Category: Science/Technology

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Microsoft Developers Are Allowed to Have a Sense of Humor

I found this very amusing TechNet article in today’s Langa List.

Here is an excerpt:

I Thought We Weren’t Supposed to Change Settings in the Registry?

As you probably know, Microsoft has a sort of love-hate relationship with the registry. The registry is the configuration database for Windows and Windows applications, and many options can only be set by manually changing a value in the registry. For example, if you’ve ever read a Microsoft Knowledge Base article, you’ve likely seen a sentence similar to this:

To correct this problem, change the following value in the registry.

Now that’s fine, except that this sentence is invariably followed by a disclaimer similar to this one:

Warning: Don’t ever change a value in the registry. Ever. We know we just told you to do that, but would you jump off a cliff if we told you to? Don’t ever change a value in the registry. Don’t even say the word registry. We know a guy once who said the word registry, and three days later he was hit by a bus. True story. As a matter of fact, you shouldn’t even have a registry on your computer. If you suspect that you do have a registry on your computer, call us and a trained professional will be dispatched to your office to remove the registry immediately. If you accidentally touch the registry, wash your hands with soap and water and call a doctor. Do not swallow the registry or get it in your eyes!

Now, to be honest, some of those fears are a bit exaggerated, and the disclaimer is there largely for legal reasons (remember, this is the day and age when you can order hot coffee in a restaurant and then sue the restaurant when
the coffee they give you turns out to be, well, hot). If you do it correctly, changing the registry is perfectly harmless. At the same time, however, it’s
true that there are certain values in the registry that should never be changed. In fact, changing them can pretty much wipe your computer out, once and for all. It’s like working on the bomb squad: if you snip the right wire, the bomb is
defused and everything is fine. But if you snip the wrong one—Boom! You just created Microsoft Bob!

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Fighting the Sick Computer

[doug]Before you ask, I will point out that I run a hardware firewall (provided via my SMC Barricade router, and have Norton Antivirus 2005 doing e-mail scanning, realtime protection, and nightly full system scans, including, of course, using the latest virus definitions. This cannot be a virus problem!)

It all started just before Christmas. I really needed more hard drive space, so I decided to stop by Best Buy and grab a decent-sized (160 GB) Western Digital 7800 RPM drive. You’re probably thinking, “No problem, just throw the new drive in, and you’re all set.”

(I am going to outline this from here on, and will update the entry when I have a chance to provide more detailed information.)

  • Used the Western Digital utilities to copy the system and secondary partiition to new partitions on the new drive.
  • I begin booting from teh new drive, with the old drive attached as a secondary drive.
  • I am amazed at the new drive’s performance increase.
  • After 3 days, the new drive slows to a crawl, and shows massive time-to-read errors in its SMART monitoring system, but no data loss or bad sectors.
  • I exchange the new drive, and repeat the process.
  • Network games that are heavy on processing power start locking up the system. I suspect a power supply overload, so I disconnect the old drive. The problems go away.
  • At the beginning of February, a bunch of System level-files go missing (application data like the install file for Microsoft FrontPage). A bunch of DLLs stop loading. The only real symptoms are missing icons, the inability to update old installs, a 5-minute launch time on our ZoomBrowser, and System Restore won't come up.
  • I spend days using the Event Viewer. There are no hardware failures or disc errors reported, and no explanation for this.
  • In mid February, the unthinkable happens. David puts in Knights of the Old Republic, and the CD icon comes up, but the launcher never appears.
  • I kill the process and log his account off. When I jump to my account, I get a notice that an error occurred with one of the registry files, and that Windows had restored the registry from a backup.
  • I reboot, and discover that I can’t get into my account. Several of the other accounts have reverted to their “new user” states—the default desktop, no e-mail configuration, etc.

    • I fear that more folders have disappeared, and that our e-mail is among them. I start a search for inbox.dbx, under my Documents and Settings folder, and it finds nothing.

  • My fifth search produces results. Our e-mail is safe.
  • I reinstall the drive old drive from December, and synchronize our files.
  • Earlier this week, the same registry problem occurs. this time I run system restore from the previous night’s automatic recovery point, and everything returns to normal

I still have not found the source of the problem, and am very anxious while wondering if it will occur again. Maybe the registry fault is an errant piece of Knights of the Old Republic, or even caused by a dirty CD. The game itself was copied from the “old” D-partition to the new bigger one, so something could have gone wrong in a strange way. I’ll have to give reinstalling it a try.

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Why President Bush Is Opposed to Federal Spending on Stem Cell Research

This weekend, for the first time ever, I actually heard a newscast (a Webcast, actually) that included the words, “the destruction of embryos,” in conjunction with President Bush’s stance on Federal funding of stem cell reseach.

On October 21, I had the privilege of attending a lecture by Lisa Boucher Clark, Ph.D., from the University of New Hampshire, entitled “Stem Cells and Cloning: The Perils and the Promise.” The issue was fascinating, and Dr. Clark presented this extremely controversial topic in a factual context, attempting to avoid editorializing or taking a side on the issues, and, in general, succeeding in doing so. (The topic needs a BLOG entry of its own; despite Dr. Clark’s efforts, there were outbursts and arguments that erupted from the audience.) One of the things she discussed is the promise of using stem cells in therapeutic medicine. For example, we are nearing the technological point at which it would be possible to combine somatic cell nuclear transfer (cloning) with stem cell harvesting to produce stem cells that would later be coaxed to differentiate into heart cells—or just about any other tissue—that perfectly match the donor-recipient to replace damaged heart muscle. (This is something of an oversimplification: Although the basic technologies have already been proven, they are not yet very reliable, and to date, SCNT has not been successful with human cells.)

This is the promise of cloning and stem cell research. But it comes at a price. Assuming the SCNT procedure works, the stem cells produced would be removed from an embryo at its blastocyst stage, thus killing the developing embryo. Those stem cells could then be cultured into entire cell lines. Note that current stem cell lines are produced using discarded embryos from in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics, not from cloning via SCNT.

Our President does not want to give federal money toward stem cell research that destroys embryos. He has allowed for federal funding for stem cell research in cultured stem cell lines that are already in existence, and has done nothing to prohibit or outlaw privately-funded stem cell research. He is not trying to stop the progress of science in a potentially helpful area. He is living up to his beliefs, and his promises, by not putting tax dollars to use in killing the unborn.

The media have done a poor job of presenting the technology and the subject matter as it actually exists, although it is not entirely their fault. Former President Reagan’s son Ron is an outspoken advocate of stem cell research, but he carefully avoids talking about the fact that embryos are destroyed in the current process. More proponents of embryonic stem cell research should come clean on what the full implications of such research are.

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62,000 versus 3.4 Million—What Does This Show about the US Technology “Edge”?

Dean Kamen (the inventor of the Segway) “noted that last year the U.S. graduated just 62,000 engineers (there were more Sports Management graduates) as compared to the 3.4 million technology grads coming out of universities in India. Kamen says we have only ourselves to blame. ‘You get what you celebrate…we celebrate sports and movies.’”

See this article at PC Magazine online for a more complete story about his speech at the FIRST robotics competition.

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Doug, the Haiku Master

Stream unvisited—
An update is required.
I wait forever.

Okay, the above title is an exagerration, but let me explain. We are using a new version of the source control system in place at Kronos. (We switched to this new system—which is not a Kronos product—about six months ago, from VSS, which sometimes produced catastrophic problems, and was not living up to our needs). The latest release of this new product promised some highly beneficial new features, but, primarily because Kronos is pushing the product well beyond its typical implementation, there have been some “performance issues.”

After receiving a notice last week that performance was really slow, but the system was not locked up, instead of a whine, I posted back a quick Haiku. Haiku, at least as we learned it in high school, is Japanese poetry consisting of three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively. There are variations on the definition, especially when working in English, but the format tends to produce poetry that appears to be deeply insightful at best, and pithy at worst.

I received quite a few compliments on the e-mail, but didn’t realize how notorious I’d become until a co-worker who I do not believe I’ve ever even seen stopped me in the stairwell and asked, “You’re the guy who wrote that Haiku, aren’t you?”

Here are a few of the other comments:

  • This is most masterful.
  • Thanks Doug. This helps make the pain of [the source control product] more bearable.
  • Very nice!
  • {:-)
  • This is great. (-:
    I’m sure you've seen all those “error message haiku” that have been circulating for years. Some of them are very funny as well. My favorite was:

    With searching comes loss
    And the presence of absence:
    “My Novel” not found.

  • Congratulations tovarisch Doug Wilcox: you are now awarded the “Udarnik of the Month” title. Now write more haikus “sverx plana” before the end of October. (“sverx plana” means something like “above the required quota”).
  • bravo!
  • Excellent haiku of the day. Thank you!
  • Excellent!
  • LOL!!!

    How about:

    Jboss starting up,
    Machine useless for all tasks.
    Gaze at screen saver.

    To which I responded:

    JBoss now better;
    Standards can be pleasant:
    One Gig of RAM.

    OK, that one made my cat wake up when I laughed!

So am I popular, or notorious?

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Online [PC/Video] Gaming: An Industry Name Finally “Gets” It

From this article at Reuters:

The new platforms are expected to offset what Florin [Gerhard Florin, Electronic Arts’ head of European publishing] sees as a disappointing early start for online gaming. The prospect of amassing a core of gamers who pay a monthly subscription to battle other global combatants on the Internet has yet to take off.

Florin attributed the slow take-up to a nagging fear that a gamer could be humiliated in challenging an unknown foe.

“We expected millions of people wanting to play the online games and we have found that, no, they don’t. There is a pretty easy reason. If you play tennis and you don’t know your opponent you are careful whether you should play against him. The same is true with online. If you go online you could be slaughtered or cheated,” he said.

Overcoming the social aspect of online gaming, he added, will hold back the market in the short term.

I think this is probably the most frustrating thing in online gaming. It is almost impossible to win (other than when I am playing with a known group of friends), because those who do game online tend to be those who spend far too much time gaming online. So it isn’t that one might be humiliated, it’s that one will be humiliated. Of course, years ago I was beaten at Command and Conquer by an eight-year-old. When one throws in “unsportsmanlike behavior”—everything from player-killers to abusive language—as well as lag time and trouble keeping a connection to many servers, the appeal of single-player games is obvious.

I do like to play against human opponents. My son John is very challenging, especially at WarCraft III, but our skills are near enough that I can beat him when I really work at it. When I play with Isaac and David we either team up against computer-AI-driven opponents or give them one or more computer partners to help balance things out (except in the Jedi Knight series, where David needs no help). Overall, though, it is rare that online gaming is very fulfilling to the average gamer.

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David Now Has His Own Web Site

It’s in development, but being documented as it is built. http://david.wilcoxfamily.net/ Part of the trouble was trying to explain to him what I can and cannot do on a Web site. He plays the Flash- and Shockwave-based games online quite often, and figured that I could just whip up one of my own in about half an hour. There is more detail on the site, including my commentary from his perspective. Enjoy.