I tested Windows Version 6 (Vista) from its first Alpha release straight through the latest service pack. I adopted Vista on my main machine when it was a Beta 2. I am one of the few that thinks very highly of Windows Vista. I laugh at virtually every review of Vista since it is a rehashed criticism of the operating system that has been around ever since Apples marketing campaign sniped the platform at its onset. 

In almost every review of Vista the security alert annoyance is brought up. If everything went according to Microsoft’s plan the user would almost never see that prompt. The idea was to divide the operating system into two spheres, one sphere would be the simple day to day use of software. The software should not be touching the “guts” of the operating system. This is the best way to prevent malware and viruses from taking over your system. It is also a way to ensure that the sea of software available for Windows does not change your system without you knowing about it. I do not believe the policy was poorly implemented, I find it to be poorly understood. Not as much by the end user but by software developers. The best example is the Amazon Video Player of 2008. When installed it prompted no less that ten time that the system was being changed. Microsoft had an enormous amount of pressure to make the system compatible with poorly written software. If it were not for the numerous lawsuits already filed I am sure that the engineers of Microsoft would have insisted that the software give better accounts to what it was doing to the system instead of saying something to the effect that it needs to change a setting. 

A great deal of Vista’s problems were due to the large amount of vendors that feel that they have a right to the operating system and they were going to continue with their lazy practices in which security holes were exploited in order to meet deadlines.

Unlike most people I designed my system around Windows Vista 64 bit. This is why I feel comfortable converting my main machine to Windows 7 while Windows 7 is still in the RC1 phase.

The key areas I hope to explore is Speech Recognition, Libraries, Vitalization, Gadgets, Driver Support, and application compatibility. I am doing what I believe everyone should be doing and that is using the 64 bit version. Though most people outside the world of gaming and multimedia programming do not need the ram made available to the 64 bit operating system. However, since the cost of RAM is low and the parts to build a 64 bit machine are identical the consumer market should transition to 64 bit operating systems and spare the developers the headache of making a 32bit and 64 bit version of their software. Though 64 bit operating systems enjoy much more compatible programs that XP 64 bit or the early days of Vista 64bit, there are still some issues that remain. 

The only compatibility issue I found to date was with Google Chrome and Windows 7 64 bit. Fortunately there is a quick  fix to the problem. 

While people appear amazed at the quickness Microsoft has had in releasing Windows 7 it is important to note that the reason for this is that a lot of the issues in driver development and software vendors have been address over the past 3 years of Vista. It is important to realize that Windows 7 is not an XP successor but a Vista successor. My guess is that XP users will have a similar issue in upgrading as the Vista users did. This is because major changes have been done to the principles of the operating system. Remember XP is to Windows 2000 as OSX Leopard is to OSX Tiger or OS 10.5 is to OS 10.4. It is was an incremental upgrade not a version upgrade. The core of XP has been around for almost a decade. Needless to say there have been some fundamental changes to technology since then. 

The only saving grace for the people that waited to transition to Windows 7 by forging Vista is that Windows 7 has an XP Virtual Machine in it. I am guessing this will work better than the “run as” mode in Vista. The reason the “run as” never worked right was the fact that it only applied to the initial executables and the initial executable rarely had the compatibility issue. 

In part 0010 I will discuss Speech Recognition in more detail.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-plane29-2009apr29,0,2498563.story

I don’t understand this, I though Hollywood and the Left were closer than this. I have seen dozens of movies of exploding Air force Ones and dozens of movies of cites being destroyed, mainly New York. I have seen Godzilla attack it, I have seen giant waves overrun the streets of Manhattan. So will someone please come clean and tell me that if someone in DC wanted to know what the 747 would look like flying next to the statue of liberty, why the frack did they not call Michale Bay? Yes, I have a low opinion of Michale Bay, but still the man could have got the job done, it would have looked far more realistic, and nobody would be freaked out.

I know that their are morons in middle management in the West Wing that failed to considered the emotional impact this would have on a population, much less a group of people who have had major terrorist attacks occur 2 times in past decade an a half, one of which was buy two airplanes. I wasn’t in New York on 9/11, but there is a piece of me that gets a little edgy when I see a plane a little off course in Burbank. I cannot imagine what this must have been like for the people of New York.

As heartless as this sounds, I am not surprised that people failed to take into account people’s feelings, this is after all the US government. They are doing what I expect kiss ass retarded staffers would do. What bugs me more than anything is the manner in which it was done. With all we can do in digital technology someone thought it prudent to use real props. How many rendered models of 747s and New York do we have? I am sure there are hobbyists that could have created a better visual than what was captured by these amateurs. Hollywood, hell even Bollywood has perfected the art of photo shoots and creating high concept visuals to satisfy the “what would that look like” crave.

I think New York is filled with a lot of pushy, load, obnoxiously rude individuals, however they are still Americans, and more importantly, they are people, and there are a lot of good people in that town that did not deserve that scare. Hell, even the worst people of New York did not deserve that. New York is host to the UN, Statue of Liberty, and is an icon of America. A majority of creditable terror attacks target New York. These people have balls we on the west coast can only dream of having mealy because of the fact that they now they are a target and get up and go to work every day insight of that fact.

I remember how afraid I used to be as a child. My father, a defense contractor told me about the Soviets nukes, and how a facility near our city was a target. I was in constant fear that one day I would hear the president give the order and then it would all be over. I never saw Rockadyne get struck, never saw a Soviet attack. New York has seen attacks, they have seen it by our own airplanes.

In the end when the initial fear of what recent events did to New York and when the anger that an idiotic staffer thought a photo shoot like what was done was a good idea, a larger pit will open in the guts of New Yorkers. They will think what I think.

If we can watch aliens destroy the Empire State Building and send a fireball through New York, if we can show tidal waves knowing over the Statue of Liberty, and a few will realize that their children could have accomplished this task better than DC they will get half of the solution. When the folks in LA learn more about what was done, knowing that we can produce scenarios far better than DC without freaking out New York then we will have the other half of the solution. When the two groups realize that we both have two parts of a good idea we will realize that we no longer are slaves to DC but they work for us.

Sorry New York.

Latly articles in technology seem to make my head spin in so many different directions, one might say that it is spinning in 3d. Since I am never sure how much I can speak on issues like this I am sure that the quote from the LA times and the title of this post says it all.

Disney made a bet three years ago that the strength of its ABC and Disney brands would be enough to attract online viewers, and so it chose not to participate in Hulu during its launch. ABC shows, including “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives,” have generated plenty of viewers on ABC.com, but it now trails other network sites, including Hulu and CBS, according to ComScore.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cotown-hulu28-2009mar28,0,7839088.story

Unlike most articles the authors left a signature, this is good for me because I can direct this next comment to the two of them, however before offering my constructive criticism, I do think it was one of the better written articles I have read on technology in some time. 

dawn.chmielewski@latimes.com
meg.james@latimes.com

After many versions of what I would like to say this is all I can come up with, “it is simply clear you have a clue about what you are writing, but not an idea. You are filling in holes per the standard of old technology and old media and you are missing the mark when it comes to the technology of the hear and now. The ‘Disney Brand’ that was mentioned in the quote is not the problem, but how the content is delivered, tracked, and syndicated. With that said look at an Episode of House on Hulu and an episode of Lost on Abc.com, after looking at the two and you will see what I mean.”

If you would like to learn a tad more about Web 3.0, please read this post: http://vincentclark.com/2009/02/19/web-30-preview/

Ms. Chmielewski and James, I hope that you are not offended by my bluntess, dry sense of humor, and or foundness of repurposing the quote “its the economy stupid.” If I did not appericate your article I would have just replied with the words, “it is the technology stupid.” Then let you go from there. The challenges of the new world order is that they cannot be held to the old world standard. The best brand and the best shows would fall on blind eyes and deaf ears if the delivery mechanism was subpar. When I watch the broadcast version of House I leave it up to Charter (my cable provider) to ensure that I have a positive experiance when viewing the show. Since Charter uses the same mechanisim to broadcast House as they do Lost my experiance in viewing the shows are the same. Since there is a baseline in delivery for the two shows my desicion to watch one more than the other would be based upon the content of the show. That is simply not the case when it comes to viewing shows online. 

There is no question that Hulu’s content contributed to its success since you can have the best delivery the web has seen however, if there is nothing to watch then there will be nobody to appericate it. Hulu’s real success lies within the ability to syndicate tv shows and clips to other websites or Internet based applications.

Why do I think that?

The answer is simple, war. War and the fact that we are currently not at it. Yes, the people fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan would disagree with that. I am also certain their are people in certain parts of Africa, and South East Asia that would disagree to that assertion. The people of Gaza as well as people within the inner cities of our own country are fighting for survival. I am not discounting their strife. Despite the horror seen from the collapse of Yugoslavia, the reality of the past six decades is that Europe as remained at peace. These skirmishes in history. The truth is, though the world may not be at peace, it is at relative peace.

The world’s economy in 2008 proved two points. The first is that we are all linked together. Mismanagement on one end has global reproductions. We have seen what we have long theorized, we are truly a global economy, we are truly all networked together, our destinies are now permanently intertwined.

At any point in history the events of 2008 alone would have triggered wars among all the world powers, the fact that this has not happened should inspire nothing but hope.

The undeniable reality is this, our economy is based on faith and that is all. God and Money have far more in common than bankers and preachers would like to admit. I am not saying that it is good or bad but, true. The world’s strongest government and greatest militarise can not reinforce their own governments if it were not for the people’s belief in the government.

In God we trust

In Government we trust

In Economy we trust

I truly believe that once we embrace this notion and realize our potential as human beings is unlimited. The economy can be fixed as easily as it was broken. Like the retold tale of the faithless preacher finding God, things will only get better when we as people believe that it will be.

Humanity is at its cross road and our choice today needs to be made. We can set into motion good or evil, but it will have to be a joint decision.

One thing that I noticed right away is the fact that it fully recognized and installed the drivers for my printer, Vista was able to put in half of the drivers (a month ago), but was missing the key drivers, the ones to print and the one to scan. I am going to plug the printer in to my new Vista build and see if it can add the printer without me having to challenge myself by going to the Epson website, which sucks big time!!! Finding the right driver for your printer, and there are a lot of drivers from way too many options to choose from. I cannot believe that one series with several subseries all require different drivers. Blows me away. 

Windows 7 also picked up my voice recorder just like Vista. I have had no driver issues.

WordPad looks really nice too. I will go more into Windows 7 before I reformat and put my long overdue server on it. I almost want to get a new harddrive just because I am enjoying Windows 7 so much. Unfortunently I need my two Vista machines and cannot turn one of them over to a beta operatings system like I did with Vista. Vista in beta was still better than XP, and as always anyone that wants to have an intelligant discussion with me on why Vista is the better operating system (7 not included) let me know.

I also want to note, OSX failed miserably when trying to install my printer, getting drivers for it was more of a nightmear than normal.

^{originally published December 2nd, 2004}

It has been eight years since I finished my final round of chemotherapy. I was cured. Some days it seems like it was just yesterday, but most days it seems like a lifetime ago. It’s amazing how quickly life can change.

In September of ’96, my life was heading in a different direction; it has been so long that I don’t quite remember what direction it was going in, but I sure as hell know this isn’t the path that I saw for myself. People would tell me that things happen for a reason. Two surgeries later, two rounds of chemotherapy, pneumonia, a degenerative disk from the chemo, nerve damage, the loss of being able to have children-I still wonder: what was the point of all that? Why did this need to happen? I still don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know that I feel like an ass every time I ask myself that. I am thankful that it was me and not one of my friends or cousins.I don’t want that ever to happen to someone that I care about.

I know I should feel lucky, but most of the time I just feel guilty. I got a curable kind of cancer. Yes it sucked, still does suck, and I guess it always will always suck, but it isn’t going to kill me. We think of all the shitty things that we have to go through in our daily lives while most people my age will never know what it is like to tell their mother that they have cancer. Sometimes you will think about how shitty it must be to get out of bed and go to work. This sucks, because we should be glad that we have the ability to get out of bed. Yeah, things suck sometimes, and for some of us most of the time, but we can still get up. Tomorrow, we will be okay. My uncle once said, “You know, if you have a warm bed to sleep in, three square meals, and nobody is shooting at you, then things aren’t that bad.”

Some days we feel like throwing in the towel, saying “that’s it, I give up,” but deep down inside we know that we would never do that. I remember my cousin telling me that people would ask him if it was hard to grow up without his mother, who died when he was fifteen. He told me that he would tell them that he didn’t have a choice-he did what he had to do. He said that it was much like what I was going through. I didn’t have a choice; I did what I had to do. Shit happens, and sometimes we are stuck with it, but giving up is never an option.

One thing always stood out in my mind when I was getting chemo. I would be there for eight to ten hours, and I would see people come and go. Most of them were sixty or seventy years old, and I thought, I want that to be me when I get that age. Not that I wanted cancer; I just want to be that age and still be fighting hard for my life, even if only to extend it by a month or two. I think of this one girl, the only one my age there. She had melanoma on her lung. She asked me if I was going to be okay. I told her yes and asked her if she would be okay. She told me they didn’t know, that they needed to see if this round of chemo would shrink the tumor. She is dead now, and so are most of the people that were in the office the days that I was there. I was one of the few that survived this long and I will continue to survive as the years go on. I am not sure what that means, but I do know that it means something.

Your Friend, Vincent

Personally, I think most peoples heads would pop. Everything from corporate America, to technology, to the politics of America and the world both beyond and within, the insight I have really should in large part be kept to myself.

Someday’s I feel like finding the person in charge and tell them what is really going on, mostly because I want to see if I am right. But I don’t. Not because I fear being wrong, but that their head might pop. Then I would naturally feel responsible.

That would be nice if that was true, but to be straight with you, I don’t think their head would literally pop, I know that they would trust their vantage point over mind. I remember when I was a camp counselor one of the campers looked at the mountain and told how she didn’t see the mountain, but the rocks, and the bugs under the rocks, the fallen leaves and all the little things that made up the the big.

Too often we are distracted by our vantage point. Our points of view, and too often that clouds what the real big picture is, or rather the larger picture. Every universe is composed of galaxies, and solar systems, planets and habitats all composed of molecules made from protons, electrons, protons, and quarks, at the same moment the quarks that make the protons and neutrons, the electrons and the molecules are used to make up the habitats that exist inside the planets of the solar systems, contained within a galaxy organized into a universe. All bound together by with some variance of time.

We live in a world that isn’t constant and that will not make sense no matter how hard we try to make sense of it. How many times do we trick ourselves in stopping here? Resigning to the fact that none of this makes sense, so we find one thing and try to make sense of that. The unfortunate things is that when those two notations are merged an abstract portrait of reality is spread across the heavens for all to see comprised those rocks and twigs we cannot see from a distance.

Do you really want to look at your companies news channel and notice pixelation in the logo? Do you want to know that the image used for the hi def broadcast was most likely copied from a letter head graphic. My guess is no you don’t, which is my point, you don’t want to know what I know, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t. Do you want stair at a billboard by sprint and read the words, “better than three coats of sun tan.” Do you want to know how many clueless individuals had to ok such a large waste of money and know that their is someone that still thinks that the brain trust behind that slogon is a pretty smart lady? Or how good that billboard looks on the happless group of people that brain stormed for hours to think up such a mind numbingly offensive slogin?

There is a reality out there that is made to seem to complicated for us to understand, that it is so absurd the ones that fight the hardest for you to not to try to understand it understand it the least.

I would tell you more, but there is that hole head popping things. Two much reality in concentrated amounts is never advised.

By the way, thanks Alan John

I am not sure when I began to see the difference between good and evil. As a life long Star Wars fan my initial exposure to the two was the struggle between the light and dark side of the force. Until twenty minutes ago I could never fully understand why the dark side had the advantage.

While walking to my car I was wondering why evil always seem to have the underhand. Naturally my thoughts turned to the struggle between the Jedi and the Sith. I remember Yoda saying that the dark side was not more powerful, however, I was still lost to why the “good side” of the force was no match for the “dark side.”

My thoughts then drifted to more earthly representations of good and evil. I then had an epiphany, good offers restraint where as evil did not.

In a parallel illustration we will look at the approach two different forces of equal strength would take while attempting to take and maintain control of the city of Chicago.

The two forces will be representation of good and evil.¹The two forces are completely equal in strength. There is little doubt that the evil force could take control far quicker than that of the good force. The evil force would also spend far less energy and resources in maintain control of the city.

The advantage that evil has is that there is no restraint in evil, which is a classic separation between evil and good. Good would take into account the civilians of the city. Though good needs to take control of the city this should not come at the expense of the people that reside inside it. The good force needs to spend far more time in calculating its strikes as to not occur casualties of the cities inhabitants. When controlling the city the force would need to squash any uprisings. To address any uprising the evil force can oppress the citizens, make public examples in the form of torture or executions, and withholding vital necessities such as food and medicine. This is something that a good force could not do. Since the good force operates within the constraints of caring for the people as their own arbitrary executions are seen as an act of murder and deemed a war crime. Withholding food and medicine is seen as a human rights violation and therefor cannot be used as weponds in the struggle for control.

While good needs to prefect the aim of their weapons the evil force can focus on effectiveness. The side of good must adhere to internationally agreed upon rules which limits the type of weapons that are available for use. Deploying chemical weapons would be an ideal tactic in urban warfare, however, conflicts with the contraints of good. If the goal is to control the city and there is no need for the inhabitents of the city it would be far easier for the forces of evil to develop wepondry to exterminate the population than it would to develop wepons to spare the population.

“good is restraint”

A chief separation between good and evil is that good operates within the context of rules. While there is no pure good the same is true for pure evil.

Within the war of terror you can see a once noble calling corrupted by the forces of evil. The best illustration of this is that of suspending the US constitution in order to gain the upper hand in the fight. When the United States abandons her most sacred principles the noble aspect of her calling begins to be corrupt by the evil she is fighting to destroy.

Winning the war would be far easier if it were not for the moral constraints imposed on the side of the United States. Strategically the best way to remove the threat the west faces from fundamental Islam is to neutralize it. The United States has the weaponry to remove this threat from the planet while maintaining access to vital resources if it completely disregards the people and structures around it.

The main distinction between the United States and its enemies is the Constitution. The United States has set down a set of principles in which in theory, she must adhere to. When concessions are made within that doctrine the restraint that it provides begins to weakened and the principles of good begin to be corrupted by the lawlessness of evil.

When Anakin Skywalker was asked to tell the differences between the Jedi and the Sith he remarked that the Sith only think inwards about themselves where as the Jedi were selfless thinking of others. The Jedi looked towards the bigger picture between in the struggle while the Sith looked solely at the objective at handed and adopt the “at all costs” motto. The Jedi, to a fault, bared little credence to “acceptable losses”

This is why during Episode Two’s battle between the Jedi Yoda and the Sith Trantis (Doo Koo) the Sith Lord was able to flee the battle and was not destroyed. The Sith Lord threatened the lives of a Jedi and his apprentice knowing that his adversary would then focus on saving them giving him the opportunity to flee. This say tactic would not have worked on a Sith lord since the Sith Lord would have had no qualms in sacrificing for the sake of victory. ³

The limits on the Jedi powers are the same as the limits on the forces that must answer to the edict of human rights. These are not actual limitations of power, but constraints of that power. Though the force of good is equal to that of evil, the rules in which it must operate diminish the effectiveness of that power.

- Vincent Clark