VT's Zone: December 2005

Thursday, December 29, 2005

Tech Trivia Time

Apple
Excessive heat trapped in the chassis of the Apple /// caused components to buckle, unseating chips. Customer support technicians for this computer often advised users to pick up the machine and drop it from several inches onto a hard surface.Dropping the computer onto a hard surface knocked the chips back into place on the printed circuit board, often fixing the customer's problem.

Blu-ray
The Blu-ray name as we all know is a combination of "blue," for the color of the laser that is used and "ray," for optical ray. But did you know that the "e" in "blue" was purposefully left off, according to the manufacturers, because an everyday word cannot be trademarked?

Chinese typewriters
Did you know that some Chinese typewriters have 5,700 characters? The keyboard is almost three feet wide on some models and the fastest one can type on these machines is 11 words per minute.

Mike Muuss
The network ping program was named after the sound that sonar makes. The reason being, its creator, Mike Muuss, was inspired by the whole principle of echo-location.

9,475%
Did you know that in the year 1996 Internet service providers grew by 9,475% in the U.S.

Larry Wall
Perl, which was created almost single-handedly by Larry Wall, stands for Practical Extraction and Report Language. Did you know that Larry also endorsed an alternative meaning - 'Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister'.

Excel Easter Eggs

Check out the below article on how to release some easter eggs coded into various versions of MS Excel. One of them has a racing game.
http://www.j-walk.com/ss/excel/odd/odd01.htm

Problems with WMV

I have faced some issues with WMV format. I am unable to scroll the video (rewind and forward) using the Windows Media Player Ver. 9 and 10. (wmplayer.exe)
But they do work with the old version 7 (mplayer2.exe). But a bit slower.
Any clue as to why MS has not done this?

Noticed how the gmail manages fast reponse times to the user actions. Its AJAX working behind.

Yahoo Mail Next Version is supposed to include this.

New Idea - Smart Window Mgmt

I am currently working on an idea that would enable the application windows to be better grouped and managed based on the user's current task. Cannot reveal further.. Confidential. :)