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February 12, 2008

Microsoft Patch Tuesday for February 2008

Microsoft releases updates for Windows and Office today.

As usual, the updates are available through the Automatic Updates, or through Microsoft update site.
http://www.microsoft.com/protect/computer/updates/bulletins/200802.mspx

Microsoft Office 2004 11.4.0 update for Mac is available (12MB).

Related news:
Microsoft’s workaround for security issues in Microsoft Office 2008 installer.
http://www.officeformac.com/blog/Security-issue-in-Mac-Office-2008-Installer

Microsoft Auto Update

No updates for Microsoft Office 2008.

February 1, 2008

Yahoo! Responds to Microsoft’s Takeover Bid

Microsoft to Buy Yahoo!

Yahoo! has responded to Microsoft’s takeover bid.

Yahoo! Board of Directors to Evaluate Unsolicited Proposal From Microsoft

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Feb 01, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today said that it has received an unsolicited proposal from Microsoft to acquire the Company. The Company said that its Board of Directors will evaluate this proposal carefully and promptly in the context of Yahoo!’s strategic plans and pursue the best course of action to maximize long-term value for shareholders.

read more

Yahoo! stock gains $9.20 as the market closes today (Friday, February 1st, 2008).

February 1, 2008

Microsoft Bids on Hostile Takeover for Yahoo!

Microsoft has made their intentions clear, they want to assimilate Yahoo!. Microsoft has been approaching Yahoo! in 2006 and 2007 for some kind of partnerships and even a merger. Yahoo! has been rejecting the proposals, and now Microsoft is moving in for the hostile takeover. Now it is up to Microsoft and Yahoo! shareholders to decide the fate of this hostile takeover. This reminds me of Futurama episode “Future Stock“.

Microsoft to Buy Yahoo!

Breaking news on the tech industry as Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 billion in stock and cash. As reported, Microsoft would pay shareholders $31 per share. Yahoo! share closed on $19.18 on Thursday January 31st, 2008.

Microsoft Press Release:

REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 1, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) today announced that it has made a proposal to the Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) Board of Directors to acquire all the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per share consideration of $31 representing a total equity value of approximately $44.6 billion. Microsoft’s proposal would allow the Yahoo! shareholders to elect to receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft common stock, with the total consideration payable to Yahoo! shareholders consisting of one-half cash and one-half Microsoft common stock. The offer represents a 62 percent premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock on Jan. 31, 2008.

“We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “We believe our combination will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders and better choice and innovation to our customers and industry partners.”

Microsoft’s consistent belief has been that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! clearly represents the best way to deliver maximum value to our respective shareholders, as well as create a more efficient and competitive company that would provide greater value and service to our customers. In late 2006 and early 2007, we jointly explored a broad range of ways in which our two companies might work together. These discussions were based on a vision that the online businesses of Microsoft and Yahoo! should be aligned in some way to create a more effective competitor in the online marketplace. We discussed a number of alternatives ranging from commercial partnerships to a merger proposal, which you rejected. While a commercial partnership may have made sense at one time, Microsoft believes that the only alternative now is the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! that we are proposing.

read more

CNBC: Microsoft Makes $44.6 Billion Bid for Yahoo
CNN: Microsoft bids $45 billion for Yahoo
Reuters: Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion

This would be interesting, because Yahoo! owns numbers of widely used services such as Flickr, del.icio.us, Yahoo! Mail, and others. As a matter of fact, 37prime.com (my site) is hosted by Yahoo! Web Hosting.

to be continued!

January 8, 2008

First Glance at Canon HG10 AVCHD 40GB High Definition Camcorder

UPS delivered the Canon HG10 AVCHD 40GB High Definition Camcorder just a few hours prior to this post. Thanks to Amazon.com for prompt service and UPS for actually delivering the camcorder one day early.

The price @ Amazon.com is $761.60 at the time of this post.

I use iMovie ’08 and Sony Vegas to import the videos.

I need to spend more time using this camcorder to write a more thorough review. In the mean time, check the pictures below.

The other camcorder is Panasonic HDC-SD5.

January 8, 2008

Great comment on Word on Slashdot…

This pretty much sums up my experiences with Microsoft Word:

The way it works isn’t the problem

I read TFA, and these guys seem to be worried about the wrong thing. Word menus, etc, are easy enough to deal with. What makes it a god-forsaken piece of s**t are all the bugs. Documents are always getting corrupted, figures don’t do where you want and stay there, can’t save sometimes for no apparent reason, the entire thing just bombs out, etc. We had a “Platinum Support Ticket” or some similar nonsense open on Word for a few years. The upshot, direct from a Microsoft senior support line, was that if we wanted documents to not get corrupted, was to print it out on paper, make sure it was right, then use a scanner and save it as a TIFF. Thanks, that’s good advice.

What is so pathetic is that I have ordinary technical documents from the late 50’s and 60’s that are laid out better, have better graphics, and are still perfectly readable today. While at the same time, a Word document I saved last week either can’t be opened, or has all the symbols corrupted.

Brett

I have seen too many tech articles talking about how great the new Office 2007 is with is “Innovative” new ribbon interface. For gods sake, Microsoft fix Word from being the piece of crap that it is. If Microsoft could fix the program from mangling long documents, then maybe I’d be more excited about their lame new ribbons.

The Article where the comment was quoted from:
Slashdot.org – Goodbye Cruel Word

January 6, 2008

Windows XP SP3 Beta, Note The “Beta” Part.

I knew it might happen, but I did it anyway. On many occasions, I tend to place myself at the the cutting edge and the bleeding edge of technology. In this case, it is all about Windows XP Service Pack 3 Beta. Yes, I know that it is a Beta release. Yes I read through Microsoft’s notes regarding the beta release. I told myself, “What could go wrong? Windows XP Service Pack 3 Beta is a collection of security patches and then some. Nothing is gonna go wrong.”

The first install on a relatively new computer encounters zero problems so far. The second computer also encounters zero problems to date. So I installed SP3 on a freshly installed Windows XP with SP2 on a Gateway laptop. Everything seems to be working normally with the exceptions of the audio driver. For some reasons, the system wouldn’t load the audio driver. I tried to reinstall the audio driver, but it wouldn’t install at all. OK, that’s just a minor setback, but it’d be a lot nicer to have audio on the laptop. After an hour of troubleshooting, it appeared that there’s some incompatibilities with Windows XP SP3 Beta and RealTek HD Audio driver. I then fresh install Windows XP with SP2 on the Gateway laptop to get it properly working again. No SP3 for this laptop.

Some friends called me and told me that their computer was not working. I finally got to their place and work on the computer. Found out that many things went wrong with this Compaq computer. I tried system restore, but it was not much help. After uninstalling and re-installing device drivers and applications, the computer is working again. Took me a good 3 hours to get that computer up and running again; without having to reinstall the system. For some reasons, I had the idea on installing Windows XP SP3 Beta on this computer. It took a little bit over 30 minutes for SP3 installations, and the computer rebooted. Then the computer rebooted. Then it rebooted. Then it rebooted. Obviously, it was a bad idea to install Windows XP SP3 Beta on this system. I managed to boot windows into Safe Mode, and uninstall SP3 Beta.

The lesson is that Windows XP SP3 Beta is still a “Beta”. It still has some kinks to be worked out.

December 11, 2007

Microsoft Patch Tuesday – December 2007

Yep, it’s that time of the month again. Not that one! It’s Microsoft Patch Tuesday.

The usual updates for Windows and Microsoft Office.

…too lazy to copy and paste the details for now…… I’ll update this later.