Category: Tech

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

Caught in the Net net

I have a bunch of Google Alerts. One that I deleted was for the Beatles, because thanks to Beatles News there wasn’t a need for it. One of the active alerts is for my not-so-secret shame, K3, and in today’s catch I was expecting something like this…

… but instead I found this.

Dedicated eBook readers have, I feel, a rather limited number of potential customers. The extended battery life with e-paper when the transmitter is turned off is nice, however. I’m not very sanguine about large, backlit LCD touch panels, either, because the battery life will undoubtedly be poor. Which is why I’m intrigued by something that was pointed out to me by tech-savvy tastewar.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/the-pixel-qi-display/

Logitech rules — or at least controls

Oh, the fun and frustration of technology in the home. We now have thirteen(!) devices in the house that depend upon, or use, the Internet.

I’ve come across another quirk with playback from Logitech’s Squeezebox music server. The good news is that Logitech has a PC client called SqueezePlay. The bad new is it’s beta code, and it shows. Squeezeplay lets you choose which Wi-Fi radio in your home network you want to control. The player called Neptune is the Chumby One in the kitchen.

The interface is a slightly modified Squeezebox Radio screen, which is very nice…

… but if it plays on the PC — and that’s a big if — it sometimes sounds almost like Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music!

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2010/JAN/Squeezeplay.mp3]

When you don’t hear anything, that probably means control has reverted to the Squeezebox Radio. I assume Logitech can fix this, and I’d be delighted if they would help Chumby develop a Squeezebox UI, because their products really don’t compete directly with one another.

Wi-Fi follow-up

A couple more things about my new Wi-Fi radio setup. As was pointed out to me by tastewar, one of the features of the Logitech Squeezebox server is it can remotely control a Squeezebox client.

Logitech Squeezebos Web remote

The Web interface works for both the Squeezebox Radio and the Chumby One, which unfortunately doesn’t have its own Squeezebox UI. Needing a full-blown computer to control the Chumby makes Squeezebox support almost useless; however, I was pleased to discover that the Squeezebox Radio itself can control the Chumby. I would much prefer the Chumby having a Squeezebox control panel like the excellent interface it has for Pandora, but for now having one radio control another is a workable solution.

The Logitechal Song

As Wally Cleaver would say, I’ve been goofing around. The Logitech Squeezebox Radio is so good I was inspired to make a video to show how I have it set up. There’s no remote yet, so you get to see my hairy arm working the controls.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2009/DEC/Logitech.flv 512 384]

As I said in the video, turn it up and it gets loud. How loud? The meter shows 108 dB, and the sound is clear and solid.

Logitech Squeezebox Radio 108 dB

Something else I mentioned is the music server that’s in the basement. Logitech’s Squeezebox server is running on my spare computer, bought on the day Windows XP was released — October 25, 2001. The music is on a 160 GB USB drive that I outgrew on my primary Windows desktop.

Logitech Squeezebox Server

CD ripping is done with Windows Media Player 11. It’s set up for Carol’s convenience, so that all she has to do is open the tray and insert the disc. It rips and ejects automatically.