Category: Review

Battlestar Galactica: Razor – I held it in my hands…

Actually had a copy of Battlestar Galactica Razor DVD in my hands today.

Cylon HeadToday I went to Target, and there in the DVD section was Battlestar Galactica: Razor.

I picked it up and held it in my hands. In fact, I did better than that. I went to the check out register.

That’s when the device beeped. I was quick to learn that the product could not be sold to me until December 4th.

I understand Target’s contractual obligations, and I respect that. But it’s also very unlikely that I will be in Target that day, having plenty of time to price compare. These kind of delayed releases actually cost stores sales, especially those impulse buys.

As a consumer, I’m not at all thrilled with waiting, whether it be for Harry Potter book seven or the latest movie release. When delay is introduced, I believe we all lose. The consumer learns they can live without the product, and to wait a little more causes no harm. The store is aware the consumer is willing to pay the most when they first see the product.

So, rather than groaning about the movie industry inflicting self-wounds and collateral damage, here’s what I read on the DVD.

First, it was the Extended Widescreen Unrated “What They Couldn’t Show You On Television” Edition.

It had Battlestar Galactica facts, and what looked to be a really neat directors commentary.

It was unclear if the unrated was for more brutality, sexuality explicit scenes, or just because the new content wasn’t passed by anyone who would take the time to rate it.

Based on what previewed on the SCIFI channel, I speculate that this DVD is gonna get a Thumbs Up.

The Best Photography Books Ever on Light

Without exception, two books leap to the front of my personal library when it comes to Photography.

Light: Science and Magic
Light: Science & Magic		Crime Scene Photography
Crime Scene Photography

Most photography books explain general principles of photography, how the camera works, and, if lucky, perhaps a simplified discussion of optics and proper metering. By the time you really understand the relationship between ISO, Shutter Speed, and Aperture, and are capable of shooting in Manual mode, you’re not done — you’ve just scratched the surface. The next subject you need to tackle is light, and it is light that allows you to get those really dramatic and interesting shots. And if you think because you own a 50mm f/1.4 lens, you know it all; think again.

Light: Science & Magic is a masterful excursion into the role that light plays with photography. It covers light sources, reflection, and angles, explaining why surfaces look the way they do. Certain objects are hard to photograph, such as glass or white subjects on white backgrounds. Either detail is lost or everything comes out gray. This resource shows how to use light to solve those hard problems. The section on diffused, direct, and glare reflections is worth the price of admission alone. Camera placement, light placement, and gobos, combined with the right metering technique, will yield stunning images. It covers methodologies of lighting portraits in fascinating ways. The book is littered with tips and tricks from front to back. It’s odd to find a book where there’s solid, approachable, directly applicable material on every page, but this book does it.

The next book is quite unexpected, Crime Scene Photography. This book goes far deeper into explaining the workings of photography, delving into the mysteries of optics, proper exposure in bad lighting conditions, and the clever use of filters. It clearly explains inverse square laws, plays with subtle differences between intensity and distance, unravels why rules of thumb actually work, shows how to get the most from a flash. And all these topics roll up to support how to draw out the details you want to capture, including from fluorescent and infrared sources. There’s tons of information to convey size and play with perspective, deal with underwater situations, and how to digitally correct severe problems when you can’t retake the photo. The book is chalked full of examples.

Frankly, if I could only own two books on photography, it would be these. I read the again, and again, and again.

Walt gives these books, two thumbs up!

iPhone TOS Rebuttal

I held off my iPhone purchase because of an article exposing the evils of the terms of service. However, those have been adequately rebutted, that I now own an iPhone.

One of the big things holding me back from buying an iPhone in the first place, aside from lack of SSH (which was soon resolved), was an article about the hidden evils in the Terms of Service contract.

Well, not sure about whether to take things at face value or not, I bounced my concern off my friend Phil, who’s extremely knowledgeable about telecommunications.

He wrote me back a wonderful point-by-point analysis, which swayed my decision. Feeling that other people might benefit as well, I sought permission from him to reprint it here.

iPhone Requires a 2-Year Contract with AT&T.
1. True; they make the 2-year contract requirement pretty clear. This isn’t a great thing but it’s pretty standard in the U.S. when you buy a phone.

Expensive: Requires $2,280, Over $1,730 in Wireless Costs.
2. Also true, though he overstates the price. The service plan runs about $60/month ($40 voice, $20 data); if that’s too expensive, the iPhone is probably a bad idea. That’s still less costly than a Blackberry or Treo (both about $80/month when you turn on the features needed).

Double Billing. You and the Caller Both Get Charged for the Same Call.
3. True, but not unique to the iPhone. Every cellular carrier in the United States save for a few Nextel plans will charge airtime on both incoming and outgoing calls. If you call another wireless phone user, I suppose you could call that double-billing (though if that other user is on the same carrier [ATT], the airtime rate is the princely sum of zero cents per minute).

All Use of the Networks Are Always Rounded Up to the Nearest Kilobyte or Minute.
4. Standard practice for the wireless industry. The per-kilobyte complaint is pretty funny, though, since the charge per kilobyte for domestic data usage is zero cents per kilobyte.

Customers Are Billed for “Network Errors” and “Network Overhead”.
5. I have no idea what he’s talking about, but it makes no sense.

Billed Even Though the Call Doesn’t Go Through.
6. Basically untrue. Billing in a wireless system begins when the call is answered, though the timer starts when the call is initiated. In other words, if a call rings for fifteen seconds and then is answered, the clock begins at 15 seconds and counts up from there.

Bogus Fees Added to the Bill: Regulatory Cost Recovery Charge
7. While I agree that regulatory recovery fees are basically bogus padding, I challenge him to find a wireless (or, for that matter, conventional wireline) carrier that doesn’t do this.

$175.00 Termination Fee.
8. The early termination fee is pretty well standard throughout the industry. There are certain circumstances where you can avoid paying it (for example, if they raise rates during your contract term).

International Messages Are Charged Additional Fees as Are Files Over 300Kbps.
9. International text messaging (i.e. SMS) costs extra on every cellular carrier I’m aware of. The picture/video messaging charging he complains about isn’t even relevant to the iPhone. And the “additional fee” for large messages that he talks about is irrelevant to the iPhone. My phone communicates directly with my IMAP server over SSL; there’s no way that ATT can tell how large a message is, let alone bill me for those messages over 300K.

Over Your Quota: Get Gouged: 40¢ Per Minute and 69¢ Roaming Offnet.
10. Once again, he’s whining about something that’s absolutely standard in the industry: if you go over your bucket of minutes, you pay a pretty high rate. He conveniently neglects to mention that UNUSED minutes from your plan roll forward into the next month and can be used to offset high usage up to a year later. If that’s not enough, just call and switch to a higher plan and ask them to make it retroactive to your previous month’s usage.

The Services Are Not Secure and Can’t Block Your Phone Number.
11. “Not secure” is a leftover from the days of ANALOG cell phones, which could be listened in upon pretty trivially. And they’re saying that when calling certain toll-free numbers, you can’t block your caller ID since the recipient pays for the call. There’s a MENU on the iPhone that allows you set the default for whether you send caller ID or not; you can also set it per-call. In other words: JUST LIKE A LANDLINE.

The Current Mobile Email Service Doesn’t Support Attachments.
12. Absolutely false. You can send photos trivially (about the only sort of attachment that makes sense to create on a phone), and the iPhone will read a lot of formats (Word, Excel, PDF, JPEG at a minimum).

Prohibited Uses and “Unlimited” Sales Hype.
13. The prohibited uses language is pretty standard wireless carrier language. I agree with him that the claim of “unlimited” is pretty misleading marketing puffery, but it’s an industry-wide problem. If you use your FIOS connection at full bandwidth 24×7, you’ll soon discover that “unlimited” basically means that you’re not billed per unit of data, but that you can still be cut off if you abuse the service. There’s basically nothing you could do on the iPhone that would cause this to happen, though.

Service Is Not Intended to Provide Full-Time Connections: Unlimited is Hype
14. Same as above.

Wi-Fi Service is Limited
15. I think he’s deliberately misinterpreting this one. He’s talking about a completely different wi-fi service that one can purchase through AT&T that has nothing to do with the iPhone. There is of course no limit at all to the number of times in a given time period that the iPhone can connect to a wi-fi network.

“Offnet” Restrictions
16. Another deliberate misinterpretation, I think. “Off-net” usage refers to areas where you’re roaming. Since cell phone roaming charges basically don’t exist anymore for the consumer (the carriers charge each other, though), what they’re saying is that you can’t buy the phone and then use it full-time where, say, T-Mobile has service and ATT doesn’t.

Plan Goobly-gook
17. He’s so incoherent here that it’s hard to figure out what he’s mad about.

Comparing US and Other Broadband Countries: America Is being Laughed At.
18. Perhaps he should move! He forgot to mention that countries using the metric system think we’re pretty silly too–but I’m sure he would have if he’d thought about it. Seriously, he has a point: mobile telephony is more advanced in other parts of the world (largely due to standardization on one network type–GSM). But I’m not sure why that would be the fault of ATT and the iPhone.

New Apple Battery Defect (Model A1189)

Got a 15″ Apple laptop battery that’s split out of its case? Exchange it! Got a 17″ Apple laptop battery that’s split out of its case? Sorry, “different problem.” Hear the Genius explain it. 17-Inch MacBook Pro Rechargeable Battery – Model A1189, Li-ion, 6N6184M9US0A.

When Apple recalled batteries from its 15″ laptops, I would have thought that common sense would have prevailed in that if any battery exhibited a physical defect, such as exploding from its own case, that would be more than enough to exchange the battery.

Unfortunately for my friend Marcus, when he went to the Apple Store, with an exploded battery from a 17″ laptop (his is shown above), the manager wanted him to mail the battery and laptop back to Apple. This made no sense, as there was nothing wrong with the laptop. And, furthermore, the US Postal Service might take issue with a battery that is about to have its chemicals bust out of its shell.

Exploded Apple Battery

17-Inch MacBook Pro Rechargeable Battery
Model A1189, Li-ion, 6N6184M9US0A

Battery Label

What he wanted was to simply have the hazardous waste properly disposed of, even if it meant buying a new battery.

She explained that the Apple Store didn’t have laptop batteries, he’d have to special order one. And to verify his battery was really damaged (she handled it!), he’d have to see an Apple Genius. And, unfortunately for Marcus, the Genius Bar was all filled up with appointments, and he’d have to return the next day. …meanwhile, the battery was still growing out of its shell; something that made Marcus feel very unsafe.

I’m totally of mixed minds on this. First of all, the battery fault isn’t Apple’s doing, it’s a bad batch they got them from. Second, when a battery dies or doesn’t hold a charge out of warranty, you don’t get a replacement. Third, if you take standard flashlight battery and let it age and leak, that’s not a warranty problem. So, on this hand Apple is under no obligation to replace the battery.

Still Held Charge

On the other hand, this wasn’t a matter of the battery being dead – it still held a full charge. It just would no longer fit in the machine because it was physically defective. In my mind, Apple should replace the battery, and then go back and beat up on the vendor. Even for customer service reasons alone, it’s the right thing to do.

Apple’s stance was if it was a battery for a 15″ laptop, they’d replace it, even out of warranty. But, since it was a 17″ battery, and even though it was made of the same stuff, by the same people, and exhibiting the same visibly defective problem, it wasn’t. That’s just not right.

Basically, Apple was saying that this was a “new” battery problem, and because not enough people reported the model number (A1189), their replacement warranty didn’t cover it.

Marcus came back the next day, stood in line, talked to a Genius who took his old battery to dispose while pointing him at an entire shelf of 17″ batteries. Marcus bought a new one.

Marcus Waits 45 Minutes

Genius Bar Conversation | Register Conversation

Of course, after Marcus gets the run around and has to buy a new battery, we learn about this link: MacBook and MacBook Pro Battery Update

In it, it states that if a battery is visibly deformed, then Apple will replace it. …why didn’t the Apple Store know this?

Screen Calibration – Where’s my contrast?

If you’ve used Pantone’s huey for screen calibration, then you need to know about the hueyPRO. Additionally, if you think something’s up with your monitor because you can’t manually set the contrast, you want to read this. I bumped into this with a Dell 2001FP.

As someone who does a lot of photography, and I mean a lot of photography, I decided to invest in something that would do color calibration on my monitor.

A while back I purchased Pantone’s Huey and wrote a review saying just how much I loved it. [Pantone Software Update Page]

Since that review, Pantone has only made things better. My primary wish for dual monitor support has been granted in the form of the Pantone hueyPRO.

Once again, a fine quality product at an affordable price to end consumers rolls out the doors of Pantone. Not only do you get the device, a KlearScreen Starter Kit (with a polishing cloth), but you also get a Pantone Book of swatches of 100 Top Colors.

By simply dragging the application to the corresponding monitor, it’s possible to independently calibrate a monitor. That’s just plain cool, much better than drop down boxes and such.

This is where a new mystery appeared. As I was exploring how to manually calibrate a monitor, by setting the Brightness / Contrast by hand, I was startled to discover that my Dell 2001FP monitor wouldn’t allow me to adjust the contrast. It was like the firmware knew about it, but things were disabled.

Then I found this tidbit in the Brightness/Contrast section of the Dell 2001FP Documentation:

“Note: When using ‘2: DVI-D Input’, the contrast adjustment is not available.”

Makes sense. When a DVI connection is used, as I had done, the contrast control is no longer needed. My monitor doesn’t have a problem, all is well with the world.

REVIEW: Walt gives the Pantone hueyPRO a big thumbs up!!!

Wii: Games to Get, Games to Avoid

I’m no good at first person shoot ’em up games, I dislike sports, I get bored easily with games that repeat, I don’t like repetitive button pressing that causes my wrists to hurt, and I get motion sickness. I do like lots of variety, humor, and having friends over for social gatherings. As such, I’m the perfect candidate for the Wii. Here are a number of games suitable for social occasions and similar personalities, especially ones that don’t like to read a lot of directions up front.

Here’s Walt’s take on what Wii games you want, and which ones you don’t. Keep in mind, this is biased by someone who does not enjoy first person games (ok, I suck at them), and who loves social party games as the Wii is a great source of fun for large groups.

Wii Sports: GET IT (OK, YOU GOT IT)
It comes with your Wii, and it is the defacto standard in my mind about how games interfaces should work. Everything naturally does what you expect. Even if you hate sports in the real world, you’ll love them on the Wii. Bowling, Golf, and Tennis are personal group favorites. Here’s a great tip, too – while most people focus just on the primary games, go to the training icon, there are a 15 more games hidden in there.

Rayman Raving Rabbids: GET IT
Over 70 multiplayer games and challenges involving masochistic bunnies and toilet plungers. This has to be one of the most entertaining and clever games, and it makes great use of the Wii-mote control and nun chucks. The only down side is that you have to play the story mode to unlock individual party games.

WiiPlay: GET IT
A handful of clever two person game that use the remote in interesting ways. The games are very easy to pick up.

Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz: GET IT
Primary game with 50 multi-player games involving monkeys in gerbil balls. Interesting use of the Wii-mote, as it uses more of a key-turning action combined with tilting. The only down side is that you have to read the instructions carefully before each game, and if anyone hits a button, the game starts prematurely. Why read the directions? Because some of the stuff is just so weird, you won’t figure it out by trial and error.

WarioWare Smooth Moves: GET IT
This game has some of the worst graphics you’ll ever see. However, a game doesn’t have to have eye-candy graphics to be fun, and this title comes with 200 micro-games. Often you’re given several seconds to figure out what you’re supposed to do, and make it happen. For instance, a fly and a flyswatter may appear on the screen, you have to mentally connect the two concepts and realize you need to make a swatting action with the remote. The Wii-mote is used in ways you’ve never imagined, and each one is taught in a humorous manner.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour ’07: MAYBE GET IT
If you’re a golfing nut, you want this game. It is far more complex than WiiSports, both in the realistic rendering as well as the physics modeling. It’s possible to make very realistic avatars of yourself. And for just as good as the game is for golf swings, it equally is deficient on having an easy interface – it is just too easy to select something you don’t mean to. For a party game, it can take quite a while to complete all the holes; people get bored easily. So, if you want to play golf, it’s great. If you just want quick fun, pick another title.

Super Swing Golf: AVOID IT
What looks like Manga combined with Putt-Putt is actually a what happens if you were to make a game using Microsoft Vista’s GUI. It looks pretty, but is damn annoying to use. For instance, in both WiiSports and Tiger Woods PGA Tour, you swing your club back, and then forward to strike the ball. Not here. No, you select on the screen a tiny button that says you’d like to take a swing. Then you raise and lower the remote to tell how much you’d like to hit the ball. Then you lock in your answer. Then you swing the remote. Nothing about the game feels like a natural golf swing. Plus the tutorials are long and horrible, they throw text at you as slow as the slowest child reader might read, but don’t let you practice – no you watch the computer to the maneuver rather than trying it yourself. This could be such a great game, but the interface is so painful, so very painful, so utterly painful you will give up before you ever make it to the second hole.

Mario Paper: GET IT, AND HAVE PATIENCE
I do know know what it is about games which have so much text dialog that the makers actually think it’s fun if you have to press next, next, next, next, next, … for ten minutes without actually playing anything or being able to skip. That’s the frustrating part of Paper Mario. Then things change. You’re forced to hold the remote sideways and use it like a traditional game console, that makes you wonder why this game was ever made for the Wii. But then, 3D mode kicks in, and it isn’t so bad. And then you start using the Wii as a pointing device to reveal objects, and things are actually okay. And then, you start getting weapons that require use of the accelerometers, and suddenly things are pretty good. The game is quite clever, but may require a use of cheat guide if you get stuck – some stuff isn’t so obvious to find.

Mario Party 8: GET IT
What starts off as a board game where you simply “press a button” to roll a die and move, things get fun quickly. You have more influence over the course of events than it first seems, and after every round there’s a party game that’s presented and unlocked. The games are quite clever and require the Wii remotes to be used in odd ways. The diversity makes it hard to get bored.

Elebits: MAYBE GET IT
Aside from some child book story art, the tutorials. Make you. Click the. Remote. After every. Concept. …the whole thing introduction is long, painful, disorienting, and had to skip. The story line is horribly forced and immature. However, if you can get through that, your Wii-mote is a kind of anti-gravity gun and with it you cause wanton destruction! By moving and shaking objects, you coerce little packets of energy to come out into the open. You gun collects them, becoming more powerful, allowing you to eventually pickup and throw extremely large object into one another, open and close doors, topple furniture, break things, and so forth, all to find more of the little energy creatures. The sheer destructive nature of the game appeals to your inner child that wants to mess up the house when the parents are away. However, if you don’t look where you point, you’ll get one of the worst motion-sickness headaches that makes any first-person shooter game experience pale in comparison.

The Legend of Zelda – Twilight Princess: GET IT
This is not a social party game but a first person role playing adventure game that’s going to require some serious time investment. The game, however, is very well designed so that there are interesting activities within the game itself that are just as rewarding, even if you don’t follow the main plot threads. The game makes pretty good use of the Wii-mote’s capabilities.

Sonic and the Secret Rings: AVOID IT, MAYBE
The game claims a hundred missions and 40 party games. But right out of the box it can feel frustrating. The Wii-mote is held sideways and used as a regular-old console game pad. Come on, the Wii is all about having a useful interface. One should be able to point on the screen, not use directional arrows on a keypad! There are some instances where the game redeems itself using the remote as the Wii intended, but not enough to make me happy about this game.

Mac to Windows: The Experience

I corrupted my Windows tech guru, turning him on to Apple. He explains from a Windows viewpoint what it’s like to deal with a bare-metal install on Apple compared to a pre-installed Windows system. In this review, we see a totally different perspective: rather than focusing on features, Marcus addresses the overall experience.

I have a good friend, Marcus. He’s a super-uber-master-wizard at Microsoft operating systems and has astounded me on numerous occasions with obscure tidbits of advice from secret registry edits to recovering from system crashes so bad that even Microsoft would recommend switching to Linux.

Why tell you about Marcus? Because I have corrupted him. Yes, it’s true — I showed him the Mac.

No, not the stupid little in-store demos where you can create a photobook with iLife; no, I gave him the real demo, the one reserved for hard core developers.

Marcus shortly thereafter obtained his own laptop, and quickly made the swap to OS X, abandoning in a fortnight over a decade’s worth of emotional ties to Microsoft.

Or so I thought. Marcus writes me, he’s got some new emotions pertaining to Microsoft.

What follows are Marcus’s own words, as only a Windows power-techie can explain. But this review of his isn’t about the features, it’s about the experience.

Marcus writes:

Macintosh. Every time I find another tool that Apple offers to make my life easier, I realize that the scale tips in there favor. I was able to rebuild that drive yesterday in under 2 hours using the transfer my data method from the OS CD. So as my positive experience increases with Apple, inversely that causes an increasing disappointment of Microsoft. I am still shocked that Apple will provide a utility that will allow you to replace your hard drive and automatically transfer not only your profile and files, but all of your applications and their licenses. I booted up and everything is working.

Marcus had an external Apple drive loaded with data and applications; he wanted to install a fresh new version of the OS on a different machine, but port over everything from the old disk – but not the older OS that was on it. Apple’s default OS installation does this automatically, cloning from another system.

Dell vs. McAfee. I bought a Dell Inspirion E1505 laptop for my nephew, Justin, to take to college with him. After putting in over ten years of technical support for various companies I’m now the technical support for the family when it comes to PC’s. I thought I would just open up the laptop and setup everything for Justin in advance. That way he could have one more kid moment when he opens the gift, it would be in a functional state and ready to work, i.e. play games.

I opened the box on a Tuesday night around 6pm. I got everything ready and turned on the laptop. Immediately things went wrong.

1) The network drivers were not loaded, so the system could not call Microsoft to register.

2) Once getting to the desktop, Internet Explorer crashed with a fatal error requiring a reboot.

3) McAfee was not installed correctly and reports too many errors to even cover. This required ALL of McAfee Security Center to be uninstalled.

4) Microsoft Update was not installed, rather they were using the old Windows Update. It crashed 3 times attempting to install this update. (Note: Microsoft Update patches all MS products, verses Windows Update, which only updates the OS.)

5) After Microsoft Update was installed, the real patches start to download. Two hours later on broadband, another GB of the hard drive gone, the system appears to be nearly functional.

6) At this point it’s getting close to 9pm on Tuesday. All of the Microsoft OS and applications are patched, registered and working properly.

7) I reinstalled McAfee. The installation appeared to go smoothly. The application no longer reports any errors and results in a HUGE green checkmark saying that my system is protected.

8) Next, I initiated the Update feature of McAfee and this is when it all goes wrong. A window pops up asking me to register my software now or later. Since I had purchased a 3 year contract with them, I would really like to do this to get full support from them. I select to register now and I got an hour glass suggesting something was going on, the screen flashed and nothing happened. I saw a little red circle moving next to the clock in the tool bar reporting that 16% of the updates were complete; however, the software was not registered. After the download is complete, it requested a reboot.

9) After the reboot, I did a right click on the M icon now next to the clock. This is McAfee Security Center’s ideal of easy access to their software. I was presented with several choices, but thought I would start with Product Setup. I selected that field, got an hour glass, a screen flash and nothing again. I decided to just select open Security Center this time. The application still reports everything is working properly within it’s horrible “Crayola” interface. I again attempted to verify if the updates were complete, so I selected Update. Again the register now button appeared and failed. After trying this several times, by 10pm I was completely done with this thing for the night.

Thursday (yes, I have a life and was busy on Wednesday):

1) I turned on the laptop and found that McAfee was still in the same state as I had left it.

2) I called India…rather, I called Dell’s technical support. They reported that this appears to just be a software problem and that I should call McAfee.

3) I called McAfee. Press # for Home Products. Press 1 to make a purchase, Press 2 for something, Press 3 for technical support. Technical support will cost you 2.90 a min, but feel free to use the free technical support on the web via right clicking the M on the toolbar and selecting Customer Support. (Note: You mean the M icon that’s broken and will not do anything for me. WOW, what a terrible idea!)

I decided to Press 1 to make a purchase. I told them I wanted to verify that I was a customer with them since I was paying for a 3 year subscription that I could not register. I gave them the Dell service tag number and I was not in the system. Then they asked for an email address or my customer number. I had to then explain again that their on-line registration was broken and that they would not have yet received any such information from me. They then asked for a phone number to look me up that way. Again reminding them that I had not given them anything yet to create an account. So, they manually created an account for my nephew. I thanked them for putting me in the system, but had to explain again that in now 6 days the application reports that if unregistered it will cease to function. They of course argued that I’m in the system and a paying customer. While on the phone, the application gave me yet another reminder to register.

Annoyed with McAfee’s mentally challenged support staff, I called Dell back.

I explained the situation of paying for software that is going to disable because it could not be registered. They worked with me for 45 min trying to find a solution. Then without pressing the issue any further, Dell informed me that I can simply request a replacement laptop within the first 21 days or my money back if I’m not satisfied.

Bottom line, Dell was so professional. Dell offered all the information I needed to just wash my hands of this whole matter. McAfee on the other hand really doesn’t seem to want to help anyone. Considering the choice between McAfee and Norton, I’m not really impressed with either, but at least Norton knows how to register their software.

To sum up, with OS X, Marcus was able to do something in approximately two hours that’s completely impossible to do with Windows: install an OS from scratch and move everything from an older system to it seamlessly.

On the Windows side of the house, even when it came pre-installed by an experienced vendor, it took him, a super Windows guru with a decade of experience multiple days and phone calls just to get Windows to a point where it could be given away as a gift.

Marcus, next time perhaps Justin would like a Mac? You did.

Great XSLT Tool for OS X

Found an awesome tool for performing XSLT transformations on Mac OS X. It’s called XSLPallette, and it worked flawlessly where web browsers fell down hard.

While working on some XML and XSLT stuff, I ran into some strange problems where transformed XML content was making Firefox spin its wheels forever and Safari was having problems rendering XSL variables.

I wasn’t engaged in a browser war shoot out, I just wanted to know that the XSLT was correctly transforming the XML into the desired output. As various tools were slowly slipping from my fingertips, I figured I might just have to go back to the command line.

XSLPaletteBut then I discovered XSLPalette. It’s a “free, native, XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 debugging palette” for OS X (and it’s a Universal Binary).

All I have to say is that, as a developer, I’m impressed with the ease this tool provides for trying different XSLT engines. I does basically one thing, and that one thing very, very well. I like that in developer tools.

You give the palette an XML file, and XSLT file, select the engine, and it does the transformation, showing you messages along the way, in addition to the transformed output, a collapsible view, and a browser-like rendered view.

Walt gives XSLPalette a thumbs up!

Registry Mechanic PCTLicHelper.dll Missing

Got a message from Registry Mechanic that the file PCTLicHelper.dll was missing or corrupt. Here’s the workaround until PC Tools fixes the problem.

I’m an avid fan of Registry Mechanic and can’t say enough nice things about the product.

I recently downloaded Registry Mechanic 6 (version 6.0.0.750 w/ engine 2.0.0.560), installed, and ran it. It worked great – I even like the slightly sleeker interface. However, after doing the Smart Update, Registry mechanic displayed a message that C:\Program Files\Registry Mechanic\PCTLicHelper.dll is missing or invalid, and it suggested I uninstall and reinstall.

The uninstall worked fine. The reinstall worked fine. The re-running worked fine. But upon another update, I got the same error message.

My next thought was that the file might be getting deleted accidently during the upgrade, and to simply install the software, copy the file to a safe haven, do the upgrade, and put it back. No such luck, the file doesn’t exist in the pre-upgraded application. This is a new file needed by the latest upgrade, and judging by the file name, I believe it’s highly related to PC Tools’s license scheme that is subscription based.

A little experimentation with uninstalling and reinstalling shows that the fault lies in the Smart Update’s getting of the updated Registry Mechanic. I suppose they wrote the code but forgot to bundle the DLL.

Simply uncheck the entry that says Registry Mechanic 1.43Mb, but leave all the other items checked. You’ll be able to scan just fine.

I tried reporting this problem to PC Tools at their website support page, but that reported an error: Fatal error: Undefined class name ‘datetime’ in /home/shared/include/tickets/rawmessage.php on line 222. I guess they have bigger problems than they thought.

After calling their USA support line, 1-800-764-5783, I got a recording that said they could also be reached at support@pctools.com. That would have been nice to have on the website somewhere obvious.

This trivial issue aside, Walt gives Registry Mechanic a big thumbs up!

UPDATE 22-Feb-2007: As Mike suggested, I got the latest update this morning and this time there was an updated program, a PC Tools License Helper, and a revision to the white list. I installed the update, and Registry Mechanic worked just fine. I never did hear back from PC Tools about the issue, or its website being broken.

UPDATE 24-Feb-2007: This morning got an email from PC Tools informing me that the problem had been fixed and to simply reinstall, commenting there was no need to re-enter license information. They made no comment on the fact that their website was broken, other than to generically tell me it was a “great source of knowledge for future questions.”

Removal of Norton Antivirus

It took me slightly over 6 hours to completely and fully uninstall all traces of Norton Anti-Virus and its internet security suite from a computer. The rats nest of dependencies seem far beyond what a regular end user would know what to do.

If I’ve learned anything recently, it’s this: If Bill Gates is the devil, then Peter Norton is the anti-christ.

One of my friends has reported meeting the man, conveying that not only was Peter Norton arrogant in the extreme, but his ego was just as large. …unfortunately, I have no way of knowing first hand if this is true, but when it comes to Symantec’s anti-virus and internet security software, the similarities in web reports is uncanny.

Peter Norton, for those of you who don’t remember, was this great guy back when PCs were young. Using assembly language, he wrote a cool set of utilities, known as the Norton Utilities, to let you inspect (and patch!) the raw data on your disk. This was fantastic, because if you accidentally deleted something, a basic understanding of file systems would allow you to get your file back. Microsoft had no clue at the time about how to undelete, and this tool made us into consulting gods. The next version of the software added more power and automation, but by version four it seemed Peter wasn’t writing it anymore, the software started to feel like bloated crap-ware. By version five it wasn’t even worth purchasing; apparently enough people were getting themselves into serious trouble in the same way that power tools don’t belong in certain people’s hands, and features were removed, obscured, or hindered. To the rest of the world it looked like Peter sold out and was willing to brand his famous name on anything void of quality in order to get another buck. The Norton name took on the same connotation that ‘Made in Japan’ had before Dr. Demming taught the Japanese how to kick the United States butt when it came to quality. It’s always a shame when this kind of thing happens, and Norton Anti-Virus was no different.

A while back we’d ordered some systems from Dell, and with them came a disc with Norton Anti-Virus. I threw mine in the garbage bin, my co-worker installed his. Instead, I used a number of free tools.

Not too mysteriously, over the course of a year, my co-worker’s machine did get some viruses, some which he couldn’t purge, leading to the machine having to be rebuilt at least once. Recently, Norton Anti-Virus told him his software expired and he needed to renew; so he did. Within the month his system was running so slow he simply ordered another machine, decommissioning his high end desktop system to a deployment staging server — and I was the lucky guy who got to clean the mess.

Normally, I would have just blown away the PC and started over, however with Microsoft’s new licensing scheme, if I had done that, I would have burned up a silver bullet. It doesn’t matter that I have the media, the machine, the license key, and a working copy of the software sitting in front of me — no, if I want to clean the system, I’m screwed, forced to pay for another license. And that I’m not going to do. As is, we’re already starting to switch, corporately, from MS-Office to OpenOffice due to costs; but I digress.

One thing was for sure, the system was dog slow, even with virtually everything else removed — the pig was clearly Norton, just as the benchmarks stated.

My goal was to simply remove anything and everything off the system, save some Microsoft programs which were installed and working, do some updates, and be done. This process went smoothly, with the exception of Norton Symantec software.

Uninstalling software on Windows is supposed to be easy, go to the control panel and select uninstall. Norton Anti-Virus and Internet Security certainly had that option, but it refused to uninstall claiming an update was in progress. Problem was, I could see the internet traffic as well as my CPU activity, and there was no update. Not even after a reboot. So, I went to uninstall the live update, which complained services were still running, and when I went to stop the services, they claimed the software was in use. When I went to delete files directly, it claimed the service had them in use.

I eventually booted in console mode and started deleting folders and files, relying heavily on Registry Mechanic to clean up the registry based on what I was doing. Problem was, when I restarted, Norton put some of it’s stuff back. Seems that there’s stuff in Program Files, there’s stuff in Common Files, it’s called Norton here and Symantec there, it’s got a zillion files spread all over, include the user’s Temp directory, it runs as programs, it runs as services, it hides in dark corners, it lives in your status bar. Norton does everything, even when it claims it’s turned off, uninstalled, and removed just to hang around on your system. It doesn’t clean up after itself.

It literally took me six hours, and I knew what I was doing, to get all of Norton’s software off the machine. And when I did the results were astounding, the sluggish little PC sprang back to life.

We also discovered that certain commercial download websites wouldn’t function when Norton was installed; other’s had perplexing places where content was just missing. Norton was twiddling with web site content, injecting it’s own JavaScript, screwing up the pages.

The good news is that all this served as the perfect example for the office to abandon Norton / Symantec products altogether. I’m happy to report Norton isn’t going on any new machines, and it’s now off on all but one (which it will be removed from in due course).

Software doesn’t have to be intrusive, expensive, or bloated with renewable licenses to get the job done.

For those interested, assuming everything goes right, here’s how to completely remove Norton. Although, for me, things did not go right, and a more intensive sweep showed there was still cruft. There’s even stuff left in the registry. Heaven help you your copy is corrupted either by normal XP wear’n’tear or by a virus that knows how to neuter Norton. For a company that’s supposed to be fighting to prevent things from getting installed on your machine that you don’t want, they certainly seem hypocritical. At least they offer, burried on their website though, a tool that’s supposed to remove the software “completely.”

Walt gives everything from Symantec or branded with the Peter Norton name after 1986 a thumbs down.