I was just too bugged working with Eclipse and waiting too long everytime I went back to a previously minised Eclipse Window. I checked the Windows Task Manager and noticed that even though I have 512MB physical RAM, the VM size was 100MB for Eclipse and the physical memory being used up was only 30MB.

From Croctech

A Cure For Eclipse Sluggishness If you've ever been driven nuts by Eclipse's constant freezes under Windows, then this plugin will fix the problem.

The performance of Eclipse (and other large Java applications) has long suffered due to the Windows virtual memory manager. Windows has a tendency to preemptively swap Java processes out of physical memory, even when there is still plenty of physical memory available. This interacts very poorly with Java processes, which do not have good locality and touch a lot of memory. The problem is exacerbated when Java performs garbage collection, which causes the Java process to touch lots of memory that has been paged out to disk. Ever had Eclipse randomly hang for 15-20 seconds? This is most likely the culprit.

I wrote a simple plugin for Eclipse that uses two functions in the Windows API - SetProcessWorkingSetSize() and VirtualLock() - to encourage Windows to keep more of the Eclipse Java process in physical RAM. This plugin adds a preference page where you can adjust the minimum and maximum working set size (i.e. the amount of memory Windows is supposed to keep in physical memory when the process is in use). However, Windows will happily begin swapping out Eclipse below the working set size if the Eclipse window is minimized. By enabling the VirtualLock checkbox, the plugin will force Windows to allocate physical memory, so even when Eclipse is minimized it won't be swapped out. This is very effective in eliminating that sluggishness in Eclipse after not using it for a while.

(Yes, this is an evil nasty hack. But it's an evil nasty hack that works really well.)

http://suif.stanford.edu/pub/keepresident/

 

[Slashdot] DVD capacity wars –
[original]
"According to The Register and MacWorld, TDK has unveiled a Blu-Ray DVD with four layers that will hold a whopping 100 GB of data. This is shortly after the previously reported HD-DVD announced three-layer HD-DVD that would hold a "mere" 45 GB. Unfortunately, this is also on the heels of the news that the HD DVD unification talks have stalled."

[Slashdot] Google Might Disappear in Five Years -
[original]
An anonymous reader writes "Speaking to a packed auditorium at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., on May 12, Ballmer trumpeted the ripe opportunities around Microsoft's sprawling business and questioned the ability of Google to maintain its edge. Clearly alluding to Microsoft's key Internet search rival, Ballmer said: 'The hottest company right now -- the one nobody thinks can do any wrong -- may just be a one-hit wonder.' According to concept developed by Ballmer, the online search engines represent the key points of the future technology, and the leader in this domain, none other than Google, is destined to perish in less than five years. These predictions belong exclusively to Microsoft's CEO who sounds a little like Bill Gates announcing iPod's death."

[Slashdot] Honeymonkeys (MS) for making XP more secure –
[original]
"Ever hear the saying, "given enough time a room full of monkeys could type out Shakespeare"? Well Microsoft seems to be taking this saying to heart, and taking a cue from the Honeynet project, they have created what they have dubbed "honeymonkeys". Security Focus has an article which describes this honeymonkey network, which is little more than a network of virtual Windows XP boxes in various patch states. These boxes are setup to crawl the seedier side of the web in search of vulnerabilities not bieng reported, and are bieng actively exploited in an attempt to further secure their product. Sounds like a decent idea from the Redmond crew to me."
 

REDMOND, Wash., July 12, 2004 -- Just over a year ago, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer established the principle of "Integrated Innovaton" as a top priority company-wide to take computing to the next level for information-worker productivity and customer satisfaction.

As much guiding theme as marching orders, the mission to provide Integrated Innovaton is about ensuring that the value of the Microsoft platform is greater than the sum of its components. It's the coordination of software products, the way entire systems can be made to work together better. It's a strategy to add customer-driven features and functionality to achieve specific business results while reducing cost and complexity.

'Integrated Innovation' Provides Partners with Roadmap to Success

 

LE UI Guy writes "According to the HoustonChronicle.com, with all the hype surrounding the recent release of ROTS, speculation abounds that someone may still take a stab at creating episodes VII - IX. Gary Kurtz, producer of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, gives some insight into where the storyline may, or may not, go. On a related note, Roger Ebert, is also giving a thumbs up to a continuation of the storyline as well. Where does the line start?"
[Slashdot]

 

An anonymous reader writes "CNN is reporting that the Federal Aviation Administration proposed Thursday to amend its regulations to ensure that it can enforce a law that prohibits 'obtrusive' advertising in zero gravity." From the article: "For instance, outsized billboards deployed by a space company into low Earth orbit could appear as large as the moon and be seen without a telescope, the FAA said. Big and bright advertisements might hinder astronomers."
[Slashdot]

 

1) On the Desktop Search Wars - 

December 13, 2004

I call it MSNFS

I find highly coincidental that on Friday Microsoft lets out that WinFS isn't coming for a loooong time and on Monday releases a MSN desktop search utility packing some of the capabilities promised in the new file system. Maybe I've been watching high-tech companies too long and so make relationships where they don't exist. Or--maybe not.

2) http://www.neurobashing.com/blog/archives/2004/12/13/enough_with_the_desktop_search_already.html - Something with which I concur. I think the Operating Systems are not yet mature enough. You just CANNOT rely on training people and providing verbose Help Manuals. It just doesn’t work. You CANNOT expect them to take 200$ classes on Office when they have already spent $600 buying the software (That’s if they have, if they haven’t then they anyway cannot afford to get training). The user interface needs major changes, major improvements. Something that is more interactive, responsive, with what the user is doing. Not like the clippie in Office, but something more helpful and less intrusive.

Some time ago, someone ( Scoble ?) reported how everyone at Microsoft pitched in, helping the grandmas unfuck their MyDoom-infected computers. You go, girl. If you guys - the big brains - were forced to do that day in and day out, you'd see just how little the average user cares about search.

My users, and I suspect users at large, have bigger problems:

Outlook gives them totally meaningless error messages, hopelessly verbose and filled with obnoxious hex strings they read to me, slowly and with great care, over the phone. What Outlook means to say is, "The SMTP server returned garbage, when it shouldn't have", or "Your antivirus program is preventing you from sending mail for no good reason", or "You have once again typed the wrong password, because caps lock in on, again, since you used it to compose the entire last message". They don't know what a location bar is. They're not sure whether they have Internet or Broadband. Their computer is slow lately; do they have a virus? FrontPage just stopped working, can you fix it? And so on, and so on. Somewhere in there, they complain that they just saved a file, and now, they can't find it.

3) http://www.microsoftmonitor.com/archives/005411.html - LongHorn WinFS goes the Cairo way. Another failed attempt at improving the file system. The “search wars” have begun and Microsoft rushes in their MSN Toolbar Suite with DeskBar, pushing WinFS further away.

December 13, 2004

Yes, We're on the Road to Cairo

Microsoft promised big with WinFS, the biggest new feature planned for next-generation-Windows Longhorn. In August, Microsoft announced plans (see blog here ) to take WinFS out of Longhorn, but deliver the file system in beta form about the time the new OS shipped. The beta may still happen, according to the CNET News.com story, but WinFS won't be making it in Windows anytime soon, apparently.

Microsoft's bigger problem won't be the technology, but the public and customer relations fallout from WinFS, which the company highly touted as a new means of finding and using data. For customers, there is the trust issue. The trust factor is something competitors should jump to exploit. Microsoft typically announces new products long before their release, a tactic that can delay IT managers from considering competing products; Microsoft knows how to hype important, new features. WinFS and other Longhorn changes represent an opportunity for competitors to show customers that they shouldn't wait to see what Microsoft is going to do next. And there is precedent, too. Microsoft made similar data storage promises with Cairo, the now infamous 1990s Windows version that never shipped.

WinFS's sudden departure should thrill competitors selling enterprise products. SQL Server 2005, Windows Longhorn desktop and Longhorn Server formed a potentially deadly triad for pulling enterprise sales. Still, as I will explain in a forthcoming report, Microsoft has other means of pulling sales through its "Integrated Innovation" strategy. Competitors should prepare in 2005 for what's coming in 2006. The report will offer best practices for coping with and even exploiting weaknesses in Microsoft's 2005-06 product roadmap.

WinFS could have anchored Microsoft's plans to unify search across the desktop, network and the Internet. Further delay creates opportunity for competitors like Google to deliver workable products. It's now obvious that rather than provide placeholder desktop search capabilities until Longhorn shipped, MSN will be Microsoft's major provider on the Windows desktop. That's assuming people really need the capability. Colleague Eric Peterson and I chatted about desktop search on Friday. Neither of us is convinced any of the current approaches hit the real consumer need. I see that as making more meaningful disparate bits of information and complex content types, like digital photos, music or videos.

WinFS promised to hit that need, particularly in Microsoft public demonstrations of Longhorn's capabilities. Now the onus and opportunity will fall on Apple, which plans to release metadata search capabilities with Mac OS 10.4 (a.k.a. "Tiger") in 2005. Right now, metadata holds the best promise of delivering more meaningful search and making sense of all the digital content piling up on consumers' and Websites' hard drives. But there are no standards around metadata. Now is the time for vendors to rally around a standard. No standard is a big problem. Take for example online music stores like iTunes, MSN Music or Napster, which all tag metadata slightly differently. Digital cameras capture some metadata about pictures, but not necessarily the same way. Then there are consumers using photo software to create their own custom metadata tags when they import photos.

By the way, there being no metadata standard is another reason for Microsoft to delay Longhorn. WinFS would have used metadata as its major search mechanism. No standard would make searching more cumbersome, if not impossible to do good enough. Apple doesn't have the same problem. With Mac OS X, Apple ships the iLife digital media suite and it operatesthe major online digital download store. Apple can control metadata at point of creation and support the tagging in Tiger. Remember also that Apple is working off a smaller base of users than the Windows market. I don't foresee a problem for Apple to convince its developers to support a metadata standards for Macs, particularly if it might evolve into a standard that could be later used on Windows products.

 

Nice tool for taking screenshots, making presentations, demos etc

For user interfaces that need Windows Explorer like look and feel

XML based data driven websites – something like MSP we did …

Native XML database support in Yukon

C-Omega