theMediaman.com

I’m not sure why I tend to get worked up more by the NDP than any other party. Perhaps it’s because I expect more of them, while never having high expectations of the Conservatives nor the Liberals. It could also have to do with the fact that the NDP tend to call during dinner hour with a pre-recorded message (following a 10 second span of silence).

Simone’s got her own stresses to deal with involving the wedding, so she’s taken to tuning me out when I go on a tirade about politics.  Rather than let it simmer, I wrote to my candidate, Peter Ferreira, and the party leader, Jack Layton. 

I also want to note that this is the second time I’ve had to send the NDP such a message.

Do you support the “Do Not Call List”?

“A Prime Minister who puts families first” should not be calling me while I’m having dinner with my family, posting nothing but a pre-recorded message.

Someone for whom “leadership is all about teamwork” should not be obliterating an innovative party’s chance to adequate exposure by blackballing them (in league with Harper) from public debates.  I am not fully in support of the Green Party’s platform. My values are rooted more in Socialism than Conservativism but I can tell you that the Green Party has a hell of a better chance of getting my vote in this election than does the NDP following this action.

If you’re going to put your efforts into excluding a party that doesn’t deserve to be in national debates, get rid of the Bloc.  They have candidates in fewer than one-quarter of the ridings the Green Party does. The Bloc Quebecois have never represented Canadian interests, nor would they even claim to.

If you do win this election, I hope you will enforce a Canadian “Do Not Call List”.  I would like to eat my dinner in peace.

I was obviously upset to find that I could not log on to the DNS server at work with our two, newest, fastest laptops just because they were running Windows Vista Home Edition (Premium).

As with many purchases, the decision to get two new laptops for the events coming up was made very late. The rush was to get laptops that had as many features we wanted as possible, for the cheapest price (under $1000 ea.), and to have them delivered within hours of the purchase.

We found two Lenovo’s that were far more powerful than the price would normally allow. The only down side was that they were running Windows Vista Home Premium, which doesn’t let us connect to the local network as a workgroup computer.

I don’t put the ownership of this limit on Microsoft. They came out with different price-points so that users wouldn’t have to pay for features they would never use.  However, manymost logistics companies (i.e. Dell, Lenovo, HP) don’t let you access the full range of Windows versions. Our option for these laptops was Vista Home Premium and that was it. 

To Microsoft’s credit, they allow you to upgrade using the same install DVD-ROM, and buying an upgrade serial number from them.  However, there is no option for a “sideways-grade”.  Home Premium and Business Edition are nearly the same price. I didn’t need the features in Home Premium, and Business Edition wasn’t available from Lenovo for that laptop. In order to get the benefit of Business Edition, I need to upgrade to Vista Ultimate, which is a full $180 more!

So much for keeping the cost of these laptops under $1G.

How to Access a Domain in Windows Vista Home Premium

Now, the following may work in Home Lite, I don’t know. However, my main concern was to get the laptop to connect to the Active Projects folder where all of our key files are stored.  Copying all relevant presentation files to USB stick on a separate desktop, then transferring them to the laptop is ridiculous when we’ve already spent good money for an OS.

My search on the web for a solution gave few hints, and even one stupid “you should just pay for the version you need”. I agree that circumventing blocked features in order to keep money away from software engineers and Mr. Gates is bad form. However, when the system builders aren’t giving us those options, then I don’t see why I should be penalized $180.

While logging into a domain enables many features, the most important one is accessing shared directories.  First, make sure you’re connected to the network by testing to see if the Internet is working.  Usually, some features like that will be available automatically.

1. Click on Start (or Windows icon, as it is ‘called’ now) -> Network
2. If the computers on the Domain don’t show up, try typing backslash-backslash (\\) computerName for one of the computers you want to access into the Address Bar. If it still doesn’t work, try \\Domainname\computername\foldername. If that doesn’t work, then try creating a mapped network drive and doing the same thing.
3. When queried for a username type in Domain/username, and just your password as normal.

Hopefully that works. If it doesn’t, then ask a more local IT guy, and try emailing Mr. Gates and asking him to bug Lenovo (or whoever sold you a version of Vista that wasn’t right for you) into delivering what the customer wants, rather than what their profit margins need.

Well, not so much a review. I’ve only been using the player for a few days - less time than it took for the delivery. Tiger Direct updated my billing address, but not the shipping address, so I needed to phone UPS no less than three times to get the shipment redirected. To criticize Tiger Direct would be a waste of time. I’ve rarely had a purchase from them that went seamlessly, and I had prepared myself in advance for something going wrong.

The reason I chose to buy from them was that they had the best DVD/DivX player for the best price. Brand name, card reader, decent online reviews, and reads DivX movies from DVD-R. That last point is good because you can fit an entire season of a TV series on one disc. It also supports HDMI and I’ve read that it is excellent at upscaling footage to HDTV formats. Two features I won’t be using until my 6/49 investments pan out.

Lately, Simone and I have taken to watching HBO and Showtime TV shows. Since they can take many months to show up on TMN in Canada, we’ve been forced chosen to download them. I realize this is taking ad dollars away from the people who deserve it, but I refuse to play the game while the RIAA, MPAA and the Canadian counterparts are squabbling over distribution rights. Season 2 of Stargate: Atlantis was finished in Canada before half the episodes showed south of the border. It then played all the way through season 3 in the US before even starting broadcast here. It’s petty, but I just can’t forgive them for that.

Since Simone’s laptop isn’t equipped with a video-out (only VGA out) I figured it was worth picking up a proper DivX player in order to watch it on my big screen 27″ CRT with stereo surround sound. I’ve done a test of the player’s compatibility with different file formats, but I’ll be leaving a more comprehensive test for a later time.

One of my favourite features doesn’t even have anything to do with the packaged product. My television is RCA and so is my VCR (yes, I still have it hooked up) and they both use the exact same remote. It’s supposed to be a Universal Remote, but except for one model of digital cable box I’ve never had it work properly with any other devices. The new DVD remote is pretty ugly and the buttons are small - the complete antithesis of all prior RCA remotes.

Luckily, nearly all DVD functions are available and work by default from my old television universal remote. It’s missing the Title Menu function and the skip-chapter button, but everything else is on there. If I do need those other functions then I’ll just grab the fugly remote that was packaged with the player.

I loaded four episodes of Entourage that Simone and I hadn’t seen yet. Two worked, two didn’t. Of the two that didn’t work, one was at a resolution higher than 720×480 and simply wouldn’t display.  The other problematic file I suspect was partially corrupted, but I haven’t tested it much.

The player handles .AVI, .DIVX, .MP4 and even .OGM containers for video. It supports multiple languages and subtitles as external text files. The MP4 support seems the most limited, which is unfortunate. I haven’t tested any formal podcasts yet, but I found that the 480×272 PSP-formatted MP4s did not work. It’s not too much of a problem since most shows I watch on my PSP are just transcoded from some other video format.

When you put in a disc with video files instead of a DVD movie (or switch over to the card reader) then a file browser pops up. It looks very pretty, and displays JPEGs as thumbnails when you select them, but there’s not much else nice to say about it. It only supports about 13 characters, so when you burn discs, name your files with this in mind. The original file of “Entourage_S04E05….avi” would only display “ENTOURAGE_S04″. If you have multiple episodes, they would all show as “ENTOURAGE_S04″.

Removing the thumbnail pane would give the interface more space for more letters, but I don’t think that’s relevant. My guess is that this is just a limitation of the player’s firmware. Probably the most disappointing thing about the player.

What I assumed I would be most disappointed with was the load time, or the limited file support. I was happily surprised when I saw that the player loads the disc quickly, and that it even supports OGM, subtitles and multiple audio tracks (something I don’t think is even documented).

I’m calling the player “Murdoch 2.0″. Even though I didn’t build it, the player is a final replacement for my custom-built case I made from an old Pentium 200 with a Sigma Designs Xcard to play back DivX movies on my television. The final product was more complete than the above link shows, but that page was more to test out what CSS can do than show off Murdoch. That project met with limited success, but was mostly a hobby to keep trying new things to turn old, useless computer parts into a machine that could rival the newest Windows Media Centre PCs.

I’ll post more technical mumbo-jumbo later after I document the results of the DivXTest CD.