Folder names in SVN cannot contain dots and commas

We faced a strange issue today while trying to commit a folder in SVN. The folder was of the form ABC,DEF.GHI.JKL The command kept throwing an error Commit Failed. The most annoying part was - the reason why it failed was not conveyed to the end user at all!

Lesson for all us software developers: Always degrade gracefully and give proper reasons for it so that users can take corrective actions efficiently.

Mozilla ThunderBird setting to place reply text on top of email thread content

The default ThunderBird settings appends your reply to the end of the thread. To change this to put your reply contents Before the other content of the thread, please do the following:

1. Go to ThunderBird -> Tools Menu -> Options


2. Go to Advanced -> General -> Config Editor


3. In the warning box, click "I'l be careful, I promise" and really, be careful with the next steps


4. In the filter box, type reply


5. Look for the row with Preference name "mail.identitiy.default.reply_on_top". Change its value from 0 (default) to 1.

I always wonder why Mozilla does not keep it to 1 by default, though?

SpotOn Software launches beta versions of 2 products at Concepts - PICT

SpotOn Software Pvt. Ltd. are one of the sponsors at PICT for Concepts & Impetus - 2010. SpotOn has launched beta versions of 2 products at Concepts - CellKhel and WordPrep.

CellKhel is a mobile application software for the users to play games on their mobiles. It has 3 categories of games - static games (Braineeta and Jawbrekr), online puzzle (Sudoku) and multiplayer online mobile games (Tic Tac Toe and Othello).

WordPrep is a mobile application software for students preparing for Vocabulary examinations like GRE/CAT etc.

WordPrep

Quick Heal Antivirus issue - CPU consumtion by SCANMSG.exe

I have been using the Quick Heal anti-virus since March 2008. Of late, I have been observing a strange behaviour. A process named SCANMSG.exe used to eat up most of my CPU cycles. I observed this inside the Windows task manager (Vista). During this period, the Hard Disk light also used to glow very frequently.

I wrote to Quick Heal support but did not get a quick reply from them. I then tried to do a few things on my own. I tried all different options available by right clicking on the Quick Heal Total Security icon in my task bar. Miraculously, after I clicked on "Check new messages", this problem went away. The SCANMSG.exe process was still running, but now, it hardly took any CPU.

I thought it was a very strange phenomenon. I did not get much success on the issue by googling. Hence thought of blogging it here.

Interestingly, the same problem was observed on another Windows system (XP) and again, it got resolved by doing the same trick :-)

Cheers,
- Ashutosh