It is one of those days when you boot up your PC and pop comes a nice dialog from Apple…

No. I don’t have an iPhone (which is not value for money, under-featured, lousy battery life and “commodity’ among fashionistas).

No. I don’t want iTunes as I don’t even use an iPod (which is not value for money, under-featured, lousy battery life and “commodity’ among fashionistas).

No. I don’t need Safari (YAWB – Yet Another Wannabe Browser). MSIE and FireFox more than covers all that I need. MSIE and Opera covers my mobile nicely… thanks !

“Incredible, amazing, awesome” yah right…

Details

iPhone Configuration Utility lets you easily create, maintain, encrypt, and install configuration profiles, track and install provisioning profiles and authorized applications, and capture device information including console logs.

Configuration profiles are XML files that contain device security policies, VPN configuration information, Wi-Fi settings, APN settings, Exchange account settings, mail settings, and certificates that permit iPhone and iPod touch to work with your enterprise systems. For instructions on how to use iPhone Configuration Utility, see the iPhone and iPod touch Enterprise Deployment Guide, available for downloading at http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/enterprise/

Now, with Safari 4, you can choose your favorite sites from a stunning wall of graphical previews with Top Sites. Flip through websites as easily as you flip through albums in iTunes with Cover Flow. Easily retrieve sites you’ve seen before with Full History Search.

For detailed information on this update, please visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3661.

For information on the security content of this update, please visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222.

Important Notice to QuickTime 6 Pro Users
Installing QuickTime 7 or later will disable the QuickTime Pro functionality in prior versions of QuickTime, such as QuickTime 6. If you are a QuickTime 6 Pro user and you proceed with this installation, you will need to purchase a QuickTime 7 Pro registration code in order to regain QuickTime Pro functionality. After installation, visit the Apple Online Store to purchase a QuickTime 7 Pro registration code.

iTunes 9 comes with many new features and improvements, including:
• An improved look and feel, including a new Column Browser for easily browsing your artists or albums, movies, TV shows, and more.
• iTunes Store has a brand new look, with improved navigation for quick and easy exploration.
• iTunes LP and iTunes Extras create unique experiences that feature exclusive interviews, videos, photos, and more — available with select album and movie purchases on the iTunes Store.
• Home Sharing helps you manage your family’s iTunes collection between computers in your home. iTunes can automatically transfer new purchases, or you can choose just the items you want.
• Genius Mixes are created for you by iTunes and play songs from your library that go great together.
• iPod and iPhone syncing now allows you to organize your iPhone and iPod touch home screens directly in iTunes. Syncing is now also more flexible, allowing you to sync individual artists, genres, or TV show and Podcast episodes.
• iTunes U items are now organized into their own section in your iTunes library.
• Sync with iPod nano (5th generation), iPod classic (Fall 2009), and iPod touch (Fall 2009).
• iTunes 9 also includes many other improvements, such as HE-AAC encoding and playback, more flexibility with Smart Playlists rules, simpler organization of your media files inside an iTunes Media folder, and more.

For the longest time I watch Adobe Acrobat bloat like…… The Blob !

I cannot imagine that it has bloated to 221.0 MB worth of crap just reading PDF files.

Even with Adobe Acrobat SpeedLauncher (C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\reader_sl.exe) which is secretly loaded on windows startup, it still sucks.

Opening a PDF files becomes a royal pain.

Worst still there are these constant security patches (which happens more than product updates) making Acrobat a prime target for malware and hijacks.

See Research: 80% of Web users running unpatched versions of Flash/Acrobat [August 25th, 2009]

with 83.5% also running a vulnerable version of Acrobat.

The company has also criticized Adobe by insisting that their update mechanism “does not meet the requirements of a system that is used by 99% of users on the Internet and is highly targeted by criminals“

Zoomed-in view

Adobe Acrobat has 55 reported vulnerabilities.

Foxit Reader has 5 reported vulnerabilities.

according to http://www.securityfocus.com/bid

Foxit wins my security concerns hands down by a factor of 11 !!!

Compared to Acrobat’s 221MB bloat, Foxit Reader weighs in at only 9.67MB.

Foxit wins in software size hands down by a factor of 22.8 !!!

So head over to Foxit and grab Foxit Reader and say bye bye to Adobe Acrobat.

Psst… Foxit also has Tab Viewing feature ! Cool !

Today the Stardock Fences popped up a dialog on my PCs… (I am a PC ! Not a laptop/notebook/desktop)

Windows 7

Windows XP

I thought… no big deal… Beta Preview anyway…

But when I tried to check for updates.

And it said…

Hmm… So what’s up ? Is there any updated version after v0.98.1970 BETA or not ?

Even the download site says…

[Fences v0.98 Community-Preview Beta - FREE
Use the download button to get your copy of Fences.
(Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 is a pre-requisite for installation.)
This release is a beta / community preview, and will expire on November 1, 2009.
Fences is free and will remain free ; we hope to have a Pro version with even more features available later this year.]

My beef is that now is 1st Sep 2009 and NOT even near 1st November 2009, so why the reduced functionality mode ?

Is there anyone with such problems ?

As with any geek, I have lots of PCs to play with. One of my main problems with having so many is the updates I need to do to keep the security up to date.

But with Adobe Flash, it is really painful and stupid.

Firstly, I have to install the Adobe Download Manager (ADM) on all my PCs to upgrade my Flash plug-in in MSIE. Why ?!

Secondly, for FireFox, I have to download the plug-in and install separately. Why ?!?!

Thirdly, ADM is really such a crap piece of software. It has a simple function and does it really badly. Terrible !

Congrats ! You have downloaded 105.9% of the plug-in !

Huh ? More than 100% downloaded ?!?! What is the extra 5.9% did it download ? Virus ? Crap ?

Wait ! The progress bar stretches so much that I cannot even see what the hell it is downloading !!!

Ok. Ok… I cancel the download and clicked on the “Resume Adobe Downloads” icon on the desktop…

Guess what ?

Oh why ?!?! ALL my other applications can access the Internet with no problems…

OMG ! How long does it take to download 1.87MB worth of binary correctly ?

And why must users be forced to use the terrible Adobe Download Manager ?

Why can’t Adobe just plainly link it to

http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_ax.exe ???

Even then, it still sucks…

I am on 1Mbps broadband and it takes more than 30 mins to download 1.87MB from Adobe… Are they running on 28.8kbps modem currently?

OH MY GOODNESS !!! ADOBE is DOOMED !!!!

Yup ! Java 6 Update 15 is out…

Couple of good things…

“This release is Windows 7 support-ready and includes support for Internet Explorer 8, Windows Server 2008 SP2, and Windows Vista SP2. New features include the G1 garbage collector, plus performance and security enhancements.”

Yes, Sun is indeed up to speed on the latest on Windows. I am running Windows 7 (non-RTMed version) and I am already pleased with the experience. MSIE 8 is far better than MSIE 7 but I am not throwing my FireFox away yet… choice is good.

Secondly, the new JDK/JRE comes updated with a BING offer.

But strangely, Sun did not manage to rebundle the latest JDK with their other products like JavaFX SDK, Java EE and NetBeans 6.7.

I have no doubt it will be in due time…

By the way, test your JAVA runtime via browser here. Always run the latest versions of the plug-ins where possible to take advantage of the “security enhancements”. Cheers !

I started up my Fedora 11 again and did a software update…

2nd of July… another 24.1MB worth of 21 patches.

And again…

5th of July… another 41.4MB worth of 23 patches.

Did I mentioned that Fedora 11 was released on 9th June 2009 ?

That’s 26 days old on 5th July.

That’s a total (according to my un-scientific use of Fedora 11) 232 Patches of 488.9 MBs !!!

YMMV as usual…

I was playing with Fedora 11 on VirtualBox Virtual Machine and below are some of the snapshots of the Software Update processes.

Yup ! That’s 375.5 MB worth of 156 patches ! For a brand new shiny Fedora 11 released on 9th June after 2 delays.

After a reboot, there’s another 47.9 MB worth of 32 patches.

Oh… by the way… this is the way you install the VirtualBox Additions.

Cheers !

I was trying to register an account at IDC to get some info… but does IDC expect its users to be Oracle Database Experts in order to create an account ?

Apparently so.

http://www.idc.com 

IDC may still be working pre-dotCom mode…

Even more strange… they even provide an option to declare that You are not You !

What on Earth are they thinking ? Is the Logout button not enough ?

I was testing Windows 7 beta and somehow Google Toolbar keeps on crashing for some websites.

Below was the screenshot…

I wonder what is the “other personal information” all about ?

Why do you need that to debug ? Can’t the URL of the last web page suffice ?

hmm….

I was searching for some extreme programming stuff on FB and I bump into the single result showing this…

Very sad state of things…