M$: "Someone might have accessed your account"

I received a mail from Microsoft that someone has accessed my account. I decided to change my password to something really hard to guess: 7Psv0IbBIVda (no, that's not my cat's name). Then a month or two I received another email - someone has again accessed my account. Ow, really? How? They guessed the password?
Not only that. I received an SMS with the same notification. Later I received another sms from a similar international number from a "bank" in london that I have to contact them about "very vital" transaction. I'm starting to think that it's Microsoft's security which is compromised, not my account.

So keep that in mind when thinking of a password for your Microsoft account. Don't put one of your important passwords there!

Browser Cookies

Cookies?!? No, those are not sweet. Those get saved by your browser into your computer and track you down until ... nothing. Well cookies are harmless. But not everyone thinks like me. There is a law in the European Union that forces you to inform the users that you will save cookies in their computer. Also you are forced to get user's consent about storing a certain type of cookies (most of them).

That's ridiculous! My site is not storing anything on people's computer - the browser does. Then why should I do anything about it. Millions of people have sites and they don't have much free resource to make this functionality. On the other hand browsers can easily add it. Why don't force browser makers to do it. It's just a few browsers and billions of sites. EU talk about efficiency. They throw away probably years of human-hours work time to implement this feature in all websites. Is that efficient? Why people's work is less important than energy? Because it's not bad for the environment? Well  take 1/10 of the human-hours needed to modify the websites and use them to clean the streets or develop some energy saving product? Shame on you EU!

Well it is an effort to make good. But if it does more harm than good then it's no good. Like the solar roadways:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obS6TUVSZds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOZBrHqTJk4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-ZSXB3KDF0
They also meant to do good. Watch the videos to find out why they are just throwing away money. A guy (don't remember his name) said "Put the solar panels above the roads". It's that simple - you'll have a shadow for the vehicles, a lot more efficiency and most important - reliable, safe road surface.

I often think that big companies have lots of resources to make their product good. Why don't they do it? Well it's simple - a company is like a machine. The more complex, the harder it's to make it work properly. It's the same for EU. It seams like a good idea to make an union - it's stronger, right? But it's far from people. The countries' governments are closer to the people. People can protest and their voice can be heard. The EU is too high above. Can't reach them...

So, I don't know which part of the big machine called "European Union" failed, but I hope someone fixes it soon.

So, EU commision - "Put them above the roads"!

Bad news from oracle

Oracle just announced really bad news....

... but I think there is still hope for human kind.

Dell Latitude e6420 true review Part 1

Are you tired of looking at many reviews before buying something and then after buying it you find out there is nothing true in these reviews. Here is the whole truth about Dell Latitude e6420 laptop. My model specifications: CPU: i5-2540M, 2.6GHz RAM: 4GB samsung replaced with 2x4GB Kingston (just wanted to have 2 of the same type) Display: 1600x900 display resolution, non-touch Hard disk: Seagate 500 GB (seagate made me feel sory for my choise many times) Bluetooth: Widcom bluetooth module Wifi: Intel Centrino LAN: Intel Gigabit No finger print webcam: yes Battery: 6 cell 60W/h Adapter: 90W I'll start with the fake/delusive specs from Dell. First of all the weight is 2.039 kg without batteries and DVD (media drive bay) ... well with 2 x4GB ram. They say "basic setup" which should mean with lightest battery and DVD. My laptop configuration weights 2.5 kg with battery and drive bay on (why would anyone want to measure it without these). It's good however that they have included the CPU and cooler when measured weight - it would have been a very bad surprise... But I'm ok with weight. It's a few grams heavier than my Latitude D630, but that's because magnesium alloy case. The problem is that when I read the specification I say to myself "It's metal case and yet lighter than the others" - that's the delusion. A good company should not sell their products with lies, but with quality. I would have bought it either way, but now my trust in dell is gone. Yes, metal case! Who wouldn't be happy to have magnesium alloy case for his laptop. That's a good thing. I'm trully happy with this decision of Dell. It feels solid, it doesn't bend and sharp objects won't damage the display that easily from outside. The laptop is not ugly! I've read all over the net that this laptop is disgusting, awful looking ... That's not true. It has nice, clean design, it's not shiny as the cheap laptops sold for generic home users. Design is just fine. The only problem I find is that compared to Latitude D630 it's a lot easier to leave fingerprints on it. Or to be more precise, the fingerprints are a lot easier to see. A metalic-looking coating like D630 would make these fingerprints hard to see. I was warried that the touch pad is moved too much to the left. It is centered between the G and H letters which is (theoretically) the perfect spot for typing, however I'm not 100% sure that's the case. It might have been moved just a little bit to the right - 5 to 10 mm. In most cases it's used by the right hand and I have the feeling that I touch it by mistake with my left hand more often than with the right hand. Still - it's fine. It should be in the center of letters, not in the center of keyboard. The armrest is not rubber!!! I've read a lot of reviews saying that it feels like rubber. I have a mouse, an mp3 player and an umbrella with rubber coating. The armrest of Dell Latitude e6420 is something completely different. Although it has something similar with rubber, it doesn't make that much of friction when you move your arms. I was warried a lot that it'll feel bad. And it doesn't seam so easy to remove. The time will show, but I think the armrest material is perfect. I don't use the pointing stick often. I can't comment on it, but it has 3 buttons! Every one would like to have middle button on a laptop. The touchpad softure has some good features - the two finger scrolling is great. I completely turned off the side scroll area on touch pad. The two finger scroll completely replaces it. The zooming is also not that bad, but depends on what you are zooming. The multifinter (3) gestures are bad - I turned it off. The display is fine. I can't say that it's good - compared to my desktop Samsung monitor(s) it looks bad. I'm not sure exactly what is his problem (other than the small viewing angle), but I've never seen a Latitude laptop with good monitor. It's better than D630 though - it has higher contrast. It's good that drivers are not needed to set monitor brightness. It works like charm - like it did on D630. The drivers support from dell (and Intel too) really sucks if you want to use Windows XP. It gets even harder if you want to use windows XP x64. You would say why would I want to use old windows like XP. I won't comment because it's a whole long story, but XP is not old simply because there is no any windows newer than it. There have been only attempts to make newer windows and Windows 7 is still not a real OS. It's more like a joke. I might write a detiled guide how to install XP drivers becuase it took me 3 days (and nights). The NVidia Optimus on XP is still bad. With just a little tweak they could have made it turn on/off from the BIOS. Yes, there is an option in BIOS to enable/disable optimus, but when you disable it you can't use Intel Graphics (diver doesn't install). So, enable it and then install driver. The checkbox in BIOS will automatically uncheck itself after first boot, but driver will work. I'm not sure what state should Optimus be if you want to install NVidia Driver. I'll keep playing. Even though it's buggy I think you can use graphics just fine with XP. I don't know if it's issue with my laptop only or it's common but the 2 usbs on the right are really tight. I almost broke a cable trying to unplug it. with 2 days of using it they got a bit loose, but still not enough. I'm affraid I'll break something. I'll leave XP drivers guide, heat and battery benchmarks for later. I won't do performance review because it's specific to hardware used. A dell for $1200 would be as fast as acer for $500 with the same hardware.You do performance tests on hardware not on the laptop model itself. I think the laptop is great. The lack of XP support is bad and it's about $100-150 more expensive than it should be.

MySQL - Before and After Oracle

That never happend before Oracle.

Nikon D7000 - the non-pro review.

The new Nikon D7000 is already in shops. Well, you'll probably find it hard to get one, but it's there. But should you upgrade? Here is my non-professional review of it. I'm not a professional so if you aim to professional photography, this review might not be the best for you. And please if you read something that you think you might like or not like about D7000 here - don't take my words as granted. Just go and check by your self. Everyone is different and different things are important. Note that I have D7000 for few days and I might have some wrong first impressions. I'll correct this review as I get used to the camera.

D7000 is semi-pro camera. Regardless the scenes position of the mode dial it's getting away from family camera. No I don't mean that you must have tons of experience to use it, but you should really read the manual (which is always a good idea). What do I mean? Many of the functionalities are set by a button and all you see is a letter appearing on screen or a dot and you won't find in-camera information about what you just did. Of course if you know what you are doing it's a way faster to set functions that way, but if you don't read the manual carefully you might miss some very useful functions of your camera because it might not be in any menu.

Another difference is that it feels heavy. The body is made from magnesium alloy and there are some pretty nasty edges. Mostly If you had a plastic body camera you might find these edges annoying. Don't be scared. I'm talking mostly about the edges at bottom - where the tripod mount is. Of course these edges save you a lot of troubles when you mount it on tripod. For example D5000 with heavy lens is hard to mount on non-rubber tripod heads. it slips easily. But still - these edges hurt. Especially when you use the menus. So when you buy D7000 and you want to study the menus - use light lens or you'll find it painful because there are so many settings in the menus and you could spend hours digging it.

I won't talk about every button and what's its use. It's in specifications and/or manual. I'll try to tell how easy it is to use these buttons. For example I find it hard to set focus modes, but I might be using the wrong fingers (non-pro, remember?). The Fn button is quite convenient to use. It's so useful that you might find it hard to choose what function to set to it. I want more buttons like this!

The AE-L/AF-L is pretty useful for professionals (should be - they don't change it) and pretty useless for me. You'll find it hard to lock both focus and exposure because you have to keep pressing it while you half-press the shutter button because shutter button is "lighter" ... easier to press. For that case I would like to have "AE/AF hold" choice in the menu, so you have to press it once for lock and again for unlock. Now there is only AE-L hold option. Of course you can set the AF switch to manual focus and you have focus lock, but you have to do it with the left hand which is usually supporting the lens. For me - I would like to use it as another function button because it's easily accessible. Well, maybe using it as focus button is somewhat useful for me.

Settings

You have 2 user settings banks. This is a complete recall of all the settings. It's a bit of a pain to set all settings of U1 and U2 mode and it'll help if you set up the camera to your needs, before you start playing with U1 and U2 modes. And that's one of the "semi"s in "semi-pro" - U1 and U2 can be use only with the P mode (flexible program mode). It would be great if you can set the mode to S, A and M. Of course Pro's also shoot in P sometimes, but I don't think they do it often. Me - I like A (aperture priority) mode. Most of the time P is fine for me. However if you put flash (I mean hotshoe attachable flash, not the built in) you might want to set it to manual mode and use TTL-i of the flash to set the amount of light. Sometimes in A and P modes the speed is too slow for fast moving objects.. Actually you can set whatever mode you need for U1 and U2. To do that you have to dial the mode make adjustments and then save the settings to U1 or U2. The only problem is that you can't set the mode while you are in one of these user modes. To set mode you have to go to P, S, A or M mode and by doing that you loose all other settings that you set to U1/U2 mode.

Live view

One thing I noticed. That when zooming to maximum live view is pretty slow. It's slower than D5000 which is stupid because D5000 have slower processor. My guess is that they decrease shutter speed instead boosting ISO for more clear view. Maybe if I try it in brighter light it'll be fast when I zoom. However one of the best uses of zoom in live view is to focus where the camera can't focus - low light for example.

ISO

If you think that this camera is a magic wand and it can shoot in iso 6400 without significant noise when zoomed to 100% you are wrong. Yes it has quite less noise on high iso, compared to previous cameras, but when you read some reviews you might get it wrong. The noise is there, it's just a bit less. If you are a pro, you might get impressed, but I heard some people saying "what a bad camera" when looking at low light photo zoomed at 100% at ISO 800. One good thing is that color noise quite less than previous cameras. And I'm not talking about ISO 25 000... I'm talking about useful ISO's up to 1600.

Speed

It's more responsive. Yes, but I have the feeling that the cost is a bit less "sure" focus. If you press the button all the way down sometimes it can shoot even if the focus is not perfect. That's not a bad thing. The bad thing is that you can't fine tune this option. I think some of the other cameras (D300, but I might be wrong) has 3 settings - 1. only shoot when focus is perfect, 2. shoot when focus is almost perfect and 3. always shoot when shutter button is fully depressed. D7000 have only 2 - 1. wait for focus and 2. shoot immediately. Well you can always wait for focus confirmation before you fully depress the shutter button. I'm glad that there is such option at all. In D5000 when you set it in continuous release mode and you want to catch moving object it can constantly try to focus and never lock. You better have non-perfect photo than no-photo. Also in continuous release mode if the object is moving towards you or away from you it might get in the focus plane and you can still have sharp photos. So if you have time - wait for confirmation. If not - go for it and shoot, and if you get lucky you'll have a nice photo. One successful photo of every ten situations is pretty much more than zero.

Resolution

Although 16 MPx look much more than 12 MPx. Yes it's noticably more, but it's not that much. With D5000 at 12.1 MPx you get 4288 x 2848 image. With D7000 you get 4928 x 3264. You can't crop that much and at these high resolutions you mostly need resolution to crop. Well downsample will reduce the lack of sharpness because of Bayer interpolation, but D7000 already has high linear resolution. In real live photos it's sharp enough (or the reason is not in the camera itself). Personally I'm glad that I have 640 x 416 more pixels to crop because usually I'm not good at cropping at shooting time. Also loss of information because when shooting with higher ISO settings (noise) is less noticable when downsampled a bit.

Video

D7000 supports full HD video! Some say that video is not good. What do you expect from a photo camera? It's made for photos. It has video because it's a shame to miss that feature with the power of many lenses and the big sensor. Yes, it focuses slowly and tracking objects is often mission impossible, but if you want a video camera - buy one. Even with these issues in mind D7000 is quite good video camera in some cases. External microphone is a huge step. With external microphone you can use VR, zooming, focusing without warring too much for the sound noise. And it's sharp and clear, and ... wow. All the maniacs that zoom to 100% and say "This photo is so not sharp!" - they are usually impressed by video because video is down-sampled from full resolution. There is no Bayer interpolation loss of sharpness, you can't see most of the lens' issues. You can look closely at 1920x1080 wide screen and you might not see any luck of sharpness. And noise. What noise?
Well. Ok. Even with sharp, noise-free video recording it's not always useful. it's hard to track moving kids. With a little practice you can shoot in manual focus. Focus doesn't have to be perfect to make a good video. It's easier with lenses that have AF with manual override. You can try to focus with camera and if it doesn't work fast enough - grab the focus ring and do it right.

Battery

Surprise - new battery EN-EL15. Looks like a LiNiO2 chemistry. That gives you little more energy in less weight. I don't think it's really much of improvement. Yes it give's few 10 to 30% more shooting with one charge, but it'll be hard to find cheap chinese batteries. Yes, chinese batteries don't have all kinds of protection circuits but charger is smart enough not to blow them (if you use the original) and camera is more than smart. Nikon's prices for accessories are too high. The battery price is $64.95. For example EL9a battery price is $58.00 and you can find Nikon branded battery for $34.33, while you can find pretty descent one for $10.84. $65 is too high price when there is no much of new technology or creativity in the EN-EL15 battery.

File formats

RAW .nef file is realy 12/14 bit raw. Previous (D90, D5000, D3000) use "lossy compressed" (although it's not jpeg type lossy compression) RAW format with about 9.5 bits per color value. 9.5 is not much more than 8 bits. With 14 bits you can edit a lot more before you see loss of information. And the best is that you have an option to choose. I never liked when a software or device decides instead of you. If you need 14 bits lossless - set it, if you need small file size - set it to 12 bit "lossy" compression. What's really the difference? Ok. With 8 bits you have 256 grades for each color red, blue and green. With 9.5 you have about 700. With 14 it's 2^14 = 16384. Don't get me wrong. D5000 and D90 use lossless 9.5 bit compression for raw files. The only loss is that 12 bit color value is converted to ~9.5 bit using a special curve and neither you nor your monitor can tell the difference. The only reason to use full 14 bit raw file is to compensate lost information during editing (mostly exposure compensation).
As opposed to D5000, which uses the more compatible AVI video format, D7000 uses quicktime .mov and you need the latest quicktime codecs to be able to play it. And the bad news - codec does not come with your camera. Yes! When you install the CD from the package you might get "unsupported format" when you try to see video even in ViewNX 2. That's stupid. It's not a big problem because you can always download latest Quicktime or "Quicktime alternative" codecs, but it's just not right.

I hope that the "non-pro" in the caption will keep the professionals away because they get annoyed when someone who doesn't do professional photography reviews a camera. Well I'm not a pro, but I really use the camera to make photos. I don't just shoot test patterns and try to get the sharpest photo of a ruler. For me photography is all about fun. Pro's make it too complex. If you are having enough fun, then you are on the right track. Having fun keeps you addicted and you'll find your mistakes and correct them. And sometimes what someone sees as a good photo is not always a good photo for the others. I saw once a purple-orange spot which a lot of people "good photo" because it was made by a pro.

Links

• D7000 page at KenRockwell.com - read this and you won't regret. It's from a professional for both pro- and non-pros.
• D7000 review at DPReview.com - 22 page review with all kinds of tests.

Google Android

Open source? Is it really an open source. Linux? What part of it is Linux and what is Linux used for? If you have a regular Java enabled phone and on the other hand you have an Android powered device what will be the difference. Some Android fans would say you can make a native library on Android device. Well yes, but you still have to make your application in Java. What choice do you have? Use Java or die! Use Windows or die. Where is the freedom of Linux? And they don't stop here - use Eclipse ... Why? It's a nice IDE, but it has awful editor. Well ok, it's good, but do I have to use it. It is written: "Use whatever you want, but we recommend Eclipse.". Well these Google sayings are starting to sound too Microsoft-y. Use Google Chrome or die (This one is behind Google's Adwords sign "Use only modern browsers") ...
Why do I waste my time to write this? Well because it helps me calm down. I don't care if there are other people who think like me. Well of course there are ...
I liked Google before. I guess when someone gets too big, he becomes an greedy bastard. I wonder what Sergey and Larry think about how Google is doing these days. I guess they are just too tired of all this and switch the beaches for a change.

Good luck Google. I'm sure they will get you one day. You are a little smarter and quieter than Microsoft, but soon or later you'll get what you deserve.

Edit: On the other hand Windows mobile 6.5 looks promising. Well it's probably another shit, but at least you can run native programs.