Microsoft Surface from Mathew Hoy on Vimeo.

Apple just hit the market again with it’s brand new iPad. Whats up with microsoft? This article from New York Times, written by Dick Brass, Microsoft’s former vice president 1997-2004

AS they marvel at Apple’s new iPad tablet computer, the technorati seem to be focusing on where this leaves Amazon’s popular e-book business. But the much more important question is why Microsoft, America’s most famous and prosperous technology company, no longer brings us the future, whether it’s tablet computers like the iPad, e-books like Amazon’s Kindle, smartphones like the BlackBerry and iPhone, search engines like Google, digital music systems like iPod and iTunes or popular Web services like Facebook and Twitter.

Some people take joy in Microsoft’s struggles, as the popular view in recent years paints the company as an unrepentant intentional monopolist. Good riddance if it fails. But those of us who worked there know it differently. At worst, you can say it’s a highly repentant, largely accidental monopolist. It employs thousands of the smartest, most capable engineers in the world. More than any other firm, it made using computers both ubiquitous and affordable. Microsoft’s Windows operating system and Office applications suite still utterly rule their markets.

The company’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, has continued to deliver huge profits. They totaled well over $100 billion in the past 10 years alone and help sustain the economies of Seattle, Washington State and the nation as a whole. Its founder, Bill Gates, is not only the most generous philanthropist in history, but has also inspired thousands of his employees to give generously themselves. No one in his right mind should wish Microsoft failure.

And yet it is failing, even as it reports record earnings. As the fellow who tried (and largely failed) to make tablet PCs and e-books happen at Microsoft a decade ago, I could say this is because the company placed too much faith in people like me. But the decline is so broad and so striking that it would be presumptuous of me to take responsibility for it.

Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator. Its products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason. Its image has never recovered from the antitrust prosecution of the 1990s. Its marketing has been inept for years; remember the 2008 ad in which Bill Gates was somehow persuaded to literally wiggle his behind at the camera?

While Apple continues to gain market share in many products, Microsoft has lost share in Web browsers, high-end laptops and smartphones. Despite billions in investment, its Xbox line is still at best an equal contender in the game console business. It first ignored and then stumbled in personal music players until that business was locked up by Apple.

Microsoft’s huge profits — $6.7 billion for the past quarter — come almost entirely from Windows and Office programs first developed decades ago. Like G.M. with its trucks and S.U.V.’s, Microsoft can’t count on these venerable products to sustain it forever. Perhaps worst of all, Microsoft is no longer considered the cool or cutting-edge place to work. There has been a steady exit of its best and brightest.

What happened? Unlike other companies, Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation. Some of my former colleagues argue that it actually developed a system to thwart innovation. Despite having one of the largest and best corporate laboratories in the world, and the luxury of not one but three chief technology officers, the company routinely manages to frustrate the efforts of its visionary thinkers.

For example, early in my tenure, our group of very clever graphics experts invented a way to display text on screen called ClearType. It worked by using the color dots of liquid crystal displays to make type much more readable on the screen. Although we built it to help sell e-books, it gave Microsoft a huge potential advantage for every device with a screen. But it also annoyed other Microsoft groups that felt threatened by our success.

Engineers in the Windows group falsely claimed it made the display go haywire when certain colors were used. The head of Office products said it was fuzzy and gave him headaches. The vice president for pocket devices was blunter: he’d support ClearType and use it, but only if I transferred the program and the programmers to his control. As a result, even though it received much public praise, internal promotion and patents, a decade passed before a fully operational version of ClearType finally made it into Windows.

Another example: When we were building the tablet PC in 2001, the vice president in charge of Office at the time decided he didn’t like the concept. The tablet required a stylus, and he much preferred keyboards to pens and thought our efforts doomed. To guarantee they were, he refused to modify the popular Office applications to work properly with the tablet. So if you wanted to enter a number into a spreadsheet or correct a word in an e-mail message, you had to write it in a special pop-up box, which then transferred the information to Office. Annoying, clumsy and slow.

So once again, even though our tablet had the enthusiastic support of top management and had cost hundreds of millions to develop, it was essentially allowed to be sabotaged. To this day, you still can’t use Office directly on a Tablet PC. And despite the certainty that an Apple tablet was coming this year, the tablet group at Microsoft was eliminated.

Not everything that has gone wrong at Microsoft is due to internecine warfare. Part of the problem is a historic preference to develop (highly profitable) software without undertaking (highly risky) hardware. This made economic sense when the company was founded in 1975, but now makes it far more difficult to create tightly integrated, beautifully designed products like an iPhone or TiVo. And, yes, part of the problem has been an understandable caution in the wake of the antitrust settlement. Timing has also been poor — too soon on Web TV, too late on iPods.

Internal competition is common at great companies. It can be wisely encouraged to force ideas to compete. The problem comes when the competition becomes uncontrolled and destructive. At Microsoft, it has created a dysfunctional corporate culture in which the big established groups are allowed to prey upon emerging teams, belittle their efforts, compete unfairly against them for resources, and over time hector them out of existence. It’s not an accident that almost all the executives in charge of Microsoft’s music, e-books, phone, online, search and tablet efforts over the past decade have left.

As a result, while the company has had a truly amazing past and an enviably prosperous present, unless it regains its creative spark, it’s an open question whether it has much of a future.

Dick Brass was a vice president at Microsoft from 1997 to 2004.

Is this called paralyzed?

But I do hope the result of what i’m doing is really worthed.
Here some summary about what i’ve done, and what I must done.

- I passed all the subjects in last semester. even with the miserable circumstances:))

- Employee Climate Survey
Dissatifaction from our side as the current system “lag” and clogged due to naturally keep postback to the server. This is really unprofessional when we do it to 1500 employees. But cant do much to helped it out, as our outsource developers has their own capability
As a result, I have to deploy the new survey system and must be running well on the end of this month. Thank’s god it’s deployed and ready to use.

- Helping in marketing part. Create brochure, sending mass email, etc.

- Internal server problem
Due to increasing usage in IT in the office, our current server become down on “peak” season. I already identified this risk on the beginning when I join the organization because the last “IT Guy” use XP as a server. So, we will be using linux enterprise(maybe ubuntu, or CentOS) and must be ready on 2nd of February. I have 3 days on my weekend to do the migration. Middle-term plan is we will buy the new powerfull server machine in the next 4-6 Months.

In college, actually quite a lot as well.
- HCIU : Human Computer something. Its a loot documentation, up to 150 pages.
- MMA : Sort of flash thing, my topics is creating Wall-E games (3D in flash)
- PED : CV, resume, jobs ads, fyuhh
- WAPP : Yet another web application, using ASP( funny thing, last semester were being pushed out to learn it by ourself. Now they “properly” teaching us how to code in ASP).

Actually there are quite a few topics that I like to write about. Such as Google move in China, and another techie stuff like usual.
Just when I got home, i got tired makes me very lazy to do it.
Okey, stop complaining. Start to rest

use the code without quotes.

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Since my old laptop last installed xp is in 2006 and I used to installed it with oracle 10g, it’s getting slow even I added the ram. Thats why I decided to backup all those important document to my PC at home.

So, set up the domain for home networking, unfortunately windows gives me following error:

Not enough server storage is available to process this command.

What the heck? is 2gb RAM and 500GB harddrive isnt enough storage?

I checked with the event viewer, it said that my “irpstacksize” is too small to do the operations.

Hmm, looks like registry problems. According to Microsoft KB, this is the solution :

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters

1. If the IRPStackSize entry is not present in this subkey, follow these steps:
   1. Click Edit, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
   2. Type IRPStackSize, and then press ENTER. 
      
      Note Type IRPStackSize exactly as it appears. The value name is case sensitive.
2. Click IRPStackSize, click Edit, and then click Modify.
3. In the Data Value box, type a larger value, and then click OK.
   
   Note Values may range from 0×1 to 0xC. These values are equivalent to 1 to 12 in decimal notation.

If the problem persists after you complete the previous procedure, increase the value of IRPStackSize more.

Tadaa, The problems gone. Good Luck if you are having the same problems.

Most of the contributors -including me- are working on the same college production event called “BATAVIA”. Yes, and myself are the project manager.

Considered this project is quite big, most of the things are done in last minute and huge pressure from all side, thanks to god that it went successful even the police in DBKL request us to shutdown the second day event due to massive political demonstration near our place. My supervisor asked me after the show whether i’m happy or not due to the second show is cancelled. I’m simply answered : Both…

I’m happy because it will make a positive impact to the team members, theyve done a great show ( yes, it is really great, honestly). They can rest after months of hardwork, release the pressure, share the great time theyve done together. But..

My job isnt finished, as this is a production and  sell tickets. I still have to ensure that unused ticket for the second day have to be refunded, and the other things such as refund the deposit, documentation, make sure that borrowed properties are returned to their owners etc.

Slowly but sure, almost all the process are done. Credits to all people who ever involved in this project

laptop

You want to buy a notebook computer but don’t know where to start? You’re not alone friends.
Buying a new laptop can present many challenges, especially if you’re not familiar with laptops or notebook computers.

Over the last little time, there are so much new laptop technology has hit the market. Especially from hardware side, it keeps changing rapidly and constantly getting better in just a count of months.
The terms like Intel Core Duo, Quad Core Processors, RAMs, SLI, Blu-Ray etc can be totally mind cracking or even sounds like an alien’s language to the average consumers or let’s say consumers that never ever buying a computer before (which is they really need a computer because of their works and stuffs).
For the first time laptop buyer, to begin understanding all of the techno jargons can be downright scary and might killed their perspectives on why we need a laptop to get the things done.

Regardless of all these fancy new improvements, devices and notebook technology, you must remember you’re buying a new laptop for you and you alone.
You must first decide whether all this new stuffs important to you or not, Do you really need all this new notebook technology?

Below are several points you must know before purchasing a new laptop :

01.Count on your budget

First important thing before you decided to buy anything I guess is to counting on your budget. How much money will you spend for this thing?Is this price suitable?. I would suggest to allocate funds around US$500-US$800 to buy a good laptop. Well it doesn’t mean that you can’t purchase a good laptop cheaper than that budget, you might want to consider the 2nd hand options but it might won’t last long as you don’t know the first user.

02.Little research might work alot

After locating your budget, the next thing to do is to research what kind of laptop that suites you and suites the budget too, of course. Many brands are there in the market, it could be confusing though but you can ask directly to the seller about the laptops that suites your budget and requirements. And if possible don’t ask to other stores besides the official store, they might lie to you. Just in a worst case.

03.Portability is the keywords

17 inch laptops? 19 inch laptops? I think you better buy a desktop PC friends. Laptops and notebooks are about portable, they are here to replace those big screens we have on desktop PCs. So what’s the point to have a notebook
that weights more than 2 kilograms?it’s nonsense. 15 inch screen or less can be a good choice for choosing a laptop, easy to carry yet it’s not too heavy.

04.Ergonomically designed laptop can help you to work longer

A comfortable screen, wristpad, keyboard and trackpad are some of the most important things you must to consider when you buying a laptop. These elements are definitely supporting you when you have to work in along for a long time
with your laptop. For example, anti-static wristpad can protect you from a little shock when electricity made a contact with your body (Hell yea it’s electronic). Other than that too little screen size is also not a good thing
to spend your money on it.

05.Features and Specifications are important

US$500 will worth nothing when you didn’t think about the specs and just buying laptop because it looks good and the cosmetics are fancy. List what are the things you need and put them into your requirement.
After that, do a little research about laptop specifications that supports and allows you to do your work with specifications listed without run out of your budget.

06.Warranty is a MUST

Just in case your laptop needs backup, or the plug is strucked by lighting or any other things that might makes your laptop die, warranty is your answer. Some of the manufacturers are provide a full parts warranty for their laptop or notebook
computers. Just considering to take a full warranty when you purchasing your own laptop, it might cost a lot more expensive in the beginning, but as the oldman said, you won’t regret it until things turns bad.

07.Upgradeable sounds good

In a year or two, even less, the demand of storing data in your laptop cold be growing as fast as lighting. So, the need of more storage space is important in order to help you keep your works done. Some manufacturers are capabling their
products with an ability to support upcoming hardware even to replace them. This factor is also easily good for you to consider in buying a laptop.

08.It’s quite a long time investment

Choosing a laptop is like a choosing a partner of your life. It needs your love, needs attention and it needs a maintenance. A good maintan laptop can get you more lifetime use, so it might worth double or even triple than the price itself.

09.Accessories, is that important?

Buying a laptop doesn’t mean you are free from problems and can straight away working tasks with your laptop. However, your little computer needs protection, whether it is when you carry it on, using it or keep it in your desk. Some basic accessories might help you to protect your laptop from getting dents, scratches and etc. Bags, mouse, portable speaker, extra battery and so on are things that you must consider when you travel with your laptop. keeping a spare batteries also really helps you when you need to do a presentation, especially when you can’t find any power outage.

10.Confidence is the last step

After all the research you have done, comparing, allocating budget, listed down your requirements and etc, it’s time to give yourself a fully confident feeling on deciding what laptop or notebook computers you will buy. This last step is important for you to take care about because without any confidence, you will postpone it again and again until finally you are deciding not to buying a laptop because you are not enough confident to buying one.

- Multi tasking, yes even browser have multi tasking capabilities. Means that everypage that you open using the chrome browser, is compute the page using differents memory allocation. So if there’s crash on the page, it will not crashing the other pages.

- Google Gears. It’s download static contents from your internet pages that having gears capability. So you can search e-mail or any other data in live experiences. It’s reduce the amount to loading the whole pages.

The OS is still far from perfect. But we will see.

More Information

Is it too much that important to back up your data?

To quote a friend of mine ” There are only two types of harddrives, the ones that have failed and the ones that will fail”. And yes it is too important to backup your data because the storage drive on your Desktop PC or notebook might crash without warning. Just to remind all, no matter how expensive it is, it’s still electronics. Without any further ado, below are the ways to keep your data safe;

01. Organize your data nicely on your computer.

02. Regularly Make a back up,

03. And make it multiple copies in some separate places.

04. Find the right medium to back up your data.

05. If it’s possible, instead of having one, make copies of your data in several mediums like CDs, DVDs or external drives.

06. Name it, and keep it in safe and reachable place.

07. Avoid to having 2 or more copies for the same file on a single harddrive, even if it is in different partition.  Just in case you lose one of your harddrives

08. Buy a large CD / DVD storage case, really worth a penny.

09. In any other possibilities, you can use online storage that available on the internet. Keep it ONLINE and access it everywhere, come on people, this is 2009.

10. DO NOT back up your data in the middle of the night, chances of loosing data or wrongly-backing up your data is very high especially if your brain is exhausted during a whole day activity. Go get some sleep and back up your data tomorrow.

11. Lastly, go get some snacks and sofdrinks or watch some movies while the system backing up your data, because it’s boring.

Cheers,