Well, we've reached that time where we no longer have to hear about leaked betas, release candidates, or early fake RTMs of Windows 7.

It is done, completed, and been shipped to manufacturers (and people who have better connections than me). At this point, they're making images and testing the final version on their machines. And yes, we can all look forward to lots of crapware being installed on it: "Windows has a wireless manager, try the Dell wireless manager!" "You didn't want to use Windows power management, here is our custom tool" "You wanted to be reminded every boot about hp's printer driver update, right?"

We've all been hearing plenty about Windows 7.

"It's Vista with less suck"
"It's the Vista we should've had"

Okay, I said most of those things. I wasn't a Vista hater, but it would've been nice to get some of those features earlier on. I'm personally looking forward to it for all my uses.

1) Laptop:Will run smoother, new window management make touch pad usage easier
2) Media Center: The features I gained in Vista's Media Center TV Pack will be integrated into Windows 7. (Not looking forward to having to reset my DRM on my CableCard recordings)
3) Vehicle: I've been running XP due to its low resources and not wanting to bet on drivers for Vista. It's been misbehaving lately and could use a more modern OS. I'm ready to make the jump there

Yes, I'm saying XP is not modern. It's OLD: 2002 if my my memory serves me right. Honestly, it was beefed up Windows 2000 to support graphics and a better GUI.

We're 3 months away from when it will hit the shelves. It's a little too long for me! I miss my MSDN account......

Comcast is here to please again. Almost a month after sucking in new customers with the OTA Digital TV Transition, Comcast is changing customers (at least in my area) to all digital.  Currently, stations like ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX that broadcast in digital only, are down converted to analog for cable customer use. Other stations on cable are also broadcast in analog.

This is all changing. I have mixed feelings. Overall, my negative feelings reside with the timing. Almost exactly a month after the OTA transition, they're announcing the change?

Their FAQ page is horribly misleading.

Are there any ways that I can make my old television set work?

If you subscribe to Comcast cable, we will take care of you.  You won't need to worry about getting a new TV if you subscribe to a Comcast cable package. 

Comcast will offer some converter boxes, but that doesn't plug the hole. I have a friend that has 5-6 TVs in his house. Comcast won't give him enough converters. What if someone had OTA TV and decided to research pay TV. Cable suckered them in with no need for boxes and the customer avoided DirecTV/Dish. Whoops, well don't worry about that, you wanted to pay for their DVR anyway, right?

Onto the positive. If comcast broadcasts one digital station, theoretically, my HDTV will display in full resolution. Anyone who doesn't have an HDTV should view the same signal, but at a lower resolution.

I have noticed on a comcast Digital Tuner box that it will display black on a low res TV that is tuned to a HD channel.

Time will tell how it plays out, anyone else have any additional info on this?

Finally, the day has come. Analog TV is gone, except for LPTV. Totally makes sense right. Force everyone to change to digital except for those local low power stations. I don't think I've ever tuned into one or have the need to. I'm sure anyone who tunes to LPTV still made the digital transition since everything else changed. Good job FCC. Way to go all the way and fall an inch short.

For the sake of keeping the rest of this post sane, we're going to assume analog tv is gone. Now what do we do? Well for those who escaped the grasp of the cable companies, they're on the all digital bandwagon. TV is broadcast up to 1080i without having to buy a digital package. Yes this is a jab at the cable companies. Cable companies usually give you the broadcast channels over HD for free, but don't market it.

On top of that, cable isn't affected by the DTV transition. The digital signals they get from the broadcast companies will be downconverted to analog. Honestly, I feel that's an unfair advantage. A) get a digital box for OTA DTV from a company you've never heard of (and priced just barely above $40 to get the full value of the government voucher program) or B) subscribe to cable tv.

I get yelled at when I bring that up. If cable companies were forced to go digital, everyone would be forced to get a box. My response: OK!  For YEARS cable companies have been screwing with consumers. Force them to get boxes for more channels. Since you screwed customers by creating a box monopoly, cablecards were brought to life. I personally invested around 1000 USD in a CableCard system. How many United States citizens to you know who have cable and do not have a digital box from their cable provider in their home? Very few! Sure there are some that would get screwed by a digital cable transition, but much less than the OTA digital transition.

On top of that, since they're paying subscribers, there already is a support network setup.

Yes, I've gone on another rant, but isn't that what you've come to except by this point?

Windows 7 E will be the only version to ship to Europe. Similar to versions of XP that shipped to Europe without Windows Media Player, the EU ruled in an antitrust case that MS has an unfair advantage with IE being shipped with Windows.

OEMs that will ship machines with Windows 7 will have the opportunity to install whatever browser they would like to. Pretty much anything is fair game as long as Microsoft is not making the decision.

So if a consumer buys a copy of Windows 7 off of the shelf in Europe, they will have NO BROWSER. So how do you get a browser? You'll need to bust into an FTP site or get it via removable media.

Let's play make believe...

But wait... what FTP client are you using? Microsoft bundles in an FTP client. Clearly this is unfair. Microsoft should remove that to allow 3rd parties a fair shot.

Since you forgot to download your browser installer before you wiped your machine, you'll be getting impatient calling your neighbor to come over with IE8/Firefox/Opera/Chrome. You bust open solitaire. Isn't this unfair also? There are many companies out there that sell games for Windows. Clearly this is also unfair. Microsoft needs to delete solitaire and all other games from the computer.

You want to listen to some music instead. Whoops, sorry, Windows Media Player shouldn't be their either. Go download Winamp or WMP after you get a browser.

You finally get some audio playback software. You don't have your sound card drivers installed yet, so you decide to get nerdy and bust out some bluetooth headphones since the drivers and bluetooth stack were installed by default for your setup. But wait, there are a few companies that sell their own bluetooth stack. Microsoft had better rip that out too and force you to download your favorite choice.

I believe in a free market. If Microsoft actually blocks the installation of 3rd party software, by all means: burn them at the stake!! But as a developer, I use MSDN constantly. As one of many sources Microsoft opens up to the world, they want you to program for their platform! Sure, they'd love to see you use IE, but you don't see them crashing the Firefox installer.

If a 3rd party company like Mozilla or Google wants to compete, a customer will see their choices. Customers will make a decision. If the EU was being truely fair, they would force all operating systems ( all flavors of linux, windows, OSX, etc ) to not bundles internet browsers. It would be a level playing field. I'm assuming the decision passed down by the EU was meant to protect uneducated consumers, won't these customers be faced with a different decision? Buy a computer potentially without an internet browser... or buy that cute green ecofriendly hippie noncorporate machine Apple that has their own Safari browser ready to go?


edit: forgot to add source http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/06/windows-7-to-be-shipped-in-europe-sans-internet-explorer.ars

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,525835,00.html

Real Life "Final Destination"

image source wikipedia

I was out with my friends Nate and Ryan doing some dinner in Morris. (Side note: Morris is really much further away than I thought. I should look at Google Maps to determine the delay to food entering my belly.)

As I came home, I could hear the smoke detectors blaring as I'm walking up to the front door. I'm fully expecting to see my grandfather and his friend to be sprawled out somewhere. I enter the house and it's filled with smoke. I am having a hard time seeing, breathing, and naturally... hearing.  They're both watching TV with the loudness cranked up. My grandfather mentions he was about to call me for assistance. One of the smoke detectors actually broke since it was sounding off for so long.

Looking around the house for the cause, I notice the fireplace. it is billowing smoke. I don't know if he forgot to open the chimney valve, or didn't warm up the chimney. Either way, the house was completely filled with smoke. In my infinite wisdom, I immediately open windows. I turn on the whole house fan upstairs. As I come down to family room again, the fire is roaring since the fan is actually sucking air back down the chimney.... The room fills back up with smoke. I close the chimney valve. Since I just stoked the fire up, they're actively billowing smoke again. I have to now remove them outside.

Designating a spot on the sidewalk for them to burn out, I create a pile. Once again, I notice that the room is filling back up with smoke. The logs are still smoldering outside and the smoke is being sucked back into the house through a nearby doorway. I shut the door. I then remember that my father had a cover for the fireplace. Using him as my lifeline, he reminds me where he hid it.

Now that I have the a constant stream of fresh air coming into the house, I relax. The woman must have a 6th sense to realize the best time to screw with me. She mentions something about how it is cold outside, and how she is cold now. I had no patience for this and wasn't going to sugarcoat it. I told her something along the lines of,"Too bad, you need to breath".

My room and a few others were protected from the smoke since the doors were closed. But, since the temperature of the house definitely did drop, the heat kicked in and cycled that air all over the house. I can still smell it downstairs.

This morning, I was having issues with my phone not connecting to the 1and1 exchange server for my domain. It was giving an error, "Waiting for network". Google taught me that there are many reasons for this error and generally resetting does the trick. Naturally, after deleting it from my phone and reentering the information, I am met with the "the server could not be reached" error.

I go to exchange.1and1.com. No response
I go to 1and1.com. No response
I go to admin.1and1.com No reponse.
I call all tech support/billing/sales numbers. All circuits are busy.

My web hosting for this domain seems to still be online, but beyond this, I am clueless!

Edit: Roughly around 1300 CST, things are coming back to life, no explanation yet. I'm still getting old emails trickling through.

Netflix dropped me and many other Blu-Ray subscribers an email today detailing a plan to hike the Blu-Ray premium from $1 to $4.

My beef is that Blu-Ray prices really have not changed. I understand that originally it was a free perk they had to put a price tag on. But why now $4? Maybe it really is worth that much, but why didn't they put it at $4 before? Now that they've changed it twice, I'm concerned it won't stop there.

EDIT: The original takedowns were actually posted on this thread. I can't believe anyone took the email address Internet1@microsoft-antipiracy.com seriously.

Main Forums on XDA for Kaiser
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=378

A few problemed threads in forum
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=428261
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=436503

MS has forced requested XDA-developers to remove links to ROMs that feature WM 6.5's new features. They don't seem to mind if ROM chefs are using the new bases. MS seems to be focuses on the new features like HoneyComb, the lock screen, and new Today screen.

In theory, when XDA hackers gave us WM6.1 ROMs, we knew it was in the works for our providers to offer us the update. But with Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft has already announced that they will not allow device software upgrades to WM6.5.

It looks like Microsoft has contacted XDA-Developers admin and chefs to get all the links removed. I hope something positive can come out of this, but I honestly doubt it. I was looking forward to the new lock screen!

Side note: I'll be up for purchasing a new Windows Mobile phone soon. Microsoft will be sporting their WM6.5 soon to the consumers. They need to tell me if they'll allow an upgrade path to WM7.