Monthly Archives: March 2010

Windows 7 compatibility

Windows 7 compatibility settingsI’m quite impressed with Windows 7’s compatibility settings. They seem to have made it possible to use software which the official Upgrade Advisor says will require purchasing a later version, even without resorting to XP Mode, which being Virtual PC-based, would surely be a good deal slower. And of course some applications just work as-is.

Some of the old software I’ve tried so far.

Office 2003 — works fine as installed.

Pinnacle Studio 10 — install the software, then the 10.8 patch for Vista from Pinnacle. Set compatiblity to Windows Vista, and it works fine. (The Windows 7 Compatibility Center recommended paying for an upgrade on this. I wonder who provided Microsoft with those details??)

Auran Trainz 1.3 — install, then set compatibility to Windows XP.

Kahootz 3 — install, works fine.

As I get around to installing other stuff, I’ll update this post.

Midtown Madness 2 — seems to work okay, though it defaulted to the wrong audio output device. I’m not sure; it seemed to set the correct directory permissions on the Players directory (within the program files), which it didn’t used to do under WinXP. Or maybe my fiddling with it trying to get the sound working did it. Either way, it doesn’t seem to need the Compatibility setting set on.

Traffic Giant (Gold Edition) — worked okay except the title and cut-scene videos, which required setting compatibility to Windows XP. And the settings (eg graphics resolution) wouldn’t stick permanently without all users having write-access to the program directory.

The Movies (and Stunts and Effects expansion pack) — Apart from having to manually start the installation (the auto start just generated an error), and telling it not to install Media Player 9 or DirectX 9 (which seemed to cause another error), it seems to work okay.

Weird bug

Weirdest bug I’ve seen in a long long time. If I delete the star out of the following text:

Ubuntu is coming out with a Long Term Support version (3 years) real soon now. It’s got a few cycles to go before it’s released in April. I want it now, so I downloaded Lucid Lynx* alpha 3, and found some weirdness – which you’d expect in an alpha release.

WordPress says it doesn’t know what or who I’m talking about. “Post? What post?”

One character. Two days to make that reproducible.

Weird.

Launchpad.net: FAIL

Ubuntu is coming out with a Long Term Support version (3 years) real soon now. It’s got a few cycles to go before it’s released in April. I want it now, so
I downloaded Lucid Lynx* alpha 3, and found some weirdness – which you’d expect in an alpha release.

Launchpad.net is meant to be some kind of bug reporting thing for Ubuntu. It does everything it can to stop you reporting bugs. Everything. First of all, it takes a bazillion years to figure out what product you’re trying to report a bug for. Then once you’ve finally found it, there’s a link on the RHS for reporting the bug, which proceeds to tell you to stop bothering them with all these bug reports, try this method, try some other method, why don’t you do this instead. Oh, and by the way, if you hand craft a URL a little like this we’ll let you into the magical inner sanctum of people who care enough to have read all the way through vast swathes of text trying to figure out how a bug report can actually be filed.

Once you’ve made the magical incantations, the tool tries to distract you with other bugs that sound just like the one you’re filing, except for other products. If you’re clever enough to create a bug title that fools it, finally it lets you enter the details. Then, in a fit of pique, it says after you submit the bug:

Sorry, something just went wrong in Launchpad.

We’ve recorded what happened, and we’ll fix it as soon as possible.
Apologies for the inconvenience.

Trying again in a couple of minutes might work.

(Error ID: OOPS-1535F528)

Gagh! I’ll just hit the ‘back’ button and ZOMG! Fscking Ajax ate my bug report! How the freak am I meant to re-submit that, you *#$%&@$*%@#*!

They can go get stuffed. Worst. Bug reporting. Ever.

Gmail bug?

Anybody else seeing this Gmail Bug? The message preview on the Inbox list shows text from the first message in the thread, even if it’s since been deleted.

Which means when you go to open it, the text you get to read doesn’t match what was in the preview.

It seems to be particularly prevalent in email list discussions, where what I usually do is delete the threads as I read them (unless I have a good reason for keeping them).

I tried to replicate it by sending myself a few test messages, but Gmail didn’t join them together as a thread, and I don’t have time right now to try any harder.