Windows XP Service Pack 3: General Public Release

XP Service Pack 3 has been released both as a separate download as well as over Windows Update. I guess MS kept their word and released it in 1H CY2008, as they cryptically put it.

Unlike Vista though, XP SP3 can be slipstreamed.

Filed in Windows.

The Disgusting State of Health Care and Hospitals

I read this post about someone whose father was hospitalized for heart trouble and his experience with one of the premier hospitals in the country. It’s disgusting. The post was appropriately titled Hospitals are No Place for Sick People. The callousness, carelessness, lack of training, and so on in health care is frankly horrifying, especially when the person hospitalized is so helpless to do anything about it.

Filed in Outraged.

J K Rowling: The Case of Money and Fame Getting into an Author’s Head

I guess some people can’t really deal with the fame and fortune that comes when they rise from rags to riches. Orson Scott Card joins the ranks of the many people who have criticized J K Rowling for her lawsuit against the Harry Potter Lexicon. And he makes lots of very accurate and damming comments too.

Some of the points he raised were:

1. The lexicon is a commentary on her work that adds value to it. Rowling herself had consulted it in the past.
2. Rowling’s Harry Potter books has borrowed lots of stuff from others’ books, including Orson Scott Card’s own Ender’s series.
3. She is now out of ideas and steam, and has nothing to do. Idle hands are a devil’s tools and all that.

Learn the lesson before you get rich and famous, and don’t get struck by Rowlingitis.

Filed in Outraged, Opinion.

Woman Who Married 4 Times Before 24 in Interesting Circumstances: And You Thought Soap Operas Were Unrealistic

The Scottish Daily Record has an article about a woman who married 4 times before the age of 24. That’s not the unusual thing though.

Her first husband ran off to marry her mother. The second person who was to be her husband got cold feet, and left before the marriage. His best man married her in the end. At that time, she was pregnant with either the best man’s child, or the second absconded prospective husband’s child, or perhaps the best man’s friend’s child. Her third marriage was to a man who was a bigamist, and so the marriage was annulled.

At the fourth wedding outside the registrar, a local teenager saw her and shouted, Alison, is that you at it again? Arbroath will run out of men if you keep going at this rate.”

And you thought soap operas were ridiculous.

Filed in Humor.

Malware has EULA too!

Ars Technica has this post about how malware have EULAs too!

But unlike the normal software company’s EULA, that rely on the rule of law to enforce, the malware EULA rely on threats of strong arm tactics to enforce.

Filed in Software, Humor.

What are Microsoft’s Options Regarding Yahoo?

Marc Andreessen has a fantastic post describing what Microsoft can now do to effect their hostile takeover of Yahoo. It’s a must read, well researched, and easy-to-understand post.

Filed in News.

Tekzilla Pans Vista Too

Tekzilla, a video podcast show, gave a damming review of Vista in its episode 30. Well, actually it was in response to a viewer who asked the host why they didn’t like Vista. He replied that the big problem of Vista was its application and hardware compatibility issues.

I suppose it’s true. Maybe it’s possible to live with the slower performance or even the crashes. But if the hardware doesn’t work with Vista, and some of the applications no longer work, then it becomes a big issue, since it’s no longer possible to do work on a machine with Vista on it.

Filed in Windows.

XP SP 3 is Released - for MSDN/Technet Subscribers

After another burst of indignation from MSDN and Technet subscribers, Microsoft has relented and released XP SP3 to MSDN and Technet subscribers. Get it from the Top Downloads page after logging in.

It will still be released to the masses next week on April 29.

Filed in Windows.

Microsoft Disses Paying MSDN Subscribers over Windows XP Service Pack 3, Again

Microsoft has not learned its lesson from the outcry when it released Vista SP 1. It has announced that Windows XP Service Pack 3 will be available to the general public on April 29. But it will not be available to the MSDN and Technet subscribers, who have paid big bucks for their subscription, until the following month. Yup. Once you pay them money, they’re no longer interested in you.

Reaction to this has already started in the MSDN/Technet forum in a separate thread — the original thread was locked after 3 or so posts, so users opened a new thread. As someone on Slashdot mentioned, “Why do MSDN and VL customers get this later than Windows Update? What exactly are we paying for?”

Filed in Windows, Outraged.

DRM-Free, Self-Destructing DVD

A German company is reportedly developing a DRM-free DVD that will self destruct in 48 hours. The disc’s life is measured from the time it’s taken out of its vacuum-sealed package. The company also has a recycling program, and the discs themselves use fully recyclable plastic and stuff.

Will you buy a self-destructing DVD if it’s cheap and free from DRM? Why buy and not rent if you want to watch it only once? No matter how environmentally friendly the disc may be, I’m sure the manufacturing process will also have an impact on the environment.

Filed in News, Entertainment.

Seagate Fights Its Downhill Slide with Litigation

Another company that is slowly going downhill has decided to deal with it by litigation, rather than by improving its products and diversifying.

I’ve long used Seagate’s hard disks, among others, both as portables as well as internal drives. However, the newer portable hard disks are definitely of poorer quality than the ones I bought a long time ago. On the old portables, when they were plugged in, the drive was always available. On the new ones, if I use an application to access the drive after a long hiatus, the drive, which was on and spinning, will suddenly switch off, spin down, and then re-switch on again. All by itself. It’s very irritating, and adds two or three noticeable seconds to the initial time needed to access the drive.

With solid state drives on the ascendant, Seagate probably also sees the writing on the wall for its hard drives. Instead of innovating and perhaps buying into the technology, it has decided to use its patent arsenal as weapons against others manufacturing solid state drives. Their first target is the very small STEC, an SSD manufacturer.

I guess this spells the beginning of the end of another company. When companies try to fight the future in this way, instead of embracing it, it can’t be good.

Filed in Outraged, Opinion, News.

Monster Cables vs Blue Jeans Cables

Monster Cables, a company supposedly delighting in sending litigation letters to competitors, sent one to Blue Jeans Cables, only to find that Blue Jeans was no pushover. Its president was a former lawyer, who quickly saw through what he saw as spurious claims designed to get companies who didn’t know better to quickly settle. According to the president’s letter, none of the Monster Cables patents even applied to Blue Jeans’ stuff - and some of the patents they cited were mutually incompatible with each other so that a cable violating all these patents at the same time was impossible to make. The claims made were also very vague - they didn’t even specify which of the cables violated which patent, and so on.

Filed in Outraged, Opinion, News.

WordPress.com Problems

This new version of WordPress on WordPress.com has introduced some problems:

• After I had posted, over a day or so, it added “ggRIAA” to “RIAA” in my post title for RIAA Lets Its Lap Dog MediaSentry Break the Law. You can see from its URL that the original post did not have ggRIAA, neither did my backup of that post. PS: I’ve since fixed the title that WordPress mangled.
• While posting, I tried to use the word “differentiate” but the software just refused to let me use it, deleting it at every turn. In the end, I had to substitute “different”. Stupid software. Funny, the word “differentiate” works now.
• Hiding the categories section below the post box instead of at the right side is really not a good idea. I have already accidentally posted a number of posts into the “Uncategorized” category by mistake. Categories and tags are something that I regularly use to organize my posts. Putting the “Save” and “Publish” buttons beside my post makes me hit it earlier than I should.

Why do software go downhill over a period of time? Maybe it’s because the developers find that they have added all the useful features they can think of, and then they start reorganizing things because they can’t think of anything else.

Anyway, YUCKS to the new version of WordPress.com.

Filed in Opinion, WordPress.

RIAA Lets Its Lap Dog MediaSentry Break the Law

MediaSentry continues to flout the law, operating illegally, despite a cease and desist order from a court. This is no surprise to me, since RIAA and MediaSentry have garnered reputations of being the hoodlums of the Internet. The news has been around for a while, and the latest site to report it is Ars Technica, but I only just got fed up enough to post my opinion of it.

I think I said it before. If you want others to respect your rights, you have to respect their rights too. Otherwise what makes you different than a thug?

Filed in Outraged, Entertainment, Opinion.

Cheap GPS (Comic)

Oh, I love this comic strip about a cheap GPS set for your car.

Filed in Humor.