It’s probably obvious, but I’ve taken a week off from the blog.  (Apart from a few linkdumps, which don’t count, because who really reads them anyway.)

Vista is released today, that is the big story. I don’t like it, but it’s happening anyway. I could rant and rave but that’s not going to change anything. Many people will buy it, many more will get stuck with it and a significant number will continue with XP for many years to come. That’s my plan.

And if the OS after Vista isn’t something totally new, re-engineered from the ground up, without all the silly DOS throwbacks and over-the-top self conscious showboating (designed to mask the silly DOS throwbacks) then I’ll be switching completely to OSX and or Linux for my sundry boxxens.

Hey, maybe in 5 years Linux will actually be good.

» 10 expert tips and tweaks for Windows Vista RC2 | Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report | ZDNet.com:

Tweak #1: Add an elevated Command Prompt Windows power users know that a command prompt (Cmd.exe) is the fastest way to many tasks–much faster than digging through menus and tabbed dialog boxes. In Windows Vista, this is more true than ever, thanks to User Account Control.

Doesn’t it speak volumes when the first Vista tip on a major news site is to make it easier to revert to the command prompt? Doesn’t it demonstrate that for all Vista’s supposed prettiness that there are still fundamental usability problems in Windows?

Google Trends: iphone
As of this writing, most people searching for the word iPhone on Google are from Greece. Or at least that’s what the graph looks like. I’m not sure what statistical methodology is used, it it’s some kind of pro-rata, per population thing… But that’s not the point.

Does Greece have terrible mobile phones?

Does no-one in Greece know how to get to the Apple site?

Has the Greek press given Apple particularly high-profile coverage but lacking in detail?

Are the Greek simply tech-savvy riders of the bleeding edge?

Or are there a lot of retired mobsters sitting on their yachts in the Adriatic with nothing better to do than search google for new ways to spend their ill-gotten gains?

Who knows.

I just thought it was a bit weird.

(Should there be any Greeks reading this, i’d appreciate any local insight you might have.)

Yahoo! – Press Release:

Yahoo! Re-Aligns Organization to More Effectively Focus on Key Customer Segments and Capture Future Growth Opportunities

Read it again, it’s actually funnier the second time.

Engadget:

Rumors were flying today around Wall Street trading desks of a pending Intel buyout of NVIDIA

If Intel Buys nVidia, then we are headed down a path where the major components inside a PC will be made by 2 manufacturers and they won’t be interchangable. You either buy an ATi/AMD/Live box or an nVidia/Intel/Viiv box.

Of course it will never happen.  Even if Intel does buy nVidia, somewhere in the near future this little duopoly-in-the-making will fall apart somehow.  It’s just not how PCs are done.

The most scary thing about this is the potiential loss of the nForce motherboard chipset, which is the best chipset for AMD processors.

Intel says, ‘Let Apple be Apple.’:

Intel wants electronics manufacturers to design open systems with the Viiv at their core.

Viiv is not an open system.  It is a DRM based system with Intel CPUs and Intel Chipsets at the core.  It’s the closest thing to a closed system that Intel can make.  It is Intels attempt to try and do exactly what Apple have done with iTunes: tying content to hardware in a system that severely limits they ways customers can enjoy the media they purchase.

Viiv is nothing but another platform for DRM.

The only thing open about that is the fact that multiple manufacturers can build Viiv PCs.  They must have Intel chips inside to get the Viiv badge, so intel get’s their slice of the cake.  Calling Viiv an open platform is like callling Windows an open platform.  In fact Windows is more open than Viiv, because it can run on various CPUs and miriad chipsets. 

Viiv just creates an exclusive sub-class of PCs which effectivly come with an Intel tax.

Eric Kim is being a hypocrite.

I was watching an old TV Show on DVD…
The colour was terrible, washed out with a terrible greenish tinge – as you might expect from an old VHS tape. It took about 5 seconds in the OSX DVD player to up the contrast, shift the tint and boost the saturation. The difference was phenomenal.

It’s great the I can do this, BUT I NEVER SHOULD HAVE HAD TO.

How lazy are the Major Studios that they can’t do some basic correction on their old stock. People are paying good money to watch these DVDs. The Studios are raking in money on programs which would otherwise be sitting in some archive. This is money for nothing for these people, the least they can do is provide quality playback.

Were you ever disgusted with the quality of a DVD or CD you purchased? Leave a comment and let me know.

P.S. If you must know, it was the A-Team. It isn’t that great, but since I missed it the first time round (mum wouldn’t let me watch) I view an episode now-and-then. It’s a good show to watch whilst you edit photos since the plot lines are straight forward and you can easily get back into the story as your concentration drifts back and forth.

20060912_1612_02 Waterbirds at Gatton

Originally uploaded by CascadeHush.

My first photo post, so this is just a quick test. I currently have this as my background image.

I took this recently at Gatton, Queensland, Australia.

DesertStandard:

people never did get what the home page was about

I couldn’t agree more.

But more importantly, managing a website is difficult. Creating a blog is easy. That’s the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.

Home pages were almost always a mess, or else they were static and pointless. And once you got to a dozen pages or so, a pain to organize and keep consistent. Do you edit existing pages? Do you delete old material?

The invention of the blog solves all these problems.

And Flickr and the like help too. Many a time the only thing interesting on a persons home page was some photos.

So a blog helps you manage your ideas and a photo sharing sites organise your photos and you can link between the two and tag everything for easy organisation.

Here’s an idea, Mr Gates. You can use this one for free.

Instead of smacking legitimate users with hair-brained activation schemes, why not make owning a Windows license fun. Run a lottery every week, with the winning License Key getting a $10,000 prize. (I’m talking cash here). It would raise awareness of the Windows Key; people would begin to see it as something more than just a sticker on the box.

It’s called thinking outside the square.