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Windows mimicking Linux ? November 25, 2008

Posted by razasayed in general.
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Came across this screenshot of Windows 7 . Doesnt the desktop bear an interesting resemblance to KDE 3 ?

Also , heres a screenshot of Windows PowerShell running on a Windows 7 machine . Linux users have always enjoyed a powerful command line and Windows PowerShell , is Microsofts attempt to provide a powerful command line interface to Windows . However,as the below screenshot suggests there seems to be more in common 😉

Online C compiler November 22, 2008

Posted by razasayed in Hacks, programming.
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25 comments

Sometime back i was at my friends place . He was preparing for some test and he showed me a complex looking C expression , and asked me what it would evaluate to . I told him what i thought would be the answer but anyways we needed to verify it .  He did not have a C compiler installed on his machine . But, luckily enough he did have an internet connection , and google came to the rescue .

There is an online C compiler available at http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/compile/ . It runs your program and gives the executable for download . Pretty cool and quite handy when we quickly need to check the output of some C program , but dont have access to a C compiler . Saves some time on downloading and installing one.

However, of course this wont work if you are using a GNU/Linux system, as the output is an exe . However, for those users gcc is just a synaptic away 😉

Microsoft giving away free software ! November 20, 2008

Posted by razasayed in general.
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2 comments

Its been quite a while since my last post . Have been busy with college projects and presentation stuff . Well, now here is something interesting i came across . Microsoft has started an initiative called “DreamSpark” , which aims towards giving students all over the globe access to Microsoft software like Visual Studio 2008 Professional edition , Expression Studio , Windows Server etc, which usually costs a lot of money, absolutely free ! .  Let me point out that these are not the “Express Editions” which anyways microsoft has made available for free download , but rather the commercial versions . Bill Gates recently visited IIT-Delhi , to launch the DreamSpark program in India .

Even though i love to hack on and am a big fan of GNU/Linux,  Im not “anti-MS” , like the people i talked about in my earlier post .  I absolutely hate getting into all those platform wars, and bitching about MS and all other crazy stuff like that . But still i was wondering about the “sudden interest” of Microsoft to give away its software tools to the student community for free .

I mean Microsoft is a company which has been around for a long time now, and why is it only now that Microsoft wants to give free access to its tools to the students ? . Is this because of the growing competition from FOSS , which has become a really strong alternative to the MS platform , and which gives people a lot of “freedom”, in the true sense of the word, to explore and innovate ? .

Well, i would prefer not to answer these questions myself ,and keep them open to interpretation . Readers however, are welcome to express their views in the comments . Again, no MS bashing please, just thoughtful and honest answers 🙂 .