Heh. Microsoft is all but pleading with people to upgrade to Vista

Amusing. I'm not saying this from a Mac-centric perspective because I live in both worlds, I'm saying this because it's pretty apparent that Vista wasn't ready for prime time when it was released. You have a much chance for success and a good user experience if you're buying brand-new hardware with it, but not many can afford to run out and buy replacement PCs. We're largely ignoring Vista for as long as possible at work because we just don't trust it. It could also be said that we trust it to be not terribly stable or compatible with existing apps. We're just now rolling out Internet Explorer v7 across the City because we had some horrible problems with it when the help desk pushed it after their alleged testing. And as soon as we started rolling it across our enterprise last week, we started getting more calls about things that just don't work. *sigh*

I don't trust my personal hardware to run Vista well. I know my work PC won't run it well, it's sluggish under my normal workload under XP Pro, and that's with 1.5gig ram in it! We don't have the budget to replace PCs in job lots, so it ain't gonna happen soon. We basically have a policy that we won't role out Microsoft technology until SP1 or later because of Microsoft's proven record of the v1.0 product that you buy actually being a late beta and still not ready for prime time. An awful lot of corporations do the same thing for the same reason, we can't afford to have apps break that are vital to our work.

I don't care that MS is pleading that people not wait until SP1. They have proven from their past actions that you're much better off waiting until after SP1 is out for deploying their software.

Anyway, here's the story: http://apcmag.com/6458/dont_wait_for_vista_sp1_pleads_microsoft

Here's the Slashdot thread: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/20/0643241

Hmmm. Looks like LJ is slow with mailing replies again

I normally haven't been too affected by that, today I am. Oh, well. Hopefully it'll be straightened out whilst I am at work.

DVD Review: The John Cleese Comedy Collection

We picked this up recently at Barnes & Noble for around $25. It collects three John Cleese movies made in the mid 70's and include: How To Irritate People, The Strange Case of the End of Civilization As We Know It, and Romance with a Double Bass. Aside from Cleese, Connie Booth is the only Python to appear in all three. (I think she deserves credit as a Python considering how often she appeared in the series)

First, quality of production. It really isn't very good. The transfer did not include a cleanup of wherever they got the movies from and it shows it. That's not to say that the quality is bad, it just isn't very good. It's acceptable for 70's TV. Also, there is zero bonus material on these three disks. That was rather disappointing, but when you see what a low-budget production this is, you won't be surprised. One can only hope that some day they are fully restored and re-released. The three movies are 65 minutes, 55 minutes, and 45 minutes long respectively, and they're all at the television standard 4x3 aspect ratio.

On to the films!

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The best thing about Strange Case and Double Bass is that we get to see a young(ish) Cleese doing consistent acting in a long format, as opposed to the shorter sketches of Flying Circus. He's sort of manic like he was in Fish Called Wanda and lots of fun to watch. And, as a bonus, we get lots of shots of a fully naked Connie Booth in Double Bass, what a lovely lady! (With HUGE... tracts of land!) Cleese is also naked, but they don't have any full frontals of him. Booth was also naked in a Python Sketch (whose title I will not get precisely correct), 'A Day in the Life of a Stockbroker.'


I so wish the US didn't have this 'violence good, nudity bad' attitude as opposed to the reverse throughout a lot of the rest of the world.

Judge still working on border searches of laptops

Basically the Feds have occasionally been seizing laptops and copying their drives at border crossings. No warrant required, there is a special exemption to the 4th Amendment for border crossings. I don't have anything in particular to hide, but that's not the point -- I don't want these people poking around in my files.

I'll have to figure out what I'll do when I next cross borders. I'll probably PGP my data directories. I know Mac has some encrypted vault system, but I would definitely double it with something like PGP. Probably would be a good idea to buy some DVDs before my return and burn new stuff on to them and mail 'em home and to work.

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/06/laptopsearches