KB937061

Like some others I had a problem yesterday with one of the updates pushed out by Microsoft as part of “Patch Tuesday“: ‘Security Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 (KB937061).’

Windows Update downloads and attempts to apply this update to machines on which one of the matching Visual Studio 2005 SKUs (see here) has been installed. The update addresses a “Vulnerability in Crystal Reports for Visual Studio [which] Could Allow Remote Code Execution.” However, Crystal Reports for Visual Studio is an optional component of Visual Studio 2005 and so, as was the case on the Acer, is not always installed.

So although Windows Update would report that the update as having been “successfully” installed, it would in short order re-prompt to install it again. And again. And again, ad infinitum. (On Vista, I have entries in WU’s ‘update history’ for one, two, three.. eight “successful” installations of this update..)

On the Acer, adding Crystal Reports to the Visual Studio 2005 installation enabled WU to properly install the update and subsequently recognise it as having been installed; incidentally, the process of actually installing the update seems to happen perceptibly more quickly than that of not really installing it but reporting it installed all the same.

Finally, subsequently un-installing Crystal Reports for Visual Studio seems also to un-install the update, whereupon Windows Update prompts, again, to install it and one is, presumably, apt to find oneself back in the same cycle.

This Ain’t Your Grandpa’s Derivative-Securitized Derivative

Capital Spreads, a financial spread betting firm operating out of The City in London, publishes a daily commentary on the state of the markets. Of last Thursday, they wrote (amongst other things):

[Thursday's] comment made the point that the current trading activities were not sane ones for punters to be involved with, as a trading company I am happy to se [sic] that our clients completely ignored this piece of advice and managed to trade around 22,500 times in the 24 hr period (a quite spectacular record for Capital Spreads). I wish I could be as happy with their overall performance but sadly given the volatility this was not the case. Some punters made very good money but, in the main, most were caught in the headlights and run down.

Quite.

Statement on Security

I couldn’t help but notice the emphasis David Cameron placed on the role of the “public” in reference to the recent attempted/failed “attacks” in London and Glasgow during his response to the Prime Minister’s Statement on Security; a reference to John Smeaton?

My Enemy’s Enemy is my Friend. On Facebook.

(Indirect) Link (it’s #4):

i’ve always thought it rather limiting that facebook only has a friends list. i’d certainly use it more if it had the option of an enemies list. i mean knowing your friends’ enemies is certainly more informativethan knowing their friends.

Feisty Fawn and the Waved Dead Chicken

Given the positive experience of the, erm, dead chicken, I had to try out Feisty Fawn on the Acer.

Since the Acer’s CPU is (notionally) 64-bit, I tried my luck, first, with the 64-bit version of the distro. Somewhat to my surprise, this worked, virtually perfectly, out-of-the-box. But the (apparent) absence of a 64-bit version of Skype fairly quickly had me switching (downgrading?) to the 32-bit build.

Feisty Fawn ships with an out-of-the-box option to tart spruce up the desktop with 3D visual effects, but this would not work, on the Acer, without installing the restricted graphics drivers and XGL and using the latter to configure a login session.

I hit upon this more or less by accident whilst using this guide to configuring Beryl. Having installed the bits, configured the login session and then used it to log into the system, I found I was able to enable the built-in Desktop Effects from the system’s Preferences menu, and thereafter never felt the need to bother with Beryl.

A few weeks in, and I’ve not noticed any effect (good or bad) on system stability. From time to time, three of the four workspaces which were available when the system was installed disappear. There are various guides out there to restore the additional workspaces and, thereby, the cube, but coming from the worlds of uni-workspaced Windows and OS X, this goes unnoticed, most of the time.

By contrast, the effect of the appallingly-named “Wobbly Windows” can linger with one even after logging off: coming to Ubuntu from Windows, the effect is sufficiently subtle not to distract; but move from Ubuntu to Windows and its absence can seem (at least for a short time) jarring.

Suddenly, Windows Vista’s windows appear a bit old-fashioned and, well, fragile..

“Dear Anonymous Atheist Complaint Box..”

I feel the process of submitting complaints to an anonymous box from which we cannot expect a response is too similar to prayer. I am only including my own complaint so that you will remove your box from the library and stop trying to proselytize.

Brilliant.

I got a rep to protect!

At least some aspects of the phenomenon referred to as “Web 2.0” give me pause for thought.

For instance, yesterday TechCrunch reported on The Funded. In particular, it reports the experience of one Howard Hartenbaum: Mr Hartenbaum was variously described on The Funded website as “rude and arrogant”, “slow” and vomit-inducing. Quite. He has since been onto companies with which he has dealt in his capacity as a VC, asking them to write their feedback, virtually all of which appears to have been positive. All’s well that end’s well, then. Except..

I can’t help but feel that Mr Hartenbaum – whom I don’t know from Adam – has effectively been blackmailed into not merely providing, but soliciting, so-called ‘user generated content‘ on behalf of someone else’s website, for which his only (possible/probable) compensation can be the limitation of damage to his reputation.

“71 million blogs… some of them have to be good.” – Matt

(As seen on Technorati.com earlier this week.)

I don’t know who ‘Matt’ is (supposed to be), but he’s not wrong – I found one!

Quit and start a new game. This counts as a loss in your statistics.

Playing around with the new version of Solitaire bundled with Windows Vista, and I find that, having saved a game (which I was fairly confident of winning – correctly so, it turns out), I find that everytime I restart the program, I am prompted to resume that same game. This, of course, results in a by-now-inevitable victory, each of which counts (seperately) to one’s overall running score.

This is the sort of .. ‘bug’ isn’t the word for it .. side-effect which can be difficult to unearth when you’re putting the software together but upon which a Random Other Person can land within minutes of using the product (if not instantly).

The Acer TravelMate 8215WLMi

I got one of these late last year, to replace an aging (but much beloved) piece of Dell-provided lump of iron (trust me, they’re heavy things to haul about).

The Acer is a fine computer, but there are a couple of aspects to it which, had I known about them beforehand, would have discouraged me from choosing it ahead of, say, another Dell:

• Firstly, although it is fitted with a Core 2 Duo processor, the configured BIOS – as of the present version (1.3517) – prevents the system from supporting hardware-accelerated virtualization (which Intel market as “Intel® Virtualization Technology“), no matter what others may claim.
• Sound quality from the speakers is actually worse than that from the Dell it replaced.
• Sometimes, the case rattles ever-so-slightly when I’m typing. This is very annoying, but, when the case doesn’t rattle when I’m typing, the curved keyboard is very nice to type on.

To be fair to the Acer, it comes equipped with an integrated microphone, which, a woman from Dell told me, the Precision M65 does not; at the time, when one’s choices seemed otherwise equivalent, this was almost enough to swing it for the Travelmate, since I use Skype quite a bit.