Category: Computers/Internet

Posted on
by

I’ve started installing games on the new computer, some of which I haven’t played in over a year.

Arcanum seems to work fine, and maybe now I can actually play it. (It stopped working on the old computer, so I moved on to other games.)

Heroes of Might and Magic IV installs fine, but Game Update can’t find the server to grab patches. I assume that’s because 3DO doesn’t exist anymore. If I’d been able to just download the installers and save them locally, I’d be able to run them. So I’ve got a fully-patched copy on a computer I’m getting rid of, and I can’t install it on the new one. This is a major problem with download-on-demand software updaters.

Arcomage, the card game embedded in Might and Magic VII, which was later released stand-alone, and is a fun puzzle game to while away 15 minutes…refuses to install on Windows XP.

And now the good news. Since Ubisoft bought the rights to the Might and Magic brand, I went there looking to see whether they had picked up support of any of the older games. They do have the patches… and I just learned that Heroes V is in the works!

Posted on
by

Q: What happens when you break up/fire your web browser-developing group with years of experience, and later hire an outside firm to build your next product?

A: Netscape 8.

IEBlog has an amazing report—which I’ve just verified. Netscape 8.0.1 disables IE’s XML rendering. So if you try to load an XML document—say, an XSLT-styled RSS feed like the feed for this blog—using Internet Explorer or Netscape 8 with IE’s engine, you’ll see either a blank page or an unloaded-image icon.

Apparently every time Netscape 8 runs, it trashes a registry entry that defines how IE displays XML. At this point the only way to fix it is to uninstall Netscape 8 and delete that entry (directions at the above link).

This raises two questions:

  1. Why does Netscape 8 alter an Internet Explorer registry setting?
  2. Why can Netscape 8 alter an Internet Explorer registry setting?

I’ve said it before (though possibly not here), but Mozilla is much better off now that AOL isn’t calling the shots.

Update June 20: Netscape 8.0.2 fixes this problem.

Posted on
by

Microsoft’s automatic update system is now offering an update to the Windows Installer. That’s the program that handles all those .msi files you use to install new applications, keeps track of what’s currently installed, and lets you uninstall them.

And it needs to reboot after installing?

WHY? What low-level system file did they have to change? There is a Windows Installer service, but it’s not running, and even if it were, they should just be able to restart the service. Why do I have to reboot the entire #@!$ computer because I agreed to install an update to something that isn’t running? Is the design so broken it can’t update itself?

I’ve never had to reboot a Linux box after upgrading RPM, Yum, or Apt (the equivalent software on many Linux systems). Never, in the seven years I’ve been using Linux.

And you know, it would have been nice to know that this update would require a restart before I decided, “what the heck, it doesn’t look like anything that’ll require me to restart, I might as well grab it now.” Telling me that some updates may require a restart is like labeling a box of cookies “Processed in the same state as a peanut farm.” It’s useless. It gets ignored. Kind of like this rant probably will.

Update 1: I’d love to make this change to the dialog box:

No, it’s not F*ing OK but you’re going to make me restart anyway!
Mouldypunk (link dead)

Update 2 (years later): “OK I guess” would have at least been amusing. And thank you sooooo much, Gnome Software, for bringing this behavior to Linux. There’s a reason I still use the command line to install updates.

Posted on
by

Too bad it’s the bad guys.

As reported on DailyDave and picked up at SANS, Email Battles and elsewhere, there are phishers out there using a botnet (a network of infected “zombie” computers) not just to send emails, but to host the websites and the DNS for their scam.

Imagine what this technology could do for legitimate sites. It could potentially surpass Akamai’s system of worldwide mirrors. You could set up something like BitTorrent that would automatically mirror sites you’re looking at. Getting Slashdotted would actually improve a site’s response!

Posted on
by

Apparently wardrivers (people who cruise neighborhoods with a laptop looking for open wireless networks) have been submitting their findings to WiGLE—a searchable database and interactive map of wireless access points.

Already checked—our home network isn’t in there. (As much as I’ve locked it down, it had better not be!) But they do list several in our neighborhood.

As always, the power of the Internet can be used for either good or evil.

(via Aunty Spam’s Net Patrol.)