The death of XP is coming, and unlike 2000, it is coming with much more fanfare and opposition.

Personally I still use 2000. I detested XP. I truly detest Vista.

But either way, get ready.

Microsoft has already made changes in its timetables. Last year, the company extended the sales life cycle -- the time during which PC manufacturers and system builders could sell computers with XP installed -- to June 30, 2008. It will stop selling XP altogether on Jan. 31, 2009. And it extended the mainstream support period for XP to April 14, 2009, in an effort to reassure customers made nervous by the long delays in shipping Vista.

The result of all this tweaking is that Microsoft will stop selling XP long before it stops supporting it. You may be able to run XP for as long as you want, but before too long you may not be able to buy a legitimate copy of XP to run.

The three phases of support

First laid out in 2001 and revised in 2002 and 2004, the guidelines defined a three-phase life span and created a division between business desktop software and consumer desktop software. (In the beginning, it was easier to distinguish between business products based on the NT kernel -- like Windows NT and Windows 2000 -- and consumer products that ran on top of DOS, like Windows 98 and ME.)

• Mainstream phase: In the prime of a product's life, Microsoft provides both free and paid live support, support for warranty claims and online self-help support information. Software support and maintenance is extensive and free, with downloadable fixes and updates, service packs and freely available support for problem incidents, as well as requests for design changes and new features. Business customers may pay for additional support.
• Extended phase: Free live support and warranty support end, and free maintenance of consumer products is limited to security fixes. Self-help support information remains available online. Pay-per-incident live support remains available. Software patches and updates continue for business desktop software.
• End of life: Online support information is removed. Patches and updates cease. The product is history.

Do you love Verizon's cell service but hate how they basiclly lock your phones balls in a closet?  Meaning that you can't even put a simple ringtone on your own phone without buying it from their approved services. 

If so, and if you happen to also have the Motorola Krzr k1m, head on over to the .org side and check out the artical I just wrote on hacking the k1m.  It's not a how-to for total idiots, so you have to have some basic computer skills about you, but if you want to stop payikng for ringtones that you can make yourself and load on your phone, it's a totally free way of going about it.

When Calimus and I start working on something you can bet neither of us are going to be getting any sleep.

In the olde days we'd stay up for literally days on end coding mIRC scripts and darkbot scripts for our network.

Tonight ain't much different, except we're testing out chat software on the other domains.

Midnight and all is well.

Language warning but I think our in-house filter will get 98% of it.

Have you had your computer for a good while without having to reload the operating system?  Are you one of those who tries a lot of different applications, and trusts the "uninstall" utility to remove everything?  Did you get your computer second hand and don't have a clue how the OS was poked, prodded and abused before you got it?

If the answer to any of that is yes, then I have a utility that will help you out.  Every Windows operating system has a "Registry".  Think of the registry as a giant road-map telling the OS where every application file and supporting file is.  Well, when you remove or uninstall an application, many times, those directions in the registry arn't removed and are left to take up space.  Since the registry is always loaded at the begining of every boot up, the larger it is, the longer it takes for your PC to load.  Not to mention, the more entries that point to nothing, the longer it takes for the OS to realize there isn't anything there and move onto the next item.  So, if you keep a clean registry, your boot times and memory usage should increase.  Queue CCleaner.

Here is a direct description from CCleaners site.

"CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. But the best part is that it's fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware! :)"

So, it not only cleans the registry, but it also removes old temp file, internet temp files, internet history and even removes a bunch of other "crap".  This is a utility that I've used myself and it works great.  Best of all, it's free.  Give it a try.

What happens when you mix an ATM Machine, A Windows Operating System, and a Tech savvy blogger with a camera phone in a public movie theater?


H/t Matt

One of the big fears when I worked for IBM-GSDC in the late 1990's was Y2K.

Something heralded as a major problem from the tops of mountains and rooftops.

It just so happened that by the time 1999 rolled around I was the Information Management Officer (even though I was enlisted) for my unit at Ft Lewis.

I took the conservative road. Back up everything, and wait it out.
Worked pretty well at the time.

This new problem however could be more interesting. And thats the Daylight Savings Bug. Which isn't really a bug. It's just a fact that when politicians change something thats been a standard since 1916, it throws ...oh......every computer system, from VCR's to PC's in to a tail spin

But how serious is this problem?

Lets take a look!

What does it mean exactly?  Well, most all cell phone users know that they can only use their cellphone with their current service provider.  Meaning, a verizon phone only works with Verizon, Cingular with Cingular and so-forth.  Well, now that isn't the way it has to be.

Register of Copyrights is recommending that you should have the ability to unlock your cellphone and use it with any service provider you want.  Before now, this was illegal due to the DMCA, better known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  It seems that every 3 years they get together and figure out what no longer makes sence to be under the DMCA. This time, unlocking of cell phones was one of six exemptions and for many, the most important.  The reasoning behind this is that they see cell phone locking as a business model and not a copyright issue. 

So now, if you are willing to spend a little time to learn how, you can take your number and now you phone also to the next cell provider of your choice.  Natually this may not work with every phone.  There is always the risk that durring the unlocking process you may turn your phone into something usless like a paperweight.  However, you can at least now do this without the fear of breaking the law.

For a bit more info, you can hop over to this Ars article about the subject.

While I don't personaly use it, I know lots of poeple that do use Picasa from Google for their image viewing and minior modification needs.  Well, before today, those users were limities to the Windows world.  Not anymore.

Thanks to the gaining popularity of Linux Distributions like Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com) which are making it easier for for the common pc user to bridge the gap from MS to Opensource, Google has now release Picasa for the linux OS's.  More can be read about this on Googles site.

Ok, so the title is suggestive...Guilty.  But I have to find some way to get you folks to read my stuff since I rarely get time to post.  Sad that the owner and creator of this site has to stoop so low to grab attention, but thats what I get for being so busy.  So now that I have the attention of at least one person, lemmie pass on some great info.

I recently was sent a video file and I couldn't get anything to play it.  Before you assume anything, no it wasn't porn or even a movie.  I have an uncle that builds fountains and waterfalls, he wanted to show me his latest.  So I pull the file, try to play it and go figure, WMP (Windows Media Player) tell me to go climb a tree.  As did VLC and some other video player I was playing with recently.  Ok, must a codec I'm missing but which one?  A quick search on google reveals a utility called GSpot. "yea, right" I think to myself.  I click that link and I'm fairly sure of what I'll get.  However, there were so many references to it, I figured it earned a search just on that.  That search returned some reviews of the GSpot utility and proved that it wasn't some slimey porn site masking itself as a geek tool.  So I downloaded it, ran it on the file my uncle had sent me.  Two seconds later, I found that I was missing some AC3 codecs.  Downloaded those and was watching the file in a few minutes.  Not bad I thought.

So, if you find yourself having a similair issue, video's wil only play audio, or only play video and you know something is missing (or won't even play at all), head over to http://www.headbands.com/gspot/ and download GSpot.

With rumors brewing in the last few days, Google launched it's IM client today. It's called Google Talk and it's somewhat like most IM clients already out there such as AIM (AOL Instant messenger) and YIM (yahoo) but with a few twists.

For starters, in order to use it, you mush have a G-mail account. Which today isn't that hard to come by. Post up on any forum site that you need an account an in short time you should have a few replies from folks glad to hand out an invite. An with a 2gb mailbox, whats not to like right?

Another twist is that it also has VoIP capabilities which means if you don't feel like typing out your message, you can just "call" you're friend using the client, providing both of you have a microphone and speakers. This feature has also started the rumor that Google may be looking to purchase Skype which is a VoIP provider already well established on the internet.

Talk also gives you the ability to be notified when you have new e-mails in your G-mail account as well as e-mail other G-mail users in your "buddy" list if they arn't avilable to chat at that time. You buddy list is directly linked to you G-mail address book. So it sounds like a very neatly done application.

I haven't been able to try it out just yet (as I'm at work) but you can bet I'll be taking a shot at it once I'm home. For any of you that would like to try it out, you can find it at talk.google.com. Also, it appears as though Google Talk is based on the Jabber IM protocol which means that several other IM clients will allow you to at least use the typing chat function. So far the official list of supported clients are:

Adium (OSX)
Gaim (all OS's)
iChat (OSX) - No download as it's bundled with OSX
Psi (All OS's)
Trillian Pro (Windows).