Category: Computers/Internet

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Microsoft’s automatic update system is now offering an update to the Windows Installer. That’s the program that handles all those .msi files you use to install new applications, keeps track of what’s currently installed, and lets you uninstall them.

And it needs to reboot after installing?

WHY? What low-level system file did they have to change? There is a Windows Installer service, but it’s not running, and even if it were, they should just be able to restart the service. Why do I have to reboot the entire #@!$ computer because I agreed to install an update to something that isn’t running? Is the design so broken it can’t update itself?

I’ve never had to reboot a Linux box after upgrading RPM, Yum, or Apt (the equivalent software on many Linux systems). Never, in the seven years I’ve been using Linux.

And you know, it would have been nice to know that this update would require a restart before I decided, “what the heck, it doesn’t look like anything that’ll require me to restart, I might as well grab it now.” Telling me that some updates may require a restart is like labeling a box of cookies “Processed in the same state as a peanut farm.” It’s useless. It gets ignored. Kind of like this rant probably will.

Update 1: I’d love to make this change to the dialog box:

No, it’s not F*ing OK but you’re going to make me restart anyway!
Mouldypunk (link dead)

Update 2 (years later): “OK I guess” would have at least been amusing. And thank you sooooo much, Gnome Software, for bringing this behavior to Linux. There’s a reason I still use the command line to install updates.

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Too bad it’s the bad guys.

As reported on DailyDave and picked up at SANS, Email Battles and elsewhere, there are phishers out there using a botnet (a network of infected “zombie” computers) not just to send emails, but to host the websites and the DNS for their scam.

Imagine what this technology could do for legitimate sites. It could potentially surpass Akamai’s system of worldwide mirrors. You could set up something like BitTorrent that would automatically mirror sites you’re looking at. Getting Slashdotted would actually improve a site’s response!

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Apparently wardrivers (people who cruise neighborhoods with a laptop looking for open wireless networks) have been submitting their findings to WiGLE—a searchable database and interactive map of wireless access points.

Already checked—our home network isn’t in there. (As much as I’ve locked it down, it had better not be!) But they do list several in our neighborhood.

As always, the power of the Internet can be used for either good or evil.

(via Aunty Spam’s Net Patrol.)

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What is it about two-digit version numbers?

Mac OS went up to 9, and now it’s Mac OS X. Everything since then has been numbered “under the hood.” You can find 10.3 in the fine print, but everywhere else it’s Mac OS X Panther.

Windows alternates between vintages and letters (Me, XP, etc.). Even then, they’re only up to 5.2 internally (Longhorn will technically be Windows NT 6.0).

Red Hat Linux got up to 9, then spun off into Fedora Core, starting over at 1.

Mandrake got as far as 10.1, and Conectiva to 10, and the merged system is moving to yearly vintages.

SuSE is about to hit 9.3, but Novell has been busy absorbing all the Linux companies they bought. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to see them release Novell Linux 1 instead of SuSE Linux 10.

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Two months later, 12,500 pages mention Apple’s “Do not eat iPod shuffle” joke.

Ironically, one page that doesn’t mention it is the one that started it all. Apple has removed the footnote from its iPod shuffle product page. Sure, the comparison to a pack of gum is still there, but I guess enough people thought it was a stupid-lawyer trick instead of, you know, a joke.

Something I didn’t notice at the time, though: the U.K. version was worded differently: “Do not chew iPod shuffle.” Perhaps reflecting the relative populations, this phrase only pulls 48 hits (soon to be 49, I expect).

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You’d think with the number of years we’ve been sharing files across networks we’d be able to do it somewhat reliably.

Windows: Try to connect to a computer that’s down or misconfigured, and sit for at least 30 seconds, unable to use an explorer window, click on your desktop, or, if you’re really unlucky, use the taskbar or Start menu, until it realizes it can’t connect. (I don’t know if this has been fixed in Windows XP, but it’s still a problem in Windows 2000.)

Unix: On one hand processes are separated better so you don’t normally get a full system lock-up unless it’s trying to connect while starting up…but if you have a modern GNOME desktop, and you have a file in your recent documents list on an auto-mounted NFS share that isn’t available anymore (say, because you turned the computer off), it can lock up your desktop while it tries to connect to create a thumbnail. (This happened to me last night.) And don’t get me started with trying to disconnect from an NFS share that isn’t available.

Mac: Have you got a folder on a server with lots and lots of files in it? Especially images? Hope you can wait for it to transfer every single image over the network and create a thumbnail, because you aren’t going to be able to see anything in that Finder window until it does. (To be fair, I’m basing this on connecting to a Linux box via Netatalk, which implements Mac file sharing. For all I know, connecting to an actual Mac would pull thumbnails out of the images’ resource forks or something.)

Hmm, now that I think about it, generating thumbnails of files on network shares seems to be a problem in itself.

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