If you’re even remotely interested in what Microsoft is up to, you should already have Mary Jo Foley on your must-read list.
Well, time to update your bookmarks. Mary Jo has left Microsoft Watch and is starting up at ZDNet (RSS feed here), where she and I will be colleagues on the Microsoft beat.
Mary Jo is a great reporter and a classy person. It’s a pleasure to be working with her.
Thomas Hawk understands the power of the Reality Distortion Field:
Now I know what some of the Appleheadish types will say. C’mon it’s Steve Jobs. He’s a marketing genius. If anyone can do it Apple can do it. Apple is so damn cool it makes me want to melt down in a puddle of tears as I weep translucently at how amazingly magical their ultra hip marketing department can name things. How nobody cares about HDTV and how people will accept inferior sound quality over at iTunes, so why not with movies.
As we like to say in the reality-based community, read the whole thing. And chuckle.
… Oh, OK. I can’t resist quoting the punch line: “Yes, idiots overpay for things. Yes, there are a lot of idiots out there and yes Steve Jobs may be able to use the Obi Wan Kenobi trick voice with some, but I predict this thing [the iTV] will flop hard.”
Really nice page design work by Long Zheng to show Windows Vista’s four different interface options (Aero with Glass, Vista Standard, Vista Basic, Windows Classic). Click the screen snippet below to go to Long’s page, then hover your mouse over the buttons below each screen to see the alternate views.
If you’ve downloaded the beta releases of Windows Vista or Office 2007, you’ve had to deal with the ISO file format, which consists of an image of a CD or DVD. You can use most CD/DVD writing programs to copy the ISO file to a physical disk. In Nero 6, for instance, you use the Burn Image command on the Recorder menu.
In addition, there are software utilities that allow you to read an ISO file or mount it in Windows without burning a physical disk. This MSDN page has some useful links:
Copying the contents of ISO files
The contents of image files may be accessed directly using third-party tools. Using this method you can extract the files from an image file to a temporary folder on your hard drive, then run setup. The following tools offer such image file support:The products listed above have been known to work. Other products that can manipulate ISO files may work, but have not been tested.
Mounting ISO files virtually
The following tool for Windows XP allows image files to be mounted virtually as CD-ROM/DVD-ROM devices. This tool is provided here for your convenience, and is unsupported by Microsoft Product Support Services.
Nero 6 Ultra Edition (and presumably Nero 7 as well) has an ISO mounting tool called Nero ImageDrive. It’s incompatible with Windows Vista, however, as is the free Microsoft tool linked here.
In the comments to an older post, Chris has a question:
I have a Windows XP machine that needs to be able to run old software. When I try to run the application, I get the error message “This application requires 386 Enhanced Windows”. What, if anyhting, can I do with this issue? I really need this software to run on the XP machine. Is there anyway to run 386 Enhanced Mode on Win XP?
Hoo-boy. For those too young to remember, 386 Enhanced Windows was part of Windows 3.0, circa 1990-1991. (There’s a Knowledge Base article that explains the different modes here.)
I’m not surprised that the old 16-bit program doesn’t run under a modern operating system. One possibility to try is using Virtual PC 2004. Set up a virtual machine using 1MB of RAM (man, it feels strange to write that) and then install Windows 3.1 in that VM and finally install the old program.
Anybody have a better idea?
Thanks to Scott Hanselman for pointing out that Sun has released Beta 2 of the Java SE Runtime Environment (JRE) 6. You’ll want this update if you’re running Windows Vista RC1; otherwise you’ll find that using any Java applet turns off the fancy Aero Glass interface.
By the way, the Windows Vista section of the release notes for this version are encouraging about Vista’s effects on security: “On Windows Vista, there is a more restrictive sandbox for signed applets. A user has fewer privileges than if they were running on another Windows OS.”
So, a third-party developer is actually taking advantage of Vista’s more secure environment to improve the security model of its own software? Good.
Dylan Tweney is right:
Media companies should pay attention to the Napster story when they consider YouTube.
Lots of excellent observations here, and some good advice that, if history is any guide, the big media companies will ignore.
One key difference in this comparison is that Napster didn’t have much of a justification under the doctrine of fair use, whereas using YouTube as a repository for short clips from much longer video works can often be justified, especially when there’s substantial commentary that goes with the clip.
But since the very idea of fair use seems to be near death, maybe I’m just dreaming.
So, who do you have to sleep with to get an invitation into this group?
Someone please help me understand this. AMD and Streamload have teamed up to offer AMD LIVE! Media Vault, which promises free online storage of 25GB of data. Or you can pay from $4.95 to $29.95 a month and up the quota to as much as 1000GB.
A terabyte of offline storage? Sounds great, right? Except…
Downloads per month, even for the premium plans, are limited to 10 percent of your total storage capacity. So if you actually pay $10 a month for the Elite plan and use all of the 250GB of storage they allow you to back up your data, and then your hard disk crashes, you get to restore your backed-up files 25GB at a time over 10 months? Huh? That rattling sound you hear is my brain pan hitting the inside of my skull. (It’s even worse if you use the 25GB free storage space, where you’re limited to 1GB of downloads per month, meraning it will take you more than two years to restore a backup.)
Oh, and the promotional copy says: “AMD LIVE! Media Vault handles all of your online backup needs. Never worry about your files again. … Get safe, secure, and private online backup for all your files. … After you upload files, they are easy-to-access, organized, and automatically backed up.”
But the terms and conditions of use say: “Streamload shall have no responsibility for and does not guarantee the integrity of Private Content or Public Content residing on Streamload’s equipment. You are responsible for independent backup of Private Content and Public Content stored using Streamload’s services.”
And don’t get me started on the parts where these clowns say they’ll rat you out to anyone they damn well feel like if you store something there they don’t like:
Streamload may monitor Your access, use, Public Content, files and/or Private Content to detect signs of misuse. Streamload will not knowingly tolerate the use of its services for illegal or other injurious or damaging activities. If Streamload believes, in its own discretion, that You may be connected with such activities, Streamload may disclose its user files, the Public Content and/or Private Content to the proper authorities.
These guys win my award for Worst Online Service in the World.
Via Frank Shaw, I read this report from Wil Wheaton about his saga to recover his lost iTunes music library. The short version: Computer crashes. WW installs iTunes 7. Plugs in iPod. iTunes library vanishes. WW posts rant on blog. Apple calls and makes good:
A very kind woman named Kate called me, and told me that she’d read my blog about my problems with my purchased music. … She said that Apple wants to keep their customers happy, and ensure that they’ll be confident purchasing things from the iTunes Music Store, so she was going to push a Big Red Button that would allow me to have a do over, and download all of my purchased music again, free of charge. This seemed excessive to me, and way above what would be reasonably expected, but before I could tell her that, she told me that she’d read on my blog that I didn’t expect Apple to treat me any differently than they’d treat any other customer. She assured me that this is Apple’s corporate policy, and they’ll do this for anyone who has a catastrophic loss of their iTunes Music Store purchases, regardless of the cause.
Yes, this sounds like good customer service. Except that, as I’ve written before, that’s not what their stated policy says:
When you buy a song or album from the iTunes Store, you are entitled to download it only once.
When you buy a song, video, game, or album from the iTunes Store, you are entitled to download it a single time. If you want to download it again, you must purchase it again. You can copy downloaded content between authorized computers.
That page is linked from this article, entitled Finding missing music and video downloads:
You may need to restore the files from your backup, if you have one. If a backup is not available, the music or videos may be lost. In that event you may need to purchase replacements. For content acquired through the iTunes Store, please read Apple’s policy on replacement.
Which takes you back to the earlier page.
How is an average person (someone who wasn’t a Star Trek character and doesn’t have a widely read blog) supposed to know that there is a double-secret corporate policy that contradicts the official written policy?
If a one-time exception is available (but not guaranteed), that should be clearly stated on Apple’s website.
Update 15-Sep: Edited first paragraph to correct error in description of original post by WW.
Ed Bott 