Archive for November 2009

JavaScript - Trivia & Facts

- As of 2009, the latest version of the language is JavaScript 1.8.1. However, not all browsers support the latest version (as there is no specific need). IE 8 supports JScript 6 (which is equivalent to ECMAScript 3, JavaScript 1.5 - more bug fixes over JScript 5) while Firefox 3.0 supports JavaScript 1.8 (1.7 + Generator Expressions + Expression Closures + misc.)

Check this test page & it's source to know which browser supports which version.

- JavaScript was originally developed by Brendan Eich of Netscape under the name Mocha, which was later renamed to LiveScript, and finally to JavaScript

- JavaScript, despite the name, is essentially unrelated to the Java programming language even though the two do have superficial similarities. The language's name is the result of a co-marketing deal between Netscape and Sun, in exchange for Netscape bundling Sun's Java runtime with their then-dominant browser. "JavaScript" is a trademark of Sun Microsystems

- JavaScript is officially managed by Mozilla

- Microsoft's compatible dialect of the language is JScript.

- Owing to the popularity of the World Wide Web, JavaScript is the lingua franca of the Web and is possibly the most used programming language.

Also see:
"Java is to Javascript as car is to carpet"

India, Microsoft, miscellaneous

BigTech offers NGOs software titles at huge discounts

Heard this interesting news from Vinod Unny -

Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in India can get loads of software (& hardware) from Microsoft and other vendors at very low prices. All they need to do is sign up with BiG Tech, the philanthropy program of NASCOMM Foundation and provide details of their NGO status.

Once they are approved, they can choose from a huge list of software and obtain them by simply paying an admin fee. For instance, Windows 7 Professional Upgrade is available under this scheme for Rs.325 while Windows Server 2008 Standard costs Rs.1024.

There are only a few restrictions on the number of times that an order can be placed and number of titles.

Facts about BiG Tech -
* Over 300 registered NGO's
* Number of products donated – 3188
* Value of software donated - over 4.2 crores
* Big Tech covers 138 districts in over 26 states across India

Also see:
Pay It Forward with Wikipedia

Learning Resources

Free .NET 4 & VS 2010 Learning Resources

There is news that Visual Studio 2010 may be launched in the first quarter of 2010.

(Trivia: Typically VS products release in the year in their product names but VS 2008 released Nov 2007)

There are already a number of useful learning resources on the upcoming technologies -

Also see:
Free SQL Server 2008 Learning Resources
Learning resources on Design Patterns for .NET Developers

PDF, Tools/Utilities

PDF Security - a myth?

In the whitepaper "How Secure is PDF?", Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) Bryan Guignard's conclusion on PDF security is -

The only way your property can be safe is if you keep it to yourself.

The site Giveaway Of The Day (GAOTD) is even giving away a commercial tool called Recover PDF Password for free. This tool unlocks restricted PDF documents & recovers passwords of protected PDF files.

As per comments at GAOTD, this isn't also the only tool. This comes as a rude surprise to me.

Sometimes, ignorance is not bliss.

Also see:
PDFZilla overrides PDF's copy protection
PDF Anatomy 101
A Web App Is As Secure As You Make It & the Browser It Runs On

Tips

Resize an Image & Email with just 2 steps

Got to know from Vinod Unny's tweet that you can select some pics in Explorer and click the "Email" button to auto-resize to emailable format in Windows7.

This feature works in Windows XP & Vista too! Right click a large image that you want to email. Choose Send To > Mail Recipient -

As soon as you do that, Windows XP provides an option to let you resize it -

The dialog box is a little different in Vista -

That's it!

Also see:
Crop Images online
Free tools to generate screenshots

Privacy, Websites

Say Goodbye to Privacy

Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
Regina Brett

Danny Dover makes an interesting point on privacy -
The privacy conflicts .. encountered in the offline world are nothing compared to those .. in the online world.

With a story & hard facts he illustrates how our private details are tracked by popular websites -

Google is storing hundreds of .. metrics about it's users.
Apple is rumored to be building a $1 billion data center..
In total, 25 Terabytes of user activity data is stored daily by Facebook.
AT&T reportedly has 20,268 servers. This is infantile compared to Google's estimated 1,000,000 servers.
Twitter recently peaked at 5,000 messages a second following Michael Jackson's death. Odds are one of them was yours.
Digg says that only about half of its server load is from visitors to its website. The other half is a mix of Digg buttons and API calls. This means a non-trivial amount of information that Digg collects is from people who are not even on the Digg domain.
Youtube serves over 1,000,000,000 (billion) views a day. Odds are you are one of them.
The major credit card companies (like Visa) are now hiring psychologists and statisticians to mine your buying data and figuring out who is a liability.
Microsoft is in the process of finishing one of the world's biggest data centers in anticipation of creating the world's first mainstream cloud-based operating system, Microsoft Azure. In Microsoft's eye, the future is in your data.
Amazon has more than 55 million active customer accounts.
Mint Software was recently bought by Intuit Inc. making its combined collection of personal finance information one of the biggest in the world.
The United Parcel Service (UPS) can reach more than 4 billion of the earth's 6.3 billion people to which it delivers more than 13.3 million packages each day.
Each of the 40,000 systems in Domino's Pizza's franchises are connected to their global network. Your pizza order is not alone.

And some people actually think nobody is interested in them :-)

Also see:
Internet activist: The dark side of web personalisation