Got my Longhorn Beta Invitation

I got my Longhorn Beta invitation yesterday. It took me over 30 hours to get to Microsoft conenct site to sign up for the betas of Longhorn and IE7. I guess the site was being hit hard.
To be honest, I was pretty sure I'd get in and that I'd get my invitation BEFORE ANYBODY ELSE.
Just kidding there lol, shame on me :)

People say I'm not that excited to have been accepted. I say:
" No, I 'm really excited. Look at meeeeeeeee. I'm excited."

Ok, enough with the jokes. I really want to congragulate the developers as Microsoft for delivering this beta. I really hope to see much improvements in Longhorn. So far from what I hear, it sounds promising. One piece of information I heard is that they are lowering the system privileges for the default user. This is excellent. From my experience with Unixes, it's not really necessary for a user to be running as admin all the time. I'm not talking about ability to install software, but rather the "write" access to cirtical system parts. The default user shouldn't be able to accidentally delete files for example in c:\windows.
Users may not like this since they are used to the ability to have write access all over the hard disk. But I say it will be better to have lower privilages.

Anyway, good work Microsoft and happy testing, people !

Identity Crisis

I have changed my username in all three web forums that I visit ( www.flexbeta.net , forums.mozillazine.org and ubuntuforums.org ). My username used to be ht990332 which used to be like my trademark. Actually, HT is my initials and 199903320 is my ID no# in college. But using "hussam" which is my real name sounds much better :)

Updates to my life

Can you belive it? It's summer already. Things are quiet here.
I removed Fedora and installed Kubuntu. It's areally excellent distro.
I was also able install XFCE 4.2.2 using the xfce4-4.2.2-installer.bin installer.

here's a screenshot of xfce 4.2.2:
http://img27.echo.cx/img27/7750/untitled0aw.jpg

Trying out Fedora Core 3

I recently had to format my hard disk due to hardware errors. As I can't seem to get my hand again on SuSE 9.2, I decided to try out Fedora core 3. s
So far it is a good distro but it does lack a lot of stuff found in SuSE.

Just finished my final exams.

I just finished my final exams. Hopefully I've done well. I'm going to hang around in the engineering computer Lab for a couple of hours. After that, its a 10 day vacation for me till the next semester begins.

Today my final exams begin

Well, today my final exams begin. My first exam is in a couple of hours.
It's been a tough semester so if anybody's reading this, wish me luck. :)

Microsoft will never catch Google in the search race is because Microsoft isn't a verb.

One reason Microsoft will never catch Google in the search race is because Microsoft isn't a verb.

Even if you try to use "MSN" or "MSNSearch" or "Microsoft" or even "Longhorn" as a verb, it doesn't work. When was the last time you "Microsofted" something? When was the last time you "Longhorned" someone? Geesh, that sounds like pornography.

Now on the other hand, when was the last time you Googled somebody? Or Googled a subject? See the difference?

Source: www.webpronews.com

Ways to Help With Tsunami Relief

Like so many others around the world, we at Google are following the devastation caused by the earthquake and tsunami that has hit many parts of Asia and east Africa. Below are a few sites already set up to provide information and handle donations for victims throughout the region. Our thoughts are with everyone who has been affected.

Source : http://www.google.com/tsunami_relief.html

Do you think opensource software should always be free?

Some open source projects are being sold for money. Some like Xchat are even shareware. Do you think this is ok? I, for example, think that it is ok to charge for providing precompiled binaries.