I’ve been using Firefox 3 beta for a while now, and it’s a definite improvement in memory usage and speed over Firefox 2. As expected, it’s taking some of the addon developers quite a while to write new versions of their addon that’s compatible with Firefox 3.

Granted, I don’t use a whole lot of Firefox addons, but there is one addon I couldn’t live without: The bookmarking addon from del.icio.us. Since I work on multiple computers at work and home, del.ici.ous has became a valuable tool to keep all of my bookmark in one place. It’s also much more flexible than Google Bookmarks.

Now there is a beta version of the del.icio.us addon for Firefox 3, available here:

delicious blog - Firefox 3, del.icio.us, and you

Just follow the link and install the new version of the addon, so far it’s been working great. With the availability of this addon, my switch over to Firefox 3 is complete.

For many Mac users, QuickSilver is one application they can’t do without. It’s one of those amazingly simple application that be can extended to be extremely powerful, but still elegant enough to be used for its most basic function as a program launcher. It’s also one of those software that permanently changes an user’s behavior in how they interact with an operating system forever.

As I was listening to Windows Weekly podcast this morning, I found out that Leo Laporte had gotten a new sponsor (for at least this episode) that makes a software called “Engage”. It offers a bit of the same functionality as QuickSilver for those envious Windows users. Although most likely, Windows users never knew such an approach to program launcher existed, but Mac users dual-booting or virtualizing Windows on their machine is probably incredibly frustrated every time they had to reach into that Start Menu. It is still far less powerful than QuickSilver in terms of extensibility and integration via plugins into other programs, but at least it’s better than the bare minimum Start Menu that Windows comes with.

Engage - the automatic start menu organizer

This post goes beyond even my usual amount of geekiness.

“Show Us The Code” is pushing for Steve Ballmer to show the open source world exactly what part of Microsoft’s source code is being used in Linux:

Your repeated claims that Linux violates Microsoft’s intellectual property has come to the attention of the Linux community. Not only that, but it’s been reported Microsoft has convinced businesses to pay for a Linux patent that you can’t provide.

Publicly pledge your support for Microsoft showing the public the code within Linux that violates their intellectual property by May 1st, 2007.

So far, the support seems to be gathering steam. Let’s hope this one doesn’t fizzle out like previous movements.

A bit after my last massive, wall-of-text post about Vista content protection, Wired’s Monkey Bites blog had a few things to say about it as well:

Vista Month: Welcome To The DRM?

It’s a good, short & concise post that pretty much summarizes all the ideas behind Vista’s new content protection scheme without going into too much details. Although the post itself is relative old news by now (not to say that my post isn’t), the comments following the post is most entertaining.

There are quite a few people who swear they’ll never use Vista. Which will most likely be challenged when they purchase their next machine which will inevitably ship with Vista preinstalled. A few said they would rather switch to Linux, and even fewer said they will switch to MacOS. Completely understandable, since you can get Linux distributions for free, and you would have to pay for a new machine to get MacOS.

The number of people who are willing to defend Microsoft on this point is also surprising. While a few valid counter arguments has been made, including that most of these security features are turned on/off depending on the policy of the content provider; the fact remains that the studio has absolute, revocable control over what we paid for.

As history has shown us, it’s really hard to disable or extend pre-existing devices of any sort. For example, add-on drives to enable extra functions in consoles has never really panned out (even XBox 360’s HD-DVD drive is nothing more…

A few weeks ago, A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection was published by a software researcher from New Zealand. The paper went into deep discussion on what was, up to that point, completely uncovered topic related to the underlying Windows Vista code to comply with protected content playbacks for next-gen formats (Blu-ray and HD-DVD). Subsequent conversations about this topic flared up across the web, on Security Now! podcast as well as other various TWIT network related podcasts.

Part of me didn’t believe that even Microsoft would go as far as implementing a content protection system that would come at a such detriment to the consumer. So I waited for weeks to see if Microsoft had any sort of public statement and rebuttal against it. Microsoft did eventually comment on the content protection behind Vista, and really couldn’t say much more other than admitting, and putting a good spin on what has been done.

Short blurb about AACS
To understand Windows Vista content protection, we have to first understand the difference between DVD, Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Our good ol’ DVD format was made during the adolescence of the digital content era. At the time the movie studios were promised that this complex encryption algorithm would never be cracked. As it turns out, CSS (the method of encryption used on DVD) wasn’t as impervious as we thought. If I recall correctly, the key to decrypting CSS was discovered in one of the software that plays back DVD…

This is just too funny to ignore:
Piracy worked for us, Romania president tells Gates

Although this response could be universally applied to all software, it is hilariously funny that the president of Romania would say this right in front of Bill Gates… and basically thank him for the one issue he hates the most.

With any consumer products, there are two signs that you’re really in trouble:

1. You’re only being compared to the same product of last generation.
This type of comparative review where you’re evaluated mostly against the last generation, perhaps even last generation of your own product, can only happen under two situations. One, if you’re the market leader and there are nothing else to compare to. Or two, you are only impressive when compared against last generation or your previous self. If you’re not in situation one, you’re in trouble.

2. Even major publications that are generally very mutual and stays away from making strong statements and opinions are not giving you a positive, perhaps even just mutual review.
This would be CNET…

It’s very clear in CNET’s review of Windows Vista Ultimate, they are not impressed by how much Windows Vista had to offer after years of development, and the only comparison that would shine light on Vista’s major facelift, would be against its former brethen.

Snippets like this cannot be what Microsoft has planned for five+ years:

Windows Vista is not the Apple Mac OS X 10.4 killer one hoped for (or feared).

Perhaps we’re spoiled, but after more than five years of development, there’s a definite “Is that all?” feeling about Windows Vista. Like cramming an info-dump into a book report the night before it’s due, there certainly are a lot of individual features within the operating system, but the real value lies in their execution–how the user experiences (or doesn’t experience) these–and

…

It’s nice to see that I’m not the only one that’s been driven to Mac by the disappointment of Windows Vista.

From The Unofficial Apple Weblog:
MIT writer says Vista drove her to Mac

And the original article here:
Uninspiring Vista

Yay! I’m not alone! We should start a whole new subculture of “users driven to Mac by Vista” under the broader big-brother branch of the Mac culture.

Already, a couple of serious security flaws has been discovered in Vista, a month before its official consumer release (enterprise users can get their hands on Vista right now). Read more about it at Wired:

Vista Security Flaws Uncovered

That, in combination with how hackers already found a way to fool Vista into a permanent 30-day trial. Does not bode well for Microsoft’s PR. Of course, all operating system has its share of security flaws, MacOS X has plenty as well. Just that Microsoft is always under more scrutiny than anyone else. It’s the price you pay for being a dominant, yet also hated company at the same time.

Alright.. this is just ridiculous….

I just spent half a day of work fixing Windows on my work computer, which Windows Update broke. Apparently, somewhere along the line, the automatic update got some corrupted install files. Every time I started up my computer, it attempts to run itself, then crashes svchost.exe with some memory error.

If you looked into your task manager, you’ll probably see several entries by svchost.exe. This is a process that Windows uses to execute DLL’s, thus an integral process of the system that just can’t be allowed to fail by any extent. After my svchost.exe took a dump (and not all of them, just one of the many processes), my XP-styled UI disappeared, reverting back to “classic style”. I couldn’t run certain applications, Internet Explorer hung & crashed, and I could not access any networked drives.

The solution was, to turn off automatic Windows Update completely. Reboot the computer so it no longer tries to run the Windows Update process. Then manually go to the Windows Update site to get my updates. After wasting a few hours figuring out what’s going on, and fixing it… now my computer is up and running again. Still, isn’t this the type of thing that should *never* happen with an automatic update process? Now I’m leaving my automatic update off permanently to prevent any future occurrences of this issue.