I've always been a fan of keyboard shortcuts, using them whenever possible. Today I accidentally pressed the Windows key and D at the same time — and suddenly found that my whole desktop was revealed. How did I not know about this? A quick search led me to a great page with another 8-10 shortcuts I didn't previously know. Now you too can be enlightened about the many uses of the Windows key.

Here's a first: in "Microsoft Office Live Meeting" I got a warning message telling me that IE 7 is too new, try IE 6 or Netscape 7 instead. The irony is thick. You have to see it to believe (below).

PBS's Robert X. Cringeley thinks Intel is poised to buy Apple, saying "Apple's Decision to Use Intel Processors Is Nothing Less Than an Attempt to Dethrone Microsoft. Really." What is a fan of upstart competitors to do when his favorite upstart (Apple) might merge with one of the upstarted (Intel as opposed to AMD)? Course its sheer speculation at this point, but Cringley makes fascinating observations. Since a friend mentioned two days ago not wanting to replace his broken Powerbook, as it would be obsolete in a year or two, I've wondered why Apple would make such a big announcement and risk major sales losses. Hm...

2¹⁴— that's the maximum number of files in a folder on the Windows operating system. If you fill this up, you don't get any more (unless you move a few files to another directory). In layman's terms, that 16,384 files. Just thought you should know.

In the next day or two Microsoft will come out with its long-heralded, major updates to WindowsXP, known as Security Pack 2. The updates for SP2 take care of usability, default settings, and security bugs/holes. A new security pack from Microsoft is always a major step forward… but in my experience always comes with a few bugs itself.

I've been enjoying the use of OpenSSH in Windows lately but ran into a small problem today: "fork: Permission denied".