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July 25, 2005
c:\Program Files\iPod\ ? Come On, Apple!
I went to download a new copy of Quicktime from Apple today and noticed they bundled iTunes in the install. The installer clearly asked me where I wanted iTunes installed, so I chose the default:
I went back into the directory to delete iTunes and noticed another directory:c:\Program Files\iTunes\
had been created as well.c:\Program Files\iPod\
Apple:
I know the name of the game is getting your software onto my computer, but this is just scummy. What's next, are you going to tack on a copy of OS/X next time I upgrade my Quicktime? What else was installed when all I wanted to install was Quicktime?
I download and install Quicktime because I want Quicktime, not iTunes, not iPod software, nothing else. Even with full disclosure in the agreement, your bundling of software in this way is obnoxious at best and will turn off Windows/Apple fence-sitters in the worst case. We're all intelligent out here, why not let us download the individual software packages we want by ourselves?
[Edit: July 26, 2005]
I now also notice that Apple created two now processes that come up at startup. I've got an iPodService.exe running (I don't own and probably won't own an iPod, ever...) and an iTunesHelper.exe (remember, I didn't want iTunes in the first place.) Off to go clean up my registry and directories.
[/Edit]
[Edit: July 27, 2005]
I also had to remove approximately 50 different entries in my Windows Registry, by hand, in order to disable the services and file associations.
[/Edit]
Thanks, Apple, for making Quicktime more work than necessary. I hear that VLC plays Quicktime videos just fine, and so does QuickTime Alternative. Both of those choices quickly install only what I want and provide most of the same functions. Is this what the Apple Marketing types had in mind when they brainstormed the idea to bundle Quicktime and iTunes?
Putting a link to iTunes download on the Qucktime download page is cool. Bundling the software together (and not providing an iTunes/iPod uninstaller) is not.
To finish things off, my InstallShield for my QuickTime install has locked up part-way through and won't finish. There are no (visible) dialogs waiting for a response.
Be good net citizens, Apple, and do the right thing. Or is this your idea of "different thinking"?
Tags: apple - quicktime - itunes - ipod - software - karma - badkarma - windows - installshield - nightmare - registry
July 24, 2005
Essential Windows^H^Hze Software
The best Windows software by my accounting. If this you are starting with a blank Windows computer, this list should get you the basic kit for almost anything you need to do on it.
The Best:
PuTTY
Mozilla Firefox (Best browser right now.)
Eudora (I've been using this since 1994. I'd like to try Thunderbird, but it doesn't seem ready for prime-time the last time I tried it.)
WinAmp (Classic Skin!)
Ad-aware Personal
WinRAR
AntiVir PE Classic
IrfanView (The best image-viewing software.)
VLC (The best video/media viewing/listening software.)
Cygwin (X on Windows)
BartPE (Windows SAs, check this out.)
The Rest (in no particular order):
Opera Browser 8.01 (second-best browser, they fiddled a bit too much with version 8.)
Adobe Acrobat Reader
Quicktime
Spybot Search & Destroy
CDex
CCleaner (Crap Cleaner, appropriately named, clean your caches, temp files, etc.)
Real
Shockwave/Flash
WinZip (Classic Mode!)
Tectia SSH (Free for Personal/Non-Commercial Use)
H&R Block TaxCut
Microsoft Money (anyone compared this to GnuCash?)
OpenOffice
WinSCP
Optional (not required on most PCs):
Palm Desktop
Blender
CDex
Brother's Keeper
The Gimp
TightVNC
Finally:
Internet Explorer (and only because I have to use it to access my company's intranet.)
Most of the software is freeware, shareware, or pay-or-get-advertising-ware. I do go out and buy Microsoft Money (as much as it hurts to write that) and H&R Block Taxcut. If I could e-file from my Linux box, Microsoft OS and software would be off all hardware in my home. I'm still holding out some hope this might happen soon. Need to go see what is happening in the e-file/Linux world recently.
So share your thoughts, suggestions, criticisms. Did I miss anything? This isn't a popularity contest, I'm looking for the best-of-breed software, the best tool to do the tasks at hand.
Tags: software - windows - best - freeware - shareware - commercial - tools - utilities - bestofbreed - essential
July 23, 2005
Sunflowers (Gallery)
July 19, 2005
Sony Mavica File-Naming Complaint/Work-Around
I've had a Sony Mavica MVC-CD300 digital camera for several years now. I love the camera in general. I've taken just over 10,000 photos with the camera in the last four and a half years (many are available for viewing online.) It's like a good old friend at this point.
It's a 3.3 mega pixel camera, Carl Zeiss lens with 3x optical zoom, writes to 8cm mini-CD/RW discs, a nice all-around camera.
Recently my old friend pulled a new trick on me.
Sony chose to name the photo files on the CD in the form DSC#####.JPG on the discs. My very first picture was DSC00001.JPG and my 9999th picture was DSC09999.JPG. I expected the picture after that would be DSC10000.JPG (since there are 5 digits available.) No, it rolled over and started at DSC00001.JPG again. Since I use the original filenames of my pictures when filing them, this causes a bit of a problem now as I'm potentially trying to store multiple files with the same filenames into my photo repository. Not a very nice implementation, Sony. You've got five digits, why not use them?
As part of my workflow, I load my photos into a 'working' directory and change their owner and permissions (this is in Linux) so they are owned by me and are 'a-w' (actually 0544) on their permissions. This makes it so the file will usually not be overwritten, or at least I'll see a warning message if I try to overwrite or delete the file. I've since added another step to my workflow, I run the following short bash/ksh script on all files in my 'working' directory now that I've passed the 10,000 mark:
for i in `ls -1 DSC0*.JPG` do j=`echo $i | sed 's/SC0/SC1/g'` mv -i $i $j done
It will rename any 'SC0' pattern to 'SC1', effectively renaming all my newer DSC0####.JPG files to DSC1####.JPG, as Sony should have done in the first place. I have listed the Unix 'mv' command with the '-i' interactive switch so you'll have to confirm each rename. Once you are comfortable with the script (try it on ONE file first) you can remove the '-i' script and it will rename all DSC0*.JPG files in the current directory. I'll still have to update my script once every 10,000 photos, but at four and a half years per update, I think I can manage.
Do all Sony Mavica cameras do this? Is this a function of the naming standard (DSC* seems to be vendor-independent)?
I'll post more on my workflow in a separate entry.
[Update: 7/27/2005]
The standard Sony uses for file naming is known as "Camera File System - CP-3461" (.PDF) (or DCF for short) The standards body that published this document is JEITA, the same folks publishing the EXIF standard - CP-3451(and -1) (.PDF). They are quite active in the realm of digital camera standards. Many big Japanese electronics manufacturers are members of JEITA.
DSC=Digital Still Camera
DCIM=Digital Camera Images
So, Sony decided to follow JEITA CP-3461 section 5.2.1 which splits the 8 characters available into 4 "Free" (vendor-assignable) characters and 4 "File numbering" characters. To paraphrase the standard, files are numbered 0001 to 9999, 0000 shall not be used. This effectively limits the consumer to 9,999 unique filenames (per directory.) The standard does have some wording in it about multiple directories, but that assumes the files will only exist in their original directory and will never cross paths with duplicately named files elsewhere. Sony doesn't seem to have implemented these variable directory names in their first- and second-generation Mavica CD cameras (CD1000, CD200, CD300.) So, the blame is off Sony and on JEITA.
JEITA: When facing a similar problem to the one computer network technicians face when addressing networks, why would you tie up half your address space (4 out of 8 character positions) with free text? Why not a minimally small, manufacturer-unique identification code (alpha-numeric), maybe one or two characters? That would at least allow a larger "address space" for the file numbering. Another approach would have been using an alpha-numeric code for the "File numbering" positions, greatly increasing the usable number of pictures before duplication of filenames.
If 5 numeric character places are used for "File numbering" the limit pushes to 99,999, 6 places yields 999,999 unique filenames, a much more reasonable figure. If alpha-numeric characters are used for file numbering (0-9, then A-Z, in order) even the 4-place scheme works better, yielding 1.67 million unique file names before repeating.
Do the Japanese engineers only think consumers will take less than 10,000 pictures with their cameras? Do they know something you don't? Mine (a Sony Mavica CD300 review, review, review) made it to 10,500 and is going strong.
[/Update]
Tags:
photography - photo - sony - mavica - complaint - script - userinterface - workflow - technology - workaround -
July 13, 2005
You Can Win Unlimited Napster Downloads!
I was enjoying a Nestle Butterfinger Bar (with "trivial amount of Trans Fat" (that's what it says on the wrapper)) today and noticed their current promotional contest.
(Napster Logo) Napster. You Can Win Unlimited Downloads (for one year.)Who are they fooling? Wow, they'll let 1,000 winners download unlimited songs on Napster-Roxio for a year. Estimated retail value (including the $300 Napster Digital Music Player) of this prize: $478. Remember that "Napster [is] not compatible with Apple computers, only with PC Windows environment" (because they are using Microsoft's DRM WMA Format.) Oh yeah, and if you don't keep paying Napster their subscription fees ($14.95/mo.) after the year is over, all your downloaded music stops playing.
Nice. Nestle just gave you a perpetual monthly bill for $15 if you want to keep using the music you downloaded after 1 year. But that's only if you 'win'...
This Napster client follows the recipe of AOL. It packages a bunch of stuff into a GUI that is freely available elsewhere (Amazon
Did I mention Napster is also pimping ringtones at $2 a piece? Their FAQ neatly skirts around whether the ringtones 'expire' or not. Wanna take a guess?
I didn't win, "but Napster will give [me] a special 2 week FREE Napster trial (Credit card required to activate.)" also with unlimited downloads. I wonder what the estimated retail "value" of that is? Is it really "worth" $7.50 (half their monthly subscription fee)? Since they are "giving away" access to all these artists' songs, what are the artists getting out of this deal? Ah, the key question here...
How much of this are the artists getting? Once Napster/Retailer/RIAA/Publisher/Label take their share of the pie, how many pennies are left for the artist who created the work? I still wish artists would setup direct tip boxes, post their MP3s on the web, and include links to "official", artist-released BitTorrent streams of their music (by track or by album.)
Note: Despite the popular media hype, BitTorrent isn't illegal. It is a legitimate distributed P2P content distribution engine that is efficient and effective. I regularly download Fedora Core releases using BitTorrent in a fraction of the time it would take to get it from a beseiged file server. BitTorrent takes the large volume of people who want a piece of content and uses them as an infrastructure to enable efficient distribution of that content. I'll write more on bittorrent and it's legitimate uses later.
Bottom Line:
I'm very willing to pay artists for music that I use and enjoy. I just want a direct channel from the artist to the consumer for content delivery, and a direct channel from the consumer to the artists for compensation.
I don't like paying all the miscellaneous costs that I don't want or need in order for them to market and transport the deliverable (we'll call it 'music') to me. I also don't like buying a unit of music (namely CDs) that have been padded with less than high-quality music.
Are any developers or artists taking step towards a direct artist-to-consumer distribution plan?
July 11, 2005
Look out: 80s nostalgia coming your way
I remember fairly clearly watching an intro to a weekly show during the 1980s that I now find deeply embedded in my mind. The scene is of a very low-slung sports car that is in some sort of high-speed chase and the driver evades his pursuers by sliding the car laterally underneath a moving semi trailer (nevermind the spare tire rack that usually sits there.)
I've checked out a couple obvious sources and tried to pick a few of my friends' brains, but we can't come up with where the scene is from.
Obvious Sources:
80salive.com
series-80.net
Could it have been:
Hardcastle and McCormick - The Coyote: Found the intro to this series on-line. It's got the low-slung sports car, the chase scene, but the closest thing to the semi is when they drive the Coyote up the back of an auto transport and jump the car over the cab.
Simon and Simon?
Magnum P.I.?
Miami Vice?
It's not Automan (though that was another series that completely embedded itself in my mind. I recently found a complete set of Automan episodes. Wow those special effects were bad!)
I remember seeing this scene over and over, so I'm assuming it was the intro or outro to the series each week. I could be wrong about this. A couple people I've pinged on this seem to remember the scene as well...
Anyone got any leads or memories about this? I'm trying to identify the series and if possible find a video clip of the intro.
July 6, 2005
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Annex National Air & Space Museum (Gallery)
This is an random sampling from my photo gallery from my October 2004 trip to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Annex to the National Air & Space Museum at Dulles (IAD) in Chantilly, VA.
Tags: smithsonian - airandspace - museum - national - dulles - dc - chantilly - virginia - districtofcolumbia - photo - enola gay - concorde - sr71 - gallery
July 2, 2005
Pigs Fly! Pink Floyd at Live8 with Roger Waters!
Wow! That was great! Pink Floyd with Roger Waters just got done playing at Live8!
MTV managed to show most of the performance with no commercials and no MTV VJs interrupting with interviews of frat boys sharing their thoughts on Africa. ("Will I get laid if I say that I care on live TV?") Correction: Then they cut off the end of the end of "Comfortably Numb" so Ahmet could tell us to "stick around." Is nothing sacred MTV? I don't need to be told to stay put or see commercials for AIDS/sexual assault/Big Dave's Fireworks/Kotex/Vonage, dammit I want to see the performance! This is Pink Floyd! Maybe if they had done this as a fundraiser they could have done more uninterrupted live coverage. AOL's live Internet feed was much better than MTV/VH1's ad-littered coverage.
MTV bleeped the heck out of their broadcast. Thanks, MTV, for at least not editing out "bullshit" on Money. ABC's replay of selected parts of the concert was heavily censored, including obscuring the "bullshit" in Money. One of these days I'll blog on my thoughts about censorship and otherwise modifying an artist's work. AOL's feed was uncensored.
The camera flashes were popping, so I how to see some good photos on Flickr (Search 1, Search 2, Search 3) maybe an audience audio or video recording via BitTorrent (Search 1, Search 2, Search 3, Search 4)? They just released the DVD of the first Live Aid, how long until the Live8 DVD is released?
Setlist:
Breathe
Money
Wish You Were Here
Comfortably Numb
(kinda surprised Roger didn't get "Each Small Candle" or one of his other two new songs in there...)
David Gilmour did all the vocal duties for the first two songs, Roger Waters did WYWH with Dave doing the scat lyrics. Roger and Dave split duties on Comfortably Numb. Roger spoke very little, but dedicated Wish You Were Here to Syd Barrett. Nice touch.
A great performance, couple of new backing artists. Good sax solo on Money, don't know the performer's name.
Good London camera work by whoever is filming this for broadcast including a fade to a zoomed-in view of the Battersea Powerstation's silhouette on the London skyline. A nice fade away to the London Eye. Great coverage of the band, closeups of the performance. Couple of really nicely composed shots of Dave and Roger.
There was an ad for Pink Floyd: Echoes about an hour after their performance. You could order it from them or just buy it on Amazon.
First time they've been back on stage together since 1987. 24 years later. Wow!
Tags: live8 - pinkfloyd - davidgilmour - rogerwaters - bobgeldof - bobgeldof