Today, the 27th June 08 will mark the end of a revolutionary career for the man who had a dream of putting a PC in every home. Perhaps he didn’t expect it would be 4 PCs for each person in some occasions. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft back in 1975, will be retiring as an executive officer today. The 52 years old genius has announced his departure plan two years back, was shocking news for many, but I guess is something good for Microsoft on the long run. First of all, Bill Gates is not what he was 3 decades back. Fresh blood and new ideas need to take place, and Microsoft have fallen behind in the online era. Second, that way Mr. Gates can absorb how Microsoft performs without him from a bit far, and he can still interfere if it needs, as he will be the non-executive chairman of the company even after his departure.

Bill Gates founded Microsoft with Paul Allen at the time, when Allen showed him an issue of Popular Mechanics, featuring the first microcomputer, The Altair 8800. Gates did his contact with the manufacturer to offer him a BASIC interpreter for the new machine, which he didn’t really have ready! Against all odds, and despite technical expert advise that it’s not possible, the two young geeks made it a reality, with the contribution of a third person, Monte Davidoff!

Altair 8800

 Bill Gates has also been attributed for coming up with the concept of buying software as a product, with his harsh open letter to hobbyist who were stealing his code for FREE. It seems people enjoyed stealing Bill’s code from the start :). The letter created a big mix of supporting and attacking reactions. The fact that Bill was using Harford University labs, inviting Allen along, when he was not even a student in the University, made some people think he has already used public property for commercial use, and thus, they have indirectly paid their debt through taxes. One thing to note is,Gates claimed “Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?” The answer is, Open Source folks like Linux :). And it’s not really nothing, it many times pay back. Open Source developers are known to be paid highers salaries for their solid online reputation, and the great experience they have.

So is Bill Gates gonna have so much FREE time on his own, plays all Xbox 360 games start to end? I doubt this guy can hold it this quite. Gates is retiring to pursue full time job with his wife in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Some people may be wondering why I’m writing this article, when I have attacked Bill Gates so much in the past. It’s true, I very much hate Bill Gates’ anti-trust and monopoly practices, I hate Microsoft way of doing things, however I cannot deny also what a genius this guy is, and what changes he made to the industry.

I am looking forward to some photos of the small farewell party they might do to him :).

My only question now is, are we gonna get finally an updated version of this?

The book is what now, 15 years old? He is retiring, and this book definitely needs a successor or updated version.

I also recommend watching this amazing video, that I’m sure mos geeks already did.

UPDATE: I also naively forgo to mention. It’s WALL-E release day. My kid is going crazy about it already. However the movie is not hitting large screens before next week in Kuwait!

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Few months back I had to look for a region hack for the LG RH299H. The solution was pretty simply. Go to Menu -> Settings -> Lock icon -> “00000000″ That’s it. Things aren’t always the case however. This time I was faced with LG RH399H. The Zeros hacks didn’t work, no known hack for this model. At least none I was able to find. This site however made my day. The first two hacks didn’t work. I hesitated a bit, and then decided to trust the site with my DVD Recorder. The CD Hack worked perfectly as it should.

Bookmark the site. You never know when it might come in handy.

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Below are some useful links relating to the new Firefox 3 browser that I found interesting, and I think Firefox users should go through, non-Firefox users may want to take a look at, and see what they’ve been missing of their web life.

• Top 10 Features of Firefox 3
• Power User Guide to Firefox 3: Trust me, there is something useful to learn from here about how to make your experience better. If you don’t like something, Firefox is flexible. Don’t complain, fix it.
• Firefox History in Pictures
• Web Browser Speed Testing: Firefox according to this article is the best in memory usage, and not bad in speed as well.
• Tweak Firefox 3 AwesomeBar: The new Firefox smart bar is pretty amazing, and one of the best things in the new release. It searches your site history, bookmarks, and bookmark tags as well.  But it doesn’t stop there. Through customization and plugins, you can actually do more. I will have to give it a better look after I familiarize more with current status of the setup.

Hope you find them useful. Share any others you have here.

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The following is an interesting article from LifeHacker speed testing all major latest browsers, namely Firefox 3 RC 3(Releasse candidate 3), Opera 9.5, Safari 3.1.1 (win), and IE 7.0.6.  All tests have been carried out on Windows Vista OS. So it’s not Safari’s best place, and it definitely is what IE7 can best hope for, unless they admit Win XP is better ;).

What’s interesting is how Opera was the fastest in startup, followed by Firefox 3 and Safari was the last. A batch of 8 tabs opening at same time put Safari in the lead however, neck to neck with Opera, Firefox 2 seconds slower, and IE7 falling behind.  So Safari is best with concurrent tasking, however not very often you would want to do this in real life. Personally, I do it when opening multiple search results at once, but do you?

In terms of Javascript & CSS (important for AJAX), Safari was the best, Opera 2nd, Firefox 3rd and IE7 as always the last. (I didn’t do those test I swear!).

Memory use, what’s all Firefox fans been calling for. Firefox was #1 overall, IE7 only best at startup, when there is nothing more than MSN page probably.

A point to make however is that, Firefox was tested with their latest and greatest so far, while IE8 is still coming back and the older version was put under the test instead.

My opinion:  I am pretty much loving the Firefox 3 speed so far, no issues at all. It does fall behind Safari and Opera, OK! But doesn’t fall that bad to make me switch. Memory use as the benchmarks show are great, actually the best. The security of Firefox compared to Safari, which lacks anti-phishing is so much higher, and it has the richest plugins library amongs all. Firefox 3 has made it for me, more than Firefox 2 did to it’s successor. In the words of today’s generation I tell you “MAHALO!”

Please visit the original link for graphs and more details regarding the test.

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I had 3 downloads so far (Windows @ Home, MacBook Pro, and Linux @ work). Windows went perfect, Linux needed a bit of a small hack to get it replacing the old installation, Mac download broke first time and then went on.

I was thinking of crashing over parents house and doing a by-force upgrade to all their browsers. Unfortunately, things got in the way.

How much did you get? And what’s the favorite feature you found in Firefox 3 so far. I so much like the search of bookmarks and history all together, despite how it could crash on your privacy to some extent by chance. Also, the Firefox remember password now is a bar at the top that doesn’t hold back page loading. MUCH BETTER!

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”

Don’t forget to be part of Firefox’s Download Day!

Mark your calendar, wrap a ribbon around your finger or write a little sticky yellow note. Download Day will start on June 17, 2008.

If you prefer to no longer receive emails from Mozilla concerning Download Day, you may unsubscribe here

The sender of this email is Mozilla Corporation, 1981 Landings Drive, Bldg. K, Mountain View, CA 94043-0801.”

Mark you calendar, iPhone, HTC, sticky notes, or any other way. Just don’t miss it :). Next Tuesday

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The Ministry of Communications (MOC) is the central authority in Kuwait for internet and phone, which includes ISPs, phone lines, and mobile operators. Such a big responsibility that can take the country both ways. And unfortunately, the way they’re doing it can only take us backward I am afraid. MOC is known to be trying to commercialize everything, that they are banning the VoIP as an evil technology, and wants us instead to stick to regular international calls, that cost around $20 for 10 minutes (including the dialing and waiting time!), and I’ve tried some international call cards that don’t even work.

Below is a quick summit of things MOC is doing, and not doing!:

• MOC Taking on VoIP: Purely because it’s affecting the international calls income as they state it. The only way to allow it is if ISPs arrange for a solution on commission basis, i.e., they control the price, and take part of the money! I can only guess how competitive that can be.
• After years and years of hearing about the Fiber Optics. It’s being layed down, installed, soon we will have it. News last year spread fast about activating and giving Fiber Optics accounts for users in South Surra. This didn’t even last for 2 days before MOC stopped giving new accounts. I didn’t follow up really what happened then, but some people tell me know the ministry stopped installing new fibers for one reason or another.
• Audit Bureau blows up 140 million KD  ($526.5 m) of pending money collections from the MOC side. So if you’re so much after our VoIP money, why didn’t you do something about this? Ohh, probably this is all because of us geeks. MOC was busy fighting VoIP, bloggers, and other sort of evil stuff that they forgot about their 140 million KDs! But did they stand still when they heard the news?
• MOC started disconnecting phone lines without any prior notice, with the excuse of system failure or miscommunication between departments in the ministry of COMMUNICATIONS! The same news story tells how even people who paid their bills are not getting the service back yet! So you’re ready to disconnect now and collect the bills, but you don’t know how to turn it back on?
• MOC is taking legal action now to recover the slept over 140 million KDs.

God bless MOC.

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