Firefox in-line translator add-on

Well, found something simple and good:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-translator-for-firefox/?src=ss
 
Just select what you want to translate and pick from the drop down menu "translate...". It'll place the translation where the original text was selected. It is very very similar to the example from Jetpack but I was sick that every time I was switching version of Firefox, my plug-in was not working and I had to port it. So, I though, I will gladly do a donation to this guy. When I got his thank you email, it felt good. World should work like this more... If you like it, consider too making a donation... And by the way, this is based on the free tools from Google. Thanks too!

PS.: That reminds me I still need to donate to the folks of Downloadhelper...

Ownership of an invention by an employee in Spain

Straight from the law 11/1986, BOE núm. 73, de 26 de marzo de 1986

http://www.oepm.es/cs/OEPMSite/contenidos/NORMATIVA/NormasSobrePatentes_MU_Topografias_CCP/NSPMTCCP_Patentes_Modelos/NSPMTCCP_Patentes_Modelos_Nacionales/Ley11_1986de20demarzo_dePatentes.htm#tit3

The relation is covered under Title IV:

1. Article 15: Inventions related to the work the employee does are company's ownership, and company does not need to pay anything extra unless the effect of such an invention is way beyond what the employee was paid for.
2. Article 16: Everything else belongs to the worker. Notice that there is nothing in there on "an area where the company has or may have interest in the future". Only limit is what the worker is paid for, NOT what the company is working in or has interest in.
3. Article 17: If the inventor uses the company on any way for the invention, the company has the right on the invention. Use the company means, not only using company facilities/tools, but also acquired knowledge within the company.
4. Article 18: The inventor has to provide all the info related to an invention under articles 15 and 17 to the company in 3 months.
5. Article 19: This law still applies to inventions filed for patent even a year after the employee has left the company.
6. Article 20: Details in the University context.

Conclusion: bottom line, this looks to follow the "fairness concept" defended by me in previous posts.

Razors and blades strategy

While talking to a friend of mine on Intuitive Surgical, we discussed their business model of making a killer on the disposable portions of the DaVinci robot. I can see that with patents all over, and with a high barrier of entry, it would be hard to be a competitor for a while, so, that is a place where the famous "razors and blades" strategy would work. Same for instance, on glucose meters. This is a market (health care) also were quality prevails over cost (some times too much). But then, I wonder how Gillete, the named inventor of such a strategy was surviving today? So, I did some digging:
http://www.slideshare.net/rupakfeb7/gillette-final

You can skip the whole thing and jump to page 26: "Gillette no longer had that lock after the 1904 patents expired in 1921, and yet the strategy toward which it was unwillingly pulled worked. Whether that was consumer habit, or the superior quality of the Gillette blades, or something else is something that we cannot divine from the catalogues."
And last page: "And that leaves a hole in the analysis. Gillette had not played razors-and-blades when it could have during the life of the 1904 patents and did not seem well situated to do so after their expiration, but it was exactly at that point that Gillette played something like razors-and-blades, and that was when it made the most money. Razorsand-blades seems to have worked at the point where the theory suggests that it should not have. Why is that? Did Gillette succeed because of quality, or were there powerful, even if hard-to-discern-now locks—psychological or otherwise—between the razors and the blades?"

So, basically the author himself does not know. He proposes couple of thoughts, that maybe are confirmed in slide 24 of http://www.slideshare.net/rupakfeb7/gillette-final. Advertising, branding, etc... Bottom line, it could be quality or it may be beyond quality, the people simply got too much inertia to change or simply is stupid (assuming again there is no quality difference). Seriously, has anybody done the work of evaluating the two to justify paying for the more expensive one? Why would you go through so much trouble, anyhow? I guess that you simply assume the answer and pay for what theoretically is right (more price, better quality). I wonder what would be the strategy of a competitor to take market share away from Gillette. The competitors are not small (Wilkinson, BIC...), and I think the first actually tried (more advertising), but not sure they took market share away. It would also be interesting to check their advertising budget and how much of that affects the price of the blade.


Anyhow, the following article basically seems to say that the shaving experience is truly much better and people will be willing to pay for it. It also says that there will be a huge marketing campaign.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/sep2005/nf20050915_1654_db035.htm



My next thing to investigate ink jets... :)

Changing the language for your whole Windows XP

Wanted to change all the environment (so, forget about the "I know how to do that, just go to Language settings...") and looking around I finally found a post here:
http://www.knowledgesutra.com/discuss/tftmmm-change-windows-language.om/p_3

The only correction is to pick the right controlset folder (there a few ones). Not the one below, but the current one!

This is just for my records... I copy here his/her posting:

To Change the language of Windows XP

How To Change Windows Xp Language ?

To change the whole system language you should install newer service pack with different Language. Or Uninstall the last installed Service Pack and after change the registrysettings below install it again.

Make always a backup of your Registry at first !

For example

If you have XP SP2 in ENG and want to have it in Italian, you will have toDownload SP3 in Italian, change some registry keys (go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMControlSet001ControlNlsLanguageRegistry key, and then change the value date for �Default� and�InstallLanguage� registry value from 0409 to 0410) and you'll be able toInstall it in Italian. 

If no problems occur, you will have the whole system language changed.

Here is the List of numbers that represents each language in registry: 

1. 0436 = \"af;Afrikaans\"
2. 041C = \"sq;Albanian\"
3. 0001 = \"ar;Arabic\"
4. 0401 = \"ar-sa;Arabic (Saudi Arabia)\"
5. 0801 = \"ar-iq;Arabic (Iraq)\"
6. 0C01 = \"ar-eg;Arabic (Egypt)\"
7. 1001 = \"ar-ly;Arabic (Libya)\"
8. 1401 = \"ar-dz;Arabic (Algeria)\"
9. 1801 = \"ar-ma;Arabic (Morocco)\"
10. 1C01 = \"ar-tn;Arabic (Tunisia)\"
11. 2001 = \"ar-om;Arabic (Oman)\"
12. 2401 = \"ar-ye;Arabic (Yemen)\"
13. 2801 = \"ar-sy;Arabic (Syria)\"
14. 2C01 = \"ar-jo;Arabic (Jordan)\"
15. 3001 = \"ar-lb;Arabic (Lebanon)\"
16. 3401 = \"ar-kw;Arabic (Kuwait)\"
17. 3801 = \"ar-ae;Arabic (you.A.E.)\"
18. 3C01 = \"ar-bh;Arabic (Bahrain)\"
19. 4001 = \"ar-qa;Arabic (Qatar)\"
20. 042D = \"eu;Basque\"
21. 0402 = \"bg;Bulgarian\"
22. 0423 = \"be;Belarusian\"
23. 0403 = \"ca;Catalan\"
24. 0004 = \"zh;Chinese\"
25. 0404 = \"zh-tw;Chinese (Taiwan)\"
26. 0804 = \"zh-cn;Chinese (China)\"
27. 0C04 = \"zh-hk;Chinese (Hong Kong SAR)\"
28. 1004 = \"zh-sg;Chinese (Singapore)\"
29. 041A = \"hr;Croatian\"
30. 0405 = \"cs;Czech\"
31. 0406 = \"the;Danish\"
32. 0413 = \"nl;Dutch (Netherlands)\"
33. 0813 = \"nl-be;Dutch (Belgium)\"
34. 0009 = \"en;English\"
35. 0409 = \"en-us;English (United States)\"
36. 0809 = \"en-gb;English (United Kingdom)\"
37. 0C09 = \"en-au;English (Australia)\"
38. 1009 = \"en-ca;English (Canada)\"
39. 1409 = \"en-nz;English (New Zealand)\"
40. 1809 = \"en-ie;English (Ireland)\"
41. 1C09 = \"en-za;English (South Africa)\"
42. 2009 = \"en-jm;English (Jamaica)\"
43. 2809 = \"en-bz;English (Belize)\"
44. 2C09 = \"en-tt;English (Trinidad)\"
45. 0425 = \"et;Estonian\"
46. 0438 = \"fo;Faeroese\"
47. 0429 = \"fa;Farsi\"
48. 040B = \"fi;Finnish\"
49. 040C = \"fr;French (France)\"
50. 080C = \"fr-be;French (Belgium)\"
51. 0C0C = \"fr-ca;French (Canada)\"
52. 100C = \"fr-ch;French (Switzerland)\"
53. 140C = \"fr-lu;French (Luxembourg)\"
54. 043C = \"gd;Gaelic\"
55. 0407 = \"de;German (Germany)\"
56. 0807 = \"de-ch;German (Switzerland)\"
57. 0C07 = \"de-at;German (Austria)\"
58. 1007 = \"de-lu;German (Luxembourg)\"
59. 1407 = \"de-li;German (Liechtenstein)\"
60. 0408 = \"el;Greek\"
61. 040D = \"he;Hebrew\"
62. 0439 = \"hi;Hindi\"
63. 040E = \"hu;Hungarian\"
64. 040F = \"is;Icelandic\"
65. 0421 = \"in;Indonesian\"
66. 0410 = \"it;Italian (Italy)\"
67. 0810 = \"it-ch;Italian (Switzerland)\"
68. 0411 = \"ja;Japanese\"
69. 0412 = \"ko;Korean\"
70. 0426 = \"lv;Latvian\"
71. 0427 = \"lt;Lithuanian\"
72. 042F = \"mk;FYRO Macedonian\"
73. 043E = \"ms;Malay (Malaysia)\"
74. 043A = \"mt;Maltese\" 0414 = \"no;Norwegian (Bokmal)\"
75. 0814 = \"no;Norwegian (Nynorsk)\"
76. 0415 = \"pl;Polish\"
77. 0416 = \"pt-br;Portuguese (Brazil)\"
78. 0816 = \"pt;Portuguese (Portugal)\"
79. 0417 = \"rm;Rhaeto-Romanic\"
80. 0418 = \"ro;Romanian\"
81. 0818 = \"ro-mo;Romanian (Moldova)\"
82. 0419 = \"ru;Russian\"
83. 0819 = \"ru-mo;Russian (Moldova)\"
84. 0C1A = \"sr;Serbian (Cyrillic)\"
85. 081A = \"sr;Serbian (Latin)\"
86. 041B = \"sk;Slovak\"
87. 0424 = \"sl;Slovenian\"
88. 042E = \"sb;Sorbian\"
89. 040A = \"es;Spanish (Traditional Sort)\"
90. 080A = \"es-mx;Spanish (Mexico)\"
91. 0C0A = \"es;Spanish (International Sort)\"
92. 100A = \"es-gt;Spanish (Guatemala)\"
93. 140A = \"es-cr;Spanish (Costa Rica)\"
94. 180A = \"es-pa;Spanish (Panama)\"
95. 1C0A = \"es-do;Spanish (Dominican Republic)\"
96. 200A = \"es-ve;Spanish (Venezuela)\"
97. 240A = \"es-co;Spanish (Colombia)\"
98. 280A = \"es-pe;Spanish (Peru)\"
99. 2C0A = \"es-ar;Spanish (Argentina)\"
100. 300A = \"es-ec;Spanish (Ecuador)\"
101. 340A = \"es-cl;Spanish (Chile)\"
102. 380A = \"es-uy;Spanish (Uruguay)\"
103. 3C0A = \"es-py;Spanish (Paraguay)\"
104. 400A = \"es-bo;Spanish (Bolivia)\"
105. 440A = \"es-sv;Spanish (El Salvador)\"
106. 480A = \"es-hn;Spanish (Honduras)\"
107. 4C0A = \"es-ni;Spanish (Nicaragua)\"
108. 500A = \"es-pr;Spanish (Puerto Rico)\"
109. 0430 = \"sx;Sutu\"
110. 041D = \"sv;Swedish\"
111. 081D = \"sv-fi;Swedish (Finland)\"
112. 041E = \"th;Thai\"
113. 0431 = \"ts;Tsonga\"
114. 0432 = \"tn;Tswana\"
115. 041F = \"tr;Turkish\"
116. 0422 = \"uk;Ukrainian\"
117. 0420 = \"your;Urdu\"
118. 042A = \"vi;Vietnamese\"
119. 0434 = \"xh;Xhosa\"
120. 043D = \"ji;Yiddish\"
121. 0435 = \"zu;Zulu\"

-reply by Ing, Wop NLD

Notes: as I had my Service Pack 3 already in there, I had to uninstall it. Reboot. Did the changes above and reinstall it again. Now it´s working!! :D

Google Health RIP

Google Health, a portal from Google to keep track of your health records, sport activities and anything that could be related one way or another to your health, is going to be disconnected at the end of this year, after 3 years of service.

This is very symptomatic. Truth is that I never even looked at it. I wonder how others like Microsoft Health Vault (4 years old) are doing but my guess is that not very good and this link seems to think the same:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20080403-75/microsoft-offers-transfer-tool-to-google-health-users/

They try to point to issues with privacy or hospitals not adopting it... Others say that Google simply couldn't make money out of a service with so much privacy constraints. But to me, this is just one more proof of our behavior  as humans about health. It is something that we don't care about till we lose it. Maybe we are even program to forget about it because we don't want to be obsessed either about the idea that we are not immortal. We want to enjoy life without worry about those things. Of course, I am talking in general, but taking care of our health is something that is seen as "we need to do", not as "we love to do". A warning to many of those "solutions" where people is pouring resources to develop...

Fixing SD card corrupted

Note: I didn't recover the file, so, this is just for my documentation... No solution in here :(

So, my key file on the SDHC card is corrupted. When I try to copy it I get an error saying: "the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable". It is an Excel file, so, when I try to open it, I get "the file may be read-only, or you may be trying...". Whatever.

I run chkdsk and get: dadada file "is cross-linked on allocation unit" da da da, "cross link resolved by copying". It asks me if to convert or not lost chains. I say Yes, it says it did, but I can't really find the 344064 bytes that he claims to have saved in a file. Not sure where he put it. I can't find it either in the root directory ?!? And still can't open the file...
So, the digging starts... Checking the drive in my computer I can see that it is a 3.75GB. I can also see that I bought it at MicroCenter. Then I found this link:
http://usbspeed.nirsoft.net/?g=4gb
Which says:

Product Name	Vendor Name	Drive Size	VID	PID	Read Speed	Write Speed	Submitter

Micro Center 4GB USB Flash (New 2010 Case)

A-DATA Technology Co., Ltd.

3.75 GB

125f

0

16.55 MB/Sec

3.14 MB/Sec

jeffd

Isn't the web nice! Thank you guys! By the way, notice that 3.75 x 1,073,741,824 = 4026531840 bytes. I guess that's why they call it 4GB. C'mon!! Anyhow, back to the error.


You can read here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc975110.aspx a small explanation on what cross-link means. Not that it helps, but...

The next thing I want to try, before attempting any fixes is to save an image of the SD card somewhere. Not easy to find a freaking software that does that, but then I found the dd command in Linux. And as I have no Linux around, I found that there is a version of it for Windows: http://www.chrysocome.net/dd. AWESOME!
Open a DOS command window where the dd.exe is sitting and execute dd --list which will give us a list of all drives (here is what I got on mine):

C:\Program Files\dd>dd --list
rawwrite dd for windows version 0.6beta3.
Written by John Newbigin <jn@it.swin.edu.au>
This program is covered by terms of the GPL Version 2.

Win32 Available Volume Information
\\.\Volume{b911133a-fbd0-11dd-b92c-806d6172696f}\
  link to \\?\Device\HarddiskVolume1
  fixed media
  Mounted on \\.\f:

\\.\Volume{b911133b-fbd0-11dd-b92c-806d6172696f}\
  link to \\?\Device\HarddiskVolume2
  fixed media
  Mounted on \\.\c:

\\.\Volume{b911133c-fbd0-11dd-b92c-806d6172696f}\
  link to \\?\Device\HarddiskVolume3
  fixed media
  Mounted on \\.\g:

\\.\Volume{07c70281-38e5-11da-8c54-806d6172696f}\
  link to \\?\Device\CdRom0
  CD-ROM
  Mounted on \\.\d:

\\.\Volume{49dbb16c-2dc1-11e0-ba0d-0014a431fb0f}\
  link to \\?\Device\Harddisk1\SP0
  removeable media
  Mounted on \\.\e:


NT Block Device Objects
\\?\Device\CdRom0
  size is 2147483647 bytes
\\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition0
  link to \\?\Device\Harddisk0\DR0
\\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition1
  link to \\?\Device\HarddiskVolume1
  Fixed hard disk media. Block size = 512
  size is 65769984 bytes
\\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition2
  link to \\?\Device\HarddiskVolume2
\\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition3
  link to \\?\Device\HarddiskVolume3
  Fixed hard disk media. Block size = 512
  size is 3561546240 bytes

Virtual input devices
 /dev/zero   (null data)
 /dev/random (pseudo-random data)
 -           (standard input)

Virtual output devices
 -           (standard output)
 /dev/null   (discard the data)

One can see the 3 partitions of my HDD, the CD-ROM and the SD card, in e: !! (I know that because anyhow, it appears as e: on my Windows).

Now that I know the drive, I am going to try to create the image:
C:\Program Files\dd>dd if=\\.\e: of=c:\sd.img bs=1M --size --progress
rawwrite dd for windows version 0.6beta3.
Written by John Newbigin <jn@it.swin.edu.au>
This program is covered by terms of the GPL Version 2.

3,850M
3850+0 records in
3850+0 records out

I do it with blocks of 1M (recommended), so, it takes about 5 minutes and done! Now that I got the image, I want to recover the file. Ideally would like to work on the image, not the original, but do not know how to do that. So, I'll trust I have the image and will mess with the SD card directly.

I tried all kind of stuff but didn't work... :(

Testdisk seemed powerful but I only saw that it can do an image. Didn't see that it can help me recovering my file...:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download

Got this one that is supposed to help you get the files you want out of the disc, but didn't seem to work?!?
http://www.powerdatarecovery.com/power-data-recovery.html

Recuva gets to the point of listing the file, but says that 85 clusters are written on top by some other program... Trying to recover it with it gives me a bunch of garbage.
http://www.piriform.com/recuva/download

Also tried this but didn't go very far. Seems limited to 1GB so, didn't get to see anything:
http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/free-data-recovery-software.htm

Got the Zero Assumption Disk Space Visualizer. Nice to check the disk:
http://www.z-a-recovery.com/download.htm
From the same link, we got too ZAR9. Looks very nice and powerful. Unfortunately, what he recovers is pretty messy with fragments from everywhere :(. Couldn't get the file.

A last trick was to look for temporary files of Excel in the HDD of the computer. Unfortunately, couldn't find any in my home or work one. So, I am doom. Looked for my backup, 4 months old, and live with that :(. SUCKS!!

PS.: For those curious, I used DD to restore the image back into the SD card, as it was before running CHKDSK /f and it worked nicely.

Tyres for the GTI V

Got 225/45R17

Original tire: Bridgestone Potenza RE050 BW 91W (I guess this is the speed rating W:168mph, one day I'll check them... he he he j/k)
Retails for $243, installed in VW dealership: $289. Discount tire lists: $485 for a pair. (By the way, price is directly proportional to number of tires, nothing hidden...).
UTQG ratings: temp: A, traction: A, treadwear:140  
This tire does NOT have warranty and wears out like hell. First set gone after 15K miles, second after $20k. I drive the car a bit hard and Texas heat must not help, but c'mon!

Time to change, so, looking in Discount Tire at:

	Qty		Product Information		Price		Extended
			Michelin Pilot Sport A/S Plus (35209) In Stock 225/45ZR-17 91Y BSW A set of 4 tires qualifies for: Michelin Promise Plan (Details)		$167.00		$334.00
			Tire Disposal Fee		$2.99		$5.98
			Valve Stems, Lifetime Rotations				FREE
			Installation & Lifetime Spin Balancing		$16.00		$32.00

	(2)		TPMS Rebuild Kit		$7.49		$14.98

					Subtotal		$386.96

TX 8.25% Sales Tax

$29.28

Total: $416.24 for two tires. 500 A A Z*, 45K miles warranty.

Qty Product Information Price Extended Continental ExtremeContact DWS (26859) Usually Available in 24 Hours 225/45ZR17 91W BSW A set of 4 tires qualifies for: $30 Rebate with your CarCareONE card (Details) A set of 4 tires qualifies for: $50 Visa Prepaid Card (Details) $138.00 $276.00 Tire Disposal Fee $2.99 $5.98 Valve Stems, Lifetime Rotations FREE Installation & Lifetime Spin Balancing $16.00 $32.00 (2) TPMS Rebuild Kit $7.49 $14.98 Subtotal $328.96 TX 8.25% Sales Tax $24.50 Total:  $353. 540 A A Z*, 50k warranty

Qty		Product Information		Price		Extended
			Hankook Ventus V4 ES H105 (11844) Usually Available in 24 Hours 225/45ZR-17 94W XL B		$102.00		$204.00
			Tire Disposal Fee		$2.99		$5.98
			Valve Stems, Lifetime Rotations				FREE
			Installation & Lifetime Spin Balancing		$16.00		$32.00

	(2)		TPMS Rebuild Kit		$7.50		$15.00

					Subtotal		$256.98

TX 8.25% Sales Tax

$18.56

Total: $275.54 for two tires (this is the price of one Bridgestone!), 50k miles/5 years warranty, treadwear: 420, temp A, traction A, Z speed rating (149mph). By the way, VW dealer cost was $348 and needed a rebate...

All tyres got good reviews, so, I had to pick one and I went for the Continental. Just didn't want to risk to get the cheapest one, in case I notice it on the handling. So far, as I am not racing, I didn't feel any difference, even with aggressive street driving. Paid about $720 with all the insurances...

UPDATE: tires lasted easily 30k. I am changing them again for the same tire. They are now called

Continental ControlContact Sport AS (some marketing deal with Discount Tire), and retail for $149. Should be $376.22 without including the warranty rebate for the previous tires which didn't last 50kmiles...