Why I Can’t Recommend Friends and Family Upgrade to Windows Vista

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If you’re one of the readers of this blog who has ever asked me for technical advice, then this post is for you. Microsoft, next month, is releasing Vista, the next version of its operating system series, Windows. Vista has been touted as the next big thing from Microsoft. Its big already. Its a rhinoceros. Its horned, its blind, and its dumb – and it wants to take over your computer. After doing some reading and some research I can’t recommend anyone upgrade from Windows 2000 or Windows XP to Windows Vista. Windows Vista is advertised as a Porsche, but instead delivers the performance of a 1980’s Ford Taurus. Which to bring things into a more feminine perspective would be like being advertised marble counters but arriving to find painted countertops.

Windows Vista will require a degrading of performance because everything that is multi-media based will have to be reduced in quality. If you get a Blu-Ray disc and are excited to watch that blu-ray movie on your home computer on your flat pannel hi-def monitor – forget it. The quality will be degraded in an attempt at keeping the Digital Rights (as in you don’t have any) Managed. All sorts of encryption goes on within the processes of Windows Vista so that the data can be ‘protected’. To clarify about encryption think of it this way: your computer processes become slower because data has to be encrypted [modified to not represent itself plainly], sent somewhere else on the comuter, decrypted [modified to represent itself plainly again] and then possibly sent back in another encryptiong/decryption process. That means that the computer you have now will have to work harder just to get the same things done in Windows Vista that it has been doing in Windows XP or 2000.

Furthermore Microsoft can revoke a driver at any time which means that you could run a Windows Update to patch any number of security holes and then suddenly find yourself the proud owner of something that doesn’t work because Microsoft also slipped in a ‘patch’ that made the hardware you’re using not work because they ‘revoked’ support for it. Nice.

As a Non-Fear and Uncertainty guy I do want to add this: A new computer that ships with Vista will more than likely handle all of the things I’ve described above just fine. But know that the manufacturers are going to work hard to sell you on ‘Intel Inside’ or any number of other features that maks you think that the computer is powerful, but running Windows Vista will mean that you won’t get as much power out of it as you would running an older version of Windows or possibly a flavor of Linux [I recommend ubuntu]. Don’t be afraid of Vista, but be aware that your choice to upgrade on a current computer could be annoying and bring an older machine that’s barely Windows Vista compatible to its knees.
The one other thing to be aware of is that Windows Vista is reported to have a huge number of ‘confirmation boxes’. Those are boxes that pop up and ask if you want to do something, then ask again just in case, “Do you really, really, really want to do that?” Every review I’ve read has mentioned this. Be forewarned 🙂
But otherwise, if you’ve got a great graphics card and a monster machine, you should be able to have a pleasant Windows Vista experience 🙂 I just wouldn’t call it an upgrade. The best single-source review of Vista for computer owners is here. Thanks to Matt for that particular link.

Update: Here’s a terrific review of Windows Vista for those looking for a good, detailed review: Windows Vista Super Site.

Twisted Twist-Tie Twisters

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I am rather certain the people who twist the twist ties on the children’s toy boxes are bitter, bitter people.  I’m certain that they come home and they don’t kick their dog, mostly because they might have eaten the dog, but they sure are snippy with their kids.  They’re also a few twist ties away from starting a stick version of World War III.  I know they’re paid in rice and hookworms, but these people can’t be OK.

I told Jessica that next year we’re making all of our presents for everyone so that we can avoid any twist tie inflictions for others.  Amazingly we got a very limited number of blister packed (AKA: Satan’s packaging) toys to open for the kids.  I hope that you’re Christmas was blessed with no twist ties and no blister packs.

Merry Christmas!

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Merry Christmas readers of this blog. I hope that you’re not actually reading this on Christmas because you’re blessed to be with your family celebrating the birth of Jesus. But if not, I hope that you have a good day 🙂

Here’s a very strange video proving I need to not eat so much sugar, its 15MB because I need to learn how to use some of this software.

Illegal Information That Should Not Be Posted to the Internet

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Illegal information such as my sister’s recipe for peppermint marshmallows.  I don’t know where she keeps it stashed, but just like the Colonel’s chicken recipe it should be locked up and forever banned from being published.  Unless of course the military made it in large batches and delivered it to the middle east.  I’m pretty sure it would take care of most of the problems there because people would be stuffing their faces with peppermint marshmallows instead of planning taliban terrorist things.

They’re great, but I think you just need to register with the state if you carry them on your person.  And maybe you need a prescription to acquire them.  Thanks, Becky 🙂

The Collective Buttocks of the Music Industry Have Spoken

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In what can only be described as either insane or completely normal for insane people the Major music labels of America, AKA:” The people who would sue your grandma if they found out she had MP3’s on her computer – even if she didn’t know how they got on there,” are suing the Russian MP3 sharing site AllOfMP3.com for 1.65 trillion dollars. In case that sounds like a lot of money, you’d be wrong. Because in Russian Rubles it would be 43.378995 trillion rubles. OK, that’s the same amount of a lot of money.

Yearly music sales for the major labels is only $40 billion worldwide or roughly one fortieth of the sought reimbursement. Granted that the attorneys in this case, if their pipe dreams come true, will get a large chunk of that. So maybe a handful of attorneys join the world’s wealthiest billionaires, displacing Bill Gates as most hated human being because everyone else is jealous, or maybe this silly site is going to disappear, the Russians will not pay a ruble, and the RIAA will go about suing grandmas, teenagers, and complaining that music sales keep dropping because of the Internet. Surely no one could possibly be buying less music because they don’t want another Britney Spears album, they never wanted a Paris Hilton album, and they also did not want another new album for the asking price of $18.00 a disc. Oh, and nobody even whispered in dark rooms or in back alleys that they wanted a Kevin Federline album.

I of course keep knocking out number one hits like there’s no tomorrow. Like this.

Snow Storm Samba

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Do you ever watch the news?  Why?  Woops, that was a bit negative 🙂  We’re having a snow storm here in Denver, you may know this.  Its not a big surprise, it happens a couple times a winter and yet every time it happens the local news goes into full coverage.  Full coverage goes like this:

Anchor: “Well, [insert weather person’s name here], what’s it look like out there?”

Weather Entity: “Its a blizzard out there!  Snow is falling fast and hard.”

Anchor: “I hope we can get home!”

Weather being: “Lets check-in with one of the poor saps that we sent out there to stand in the snow so you can feel like you’re getting live coverage as a viewer.  Leslanda, can you hear us?”

Leslanda: “Weather Person, I’m getting blown around here, there’s lots of frozen water that is forming puddles of frozen snow mass.”

Weather entity: “Leslanda, how are the roads?  Are they clear?”

Leslanda: “There are many accidents because pretty much everyone around here forgets that snow is slick.”

And so they go forth with this nonsense like a scripted replay.  Its like Dancing With the Stars only its a newscast.

It happens over and over every year.  Because weather is news.  And news sells commercials.  And commercials sell sex.  And sex sells pretty much everything – which means storms are good for business – if you can get out of your driveway.

Hermeneutics and Knowing Where You Need to Study

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I was chatting with my Uncle Eric earlier today and had asked him where he got his deep insights into God’s word and he wrote some tidbits of wisdom into the IM window and I just had to share:

“Part of it is that I just read an awful lot. I also try to place myself in the place and culture and circumstance of a passage and let that tell me what areas I am just ignorant of and where I need to do more research. Until my knowledge of a situation can actually animate the characters and speak the words, I know I haven’t got the right information on the background. All too often we let our modern American preconceptions animate the characters and their motives.”

And later in the conversation:

“The thing lacking in our protestant hermeneutic is historical imagination. I don’t mean the wild, guessing kind. I mean the ability to drop ourselves into a situation and imagineer it into reality so that some interpretations are rejected out of hand, and others are cultivated until the real one is coaxed out.”

Good stuff, I thought. In short we need to think about what we do know so that we can begin to dig deeper into what we don’t know.