Archive for March, 2007

ZamZar free online file conversion

Posted on Monday 26th March 2007 under Reference by admin

ZamZar on-line file conversion looks like a handy tool for occasional conversions to other file formats. Their privacy policy claims that they don’t share email details, but I would be cautious about sending client confidential information to their servers for conversion. Links to converted documents are mailed back – and could be intercepted on the way, and there isn’t a secure sockets connection option when uploading.

Limiting SYN connections in Windows XP SP2 – Event ID 4226

Posted on Thursday 1st March 2007 under IT by admin

Well, here’s something I hadn’t spotted before, and in retrospect it makes a lot of sense: Microsoft introduced a cap on the number of SYN (half-open connections) for TCPIP.SYS to 10 in XPSP2. Yes, that would explain the slower P2P and Fasterfox browsing then…

David Kaspar’s blog post describes the symptoms, how to demonstrate that there is a problem using the event log, and links to a patcher which raises the cap to 50 connections. The tone of the post starts off a little hystericaly, but settles down into a good description of the issue and the fix.

Steer clear of these 6 Persuasion Pitfalls

Posted on Thursday 1st March 2007 under Work by admin

Bytestart is carrying an article by Al Uszynski called “Steer clear of these 6 Persuasion Pitfalls“. It discusses negative language in the sales process and postivie or at least neutral alternatives. It makes me cringe to think of the number of times I have used, or been subject, to some of these.