Download Microsoft Windows Vista for Free

Finally some good news from Microsoft! You can now download Microsoft's 'Next-Generation' operating system, for free from their website. No piracy involved! Although this is still a beta and probably still exteremly buggy, it's still worth a try. This version is version 5384.4 I believe. My guess that Microsoft is just trying to prove that they are still ahead of the competition (namely Apple and Linux) by showboating (or giving it off for free) their new operating system.

You can find it over at their website (http://download.windowsvista.com/preview/beta2/en/x86/download.htm) or you can use these ISO download links:

Use these links if you want to use the Akamai Download Manager

• The x86 (32) version of Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 2 - English version
• The 64 bit version of Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 2- English
  

Use these links if you want to use your own download manager (because it is a 3.2 Gig file, you might not want to trust the IE or FF downloader)

• The x86 (32 bit) version of Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 2 - English (if you dont' know which one, you should most likely get this one)
• The 64 bit version of Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 2 - English
  

It won't be long, until I review the OS, and I'll also be reviewing other things like Actual Windows Manager (from Actual Tools) soon, so stay tuned!

Oh yeah by the way if you like the look of Windows Vista, then make sure you visit tech-recipes.com for this killer recipe I've written to transform your Windows XP into Windows Vista!

Enable Contextual spelling in Microsoft Word 2007

We all know that sometimes Microsoft invents ingenious things but doesn't like to enable them by default. I don't know why this is, but that's just how it is. Recently Microsoft released Beta 2 of their wonderful (is it really?) Office software, which is available for free to the public. It comes with the contextual spelling check feature (which means that it will try to make sure that the word you have in the sentence actually makes sense) but it isn't enabled by default, here's how you can enable it!

1. Open up Microsoft Word 2007
2. Click on the 'Office Button' (i.e. the button that is to the top left corner of the screen)
3. Then click on 'Word Options'
4. In the left column of the window that pop's up click on 'Proofing'
5. Now check the check box that says 'Use contextual spelling', you can also press the Alt key and the n key to do the same
6. Click on OK

Now you should be able to see the blue underlines for words that don't relate to the context. I've been using this ever since I downloaded the beta, now you too can benefit from it... especially if you are like me and always keep making stupid little mistakes.

Guide to learn Cryptography

No, I'm not writing my own cryptography course, however I am going to give you some very valuable links today if you are interested in how crypto works. This is for beginners and people at an advanced level... well basically it's just links that I've known and when I saw a link to a crypto course on digg.com I decided to go ahead and publish this post.

1. Familiarize yourself with this cryptography article over at wikipedia.
2. Then go over to grc.com/securitynow.htm and listen to episodes 30-37. Yes I know Steve Gibson's voice can be annoying at times, but hey, he's a guru and you might as well listen to what he has to say.
3. Then you are going to be ready for the advanced course over at University of Washington.
4. Now you are ready to explore, research more about the application you are curious about, such as Skype etc.
   

Now, you can consider yourself a guru on Cryptography, and sure enough you are ready to take on the world. Well, if your asking your self how can this help me? Then answer is, may be since you know more about cryptography now you can be more like this guy (oh yeah and did I mention he's Canadian).

Soon enough I'll have my own article too on how this stuff works, if I can get around to write it of course. So come back in the summer... to take a crash course on Crypto if you are more interested.

Adobe Getting Greedy?

I think Adobe is getting really greedy now. Why? The answer is simple, they asked Microsoft to remove PDF support from Office 2007. Heck, they even threatened to pursue legal action. What's next? Are they going to ban all the websites like PDF Online and tools such as CutePDF, because they want people want to buy Acrobat and flash paper and all that stuff for hundreds of dollar. If Microsoft puts in their PDF exporter, then it is going to work just like Acrobat... but people don't need to pay for it.

The next thing you know... they are trying to ban OpenOffice, because it too allows people to export to PDF. That's probably the main reason that Microsoft put it in there in the first place, because they don't want to stay a step behind Open Office.

The thing that Adobe has to realize is that they can fight for all the rights they want but the problem is that, companies have to stay competitive and in order to do that only collaboration can help. What I'm trying to say is, instead of ordering Microsoft to remove the feature, they should try to work with them to add-in an optional element which incorporates something like Flash paper when you are installing it. But for some reason I don't think that things like that are going to happening soon... because of the greed factor may be?

I hate BSOD's

I was happily working away on a Geo project that is due tomorrow... And since my group is full of so called 'rotten apples' who decided to film it on the last day. They had not idea what the hell editing was... especially if they can't say a single line without seriously screwing up. So practically I was in the infamous 'now or never situation' and was stretching the limits on my computer in order to get work done.

I was almost done compiling all the clips... and opened up Adobe Audition in order to normalize the sound and make some changes to the 'beautiful voices' of people in my group. All of a sudden... BSOD! Dang! To me the BSOD looked somewhat like this:

AHA! Gotcha sucker... trying to do some real work with Windows XP, eh? Well guess what... every time you try to do some real work, we over at M$ decided that you should die because you used Windows XP.

And since we can't actually kill you (until we make that mouse that automatically zap you) the best we can do is give you our most loved and infamous Blue Screen of Death.

This way, we can ruin your work because chances are that you haven't saved anything and you are going to loose all of it and even if you did save it, we are going to make every attempt to delete it.

Technical Information:
*** STOP: Rishi from doing anything (0xAHAHAHAHA, 0xYOUBOUGHTXP, 0xYOUSUCK, OxHAHAYOUCANTDOANYTHING)

Oh yeah and one more thing... don't bother contacting your System Administrator, because he/she can't do anything to foil our plans of ruining the world with BSOD's Muhuhahahaha.

Now, you tell me is, can this tyranny be tolerated by anyone? I say, if anything like this happens once more I'm going to start using the MAC to Video Editing and Sound Editing (although it doesn't have Audition)! And the PC gets it (by it I'm referring to Linux of course).

By the way if you 'like' BSOD's but don't like the colour of it, I recommend taking a look at this tutorial over at tech-recipes to change the colour of the BSOD and make it something like WSOD (White Screen of Death).