Vista and Windows 7

News regarding Vista's success and Windows 7 (Vista's successor) continues to be posted.

Steve Ballmer says that Vista is selling really well (Slashdot post).

"Steve Ballmer is in no way disappointed with Windows Vista. It is selling 'incredibly well,' he told a press conference in Herzeliya, Israel today. 'Vista sells on almost 100 per cent of all the new consumer PCs around the world,' the Microsoft CEO proclaimed. He added that the operating system was also selling on '45 percent of all of new business PCs.' Which is enlightening, since business users are about the only buyers of new PCs that get a choice."

Scoble posts, We ain’t gonna tell you about Windows 7, a link to a CNet interview Windows chief talks '7'.

Two posts about Windows 7 on OSNews:

• Windows 7 Screenshots Leaked?
• Windows 7: No New Kernel, Builds on Vista

Update:

• Late yesterday, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer demonstrated Windows 7 according to this DownloadSquad post: Windows 7 says hello world, then runs and hides away.
The main feature was multi-touch. Hmmm, doesn't the iPhone have that?
• A lengthier story, Microsoft demos 'touch Windows', appears on the BBC's site. Interesting comment by Bill Gates about selling 290 million PCs, compared to 10 million by Apple. Those numbers look suspect to me, given several posts I saw recently about Apple selling 66% of machines above $1000. A quick search, using Google, reveals a post on Slashdot: 66% Apple Market Share For Sales of High-End PCs, which links to Macs Defy Windows' Gravity.

Unread books

As seen on a recent post at Terminal Degree

The top 100 or so books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users. Bold the books you have read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: A novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes: A memoir
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: A true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

Leopard Update

I finally had time to update my office machine to Leopard (I probably could have done it sooner, but wanted to wait until the end of the semester...). Backing up all the files took a couple of hours---too much stuff! The actual installation only took about an hour, then another hour to update the System (version 10.5.2) and Apple applications (iTunes, QuickTime, Safari, etc.).

Problems:

1. Converting Address Book
2. Lost dot files

Solutions:

The Address Book problem was an easy one (I had encountered it before). Just copy old files into the new directory (~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook). I found this on one of Apple's Support Discussions: Topic: Tiger-->Leopard Address Book

The dot file problem is a bit tougher---the dot files are gone! The good news is that I have a copy of the important ones on my home machine. Note to self: Backup dot files!

The World of Microsoft Updates

In the world of lagging updates....

OS News reports that: Microsoft Admits Some PCs Won't Be Offered Vista SP1

Download Squad reports that: Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 will add support for Open Document Format ... support for a several new document formats to Office 2007. The company plans to release Office 2007 SP2 during the first half of 2009, and it will add support for XPS, PDF 1.5, and ODF 1.1 files, among others.

Note the date above---first half of 2009!

Animal Farm == Democratic Party

It's kind of amusing watching the Democratic Presidential contest for a number of reasons. The foremost reason is they have a number of special rules:

1. Florida and Michigan don't count.
2. Superdelegates are special.

The superdelegate issue reminded me of the final commandment in Animal Farm:

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

I reread Animal Farm recently to compare the current candidate selection contest to the old book. Surprisingly similar situation in many ways, especially if we add media from Orwell's other book, 1984.

Then we have various members of the Democratic party hurling various racist/sexist comments at each other, especially since they (say they) are the party of diversity! [The media never mentioned Senator Byrd, WV, past membership in the KKK.]

Processing

About a month ago I purchased, Visualizing Data, that uses Processing.


One of the nice things about Processing is that it is written in Java, so you can use Java to add functionality.

Processing has been ported to JavaScript by John Resig. He released it about a week ago, along with quite a few demos.

More Vista Bashing

SNAFU:

• The Vista Bashing Continues, Now Business Week Pitches In


• Business Week: Closing the Door to Microsoft Vista

General Motors (GM) may take a detour around Vista, the latest computer operating system from Microsoft (MSFT). The automaker has encountered so many speed bumps getting Vista to work on its machines that it may just wait for the next version of Windows, due in 2010 or 2011. "We're considering bypassing Vista and going straight to Windows 7," says GM's Chief Systems & Technology Officer Fred Killeen.

• XP SP3 Causing Endless Reboots on AMD Chips


• Windows XP SP3: Problems, Performance Gains

The Church of Oprah?

Oprah has been going new age for some time, but it is clearly apparent with her total embrace of Eckhart Tolle's New Earth.

• The Church of Oprah Exposed a video.


• Is Oprah Starting Her Own Cult?

....But don’t worry about Eckhart Tolle. His "power of now" is all about his store. All roads lead to his merchandise, which is prominently featured on his Web site and accessed from Oprah’s.

• Oprah's New Easter, by Chuck Norris. Points out how Oprah is lost.


• Something Wasn't Wright describes the details(?) (from anonymous sources) of her leaving Rev. Wright's church. Clearly not new age teaching.

China: CNN/Olympics/Health/Internet

Awhile back, Jack Cafferty called China's leadership "a bunch of thugs and goons". They took offense to the truth and demanded an apology. Sadly, CNN caved in to their demand.

Some recent news items:

• Visit Google to search for news of China's ongoing occupation of Tibet. For example, China's Tibet spin.


• A blog post on the air in China

  The smog here is amazing. Good luck to the athletes in 3mths time. It cleared a little after some very heavy rain but was back soon afterwards. At night you can see the beams of car headlights in the smog. Also the willows are in flower and the place is full of willow pollen/fluff. There is willow stuff drifting through the air inside the room I am in now.
  
  The over-riding impression of everything here is BIG. The city has a population similar to Australia in total and has hundreds of 20 story apartment blocks, giving the city a flat and lumpy appearance. Accentuated and made all the more dour by grey smoggy skies. In contrast, there are areas of Beijing that have some quite adventurous architecture.

• Child-killing virus may be yet to peak: WHO
  

  An outbreak of a virus (EV71, an intestinal virus) that has killed dozens of children across China may be yet to reach its peak, but will not threaten Beijing's Olympic Games in August, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday.

• China Wants US-Owned Hotels to Censor Internet The Chinese government is demanding that US-owned hotels there filter Internet service during the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing, US Senator Sam Brownback has alleged.


• Amnesty UK's videos on China's human rights record and the Olympics The sad reality of their Communist leadership.


• China's Cyberwar Against India China's cyber warfare army is marching on, and India is suffering silently. Over the past one and a half years, officials said.

Psalm 90

Today was the memorial service for my wife's mother. Her passing was a huge loss to all of us, but she is in a much better place and free of all her physical afflictions. Psalm 90 was her chosen passage and is copied here in remembrance of her.

A prayer of Moses, the man of God.

O Lord, You have been our refuge in every generation.
2 Before the mountains came into being,
before You brought forth the earth and the world,
from eternity to eternity You are God.

3 You return man to dust;
You decreed, "Return you mortals!"
4 For in Your sight a thousand years
are like yesterday that has past,
like a watch in the night.
5 You engulf men in sleep;
at daybreak they are like grass that renews itself;
6 at daybreak it flourishes anew;
by dusk it withers and dries up.
7 So we are consumed by Your anger,
terror-struck by Your fury.
8 You have set our iniquities before You,
our hidden sins in the light of Your face.
9 All our days pass away in Your wrath;
we spend our years like a sigh.
10 The span of our life is seventy years,
or, given the strength, eighty years;
but the best of them are trouble and sorrow.
They pass speedily, and we are in darkness.
11 Who can know Your furious anger?
Your wrath matches the fear of You.
12 Teach us to count our days rightly,
that we may obtain a wise heart.

13 Turn, O Lord!
How long?
Show mercy to Your servants.
14 Satisfy us at daybreak with your steadfast love
that we may sing for joy all our days.
15 Give us joy for as long as You have afflicted us,
for the years we have suffered misfortune.
16 Let Your deeds be seen by Your servants,
Your glory by their children.

17 May the favor of the Lord, our God, be upon us;
let the work of our hands prosper,
O prosper the work of our hands.