Friday, November 27, 2009

The Danger

I was reading WSJ and come cross this:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499404574559630382048494.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#articleTabs%3Dcomments

A lot more people are now waken up and started bashing Global warming. Of course there are still some hard heads who just ignores or distorts everything:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jeff-poor/2009/11/25/inhofe-ambushed-cnbcs-kudlow-report-fill-host-over-climategate


I said this a long time ago, and I will say this again. Gas and Oil are non-renewable resources, one day (no one knows when) they will be gone. We better be prepared for that. Those frauds who stretch global warming is using the last bit of credibility of any true visionary who might be able to convince us and avoid the last hour doom. But again the free market might be able to save us with new innovations when fuel became expensive.

Another note, I found this very interesting post:
http://knol.google.com/k/richard-ryals/the-anthropic-principle/1cb34nnchgkl5/2#

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

The passion of Global Warming

Check out this blog:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/

It is fine to have passion, but it is not when the passion start to clog your judgment.

I also realized that Global Warming is no longer just a passion for kids and good adults who want a clean environment. It has became a big business as well, with a lot of money to loss.

Monday, November 23, 2009

More rant on windows 7

Just found out Microsoft has taken more stuff out of windows 7.

This Sunday I finally found some time to dig into the next step of my invention. I had great success but at one point, I have to write a new utility because some functionality that existed in XP doesn't exists any more. And I need a hex viewer to debug the new tool I am writing.

Then I found debug.exe is gone!! I haven't used debug for ages but from time to time I used it as a hex viewer to peak file formats. I don't want to write a hex editor again, so I have to use one of my XP machines to do that....

yet I like windows 7, it feels pretty good. It is the first time I actually added utilities on my desktop (weather and CPU meter). With 6GB of ram my computer runs fast :-)

Thursday, November 19, 2009

My computer is up again

Yep, after last Saturday's disaster (I pressed the ram too hard during installation and distroyed my motherboard), I finally got my computer back now. Rushed a new motherboard and power supply from newegg and got them Tuesday. The installation took several days and finally I got all the cables connected (the usb/sound/led are tinny and took some reading to do, because there is no indication on the MB). It almost feel like work (usually I enjoy do computers).

Thursday, November 12, 2009

My windows 7 nightmare

My windows 7 family pack finally arrived yesterday, and I jumped right in for the 64bit OS. I installed fresh (want a clean fast system), but accidentally erased the wrong HDD, which has all my HF200 videos made for the past 6 month. So nothing survived except the ones I uploaded to youtube.

Then I found it can't recognize my EOS digital rebel XT. After a bunch of tries I decided to boot back to XP, only to find it is not booting any more. So I have to install XP again, and in my horror, found that one of my big partitions became unallocated. Boot back to windows 7, the partition is still unallocated. That partition contains all my personal development data, all check in to CVS but will be a headache to restore. Then I found a XP tool released by MS that can help restore partitions. I assigned the unallocated partition to a drive, boot back to XP, only to find the entire partition is now a big drive.

So I decided to install windows 7 32bit, to try my luck with my camera. It is recognized after I install the driver for vista, but can't pull pictures. Went online and found there is a PTP mode for the camera, which I always thought it is for printers only (because it has a 'printer' next to the option).

At this point I decided to install win7 on my 400G HD because both partition is gone now. win 7 can't find the drive. Tried various methods, finally found out I have to reformat it under windows again to let it show up.

After a lot of trial and error (windows 7, xp install/re-install, apply patches, download all my apps etc), I finally got everything working. Only problem is Starcraft is not displaying right under windows 7, so I will have to re-install XP again till Starcraft II is out.

Final thoughts.
Windows 7 pros:
1. Convenient Security (run apps as normal user and you don't need to use a different account). This is the primary reason I updated.
2. looks pretty.

Cons:
1. Starcraft looks bad.
2. File explorer only show full path after you click on it.
3. Network icon does not flash when there are network activity (XP does).
4. EOS Rebel XT can only show as a drive, can't auto download pictures any more (not much a con, since I don't want extra drivers)
5. A lot of services, I think many are not needed. Takes time to find which ones are bad and disable them.
6. It could be either XP or Windows 7. Sometimes it make your partitions unallocated.