Archive for February, 2008
Posted by presson on February 27, 2008
So much is happening with the music industry. Distribution channels are changing, 
digital rights are changing, and society is changing what they consider is important, and most critically, how they will pay for content. Napster, mp3,and iPods have roots in this change. The music industry can no longer depend on CD sales for profit. The use of physical resources to distribute and the price inflation to the many hands involved with the distribution mechanism is already too expensive and is only getting worse due to rising costs of energy. These costs and the ability to pay for only the songs someone wants is driving the music industry to a new model. RIAA has proven how desperate the music industry has become. Now FINALLY the music industry understands they are doing the equivalent of trying to force sales of “horse whips” when the automobile has become mainstream. Pure genius!
Welcome to the dawn of Music 2.0! What is Music 2.0? We’re still finding out, but it’s not physical media anymore. It’s music that is distributed, filtered, and decided by the public that are listening via Myspace, Podcasts, iTunes etc.
A panel of music businesses gathered yesterday, Feb 26, 2008 to discuss:
“Consider the statements that were made today without controversy:
- DRM on purchased music is dead
- A utility pricing model or flat-rate fee for music might be the way to go
- Ad-supported streaming music sites like iMeem are legitimate players
- Indie music accounts for upwards of 30 percent of music sales
- Napster isn’t losing $70 million per quarter (and is breaking even)
- The music business is a bastion of creativity and experimentation “
read more here:http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080226-music-exec-music-1-0-is-dead.html
Technorati tags:
RIAA,
music,
music 2.0
Posted in Cool, Fun Stuff, Main, Technology, Useful info | 2 Comments »
Posted by presson on February 23, 2008
You may not run into this error, but when Vista SP1 is released publicly, you may run into the same problem I did. When I attempted to run the SP1 x86 for Vista, I got the following message:
“Windows Vista Service Pack 1 cannot be installed on your computer because the language of Windows Vista you have installed is not supported or you have installed a language pack that is not supported.
Windows Vista Service pack 1 can only be installed on computers running the English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish versions of Windows Vista or computers running only those language packs.”
Knowledge Base article 947876decribes what to do: open your control panel, click on Clock, Language, and Region. Then the KB article tells you the wrong area to look. Instead look for “Install or Uninstall display Languages: 
, click next, then Select “remove languages” and see if anything besides your main language pack is installed. Remove it, reboot and the SP1 for Vista should install.
Alternatively, you can download the multi-language version of the SP when it becomes available.
I apparently had installed a language pack when I opened an email from a vendor who is from Sweden.
Posted in Administrator, Main, Technology, Useful info | 7 Comments »
Posted by presson on February 22, 2008
Posted in Art, Cool, Main, Technology | 4 Comments »
Posted by presson on February 21, 2008
I have always been intrigued by optical illusions. Each time I find something new I 
spend a lot of time trying to understand what makes it work. Arthur Shapiro has come up with a new illusion that also shows how our eyes and brain perceive light. What I really enjoyed about this write-up is the ability to tweak the illusion to see how changes affect what you see. Check it out here:
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2008/02/what_illusions_tell_us_about_t.php
Posted in Cool, Main, Photography, Technology | 1 Comment »
Posted by presson on February 18, 2008
Yes, you read that right. On two occasions I’ve experienced a problem with Gmail with critical emails I had sent. On two separate occasions I attempted to reply to an email and had a serious problem. I typed my reply, and clicked Send. I walked away with
the satisfaction that gmail said :
Well, it did send a message, but only the quoted text from the original email. My text was gone! What is worse is there was no indication of a problem! It wasn’t until I received a reply from my recipient that there was “no message in your post.”
User error you say? I thought so too, so I re-typed the message, verified the text was there, a moved my mouse and clicked send. It did it again, and finally a third time. I ended up using my hotmail account to send the email, and the message was finally delivered.
I wrote it off as a quirk until today it happened to me again. I tried replying to a message, and the same thing happened. It can’t be spam blocker (the message was delivered, but no text other than the original message.) I then went to my Outlook that is setup as IMAP, and the message sent correctly. I found that there are others who have experienced this problem as well, but everyone is writing off as a spam blocker, but that makes no sense because the message was sent, delivered, received, and read. It just had none of my content.
So beware – and you heard it here first. All I can suggest is check your sent folder and verify the message content is there. It’s been an intermittent problem for me, so you never know when it will happen. I’ll report any progress or response from Google.
Technorati tags:
gmail,
failure,
defect
Posted in Administrator, Main, Technology, Useful info | 13 Comments »
Posted by presson on February 14, 2008
Over the years there have been the typical office/cube pranks. Some of us might remember the old tricks where you take a reel of computer tape, break off one side, and put the reel up on the ceiling so that the tape unwinds into a huge mess. More recent ones are packing peanuts, cardboard, aluminum, and now.. well, the ultimate. I’m impressed with what it must have cost:
Posted in Cool, Fun Stuff, Main | 1 Comment »
Posted by presson on February 13, 2008
Posted in Main, Photography, Technology | Leave a Comment »
Posted by presson on February 13, 2008
Posted in Deals, Main, Technology, Useful info | 2 Comments »
Posted by presson on February 12, 2008
This single lens allows photographers to take a single shot, and afterwards modify 
the depth of field, what is in focus and what is not in focus, and slightly change the angle of the shot. Amazing! Check out this short clip.
Also, here is a paper from Stanford University describing the Plenoptic Camera technique.
Posted in Cool, Main, Photography, Technology | 2 Comments »
Posted by presson on February 7, 2008
Posted in Cool, Main, Technology | 1 Comment »
Posted by presson on February 6, 2008
Posted in Cool, Main, Technology | Leave a Comment »
Posted by presson on February 6, 2008
I’m impressed with the list of improvements sp1 brings to Vista. My system is much more stable overall, and more responsive overall. Some things worth knowing about SP1 are:
- Windows Vista SP1 includes a new compression algorithm for the RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) that helps reduce network bandwidth required to send bitmaps or images via RDP. The compression, which can be selected by administrators via Group Policy settings, is transparent to all RDP traffic, and typically reduces the size of the RDP stream by as much as 25-60%, based on preliminary test results.
- Adds support for Direct3D® 10.1, an update to Direct3D 10 that extends the API to support new hardware features, enabling 3D application and game developers to make more complete and efficient use of the upcoming generations of graphics hardware.
- Adds support for exFAT, a new file system supporting larger overall capacity and larger files, which will be used in Flash memory storage and consumer devices.
- Improves performance over Windows Vista’s current performance across the following scenarios:
- 25% faster when copying files locally on the same disk on the same machine
- 45% faster when copying files from a remote non-Windows Vista system to a SP1 system
- 50% faster when copying files from a remote SP1 system to a local SP1 system
- The Windows Vista SP1 install process clears the user-specific data that is used by Windows to optimize performance, which may make the system feel less responsive immediately after install. As the customer uses their SP1 PC, the system will be retrained over the course of a few hours or days and will return to the previous level of responsiveness.
- Windows Vista SP1 includes a new Security Policy (UAC: Allow UAccess), which allows applications to prompt for elevation without using the secure desktop. This allows a remote helper to enter administrative credentials during a Remote Assistance session
- Allows users to rename or delete folders while working offline with redirected folders. This functionality is important to users that use Folder Redirection and work in offline mode for extended periods of time. This functionality is disabled by default but can be enabled by enabling a registry setting.
- Adds a WMI interface as a replacement for the MoveUser.exe tool which was removed from Windows Vista. This allows customers to remap an existing workgroup or domain user account profile to a new domain user account profile.
- Enables support for hotpatching, a reboot-reduction servicing technology designed to maximize uptime. It works by allowing Windows components to be updated (or “patched”) while they are still in use by a running process. Hotpatch-enabled update packages are installed via the same methods as traditional update packages, and will not trigger a system reboot.
- Improves OS deployment by enabling 64-bit versions of Windows Vista to be installed from a 32-bit OS. This will allow IT professionals to maintain just a single WinPE image.
- GPMC (Group Policy Management Console) will be uninstalled with Service Pack 1 and GPEdit will default to Local Group Policy editing. Following these changes, SP1 users can download an updated version of GPMC which will include new Group Policy capabilities including adding comments to GPOs or individual settings and searching for specific Group Policy settings.
- SP1 reduces the number of UAC (User Account Control) prompts from 4 to 1 when creating or renaming a folder at a protected location
Again, see all the changes here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/4/a/f4a35b2b-2f62-4104-a3e6-5f7bc1318e9f/Notable%20changes%20in%20Windows%20Vista%20SP1.xps
Technorati tags:
Vista,
SP1,
enhancements
Posted in Administrator, Main, Technology, Useful info | 1 Comment »
Posted by presson on February 5, 2008
Microsoft made some changes (“boxing”) to startup programs that will help prevent programs like Adobe Updater, WinZip quicklaunch, and other startup programs from taking all the resources of a system. Vista sp1 sets a low-priority thread and low-priority disk access that will affect ADSI queries or disk access used in logon scripts. Read more about it here: http://bink.nu/news/boxing-and-the-case-of-the-slow-or-hanging-logon-script-in-vista.aspx
Posted in Administrator, Main, Technology | 1 Comment »
Posted by presson on February 5, 2008
It’s not available for download yet, but here 
is the schedule for current users:
- In mid-March, we will release Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Update (in English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese) and to the download center on Microsoft.com. Customers who visit Windows Update can choose to install Service Pack 1. If Windows Update determines that the system has one of the drivers we know to be problematic, then Windows Update will not offer SP1. Since we know that some customers may want to update to SP1 anyhow, the download center will allow anyone who wants to install SP1 to do so.
- In mid-April, we will begin delivering Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Vista customers who have chosen to have updates downloaded automatically. That said, any system that Windows Update determines has a driver known to not update successfully will not get SP1 automatically. As updates for these drivers become available, they will be installed automatically by Windows Update, which will unblock these systems from getting Service Pack 1. The result is that more and more systems will automatically get SP1, but only when we are confident they will have a good experience.
- The remaining languages will RTM in April.
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/02/04/announcing-the-rtm-of-windows-vista-sp1.aspx
Update: here is a list of changes from Microsoft:http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d69c4e1b-c81a-41be-b1f5-66e615ba5912&DisplayLang=en
Posted in Administrator, Main, Technology, Useful info | 1 Comment »
Posted by presson on February 2, 2008
Nora the cat is at it again.. This time playing duets with student pianists. For whatever reason, the cute cat post is on the top ten for this blog..
Posted in Cool, Main | 3 Comments »
Posted by presson on February 1, 2008
In for a laugh? Got headphones? I would recommend watching this at home. There is a whole series for these helpful videos on how to use Photoshop. I saw #4 first, and I’m linking it here for you, but know there is a bit of a story line..
Technorati tags:
youtube,
Photoshop,
funny
Posted in Cool, Fun Stuff, Main, Photography, Technology | Leave a Comment »
digital rights are changing, and society is changing what they consider is important, and most critically, how they will pay for content. Napster, mp3,and iPods have roots in this change. The music industry can no longer depend on CD sales for profit. The use of physical resources to distribute and the price inflation to the many hands involved with the distribution mechanism is already too expensive and is only getting worse due to rising costs of energy. These costs and the ability to pay for only the songs someone wants is driving the music industry to a new model. RIAA has proven how desperate the music industry has become. Now FINALLY the music industry understands they are doing the equivalent of trying to force sales of “horse whips” when the automobile has become mainstream. Pure genius! 
