William Goodall's Blog Occasional mutterings

February 7, 2010

DVD lens cleaning

Filed under: DIY,Insides — William_T_Goodall @ 19:15

Today I opened up my home theatre system to clean the lens on the DVD player with a cotton bud and some isopropyl alcohol as it was beginning to get a bit fussy about rental disks (which tend to be dirty). This was the first time I’ve had to clean it since replacing the whole DVD drive mechanism a while back. It should work with occasional cleaning for a few more months and then I’ll need to replace the whole optical drive again. Or get a new home theatre system.

This is what it looks like inside from when I replaced the drive mechanism.

New drive installed except for attaching the cables.

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The old drive before it came out.

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February 4, 2010

Former Microsoft VP Dick Brass weighs in on why Microsoft ‘no longer brings us the future’

Filed under: Apple,iOS,IT,Microsoft — William_T_Goodall @ 15:06

It’s a sad tale, if you hear Dick Brass tell it. In a new op-ed for the New York Times, the former Microsoft VP explains how he thinks the Microsoft corporate culture has “never developed a true system for innovation,” and that while the company is obviously strong at the moment, he doesn’t see the company retaining its dominance if or when the Office and Windows revenues die down. His own anecdotes are a little heartbreaking: his team developed ClearType (first announced in 1998), but due to infighting and jealousy within the company, was kept from shipping as a default until 2007 with Windows Vista. Similarly he argues that the Tablet PC was much restricted by an Office team that didn’t believe in the concept, and therefore never developed a version of Office that was stylus-friendly. Dick left the company in 2004, and he says the tablet group at Microsoft has since been eliminated, and that almost all the executives in charge of “music, e-books, phone, online, search and tablet efforts over the past decade” have also left. The man isn’t out to get Microsoft: he sees the company as important, and its profits have obviously gone to great philanthropic ends through Bill Gates and others, but if what he says about the anti-innovative corporate culture is true, it sounds like Microsoft has some work to do before it can return to its place of preeminence as an innovator, instead of the fast and effective follower it seems to be becoming in many areas.Former Microsoft VP Dick Brass weighs in on why Microsoft ‘no longer brings us the future’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 09:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | New York Times | Email this | Comments [From Former Microsoft VP Dick Brass weighs in on why Microsoft ‘no longer brings us the future’]

Moribund and soon to be beleaguered Microsoft lost its way many years ago.

February 3, 2010

Headphones

Filed under: Television,Unboxing — William_T_Goodall @ 21:30

Ordered Monday, arrived Tuesday and put on charge overnight (16 hours required before use) set up today.

Sennheiser RS-130 and HDR-130. Base station and two sets of headphones.

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Supplementary headphones.

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Just two little AAA NiMH batteries.

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Base station and head set.

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Installed in the home theatre room for late night viewing of 24, Lost and other noisy shows.

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The base station charges two sets of headphones OK.

The SKY HD box conveniently outputs an analog stereo signal simultaneously with the optical digital 5.1

UPDATE: 4 Feb 2010.

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Today this SCART->3.5mm headphone adapter arrived and I found it worked to get stereo out of my home theatre unit so now I can get headphone sound while watching DVDs or AVIs on a USB flash drive. The sound out on the SCART turns on when the HT speaker volume is set to Min (0).

Pip Resting

Filed under: Greyhounds — William_T_Goodall @ 21:17

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Pip likes to lie on the landing.

February 2, 2010

iPad kool-aid victim goes on the offensive

Filed under: Apple,iOS,IT — William_T_Goodall @ 12:21

Dismissing Apple’s iPad is understandable. Given its simplicity and evident shortcomings, it’s easy to see why the tech elite might have little use for it. But the volume and insistence of the wrath, the sheer bloody outrage, is remarkable for a product only a few people have even used. What, exactly, do we have to fear from the prospect of a high-quality, non-user-servicable computing appliance? Heeere’s Joel:

The iPad isn’t a threat to anything except the success of inferior products. And if anything’s dystopian about the future it portends, it’s an American copyright system that’s been out of whack since 1996.

Titled “iPad Snivelers: Put Up or Shut Up”, his is an angry rant, but of great value in it is the distinction between the right to hack and the value of attacking products whose design makes hacking difficult. Like those he criticizes, however, Johnson doesn’t quite address the other issue that makes it all so murky: Apple’s near-total control of its mobile software ecosystem, and the brewing battle between it and Amazon over ebook publishing.

To me, the answer seems paradoxical. We have everything to fear from computers like the iPad, because it marginalizes computer tinkering as a hobby and threatens to turn it into an ivory-tower discipline like heart surgery or architecture. But there’s also nothing to fear, because hacking is a way of thinking and if low-end computers finally become unserviceable black boxes, there’s plenty of other things to hack.

That’s why Joel’s final point is the best one: it’s far more important that we attack bad laws like the DMCA than the hacker-averse product design it engenders.

Also, if you hate the iPad’s limitations, Dell’s Mini 5 might be the droid you’re looking for. Check it out.

“iPad Snivelers: Put Up or Shut Up” [Gizmodo]

[From iPad kool-aid victim goes on the offensive]

Most of these ‘openness’ whiners are just parroting talking points they clearly don’t actually understand and close to none of them could program their way out of a wet paper bag.

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