One way to handle "Port 80 in use by "Unable to open process" with PID 4!" error

This frustrating message is displayed if there is port contention between an existing program and the new program you are trying to install.

For example, I wanted to install Apache, MySQL and PHP using the XAMPP cross-platform web server stack. I was frustrated by various erros that showed up which includes the 'Port 80 in use by Unable to open process with PID 4!'. It could be Port 443 as well. I am using Windows 7 64bit Ultimate edition OS and XAMPP version 1.8.3.

The PID refers to a port being used by the system. After various tweaks found a  way to start APACHE and the other programs. The XAMPP Control Panel may have a bug. Read here for details...

http://hodentekhelp.blogspot.com/2014/02/on-installing-apache-on-windows-7-64bit.html

Big data gets a big break on Windows Azure

Big drop in price for data processing price for big data was announced by Microsoft effective February 7, 2014. Also announced was the name change for Windows Azure Media Services.

Here is a summary of this change in price:

As to name change what was called 'Encoding Reserved Units' previously will be called 'Basic Encoding Reserved Units'.

Here is a summary view of  'Windows Azure Media Services'.

LibreOffice gets launched to the cloud

LibreOffice Writer is a wizard driven, On-line (you can have a shortcut to the APP on your desktop/phone) word processor and publishing tool similar to other similar word processing products (MS Office etc.).

There were to Office related products on tne cloud, Microsoft Office 365 and Google Docs. Now there is a third one. Will it make substantial difference to MSFT it is hard to tell in the long run but probably just one more program on the internet for now.

Key features noted from the web site  are the following:

•    Templates and styles
•    A spelling and grammar checker
•    Word and character count
•    Page-layout methods, including frames, columns, and tables
•    Embedding or linking of graphics, spreadsheets, and other objects
•    Built-in drawing tools
•    Master documents—to group a collection of documents into a single document
•    Change tracking during revisions
•    The ability to import and edit PDF files.
•    Database integration, including a bibliography database
•    Indexing
•    AutoCorrect and AutoComplete

Here are some details of the shortcut.

You need to spend $0.99 to try it out

LibreOffice 4.2 does better than OpenOffice 4.0 connecting to SQL Anywhere 16

LibreOffice 4.2 does better than OpenOffice 4.0 connecting to SQL Anywhere 16 using a ODBC connection.

In my previous article I had found that connecting to SQL Anywhere 16 using OpenOffice 4.0 was easy but it failed to bring in data of tables from the server.

http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2013/08/do-you-need-to-connect-to-sql-anywhere.html

Using LibreOffice 4.2, connecting and fetching data from SQL Anywhere 16 presented no problems. Updating was as easy. More here....

End of days for Cable TV

• How much do you pay for watching TV over the cable? 
• How many channels they offer and how many of them do you really watch or really want? 
• Are the fees they charge reasonable considering what you want and what they offer? 
• What about channels they offer and charge for them? You want to get away from the Cable TV guys? Here is your chance.

Well, Aereo will at least make it lot cheaper for the users. It may not offer 3 to 400 channels (very few useful or the ones you care to watch) but the price is very good, about 8 to 10 times lower. It is only available in some cities now but spreading rapidly. I guess it will take a long time to reach the Hawaiian Islands.

The cable companies are not keeping quite and the battle appears to be raging and reaching the highest legal levels . This following quote is from Bloomberg regarding this case:

"The justices yesterday agreed to hear an appeal by media companies including Walt Disney Co. (DIS)’s ABC, 21st Century Fox Inc. (FOX), Comcast Corp. (CMCSA)’s NBCUniversal and CBS Corp. (CBS) They contend that Aereo, which is backed by Barry Diller, violates their copyrights by using thousands of dime-sized antennas to obtain broadcast signals without paying fees."

Here is are some pictures from Aereo and  Digital Trends sites.

Your route to getting signals from the cloud

Supported devices and browsers. More will be coming soon

Here is the antenna from Aereo, the image on the right is an array of antennae. 

  The locatioins where it is available are shown here (sold out in NY)