35 articles in this selection
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| 2010/04/27 Enemy Lurks in Briefings on Afghan War - PowerPoint
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul last summer that was meant to portray the complexity of American military strategy, but looked more like a bowl of spaghetti. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, center, in Kabul in March. He gets PowerPoint printouts the night before staff meetings.
“When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,” General McChrystal dryly remarked, one of his advisers recalled, as the room erupted in laughter....
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| 2010/04/27 PowerPoint Makes You Dumb
In August 2003, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board at NASA released Volume 1 of its report on why the space shuttle crashed. As expected, the ship's foam insulation was the main cause of the disaster. But the board also fingered another unusual culprit: PowerPoint, Microsoft's well-known ''slideware'' program....
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| 2010/03/05 IE6 Funeral
Internet Explorer Six, resident of the interwebs for over 8 years, died the morning of March 1, 2010 in Mountain View, California, as a result of a workplace injury sustained at the headquarters of Google, Inc. Internet Explorer Six, known to friends and family as "IE6," is survived by son Internet Explorer Seven, and grand-daughter Internet Explorer Eight.
Thanks to all who came out last night, and thanks Microsoft for sending flowers!...
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| 2009/11/03 Microsoft Research Virtual WiFi
Virtual WiFi helps a user connect to multiple IEEE 802.11 networks with one WiFi card. VIt works by exposing multiple virtual adapters, one for each wireless network to which connectivity is desired. Virtual WiFi uses a network hopping scheme to switch the wireless card across the desired wireless networks. Switching between networks is transparent to the applications, such that the user feels she is connected to multiple wireless networks simultaneously. Virtual WiFi is implemented as an NDIS intermediate driver, and a user-level service in Windows XP. Virtual WiFi interacts with the card device driver at the lower end, and network protocols at the upper end. The buffering protocol is implemented in the kernel and the switching logic is implemented as a user-level service....
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| 2009/09/29 Microsoft's Windows 7 Launch 'Party': Pass the Cringe
Microsoft is back at it with another attempt at a campy viral campaign - this time to promote its Windows 7 operating system, due out on Oct. 22. But you just knew that once they put the Microsoft geeks in charge of the "party," that it wouldn't be a 10-kegger and before long, we'd all be putting lampshades over our heads. Microsoft rolled out a YouTube video to demonstrate what a Windows 7 "house party" might look like. It features a demographically-correct cast of actors: The hipster white guy, the athletic black guy, the hot blonde and the older woman. Standing around the kitchen, they smarmily chat about their own parties and offer tips for hosting a Windows 7 party. They toss their heads back and smugly laugh at each other's comments with that I-could-kill-you-with-this-cheese-knife look on their faces. You keep hoping, searching desperately in the 6-minute, 14-second clip for some relief: A joke. A mass murder. Porn. SOMETHING. But it never comes....
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| 2009/09/29 Microsoft's grinning robots or the Brotherhood of the Mac. Which is worse?
Microsoft, hellbent on tackling the conspicuous lack of word-of-mouth recommendation, is encouraging people - real people - to host "Windows 7 launch parties" to celebrate the 22 October release of, er, Windows 7. The idea is that you invite a group of friends - your real friends - to your home - your real home - and entertain them with a series of Windows 7 tutorials. To assist the party-hosting massive, they've also uploaded a series of spectacularly cringeworthy videos to YouTube, in which the four most desperate actors in the world stand around in a kitchen sharing tips on how best to indoctrinate guests in the wonder of Windows. If they were staring straight down the lens reading hints off a card it might be acceptable; instead they have been instructed to pretend to be friends. The result is the most nauseating display of artificial camaraderie since the horrific Doritos "Friendchips" TV campaign (which caused 50,000 people to kill themselves in 2003, or should have done)....
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| 2009/05/28 The OLAP Report excerpt: Microsoft Project Gemini preview
Gemini is designed to look as much like Excel as possible, so its data will look like a set of Excel tables. Anyone familiar with Excel 2007 tables (which is still probably only a small minority of the hundreds of millions of the world’s Excel users) will immediately feel at home. However, Gemini tables are actually stored as highly compressed, column-indexed, in-memory objects, not Excel worksheets. They are viewed and manipulated in the new Gemini client window, not in the Excel worksheet itself....
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| 2009/05/23 Windows 7 Release Candidate Customer Preview Program
Welcome to Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) testing. We're on our way to Windows 7, and if you like trying out pre-release software, now’s your chance. You get to see what's coming, and we get to see if our changes and fixes from the Beta testing are working correctly. How do you test the software? You put it on your PC, and then do what you'd normally do. Your PC will automatically and anonymously send our engineers the information they need to verify the fixes and changes they made based on the Windows 7 Beta tests....
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| 2009/05/06 Borland fights big brain suck
Borland last week filed suit against Microsoft, alleging that the Redmond, Wash., giant has been systematically recruiting Borland developers in an attempt to eliminate the company as a competitor. Microsoft and Borland are rivals in the budding Java and Internet tools markets....
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| 2009/05/06 Top 20 tracks remixed by Microsoft Songsmith
Below, here is our Top 20 tracks remixed by Songsmith. This post comes with a health warning. Listening to them all as I have just done might make you go a bit doolally. Please use the comments section to send in some of your favourites too.
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| 2009/04/21 Handling Early Arriving Facts in SQL Server Integration Services SSIS
We typically use the Lookup Data Flow Transform to retrieve the surrogate key for a dimension row based on the natural key in a fact table. While this works well, we occasionally have a situation where a fact table row has a natural key that isn't in our dimension table and we're looking for a way to handle this. What do you think?...
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| 2009/04/14 Microsoft Gemini - Self Service Analysis Demo
Watch a demo of self service analysis with Excel from the keynote presentation at the 2008 Microsoft BI conference in Seattle. Learn more about Microsoft BI at http://blogs.msdn.com/bi/
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| 2009/03/10 UBitMenu Brings the Microsoft Office 2003 Menu Back to Office 2007
This plug-in adds a new Menu entry to the Office 2007 ribbon (specifically in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint). When clicked, your ribbon displays the classic Office 2003 menu, complete with the buttons and file menus you're used to from your old Office 2003 install. As Samer from FreewareGenius points out, not every single bit of functionality remains in the UBitMenu toolbar as is available in Office 2003—due mostly to changes in Office—but most of the features you're used to remain in all their glory....
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| 2009/02/16 The OLAP Report: Project Gemini — Microsoft’s Brilliant OLAP Trojan Horse
Project Gemini was announced at the second annual Microsoft BI Conference in Seattle on October 6, 2008, and there is no doubt that it was the highlight of the three-day conference. The Gemini code-name is meant to imply that Excel and Analysis Services, and end-users and IT, will be twinned using the new product, but our pun (‘BOTH’) reflects the view that Gemini appears to be both a brilliant way of introducing Analysis Services to Excel users and some rather smart technology....
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| 2009/02/16 Microsoft Treemapper with Excel Add-In
Treemapper is an Excel Add-In that allows an Excel user to quickly and easily generate a treemap visualization of any hierarchical data in Excel, or from a CSV or XML file. Treemapper is based on the Data Visualization Components also available from this group....
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| 2009/02/08 BI Architecture and Design Guide - Home
This guide is intended for software architects and developers who are developing Business Intelligence applications on the Microsoft .NET Framework using SQL Server 2005 - Integration Services, Analysis Services, Reporting Services and Microsoft Office
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| 2009/02/07 Sql Server 2005 Developer Edition Installation Failure
So I resolved this issue. Apparently it was failing because the XML component was failing. It was failing because I had installed SP3 which installs a XML SP2 which happens to be newer than the one sql tries to install. SQL won't take no for an answer tho, so I used RegEdit to delete the key Hkey_local_machine\software\classes\installer\products\096825A1D2A65CB41B34C8A48E1DD969 (which is the XML 6 sp2 guid). That allowed sql server to install it's xml....
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| 2009/02/06 Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog : Microsoft Business Intelligence strategy update and SharePoint
PerformancePoint scorecarding and dashboarding capabilities will now become part of SharePoint Enterprise CAL and available to customers who are on SharePoint SA. This means that customers who want to deploy PerformancePoint can do so today at no additional cost. In mid 2009, we will release PerformancePoint Server 2007 “service pack 3” which will include updates to the current product’s planning module. Thereafter, customers should not expect further investment in standalone versions of PerformancePoint Server. However, we will continue to invest in a performance management platform and increased functionality through Excel, SharePoint and SQL Server to support broad-based performance management models and simulations. These changes enable customers to deploy a complete BI solution with existing investments in SharePoint Server, SQL Server, and Excel....
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| 2009/02/03 The OLAP Report: The rise and fall of Microsoft PerformancePoint Planning
Despite all the positive auguries, it seems that PerformancePoint Planning has flopped. Microsoft announced on January 23 that it was to be discontinued. There will be a final SP3 Planning release in mid 2009 to deal with immediate customer issues, but no further enhancements. It is possible that some planning functionality will be added into other Microsoft products, such as Analysis Services and Excel, but this will not be based on the abandoned PerformancePoint Planning product. The Biz# project will have run for almost six years from commencement to abandonment, with little to show for it apart from some disappointed customers and partners....
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| 2009/02/03 Windows Sysinternals: Documentation, downloads and additional resources
The Sysinternals web site was created in 1996 by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell to host their advanced system utilities and technical information. Microsoft acquired Sysinternals in July, 2006. Whether you’re an IT Pro or a developer, you’ll find Sysinternals utilities to help you manage, troubleshoot and diagnose your Windows systems and applications. If you have a question about a tool or how to use them, please visit the Sysinternals Forum for answers and help from other users and our moderators....
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| 2008/12/09 7 Better Alternatives To Common Windows Apps
No matter how much you like a certain feature of Windows, there is always someone out there modifying it some way or another. This not only includes some of the integrated features of Windows, such as the Start Menu or Windows Explorer, but also individual applications, such as Notepad and MS Paint....
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| 2008/10/06 Create Your Own E-Learning
The Learning Content Development System (LCDS) is a free tool that enables you to create high quality, interactive, online courses. Virtually anyone can publish e-learning courses by completing the easy-to-use LCDS forms that seamlessly generate highly customized content, interactivities, quizzes, games, and assessments—as well as Silverlight-based animations, demos, and other multimedia....
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| 2008/10/03 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, 2008
The market for business intelligence platforms is moving away from a position of being dominated by pure-play vendors. This is being driven by a trend for consolidation, with several large application and software infrastructure vendors initiating major BI acquisitions in 2007....
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| 2008/09/19 Zarafa - MS Exchange Replacement
Open Source Collaboration, providing:
* Integration with your existing Linux mailserver
* Native mobile phone support
* Outlook "Look & Feel" webaccess
* Stable Outook sharing (100% MAPI)
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| 2008/05/17 Microsoft Virtual PC 2007
Whether Microsoft virtualization technology is an important component of your existing infrastructure or you're just a Virtual PC enthusiast, you can now download Virtual PC 2007 absolutely free.
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