Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Computers and Internet

  • New Features

    Windows Live Spaces has just got some new features. The Space Craft has the details.

  • BrightEarth: Crisis in Darfur

    The Google Earth application continues to be a springboard for new ways of presenting information. Declan Butler, in Nature, describes the BrightEarth project, which is using Google Earth to raise awareness of the human tragedy in Darfur.

  • Bug Testing

    A month ago, I blogged about the ongoing saga of a conflict between Microsoft’s Windows Home Server and the version of CA Anti-Virus 2007 for Windows Vista. Namely, that a Vista computer won’t boot up correctly when both the CA software and the connector software for Windows Home Server are installed on it. The computer just hangs.
     
    I see that today the various reports of the issue from different users, and corroborated by yet other users, have been marked by Microsoft in their bug feedback system as "Closed". And the reason given? "Not Reproducible". This is either evidence that people invent reasons to meet their bug-fixing targets, or proof that Microsoft developers live in a different universe to the rest of us mortals. Colour me as not impressed.

  • A Failed Experiment?

    Jeff Atwood, over at Coding Horror, has a thoughtful analysis of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service, and why it might be said to show signs of failure. Worth reading.

  • I Feel His Pain

    As an ex-IT Architect, I know just what the presenter depicted here is going through… Architecture – a passion for me, pointlessness personified for most of my audience. Ah, purgatory, therein lies your sting…

  • The Novint Falcon

    Another intriguing computer interface device – the Novint Falcon. Otherland is on its way. I just wish that game designers thought about something other than killing people though.

  • Clippy Reincarnated?

    Some of you will probably remember Clippy – that obnoxious anthropomorphised cartoon paperclip that came with earlier versions of Microsoft Office. Thankfully, it has now been laid to rest in the latest version of Office. But don’t breathe too easily – the next generation of these assistants has just made her debut on MSN Messenger.
     
    Here’s Muse. And here’s her blog. Now run away. Very quickly.
     
     

  • Monkey Think, Monkey Do

    Emotiv Systems demonstrated a prototype of a new computer peripheral recently. It purportedly allows the wearer to think about actions, and for those actions to be acted upon by the computer. Watch the video to get a sense of this. I can’t help but feel that a) the learning/training time is going to be fairly long and b) the response time as evidenced from the video (presumably carried out by trained personnel) is slower than molasses on a cold day. Still, it will be interesting to see what actually arrives on the market.

  • The Workaround

    Well, after that rant about stupid packaging decisions for Windows Home Server, it comes as something of a relief to be able to say that I had one piece of good luck today. You know that conflict between the Windows Home Server client software and CA’s Anti-Virus 2007 product that I’ve been banging on about? Well, I discovered that there’s a workaround…
     
    I was watching a video podcast by Ian Dixon on TheDigitalLifestyle.com when I noticed something curious. He was demonstrating how to restore an individual file from a Windows Home Server backup, and he right-clicked on the file. I spotted that in the pop-up menu there was an entry for CA’s Anti-Virus. Hang on, thought I, how has he got that running on his machine, when he has also got the Windows Home Server client software running as well?
     
    An exchange of emails brought the answer… and for those of you wanting to have the workaround, here it is…
    1. Change the startup of the “Windows Home Server Connection Service” service [sic] from “Automatic” to “Manual”
    2. Remove the Windows Home Server tray application (WHStray.exe) from the list of programs that are started when Vista boots up. You can do this from the Software Explorer in Windows Defender or, alternatively, just delete the link to the application in C:ProgramDataMicrosoftWindowsStartMenuProgramsStartup.

    Then you should find that Vista will boot normally. Once you’re up and running, then starting the Windows Home Server console will start both the connection servce and the tray application for you. There you have it…

     
     

  • Windows Home Server Packaging

    While I’m still waiting for Microsoft to come up with a fix for the conflict between their software and CA’s anti-virus product, I thought I’d mention another oddity about the Windows Home Server software.

    Microsoft are saying that one of the selling points for this product will be the fact that your home computers and your Windows Home Server will be remotely accessible from anywhere on the internet. They’ve gone on record with this. Indeed, when I connect to my Windows Home Server over the internet, once I’ve logged in, this is the welcome screen that I see:

    Windows Home Server screenshot 2

    See those “Connect remotely to any of the computers in your home” and the “Access any home computer” claims? Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Just one slight problem. It’s not true…

    What happens when you click on the “Computers” tab in the welcome screen is that you’ll get a screen rather like this:

    Windows Home Server screenshot 3

    Look carefully – you’ll see that the computer called Monet has two entries – one when it’s running Windows XP Professional, and one when it’s running Windows Vista Home Premium Edition. And look, the Vista Home Premium Edition entry is marked as “Not Supported”. What’s that all about? Well, let’s click the helpful text just below that reads: Why can’t I connect to some computers? Then this screen will pop up:

    Windows Home Server screenshot 4

    Er, hello? Microsoft are telling me that the only operating systems that support Remote Access via Windows Home Server are Windows XP Professional, Vista Ultimate, Vista Business or Vista Enterprise?

    Let me get this straight, the Windows Home Server product, the one that is supposed to be for ordinary mortals, not geeks, the one that is supposed to give you remote access to any computer in your home, won’t actually do this if you have Windows XP Home, Vista Home Basic or Vista Home Premium installed on your home computers? You actually have to have XP Professional, Vista Ultimate, Vista Business or, gawd help us, Vista Enterprise installed on your goddam home computers?

    I’ve heard some nonsense in my time, but this takes some beating. The whole raison d’etre of Windows Home Server is being torpedoed by a product packaging decision… how stupid is that?

    Well, of course most homes will have XP Home, Vista Home Basic or Vista Home Premium. Only geeks buy XP Professional or Vista Ultimate… What really irritates me is that I had Windows XP Professional at home on all our systems, but wanted to move to Vista Home Premium in an attempt to be less geeky. More fool me, I suppose.

    I should just add, taking a deep breath after this rant, that I’m not the only beta-tester of Windows Home Server who has gone “What?” at this packaging decision. I see that this issue is now marked as “Closed(Postponed)” on the feedback site, and it could just be that the final version of Windows Home Server will emerge with Remote Access to all your home computers enabled – just as Microsoft is currently claiming, when you don’t read the fine print, that is. Let’s hope so, otherwise Windows Home Server starts to lose a lot of its attraction for me.

    Update, November 2007: Well, the final release still doesn’t support remote access to “any home computer”, despite Microsoft still seeming to imply this (unless you read the fine print). I’m not impressed.

  • Let It Out…

    … and Vote.
     
    Apparently, some kind soul has nominated my blog to the Let It Out campaign run by Kleenex. You can even vote for my blog, should you feel particularly kindly disposed to do so. I feel rather like Groucho Marx, who famously said that he wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have him as a member… However, I have no shame. So vote for me…

  • Twiddling Thumbs Again

    Last month, I mentioned in Do I Need Windows Vista? that a number of my hardware devices would either never have software drivers for Vista, or that the manufacturers were still working on them. Six weeks later, what’s the current situation?
     
    My soundcards – I have two, one is a Creative Technology Audigy 2, the other is an E-MU 1820M professional audio and MIDI interface. Currently, the Audigy sort of works – it can handle stereo playback, but the 5.1 surround sound capability continues not to function, and the Creative control panel application falls over on a continual basis. Last month, Creative only had Beta drivers released for Vista, but now their "final" drivers have been released (version 2.12.0002), with no discernable improvement whatsoever that I can see. I wrote last month that Creative’s customer discussion forum for Vista issues was glowing white-hot, being filled with angry comments from dissatisfied customers. It’s currently rapidly heading towards total meltdown as far as I can see. Really, Creative’s software quality is a total joke, and judging from the reactions of the forum moderators, they clearly haven’t a clue about customer service either.
     
    Turning away for the moment from that disaster, what’s happening on the E-MU front? Well, there’s still no sign of Vista drivers, but at least E-MU has now posted an expected delivery schedule for their software drivers and applications. I see that I can expect to wait a further month for beta versions of the software, and until Q3 for the final versions. Given that early versions of Vista were available to hardware and software developers over a year ago, and that the final version was available three months ago, to see that my E-MU hardware won’t have final software until nearly a year after Vista was released is disappointing to say the least. I’m also disappointed to see that one of my predictions of last month has come true: E-MU will not be releasing Vista versions of their Emulator-X application, I will have to upgrade to Emulator-X2 if I want to get a Vista version. Sigh.
     
    The one little ray of sunshine is that, while Steinberg have discontinued their Midex 8 interface, it does appear to work using the Windows XP drivers on the 32-bit version of Vista. It does not work on the 64-bit version of Vista, apparently, so that’s a road that I can’t go down in the future. 
     
    So now I twiddle my thumbs until E-MU release beta versions of their software. I have to say that I’m also not particularly confident that the beta software will work to any degree. You see, E-MU is now part of the Creative Technology company, and I’ve noticed that the quality of the software seems commensurate with that. Aren’t computers fun?

  • Sidebar Gadgets

    One of the toys introduced with Windows Vista is the Sidebar – a place where small applications (called "Gadgets") can live and run. I use it to hold a couple of weather and news gadgets, plus a photo gadget that shows photos that I have taken in the garden.
     
    Windows Sidebar 
     
    There’s a thriving community out there writing gadgets. As might be expected, their usefulness is often in the eye of the beholder. For example, here’s one for the Harry Potter fans: a countdown clock to the publication of the last book in the series.
     
     

  • Twiddling Thumbs

    I’ve mentioned before that I’m currently testing a beta version of Microsoft’s Windows Home Server product, and that I had a showstopper of an issue on my Vista machine – after installation of the Windows Home Server client software, Vista won’t start – it just locks up.
    Two weeks ago, the cause was identified – it’s a conflict between CA’s Anti-Virus 2007 product and the Windows Home Server client software. I wrote then that Microsoft were aware of the problem, and that a fix was on the way. I’m beginning to wonder if I might have been jumping the gun. I’ve been following the issue on Microsoft’s feedback forum for beta testers, and some of the responses I’m seeing from the Microsoft side make me wonder whether they’ve really understood what we’ve been telling them.
    It seems as though Microsoft thinks that we’re talking about their Live OneCare product and its anti-virus capability. Er, no, guys. Read my lips: it’s a conflict between CA’s Anti-Virus 2007 and your Windows Home Server client software.

  • The Digital Universe

    Via Preoccupations, I learn that there’s a new study been published on the ever-increasing amount of digital information published worldwide and its impact thereof. It estimates that by 2010 we’ll be drowning in 988 exabytes (988 billion gigabytes) of the stuff. It’s sobering to realise that in just 2006 alone, the study estimates that the amount of digital information created, captured, and replicated was 1,288 x 1018 bits. In computer parlance, that’s 161 exabytes or 161 billion gigabytes … This is about 3 million times the information in all the books ever written.
     
    Equally sobering is the observation that the lifetime of digital information is very short, so long-term preservation of real information is a definite challenge.

  • Denounce

    Denounce – not a verb, in this case, but a combined Blog reader and Podcast player application. Well, to be strictly accurate – it’s more of a conceptual application, built to show off some of the new capabilities of the user interface of Microsoft’s Vista. It’s not functionally complete, and it’s buggy; but it does succeed in showing some of the new ways of interacting with your PC.
     
    Denounce screenshot 1 

  • Turning The Pages

    I’ve mentioned the British Library’s Turning The Pages application before. If you haven’t seen it for yourself, or are unable to run it on your computer, then here’s a short video that shows it off, and gives the background to the initiative. For the best quality, download the video and then play it, rather than watch the online streamed version.

  • Kicking The Tyres

    I mentioned that I’m currently testing the beta software of Microsoft’s Windows Home Server. In that last posting I mentioned that I had a showstopper of an issue – Windows Vista would not start when the Windows Home Server Connector software was installed.

    Someone reported the same issue today on the feedback forum, and said that it was caused by a conflict between the Connector software and the CA Antivirus program for Windows Vista. A bit of testing on my part confirms this: either I can run the Connector software or I can run the CA Antivirus – but I can’t run both together. What’s also frustrating is that the Windows XP version of CA Antivirus does not have a conflict. Martin’s PC, which is running Windows XP, is happily sending backups through to the Windows Home Server box.

    I’ve reported this to Microsoft, and I’ve just received an email to say that they’ve confirmed this, and there is a fix in the works, so I’m looking forward to getting this and carrying on with testing.

  • Windows Home Server Hiccups

    Amongst other things, I’m currently testing the beta software of Microsoft’s Windows Home Server. Along with about 10,000 other people, apparently.

    It is only the second beta, so one should expect bugs; and in that I’ve not been disappointed.

    I’ve had a couple of problems with the Connector software. On one machine (which was running Vista at the time), it failed to find the server machine, even though it sits on the same subnet of my home network. That machine has now had Windows XP re-installed on it for other reasons, and now it is happily sending backups through to the server.

    But far more seriously, on another machine (also running Vista) the Connector service will lock up the machine completely after some time has elapsed. The only way to deal with it once it locks up is to boot into Safe Mode, and disable the Connector service. I suspect that it is conflicting with one, or even worse, a combination of the 73 other services that the machine happens to be running. I see from the bug reports that I’m not the only person suffering from this, so hopefully Microsoft will get around to looking at it at some point.

    Another bug that has started ringing alarm bells with me is that someone has reported that moving his 26,000 photos onto the server has corrupted the photos’ metadata. This would be a disaster for any photographer who uses metadata for digital asset management. I’m certainly not going to entrust my 24,000 photos to the current beta – at least not until Microsoft have identified and corrected this particular bug.

    Apart from real showstoppers such as these, there are the usual raft of niggles, which while they may be somewhat irritating, don’t cause active harm. One example I’ve got is the fact that each time I reinstall the Connector software on a client machine, the previous examples live on like ghosts in the administration console. Take a look at this to see what I mean.

    Home Server Console with Ghosts

    Those greyed-out icons cannot be got rid of, and represent previous instances of the Connector software on client machines.

    So, on we slog…

  • Fun With Computers

    I have a definite love/hate relationship with computers. My working life was centred around them, and inevitably at parties I was asked advice on PCs. But they usually put me in mind of the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

    There was a little girl,
    Who had a little curl,
    Right in the middle of her forehead.
    When she was good, She was very good indeed,
    But when she was bad she was horrid.

    When PCs go bad, they can be really horrid. I’ve just spent a fun day working on Martin’s PC. It all began last week, when I decided to upgrade our home systems to Windows Vista. I had run the Microsoft Vista Advisor on the three systems, and it had suggested that Martin’s PC should have more memory, and that the graphics capability would not be capable of the Aero interface, but would be suitable for the basic Vista interface. OK, I thought, that’s no problem, I’ll just add in more memory, the Aero interface is icing on the cake, but not essential.

    So more memory was installed, I took backups and installed Vista Home Premium. There was a slight panic when I found out that Vista was only able to drive the onboard graphics chip (Intel 845G) at the minimum resolution of 640 x 480 pixels. However, Intel’s Vista Graphics Support FAQ claimed that Vista would support the 845G shipset using XPDM (XP Display Model) drivers. Off I went to the Intel site and downloaded the latest version of these drivers. Well, I say latest version – some alarm bells rang when I read that the 845G chipset had reached the end of their support life. The key phrase being "nor will Intel provide any future software updates to support new operating systems or improve compatibility with third party devices and software products". Still, if Vista would support the XPDM drivers, then I should be OK, shouldn’t I?

    Well, at first, all seemed hunky-dory. The resolution went up to 1024 x 768, which is what the monitor wanted, and Vista Home Premium seemed to be behaving normally. I then spent several hours transferring across Martin’s data, installing applications and reconstructing his environment. Everything seemed fine until I decided, rather than logging off from one account and logging onto another, to simply switch users. Blam – a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death). It was repeatable – every time I switched users I got a BSOD – but logging off and logging on was OK. So I decided to follow the apocryphal doctor’s advice (patient: "Doctor, it hurts when I do this". Doctor: "then don’t do that"), and not ever switch users. Martin was unlikely to do it, so I thought that he would be unlikely to trigger the BSOD.

    I was somewhat amused to find that after rebooting the system, Vista helpfully told me that the BSOD was caused by the Intel graphics adaptor, and advised me to go to the Intel web site to download the latest driver. Obviously, no-one at Microsoft had been reading the Intel web site: "nor will Intel provide any future software updates to support new operating systems". Ho-hum.

    Still, Vista seemed to be running, and Martin started to use the system. All went well for the first few days, but then he decided to use the attached Logitech webcam for a video call with a friend. The performance was awful – like trying to do it over a dial-up connection. And – horror of horrors, the dreaded BSOD started showing up. There seemed to be no way to stop it, or to improve the situation – and of course the other shoe dropped as I remembered the second part of Intel’s fateful words: "nor will Intel provide any future software updates to … improve compatibility with third party devices and software products".   

    Martin’s PC is a Dell Dimension 4500s; long out of production, of course. I bought it for him because it was nice and compact and whisper-quiet. The downside of its compactness is that it only has two PCI expansion slots available. It was at this point that I realised that the days of PCI graphics expansion cards are also long since passed – graphics cards today require AGP or PCIexpress slots – neither of which the Dell possesses. So there would be no possiblility of bypassing the problem by using a graphics expansion card. Really, the only way forward was to take three steps back, and reinstall Windows XP again.

    And that’s what I spent yesterday doing. Naturally, the Windows XP re-installation CD dated from years back, so multiple trips to Windows Update were called for to bootstrap XP into the latest version. Well over 100 critical updates – including SP2 – were involved. Finally, this morning I finished reconstructing Martin’s environment and got all his data back just as it was. Computers, eh, doncha just love them?