WWDC Eve == Christmas Eve

Anyone that follows Apple, and probably most in the tech world, know that the World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) starts tomorrow, and Steve Job's Keynote starts at 1 PM Eastern Time. Take a look at the rumors at MacSurfer, the buzz is palpable. I am not going to engage in the rampant speculation going on, you can see a large collection of it on MacSurfer, but it really is just like Christmas Eve. I had seriously considered going on my own dime to the WWDC this year, would have been my first time, to see the keynote and soak in all the developer knowledge because of the Leopard showing, but the expense was just to great if I wanted to have any coin left over to buy whatever wonders Jobs unveils tomorrow. It doesn't help when someone like Robert Scoble, who has an in-law that works at Apple, pours gasoline on the fire with this in a post on Vista not being ready:

Huh? I believe Vista DOES make our computing lives easier. The desktop search features are a huge advance. The multimedia capabilities are WORLDS ahead of anything else I’ve used. And the Tablet PC, Speech Recognition, and Media Center stuff that’s in there is WORLDS ahead of Apple. Although watch Apple in a week. Hint hint.

I just wish Apple was streaming the event live, realistically I won't know anything until 2-3 PM EST, oh the agony...

Windows Server 2003 Server Service Optimization

I have been looking at a lot of Windows Server 2003 configurations lately to audit the dev, test, uat, and prod environments for my company. One of the things that seems like a holdover from the NT4 days is tuning the Server service. You get to this configuration in W2K3 from Start-Control Panel-Network Connections-Properties on Local Area Connection. Then select File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks and click the Properties button. I could put some screenshots together, but I am being lazy :) Anyway, you get 4 choices for Optimization:

• Minimize memory used
• Balance
• Maximize data throughput for file sharing - the Default
• Maximize data throughput for network applications

There is also a checkbox to Make browser broadcasts to LAN manager 2.x clients, I have never used this box. Tuning this service used to be one of the first things you did in NT4 when not using the box as a file server, but more and more, I see it being left in its default configuration (noted above). I think people expect that you shouldn't have to do this anymore, after all, you did you the Manage Your Server wizard to configure your server roles right? Unfortunately, you still have to change this one by hand, and for Exchange, SQL Server, and IIS you want to choose Maximize data throughput for network applications. Click on this link to see Microsoft's description of how the kernel is tuned based on this setting, but the short version is anything but the default does the same thing, makes the file system cache a fixed 8 MB (instead of being capable of expanding to physical memory limits) and makes the memory manager more aggressive about moving memory pages out of physical memory, which is better for apps that manage their own memory caches.

Review Update: Microsoft Xbox 360, now a typical MS product

Back on June 21, 2006, I wrote that the Xbox 360 was Microsoft's Best Product Ever. Well I have had the 360 for nearly 4 months now, and I have run into a few issues that have taken the shine off my previous glowing review.

• The Universal Media Remote died. I bought this seperately, but its part of the MS accesories story, and in < 3 months, it just wouldn't work anymore. I don't remember doing anything to harm it, but it died. To MSes credit though, they did ship me a new one very quickly, but I am concerned about the longevity of this system because...
• The 360 crashed on boot with a System Error. This would appear to be the 360's BSOD (in this case a Black Screen of Death). It happened on a cold boot after being off all night long, so I an concerned this points to a coming hardware failure
• Games sometimes just lockup.I have seen this in both Project Gotham Racing 3 (PGR3) and Ghost Recon: Advance Warfighter (GRAW). Game is playing fine, then all of a sudden the screen freezes and the 360 is unresponsive, but music keeps playing. Very Odd
• The 360 runs VERY hot. I am not talking about the fan noise, that is immediately obvious, I mean the temperature of my 15x10 room changes from acceptable, as is the rest of my house, to unacceptable if I play the Xbox 360 for more than an hour. I have had to bring a fan into the room just so there is enough airflow. And no, the game lockups happen at all times, so its not purely a hear issue.
• Achievements aren't well documented in many games. I am growing increasingly frustrated by the need to google forums and other sites for an actual explanation on how to obtain some achievements. There are a lot of achievements, particularly in PGR3 and GRAW, that require getting compound objectives. If you can't get it done in one sitting, you have no way of knowing most of the time what criteria you have satisfied vs. what you don't. Also, the wording on achievements is sometimes intentionally cryptic, that's my observation, to make it harder to achieve. That's not cool, I don't want a mini-game built-in to the achievement system, I just want to clearly know what in a game I can get points for, and what my status is in getting those points
• Downloadable Content Pricing. The GRAW - Chapter 2 was very expensive for a game I already paid $60 for. I bought it to get another set of Co-op missions since me and a friend have really enjoyed the Co-op missions. Have I got my money's worth? Tough to say, but what's infuriating is that there were no more achievements for the additional Co-op missions for my I think $12.
• Unable to download content error message. I am a demo and trailer downloaded whore from Xbox Live Marketplace, until 2 days ago that is. I tried to download the Madden 2007 trailer and some other stuff and I kept getting told unable to download content. Reason why, I was out of Hard Drive space!!! Common MS, this should be an easy thing to tell the user, Unable to download content because the hard drive is full, I shouldn't have to troubleshoot the downloading of content. You have got to be kidding me.

I wonder how many other people were really excited about the X360 but are not starting to run into problems that cause their experience to be less than stellar?

Regarding Brian Krebs’s Reporting on the Supposed MacBook Wi-Fi Exploit

I was going to blog this myself, but Daring Fireball has already done the job and it's a good read. To sum up, the reporting on this issue is so poor it's no wonder people are not reading newspapers anymore, you get better, more accurate, and completely information online than nearly anything tech related from the dead tree set.

Review: Nintendo DS Lite + Games

I posted a whole bunch about my experiences with the Sony PSP, which were not good. Well that device has finally been auctioned (thats almost like a divorce) and been replaced with the Nintendo DS Lite. If I had to sum up my experience with the PSP in one word, it would be disappointment. Doing the same with the DS Lite, I would say joy. What is the big deal about the hardware? The DS Lite is designed to play handheld games, and it is fantastic at that. The console form factor is fantastic, it doesn't weigh much, screens are very bright, the stylus is big and heavy enough to be good to use, sound is great with headphones, and button placement is ideal. There are near zero load times! For anyone that has been playing optical disc based consoles for years, it is startling to use a cartridge system again, and honestly very satisfying. I can't stress how great it is to not have to wait on the stupid system when you have just a few minutes to get some playing down. Its so fast it makes me get very angry at my Xbox 360 for excessive load times (Project Gotham Racing 3 you are on notice). This is not to imply that the DS can compete on graphical firepower with the PSP, it can't, but you don't care at all because of the games. With the innovative touch based control scheme in a lot of games, I finally feel like there is innovation in games again instead of retreading everything. But wait, the hardware may be slick, but without software (*cough* PSP) who cares? This is where the DS really shines. The game library is innovative and it there are great titles. Here are the titles I have already bought in 2 months (release June 11, 2006) with the DS:

• Advance Wars: Dual Strike
• New Super Marios Bros
• Brain Age: Train Your Brain In Just Minutes A Day
• Tetris DS

These games are all great, with Advance Wars and New Super Mario Bros requiring special mention. Nothing on the PSP that I played was as good as any of the DS titles I already have, and Advance Wars and New Super Mario Bros are some of the most fun games I have ever played. Brain Age, Tetris DS, and New Super Mario Bros all got my wife to play, and she hasn't picked up a controller ages. I also got a chance to play Metroid Prime Hunters, Ridge Racer DS (same as the PSP version, only lower rez polys), and Super Mario 64. Metroid Prime Hunters is a lot of fun once you learn the touch screen based control scheme, but once you do, you will cringe at the thought of the PSPs one analog stick in SOCOM anew. There is also a number of games the came out for the DS before I bought one, and Game Boy Advance games (which the DS also plays) that I want to get, here is a sampling:

• Castlevanie: Dawn of Sorrow
• Trauma Center
• Phoenix Wright: Attorney at Law
• Animal Crossing: Wild World

This doesn't even take care of all the new games coming out this fall and winter, like StarFox and Final Fantasy III. Why didn't you just get the DS when it first came out? The DS Lite is not to be confused with the original DS, which people are referring to as the DS Phat. Check this Wikipedia entry about the DS Lite. I tried a friend's DS Phat when I told her about how much the PSP sucked, and I wasn't impressed with the DS Phat because it was even bigger than the PSP and the screen brightness was awful. I primarily use any handheld system on the train to/from NYC, and their is a lot of sunlight, I need bright screens. Anything wrong with it? I have not a single complaint about the DS Lite, but there have been rumblings of a Cracking hinge problem. I don't have this problem with my DS Lite, and I suspect that its the Internet's propensity to act as a megaphone for those with issues. I certainly don't baby my DS Lite, I toss it in the backpack with both my laptops and other junk, no cracking for me. Conclusion If you like playing innovative, fun games and not just ports from the PS2 (*cough* PSP) on a handheld, the the DS Lite is for you. It doesn't have the best 3D graphics, but the games sure are fun.

Microsoft Buys Sysinternals

As I have mentioned before, Mark Russinovich of Sysinternals is a hero of mine, demonstrating the deepest technical knowledge of MS Windows that I myself had once aspired to. His tools have helped me out of countless problems with Windows, and it was always a mystery to my why Microsoft didn't gooble up Mark and his business partner Bryce Cogswell because they so obviously loved Windows and built needed software for the platform. Well that day has come and Mark blogged it.. I greatly admire what these guys have done and I am very happy for Mark and Bryce. However, I have deep concerns about ongoing availability and improvement of the Sysinternals tools which MS now owns. MS doesn't know ultimately how those are going to get packaged, where you can get them from, but its clear it won't be on Sysinternals indefinitely. The MS machine is going to absorb them, and I have no faith that it won't become another PowerToys or ResourceKit debacle. A lot of people, dare I say millions of people, really depend on these tools to succesfully manage Windows and it would be a real shame if Mark and Bryce stopped working on these, or they weren't released/updated as often. I can only hope that MS does the right thing.

Review: Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest

I rarely do movie reviews here, there are a ton of people that do it well, professinally or as a hobby, and I usually don't feel like there is much more to say. Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (aka Pirates 2) is making so much money is such a bad movie I feel that I have to try and stop anybody that reads this from letting Captain Jack steal their hard earned money. Some background, I love Pirates 1. It was funny, the effects were great, and all the characters (Captain Jack down to the bad pirates) were just about note perfect for an action/adventure movie. It was near or at Indiana Jones good, and I watched it in the theater a bunch of times, own the DVD, and have watched that a bunch of times. Seeing Deep give his performance there was a thing of beauty. Pirates 2 is none of those things. It is only funny in very few places, and not for dialogue or character driven reasons, it's just slapstick. The funny is nearly all in the first 30 minutes, and then it becomes very not funny. In fact, for a movie with so much motion, I was bored out of my skull. You don't care about any of the characters because they are now uninteresting, and a large portion of the dialogue is recycled jokes or character beats from Pirates 1 that are no longer funny. Take Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, there is one recycled beat, that Indy can't draw his gun and shoot the swordsman near the end, everything else Indy does is in character, but like that character was on a different adventure, not replaying the first. Please save your money, don't go see this movie, if you must rent it on DVD or add it to your Netflix queue, but I would even say just give up on it. I felt like I had just seen The Matrix Reloaded all over again, but even there I had hope in Matrix Revolutions before seeing it, I have no hope for Pirates 3. Read below the spoiler warning for more specific criticism. *** SPOILERS *** The big set piece of the movie is the Kraken attack. But wait, you don't get that 1 time in some climatic battle, you get that 3 times, that's right 3 times, before the movie ends. Davy Jones, the CGI work on the tentacle face, is amazing, ILM hit it out of the park there, but the character is just one note mean and you don't really care. What Pirates 1 had going for it where memorable 2nd and 3rd tier characters that were amusing because of their character, Pirates 2 has reloaded on bad Pirates, but they are all memorable only for their appearance, and even that is sometimes mudddled because the CGI is so busy it becomes hard to make out. Jones' ship, the Flying Dutchman, is fun to see dive under the water, but then you don't really get a sense why they have to do that other than to loop on more CGI. Couldn't the fish pirates just jumped overboard and swam to shore? There are large sections of the movie that have nothing to do with the main plot, including the whole cannibal island business. Cannibal Island was the most fun in the movie, but again it just doesn't feel like it's part of this movie. And the movie is too long, you could easily excise a whole bunch of crap from this movie. I like long movies that need the time to tell the story, this is not one of those movies, its just long for excess special effects because the makers feel that's how they will get people their money's worth instead of building a better story. I have read a bunch of times that this is like Empire Strikes Back, and the people that make that comparison couldn't be more delusional. Empire is an emotional punch, not just a visual one. The AT-AT attack is much more powerful than any single Kraken attack in Pirates 2, and the "loss" of a hero in Han Solo feels like a punch in the stomach because you can feel the emotion between Han and Leia. Captain Jack going into the bowls of the Kraken (which looks like the Sand Pit creature in Return of the Jedi btw) means nothing, its just the next set piece.

Fascinating Analysis of Windows Vista Bugs

Robert McLaws: FunWithCoding.NET - Windows Vista Edition : Windows Vista Bug Reports: An Analysis This analysis, complete with pretty charts and graphs (I presume courtesy of Excel 2007, very nice) is a fascinating look at the bug reporting process for just the publicly accessible tools Microsoft has provided. I would love to see the data MS has internally. This is not to bash Vista. I just find large engineering projects fascinating, and this is certainly one of the biggest, maybe the biggest in all of software. I am currently in the bug triage phase on a project and I am humbled by the monumental task MS must have of deciding what to fix and what not to fix to get Vista out the door.

Review: ABC Television Shows Streamed for Free with Ads

Given the recent news that Disney says ABC free web TV a hit with consumers I figured I would give this another try. When they first announced this functionality, I tried it and it crapped out pretty disasterously, so I hadn't given it another thought. But this week I have had decent success using the feature to watch the last season of Alias. I was curious how the show got wrapped up, so this seemed like a good way to find out since I missed it when it aired, didn't Tivo it, and don't have an iPod video to download shows to. This isn't a commentary on the show, just the technology and the overall experience. First, the best thing about this is that its free, this is certainly not an experience that I would pay for. At first, the presentation seems slick, like a good experience, but the more you use it, the less satisfied you become. The video quality is pretty good, but not great, with a decent number of video artifacts. I wouldn't call it HD quality at this resolution, its definitely more heavily compressed than I would like. Skipping around within a show is good, fast, but there are no Chapters to jump through, say if you want to skip the opening recap. The Bad

• Too many clicks - Getting to the point of actually viewing a show is a lot of clicks if you don't want to view anything but the most recent show. If you are trying to catch up on a season, its annoying.
• No bookmarking - The next annoyance is no bookmarking. If I am watching a show and have to close the current session, I have to remember where I left off, there is no concept of bookmarking where I might have been in any show.
• Pausing frequently doesn't work. Pausing for short periods of time seems fine, but for any extended duration, say over lunch, gets very iffy.
• Server bandwidth problems - Over one multiple hour session, there were many times where the server couldn't be connected to anymore, with frequent restarts of the web app to fix the problem
• Performance Is OK to terrible - Performance while watching a show is ok, nearly 50% of my ThinkPad T42's 1.70 GHz is consumed, but during some ads, the box gets absolutely crushed

Overall, at least until June 30th when the ABC web site hints something will change, perhaps in the feature not being free but who knows, this is a pretty good way to catch up on some ABC shows you may have missed. The key question is, would I use this instead of buying episodes from iTunes? Only if portability was not a concern, then I would probably pick this over iTunes, especially if it stays free.

Review: Xbox 360, Microsoft's Best Product Ever

My wife purchased an Xbox 360 for me as a gift for my 31st birthday in April. I actually argued with her NOT to buy it, as I said at the time I was holding out until the PS3 and Wii details were announced at E3. She ignored me, as wife's are so good at doing, and now I have a next generation console. The Xbox 360 is easily Microsoft's best product ever, as Engadget in an editorial on the future of the PC recently hinted, and I agree so I figured it was time to write the review. The Xbox 360 is Microsoft's most Apple like product. The ability to control the whole widget proves its superiority to building compelling product once again (e.g. iPod, Mac). Especially with the Spring 2006 update to the system software (which added a download manager, an annoying problem in the RTM version, and DVD playback improvements among numerous changes), the system is very refined. There are still some features I want to see added to the Dashboard (e.g. Turn off Notifications while watching a DVD), overall the attention to detail and the execution of the implementation are excellent, unlike say Windows in general. The mission with the 360 is to be an excellent game machine for power gamers, and Microsoft has succedded admireably.

As far as game graphics, things are hit and miss depending on the title. Call of Duty 2 looks great, very impressive even at just 480p, it makes me think next-gen, as does Oblivion and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, but Hitman: Blood Money only looks good, but not mind-blowingly better than Xbox Classic.

Controller The wireless controllers are the first ones I have used that "just work" and I can't detect a difference between wireless 360 and wired Xbox Classic. Even with the headset in sending and receiving audio, no latency that I could detect and immensely satisfying no to have cables dangling (except when charging of course).

The controller itself is easily the best of any Xbox controller, and I prefer it to the PS2 controller. It feels very comfortable, they fixed the white/black button disaster of the previous two Xbox controllers (I could never hit them without loooking for them), replacing it with shoulder bumpers that are easy to hit, and everything else just feels right.

Xbox Live Marketplace Being a previous Xbox and Xbox Live user, one of the things I was most interested in was how MS was going to extend the Xbox Live functionality. Marketplace is very much like taking the iTunes Music Store and making it about games. This is one area that greatly benefited from the Spring '06 patch, with better categories, the download manager (RTM only allowed you to download one thing at a time, and nothing else could be done with the system, ARRRGHHH), and better identification of new content. All that aside, the killer ability is downloading game demoes. This is one of those core abilities your take for granted on the PC, or even listening to song previews on iTunes, and adding this to the Xbox was a magnificent addition. Frankly, I didn't know about this before I got the 360, and it was a very pleasent find.

About the only thing I find missing here are content Notifications. Why can't I subscribe to, say Halo 3, and whenever I logon to the box, new content is automatically downloaded and I am told its available? I think Nintendo has hinted at this with the Wii, and MS should be able to easily add this with the next X360 patch, just use RSS!

Xbox Live Arcade This feature is also a very welcome surprise, and like a lot of people, I downloaded Geometry Wars. I love the concept of simpler games available for download that don't require hours and hours of time just to get into. I am eagerly awaiting Street Fighter.

DVD Playback One of the tipping points for getting the 360 was that my Xbox Classic was having a hard time playing back Netflix movies. The DVD playback software on the 360 is leagues better than the Xbox Classic, information overlays are transparent and nicely down, and greatly improved with the Spring '06 update. One of the only drawbacks I knew about was no upscaling to HD resolutions, which was added in the Spring '06 update over the (optional) VGA connector. Also, the picture quality seems better.

Ok, so what's wrong with it? There are only a few issues with the 360, which I am sure Microsoft is working to address. When playing games, the fans are very loud when playing a game. The surround sound thankfully drowns out this noise except during quite times, but that is acceptable. The power supply is frikkin' huge, immense actually, and its pretty damn silly looking and I can't stick it behind the entertainment center for fear of overheating, so it sits right behind the X360 on the shelf, kind of ruining the asthetics of the X360 which are very good, with one exception.

The hard drive, which slots onto the top of the 360, even at the .5 inches it is, is out of place because its not flush with the rest of the case. I would have preferred they simply extended the case so that the left edge of the X360 and the HD were flush. I can imagine they did this as an optical illusion to make the X360 look just that much smaller, but its kinda transparent and they aren't fooling anyone.

I don't have an HDTV yet, but there is no HDMI connector available for the 360, and my understanding is more hardware would be needed in the box for the 360 to add one. Perhaps this is coming with the HD-DVD add-on, but current information suggests not.

Backward compatability is problematic. Of the 5 Xbox Classic games I have on the shelf, only 2 worked up until the most recent backward compatability update. Halo 2 is a good example. Everything appears to work fine in the game, but then movie segments stutter. I don't have a huge library of old games that I need to play, but I have nearly bought a few old games that I didn't get around to playing before I got the 360 and I am glad I didn't buy them, because they weren't compatible with the 360. Also, any new titles that come out which aren't for the 360 aren't compatible. Here is an interesting idea. Hitman: Blood Money is out for nearly every platform, but it's the most expensive on the 360 ($60). Because of the back compatability issue, I can't choose the cheaper Xbox version to play the game, even if I didn't care about Achievements or the minor graphical enhancements.

Conclusion Even with the problems mentioned, there is no question this is the best home game console on the market. If the games on the 360 interest you, I highly recommend picking one up. Of course, there are rumors of a price drop this holiday season, so maybe you want to wait until of if it happens, but knowing what we do about the PS3 ($599 for the full deal), I would easily buy the Xbox 360 now and start playing some good software, and buy a Nintendo Wii when it comes out for $199 or at most $249.