Will these new bikes change the character of New York?

Today, Memorial Day, was the debut in New York city of its first bike sharing system known as Citi Bike. Will they change the character of our neighborhoods, our commuter habits, even our mood? For an interesting reading about the myths surrounding the deployment and usage of a public transportation system like this, read The Guardian blog about what happened in London or a direct take from the New York Times on the first day of the bike share program.

Why I did not buy Adobe Photoshop Elements 11, etc.

It sounded like a good offer for the Memorial Day weekend: $50 off from the retail price for two Adobe products: Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 and Adobe Premiere Elements 11, that is, $99.99. Everything went all right up until I saw what you see here on this screenshot. The only choice at that point was to click on "Place Order" without knowing the content of the product license agreement and much less which third party terms were involved. What's missing in this shopping cart web page is a link right there next to the product license agreement, which you will be able to find buried in a separate page. I contacted a customer service rep through a web chat who started lecturing me about software licenses instead of providing a straightforward answer to my question(s). I tried later on to place the same order and, again, there were no links to the product license (I've a bigger screenshot, if need be). In my opinion, clicking on this button is simply a buyer beware kind of trick and plainly deceptive. The link, I insist, should be next to the "Place Order" button. Read the text again and try to make sense out of it in the context of this screenshot with only one choice: "Place Order". By clicking Place Order, you acknowledge that as a condition to install and use your Adobe product, you must agree to the terms of Adobe's click-through product license agreement (including any third party terms which may appear in the agreement).

Virtual machines: VMware and Hyper-V living in the same host computer

Among the powerful and useful features that come with Windows 8 Pro is the Hyper-V technology, specifically Client Hyper-V (as opposed to Server Hyper-V, present in Windows Server 2012). This technology is Microsoft's response to the established and solid VMware virtualization tools. However, it is not possible to run both Hyper-V and VMware in the same machine at the same time and you will learn that as soon as you try to run one or the other system. It's an either/or proposition, but there is a solution: you can create two different ways of booting up Windows 8 as if there were two different operating systems. The main reason for this is that Hyper-V is a "layer" (type 1 hypervisor) loaded on top of the hardware layer before the operating system is loaded, whereas VMware is a virtualization engine (type 2 hypervisor) that is sitting on top of the operating system. So, the trick is to create two choices (as shown to the right) when starting your computer. For this you need to add an entry to the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store which contains boot configuration parameters and controls how the operating system is started, using the "bcdedit" command. These parameters were previously in the Boot.ini file (in BIOS-based operating systems). Follow these instructions, as I successfully did, to configure Windows 8 to boot either Hyper-V or VMware. Please, make sure you know what you are doing. If all goes well you will see a similar start-up screen as shown here. To use VMware virtual machines start with "NoHyperV".

The quiet success of Windows 8, but success nonetheless

Autumn, winter and then springtime tagging along Windows 8 in my laptop computer, while reading, not without amusement, how this operating system has been a "failure" and a disappointment to users... to the point I thought it would have been a good idea to create a special section of "misinformation" on Windows 8. Nah. There's plenty of pseudo journalists and bloggers spewing rumors and half truths and I don't think I should promote them in my blog. It is not hard to realize that these days a vast majority of tech writers apparently carry an iPad or some sort of Android tablet or phone, so the objectivity of their writing about anything Microsoft is questionable from the get-go. I'm not saying Windows 8 and previous versions are perfect or that Microsoft creates only perfection, no, that's not my message. I share with many a judicious writer, however, objective and more balanced views on how, in spite of the naysayers, Windows 8 keeps getting better. Now, looking forward to the forthcoming Windows 8.1.