Bitlocker the technical betrayal?

Articles about the NSA and FBI stuffs are everywhere in the globe and wiping them out is one of the stupid orders/plans like what someone already issued in wiping out hard disks containing leaked documents of the evil spying motives at The Guardian. According to some article I discovered, it seemed that there was some backdoor implemented inside BitLocker so that this evil spying can continue ever since the Windows Vista days.

Also, there is some progress going on from EFF, Fight for the Future, IDL, etc. that more stuffs are coming in on what those evil spying agencies have been up to. The targets range from computers, tablets, smartphones and even your private stuffs in US powered technology brands. However, to be frank, I have been SICK AND TIRED of talking and blogging about these as there’s no FUCKING END to this saga. If THIS is the BULLSHIT they’ve been continuing against the civilians, then there may be no point using technologies affected by that.

LNY Day 3

Again, this one involves the external visit unlike the second day in which the whole celebration took place inside my home for LNY. I recently finished the remix of December Breeze from Reflec Beat Colette today after starting the work on it yesterday. However, right after finishing the remix of December Breeze, I started on London Evolved which everyone knows it as a DDR song. After the visit to my fourth aunt’s home, I returned back home with the old laptop computer that belonged to my fourth uncle. From what I saw from the system specifications, it seemed that the RAM is only 1GB and the computer’s running Windows Vista Home Premium. This combination made it really unstable but of course, I know the freaking 360 products which are in Chinese entirely. They range from computer maintenance tools, anti-virus to web browsing and so on.

Speaking of London Evolved, it recently made the appearance on Reflec Beat Colette but I’m sure that the Encore Extra Stage song is obviously Tohoku Evolved. It may be harder than London Evolved but the meaning of Tohoku Evolved is about the March 11 disaster aftermath in which the song is arranged for praying for Japan’s national recovery.

Next day may involve looking for the fountain speaker thing by ATake which surprisingly comes with the Male To Male Audio Cable that allows you to get direct audio from two devices at the same time. Last time, I confused the shit out of the staff working at some shop as I was trying to look for that cable until I realized that that speaker from ATake finally had that cable but yesterday, I finally figured out with another online research on Google about getting the computer to directly receive audio from PS Vita console and things worked out correctly after following the instructions. All you have to do is to connect one end of that cable to the Microphone jack of the computer and the other end to the Headphone jack of whatever mobile device you want. You can optionally hook in the earpiece/headphone cable to the Headphone jack of the computer to see if you’re hearing some sound from the mobile device. When I did that yesterday, I finally hooked things up correctly. I could hear the sound coming from my computer and the PS Vita simultaneously. I guess that it can be useful for my video capturing of mobile devices in the future with that cable hooked in like anytime I want. Note that the video capturing is still done with the webcam though.

Firefox 18 will have static themes

Well, for some reason, the browser is slowed down like hell due to animated themes. Remember that Windows Vista has animated desktop and other cool stuffs as well? Those surely take lots of resources but we still find them quite cool all along. Sure, the animated themes in Firefox are likely to take lots of resources and it can be troublesome in terms of performance and the browser has to do all the buffering work non-stop like crazy by redrawing all the stuffs no matter how fast the browser can be.

Well, there is a bug which is the reason on why there is a huge resource hog. The solution is to have smaller resolution images so you may have to make a theme out of small images without losing various details you want. But to make the solution worse, they have no choice but to remove the animations entirely. I guess this is more troublesome in terms of performance than static skin.

One brave thing Mozilla is that they have understood that people will be upset with this decision but it seems that there is already a workaround where you can install Personas Shuffler to get the animations back. Bravos, Mozilla.

Click To Run and Office on Demand

Previously, I had the curiosity of trying out the new features of Office 2k7 in the past during my Multimedia Technology days such as the glow effects, the 3D shapes, the more customizable text in any form that replaces the WordArt feature as well as newer transitions and animations. Another previous curiosity from me regarded the newer interesting interface of Windows Vista Home Premium and above although I might be warned that that operating system took a lot of resources. Instead, I tried out their successors, Windows 7 and Office 2k10 when they were in prototype forms and now it is the same with Windows 8 and Office 15. After the beta period expired for Office 2k10, I had one more chance to try out by trial period and that was under Click To Run feature upon installing the program. In Office 15 Customer Preview, it is the same under Click To Run feature but even then, the animations are kind of choppy due to having support for Windows 7 and 8. Not only those during the installation and the program’s startup, there’s also the trailer video that I already explained earlier.

In the past, the installation was done with CD-ROM or floppy disks and of course, I recommended that you installed the previous Office software with CD-ROM to save time but even then, the CD-ROM drives were still sensitive in the 90s and the DOS based Windows OSes caused you a bunch of BSODs from CD-ROM related problems. Even worse is that you might need to restart the computer and perform the disk scan for errors. What a wasted childhood like this! Also, having to install by floppy disks might be even worse because all the disks had to be in working condition and the process took a very long time compared to installing on virtual machines with virtual floppies. Things have changed. From the basic file copy method, the installation method was moved to ACME installation that allowed flexibility for automating the installation. After that came Windows Installer which was the next evolution of the installation technology as we use today in today’s operating systems and in fact, even InstallShield series is now part of Windows Installer. With that, you can add or remove features of the product as well as to repair it. This started with Office 2k0 but starting with Office 2k7, there was also the multi-MSI installs with the Catalyst install technology to better support multi-language and multi-product scenarios. Today, the installation of Windows and Office products is done with DVD-ROM but they can also be installed through USB Flash Drives and Network Installation. Unfortunately for the developers, the internet was quickly emerging as a primary vehicle for obtaining software and the efforts they had done were not great enough for the users. This is because we have been installing things we have downloaded from the internet mostly besides having to buy the software from retail store.

Click To Run

The first time you install Office using Click To Run, it downloads the respective packages from the internet for you but the technology was available for a limited number of consumer SKUs in some markets. Unfortunately, there were things that still needed improvement for version 1.0.

• The technology that was used under the covers was too impactful, it required local file system drivers and created a new virtual partition in the system which is the infamous Q Drive that might have caused problem for some users. This is no embedded machine that requires the virtual partitions that are temporarily needed to run the embedded program from the main disk.
• Running on the first time may not be easy in terms of performance.
• Integration with other software was not as rich as with traditional install technologies in some cases and compatibility could suffer. This may be due to having like a few add-ons you want to use for greater enhancements but that can increase the amount of time the program takes to load.

With version 2.0, it is designed to be always up-to-date and modern and agile. By getting agile, there may be options for customized installation but what we got when getting Office 15 Home Premium Preview was the general or full installation that involved other programs I don’t even use.

Like always, you cannot mix 32 and 64-bit versions of Office products when doing the installation. One thing to note is that 32-bit version is selected by default to avoid some sort of technical problem but in general, it can cause some technical confusion when using 64-bit computers that you may want to install 64-bit version instead on 64-bit operating systems.

The bootstrapper is a small sized file that is both product and language specific. Don’t wait too long though because it contains some specific licensing information that is unique to your account and your Office product can’t be activated once it expires.

When you run for the first time, there will be First Run Experience as well as the Hero application. The Hero app is the first Office app users will run when they install Office. During the installation, I recommend that you wait until the installation process is complete so that you can use the entire product. You must stay online during that process to ensure smooth and complete installation, otherwise, when you start the product, it will download the parts needed for it which can be a waste of time.

There are multiple ways to repair Office 15. First is Quick Repair and second is Online Repair. Online Repair requires internet connection to do the product repair and it takes longer time compared to Quick Repair.

Office on Demand

This one is temporary because the way you use Office is that the data is not stored on the computer permanently. It’s sort of like using RAMDisk to store Office products so that you can use them but the thing is, how can the application start quite fast? More factors include the need license to use the products, the need for declarative install, the need for add-ons and most importantly, the general way to run the application without needing administrative rights. Office On Demand is built on the technology called “User-Mode Streaming” and available to Office 15 subscribers and allows them to run temporary instances of the Office applications on the computers where normally they are not able to install the software. In case the installation is completely disallowed for security reasons, Office On Demand is the better option for the users. Provided that you have your Office account, you are able to start the individual Office on Demand applications from My Office tab of Office 15 Customer Preview site. Downsides though will be the speed of the internet connection, the traces of Office 15 cache files stored on whatever computer you’ve used and the rights for Internet access depending on the environment.

New Microsoft certified courses in the future

Currently, the operating systems involved in the courses have been Windows Vista and 7 and their server variants and I have never got any single Microsoft certificate before for real. Previously, there were modules like System Administration, IT Security and Windows 7 to name a few in which I learnt these before. For System Administration, it is how you manage the complete computing environment like servers, networking equipment and other computer stuffs but for that module, it consisted of the various topics of the original Windows Server 2k8. You can use R2 release which is identical but it has more features than the original release and the R2 release of Windows Server 2k8 is what IT Free Training has been using as part of the training. There are features that the original release doesn’t have but they are actually parts of the other Microsoft certified courses.

There are three levels of certifications formed into the pyramid. First, is the Associate level which contains Technology Specialist and Solutions Associate and this is where your foundation for your IT career starts. If I can start with that, so be it. Next is Expert level and from that level onwards, it is not easy for me but your IT standard can be globally recognized for IT excellence. You can choose to be an IT professional, professional developer, solutions expert or solutions developer. Last is Master level and it is the hardest level to get. This is where the distinction for experienced IT professionals starts with Master Certifications or Solutions Master Certifications.

Starting with the future, the MCTS or Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist certification will be retired. Current MCTS exams will be expired when mainstream support ends. For MCTS, this is for those who want to validate their abilities to successfully implement, build on, troubleshoot and debug a particular Microsoft technology. Indeed, I have great skills in using Windows OSes but I still have to improve even more by trying to take some opportunity to learn the Windows Embedded and Server OSes. The first step for me will be to try Windows 7 certified course as learnt from IT Free training videos which is about installing and configuring the operating system for the business environment and I believe that you can install and repair the operating system yourself on your own computers as well.

For MCSA or Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate, there are some changes. First, if you’re new to certification, you can start with Active Directory course, Network Infrastructure and Server Administrator courses to obtain this completion certificate. If you want to update your skills to the future MCSA, you can sit for the 70-417 exam which is available until July 31st two years later. However, if you already have passed the exams for the current MCSA, you can try completing it and upgrading to the future MCSA rather than starting directly with the future MCSA. For the future MCSA, it is aimed at supporting Windows Server 8 which had recently gone RTM at the same time as Windows 8. There are three more courses to learn such as Installing and Configuring, Administering and Configuring Advanced Services of Windows Server 8.

Next is MCITP or Microsoft Certified IT Professional. Unfortunately, it is being retired due to the arrival of the new technology. Currently, almost all MCITP certification have expiry dates of July 31st next year. Some MCITP certification based on technology earlier than four years ago will be retired on September 30 this year. For the next level for me to choose in the future, there will be options like Enterprise Desktop Support Technician or Administrator on Windows 7 but that requires learning 70-685 and 70-686 respectively and I don’t think IT Free Training has already offered those courses to learn. Unfortunately, these will expire next year so what’s the freaking point?

Next is MCSE or Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert. It was previously known as System Engineer which was already retired and replaced with other certifications like MCITP and MCSA. This caused a lot of people to be confused as MCSE was seen as a brand name. Unlike the previous certification, Solutions Expert looks a solution based on the current technology at the time. To keep such a new certification in the future like this, you will need to recertify as the new technology is released. This is different than the old certification which was based on one technology.

Lastly is MCSM and MCP or Microsoft Certified Solutions Master and Certified Professional. They are the hardest certifications to get because you must obtain the certifications you want to get the master certification. Once you have obtained those certifications, you can apply to Microsoft for the master certification. They will review your experience in order to determine if you can achieve this certification. That is for MCSM but for MCP, it can be obtained by passing any certified exam. Once you are an MCP, you can gain access to the MCP website giving you additional information and also tools like viewing your transcript.

You can visit Prometric website to get information about the examination venues so that you can book the exam for the certified courses you’re in.

Indeed, I had already subscribed to IT Free Training YouTube channel so that I can learn even more from those Microsoft certified courses. Right now, it seems that Windows 7 70-680 course list from IT Free Training was already complete this year but then, during the attachment last year, I already issued the questions based on what I learnt from IT Free Training to my juniors when the list was already incomplete at that time.