first and did not backup the database and files, and almost lost everything as a result of that. In fact, at one point of time, I thought I did lost everything. Fortunately, the most important plugin and theme folders in wp-content were not damaged and the backend SQL database were upgraded without any problem.

2. For some reason, Keith’s WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin did not work for my site:

http://techie-buzz.com/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade-plugin-update.html

Having said that though, it does not necessary the entire plugin does not work. In fact, it worked for many people as far as I know.

3. During the process of using Keith’s plugin, the backup files are available for you to download. Note that if you have the Windows Extractors for zip files, the folder seems to be empty when you open them. Do not worry, extract the files using the right-click functionality in WinRAR and the files would be seen.

For the latest release notes for WordPress, please take a look at this website:

http://wordpress.org/development/2007/10/wordpress-231/

WordPress, simply the best blogging software in the world