Monday, July 14, 2003Wow - this is definitely playing on naive computer users. Agree to the license and they can install and update any software they want on your computer. It appears legal... but horribly wrong to allow. Note - this program may NOT be identified as a virus! Practice safe computing and don't install software you download.
8:29:00 PM # comment [] trackback []
I've been blessed with good managers for nearly all of my jobs. I'll admit, that this group of good managers all share one common aspect. They all believe in the simple principle of hiring the best people and enabling them to do their job, removing roadblocks wherever possible and providing whatever is needed to get the job is done. They all respected their employees.
I've also had managers that did not share this philosophy. These managers were always difficult to work with for wide ranging reasons. Sometimes I believe it was related to perception or personality or control or many other possibilities.
I was stunned today listening to the NBC Nightly News when they interviewed Gerald Ford.
Gerald Ford said: I would rather have people smarter than me, better educated than I was. I was never one to say that I had to be the best. If you get good people,
even better than you are, I think that's a sign of good management.
8:11:40 PM #
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When will the entertainment industry learn that I don't want to be treated like a thief? I see this as yet another attempt at calling me a thief. I'll gladly buy whatever I want to hear or watch... but make it so that I can keep it and watch it when I want to. Feels like a spy story where the message self destructs after you hear it.
Why did DIVX fail? It seemed to fail to me because of a poorly implemented system that provided less content (no extra stuff) and it's invasion of privacy.. The DIVX disks were cheaper, but it required the user to allow their viewing habits to be recorded and you could end up paying a LOT more for a movie than you expected (DIVX disks could be upgraded). The short story was that you got charged again and again possibly for the same disk over again and again. I never bought into DIVX because of the invasion of privacy and lack of content.
Guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens. I'm predicting now that this company and format will flop bit time.
9:56:17 AM #
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I've been trying to help a friend out with her PC. She got a new PC and is using windows 2000 professional, latest updates. There is a collection of pictures (jpeg's, a tiff or two and a photoshop file) that as soon as any program scans the directory, that program dies horribly. This includes explorer (which copied the files from one w2k system over the network to the new systems hard drive), winzip, a few explorer replacements and even photoshop hangs. It's not the memory of the system as everything else seems to work fine (w2k boots, other programs run just fine) and just avoiding these files avoids the problem if explorer crashing and restarting.
The nutshell problem is that using explorer to get into the directory with these files crashes explorer with an write operation that fails to a low memory location (like 0 or some other six digit hex number). Dr. Watson kicks in and creates a dump file. Then explorer restarts.
I've looked at the dumpfile and the PC address is in a system DLL (NT.DLL possibly? I can't quite remember now). I was hoping for a user DLL, but no such luck.
I've tried the obvious stuff - the disk is now ntfs (was fat32), scanned for bad blocks (250gb drive), checked the browser help objects (ownly two there, disabled both and still had the problem), checked for spyware (didn't find any), tried norton systemworks and it fixed a number of small windows problems (mostly minor registry problems). I haven't had a chance to use disk doctor on it yet. But since explorer copied the files from one system to the other, this isn't likely to be a physical disk problem. I used file monitor and can catch the explorer crash while it's scanning the directory and attempting to build preview icons for each file.
I had renamed files and broke them into subdirectories and that can get past the problem with these files. But, other directories will continue to have this same intermittent crash/restart.
The old PC is running windows 2000 with an older service pack (was sp2, might be more current now). I'm thinking of just trying SP2 only and seeing if that'll help.
Any ideas the might help would be greatly appreciated.
8:49:04 AM #
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Progress at the vet's office on Toute Sweet. Toute needed to have a longer IV because she is up and walking around her cage a lot. She's also been interested in food. These two details indicate that she's getting better. This means that the antibiotics are working. Still don't know when she'll be released... but this means that she'll be coming home healthy soon. Thank you God!
8:32:13 AM # comment [] trackback []
There are some goverment programs that go way to far. TIA seems to be one of those types of goverment programs. I think the initial idea probably seemed like a good idea - try to predict when and where terrorist activity could happen. The most obvious problems are invasion of privacy, no accountability, no way to verify or confirm any information gathered.
8:29:23 AM # comment [] trackback []
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