June 2006 - Posts
How cool is this? I just noticed that Word 2007 has a smart tag that pulls out measurements and provides conversions for you. I think this is new in Office 2007 (don't remember seeing it before, but maybe I'm just losing my marbles).
That has to be a fairly un-original title for a post about Windows Vista. Ah well, it's appropriate. I just had my second attempt at running Vista beta 2 today. Long story short, I've given up. On my particular hardware (Acer C310 tablet PC) it's just not viable yet. Although the C310 is on the compatibility list, Vista blue-screens and is obviously unable to live with Acer's EPM (ePower Management) utility. I had other problems too, but that was the main one. I originally tried a nuke-and-pave clean install and that worked up to a point, but Office 2007 would not work (it installed but outlook would not even launch). So I restored to XP then tried an upgrade install, same problem with the blue screen/Acer ePM problem but I wasn't really surprised that an upgrade install ended in tears. I generally wipe the slate and start fresh when I upgrade the OS as I find upgrade installs to be generally unsatisfactory. The odd thing is that Vista seemed undecided about whether it was joined to my SBS domain. Maybe I haven't understood how user accounts work in Vista yet, but it would not allow me to add any domain users to the machine ("trust relationship failed"). There are also known issues with SBS though that's only to be expected in a pre-release product. BTW, I think Microsoft is making these betas far too accessible to the general public and blurring the line between development and release software. They turned betas into a marketing art form. Anyway, the product looks very promising but for me, at the moment, I can't live with the incompatibilities and problems.
Office 2007 is another matter. I've encountered a few problems but it is generally quite stable. My Outlook occasionally crashes (just vanishes from the screen, no error no nothing - try sending a screen shot of a vanishing application!). I've also had problems with Outlook crashing on exit and Online Crash Analysis says that is a known problem and will be fixed in the next release, so roll on RC1! The CRM 3.0 client doesn't seem to work properly and I'm told CRM 4.0 is due out 'about the same time as Office 2007 and Vista'. The new RSS reader built into Outlook and IE7 is really great and blogging from Word is such a neat idea, shame I can't get it to work with my community server. I love the new user interface and I can *just* live with the stability and compatibility problems, so I'm going to keep Office 2007 on my tablet and give it a good run through its paces, but the next release will be welcome.
So for now, it's asta la Vista!
Don't be conned by a retailer into buying 'OEM' software. They are forbidden to sell OEM software seperately and they can't even give you a copy unless it is preinstalled on a fully assembled computer system. They are not allowed to give away or sell OEM software packs under any other circumstances.
OEM software is intended for Original Equipment Manufacturers to preinstall the operating system on the computers they build and sell. In recent times, high street retailers have used licensing ambiguity to sell OEM software with any piece of hardware, such as a stick of memory or a cheap mouse. This gets you (the end user) a saving of maybe £20 or £30 compared to a retail boxed upgrade license (OEM versions of Windows XP Home Edition seem to sell for around £65). However, the economy is false, for the following reasons:
- The retailer broke their license agreement with Microsoft when they sold an OEM media kit, so this probably means that the end user does not have a valid software license either. When you buy software, it's the license you are paying for and if you're not getting that, it seems like a big waste of money. You could end up having to pay again.
- OEM software should be installed using a special utility called the OEM Preinstallation Kit. Using the OPK, the manufacturer typically configures items such as the computer make and model and adds their support contact details and various other items. If the OEM software was not installed using this kit, then those settings will be absent.
- There is a risk that the system may fail the Windows Genuine Advantage verification. This would mean you would not be able to get free add-ons, service packs, security updates and bug fixes. This really does happen - an associate from a local IT company told me only a few days ago that he was having to relicense all his customers' computers when they suddenly all begain failing the Genuine Advantage check.
- OEM software is licensed to one specific computer and the license lives and dies with that computer. You can't transfer it to another computer - if you replace the computer you have to buy the software again.
Illegitimate reselling of OEM software is not allowed - it's not good for the customer/end-user and ultimately it's not good for business. Many high street and online retailers seem blissfully (or perhaps willfully) ignorant of these facts and will happily sell an OEM media kit to a customer given the weakest excuse. A relative of mine was just today sold a Windows XP OEM kit by a high-street store to take home and install on a new 'barebones' system. The store was under the impression that because they also sold the barebones system, it was 'perfectly legal' for them to sell the OEM pack. They were wrong on several counts. You can download the OEM license agreement and check for yourself. I've pulled out the relevant sections and added my own emphasis:
4.1 We grant you a nonexclusive right to distribute an individual software license only with a fully assembled computer system. A “fully assembled computer system” means a computer system consisting of at least a central processing unit, a motherboard, a hard drive, a power supply, and a case.
Then...
6. PREINSTALLATION REQUIREMENT. When you distribute an individual software license for a desktop operating system or application software, you must preinstall it on the fully assembled computer system’s hard drive using the OEM Preinstallation Kit (“OPK”) provided in this package or otherwise made available by us. This preinstallation requirement does not apply to server software.
And finally...
15.1 You must not advertise, provide a separate price for, or otherwise market or distribute individual software licenses, or any part of them, as separate items from the fully assembled computer system
So, clearly a barebones system with no hard drive fails to meet the criteria of a fully assembled computer system. The software was not preinstalled and the OEM kit was sold seperate from the computer system.
There's a lot of it about. You can find instances of major retailers still selling OEM software both on the high street and online. Don't waste your money.
We're always hearing on TV how our planet is at risk from collision with an asteroid or comet. Theory has it that the dinosaurs were wiped out (or at least helped on their way) by such a collision - evidenced by the thin iridium rich deposit found around the world dating to the time of the extinction (the K-T boundary). The dinosaurs came to dominance by filling the evolutionary void left by the preceeding Permian extinction - there now seems to be evidence to suggest that mass extinction was also caused by an asteroid impact. One day, humankind could suffer the same fate. There would probably be no warning and even if we saw it coming there would be nothing we could do about it with current technology.
Until recently, governments have adopted the head-in-the-sand approach and ignored the problem. After all, with mass extinctions happening millions of years apart and little possibility of doing anything about it anyway, there is no political capital to be gained. More recently there are a few robotic telescopes carrying out surveys to try to identify potential impactors. To date over 300,000 minor planets (asteroids) have been discovered, catalogued and had their orbits understood so that any home computer can accurately predict the position of all of them within a few seconds. However, many of these objects remain undetected and amateur astronomers with relatively modest home telescopes are still able to discover new objects and to help refine the orbit calculations of the already-known objects.
One of the nice things about discovering a minor planet is that you get to name it. So in the hopes of contributing to the science of astronomy and maybe even naming asteroid "Tigra" I'm going to start searching for minor planets with my own telescope. First step is to make a few observations of known objects and submit the measurements to the Minor Planet Center to have the data checked for correctness and accuracy. Once I can provide the quality of observation necessary, I should receive an observatory code to identify my installation and to enable me to submit future observations. The whole process is fairly automated and maybe I'll blog about that in a seperate post.
Oh, if you're interested in what's out there but can't be bothered to buy and learn to use your own telescope, there's an internet observatory that you can visit called Slooh.com (from "slew" - the act of quickly moving a telescope from one position to another). They have two robotic remote-controlled telescopes on Mt. Teide in the Canary Islands. One observatory is used for shared "missions" where you can log on and watch the show along with all the other users. The other observatory can be booked for private use by individuals to look wherever they wish. The technology behind all that is an interesting story in itself, but all you really need to know is that they are using a little bit of software developed by me that helps their domes to rotate correctly. Click on the image to visit their site.
I read somewhere that if you include certain keywords in the title of a blog post, the number of hits will go through the roof. Well, I couldn't resist it. I just have to try that. So here goes.
To date, the most views on any of my blog posts is 250. I'll post comments to this post periodically to let y'all know how the hit count is going.
Otherwise, sorry to disappoint, but there is no porn, viagra, illegal music downloads or anything of that nature here.
A few days ago I blogged about the Office 2007 beta feedback tool. I have to agree with David Overton that this is a very intuitive and easy feedback mechanism, simply click on the happy face or the sad face. Neat, easy, simple.
Only trouble is, gee whiz, I'm frowning my life away. Why? The green happy smiling face has vanished from my notification area so now I can only report negative feedback.
Update: before you rush to point out that I have to set the icon to "always show" to stop it auto-hiding itself, well I already did that. No dice.