My Vista Experiences: a week later

Chromium FTW! (PC Tech)

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Well I set a goal for myself this weekend to get everything working do or die or uninstall Vista and put back XP on my system. I’m happy to say Vista is still here, and I’m prepping for the future.

Silicon Image finally wrote a good driver for Vista so that I can use my SATA card. Netgear still doesn’t have their act together for Vista compatible drivers for my SC101, but they did post an update in their forums saying that support for Vista was forthcoming with the public release of Vista in January. I can kludge along with that answer in the mean time.

I had to turn off User Access Control. It was way too restrictive in its operation and required way too many authorization clicks to make the experience enjoyable. Also having it on break the Extract here capabilities of WinRar 3.11. Not a big deal entirely, but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I understand what it’s for – Newbies who should not be running strange executables, or deleting important files… but for someone of my caliber, it was just a waste of my time.

WoW runs slower. So much so in fact, that I had to switch to full screen in order for it to not be so choppy. So gaming in general I think will take a hit. You will need a new system soon. Just bank on that fact.  Vista with Aero Glass is a bit of a resource hog. Keep in mind I have the sidebar with gadgets fully on and transparent and all of Aero Glass.

Firefox 2.0 is a bit more stable now. Not sure what was  causing the problems before. I still get the dreaded Blue Screen of Death from time to time. I think its related to the on board audio. It just doesn’t play nice. Most of the crashes happen when I have a video file paused and minimized.

The Logitech G15 keyboard driver is still the XP driver, but it seems to work. Although intermittently the cpu usage bar will stop working, but that was an issue I had in XP as well, so not sure what’s going on there. Their support forums aren’t much help either. The LCD at least works in games.

Most of my older programs all work fine, among them Trillian,  RenameIt, Advanced Disk Catalog, FireFox, Winzip and WinRar all get along with Vista. Symantec AntiVirus I had to explicitly tell the setup to run in supervisor mode or else it wouldn’t install, but I think that was User Access Control kicking in again, being a general pain in the ass.

All in all so far: Make sure you run the Upgrade Advisor (not like you have a choice when you upgrade). But listen to  it about which drivers are incompatible or don’t exist, as it’s pretty dead on, and if it says no go, then it literally will not install. Also you may want to wait for the drivers to mature a bit before installing. I’m sure that the video drivers particularly have a ways to go before maximum optimization is achieved.

Chrome out.

Jap Wii Manual Hints @ new games

Zombie16 FTW! (Fun, Nerdy, Video Games, Zombie)

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See Here

These include:

Wack a Friend, Ride Your Own Horsey, The Hydroginator, Elctro Love Poems Stop My Heart (ELPSMH for those in “tha know”), Cloudy Day Ash Parade, Dream Land, St Patty’s Day Grate Cleaner, The New Pope of Wii-Land, Dr. Sensors Tongue Depressor Adventure, Stomp – The Rectangle Adventure, Disc Dr. Xtreme, My Testicles and Wii, Finger Bang!, Polar Opposites, Lean Back – Special Library Edition & Stomp – Ninja Nunchuck Adventure.

Also the last 2 pages hint and more Wii Sports like multi titles with ‘Mote-rific which includes Teddy Bear Zapper, Pitch Black LCD Edition, Wii-motes can fly and My Reflection Looks Wii-rific and Playa Hata’s which includes Trapped in the Closet, Trinket Blast-o-thon and Plug It In My Hole Special DP Edition, yeah you only get 3 titles but the DP version adds an extra hole which makes it that much more pleasureful.

Pandora’s Jar: Save MP3s From Pandora and LastFM

LowCommotion FTW! (Hacks, Music)

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http://www.hak5.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=828

if you haven’t tried pandora.com you should really give it a whirl.  think of tivo’s “thumbs up / thumbs down” rating system applied to music.
pandora’s box how-to guide: http://www.hak5.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=983

Beach volleyball bikinis shake up Asian Games in Qatar

Listener FTW! (Sexy)

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http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/12/02/immodest.beach.ap/index.html

Even so, the Iraqis wore considerably more conservative outfits than their opponents, the Japanese. While the Agasis were clad in yellow, two-piece tights that went down to mid thigh and covered most of their shoulders, the Japanese pair’s uniforms were so small that the country name had to be abbreviated on their bikini bottoms. 

Hey Chrome, got any pics of the Japanese volleyball team?

TiVoToGo DRM cracked

LowCommotion FTW! (Tech, TV)

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http://www.pvrwire.com/2006/12/03/tivotogo-drm-cracked/

Megazone over at TiVo Lovers is reporting that someone’s cracked the DRM on TiVoToGo, letting you export recorded programs from a TiVo for viewing on any device.

for all you linux haters out there, suck it… http://tivodecode.sourceforge.net/

Zombie Chickens Roam California

LowCommotion FTW! (Animals, Zombie)

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http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061122/NEWS/611220399/1033/NEWS01

“We called them zombie chickens,” Stauffer said. “Some of them crawled right up out of the ground. They’d get out and stagger around.”

FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool

LowCommotion FTW! (Cell Tech, Your Rights)

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http://news.com.com/FBI+taps+cell+phone+mic+as+eavesdropping+tool/2100-1029_3-6140191.html

The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone’s microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.

how useful is this, really?  have you ever gotten a call from someone’s cellphone when they leave the keypad unlocked and their ass decides to call you?  it sounds like a mashup of turntablism and satinism…

Wiitards unite.

Chromium FTW! (Video Games)

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They have a site now. You too can blog about how you’re too wiitarded to wield a wiimote.

P.S. Penny Arcade has a strip about it. 

PS3 vs The Wii

Chromium FTW! (Video Games)

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G4 Style

Stephen Colbert on the Wii

Chromium FTW! (Video Games)

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You see where this is going.