As a Redmond-virgin, I took the opportunity to take out the three Microsoft campus “must-see” destination today - Microsoft Home, Microsoft Center for Information Work and the Microsoft Visitor Center. Whilst both Home and CIW were both cool and still cutting edge, neither of which has had any major renovations for a while and there’s plenty of good coverage about what they involve, however the new Visitor Center just launched weeks ago so it’s still fresh. You can check out a gallery of photos above.

One of the most interesting installations of the new Visitor Center is the floating sphere with 3D projection. From what I could gather, it uses four projectors to cast a perspective-correct overlay on top of a large white sphere lifted in the air. Whilst it is similar to the installation at Google’s lobby with “live search terms”, this too seems to be “live” with popular Live Search queries appearing occasionally.

The other installation, more of an artistic rather technology showcase is a

• %System32\kamsoft.exe
• %System32\gasretyw0.dll
• %Windows\kulionrx.dll
• %System32/Windows Dir
  
  
  
  • tavo.exe
  • upxdnd.dll
  • upxdnd.exe
  • msccrt.dll
    
  • ravmon.exe
  • ravmond.exe
  • IPARMOR.exe
  • adam.exe
  • KAVPFW.exe
  • EGHOST.exe
  • MAILMON.exe
  • msccrt.exe
    

Description of Privacy Commander and consequences of its residing on your PC

What is to be said about Privacy Commander or PrivacyCommander? Stay away from it and remove Privacy Commander, if infected. This case represents a standard situation with fake virus remover. Various more or less unfair tactics are applied by hackers to make users install at least trial version of this malware, installations with trojan and redirections to home-page of Privacy Commander seem to the most popular among them. Failure to remove Privacy Commander impacts on your operating system and is a reason of slow computer problem. This slow computer problem is when program requiring considerable system resources to be available when they run cannot satisfy this demand and may run with freezes or generate error reports. The speed of Windows loading and navigation speed is also decreasing.  This is how the trialware operates, but that is the dark side and its does not come right after installation. The “light side” may drive crazy those who strongly dislike various computer noises like systematic alerts and pop-ups. There are more details of  PrivacyCommander described in the section below.
If you believe you are familiar with  Privacy Commander enough and would

If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you’d probably have noticed in the past couple of weeks my affection (exhibit 1, 2, 3 & 4) for Left 4 Dead. As a matter of which, I’m also giving away a copy of Left 4 Dead in the HP Magic Giveaway. When I realized Seattle (where I am this week) is also home to Valve Software, I knew I just had to go for a tour. And that’s what I did today with the help of office manager Katie.

Since Valve isn’t working on any new IPs or major projects, I didn’t get to play any upcoming games content (as some other tours have) however I was still able to linger with some of the best minds in the industry and a chance to handle a few iconic memorabilia, I learned a few interesting tidbits about Valve’s business that I’d like to share.

• Valve has an extremely flat corporate structure. Titles were less applicable and everyone was equally valued as everyone else.
• Their offices which span approximately three office building levels is the