Idle/Random/whatever Thoughts of a Demented/Idle/Whatever Mind

Well this was one thing that I had thought a lot about. In college when I was totally unaware of the alpha blending technology. So I wondered how the ppl would have had got hold of it. I had this weird idea of having a pixel taken from background and using that to make us believe that its semi-transparent. When I learned about Alpha Blending I thought my idea was really childish. I should have thought beyond. Then came the question of how to make the splash screen transparent. Well as many of u might be knowing, splash screens are bmp images by default. You cannot have any special effect using them. But then I had an idea, how about taking a snapshot of the current screen and then generating a splash bmp giving a nice semi-transparency. This was one among the many ideas that bumped by head at some point of time.  Coming back to today. We all must have used the Windows Live Writer or other applications. If u havnt then give them a try. This application has a nice splash screen wh...

According to this story by Engadget , the rate of piracy of Vista is half of XP. Now should MS be happy about. After all piracy is low. But are they overlooking the fact that people hate Vista even if its free or at real dirt cheap prices. There have been several instances where people have downgraded their system to XP instead of the standard Vista. If the kind of hard selling that they are doing, I feel they are pretty much aware of the fact that people just dont trust Windows Vista. The acceptance level has reached a new low. The only way for them to outsell is to make their earlier product look bad. But then why would not they believe that the competitor (Linux and Mac) would not be dubbed as better creations. I really dont know if Vista is all that bad. I am happy with XP provided by office. I plan not to shift to Vista, unless forced. So the big question is, would you shift to Vista, even if it were to be free?

You might have heard of an old joke called Is Windows a Virus? If not then let me refresh your mind No, Windows is not a virus. Here's what viruses do: They replicate quickly - okay, Windows does that. Viruses use up valuable system resources, slowing down the system as they do so - okay, Windows does that. Viruses will, from time to time, trash your hard disk - okay, Windows does that too. Viruses are usually carried, unknown to the user, along with valuable programs and systems. Sigh... Windows does that, too. Viruses will occasionally make the user suspect their system is too slow (see 2) and the user will buy new hardware. Yup, that's with Windows, too. Until now it seems Windows is a virus...but there are fundamental differences: Viruses are well supported by their authors, are running on most systems, their program code is fast, compact and efficient and they tend to become more sophisticated as they mature. So Windows is not a virus. It's a bug. A sim...