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Vista Service Pack 2 hits RC2 milestone
The Windows Vista blog has announced that Vista SP2 has reached Release Candidate status. This is the last stage before final release and means it is available to people with Technet and MSDN accounts. Hopefully we’ll get our hands on it soon and will take a look.
A full list of what Service Pack 2 will include can be found here. In addition to all of the updates released since SP1, it will install Windows Search 4 and an improved Windows Media Center.
New games for Windows 7….
Well, Windows XP games that got cut out of Vista that are returning. They are Internet Backgammon, Internet Checkers and Internet Spades.
As the names suggest they are online multiplayer. A very cool feature is that the computer will take over if a human opponent drops out. There’s no mention of how it will decide on the skill level. That could present a problem with the statistics tracker in the Games Explorer if the replacement is too good.
Apogee stops making new Windows based products
Potentially bad news for recording musicians with Windows based systems, Apogee Electronics has announced that they will no longer be developing new products for Windows. Instead they will concentrate on Apple Mac instead. They will continue to support existing products.
Move over Qwerty and Dvorak, welcome Colemak
If there was ever an idea of mine that was considered ‘outside the box’ by my colleagues it was suggesting a feature on using the Dvorak keyboard layout.
It was offered with the best of intensions (take note please naysayers). I’ve not used it for a little while because I didn’t have time to learn it to level of Qwerty but I was definitely picking it up more quickly than I’d expected.
If you’ve never heard of Dvorak, I strongly recommend looking at this introduction. DVZine.org is also an excellent resource but the site seems to be down at the moment.
To summarise, the Dvorak layout was created with a lot more attention to how people type. This even included arranging the home keys (the ones your fingers start from) with the relative finger strength in mind, giving your little (pinkie) finger a break.
Anyway, the Colemak keyboard solves one of the biggest problems of the Dvorak keyboard by leaving the most commonly used shortcut keys – Z X C V B - in the same place as Qwerty.
Here’s a picture from Wikipedia, and there are lessons on the Colemak website.
Why open source is good
I was pleased to hear that the UK government has said that public services should avoid being ‘locked into proprietary software’. (Thanks to spode for the link).
I’ve got a good example of this from only this morning. I’m helping my wife’s school update their website and as part of the project we’re going to put their newsletter online. Well, I am and therein lies the problem.
The newsletter is currently created in Microsoft Publisher. Nothing wrong with that you might think but nothing, NOTHING reads publisher files. Except Publisher of course.
What surprised me is that not even other Office software will open Publisher. I thought Word might have a go, but nothing doing. OpenOffice didn’t want to know either, nor did Scribus, or Magix Xtreme Graphic Designer (a shame because the latter has otherwise been an excellent design program).
After a while on the web I found a C# utility that claimed it could convert Publisher. Great I though, until I realised that it would only work if Publisher was already installed on the computer.
One of the key benefits of an open source world is that you can share the means to open/edit a document just as easily as the document itself. OK, I’m not going email OpenOffice with a shopping list, but I could if I wanted to.
Publisher is a particularly bad case because Microsoft doesn’t provide a viewer like it does for Word and PowerPoint. Instead the help page suggests downloading the trial version of Publisher. Not really a long term solution.
In contrast I’m creating the website with Joomla. I’ve no concerns about handing the project over. You can download Joomla for yourself and all the templates and content pages are in standard file formats. Of course, I’ll have to explain how it all fits together but that’s the only barrier. And it won’t cost anyone a penny installing the software.
PNY Micro attaché USB key
It seems that the limiting factor on the size of USB keys is now the plug and ability to hold on to the thing to plug and unplug it.
The PNY Micro attaché takes this to extremes, it’s hard to see how you could make a USB key any smaller.
One of the ways that the size has been kept down is that it does not have a full USB plug; about a third of the key disappears inside the USB socket. Hopefully the photos demonstrate this, for non-UK readers the 5 pence is the smallest coin around.
Actually this does present the only real problem I had with the key. It is rather difficult to work out which way up it should go in the socket. Unless the socket is easily accessible, I found myself plugging it in and hoping, ready to swap over if Windows didn’t detect it.
Once I’d got it the right way round it was just like any other USB key. Performance was fine and it didn’t keep me waiting any longer than any other USB key.
There is a keyring hole, but to be honest I’ve just been keeping it in my wallet.
Don’t forget the people part of security vulnerabilities
There’s a lot said online about how vulnerable Windows is to malware, and often how Mac and Linux are invulnerable.
I’ve always got rather irritated by this because when I’ve pointed out possible vulnerabilities some Linux enthusiasts will reply ‘well yes, that’s possible but it wouldn’t happen because no one would start the program’.
Assuming that the user will never make a mistake is a huge vulnerability. Ironically, the past (and many of them are past) problems with Windows have got Windows users into a more security conscious state of mind.
Kudos to fsdaily.com for linking to an article linking to an article with accurate details of how to attack a Linux computer.
There’s nothing terribly complicated about the attack; the hardest part is persuading people to run a file. But that’s not very hard really.
Linux is more secure than Windows, but this doesn’t mean that there is any justification for complacency, and in this Windows users are probably ahead of many new Linux users.
New version of Small Basic released
An excellent programming language and editor for beginners, Small Basic has received some useful updates.
The most exciting for me is that ability to share code with other Small Basic users over the internet. Code can be uploaded to the Small Basic website where it is given a code that can be used to find it again. It’s a little like the short web addresses from sites such as tinyurl and snipurl. So the latest game posted on the blog has an address of http://smallbasic.com/program/?QRQ360. It’s a great idea and should make it even easier for beginners.
There are some bug fixes and performance improvements too. If you’ve never attempted programming before this is a good place to start from.
What do new web browsers need?
A fast Javascript engine it would appear from all of the press releases flying around about upcoming releases. The most recent from Opera about their new Javascript engine, called Carakan.
If you get down to the bottom of the press release there are some impressive numbers, doubling performance on cross platform versions and somewhere between 5 and 50 times faster on native code.
Why should we care about Javascript performance? Well it’s at the heart of Web 2.0 as the J in Ajax, and it’s getting harder to find websites that don’t use it. Bizarrely though I couldn’t find a logo so it is something of a backroom boy.
Google Chrome was really the first to champion its Javascript performance. Chrome isn’t just about processing code faster, but about giving every tab the ability to run Javascript independently of the others. I’ve noticed the delay of starting Firefox with 30 odd tabs as they load one after the other rather than all at the same time. You can read more in the graphic press release from Google from page 3 onwards.
Firefox has also got a new Javascript engine in the works called TraceMonkey. In Mozilla tests it did better than Google Chrome, so it looks like things are getting interesting.
Still going strong – Moraff’s games
I got a press release this morning about some new tilesets for a MahJongg game made by Software Diversions, home of the Moraff games.
I don’t know how many people know this but Moraff was very big in the good old days of DOS. Moraff’s Revenge was one of the very first 3D role playing games and I remember spending many happy hours playing Moraff’s Blast, an Arkonoid like game (although Popcorn was my favourite). Time to dig out DOSBox.
Follow up on DirectSong
Stephen has helpfully pointed out that there is a catalogue with prices at DirectSong. Many thanks!
They are pretty reasonable at between $6 and $10. But I still can’t find a link to the DirectSong catalogue from the homepage though.
Free anti-spyware tool? Not quite
At the time of writing, Lavasoft is apparently giving away it Ad-Aware Plus utility free of charge.
Well, nothing's free of course and this is no exception. To get the software you have to sign up to one of a range of special offers from companies such as LoveFilm and Emusic. You'll only discover this when you click the free offer link)
They all insist on some cash up front. With Lovefilm, for instance, you have to pay £9.99 for a membership and if you cancel the deal before payment, access to the free software is blocked. Given that the software costs $27 (about £18) that would give a saving of about £8 in exchange for having to sign up to a service you probably don't want, pay for it and have to remember to cancel it.
Given that the only real benefit of the paid-for version is an anti-virus feature, it's best to stick with the free version of Ad-Aware and use a free AV tool such as AVG, Avast, or Avira.
More info on Windows 7 versions
Having posted last night very quickly about the Windows 7 versions, here is some more information. Microsoft has released an interview with Mike Ybarra, the Windows General Manager.
It seems that the list I linked to needs a little bit of context. There will still be lots of versions but two will be given greater prominence, Home Premium and Professional. Much like the good old days of XP. Of course it remains to be seen whether manufacturers choose to keep it simple.
Versions that I’ve been able to pick out of the interview (it would have been helpful if a list had been in the interview):
- Home Premium
- Professional
- Home Basic
- Starter
- Ultimate
- Enterprise
One change that springs up is that Home Basic is for emerging markets but Starter will be available worldwide.
Pricing is yet to be announced.
How many Windows 7 licenses?
Life used to be simple with Windows XP. You had Home or Professional and the descriptions pretty much said it all. Apart from the odd irritation when we’d come up with a solution for a problem with XP that only worked on Pro ( Group Policy Editor mostly ), it was simple and it worked. And I never had a problem knowing which to recommend.
Then came Vista and life got more complicated. From the point of view of the home user (step forward the Aged Ps) there was a choice between Home Basic, Home Premium and Ultimate. Ultimate could safely be recommended to enthusiasts but what about the other two. Having used Ultimate for a year, I was pleasantly surprised at how I didn’t mind that much moving to Basic*.
There were some hopes that Windows 7 would return to a simpler path, but according to Engadget, that isn’t going to happen. There’ll still be a Home Basic, Premium and Ultimate. The Starter version probably won’t be available over here in the UK, although it might have some advantages.
* Well alright, I really miss the handwriting recognition right now and the backup situation is a nagging worry. Aero Glass doesn’t bother me, I boot into Ubuntu for a cool, arty desktop(note transparent task bars, and the 3D efforts not visible). In fairness I could probably get Vista Basic looking as good, but it feels like too much effort.
Enjoying game music
Without really meaning to, I found some good music to listen to while working, music from games. It makes quite a lot of sense really when you think about it. Game music is written to help the gamer enjoy the game without distracting them, so it’s perfect background music.
Myself, I’m listening to the tracks from some of the Might and Magic series of games, 6-9 to be precise. As they were created some time ago, the music was supplied on a combined audio and data CD. Extracting the music couldn’t have been easier with the ripping tab in Windows Media Player, although I had to put the track information myself.
It seems that these games were at something of a sweet spot for general listening. Earlier games often used MIDI, which was very atmospheric in games like Dark Forces but loses something for day to day use. Some games have a decent collection of mp3s, X2 The Threat was one, but I’ve found that many use a system to change the music to react to events. The resulting files are too small to be of any use in this way.
Having said that, there may be a small renaissance of game music. Some idle web searching produced DirectSong, a website offering albums for Elder Scrolls III and IV, Guild Wars and Dungeon Siege II among others. Annoyingly there is no mention of price before signing up, which is enough for me to go elsewhere, but it’s a good idea none the less.
As a slight aside, one of my favourite games of all times, No One Lives Forever, came with a small album’s worth of music on the second install CD. In fact you can even download the source code for the game now from the official site. In fact, I’ve just discovered that you can download the music, and quite a few more extra tracks too, from indiespace.com. I think I shall do so now.
Does anyone else have any favourite music from games?
