Microsoft makes us all beta testers

Microsoft's attempt to ensure that the copy of Windows XP you have installed is legit, has pissed off more than a few people. A couple of weeks ago, my organization mandated that all XP machines install Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications. If not, the threat was that Update would stop working. It's other purpose is to do the OS validation. Our overworked IT staff took MS's word for it and deemed it required. Luckily the majority of the computers my lab uses are Macs, but we do have a few Windows boxes running lab equipment. So I dutifully installed it.

Turns out, WGA is BETA SOFTWARE! When I found this out I was not happy. I pointed out the inherent problems with the installation with the IT manager, who was fairly meek about it (because of the threat "Critical Software Update - Apply NOW!" type of warning, I don't think they actually knew this). My biggest gripe, besides it being beta and spyware, AND IRREVERSIBLE, is that a buggy update could break the software/hardware combination controlled by that computer. And it's a royal pain to install and get working if the OS had to be reinstalled. Besides controlling an instrument that often has long run times, it also runs a Sassafras Keyserver for a networked software license.

So, yep it bit me in the ass today. MS Software Update ran over the weekend, automatically rebooted (which would have killed an experiment if one had been running on the instrument), and promptly froze at the BIOS prompt with an alert that the bootsector had been changed (and could be a virus!). When I cleared this, booting finished, and an alert popped up happily proclaiming software update had completed. Evidently the update did something at the BIOS level (who knows and I really don't care), which triggered the antivirus software. A complete scan of the hard drive showed no viruses.

But, if that had happened in the middle of somebody's experiment, it could have been expensive, maddening, and, well I can think of several stronger words.

Tomorrow I have to try to turn this off.

more of the same...

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead, blasted by a couple of 500 lb bombs from an F16 after his location was finally confirmed long enough for a strike.

There is no doubt that al-Zarqawi was one of the worst of the terrorist insurgents in Iraq. For that just remember Nicholas Berg. There is no doubt that if the US invasion of Iraq hadn't given al-Zarqawi his battlefield, he would have found another one with al Qaeda. But neither should anyone doubt getting this one guy will change anything in Iraq, at least not for a long time. I fear that our policies have created a new generation of terrorists, and we won't be 'winning' for a very long time. And the number of Americans that now believe this has become very high.

How long?

random thoughts

So many things running through my head.

The morass that is Iraq has more or less degenerated into a Civil War.

• Bombs, suicide bombers, Iraqis killing Iraqis, students pulled off of buses and executed.
  
• Over 2500 American deaths. Close to 10 times that in injuries, many of them severe, amputations, limbs lost, brain injuries, and lots of PTSD.
  
• I can no longer see how any exit strategy has a chance of working.
  

The state referendum to repeal a state law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation failed miserably (and thankfully) to gain enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. Thank God, and here's hoping that Tim Eyman just goes away. He truly is a horse's ass (which is actually denigrating to horses). We can only hope he now just goes away.