Author's Choice,General 3 February 2011

I have noticed that over the months (since 2010), Bing was catching up on Google in terms of search relevance and search results. Almost all the things that I searched on Google using my IE with improve user experience turned on appeared on Bing after a few minutes. This is odd since I search them on Bing first (laziness to turn the default search engine to Google).

For months I was thinking it was normal due to the mere fact that Microsoft has acquired of some search engines including Yahoo’s directory over the years. I was not aware that even Google itself was intrigue on this issue and they have conducted a test by inserting fake search terms and fake search results on their database. This dummy data was used as a test medium to confirm the theory that somewhere inside IE8 or Windows itself is a recorder of Google search terms and results. The test will prove true if the bogus search terms will appear on Bing and eventually the search results.

 General 3 February 2011

Today is the yearly celebration of the Chinese New Year which is highly based from the lunar calendar. I am warmly extending my greetings to all Chinese friends out there for this special day.

Generations ago, the first day of the lunar year (or the first day of the Chinese calendar) was being used to take a break from a very long period of planting and harvesting cycle.

A festival was being held to on this day which is just a few days after the harvest and a few days before the planting season. Some even called it as the Spring festival which may last up to 15 days.

The preparation usually takes a month earlier just like the New Year celebration that we got used to. The houses are being cleaned from top to bottom in beliefs that this will drive away bad luck, doors and windows are also being repainted.

 Entertainment,General 14 September 2010

Microsoft Humorous Quotes

• “640 K ought to be enough for anybody.” — Bill Gates, 1981
• “I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time. As the successor to DOS, which has over 10,000,000 systems in use, it creates incredible opportunities for everyone involved with PCs.” — Bill Gates – OS/2

Programmer’s Guide

• “The best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating systems.” — Bill Gates, OS/2 Notebook, Microsoft Press, 1990, p. 614
• “The Internet? We are not interested in it” — Bill Gates, 1993
• “Sometimes we do get taken by surprise. For example, when the Internet came along, we had it as a fifth or sixth priority.” — Bill Gates, Jul, 1998
• “We had planned to integrate a Web browser with our operating system as far back as 1993″
• Microsoft (27 Jul 1998, filing its first court responses to federal antitrust)
• In response to Java: “Anybody who thinks a little 9,000-line program that’s distributed free and can be cloned by anyone is going to affect anything we do at Microsoft has his head screwed on wrong.” — Bill Gates
• “Microsoft Products are Generally Bug Free” — Bill Gates

 Author's Choice,General,Reflections,Video Stream 4 September 2010

‘Kambas ng Lipunan’ is a documentary by the late Joey Velasco (a national artist) that revolves around the 12 street children from different streets of Manila, Philippines. The painting was a modern ‘Last Supper’ with the portrait of Jesus Christ but the normal 12 disciples was replaced by the 12 street children.

Each face holds a story, each smile holds a secret and each eyes stairs right back at the person viewing them as if they want to reach into your heart and soul. The canvas turned into the whole world realization of what really is happening outside the four corners of your comfort zone which you call home and drags you to a journey into the real world where real person live and interact.

This faces are so familiar and you can see them around the world but almost no one sees them or did we just ignore them?

Joey Velasco, the documentary author, died July 20, 2010 due to heart attack and seizures.

‘Everyone knows he’s going to die, but nobody seems to be completely and absolutely prepared for it. Nobody lives each day ready to die; life should be lived to the full each day.’

NOTE: The painting was called ‘Hapag ng Pag-asa’

 General,Reflections,Views 25 August 2010

The unnecessary deaths that occurred last Monday hostage taking have angered a lot of Hongkong nationals and people around the globe. I am one of them too despite being a Filipino and residing on the Philippines, I am at one heart with the people who have been killed at that monday night. For a span of 10hours after the bloody event, I started airing my question on what happen and why did they do that. I also pointed out how incompetent our President was for ignoring this case and even ignoring HK officials on all the methods they have done just to reach him.  Some fellow countrymen condemn me for my action but like the people of the globe, I want an answer and it turns out that I am not alone.

I won’t tell the rest of the information since it is scattered around the globe on all news sites but I would like to share this posting that I stumbled upon on http://www.allvoices.com/ (the link is an APTURE link and will open on a new browser). This have nothing to do with my point of view but a sincere letter from a teenage person as he claims is worthy to be blogged about.

“A letter from a teenage Filipino to the WHOLE WORLD”

As you are reading this letter, I bet that you have seen/heard about what happened earlier in our country.

Tourists were hostages of a policeman here, Rolando Mendoza. After a few hours of the horrible crime, some of the victims were dead including the hostage-taker.

I wrote this letter not just to apologize but also to let everyone know that we Filipinos are not all like Mendoza. We are loving and good-hearted people….

 Author's Choice,General 29 June 2010

What’s in your computer? If you’re like most of us, you can probably name the processor (Intel or AMD, Celeron or Pentium), maybe how much RAM it has, and maybe how big the hard drive is.

When you go to a computer store and see all the bright shiny PCs laid out next to each other, most will have tags or stickers indicating the:

* Processor brand and model
* Hard drive size and speed
* Amount of memory (RAM)
* Graphics card
* Operating system

 General,Online Security,Programming,Views 29 June 2010

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has disrupted a long running online scam that allows fraudster to steal millions of dollars from U.S. consumers for approximately 4 years by taking a few pennies up to a few dollars a day.

It was a patient scam designed for less detection which perfectly evaded fraud detection software as the cash charges are neglected by most anti-fraud mechanisms. The actual charge being done was between $0.25 and $9.00 per card and making sure no card was charged multiple of times. The fraudsters have a total of 1.35 credit cards on file and %94 of the total charged was neglected by the victims.

To further hide the trail, the fraudsters have created a few bogus companies where the money was being passed back and forth. It was also found that they have money mules that open bank accounts across the globe which was recruited by spam e-mails claiming they need some help to operate their business offshore.