wildwinter

Well, yesterday I finally bit the bullet and installed Vista.

Ow.

The aim of the game was to install Vista on an entirely separate partition from XP, partly for testing, and partly because I didn’t trust Vista’s compatability levelse etc.

It failed to install the first couple of times – just froze on the Expanding Files section without any progress bar.

After a couple of tries, it then trashed my XP install so that XP wouldn’t boot (a nice BSOD going on about HAL.DLL and with lovely hex digits on it. It’s been a long time… XP must be more stable than I realised).

Some help from Steve sorted out the disk partitioning, which seems to have caused some of the problems. This required an Ubuntu LiveCD. Which just goes to show how far Linux has come, when you’re booting it from a CD to fix problems with a box intended for Window. I wish every OS was as friendly.

So, Vista finally installed. Lack of wireless drivers soon sorted out. Still no working XP until I fiddled around with boot.ini this morning, after realising the logical names for the partitions had got screwed. So, happily, XP and Vista now both run.

But as for Vista… *sigh*

This damned new security model is just so frustrating. That Apple advert isn’t so far off the mark. Almost everything I’ve tried to do in the last day or so has popped up a ‘are you sure?’ security warning, sometimes three or four. It’s unbelievable.

The only real problems/nagging annoyances I’ve had so far are from things like haXe, which works fine (apart from the installer, but not a big issue) but accesses the registry every time the compiler runs – which pops up a security alert! It’s a command-line compiler and part of our Ant build system – and do you know how annoying it is to type ant then click a dialogue every time I rebuild? (Typically a couple of times every five minutes at the moment). Yes, it may be an issue that haXe accesses the registry (Nicolas is going to take a look at it) but, really, is it that much of a security risk..?

Edit: If you set up your command-prompt to have administrator privileges it seems to get rid of the haXe issue. Not ideal, but better.

Shamelessly nicked from elderlight…

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?cat=14

If we ever need to get seriously into time tracking, this new Apollo app from the mighty Grant Skinner might be handy.

Today I am mostly attempting to install Vista. (For testing purposes).

And, whaddayaknow – it has buggered up my computer.

AGH!

Edit: Well, it’s working, now – but appears to have completely sh*fted my install of XP (which is on a completely separate partition and which shouldn’t have been touched). Oh fudge.

Mark Thomas – ‘My Life in Serious Organised Crime’

“Mark Thomas tells of his campaign against the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, part of which requires anyone wishing to protest in the vicinity of the Houses of Parliament to obtain a permit from the police. Mark has done this hundreds of times.”

Well worth a listen…

This is utterly ridiculous.

*goes to look for someone to demand an explanation from*

Edit (10:17am): I have just phoned Adobe UK and someone is supposed to be calling me back later to day to explain the reasoning behind it.

Edit (3:37pm): Well – a telephone call from Adobe Europe (in the Netherlands) today. A lovely Russian lady whose name I didn’t get.

She tried to tell me the price difference was down to VAT rules – until I pointed out that VAT is 17.5% over here, not ~80%.

As an aside, she pointed out that we in the UK pay slightly more for our downloads because we pay Republic of Ireland VAT rates for downloads (21%) as opposed to UK VAT on box product (17.5%). I’d noticed that the UK store downloads were pricier than the box product the other day, and couldn’t understand it – that explains it. Doesn’t have much bearing on the US/UK gap, tho’.

Then she tried to be terribly reasonable, telling me that I could, if I wished, buy the software from the States, but couldn’t then have any European support or European upgrades (hardly a problem).

I straightfowardly put it to her that it was simply about commercial interests and that Adobe charged the UK prices that the UK would pay. Which she agreed with.

Which means the only explanation is – because they can get away with it.

Edit (9am, Friday 30th): There’s an email from John Dowdell on Flashcoders:

*snip*
What I’m doing now is trying to collect similar reactions for my partners, to show that this is indeed a frequently-asked question, and one that deserves a definitive explanation on the Adobe site. (The FlashCoders web archive is not viewable to non-subscribers, so I’m snipping threads to give a flavor of the whole.)
*snip*

It might be worth an email to him: jdowdell at adobe dot com

For fans of The Muppets, Nine Inch Nails and/or Johnny Cash (!)

Stolen from itchyfidget – yesterday’s Daily Express headline.

Edit for realisation: So if I take four aspirin…

Ray Winstone is going to be in Indy IV.

As a follow-up to my post about APE, here’s another AS3 physics engine that looks promising: Fisix.

There are so many AS3 libraries out already! Way more than I remember for Director, let alone AS2.