November 2007 Archives

I was looking at the User's Manual for the soon to be released Samsung BD-UP5000.  On page 7 I found this bit of text:

Restrictions on Playback

• This player may not respond to all operating commands because some Blu-ray, HD DVD, DVD, CD discs allow specific or limited operation and features during playback.
  Please note that this is not a defect in the player.
• Samsung cannot assure that this player will play every disc bearing the Blu-ray, HD DVD, DVD or CD logo because disc formats evolve, and problems and errors may occur during the creation of BD, HD DVD, DVD, CD software and/or the manufacture of discs.
  This player also operates differently than a standard DVD player or other AV equipment. Please contact the SAMSUNG customer care center if you have questions or encounter difficulty in playing Blu-ray, HD DVD, DVD, CD discs in this player. Also, refer to the rest of this Manual for additional information on playback restrictions.

I think the key bit is "Samsung cannot assure this player will play every disc ... because disc formats evolve, and problems and errors may occur during the creation of ... software and/or the manufacture of discs."  That is just crazy I think.  The idea that a player for a given format cannot play those discs.  Ah the joys of modern consumer electronics.

Kindle: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device

Hey if you want one, use the above link.  I get a kickback, we both win.

Just in case anyone wants to buy me something for Christmas here are some suggestions.

Books

DVD

HD-DVD

Video Games

Today I needed to ship 3 packages.  Since most UPS stores aren't open on Sundays I went to FedEx/Kinko's since most are open on Sunday and some are even 24 hour operations.  I went to the first one and filled out the forms for FedEx Ground and got the items boxed up.  The clerk starting ringing me up.  This takes a bit since she has to type in all the stuff I just hand wrote on all the forms.  She prints out the label for the first box.  As she attempts to print the label for the second one the label printer jams.  She first tried to replace the roll of labels and then it starts jamming again.  Then she asks for help from the other employee.  He is of no help.  Next they open a new box of label rolls.  This one has some type of cleaning cloth, the employee doesn't read instructions on package and just rips it open and starts rubbing it on every surface she can find.  They then put in a second new roll of labels from the new box.  Still no joy.  After about 15-20 minutes of this they give up.  Turns out they only have one label printer so they can't process shipments.  They give me directions to another location.  I pay for the one that could process and head to second location.

After a 15-20 minute drive I arrive at second store.  As I enter the two employees appear from the back as no one else was in store.  Two other customers enter just behind me as well.  Employee one attempts to help me.  She realizes she doesn't have password for system.  She goes to the back and gets her smock and then proceeds to dig through it to find a scrap of paper with her password on it.  She enters it into system and apparently her password has expired.  She now proceeds to call tech support on the phone.  I just keep hearing her say things like "More options", "No" and "Representative".  She gets to a human and they can't help and she calls another number.  After about 15 minutes she gives up and asks the other employee if she can login which she does.

(Quick sidebar - While this is happening with me a lady has been trying to get a print job done.  She has brought in her own labels, a thumb drive and instructions.  She wants 4 different PDF's printed on labels ???  She is trying to tell the employee what print options to choose when printing, it is bizarre to watch.  There is also a third customer that wants to buy a 5 pack of envelopes.  After logging in to the system to allow me to ship the two employees attempt to quickly ring up the poor guy just standing there.  The label lady then goes berserk and screams "NO, FINISH HELPING ME, I AM GOING TO BE BITCHY BECAUSE I AM IN A HURRY!"  At this point my clerk could actually help me so I lost track of what happened.  I am pretty sure her print job is going to be wrong. - sidebar done)

Once she got logged in things went fairly smoothly.  She obviously hadn't done the shipping much as she seemed to have to concentrate and remember what to do.  Also she seemed to do things that weren't needed like giving me my tracking number three different ways.  I was just happy to have it all done by the end.  Good luck all ye shippers.

I will start off by saying that for the most part I like Best Buy, they have good prices, good selection and usually ok customer service.  They now have a program called Ask a BlueShirt, admittedly it is about HDTV but I figured it was a good way to pick on them a bit.  Today I went in to buy some gifts, since the people they are for might read this I will not mention the exact item.  I headed to the section for the item I wanted.  I began looking for the two items.  As I started to look a gentleman in civilian clothes asked me if I needed help.  I noticed he was holding price tags so I guess he was an employee.  The first item was found in the time it took to look in the right place alphabetically.  The second item was far more um entertaining.

Me to first employee: "I am also looking for item 2."
Civilian dressed employee: "Hmm, not sure if we have that?"
He proceeds to walk around the section for 5 minutes while I also look and then gives up.  I continued to look around more and eventually found an end cap advertising what I want.
Me to second employee: "I am looking for item 2?"
Blue Shirt 2 : "I have never heard of it."
I show her the end cap.
Blue Shirt 2: "I don't think it is out yet."
Neither employee offers to look in inventory system for me.  I decided to do it for myself.  I walk over to computer section and find a computer with active Internet connection.  I ended up using a MacBook since it was the first I found with live connection.  I went to Best Buy website and look up item 2, shows as in stock at the store I am standing in.  I then go back to Blue Shirt 2.
Me to second employee: "BestBuy.com says you have it in stock."
Blue Shirt 2: "Oh?"
She finally goes and looks at inventory kiosk.  While she does this she uses headset to call the back and asks if they have it.  Response of yes they do.  Magically Blue Shirt 3 appears holding the item 2 which 5 minutes ago hadn't been released yet.  Since it wasn't in theft prevention package they had to carry it to front.  Once I got through the line it took a few minutes to figure out where it was left at front.

In the end I got what I wanted, but only because I had more persistence and better skill at inventory searching then the employees did.  It shouldn't be this hard to buy something, and like I said at the beginning Best Buy is a lot better than other stores.  Good luck to all ye Christmas shoppers.

The bug pictured below has been sitting in the same spot for over 24 hours on the front porch.  Anyone know what it is?

Apple released Mac OS X 10.5 on October 26, 2007.  Chris sent me a link to ars technica's extensive in depth review of the new OS.  While I was reading it I wrote up the following thoughts.  My thoughts in some cases won't make any sense without the context of the original article so before reading my comments you may want to at least skim the original.  Also what follows is almost stream of conscious, with a little editing.  If anyone can answer the questions I pose please do.

The graphical changes highlighted to seem to be strange choices.  The menu one is similar to Vista Aero Glass, but even Vista didn't make the start bar itself transparent.  The folders seem to be the worst I think, losing contrast and identifying parts will make it hard for lots of users.  The dock I understand from a marketing standpoint, I have seen people gush over it already equally the way this review bashes it.

Dtrace is cool, especially being built in.  It is like ProcMon (combo of RegMon and FileMon) being built into OS (which it may be in the future).  Troubleshooting at a very low level and where (almost) nothing is hidden.  It is interesting to see the differences in the problems both OS X and Windows are going through getting to 64-bit.  Windows still has two versions but everything essentially runs on both.  OS X has one version but 64-bit and 32-bit apps have problems chatting.  Hopefully the next version of both we can just say toodles to the 32-bit waste.  They both share the issue of drivers in a mixed world.  At least there can be 64 bit drivers in windows, in OS X still stuck with 32-bit drivers, I wonder how that transition to 64 bit drivers will be handled.

I still admire Apple's ability to just toss out huge chunks of backwards compatibility.  I can only imagine the windows landscape if Vista had no support for 16 bit, dropped anything older than Windows XP GUI and was built atop .Net 3.0 fully.

Wow this is long.

It is amazing that both Apple and Microsoft seem to be making little progress on high ppi screens.  Vista was supposed to fix it, sure except all the applications break.  Now I see even Apple's own apps can't handle DPI changes.  Why is this so freaking hard?

I remember playing with icon spacing in windows 3.1, don't think I have cared since then.  I just so rarely use icon/thumbnail views.  I am almost always in details list view.  The dock seems to have gone very far toward graphical flash over functional usage.

Time machine is "Complete PC Backup" combined with Previous Versions in a pretty package.  Also it isn't quite as elegant of a technical solution due to file system issues.  However it is a great feature.  It is too bad they killed the ability to go to airport USB disk since that would be the easiest for a household.  That is a feature in Windows Home Server.  WHS pulls incremental backups from desktops to a central location and can be restored via a boot disk.  Also Time machine is there for everyone, Complete PC Backup is only in Vista Ultimate, Business and Enterprise for some stupid reason.

No mention of Bootcamp and how it works under leopard.  Does leopard generate driver disk, download updates for hardware?

Great article.

It will be interesting to see how 10.5 matures alongside Vista maturing.  I would bet that 10.6 will be out before Windows 7, however I think Windows 7 will bet 10.7 out the door.