As per this report on c|net, citizens of California, USA are all set to claim their piece of the US$1.1 billion pie that Microsoft lost to California in a case filed by the latter claiming that Microsoft over-charged for Windows & its other softwares. Now this is one huge payout, & if you are a citizen of California & bought a Microsoft product between 1996 & 2001, you can file your claim.
You will be paid in the shape of vouchers ranging from $5 to $29 depending on the number of licenses of Microsoft products you purchased. The last date for filing claims is Jan 8, 2005. If the total amount claimed is less than the US$1.1 billion, then Microsoft will have to pay two-thirds of the remaining amount as technology donations to needy schools & they can keep the remaining one-third. How generous of the judge. ๐
But it doesn’t look like Microsoft will be able to save even a cent from this bounty. So far around 6,20,000 individuals & companies have filed for claim ranging from $50 to several million $$. ๐ฏ
Windows without Media Player!!
Can you imagine? I can’t. Sad but true, Microsoft lost its Europe appeal & will now have to ship Windows without Windows Media Player, reports The Register.
I was against this when the decision was slapped by the EU on Micosoft & I’m still against it.
Firstly you don’t have any right to tell a company that they can’t give out a software of theirs for FREE with another software of theirs. That’s just taking away the freedom of doing business legitimately, that’s just dictatorship, when you are telling a company how they should sell their software, even when they are doing nothing wrong.
Read MoreHappy New Year 2005
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2005
to all of you guys(n gals). ๐
May this year be more prosperous for you(& me). ๐
A lot of people make resolutions for New Year, things they’d do & not do in the New Year. But I stopped making New Year resolutions a long time back as I don’t need a New Year to do or not to do anything, that’s what I believe. ๐ Still goodluck to those who believe in making New Year resolutions. ๐
Do Them In!!
Ok, I’m now fed up with comment spammers. As noted in my last post, I’ve been under attack since last night. If that wasn’t enough, the spammer came back for more late this morning, flooding my blog with more. :curse:
So I decided enough is enough. Now I’ve installed Kitten’s Spaminator & heavily updated my Blacklist with Simon’s Blacklist & the WPBlacklist. Its now quite beefy, with over 2000 lines of spam words & urls & emails etc. If you want it, you can access it at my_blacklist.txt Feel free to use it. I’ll try & keep it updated. If you use any blacklist other than mine or have your own, I’d sure be interested in it. ๐ But I will merge it in my public blacklist only if I find it worthy & if I find that you are blacklisting innocent domains/emails/IPs/words etc., I’ll not use it. ๐
Bloody Hell !!
Its been like hell here, with me wasting 2+ hours of my Sunday morning deleting comment spam which seems to have hit this blog of mine last night. And this is one of the biggest attacks I’ve faced at this blog, comment spam in access of 300. ๐ฏ
And this time it isn’t for pagerank or link popularity, but just to show that they can spam. :curse: The comments contained not a single link that worked, just rubbish like
PHP Buggy!!
There are bugs(seriously) in PHP meaning that you need to upgrade so as not to let that potential nutter nut his way into your server, reports c|net.
The PHP Group released versions 4.3.10 & 5.0.3 which contained the patches that fill the holes with putty(I hope not).
So if you are using PHP4, get v4.3.10 or if you are using PHP5, get v5.0.3 now!! ๐
The website is the same old one, www.php.net ๐
Moreover Ping-o-Matic!!
Ping-o-Matic now pings Moreover, good thing I’d say. ๐ Ping-o-matic has definitely eased things out for the bloggers who now don’t have to ping many services everytime they update their blogs. Just ping Ping-o-Matic & it’ll do the rest for you, pinging all the services. ๐
Read MoreDrive THEM Bankrupt!!
Wanna kill SPAM? Kill the SPAMMERS instead. Well, not actually kill SPAMMERS but make it almost impossible for them to SPAM.
Just ask yourself a question. Why do spammers SPAM you? Just because they can’t afford advertising their websites/services etc. so they opt for the next best(worst) thing, they SPAM so as to spread awareness about their stuff. What does all this mean? That they are low on budget. If they are low on budget then if their hosting bills suddenly increase manyfolds, they wouldn’t be able to afford it. And just how can you increase their hosting bills? Their host just won’t bill them more simply because you want them to. ๐ So?? ๐
Well, you can simply pull so much data from their websites so that their bandwidth usage & their data transfer increases which would result in more bills.
Showdown, iG:Syntax Hiliter v2.0 Final!!
I’ve been sitting on it for over a week now, I can’t hold it any longer. ๐
Ladies & Gentlemen, I give you the much awaited, iG:Syntax Hiliter v2.0 Final. ๐
After really serious coding & much fretting, the final release of iG:Syntax Hiliter v2.0 is knocking on your doorstep. This is really an update to which a lot of you’ve been looking forward to(so it seemed from all the eMails that I got). ๐ I believe that this release wouldn’t disappoint you & will prove to be worth the wait. ๐
Read MoreLinux = Law Suits = Trouble??
Are you using Linux? Do you proudly wear the Penguin? If yes, well then there are chances that soon you’ll be hauled into a court of law in patent lawsuits. Atleast that’s what Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in Microsoft’s Asian Government’s Leaders Forum in Singapore, reports Reuters. Steve also added that Linux violates over 228 patents & there are chances that someone will demand money for all that intellectual property rights. One big example is SCO Group Inc. who claims that Linux is based on its Unix & is suing big boys like IBM, etc.
Read More