Pondering Google
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Technical
Larry Dignan has written an excellent piece on Google’s future. Who would possibly imagine Google to be targeting $100 billion in annual revenue?
Most interestingly, he mentions that Google dives into all sorts of markets, but they do a lot of these things just to keep competitors like Microsoft on it’s toes guessing their next move. Also much misunderstood is the rumor that Google is releasing a Google OS. Thing is, much of the Google OS is already out there!! “Google OS” is actually alive and kicking in Google’s datacenters - all the stuff we’re using now, like it’s mail, video, word processor and spreadsheet tools are in effect running on Google OS.
I can’t possibly summarize Larry’s article. You’ve simply gotta read it for yourself.
Internship: Over
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
In the blink of an eye, my internship at HSBC’s Office Automation Department has come to an end. I can still remember about 2 months into my internship, I would be thinking like: oh my God, how am I gonna live another 4 months here?? But surprisingly, I survived.
When internship period is over, there’s surely a burning question: “Would I return to HSBC?”. Heck, there are others who asked me the same question too. While my fried here has the answer pretty obvious:
Basically means: “Hell No!”
While all the other 3 trainees would agree that it’s damn stressful working at HSBC, I beg to differ. True, HSBC’s internship program is definitely one of the toughest, other than Eprotea. But, I have observed that that’s pretty much how working life is. Do tell me if there’s a decent paying job, with great career prospects, where I can stick strictly to official working hours only. Read the rest of this entry »
The Only Thing I Like About Vista
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Technical
The only thing that I truly love about Vista, is the recovery options available.
I was trying to patch some files for themeing (more on that later), and screwed up my shell32.dll file. I could have just repaired the installation, but I opted to format my C: drive. Since all of my files were already on another partition, I just needed to copy some files on my desktop. That’s when the command prompt came in handy. All I did was:
C:\> d:
D:\> mkdir OldDesktop
D:\> c:
C:\> xcopy \users\jonathan\desktop d:\olddesktop /s /e
mkdir command makes a directory, and xcopy command copies entire directories.
After some effort, I was able to patch my uxtheme and apply visual styles to my Vista. The instructions here are pretty good, but remember than you only need to patch the 3 files. The tricky thing is, when you try to copy certain files (by copy and pasting them), it might not work. I had to use xcopy (again) to forcefully copy certain files. Anyway, patching uxtheme in Vista is definitely not for the faint hearted.
Meeting Jennifer Perret
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
Sadly, I couldn’t make it to Tech.Ed 2007 at KLCC - really sad. All MSPs were invited to dinner though, at Madan Kuan’s. The highlight was of course, getting to meet with 2 new SPs (don’t exactly remember their names :p) - their energy and passion were really amazing! Also, we got to meet Jennifer Perret, who is the Program Manager for the MSP Program. Yeah, so basically, she was like my “GM”.. haha..
I did get to hear some interesting points, straight from a 10 year plus Microsoft employee - firstly of course, is that the unfortunate fact that Google (and Apple) are the media’s darling. People keep idolizing Google, thanks to all it’s free products. But the thing is, Microsoft and Google have largely different business models - Google is an advertising company (no, the “Web 2.0″ part is still part of it’s advertising business plans), Microsoft’s simply not. It’s major cash cow is still Windows and Office. It’s major audience? Enterprise users.
Jen did tell us about her take on the Microsoft monopoly issue (quite a long time back, was it in 2000?). Microsoft was so busy building their products, so busy making them good, that they didn’t even realize they have gotten that big. She was a developer on the SQL Server team, and I guess that’s what all the developers were doing - busy creating great products.
And enough already with the Windows is insecure thing.. it’s a total myth! Windows has such a huge market share, so it’s a natural target. It’s just like McDonalds - they get all the blame for obesity and health problems, as if that’s the only place people can get Coke, as if nasi lemak isn’t fatty. A senior SP who’s working at ExxonMobile did tell me, Windows XP has plenty of security features, it’s just that Microsoft didn’t enable them (by default). People complain that XP isn’t secure. But when Microsoft took drastic steps in Vista, they whine like a bitch. Common!! If you can slap on extra locks on your car/home and not complain about the hassle, why whine about UAC?
I’m not saying that Microsoft’s products kick-ass - for one, GMail does load slightly faster than Live Mail - just don’t blame them for every single thing..
Anyway, after dinner, we headed back up to Microsoft’s offices to continue the “1 on 1″ session with Jen. The worst news of the night came at the end, when my dear boss Vico, announced that he was leaving Microsoft to take a few months off and pursuing his MBA. Thank you Vico, for everything, and all the best to you!
Malaysian FYPs
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
This is another rant on the Malaysia education culture.
I just don’t know why, but to some, Final Year Projects are more like, Final Week Project. No, this isn’t coming from a student, but a senior staff at multinational firm. That person seems to think that us youngsters can stay up a few night and finish up the FYP. Gasp! That’s how important FYPs are to some people. I was appalled to hear such a thing.
Even when I look at my peers, a majority of them are doing really mundane things that are not technically challenging. For them, the FYP is pretty much a combination of a few previous assignments of different subjects. For those who attempt something totally new, I salute you.
Sigh, so is that what FYP is these days? Just another assignment with more things to do?
