Posts filed under Annoying

Major Server Downtime

Last night my server went down. There was a 'poof', and then nothing. The status LED on my motherboard was still in the green, so it could be either the motherboard, CPU or the power supply. This morning I head out to the local computer dealer to get me a new motherboard, CPU, and a power supply. Thankfully, it was just the power supply that died. This might actually be a good opportunity to upgrade my server to a Mac Mini.

Posted on March 30, 2007 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Personal, WordPress.

Wordpress 2.1.2 Update

I upgraded my version of Wordpress to version 2.1.2. This went the usual 'problems'. First of all I 'forgot' to make a recent backup. Second, I used Transmit (an OSX FTP Client) to upload the new pages. Transmit has the possibility to overwrite files. No worries (I thought), I just renamed the files I editted, do I could rename them back when I had uploaded the new files. It seems that I didn't read the warning very well. When I overwrote the directories, Transmit removed them first and uploaded the new files afterwards. This meant that all my uploads, and customized files were gone..... aaaaargh. Fortunatelly, I had a backup from two weeks ago, so I could get the old files. This reminds me to make a decent backup before doing anything about my Wordpress installation in the future....

Posted on March 22, 2007 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Personal, Website, WordPress.

Remote Annoyances

It's been a couple of days since I got my new home cinema set, and there are several annoyances with remote controls. My old home cinema components were also from Pioneer, so I guessed that the new remotes would be similar, but boy I was wrong. The new remote for the AV receiver has about 10 times as many buttons, with every at least 2 functions per button. The remote for the Pioneer DVR-545 lacks several key buttons on the remote;

numeric keys for zapping
buttons for going fast forward and reverse
Audio and subtitle selection

If you need those controls (and I need them a lot), you have to slide the remote open, and use a SHIFT button to alter in movie settings (like the subtitles). Why not place these buttons on the surface? So newer doesn't mean better IMO

Posted on March 21, 2007 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Hardware, Personal.

Microsoft Windows 2003 Service Pack 2 Released

Microsoft released Service Pack 2 for Windows 2003 this week. Normally, the release will be announced, but this time they released it quietly (??). Anyway, I tried to upgrade my experimental Windows 2003 SP1 server with SP2, but that was a no-go. It seems that if yo uninstalled Internet Explorer 7 AFTER you installed sp1, you need to uninstall IE7 (according to the release notes).

Internet Explorer If you installed Internet Explorer 7 after installing Windows Server 2003 SP1, you must uninstall Internet Explorer 7 before you install Windows Server 2003 SP2.

After this you can install Service Pack 2. This means 2 reboots instead of 1 (are we going back to the old days where you needed a reboot every time you sneezed??) First of all, I didn't want IE7, but it got pushed down my throat in their so-called 'critical updates'. And second, this confirms the lack of inter-department communication in Redmond, otherwise this wouldn't be necessary.... And the fun continues.... After uninstalling IE7 I received an 'Access Denied' error while updating. Research on that error gave me some pages relating to Windows XP service pack installations. It seems that there might be some registry keys which are not modify-able by the installation of SP2. For godsake, I run the update under the administrator account. Why can't the installer modify the registry setting for me? Why do I have to screw around with the registry editor and logfiles to install a freakin' service pack from Microsoft :mad: ? The Windows box goes out the window, as soon I have enough money to get me a OSX based server.... UPDATE: The update via Windows Update also didn't work. It didn't show the Access Denied error, but it wouldn't install SP2. I did get it to work though by 'resetting' the permissions on the registry with the following command:

secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\repair\secsetup.inf /db secsetup.sdb /verbose

Posted on March 15, 2007 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Microsoft, Operating Systems.

More EU Action Against Apple

And yet another dumb-ass politician with no clue whatsoever is starting a campaign against Apple. Again the iTunes Music Store (ITMS) is the victim in this crusade. A certain Meglena Kuneva is complaining about the fact that music bought at the ITMS can only be played on the iPod. Well, Meglena Kuneva, I got some considerations for you:

Music bought in the ITMS can be played on Windows and Apple platforms (iTunes, which is free).
5 platforms can be authorized to play these songs. This means that you can buy 1 song and play it legally on your work, at home, on your laptop, on your wife's PC etc.
Music bought in music stores selling the MS flavor (PlayForSure) can ONLY be played on Windows platforms.
ITMS music can be burned on CD's by default, lot's of MS flavors won't allow that. There are some limitations on burning when you're burning playlists.
Music burned to CD can be ripped to MP3, and can be played on ANY mp3 player.
Music protected with PlayForSure solution, can't even be played on their own Zune media player, so you have to buy the song(s) multiple times.

The biggest advance is that there are no different flavors of FairPlay. The MS DRM can be different on each song. Sometimes you're not allowed to do anything but listen to it on you're PC, while other implementations allow you to do more with the music. This is nice, but when you have plenty of songs, how do you keep the limitations apart? An accurate list with the Apple FairPlay DRM limitations can be found here.

Posted on March 12, 2007 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Apple, News.

Sony Limits PS2 Compatibility on PS3

The great thing about the current game consoles is that people who have (owned) an older version still can play their games. most XBox games run on the XBox 360. Nintendo also offers great backwards compatibility on their Wii. Sony has to be the one company who differs. The current PS3 (sold in the US and Japan) offer backwards compatibility with PS2 games (to some extend). The PS3 which will be available in Europe will have a different 'engine'. This means that backwards compatibility is much less. Way to go Sony. This means that the current PS2 owners have to keep their PS2 as well.... I'm stil in the orientation phase in deciding which console (Xbox360, Nintendo Wii or the PS3) I should buy, when I get my new HD-TV. I guess that PS3 is dropping a few places with this strategy, cause older games come cheap and can still offer lot's of fun.

Posted on February 24, 2007 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Gaming, Hardware.

Macrovision Responds to Steve Jobs' Open Letter

A couple of days ago, Steve Jobs posted an open letter regarding DRM. Since then several others have responded to the letter. Some against it (RIAA of course :neutral: ), others in favor of it. Today, I ran into an open letter by MacroVision. These are the guys that made it impossible (euh.. well... a bit harder actually) to copy the old VHS tapes. They can't agree with Steve, cause that would put them out of business. So they came up with some bery intelligent (NOT) reasons why DRM is good for the consumer: DRM is broader than music Sure, for them. Just put the bloody stuff on everything. Music, Video, Software. If they have the chance they'll probably put it on a sandwich. DRM increases not decreases consumer value With DRM, I can't put my purchase music or movies on another player or play it under Linux. If I want to do that, I have to BUY it several times. And that puts more money into their pockets. The funniest line in that paragraph is probably: "Abandoning DRM now will unnecessarily doom all consumers to a "one size fits all" situation that will increase costs for many of them." [sarcasm]Indeed going for plain-old mp3's, or mpg's/avi's cripples me to hell and back. Can't play it on anything these days.[/sarcasm] DRM will increase electronic distribution I don't get this one. It is well known that people don't want protected stuff. They want to play the things they bought on players they choose, and not just the players the RIAA and others decide. So removing DRM would mean that more people are able to play the content on their devices of choice. It would also open the entire Linux market (they are left out with all the DRM protected stuff). More prospect customers means more transactions, or at least the number of customers / transactions would be the same. But if they stay the same, you get a bigger margin on sales, because you don't have to pay for the DRM licensing. DRM needs to be interoperable and open Can't argue with this one, but it means that they have to open the sourcecode, so that the Linux communitie can also use the technology. And we all know what that means... It means that all DRM will be cracked/circumvented within days, so that's not gonna happen ever.

Posted on February 16, 2007 by Willem and filed under Annoying, General, Software.

New Dell 24inch TFT

Today I ordered a new Dell 24inch TFT monitor for my main PC. I currently have a 19inch Sony (1280*1024), and the new 24inch widescreen monitor has a lot more desktop space, which comes in handy when you work with lots of open programs. The main reason for buying was that Dell had a special discount till the end of Februari 2007 (nearly 300 euro's off). The secondary reason was that I wanted to treat myself for my upcoming birthday :-). This evening I was surfing the net, and ended up on the US website of Dell, and saw the prices there..... just take a look at the pictures, and explain the difference to me (I know that you have to add sales tax in the US, but that's not what I'm pointing at).

US Dell Website

Dutch Dell website

Posted on February 5, 2007 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Hardware, Personal.

Mac Book Pro Wireless Issues

I have several wireless devices in the house. Some of them are not capable of connecting to 802.11g (54Mbps) networks. For these devices I have an older Linksys Accespoint (802.11b / 11Mbps). For my other wireless devices (Mac Book Pro, and a Windows Laptop from work), I have a Speedtouch DSL router with builtin 802.11b/g wireless. Somehow my Mac has some problems connecting to the faster networks. But the problem is that this used to work correctly in the past. The last couple of weeks everything works fine in the beginning, but after a while the connection gets terminated, eventhough the wireless indicator displays full reception. Switching the 54Mbps network to the Linksys access point (which also support this) is not helping. The only thing that keeps working is connecting to the slower 11Mbps network. I also tried modifing security settings (changed from WPA-PSK to WEP), but that also gives problems. I even tried different wireless settings (changing channels,SSID's, etc.) I found some possible solutions, like removing the com.apple.airport.preferences.plist file in /library/preferences/SystemConfiguration/. This removes all settings concerning the wireless networks for the airport. The result is that you need to reconfigure all wireless networks. After the reboot and reconfiguring the wireless networks, it seems to work a short while. Another thing, which is very peculiar, is that it seems to happen mostly late at night (like 10 minutes ago). This could be a coincidence, because that's when I use my MBP the most. It's is more than annoying. It's driving me crazy. I have even thought about buying a genuine Airport Extreme, but only if I'm sure that it solves my problem...... AAAAAAAAAAAARGH

Posted on February 5, 2007 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Apple.

Terrible Voice Recognition

A while ago, I thougt that I had contracted a virus on my Windows laptop from work. Unfortunately, there's no chance that I can migrate to a Mac there :-(. The strangest things were happening on my laptop. Suddenly there appeared strange pieces of text in Word documents, and in e-mails I was writing. My first reaction was that someone was typing along with me. After scanning my laptop with three virus scanners and using several anti-spyware software suites, it turned out that there was nothing wrong. After that the uninvited pieces of text were gone..... Until yesterday. But this time I had a clue what had happened. I use the keyboard a lot for copy, and pasting (CTRL-C and CTRL-V). It seems that WINDOWS-V starts voice recognition. I must have pressed the wrong key combination. This key combo starts with a dialog box explaining that the mic needs tuning. I canceled that dialog, but somehow the voice recognition is still being enabled. There's no visual indication that it's running. It seems that Windows doesn't recognize the Dutch language, and therefor it starts guessing what you say and displays that in the focussed window. Lame ass Windows functionality if you ask me.......

Posted on February 5, 2007 by Willem and filed under Annoying, Microsoft, Operating Systems.