Late Vista News
I have finally installed Vista SP1. The process was advertised to take "an hour or more" and completed in about 50 minutes. So far, I'm still watching to see what (if anything) has improved and I'll have a complete report in a few weeks—probably around June first.
Three Degrees in an Hour While Drinking Beer
Undergraduates spend a lot of time drinking beer, or so I'm told. Not that I ever did that while I was an undergrad. No. Not a chance. I think about that every day when I receive a pile of spams offering to sell me a degree from a "prestigious non-accredited university" based on my "life experiences". These are phony degrees. Fakes. Forgeries. Bogus. Lies. I know it and the people who offer these "degrees" know it even if some of them protest on their websites that the degrees are for "entertainment" only. Some of them also offer fake transcripts. Also for "entertainment" only, I presume. I know that I would certainly be entertained if my doctor happened to have a phony degree.
But then I started thinking: If I want a phony degree, why should I have to pay someone else to create it for me? It seems like the least I could do would be to have the initiative to perform the task of creating my own forged diploma.
It was Sunday afternoon. I was relaxing. A Canadian beer or two were on my schedule. So I opened Corel Draw and started tinkering. Less than 90 minutes later, I had 3 degrees that—if placed on my wall—would engender confidence even though I did nothing to earn them.
Here are My Degrees
If I'm in for a penny, I might as well be in for a pound, so I didn't stop with a phony bachelor's degree. I created a master's diploma and a one showing that I had earned PhD. Just call me "Doctor Blinn", please.
According to this diploma, I "earned" my bachelor's degree in obfuscation at the University of West Mudsock. If you look at the larger image (just click the small image at the left) you'll see that the dean was James Dean.
I thought the windmill graphic was a nice plus here.
For my master's degree (I really should have used a different paper stock for this one, don't you think?) I moved on to the Universitatum Numbnutum. It seems that I graduated with honors.
The "university" seal contains some small text that doesn't foster much confidence, but nobody will ever get close enough to it to read it.
When it came time to "earn" my PhD, neither the University of West Mudsock nor the Universitatum Numbnutum offered what I needed. I knew that only the ALLCAPS UNIVERSITY would satisfy my needs.
And yes, if I wanted to make this convincing, I would need yet another paper stock.
And probably a better graphic. The clock tower reminds me of Back to the Future.
The sad thing is that there are people who believe it's the piece of paper that confers knowledge. They waste money buying a "degree" from one of these bogus paper peddlers and convince themselves that this paper qualifies them for a position that they are not qualified for.
With luck, these losers are hired for positions where they can do little harm.
And meanwhile the paper peddlers feather their nests with payments from people who feel that their life experiences qualify them for a degree.
Another View of Vista
You've heard my opinion of Vista. I've said that it's good (because parts of it are good). I've said that it's bad (because some parts are bad). I've even compared it to Windows Millennium Edition. In short: If you're trying to decide whether to upgrade to Vista, I probably haven't been much help. Recently, I received a note from Marshall Thompson and his views are about as conflicted as mine. Marshall is the owner of TCR Computers in Pickerington and Lancaster. I asked if I could use his commentary, and he granted permission. For many people Vista continues to be a puzzle.
Last month I loaded Vista Business with Service Pack 1 on my main desktop at home. I really wanted it to work. I like Vista’s Aero interface and the thrill of getting to play with something new. Even the Gadgets are finding a home in my heart. Some basic data points:
- The basic OS install with updates went okay as long as you call two and a half hours okay.
- Vista liked my relatively new Intel mainboard with integrated graphics. It even gave the integrated video a 3.2 rating.
- Hardware drivers were a piece cake for the mainboard, video, sound, LAN, 22” Viewsonic LCD, and Epson R1800 printer.
- The network connection took two tries, but this was probably me not paying attention to something. The server drives mapped just fine.
- My external hard drive popped right up and provided access to my backup files.
- Office 2007 politely installed and setting up Outlook with my several e-mail accounts was smooth. Office 2007 imported my Office 2003 PST backup file without any issues.
- I have a couple of old 16-bit card games (blush) that I have always moved by just copying the folder to my new Windows install and running them from a shortcut on the desktop. With Vista they worked the same way and let me keep my high scores intact! How about that!
But Paradise Didn't Last
Unfortunately I cannot report the same success over the next three weeks. Notable glitch one was that my Quicken 2005 would not install. My finances are not very sophisticated and the last thing I ever want to do is buy a new copy of Quicken with features that I will never use and have to learn a new interface. It seems that Intuit has moved their support to the Middle East. I called and talked with a tech support person who gleefully told me that the sunset for Quicken 2005 was April 30, 2008. Intuit tosses out some lame workarounds to get Quicken 2005 to load on Vista but it didn’t happen. Quicken 2008 appears to run without problems.
Photoshop CS2 is buggy with Vista and I think this is pretty well documented. Given my amateur status as a photographer, Photoshop Elements 6 was the fix for strike 2.
This is odd. WinRar isn't my primary Zip utility, but I do use it and it seems to work OK on Vista. -Blinn
I use a file compression utility called WinRar. It supports zip files as well as rar files. I rarely have to deal with rar files, but I do like the utility for zip files. WinRar would not run under Vista. I imagine the developer is as much the problem here as Vista, but it still irked me that the program would not run.
I can sympathize with this! I have a Windows Mobile 6 device (one of the low-end HP units) and if I plug it in at home on the Vista machines, Vista loses all 3 external USB hard drives. I sync at the office and use Google Calendar to transfer the calendar between home and office. -Blinn
Strike 3 was my inability to get my Windows Mobile 6 Smartphone to sync with Vista’s new mobile device program. This one really confuses me as I can sync the phone with my Vista Home Prem notebook (service pack 1 not yet installed.) I spent 3 days trying to get this to work. A quick Google search revealed that I'm certainly not alone with this problem.
What This Means for Users
To put this in perspective, my home desktop is like most everyone else’s PC. It's used for collecting, massaging, and spitting out data. There are the two old card games I mentioned, but no other entertainment packages. I didn’t count them but I would guess my primary applications are in the range of 10 to 12 programs. Communications, record keeping, printing programs and a few utilities for disk burning, and such. So the percentage of program problems is pretty high. Having said that, most of the problems can be eliminated if you're willing to buy new versions of the applications. The Smartphone continues to be a puzzler because it works on one machine running Vista and fails on another.
I'm still mulling the future of the operating system. I like enough of what's in Vista to keep on keeping on, Now that SP1 us on the machine, I'll need to decide whether I want to stick with Vista or return to XP. -Blinn
I have gone back to Windows XP.
My increasing knowledge of Vista and improvements in the installation process made this install more tolerable. Vista SP1 seems to be more robust, but this is purely a seat-of-the-pants measurement.
My three week experience was not long enough to see if SP1 made Vista more stable. Whenever Vista becomes the topic of discussion I am still haunted by visions of Windows Millennium Edition. Thankfully, Microsoft has committed to let white box builders sell XP through the end of this year.
Marshall Thompson
TCR Personal Computers
740.687.6507
May Fourth 1970
This is a day that is both meaningless and meaningful. I have the opportunity to say "May the fourth be with you," as a silly reference to Star Wars, but this is also the day in 1970 when 4 students at Kent State University were killed by the Ohio National Guard. Details are here and at Kent State's official site. I remember going to work that day at a small radio station in eastern Ohio. The station's talk show host's opinion was that it "served them right" to be killed. Until that day, I felt that support for free speech was universal and that firing guns at unarmed students was something that happened only in other countries. Those were strange and difficult times. Soldiers, many about the same age as the students they shot, were killing and wounding Americans in my state. On the other side, some misguided individuals were bombing ROTC buildings and killing people in the name of peace. It was as if the entire nation had gone mad.
In these difficult times, it's worth remembering those difficult times.
Most, if not all, of those killed (4) and wounded (9) at Kent State on that day were not involved in the protests.
- William Knox Schroeder had transferred from Colorado. He was a member of the Reserve Officer Training Corps. He was shot in the back.
- Alison Beth Krause was also shot in the back. She was more than a football field's length away from the protests at the time she was shot.
- Sandra Lee Scheuer was an honors student in speech therapy. She did not take part in the Vietnam War protests that preceded the shootings and was more than 130 yards away from the incident when she was shot in the throat.
- Jeffrey Glenn Miller was the closest to the National Guard troops who killed him, but he was still nearly the length of a football field away. Miller had transferred to Kent State from Michigan State University. He was shot in the mouth by a single rifle bullet while facing the Guardsmen.
- The wounded: Thomas Mark Grace, 225 feet away (shot in the left ankle); Joseph Lewis Jr., 71 feet away (shot twice in the right abdomen and left lower leg); John R. Cleary, 110 feet away (shot in the upper left chest); Alan Canfora, 225 feet away (shot in the right wrist); Dean Kahler, 300 feet away (shot in the back and permanently paralyzed from the chest down); Douglas Wrentmore, 329 feet away (shot in the right knee); James Dennis Russell, 375 feet away (shot in the right thigh); Robert Stamps, 495 feet away (shot in the right buttock); and Donald Scott MacKenzie, 750 feet away (shot in the neck).
In 1970, what happened on the campus of Kent State University seemed wrong. Today, 38 years later, my opinion hasn't changed.
Nerdly News
Have an XP Machine? SP3 is Coming.
Microsoft says that XP is dead meat after June 30, but "white box" builders say they've been given a pass to the end of the year and both Dell and Lenovo say that they will be able to provide new XP systems after June 30. But that's another story. This one is about service pack 3, which will appear on your XP system soon. I installed Vista service pack 1 only yesterday; I had put it off because of known problems with the inital SP1 release. Should you allow XP service pack 3 to be installed now or wait? Good question.
SP3 won't become an automatic download until June, so you can put it off until then if you want to.
Microsoft had planned to make Windows XP SP3 available at the end of April, but didn't because there are "compatibility issues" (Wow! What a surprise!) with Windows XP systems that run a Microsoft retail store program (Dynamics Retail Management System). Windows Vista SP1, which began automatic downloads last week, has the same problem, which caused Microsoft to delay automatic downloads.
Microsoft says SP3 will be the final service pack for XP. Pressure could change that, though. If frustrated users start migrating to Macs or Linux-based machines, you can bet that Microsoft will put XP back on the table, and fast. SP3 contains all patches and hotfixes released since XP 2001, when XP was released. There's also Network Access Protection (NAP) that quarantines new PCs on the network until they are confirmed to meet the owner's security guidelines.
Another Judge Slaps the RIAA
It's yet another setback for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Some recording industry executives have finally discovered (belatedly) that online music sharing might have economic benefits that the industry could use profitably, but the RIAA continues to insist that such acts as storing files legally converted from a CD becomes an illegal act the instant the files are stored in a "shared folder". US District Judge Neil Wake disagrees. Bravo for common sense in the case Atlantic v. Howell.
Earlier reports suggested that the RIAA considered the mere act of converting audio from a CD to a digital form that can be stored on a computer is illegal. The organization clarified that misconception by explaining that the files change from legal status to illegal when they're placed in a shared folder, but Judge Wake shot an arrow through that balloon when he rejected all of the RIAA's assertions about "making available" and "offer to distribute" theories in regard to shared folders.
The RIAA had sued Pamela and Jeffrey Howell for copyright infringement in 2006. The couple had a Kazaa account and Jeffrey Howell admitted loading the Kazaa software onto his computer. But the couple said that they had not placed files that they had ripped from CDs in the program's shared folder. The files were from CDs that he owned, Howell said, and were on the computer solely for his use.
Wake reversed his own order from August of last year, in which he granted the RIAA's summary judgment and fined the Howells nearly $41 thousand.
The Monthly Spam Report
I have a Google Mail account that receives all messages send to my (several dozen) e-mail accounts. The Google spam folder retains messages for 30 days and then automatically deletes them. Google recognizes at least 90% of the spams I receive as spams, so it seemed to me that this would be a good way to keep a running account of how many spams I've received in the past 30 days. In the past 30 days, the count is up nearly 1000 from the previous month.
Wow. More than 7000 spams in a month. And below are some of the many I didn't open.
I'm fairly sure that I don't care to hear from "loathsomeness" regardless of his (her? its?) number.
What would this have been about? I know from the subject line that it would have been some bogus offer to make my site #1 in the search engines. There are legitimate search engine optimization (SEO) companies, but they don't send spam.
And then there's ...
These are from the "we caught you naked" goof balls. Do people actually open messages such as these? Unfortunately, the answer to that question is yes. I've trimmed these a bit to obscure the actual e-mail addresses they were sent to.
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