Thoughts and Theories From Roger Andre

A plug in for firefox that Microsoft released some months ago, has been blocked by Mozzila. I was issued a warning that stated the plugin caused security and stability issues. I remember thinking how great it was that MS had done 'something' for firefox users, but now I'm not so sure.

I went the whole hog and uninstalled the add on. I expect this to be news on monday. It can't just be me again, can it?

After receiving a zipped file containing a .avi file, I thought I'd give media player classic a go at unpacking and opening the file all on it's own. Now, every single zip file has an association with media player classic with no option to re-associate file unzipping with windows explorer. It's right there in XP as an option. Can anybody replicate this or point out what I'm missing?

I find my self working in the corporate head quarters of a famous shoe maker located in Street, Somerset. I sit down to use one of the computers in the staff cafe for a little browsing session, only to find IE6 languishing on the system. This annoys the hell out of me and I decide not to put any personal details into the machine. Nothing unusual about finding IE6 in a corporate networked environment I know, but still none the less annoying.

There are some out sourced IT guys milling around the place, so I ask one of them. “Why is IE6 the default browser in almost every corporate environment”?

“It's just the way things are”. He said back to me.

“Why”? I asked.

“Just is” He replied.

End of conversation. No hope of an explanation. The guy just wasn't interested.

Hmm I wonder if he's one of those MS haters that works on administering MS systems in the work place. A topic recently explored on ZDNet US. The feeling for some was that if you are an MS system admin and you hate your job, then there's every chance that you don't give a stuff about people in the work place you administer having a reasonable experience on their aging XP machines.

Others went as far as to say that if you're an MS hating system admin, then you most likely suck at your job! Indeed, I see desktops everywhere that lack the fine tuning taught at a very basic A+ level of competence.

Now I my-self have had success in convincing the smaller business to update to IE8 and use firefox for general browsing with not one complaint after the transition so far.

The next step will be to show those who are willing, how linux can be evaluated and work within the safety of a VM. If it takes a windows host to solve driver issues etc until the process is simplified, then why the hell not?

When we see machines appearing with 4-8gb of ram and beyond as standard, then resources for those using the usual office apps will not be an issue.

So am I being a cynic here? Is there something I've missed? Is there a really good reason not to roll out an update to IE8 across the network? And; could it be that corporations are being left in the dust because of outsourced IT, cost cutting and just sheer stress?

I'd love to be informed , however brash the answer.

A quick note to inform those of you that don't read the E.U.L.A. when installing software and use the SPOTIFY music streaming service, that your computers are also being used as servers to distribute material to other users of the service as stated in part 10 of the SPOTIFY End User License Agreement What I'm talking about here, is not to be confused with the 4OD fiasco.

Channel 4 On Demand puts a service on your computer that starts up on every boot, and is also called the 'kontinki service'. This service is designed to make use of what is sometimes precious bandwidth, even if you're not using it. When I took issue with this and killed off the kontinki distribution service, I found no issues whatsoever with my ability to stream from 4OD. 4OD was given the boot from my machines a long time ago, and C4.com did the right thing and allowed for fuss free steaming with no client being involved.

Interestingly; the BBC i player will also make use of kontinki for streaming distribution if it “happens” to be on your system, but not otherwise. To users of windows, you may be pleased to know that SPOTIFY does not put a start up entry on your computer, so 10/10 in that regard.

The deal with SPOTIFY is this. If you close the program, it will leave the file sharing part of the program running and you will see the icon in the task bar. If you want to switch this off, you need to right click and exit.

It is also worth bearing in mind that this will be HIDDEN in Windows 7 unless you enable the task bar settings to 'show all' or click on the tiny upward pointing arrow on the task bar.

Really, I can't imagine why the record companies are so frightened of using the words; torrent, file sharing, and peer to peer. This is exactly what SPOTIFY does.

Now that's out of the way, I would like to say a big thankyou to all the record companies involved with this project. It's a dream come true!

I think an important point regarding the deployment of windows Vista and 7 for business, is that the hardware and applications currently available are more than ample for many a business. If you look around there's even a few corporations still happy on windows 2000, and I know of at least one IT firm (EDS) that takes care of the patching for this older OS. As much as I've been loving windows 7, to some people the OS is just a shell. Let's face it, there's hardly any difference between a power point presentation on XP and one on Vista or 7 when you are running the latest version of office. In reality it's the application that gets the attention and not the OS. The best thing MS could do would be to give XP a medal of honour and let the OS bow out with grace instead of trying to strangle it to death. Now we've got the hardware, Let business continue to use XP if it so wishes. On the other hand, a smooth transition would be possible by rolling out new hardware alongside old hardware by using sync technologies between the two to mirror file storage and other types of work. Many a scenario is possible including third party XP patching, and if a business roll out really isn't feasable until 2012/13 surely we'll find stories abound of business hanging on for windows 8.

Maybe a new home and leisure OS from Microsoft will be on the cards.