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Monday, November 04, 2002
Jon Udell: Extending Groove. Jon came up to our office for a sneak peek at Groove Web Services. He gets it!
10:42:55 AM
Anyone remember that old add for Apple where a kid is trying to play a CD ROM and the father can't make it work. Finally the kid says something like, "I'm going to my friends house to play. He has a Mac."
I'm travelling this week to Microsoft. Its a 5 hour flight from Boston to Seattle so I thought "hey, I have that handy power adapter thing, I should bring a DVD or two". So I bought some cool new Anime DVDs. Sure enough, the movie on the plane is Stuart Little 2 so I'm psyched to have my own movie. But will it play? No way. First Windows Media Player pops up and says something like, "I found a DVD. Do you want to play it now". But it can't play it. No compatible decoder found. Ok, well, I didn't even know Media Player could play them. So I run the DVD player that came with the laptop. Same error: "No compatible decoder found." Bummer. I gues I'll work on some code for the rest of the flight. Later at my hotel (yes, it has broadband) I search for a new decoder. I find one for $14.95. Do I want to pay extra for some extra stuff? No? Do I want to install a new installer? No. Am I sure I don't want to pay more for more extra stuff? Yes. Ok, then install away. Reboot. Run Media Player. Now it seems like its doing something. Hourglass comes up. Then it crashes. For fun I hit "Debug" and see that I'm in kernel32.dll trying to dereference a pointer with the value '10'. Reboot. Try my other player. No, it still doesn't see the new decoder. Try some settings. Turn off Dolby. Now Media Player doesn't crash but I get a flickering black screen and no sound. Same deal with Media Player 9. Sigh.
I'm going to my friend's hose to watch this DVD. He has a Mac...
Sure enough, the movie on the plane is