When They Say Upgrade, They Mean It: No Clean Installs with Windows Vista Upgrade Discs

Microsoft is ending their past policy with regards to upgrade installs, starting with Windows Vista. In the past, for example, you could perform a clean install of Windows XP Professional using an upgrade CD, by doing the normal install, then popping in a Windows 98 or Windows 2000 CD when prompted. Then the install would continue. For Vista, this will no longer suffice to satisfy the bean counters at Microsoft.

Microsoft has cut out this process for Windows Vista and forces users who buy an upgrade CD to actually have a valid install of Windows XP Home or Professional on their machines before upgrading. For most users, this wouldn’t be a problem. They more than likely have an existing copy of Windows XP installed and would have no problems upgrading to Windows Vista with an upgrade CD.

But for do-it-yourselfers who buy a Vista upgrade CD and think that they can easily perform a clean install whenever they feel free are going to run into the road block. Source: DailyTech

Many may say, what’s wrong with that? But when switching OSes like this, you should really have a clean install. Otherwise you’re going to have a system full of unused files and garbage. I realize that most users will just go with the direct upgrade, without starting from scratch, but I wouldn’t be one of them.

CourtTV Works Still More ‘Extra Ad Magic’ into Shows

I realize people like me, with Tivos (or any PVR) are wreaking habit with commercial laden shows. But things are getting ridiculous.

You may recall my post in November of last year, when I first noticed CourtTV overlapping the final credits of one show (on the RHS side of the screen) with the starting credits of the next show. This means they can squeeze an extra ad or two into a half-hour (think about it). Unhappily, not only have they NOT discontinued this practice, they’ve expanded it.

Previously they would stop the overlapping and go full-screen when the credits of the next show completed. Now they go a full 1 – 2 minutes into the actual content of the next show, which is even more annoying … and it was annoying enough previously.

Look, CourtTV, I realize I can skip your commercials, so the extra ads don’t hurt me … but the half-screen content … now that’s so annoying … well, I’m actually blogging about it. What’s next … a full half-hour with commercials side-by-side with the actual show?

This Web Site ‘Names That Tune’

Have you ever had a tune get into your head, but you can’t figure out the name, despite all your efforts? If you’re like me, you may be bugged until you figure out just what the name is. Midomi just launched its beta today, and it claims to be able to identify a song that you hum, whistle or sing “to it.”

The underlying speech- and sound-recognition technology, dubbed Multimodal Adaptive Recognition System, or MARS, differs from similar technologies in that it looks at a variety of factors for recognizing samples, including pitch, tempo variation, speech content and location of pauses, said Chief Executive Keyvan Mohajer, who has a Ph.D. in sound- and speech-recognition from Stanford University. Source: News.com

Does it work? For my wife, yes; for me, no. But then, no one ever accused me of singing on key.

Upset About Bad Drivers, Rude People? Rant About it on the Web

Ever get cut off by a driver who seemed to think a turn signal mandates entry into your lane … even without any space? Nowadays a honk generally gets a response, but generally not the kind my mother would have gotten … an apologetic wave or something. Nope, you’ll be ignored, or flipped off.

Or maybe my pet peeve: people leaving their cell phones on in a movie and maybe even answering them.

Several websites have opened up to cater to frustrated people. Among them are advicegoddess,com, rudepeople.com, platewire, and hollabacknyc.

“Just to say to someone, ‘Careful you could kill someone,’ they’re like, ‘Yeah, whatever,’” she said. “But once I put their picture up on my site, it’s not just you I’m deterring from that behavior again. It’s other people.”

But can these sites actually change behavior? In some instances, yes. One Santa Barbara, Calif., man used to steal neighbor Tim Halberg’s morning newspaper until he was caught on videotape by Halberg himself. Halberg posted the video on youtube.com and the stealing stopped. Source: ABC News

I took a look at these sites and noted many examples that have experienced. A lot of it, to me, is that common courtesy and politeness have gone out the window, as more and people now have a sense of entitlement about their actions … kind of like, well, I exist, therefore I’m entitled to do whatever I want.

AT&T’s Standalone DSL Prices to Radically Improve

You may recall my earlier story, in which I indicated just how much of a non-savings AT&T’s standalone (”naked”) DSL service was. $45, basically a non-starter as it offered only about a $1 savings over the price with phone service. There’s a turnaround coming soon, though.

Within a few months, AT&T is expected to start charging $19.95 a month for “naked” DSL, meaning you don’t have to buy any other AT&T (T) service, including phone, to get that rate. It currently charges $45 for a stand-alone broadband subscription.

AT&T also is developing $10 DSL for new subscribers who also buy AT&T-branded phone service. Source: USA Today

Don’t get the idea that AT&T did this out of the kindness of its heart. The reason it did it was to get the necessary FCC votes to compete its acquisition of BellSouth. And it’s only promising to hold the price for 30 months, with the clock starting once the service is offered in ANY of the 22 states where AT&T is the “incumbent local phone provider”. Finally, the service will only provide 768 Kbps download speeds, as opposed to the 1.5Mbps service most customers opt for.

Why I Hate Stealth Installs… and Why You Should, Too

First, what is a stealth install? It’s my term for an installation of a program or part of a program, without your knowledge, particularly when that software cannot be removed by uninstalling the program.

Let me give you an example. I have been using Corel Paint Shop Pro since before Corel bought it … since it was Jasc’s Paint Shop Pro.

When Paint Shop Pro XI (renamed Paint Shop Pro Photo) came out, I naturally upgraded. It was bad enough that a JPG file that I could open in Microsoft Paint failed to open (although Paint could open it just fine), but then I installed the 11.11 patch.

Usually after installing I check to see if anything new was installed into the startup folder, or in the startup items list, using MSCONFIG. When I did this I noticed a new service, Protexis Licensing, running.

A little research, including backing up to an old system image I had created with True Image and I realized it was the 11.11 patch that had installed this.

There were two things I was upset about: I don’t like services running all the time sucking up resources and CPU power (no matter how little) when they are not needed, and I could NOT uninstall the files. After uninstalling PSP 11, they were still there in the c:windowssystem32 folder. And although I found and confirmed likely suspect files (PSIKEY.DLL and PSISERVICE.EXE), I was not 100% sure these were all the files that belonged to this licensing software.

Don’t get me wrong: my copy of PSP11 is legal. I don’t object to licensing software per se. I just object to extra stuff running since I am a gamer and want minimal interference when running a game that sucks my PC dry anyway. And if the program does not clean up when uninstalling, it means your hard drive gets cluttered up, even if you uninstall.

Additionally, I found that disabling the service (using SERVICES.MSC) would not prevent PSP 11 from running, nor would removing the files (either deleting or renaming them). So what good is it, and what exactly is it doing?

I looked through Corel’s website and discovered they have a program called ZAPPS that’s supposed to completely remove PSP. Nope, still left those files around. Grrr.

Finally I filed a tech support case. They first did not understand what I was talking about (my guess is Corel did not update their TS on this issue) and finally they told me to call them. Which, based on past experience with any tech support department, will likely result in me telling them what to do, as frankly, I usually know more than most tech support departments, based on my years in the industry.

I gave up. I went back to an older image, bought PhotoImpact 12 after confirming it did not install any licensing stealth software, and felt much more satisfied.

One other thing. During the experiments of installs / uninstalls, I found a program called Advanced Uninstaller Pro 2006 that monitors installs and thus can also completely uninstall them, even with stealth installs like this. If you’re concerned about stuff like this — and you should be, if you want a clutter-free hard drive, I would recommend you look into this program. I used a trial version, but I’ll be buying it.

The Gates Foundation – For Better or Worse

First, don’t get me wrong. The Gates Foundation does incredible good. The problem exists not with the work the Foundation itself does, but rather with the way it invests the money it has.

The Gates Foundation had $35 billion in assets at the end of 2005, and then received a promise from Warren Buffet for $31 million of his money last year. This is a huge amount of money. That said, the Foundation “only” distributed about $1.4 billion last year. The rest of the money is invested, and here lies the problem.

The LA Times has a two-part series (here and here) about the conflicts between the philanthropy of the Foundation and the interests of its investments.

Examples:

• A vaccination drive in Ebocha, Nigeria, funded by the Gates Foundation, at the same time that fumes spout from a nearby power plant, owned by Eni, whose investors include The Gates Foundation. These fumes are causing bronchitis, asthma and blurred vision.
• That same plant has oil workers, and they and the soldiers that protect them are magnets for prostitutes, contributing to HIV spread … a target of the Gates Foundation.
• Investments by the foundation in mortgage companies that were accused in lawsuits or by government officials of making it easier for thousands of people to lose their homes.
• Investments in chocolate companies said by the U.S. government to be profiting from the slave labor of children.

Now, there is a firewall between the investment side of the business and the philanthropic side. This can explain the sometimes direct clashes where the Foundation may be working on something in an area which is actually being harmed by the investment side.

It doesn’t explain why the investment side should even be looking into these type of investments at all. Don’t get me wrong; I’m sure my private investments in mutual funds and the like are not 100% socially responsible. But the Foundation and its huge assets make a much larger impact on the market when its money is invested.

What do I think will happen? Likely, Bill and Melinda Gates will take a closer look at these issues. In fact, I have no doubt. Now that it’s public (and it’s possible they didn’t know, or simply didn’t have the time to now), they could (and I hope they do) lay down the law to ensure that future investments are socially responsible.

Time will tell.

Asus XG Station: The Solution to My Gaming Laptop Jonesing?

I love gaming, but I also love being able to move around the house and game. That means expensive purchases, as gaming laptops are very expensive compared to their desktop brethren yet still underpowered compared to them. However, laptops such as the Dell XPS M1710 (my last buy, about 3 weeks ago) are very powerful gaming machines. Despite this, and despite technologies such as NVIDIA’s MXM, you are generally stuck with a non-upgradeable graphics card, as upgrading your card in your laptop is still an iffy (meaning, if the manufacturer releases a card and if it’s reasonably priced) proposition.

Asus has something to crow about, as they have just demonstrated the XG Station, the world’s first external graphics card station for notebook computers. It connects via your laptop’s Express Card connector and has a PCI Express slot; this could be the solution for keeping up with graphics card releases on your laptop.

Equipped with Express Card interface, USB 2.0 and Dolby headphones, the XG station seamlessly integrates notebook computing with PC graphics power.The Asus XG Station is the world’s first docking station to provide a standard PCI Express slot for additional graphics computing power on notebook computers with Express Card slot, delivering VISTA Premium performance. Source: FarEastGizmos

They boast a 9x improvement, but that’s with integrated graphics vs. this solution. I’d love to see a comparison between this with an NVIDIA 8800 card against my M1710 with the NVIDIA 7950GTX graphics it uses. Release date is supposed to be the beginning of Q2 2007. I will definitely keep my eye on further developments for this product.

Stats on Microsoft Insecurity in 2006

The Washington Post has an interesting article today in which flaws for Windows and Internet Explorer in 2006 were examined, and the amount of time in which that flaw existed, vulnerable, was compiled.

For a total 284 days in 2006 (or more than nine months out of the year), exploit code for known, unpatched critical flaws in pre-IE7 versions of the browser was publicly available on the Internet. Likewise, there were at least 98 days last year in which no software fixes from Microsoft were available to fix IE flaws that criminals were actively using to steal personal and financial data from users.

In contrast, Internet Explorer’s closest competitor in terms of market share — Mozilla’s Firefox browser — experienced a single period lasting just nine days last year in which exploit code for a serious security hole was posted online before Mozilla shipped a patch to remedy the problem. Source: Washington Post

Hmm, this makes me feel waaay better since I changed to Firefox as my primary browser. Although that was mostly driven by my issues with IE7, I’ve been happy with my switch, and especially with the wide number of extensions available for it.