Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

Time	Event
12:05p	Vista SUCKS, as predicted... So I decided to get myself a toy this year to compliment my outgoing personality. I finally bought a laptop so I could GET OUT OF THIS FRIKKIN' HOUSE! :) My initial choice was a cheapo dealie from our local Best Buy, but the kid working the Computer section on the day I visited read me like a book! "Dude, this thing is going to make you miserable...you're a gamer, aren't you???" Indeed I am. I live on video sites too...so the stock graphics chip on the low end crud box I set my sights on wouldn't have been able to run jack. For an extra Ben Franklin, I got myself the newest Presario Notebook and I have to say, I got a nice toy for the most part. It needs more memory, hard drive space etc...but for an off the shelf experience this was initially happy one to be sure. It's got an AMD Turion 64X2 chip in it with Nvidia graphics and a blazing wifi card....and I was happy happy happy until... I'm happily working away one day and got a request to do some audio processing for some folks. I have my machine with me and THOUGHT I was about to dazzle everyone with my mad skills. See at home I've got a Linux box now with some VERY slick software a la Ubuntu Studio and my old XP machine is simply a huge ass audio/visual production studio now. I'd moved a bunch of stuff onto the new machine and trusted my 20 some odd years in tech support would allow me to get 99% of it working with Vista, which was my ONLY choice for an O/S on this new machine as XP isn't even a choice due to non-existent drivers for some of the new hardware (audio and modem on a single chip??? What an ODD design!) and a dual boot Linux attempt nearly melted the PC speakers with a faulty firmware package. Anyway, I installed the requisite software for my immediate needs and went to work my magic, only to find THERE IS NO AUDIO CAPTURE FUNCTIONALITY AT ALL...zero, zilch...NOTHING. Panic and sweat ensue and I excuse myself so I can be humiliated elsewhere. I hit our local Panera and begin Googling while sipping on a hot cinnamon coffee dealie...and find the root cause. Microsoft in Conjunction with HP apparently forced Conexant to release an audio driver that only provides OUTPUT with their new SmartAudio hardware, all other functionality deliberately prevented. The only audio input is routed through two condenser mics on the screen and a mic jack on the front that is so badly compressed it can't possibly be used for anything other than voice recording. If you tear apart the software and the various installs available from all 3 providers, you can physically see the Stereo Mixer functionality RIGHT THERE, ready to use...but disabled in so many places I couldn't get it to work even with some home made DLLs and whatnot. I found during some trials with other 3rd party drivers the Sony Vaios are even more hobbled - Sony's answer to the rootkit fiasco when they first tried to shut down home audio processing "Just turn it off before they even get their new machines home - that'll fix 'em". So my earlier rants about Vista taking away our personal liberties have all come true...I'm living the nightmare. Vista is three thousand steps backwards from XP, it's Big Brother telling me what I can and cannot do with equipment I BOUGHT with my hard earned money and use in the privacy of my own home. The real bitch of it is, I can't just pop in another audio card and move on with my life...it's the Brave New World..everything on board with a single firmware source controlling multiple pieces of functionality...screw with one too much and you may nuke your entire machine. So I have buyer's regret now. Well, not totally. I mean, for a good amount of stuff I do, this fits the bill well and there is some slickness to be sure. But this bullshit with audio capture and processing being shut off has GOT TO GO!! To HP, SHAME ON YOU for participating in this nonsense, I thought more of you. To Microsoft - suck it, I'm all Linux from now on and you can take my XP machine from me when I'm dead and cold. Hell, I've still got two Windows 3.11 machines running! As well as Win95, Win98 and Win2000 machines fully functional. hee hee hee I've got the Museum of Windows over here!! And they ALL RUN BETTER THAN VISTA!! To all of you in the market for new machines moving forward, LOOK CAREFULLY at what the manufacturer has hobbled before you buy....and write reviews of your experience on the appropriate websites so the rest of us can more readily determine what our real choices are. It is my hope that with enough buyer boycott of machines thusly disabled, we can force manufacturers into smarter decisions. Hell, Dell already caved and released updated drivers which re-enable the audio capture on their new machines...let's please get everyone else to follow suit. Current Mood: bitchy Current Music: Lord of the Rings soundtrack (Comment on this)
1:00p	Really nice ad blocker - KH Blocker I wanted to have it mentioned somewhere here on the net that there's a really cool banner ad, javascript ad, flash ad etc blocking package out there called KH Blocker. If you haven't tried it yet, I STRONGLY recommend that you do! It's totally free, TINY and has a footprint so quiet you'll literally forget it's there sometimes and wonder what happened to all those annoying ads like the one where you're supposed to smack a mosquito...God I HATED that one so much!! Anyway, I've used it for almost 3 years now and have recently noticed an up-tick on the number of folks suffering from the barrage of ads that appear on literally every page now while I surf happily along without the same nuisance. I'm not against advertising on your page, that's cool, I know many of you make some nice extra change with them floating around on your page. The problem is the sheer volume of ads many of you use now (taking up as much as half the page - no lie!) and the content. See, when I go to visit my favorite news, music or video site and all over the sides are scantily clad women and/or men doing whatever on their bedspread while supposedly chatting away on their computer....and my KIDS sit down next to me and say "Daddy, what are you doing???" - it's a bad moment for me. I won't even mention my favorite...erm..."acquisition" sites and the content they have there. Good gawd, I wouldn't send my brother there and he's a real pervert! LOL!! Again, I know you gotta pay for the web space and hosting somehow and if ads do it for ya, then go to it! But I simply can't have it visible on my pc any more and I'm NOT clicking on ads for anyone only to be inundated with spyware and trojans any more. Not gonna happen. So BYE BYE ads, thanks to KH Blocker. Please, for heaven's sakes don't pay for that service either. It's a simple matter of selective java script and flash blocking by looking at the referring URL...you can do that yourself with simple browser settings and controls set in your hosts file. But it's really handy to have a package handle that for you automatically - hence I'm giving you a recommendation. And NO, no one paid me to say all these nice things. I just thought the author was WAY overdue for some kudos...and here it is. That is all. Current Mood: thoughtful Current Music: LOTR sound track (Comment on this)

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