I download most music these days from eMusic and Amazon MP3s. But I still buy CDs occasionally. Last week I bought Bob Dylan’s new Tell Tale Signs, which is the eighth installment in the Bootleg Series. I burst out laughing when I opened the jewel case and saw this printing on the first disk:

Someone at Columbia has a good sense of humor. Oh, and the 2-CD set is really great stuff, too.

It’s sometimes useful to know how long Windows has been running. With most Windows versions, including XP and Vista, you can find out when the system was most recently started by opening a command prompt window (Cmd.exe) and entering this command:

systeminfo

You’ll get a screen full of information about your computer (model number, CPU, memory, and so on) and your current Windows installation, including which version you’re running and when it was originally installed.

In the opening block, on a system running Windows XP, you’ll see System Up Time, measured in days, hours, minutes, and seconds, as shown here:

On Windows Vista, this block of information includes the System Boot Time (the date and time when the system was last started), but the System Up Time value is not shown here. Instead, you need to go to the Performance Tab of Task Manager and look in the statistics block at the bottom right corner:

In the case of Windows Vista, the measurement of up time does not include any time when the system was sleeping or hibernating.

This is definitely worth updating, if only for the security fixes:

Adobe Flash Player version 10.0.12.36

You might want to uninstall Flash Player v9 first.

Alas, still no support for 64-bit browsers. Adobe says they’re “working on Flash Player support for 64-bit platforms” and will deliver it in “an upcoming release of Flash Player following Flash Player 10.”

Flash Player 10 works with IE 6/7 (and IE8 Beta 2, I can confirm), as well as Firefox 2 and 3, on all Windows versions. AOL 9 and Safari 3 are supported on desktop platforms but not on Windows Server 2003. Opera users, you’re OK if you use XP or Windows 2000 but apparently out of luck not officially supported if you use Vista or any Windows Server edition.

Update: In the comments, Danny notes that he has installed Flash Player 10 on a system running Opera 9.60 and Vista Ultimate SP1 and it works just fine. Thanks, Danny!

Update 2: Ars Technica has run some performance tests:

As the numbers will show, Flash performs far better in Vista versus Mac OS X running on the same hardware, and it actually improved slightly with the version 10 update.

Imagine that.

Veteran Windows developer Larry Osterman compares and contrasts the Windows 7 and Windows Vista development processes.

Here’s how Windows 7 is being built:

A feature is not permitted to be checked into the winmain branch until it is complete. And I do mean complete: the feature has to be capable of being shipped before it hits winmain – the UI has to be finished, the feature has to be fully functional, etc.

By contrast:

Back in the Vista day, it was not uncommon for feature development to be spread over multiple milestones – stuff was checked into the tree that really didn’t work completely.

You could see this process work itself out in real time back in mid-2006, when Vista release candidates were appearing. My Windows Vista Inside Out co-authors and I met with and talked to feature teams who were checking in unfinished code and changing core parts of the user interface up until what were supposed to be release candidates. Here, for example, is what I wrote on July 31, 2006:

There’s some truly great stuff in Windows Vista, but current builds are not at the quality level they need to be at for a release candidate to appear in the next few weeks. If management insists on hitting an arbitrary January ship date, the results will be disappointing at best, and potentially nightmarish.

Everything I’m hearing about Windows 7 from people who’ve seen it and from those who are currently using it suggests that the new sheriff has done everything possible to make sure that the Vista experience isn’t repeated.

If you’re a Windows geek, Larry’s post is a must-read.

Windows Update delivered the October 2008 Cumulative Update for Media Center for Windows Vista yesterday, along with the regular Patch Tuesday updates. I was delighted to see this fix on the list:

Fixes an issue in which you cannot seek through recorded TV shows on Windows Media Center systems that have digital cable tuners. Additionally, the recorded TV shows display the incorrect length.

I wrote about this bug last February:

When I play back the recording, it appears to have been truncated. A half-hour show might appear as if it’s only 5 or 6 minutes long. In actuality, it’s the full recorded length, 30 minutes, which you can confirm by looking at the file size or the file properties.

The navigation buttons on the remote control work until you approach the "phantom" length marker. In the case of a 30-minute program that appears to be only 6 minutes long, the elapsed time counter stops at 5:35 or so. But the program itself keeps playing, and as long as you don’t touch the remote it will continue to play till the end. If you do touch the remote, you’ll find yourself whizzing through the program to the end and you’ll need to start over.

As I noted in that post, Microsoft acknowledged this bug exactly one year ago, in October 2007.  Nice to see a fix delivered, finally.

The other intriguing change in this cumulative update is this one:

Implements support for Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free copy for digital cable tuners that have the latest digital cable tuner BIOS versions that support DRM-free copy.

I have three ATI cable tuners here, all of them containing the April 2007 BIOS update. I checked yesterday and couldn’t find a newer firmware update. Anyone out there have any clues on when new code might get pushed out to these boxes?

And it’s …

Windows 7.

This mock PSA (at least I think it was a spoof) had me rolling on the floor:

Don’t miss the ending, where the poor befuddled grandma reads the list of URLs: “Wuh-wuh-wuh, period…”

Hilarious.

(via j-walk)

If you have a notebook with an integrated TouchPrint fingerprint reader, or if you’ve purchased an add-on fingerprint reader for your desktop, new drivers and software are available from UPEK.

The 2.12 driver package works with Vista (and Server 2008) x86 and x64, as well as older Windows versions going back to Windows 2000.

You’ll also want to snag the latest Protector Suite QL release, version 5.8.2.4640. (The download page has a separate link for Toshiba users.) If you’re using a previous version of the fingerprint software that came from your OEM, read the instructions at the bottom of the download page, which explain how to remove the outdated OEM software and replace it with the new, improved suite. (If you have an HP notebook, you’ll have to look elsewhere, as the HP machines I’ve tested use a different hardware solution for their fingerprint readers.)

Back in May, I documented the strange story of Ricavision, which was accepting applications from “beta testers” for its SideShow-enabled Media Center remote control, then charging them $349 plus shipping for the privilege. At the time, I called it “a case study in how not to treat customers.”

Now it looks like it might be even worse. Via Ian Dixon, I learn that Ricavision has folded its tent. The details are in this article by Julie Jacobson at CEPro:

Ricavision, a great hope in the Media Center space, appears to be out of business.

Phones are disconnected at the Irvine, Calif. headquarters of the PC maker, which was one of the most promising purveyors of Windows SideShow technology.

A former employee who answered his cell phone indicated that Ricavision was essentially gone.

Jacobson’s report includes details from two would-be testers who are out $350 and none too happy about it.

Ricavision’s website is still alive, but has not been updated since May. I just called the numbers on the Contact Us page and can confirm that they are indeed disconnected.

Every bit of contact I ever had with the folks who ran this company was suspicious, as I noted in that post earlier this year. It’s obvious now that the company was lying through its teeth just about every step of the way. Those who had their credit cards charged might have a stronger word to use.

Anyone out there have any firsthand experience to share? Leave a comment below and use your real e-mail address (don’t worry, it won’t get published).

In the comments last week, Mike asks: “Why is the next version of Windows called ‘Windows 7’???”

As Peter Ortner responds in a later comment, “It’s the next version after Windows NT 6 (Vista).”

That’s true. Sort of. But Mike goes on to explain that he asked the question because he knows that Windows 7 is really Windows version 6.1, and what’s up with that? It’s a good question. The more I think about it, the more I realize that the Windows 7 name isn’t going to work in the long run. I take on that topic in a new post over at ZDNet (Will Windows 7 get a new name for its release?)

You can get the full analysis in that post, so I won’t repeat it here. Instead, I thought it might be interesting here to provide a little history about version numbers, and why this one is so unusual.

Every Windows version has a number that identifies its kernel. Software developers can write code that checks the version number to decide whether a program should be allowed to install. You can determine the version number for any Windows release by dropping to a command prompt and running the ver or winver command; the first produces a text string, the second reveals a dialog box, as shown here.

The version history of the various Windows families goes like this:

• Windows 3.0 and 3.1 (and Windows for Workgroups 3.11) from the early 1990s used the version numbers as part of their name. The first releases of Windows NT, also from that era, followed suit, with Windows NT 3.1 and 3.5.
• Windows 95 was technically version 4.0. Windows NT 4.0, which was released exactly a year after Windows 95, adopted the Windows 95 interface. Windows 98 was version 4.10.1998 and Windows 98 Second Edition was 4.10.2222A. The much-maligned Windows Me was 4.90.3000. (History lessons here and here for those who care.)
• Windows 2000 was the first release in the version 5 family. It was followed by Windows XP, which was version 5.1. Service packs are identified by build numbers, but service packs do not affect the version number.
• Windows Vista was Windows 6.0 (Vista Service Pack 1 is build 6001, as the screen shot above shows). Because the next release of Windows is going to be based on the same kernel as Windows Vista, it should have the version number 6.1. Indeed, every copy of Windows 7 that has leaked to public view so far has had a build number of 6.1.xxxx. This numbering is almost certain to remain in the final product. If the major version number changed to 7.0, many applications written for Windows Vista would fail to install or run properly, simply because of version checking.

So if the next release of Windows is version 6.1, why call it Windows 7? I agree, that makes no sense at all. I think, in fact, that Microsoft is much more likely to go back to a safe, boring name for its next release. Hop on over and read my prediction, then add your own vote in my online poll.