Some EU stupidity….

This is just stupid, downright stupid.

When Microsoft ships Windows 7 in October of this year, versions sold within the EU will not have Internet Explorer on them due to an EU ruling.

That’s all fine and dandy I hear you say, sure I’ll just download it or Firefox off the internet, no problem at all. And you would be right, no problem at all, for you or me…

But… (and its a big but, a Kim Kardashian size butt), well what if some home user decides to upgrade their PC or laptop but are unaware that they won’t have a browser on their PC after the upgrade?? How will they get one? They can’t logon to mozilla.com to get it… no browser. They can’t logon to Microsoft.com to get it… no browser. I guess they will either have to go buy a magazine and get it off a cover DVD or ask a friend nicely if they can download it for them.

Actually I want to correct myself there. EU users of Windows 7 cannot perform an upgrade from any version of Windows to Windows 7. You have to perform a full clean install!!  Go on, guess why?? Have a good guess…. Yes, that’s it, the EU will not allow it!

Now I am all for the EU making life easier for the consumer and for breaking up unfair monopolies, but in this case they have failed miserably to make life easier for the man in the street.

Not only do they have to make sure that they have a browser to hand when they go to install Windows 7, they also have to do a full clean install meaning that they then have to go to the trouble of reinstalling all their software, their printers, their ipods, their cameras…. basically anything they had installed on their PC is not worth a toss.

In fact, take it one step further. Imagine a business decides to upgrade its Vista PC’s to Windows 7, how much longer will it now take to complete one PC install now that a fresh install of the OS and all the software is needed. Oh and lets not forget configuring the network and email clients to…

Thanks EU, thanks a lot for another fucking stupid idea. Its right up there with regulating cucumber curvature!

So long MJ….

Well it appears that MJ is dead. Dead of a heart attack at the age of 50. That’s just sad news.

For many, Michael Jackson was the greatest pop performer ever, the self proclaimed King of Pop. For others he was a freak, a wierdo, a pervert.

For me, Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad (all in my CD collection) are three of the classic pop albums. Who out there has not tried to moonwalk at least once?? I remember as a bleary eyed kid staying up till 11pm to watch Channel 4 premiere the video for Thriller. I remember having black slip on shoes and white towelling socks. I remember buying the Bad album in Tower Records Piccadilly Circus back in the late 80’s…. As a musical legend, Michael Jackson is up there with Elvis, Lennon, Hendrix.

The other side of the coin was his eccentricity and the reports of alleged child abuse. He also underwent dramatic facial surgery, yet in an interview with Martin Bashir denied having any facial surgery.

In 1993 he was accused of child sexual abuse by Evan Chandler, father of 13yo Jordan Chandler. On 1st January 1994, Jackson settled out of court with the Chandlers and their legal team for the sum of $22million.

Again in 2005, Jackson faced more child sexual abuse charges involving another 13yo boy, Gavin Arvizo. On 13th June 2005, a jury found Jackson not guilty on all charges.

Even recently, Jackson was the centre of more controversy. Starting on 13th July 2009, he was scheduled to perform for 50 dates at the O2 in London. Jackson hit out at the plan for the gigs saying "I don't know how I'm going to do 50 shows," he said of the gigs, which kick off in July. "I'm not a big eater - I need to put some weight on."

The O2 gigs also were put in doubt when AllGood Entertainment claimed that Jackson must first perform in the US under a contract he signed with the New Jersey-based promoters before embarking on his 50-night stint at the 02 Arena, which was set to begin in July.

So, Michael Jackson, King of Pop is dead, never to moonwalk again. He certainly led a very strange life, a life full of highs and lows, a life full of controversy. I separate MJ the man from MJ the superstar. For me they are 2 different people. MJ the superstar will be sorely missed by all those who love music. MJ the man will always have questions asked about him and his private life.

Hmmm….. I had not intended this blog to be this long… Funny how you can lose track. To finish up, for one last time, I’ll pass you over to MJ. Moonwalk baby, moonwalk!

Will.I.Am versus Perez

So I see that Perez Hilton, the worlds worst celebrity blogger was assaulted at the weekend. I can't say I am surprised about that. I am surprised that it is the first time in 5 years though!

The man makes a living on being rude, ignorant, horrid and spiteful to rock stars, pop stars, movie stars and wannabes on his blog.. He started out 5 years ago commenting about these people and the lives they live and the alleged debauchery and now he has turned into what he hated originally. Frankly his treatment of Miley Cyrus (16 years old for gods sake) borders on bullying.

I see from his original tweets that he said Will.I.Am and his security assaulted him. Somehow after this "horrific" assault, he managed to twitter to his adoring public...

Strangely, some time later he changed his story and it is now alleged that Polo Molina (he manages Will.I.Am) assaulted Perez Hilton.

Anyway, Will.I.Am released a video statement refuting the first round of allegations, Perez then followed up with his own video, which is quite frankly hysterically funny.

Now I don't condone violence at all. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I wouldn't hurt a fly (and I'll fecking beat the shit out of anyone who says otherwise), but if you are going to deliberately try to wind up someone by calling them a  fag and a faggot to their face, then you should expect payback.

One final thing. Now I have had my fair share of punches to the eye, both deliberate and accidental. They generally involved copious amounts of swelling and bruising. Now bruising can be covered up by make up, but swelling? Well that is hard to hide, but Perez seems to have found the solution.

Disclosure:

Whilst it is quite obvious that I am not a fan of Perez Hilton, I feel it only fair to also point out that I am not a fan of Will.I.Am or the Black Eyed Peas. It should be noted however, that I definitely would do Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas, and not just for celebrity value!

Windows 7 Install on Acer Aspire One

After reading many reports on the internet about installing Windows 7 on an 8GB Acer Aspire One, I decided to give it a go tonight. Reports on the web said that it would not work on an 8GB SSD without compressing the disk. This would take somewhere between 24 and 48 hours!!!

Anyway, I pressed ahead and managed to transfer my Windows 7 RC onto a bootbable USB drive without too much hassle, though it took over 30 minutes to do so.  Install took about 2.5 hours, give or take a few minutes. There was no need for disk compression at all. It would seem that the previous beta installs of Windows 7 are slightly larger than the current Release Candidate.

Once installed, I was left with just over 800MB. I uninstalled a few unnecessary a applications and free space grew to just under 1GB of space. Even though installation took quite a long time, I was impressed when finished as everything worked on first boot.

I put an 8GB SD card for more storage and installed portableapps versions of Firefox, VLC, and Sumatra PDF. I also installed Clamwin AV. Windows 7 had no problems connecting to my home network and browsing my home network was nice and quick.

Once I was happy with my setup, I decided to play around. I started up Firefox and browsed to some of my favourite sites. I also used VLC to browse my network and play back some media files. Video playback, whilst not choppy, slowed down on multiple occasions. As I plan on using my AA1 for watching movies on the go, I figured this would really annoy me!

Over all reaction times when starting applications in Windows 7 lagged noticeably behind their counterparts in Ubuntu. Startup and Shutdown times in Windows also lag dramatically behind Ubuntu.

My Acer Aspire One has the following specs:  1.6 GHz Intel Atom, 8GB SSD, 1GB Ram. It is entirely possible that an Aspire One with more Ram (I believe the limit is 1.5GB) could happily run Windows 7

So, to sum up:

The Curious Incident of the Train in the Election Poster

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in the middle of an election campaign to be re-elected the President of Iran.

Nothing much strange in that, well there is but thats not what I want to talk about. The really strange things is this:



Whats strange about that you might ask? Well look at this train and then look even closer. Now compare that train with this train:



Spot the similarity?? Yeap, thats right, they are both Iarnród Éireann trains! Some how, from some where Roy Keane Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has got his hands on a retired Iarnród Éireann train!

Iarnród Éireann spokesman Barry Kenny had this to say. "We fully expected Irish public transport, and our plans to develop the rail service, to feature in our own election campaign last week, but to feature in Iran was a bit of a surprise"

In case you are wondering, the Farsi script on the poster says "The country is advancing as rapidly as a train." Nice thought apart from the fact that the train is a General Motors 181 and was scrapped two years ago after a 41 year career, having entered service in 1966.

Oh and as for the Roy Keane quip, well I will let you decide....



It should be noted that parts of this post have been inspired by this article!

My new toy...

I got a good deal during the week on an Acer Aspire One. I picked up an 8GB SSD, 512MB Lnux version for 140euro. I had no particular reason for purchasing other than I fancied one and the price was right.

I figured I would install Windows 7 on it, but after reading up on the hassle involved on installing W7 on an 8GB SSD, I quickly discounted that idea. I thought about putting XP on it, but in the end, I went with the latest version of Ubuntu Notebook Remix. It installed relatively easily from a USB drive. Almost everything worked straight from the install. The only issue was when I installed Skype and found that the microphone did not work. I eventually found a walkthough on how to solve that problem and now everything is fine.



Ubuntu NBR comes with Open Office as part of the install, so that was one of my main packages looked after. I also needed a cad package, but as most cad users out there know, linux is not best served in that dept. On a whim, I installed Wine and then downloaded ProgeCAD 2008 Smart. Much to my surprise, it isntalled without issue and most surprisingly for me, worked first time! It does throw up this error though which I believe will stop ProgeCAD working after the trial period as it cannot be registered. I will have to see what I can do about that.



The final mod (so far), has been to totally dismantle the netbook to install an extra 512mb (kindly donated by a friend) to bring total installed ram to 1GB. Now normally if you want to upgrade the memory on a laptop, you undo a couple of screws, remove the panel and install the ram.... Well not so on the Acer Aspire One!!! You gotta take the whole thing apart to get at the spare slot! It truly is not for the faint of heart! I used this tutorial at crunchgear.com to guide me.

So, at the moment, all is good with the netbook and hopefully it will stay that way!