Bluescreen hell and hope ( Google O.S. )

My computer got attacked by something lately - I'm not sure what really, but it involved a lot of blue screens and 'STOP 0x0000007B' messages. Entirely peeved, I decided to format my hard drive, having backed up everything beforehand, which I do on a regular basis anyway ( the machine got progressively slower over time, and I sensed the worst - backing up is good advice which can not be repeated too often )

I then embarked on a reinstallation nightmare. Windows setup was giving me various bluescreens. Having confirmed the disk were not surface - damaged or dirty, it took forever to get to the root cause of the problem - well, sort of get to the root of it. Having strained the grey matter I remembered unistalling Pinnacle products before the roof fell in. I answered 'yes' to 'remove all files' even if they were shared. Either it's a coincidence, or that stuffed my machine.

Having re-written the bootsector, performed LLF on the drive, and run various variations of FDISK and so on, I discovered why windows wouldn't reinstall. I was using an OEM Windows XP home disk, trying to use the XP Professional Uprgrade, and the thing was hanging. There was only one thing for it: a slipstream disk. Thankfully I had another machine connected to the net, and found the instructions without any trouble.

Basically a slipstream disk copies over the files which an OEM disk lacks. I was able, by following the instructions carefully, to combine the XP pro with Home, and throw in SP-2 for good measure - all on the one disk. I can't remember how many times I've had to go to these lengths over Windows. It took almost a week to get my computer up and running again, and my patience was at nil for a finish. It looks like the days of paying a wad for an O.S. have - praise to the Lord - finally come to an end though.

Within the next few months, Google O.S. will be making an appearance. From what I can gather, firstly on Notebooks / Netbooks / PDA's, but later on we'll be getting it on all forms of computer. About time, and hats off to Google yet again. It's much more than an O.S. though, it's more of a way of life. Not a new way of life, but rather one we live already but which MS is still too dumb to recognise.

For example, video player? - what video player?! Google are betting on us not needing a video player fundamental to the O.S., because most people watch streamed video online. Beautifully logical. Get ready for a super - Linux. I can't wait! No matter if it starts off wobbly ( there's no evidence it will, based on the excellent Chrome ) but besides, there's plenty of room for getting it wrong at the start. If Google do their worst, the Beta will be no worse than the final product of MS with all the patches, sellotape and plastic ties that help it barely chug and fart along. Oh, and it won't cost the laughable €392 I was quoted when XP came out. No, it will be FREE!

The future suddenly looks a lot brighter!

ClickandPay.com / NetObjects - which is worse?

Well, back in July I decided to purchase some software from NetObjects. They were in discounting form and I had money - never a good combination. The last time I bought from them - 2008 - I simply did a Bank Transfer from me to them with no problems - invoice was emailed to me, and despite not great communication otherwise ( none in fact ) the product arrived within a few weeks. As it came from Germany I was a little bit peeved ( the Germans are pretty fast ) but a few weeks was okay. Just about.

It's a slightly different story this time. On the 27th. of July I went on their site to make my purchase. When it came to 'Checkout' time there was no sign of 'Bank Transfer' ( which is still advertised on their site ) but rather 'ClickandBuy'. I had no choice but to opt for it. Unbecknownst to me, I was signing up for a whole different service ( more about 'service' later ) which had nothing to do with NetObjects. To make matters worse, clickandbuy are moneygrabbing bastards by all accounts. Thanks NetObjects.

Following a long process of looking at blank 'help' pages on ClickandBuy.com, I finally managed to discover that my payment is just sitting there, doing nothing. I then went on Google to check out 'ClickandBuy'. By all accounts it's a "service" ( London - based ) which lies somewhere between a virus and a 419 scam.

I'm thoroughly disgusted at NetObjects for seeing their customers as a cynical opportunity, and more than disgusted that 'ClickandBuy' have my account details thanks to NetObjects. So much for trust. Take a look at the links below and decide if these are the sort of shisters who you'd be happy giving your details to! Oh, and I've gone completely off NetObjects too. I no longer want anything to do with a company that dupes customers like that: a half - decent company should not take advantage of customers.

I've demanded a full refund and will be in touch with my Bank about ClickandBuy.

http://www.ripoffreport.com/ClickandBuy/Internet-Services/ClickandBuy-clickandbuy-scam-7C4PM.htm

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081113045549AAvAN3G

Windows 98, MMX and driver problems ... ahh, the good old days!

I recently dug out an old Dell laptop, namely because Windows XP 'compatibiltiy mode' doesn't work with quite a number of my really old games, Like Destruction Derby 2 ( 1996 ). The problem is rarely graphics: quite a number of games will run, but with no sound. Things have moved on a bit from 'MIDI' 'WAV' and 'AWE32' ... not to mention 'Roland'! In other words, I stretched 'backward compatibility' to breaking point.

The old Dell in question is a 1997 Latitude XPi CD ... that's right, it has a CD-ROM drive, maw! It also has something I really like ... a floppy drive! Out came the 2 gb. drive and in went my 100 gb. Fine but runs a bit hot. Specs otherwise are: 64 mb. RAM ( + 16 onboard ) Pentium 166 MMX processor, Neomagic graphics ... and ESS sound.

The sound is proving to be a bit of a problem though. The Dell website, surprisingly, has nearly every driver still on it for this machine ... except the correct sound driver. I set up the machine with Windows 98 SE and Windows 2000 Professional on a dual - boot system. No sound in either case. It turns out that the driver on both disks is slightly different from the Dell driver, and dell no longer have the file available ... ESS1887 to be precise.

I have to say I'm impressed with the catalogue of files available via the Dell support website though. I was less impressed with Microsoft. I try to like Microsoft. I watch videos of Microsoft's history on Youtube and get a warm feeling all over. Then something happens and I just go back to hating them! This was to be one such time.

True to form, Windows 98SE wouldn't shut down. Then I remembered the 'shutdown assistant', a little patch for this pretty major flaw which was issued by Microsoft. Did I find it on Microsoft's website? - no way! Now that REALLY annoys me. To put it simply, Dell don't have a driver I want. No problem, that's tough ( but as already mentioned they still have a lot of files - 12 years on ).

In the case of Microsoft, here they made a complete balls of something. That's different. If they make a balls of something, the patch ( shutdown ) should be available for as long as it's likely that someone will need it. If they don't want to provide it, they should quit stopping others from providing it. Microsoft are incredibly protectionist. Even the old Windows 3.11 disks are not legally available for download. It's stupid. Who is going to make a fortune from Windows 3.11? Might it usurp Windows 7?

I eventually got the download so that I could shut down Windows 98SE from a person who, presumably, was 'illegally' hosting it. My God, how I really do hate Microsoft! Whatever about Windows 3.11, which is of course their property, not making a fix available for something bought is purely contemptible. I must get my linux user manual out again ... and get to like it.

All in all, I'm enjoying my little step back in time. Like many who get misty - eyed about computing of long ago however, I had forgotten how frustrating searching for drivers can be ... and making floppy disk bootdisks!

Adverts.ie - I'd buy something if I could

I've been looking out for a Blackberry Storm for quite some time now ... or at least since Vodafone released it last year with a 12 month contract and €109 price ( it's free in the U.K. / better contract terms ) Needless to say, at the time I wasn't interested under these 'terms'. Vodafone do what they like, and the 'Telecommunications' "watchdog" in Ireland has nothing to do with phone charges!

I was perusing Adverts.ie when I came across a nice example at a reasonable price. Tried to log in to Adverts.ie and discovered that I could not. I then entered the details of another account ( set up in frustration some time ago as a test, resulting from the same 'You do not have permission' error ) but again, no go.

On this second attempt I was redirected to sister site 'Boards.ie' where - guess what - I was told that I did "not have permission" to post a reply to the advertisement. For the third time in a week, I gave up. I like Boards.ie / Adverts.ie but they are not much use if users can not log in. Is it me? - well, I don't think so. I log on to at least 6 forums and never have a problem with 'enabling cookies' or anything else - it just logs me in instead of hopping from site to site with the same error message.

Copyright insanity

Today I logged on to Youtube to check a video that I had added to my favourites list. To my utter amazement, I got a red bar at the top of the screen telling me that due to copyright issues I needed to sod off, basically. At first I thought that my account had been suspended, but on further examination no, it seems to be yet another "highly unusual" youtube-ism.

This can mean either of two things: 1/ it's a new bug in 2.0 channels, or 2/ they're serious. I certainly hope it's the former. For quite a while I've felt that Youtube have been bowing to the more insane elements of the copyright brigade. Insane copyright enforcement as we know it began with Walt Disney.

One does not have to look very far to find evidence. Yes, the suits at Walt Disney are very active indeed, engaging in such petty behaviour as threatening legal action against preschool creches. Only a couple of years ago a local creche was threatened over showing a Walt Disney video to under - 5's. I also recall in the recent past a school's Christmas play revolving around 'Snow white and the seven dwarfs' ( man, is that politically correct?! ) having to be abandoned due to the same copyright jackboot approach.

Now I can well understand what copyright is all about, and God knows, Ireland is a copyright theft zone at the best of times. There are people, regardless of how much money they have, who will never pay for something if they can help it. We live in a culture where - and it has to be said the internet has not helped - intellectual property is seen as being there for the taking. The most startling example is probably Music.



I remember when the big debate was about putting a levy on blank Cassette tapes ( technically speaking, recording from the radio is illegal ). In fact our own U2 were among the biggest promoters of this levy idea. The arguement, however, is twofold. For far too long the music industry has been ripping people off, and the oft - wheeled out example of the needy artist in justifying this is a bogus one ( the music industry takes them for a ride too, regardless )

The simple fact of the matter is that Copyright, to my mind anyway, is to stop people who can afford something from stealing it. It should not be for protecting markets to a greater than fair financial end, nor should it be about keeping poorer people who can not afford something ignorant. Both instances are called 'Greed' not 'Copyright'.

Youtube have, over the past number of months, been actively disabling sound on the most grainey rubbish - quality recordings due to copyright. It makes no sense. If they had any sense they would get together properly with all concerned, and put out a 30 minute quality preview of something which is 90 minutes, as per 'journeymanpictures' ( great channel ). This would whet people's appetite and make them feel like buying it. What seems to have happened is that Youtube and the movie / music industry are at the point of mild flirting at best.

Another daft idea is that of "algorithmically demoting" videos which contain profanity. The only problem for youtube is that these videos are consistently at the top of the most viewed / favourited / commented, and making a most viewed video not most viewed is profoundly dishonest. It either is or isn't. The youtube partner progam is practically impossible to join, as everything is a copyright infringement in youtube's ultra - vague 'rulebook'. Last but not least, they are promoting some truly rubbish videos from some of those who do succeed in becoming partners, like a girl showing eveyone her apartment.

As we all know - though I wonder if youtube have been told - things move fast in the tech. industry. Apple twigged it and came up with 'itunes'. This latest youtube annoyance is one of many ( see my previous post ). If they don't get their act together and come up with something workable soon, they will drown. Youtube has already been around for 4 years - a very long time in the internet context. That should mean that they have another 18 - 24 months left, if the rise and fall of the vast majority of previous ventures is anything to go by.

In short, common sense has to prevail. Preventative measures never work, but working with people and giving them options at a FAIR price does. I often wonder if, in two years time, I will be sitting here (no doubt a little more grey) and watching a new youtube type service from Asia or India, after the original youtube had tied itself in knots and lost all credibility. It is already three quarters there.

IQPrize winner: Decisions for what?

Alas the time has come and gone ... as per my previous post I didn't win the €10k. prize in this competition run by a Dublin I.T. consultancy firm. The whole idea, just to re-cap, was that someone would forward an idea which would "kick start the economy".

The winning idea, 'Decisions for Heroes', amounts to glorified Excel. It has innovations, but no one thing that I can see which is truly outstanding ( other than the fact that it's a noble thing to do - probably not lost on the founder when entering the competition ) Even the name is a rip - off of 'Help for Heroes', a British charity founded in 2007.

Of the other 8 shortlisted 'ideas' we had 'Our Writers Bloc'. This idea cuts out the middleman in online publishing: the writer publishes via this site, and readers pay to read it. Only one problem: IDG launched exactly the same thing a couple of years ago ( blurb.com).

Myhotel.ie was apparently an amazing way to book hotels, but no detail was given so I will have to fall back on the default position of assuming it's more of the same. The other entries comprised of stockmarket investing online, mental games for the mentally challenged, paperless bills filing service, and 'Plink'.

The idea behind Plink is a bit confusing, but it does sound exciting. It has to do with mashups, and garnering information to link to, for example, a photograph taken ( pertaining to the subject ). Sounds very interesting, but would probably cost a fortune to develop, not to mention the possibility of legal action from Plink.com - a social networking site parked since 2006. It always pays to check these things!

In a nutshell, as I said before judges in some of these competitions set out with a rough idea of what they want before anyone even enters. I also suspect that this competition had more to do with personalities and gloss than real ideas. I didn't think that I had the best idea - I didn't think I would win either to be honest - but I would have fancied my chances against a data entry product which relies on the goodwill of users to build a database!

I was keen on the idea of some feedback on my site - www.deadpc.net - from the people who ran the competition, but now I'm not so keen. I got an email telling me to register by the 24th. if I wanted 15 minutes of opinion. As an added bonus, the founder of 'Decisions for Heroes' will also be on hand to give advice. I feel that taking advice from someone who can't think of an original name is beneath me.

YouTube changing the rules ... again

Youtube has come a long way since 2005, and is now facing that mid - life crises which recently hit Facebook: reinventing itself, namely. Money. In the case of Facebook they got a serious rap on the knuckles for wanting to hold on to commercially valuable personal information pertaining to users, and backed down. In the case of Youtube, it's more in - your - face, or perhaps, in you 'interface'.

These new 2.0 'Beta' channels are crap. Hopefully the delay in implementing them is a reflection of some serious second - thoughts on the part of Youtube ... I really hope so. Lots of people have lots of different complaints, but as someone who is not heavy into the 'Director' end of Youtube I have to say there's one really annoying aspect to the whole thing which jumps out straight away.

Once upon a time, you hit on a user and see that they have nothing but favourites. No problem. With these new 'Beta' channels being forced on everyone, we now have the latest 'favourite' being given the same prominence as someone having uploaded a video of their own. You see video first, favourite second as opposed to favourite first and video second. This dilutes the creativity of getting off your ass and making a video.

I accept that youtube has to make money: no such thing as a free lunch and all of that. What I don't understand is why they seemingly don't understand phased development. Roll things out gradually, get a consensus, and mould it into a commercially viable system rather than using the sledgehammer approach. While Youtube has to make money, they also need to keep an eye on the fact that without users, there's no advertising revenue - in other words, money.

This is not the first Youtube weirdness cloudburst. I recently put together a 16 minute video. I thought it would be fine to upload, because I had taken a look and saw videos up to 30 minutes on there. Not so. Under the "Grandfather rule" Youtubers who joined before a certain date can upload long videos, but more recent Youtubers can't for copyright infringement reasons. Therefore all older Youtube users do not abuse copyright, and new ones do. Makes sense ... on second thoughts, no it doesn't.

It strikes me that Youtube, in the middle of it's arrogance, would do well to remember it's a fad. It will pass. In the late 1990's, Napster ruled the world. Ask most kids now what Napster is, and they'll probably shrug and say something like "an online retailer of nappies?" Remember that, youtube!