Live.com and other related email domains registration

Have you got your live.com email? I failed to get mine and it was too late to get mine. But I just manage to get Live.IT domain for myself. The .IT domain extension is meant for the people residing in Italy but I thought it would be cool to have one. If you are in vein to get one for yourself, be it .com or .IT or .BE, but failed deliberately, then you may want to hop over to Helmers Blog. He have listed all the links that could possibly enable you to register from your favourite domain extension. And yes, I've verified that it is working.

I used http://get.live.com/it-it/mail/overview to get it. Basically the URL address did the trick to enable the registration for the specific live domain name.

Windows XP activation key: activate by phone

Been trying to install a copy of windows xp onto my virtual machine to do some testing. However, upon starting my freshly installed windows xp that resides on the virtual machine, it appears that the windows requires key activation (which is a norm). Then without hesitation, I went and followed the steps in Easy Way to Activate Windows Home Server (Crack and Bypass Activation). Apparently, the registry editing worked. The key icon residing at the right bottom pane has gone after restarting the machine. However, am not sure if it will bypass the genuine windows validation process upon updating the windows. Probably will try it out if there's a chance.

Crystal Report License Implementation On Visual Studio

I have been doing some reports for my employer to be implemented in client place. There have been some debate on the licensing issue. Without curiousity, I did a check on google for more details on the license to avoid any rights infridgement.

Developers can use Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET or for Visual Studio 2005 to do the following:
Design unlimited reports for use in Visual Studio .NET or Visual Studio 2005 applications by using the integrated Crystal Reports designer.
Integrate the Crystal Decisions server software (Crystal Reports engine used in conjunction with Microsoft ASP.NET server) into server or Web applications.
Integrate the Crystal Reports engine into client Microsoft Windows applications and, at no additional charge ("free runtime"), developers may:
Freely deploy those Visual Studio .NET or Visual Studio 2005 applications in their own organizations. -or-


Redistribute those Visual Studio .NET or Visual Studio 2005 applications outside their organization for use by third parties.

True enought the Visual Studio bundled with the Crystal report and report development under VS is licensed. However, free stuff doesn't always come easy. There are as usual with conditions.

For each server or Web application, you may use only a single instance of the bundled server software on a single server. You may not use a Web farm to increase the scalability of the bundled server software. You must purchase additional licensing to increase scalability.
You must deploy and redistribute the application as follows:
You may deploy each application that uses the bundled server software (designed for five simultaneous users) internally in the your own organization at no additional charge.
You must obtain written authorization from Crystal Decisions to redistribute an application that uses the bundled server software outside your organization for use by third parties. For more information about how to apply for written authorization, visit the following Crystal Decisions Web site:
Crystal Reports .NET Licensing
http://www.businessobjects.com/products/reporting/crystalreports/net/licensing.asp (http://www.businessobjects.com/products/reporting/crystalreports/net/licensing.asp)
For more information, including how to purchase additional licenses, how to apply for the right to redistribute server or Web applications, and server software scalability, visit the following Crystal Decisions Web site:
Crystal Reports .NET Licensing
http://www.businessobjects.com/products/reporting/crystalreports/net/licensing.asp (http://www.businessobjects.com/products/reporting/crystalreports/net/licensing.asp)

Undeniable it's still quite gray on how the licensing works.

Other relevant agreement: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa288179(VS.71).aspx

Oracle Char vs VarChar vs Varchar2 datatype

I was kinda confused earlier on the differences but get a better explaination after hunting around. Below details each of their characteristics:

Char: Declare and used. If the size declared is 5 and assigned value is only length 2, the leftover will be stored with spaces. Some claimed this would be much faster, but some doesn't find any differences in performance comparison to varchar.
VarChar: Declare in advance, size used only when assigning values. Depending on the values assigned, for those that have not been used or excessive size allocated will be freed. First few bites will store the length of the values assigned. ANSI SQL Standard.
VarChar2: It is an oracle's improved Varchar datatype version. Characteristics are mostly similar to varchar.

Do you have anything to addon?

Windows 2003: Terminate User session remotely

I tried to remote desktop login one of the windows 2003 server but was prompted "The terminal server has exceeded the maximum number of allowed connections.". As this would prolly some sort of CSI required before I could login the server, I was wondering if there is any tool to quickly terminate one of the user session (since there wasn't anyone admit loggin into the server. Browsing through Microsoft site and found PSTools. Below is the steps to kill the connected user session on Windows 2003 (worked for me, atleast):

Open your command prompt and from the directory that contains the psexec utility, do the following

1) psexec \\x.x.x.x -u user -p password cmd (this will give you access to the cmd prompt on the server)
Example: psexec \\127.0.0.1 -u admin -p password cmd

2) once you get the command prompt run the command qwinsta to get a list of all Terminal Services connections. Each connection has an Id Number.

3) Run the command logoff [id# of session to quit] /v (this will kill the connection with that id #)
Example: logoff 2 /v

Do you have any other alternative to this?