Month: February 2010

XP BSOD

Microsoft may now have a worse public relations problem than Toyota has:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9155419/Windows_patch_cripples_XP_with_blue_screen_users_claim?source=CTWNLE_nlt_dailyam_2010-02-11

I don’t automatically take Windows updates. I set XP to notify me and then I click “Advanced” to review them. That way I can ignore Office-related changes that don’t apply to my home computers. But yesterday all of the updates looked like necessary security fixes, so I took them on my desktop and netbook computers. If I have to deal with this BSOD problem I will be very, very unhappy.

Follow-up: It seems that if the first restart of Windows is OK after the update for KB977165, you won’t go BSOD. I updated my Dell Inspiron 530 desktop and Acer Aspire One netbook, and both were OK after restarting. I have not yet updated Carol’s laptop and Eric’s tower PC, and for now I think I’ll leave them that way.

I don’t know how widespread these crashes are. The update was released two days ago, and news of the XP failures doesn’t seem to be in the non-technical media.

Follow-up: Microsoft has pulled the patch.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9156118/Microsoft_stops_serving_Windows_patch_blamed_for_blue_screens

Follow-up: Appears as though the affected machines might have already been infected.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1764&tag=nl.e589

Prue News

Prudence Bury has put her home in France up for sale. Prue says it’s time to downsize, but “Oh how I hate that expression.” Here is a link where you can see her property, which includes a separate guest/vacation house, called a gîte.

http://www.vendeehousesales.eu/index.html

What a lovely place! The farm house was restored by Prue, and she did all of the decorating, of course.


Prudence Bury-Fuchs with the Beatles band Los Brandys, November 2009

Fury at Fiore

Seeing the end of printed newspapers on the horizon, Mark Fiore was one of the first political cartoonists to use Flash animation. Fiore is a liberal, and around the time that George Bush was re-elected I watched a lot of his cartoons. But eventually his bag o’ gag tricks became somewhat repetitive, and I stopped watching.

Back in December, NPR used one of Fiore’s cartoons, and it went relatively unnoticed for a while, but then went viral.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120344047

But Fiore doesn’t give Obama a free ride. Unlike Republicans, Democrats think it’s all right to criticize a sitting President from their own party. The lock-step adherence to the GOP party line during Bush’s tenure was both impressive and appalling.

It is my opinion that George W. Bush was by the far the worst President we have ever had — how I wish we’d never gone into Iraq — but there’s no doubt that the mess he left behind is Obama’s to fix, and I’m pretty much with Jon Stewart in my criticisms of the job Obama is doing so far. Financially, there are two things that I think must happen, where Obama could show some leadership:

  1. Eliminate the Bush tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy.
  2. Bring back Glass-Steagall to separate investment banks, commercial banks, and the insurance industry. (Note: Glass-Steagall was repealed during Clinton’s second term.)

As far as fiscal policy goes, I think we’re spending all we can now. Borrowing more money from China isn’t in our national interest, not even in the short term.