Activity for Yesterday

Review - Paint.NET
3.50 (Nov 7, 2009)

Still a great program, but no longer Open Source (officially beginning with version 3.5 released November 6, 2009 but informally announced on December 30, 2008 on the developer's forum).
Review - Microsoft Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor
2.0 (Oct 21, 2009)

Works and does what it should. Mac OS X also has an "Advisor." His name is Steve Jobs, and his advice is always that you need to buy a new Mac and new applications. Sure, maybe [Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, ...] and your "ancient" 3-year-old apps will run on your existing Mac, but Apple decided to abandon [Motorola 68000 series CPU architecture, PowerPC architecture, entire Mac OS "Classic" code base, SCSI, Firewire] and you're lucky if Apple gives you just enough backward compatibility to last until your credit card can be charged for all new stuff. Absolute NO software (not a single tiny program) which shipped for the Macintosh in 1985 will run as-is on Snow Leopard. No Advisor needed because the answer is NO, nada, zero, zilch. Meanwhile, Windows 7 will actually run some of the programs which shipped on the PC-DOS version 1 floppy diskette in 1981...totally as-is (no recompile, running as native x86).
Review - Disk2vhd
1.0 (Oct 8, 2009)

This new addition to the Sysinternals utilities does what it claims, but it will disappoint people who assume they're getting a complete P2V tool. This is only a disk conversion tool. If the disk you're converting is a system (boot) drive, don't expect it to work properly as-is when booted into Virtual PC, Virtual Server, or Hyper-V. At best, it may boot and you will have to fix minor driver issues yourself. At worst, it may not boot at all or may require safe mode to boot. Also keep in mind that Microsoft never backported their large VHD support from Virtual Server back to Virtual PC, so even if you're using the latest version of Virtual PC, you can't use a VHD larger than 137 GB like you can with Virtual Server or Hyper-V.
Review - Microsoft Extended Security Update Inventory Tool
2.50.3174.2191 (Sep 9, 2009)

This is basically a version of EST (Enterprise Scan Tool) for networks using SMS (Systems Management Server) 2.0 SP5 or later, or SMS 2003 SP3. If you are not running a compatible version of SMS, then this download is useless.
Review - Eudora for Windows
8.0.0 Beta 7 (Sep 5, 2009)

Although Eudora 8 is the successor to Eudora 7 and earlier, the codebase is virtually all different. Eudora 8 is basically just Mozilla Thunderbird packaged together with the Penelope extension (all open source) which makes Thunderbird look and act somewhat like Eudora. Believe it or not, there are still thousands of people quietly clinging to Eudora for various reasons. Telling a crack addict to simply stop isn't usually effective, and neither is telling a Eudora addict to simply switch to something completely different. Qualcomm could have simply abandoned this no-longer-profitable market. Instead, Qualcomm is doing the right thing and setting it free with an way to move forward using open source.

I can't rate this higher because it's honestly not very good and progress has been slow since the first beta in 2007, but it's an admirable effort. Beta 7 is based on Thunderbird 3.0b3 so it can use most Thunderbird extensions which are compatible with 3.0b3.
Comment - Sophos study suggests Windows 7 UAC's default setting is self-defeating
8.0.0 Beta 7 (Nov 5, 2009 - 5:30 PM)

He acknowledged Microsoft's free Security Essentials, but did he test Windows 7's default UAC together with MSSE (which, in my tests, downloads and installs faster than any other free AV with real-time protection; the initial update and scan may take longer, but user perceptions about the hassle level will be based solely on the download and install)?

I suspect he did test it, but doesn't want to point out that MSSE would have stopped everything which wasn't stopped by UAC or other Windows 7 security features.
Comment - Mozilla aims to revolutionize Web layout with new Firefox font support
8.0.0 Beta 7 (Oct 23, 2009 - 12:38 AM)

Scott, it remains to be seen whether the WOFF implementation will be challenged by foundries. I can't speak for PC_Tool, but as I've said, I'm not just blowing hot air based on skimming some articles; I personally used EOT and still have all the code and files, including hex dumps of TTF headers. I know first hand that Microsoft's solution included multiple provisions designed to address license issues, and when I look at what WOFF is doing, it's really not a great deal different in terms of being able to respect all the wishes of every foundry, given that some of those wishes may be unreasonably restrictive of "fair use." Some foundries like Bitstream are more progressive and generous, so they will tend to be lenient and easily satisfied. Others like Monotype are going to be more protective of certain typefaces which cost them a great deal to acquire or develop. In some ways, WOFF's approach is a little like The Pirate Bay claiming innocence because "no actual files are hosted on our servers." Being technically true didn't prove to be an effective defense for The Pirate Bay, and I doubt that WOFF's approach to repackaging will be seen as substantially more defensible than EOT's was.
Comment - Mozilla aims to revolutionize Web layout with new Firefox font support
8.0.0 Beta 7 (Oct 21, 2009 - 11:17 PM)

Yep, I personally wrote a web app on Nov. 16, 2000 (I'm looking at the files right now) which needed to render a wide report in Arial Narrow on an intranet where many desktops lacked MS Office and therefore didn't have Arial Narrow installed nor licensed to be permanently installed. The "Installable Embedding" mode was enabled in arialn.ttf so I used Microsoft's WEFT to repackage it as an *.eot file and I added a stylesheet with the @font-face rule. Worked OK, but I never used the feature again after this project because Microsoft never garnered enough support from the W3C nor from web developers to make it worthwhile for Microsoft to improve the tool support and simplify the whole process.

In fact, Microsoft originally submitted it to be part of CSS1 on April 19, 1996. The CSS3 submission in 2007 and standalone submission in 2008 were just two of many resubmissions. In 1996, typeface foundries strongly opposed it on idealogical (profit-driven) grounds and web developers opposed it due to various IE4 shortcomings. My project just needed a simple tabular layout but designers who wanted to do serious layout work where things like kerning and dropcaps actually matter were not impressed. Some of these criticisms were really the fault of CSS' primitive state in the late 90's, but the bottom line was that OpenType Embedding was an innovation that was simply way ahead of its time.

Mozilla's gripes about IE8's lousy @font-face implementation are completely accurate but they don't point out that IE8's implementation has hardly changed since IE4, so Mozilla is really comparing a browser they will release in late 2009 with the browser which Microsoft released in September 1997. I would be shocked if Mozilla's implementation wasn't a LOT better, after having 12 years to think about it.
Comment - Mozilla designer suggests Windows 'browser ballot' is preferential to Apple
8.0.0 Beta 7 (Oct 16, 2009 - 2:13 PM)

The first choice should have the title "BAD Choice" with a button labelled "Do NOT Click Here" and the description "This selection will display a funny dancing baby video, but you are a MORON if you pick this because your computer WILL become infected with malware which will take you weeks to remove and ruin your productivity."

Most likely, 80% of all users will click it. If I could only get a penny for each click...
Comment - Yahoo, Apple, Adobe, others named in Eolas patent lawsuit blitz
8.0.0 Beta 7 (Oct 8, 2009 - 7:06 PM)

Complete list of losers: End-users, Microsoft, Eolas, Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Argosy Publishing, Blockbuster, Citigroup, eBay, Frito-Lay, GoDaddy, J. C. Penney, JPMorgan Chase, New Frontier Media, Office Depot, Perot Systems, Playboy Enterprises, Rent-a-Center, Staples, Sun Microsystems, Texas Instruments, Yahoo, YouTube.

Complete list of winners: Lawyers for the above.