[Windows] Unleash Vista with Language Packs

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I. Abstract

One of the obstacles with Windows in earlier times was: you could not simply change the language from say german to english or german to french. For me as a german loving the languages this always was a big prob. I saw the easiness of changing languages under Linux and wondered. Now with Windows Vista you can also install and use up to 16 different languages.

As always with Windows operating systems there are also limitations: changing of languages is (officially) only supported by Windows Vista Ultimate. Although you might choose any language during installation of Windows Vista Basic or Home Premium or what ever, you sadly will not be able to officially change it once you installed it. But by digging the dark places of the net, we found there are ways to change the language even in non Ultimate versions. With the help of a tool called “Vista MUI Tool”, which is being developed by some chinese guys, you can enable multi language on all Vista versions. Anyway this topic will not be covered here, because we ain’t got no Vista Basic version here. But we confess to come back to the “Vista MUI Tool” in a short while, simply because activating functions that have been disabled is an interesting topic for all of us, isn’t it?

The following short article will deal with changing the language in an Vista Ultimate version by using onboard tools – no modifications required. As an ultimate user using it in english you’ll enjoy the following advantages: you will have access to the  Windows Ultimate features (english only!) and to tons of different Widgets, that are also available in english, only.

II. Premises

For following this little tutorial and for playing with me the following 15 minutes, you need the following:

  • Windows Vista Ultimate (go and buy it, it really got cute effects, once you got used to it, you wonder how crappy XP looks like in contrast)
  • Have Administrator privileges
  • a little concentration, although there won’t be too much Zen in this article

III. Installing new languages

Have Vista booted and be logged in as user with admin privileges. In the following example we’re gonna install a french language pack while we are running an english language version. Do the following:

  1. Click the Start button and choose the Windows Update:
    vista-language-pack-01.jpg
  2. The Windows Vista Update window will open and you click show available updates (on the screenshot partly german: verfügbare Updates anzeigen)
    vista-language-pack-02.jpg
  3. A window gets opened then where you can choose your updates, besides the language updates there may be others, but hic et nunc we’re not gonna deal with those. Choose the languages you wanna install and click the install button.
    vista-language-pack-04.jpg

    Note: (automatic background download and) installation of languages takes time. We experienced it may take up to 10 minutes per language pack. So better install them manually, not all of them at once. Each language pack is 300-500MB download size and requires between 1GB to 2GB space on your harddisk!
  4. There will be a security question if you really want to install the language pack. Click the Continue button.
    vista-language-pack-04a.jpg
  5. The download begins and then it gets automatically installed. This will take time now. Instead of wasting your precious time, you may consider some advertisements on our site, would you?
    vista-language-pack-05.jpg

    vista-language-pack-07.jpg
  6. When the installation is finished and your screen looks like that (at least the symbols ;-) You’re good to go then.
    vista-language-pack-08.jpg

You may repeat this step with as much language packs you need.

IV. Activating the new language

So after having prepared all the required languages, we really like to use them. Do the following:

  1. in Vista click the Start button and open the Control Center
    vista-language-activ8-01.jpg
  2. In the area Clock, Language, Region choose Change display language
    note: click the Control Panel Home button, in case you’re in Classic View
    vista-language-activ8-02.jpg
  3. In the field Choose a display language select your language and click the Apply button
    note: after having clicked Apply it may take some seconds to some minutes
    vista-language-activ8-03.jpg
  4. Windows will want you to log out to apply the language changes:
    vista-language-activ8-04.jpg

After logging in again you’ll have the selected language set

V. Final words
That should do for the moment. Next time we’re gonna take a Windows Vista Basic and unleash the language pack thing there. Ob Duh…

[e-Biz] Apple Asks Court To Dismiss Psystar’s Countersuit

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After Psystar countersued Apple a month ago for anticompetitetive business practices (read here). Apple’s attorneys now respond on 23 pages. Apple’s argumentation in short: Psystar violates Apple’s license agreement when putting Mac OS X on Psystar’s OEM computers.

In the paper Apple tries to circumvent the whole monopoly issue by argueing that there is no specific Mac OS X market, but an Apple Computer market. And since there is no specific market for the sole operating system, Apple is no monopolist. Rather than having a Mac OS X operating system market, there is a market for computers and in this market Apple Computers compete with other computers. Apple sums up that Psystars charges need to be rejected, because Apple as a company cannot be forced to help their competitors and thus weakening their own market position.

You may read the whole argumentation here at ZDNET. They released the whole 23 pages as a PDF.

Our comment:

This whole topic remains fascinating. From a technical point of view we would not follow Apple’s argumentation here, because of a simple fact. Mac OS X is heavily based on lots of open source parts from the Linux and GNU worlds. And the Mac OS X’s kernel Darwin was and still is available for x86 based PCs aswell. This might mean by releasing the kernel as a stand alone version, they implicitly admit that the operating system is only artificially bound to the hardware. You may find more some technical notes in our recent article here (see VII. Modify startup script) and on the wiki of the Chaos Communication Congress 2007.

[iPhone] PwnPlayer for Beta Testers

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What it is

Eric Castro released a beta version of his All-In-One media player named “PwnPlayer” to chose beta testers. PwnPlayer is intended to be a replacement for the iPod player included with the iPhone or iPod Touch.

Features

PwnPlayer’s features as follows:

  • playback from file system – PwnPlayer reads any folder from the file system
  • copy files to the iPhone via FTP client, iTunes not required
  • Compatibility with iTunes music library
  • Search songs, artists, albums or files
  • Gesture controlling even on locked screens

For obvious reasons this app will not be available on Apple’s AppStore

Requirements

  • Jailbroken iPhone 2G or 3G
  • Jailbroken iPod Touch
  • Cydia Installer

More information

Interested in becoming beta tester of this amazing app? Simply donate Eric some money. He’ll contact you then.

» Visit Eric Castro’s PwnPlayer pages here…

[iPhone] Lotus Domino for iPhone Available

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IBM announced the availability of a Lotus iNotes version for the iPhone for every company holding a Lotus license. Eventually IBM brings Lotus Domino to the iPhone.

The iPhone iNotes is no native app, but a web front end. This ensures that no data remains on the device in case it gets stolen or lost.

» Find more details on IBM’s Lotus here…

Pictures are courtesy of IBM. Find more screenshots on their pages.

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[iPhone] Apple drops NDA for iPhone Developers

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In a press release Apple yesterday announced to drop the “non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software (..)”, because it “created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success (..)”. Developers are now allowed to publicly discuss matters of Apple’s iPhone SDK. Anyway, Apple added this does not apply to unreleased software. Unreleased software will remain under NDA until release.

John Timmer of ars technica took the time to write an introduction into developing iPhone apps.

»Read Apple’s press release here…
»ars technica’s “Inside the iPhone SDK”…

[iPhone] Adobe Confirms Flash For iPhone

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On the Flash on the Beach Conference eventually Paul Betlem – senior director of engineering at Adobe – confirmed, Adobe is actively developing a Flash version for the iPhone. The Flash Magazine reports, Adobe will have a Flash Player for iPhone available in short time, but since the iPhone is closed plattform Apple will decide when it will be released.

In March Microsoft and Adobe announced to license Flash Lite and the Acrobat Reader, so that all upcoming Windows Mobile OS based devices will support it.

[Stories] Islands in the Northern Sea and Confidential Data

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What happened in earlier episodes

By the time one can get the feeling, our fellows from the administration of this island in the northern sea have a very – let’s say “own” – relationship to personal data than we continental europeans. To make things short, here we got a short overview about what happened before:

  • November 21st, 2007: The HM Revenue and Customs administration misplaces (or loses) a CD containing child benefit data of 7,25 million families (incl. all names, birthdays etc.pp)
  • December 18th, 2007: The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency assigns a U.S. American company (Pearson Driving Assessments) to edit and handle data of driving learners. The harddrive containing 3 million datasets however gets lost somewhere.
  • December 23rd, 2007: National Health Services lose or misplace mediums containing some 100,000 sets of patient data from hospitals
  • August 22nd, 2008: UK’s Home Office loses or misplaces an USB stick containing unencrypted data of about 120,000 criminals, including files of the inquiry.
  • August 26th, 2008: on eBay hardrives got sold – containing datasets of about a million british bank customers
  • August 27th, 2008: the Charnwood Borough Council sells a harddrive that has in fact been erased, but not been wiped. Datasets of 35,000 people can be recovered using freely available unerase software.
  • September 9th, 2008: the National Offender Management Service assigns EDS to edit and handle their employees data. A harddrive containing data of 5,000 employess gets lost or misplaced.
  • September 26th, 2008: the General Teaching Council loses or misplaces a CD containing data of 11,000 teachers (incl. names etc.)
  • September 28th, 2008: the Ministry of Defence admits having had a burglery on a military air base. Thus losing 50,000 soldier’s datasets.

The whole globe is really wondering when all this disgrace will eventually stop. Not now, that’s for sure.

No more stories

You say: you can not believe it? We neither. Again the administration from the island have had a – let’s say creeping – issue with precautions for confidential data. This time obviously an MI6 agent sold a camera on eBay for 17UK£.

You can definitely anticipate what the deal was with that specific camera, can’t you? Mr. MI6 used it for getting some nice shots of accused terrorists, fingerprints and such. And of course he forget the thing with the deletion of the SD card.

A 27 year old buyer was quite irritated when downloading his holiday photos of that camera and having to find out that there were some more pictures on it…

[e-Biz] Apple Stock Going Down 17% on Nasdaq

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Morgan Stanley and the Royal Bank of Canada yesterday downgraded Apple’s share from “overweight” to “equal-weight”, cutting down the price target from $178 to $115. They don’t expect Apple to sell as much Macs within the next three months like in the 2.5 years before. After this information the Apple share went down from 128.24US$ to 105.26US$, thus losing more than 17%.

Morgan Stanley expects a deceleration in PC unit growth in general. The only part of the market that will have (little) growth is the sub-$1,000 area. A field in which Apple is not represented well.

» Nasdaq stock quote for Apple…

[e-Biz] Wallmart also Shutting down DRM Servers

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The next DRM Server’s Shutdown to come

The transition is coming silenty, for Walmart it began in August 2007, when they began selling digital music free of DRM. Prior Walmart has been using the proprietary implementation WMA by Microsoft to protect music from copying. With the open letter by Steve Jobs (February 2007), that dealt with the DRM topic, the music marketing model began to shift from DRM protected music to pure MP3’s. In February 2008 Walmart ceased to offer digital music with DRM in favor of only offering pure MP3’s.

Now the transition seems almost over. Walmart now sent emails informing their DRM customers, that the DRM servers will be shut down soon – thus turning all legally bought WMA audio tracks worthless. Walmart strongly recommends to back up the protected music to normal audio CD’s:

“By backing up your songs, you will be able to access them from any personal computer. This change does not impact songs or albums purchased after Feb 2008, as those are DRM-free.”

The hassle-freeness of Legality?

Like the customers of Microsoft Music, who forced them to have the DRM servers running for the next three years and the customers of Yahoo Music, who will shut down their servers tomorrow, also Walmart’s digital music customers from the earliest days will most likely consider this the end of an argy-bargy story. We can’t imagine they would really feel pleased for having to manually convert all their legally bought audio tracks to tons of audio CDs and having to re-rip them with loss of quality.

Now what exactly was the advantage of buying music legally online vs. illegally downloading vs. buying the CD in the first place? The evolution of digital consciousness has obviously just begun to start in the heads of the music industry’s leaders.

[iPhone] Recommended Apps: PaklSound1

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People in the know what’s going on in the field of music innovations have already gotten to know Tenori-On by Yamaha. Tenori-On is by far the most innovative new music instruments (read article here).

Anyway a group of programmers now decided to bring at least parts of the fun that Tenori-On includes to our beloved Jesus phone. The application is called PaklSound1 and is pure fun when sitting in the train or anywhere else. Be warned it is by far not as powerful as Tenori-On and requires lots of battery power, but therefore it costs only 0.79€ (0.99US$).

» Buy and Download PaklSound1 on AppStore…
» More information on the PaklSound1 page…

On YouTube a guy has prepared this nice video, enjoy: