08 June 2003

Too much security can be bad for your PC! Since a lot of you use Windows PC's (if you're a Mac user you don't need to read this unless you want a good laugh) you might be interested in what just happened to me. I run Norton Internet Security 2003 on Windows XP Home, and since I live alone I'm the only user of the PC. Today I did a routine live update, and it downloaded a patch of about 1.5 Mb. It installed OK, and then told me to reboot the computer to complete the installation. I did that, but the "loading personal settings" procedure took longer than usual, and Norton Internet Security failed to load automatically at startup. I opened the program manually, and tried to check the settings, but it told me I needed administrator privileges. Of course, I *am* the administrator, but somehow the registry settings were telling it I was a "restricted user." What's worse, all the options were turned *off*, so the program wasn't actually protecting anything. Now, this sort of thing can be fixed if you're a hardcore registry tweaker with plenty of time to spare, but I'm not and I haven't. I decided the best thing was to do a system restore, and the most recent restore point was Friday evening, since when I hadn't done anything to the PC except this live update. The restore went OK, Norton Internet Security loaded on startup, and when I re-ran Live Update it told me all the files were up-to-date. So what had gone wrong? I don't know, but I do recommend using System Restore if you use Windows XP and want a quick fix to a problem. 7:49:47 PM     comment on this entry []

About Nozema My old friend from Denmark, Poul Foged, posted a comment about Nozema, wondering why they turned down the chance to put Radio 10 on 1008 kHz. I have not spoken to anyone at Nozema (this being a long holiday weekend), but according to reports they weren't interested in a one month deal. Now, Nozema is a private company, and says it has already suffered financially because of the delay in carrying out the frequency auction. At one point they were even talking of taking legal action against the government because Nozema was spending a lot of money on the "zerobase" project (the re-engineering of the FM network) without any clear indication of when they would be able to start signing contracts with new licence holders. Now, we do know that there will be technical changes at the Flevo site, whereby they will use a single mast on 1008 instead of the directional pattern that was used for the public broadcasters, and probably with higher power. Maybe they want to get started on that in the meantime, or do other work which requires the transmitters to be switched off. Radio 10 would no doubt have wanted to use the directional system, with lower power. Since Radio 10 has no legal claim to the use of 1008, Nozema would be perfectly entitled to refuse if it didn't fit in with Nozema's own plans, and the financial benefits were minimal (which is apparently the reason they gave). I'll try to find out more this coming week. BTW, just to be clear, there are two transmitter operators here: one is Nozema, the other is Broadcast Partners b.v. Nozema has the lion's share of the market, as it does all the engineering for the public broadcasters, but Broadcast Partners currently have five major commercial stations as clients. This may be a good opportunity to say that we've decided to put together a dossier on Dutch domestic broadcasting for the Media Network site. Much of it will consist of links to current information, but I'll be writing an overview which hopefully will put a lot of that information in context. Because of the interest that has been shown in developments here, we're going to fast track that project so hopefully there will be something online within a few weeks. In the meantime, if there's anything specific you want to know about Dutch radio, click on the letter icon to the left of this page, and E-mail it to me. I won't answer such questions individually, but I'll include the answers in the dossier. 11:39:37 AM     comment on this entry []

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