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I'm totally, completely, utterly, done with Windows 7.
No, I don't mean I'm done installing it. I'm done with it. Over and out.
I'll try and avoid family-unfriendly wording in this post, but it's hard.

Last week, I got an unexpected envelope from Microsoft in the mail, containing the Windows 7 RC install cd, so I wouldn't have to download it. It seems to me they really want people to try out their new Operating System. Not enough people asking for it maybe?

Anyway, after installing, I ran into the same old connection problem: Windows 7 can't find the internet[1].

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Yesterday I was in Liverpool, and took this photo of the entrance of the large Marks & Spencer store:

See the woman with the child? You'd think she just came out of the store after shopping for clothes or something. Well, these days you can never be sure of anything — what if she just bought that child? Unlikely you say? Look at what I saw at the top of the escalator on the 1st floor inside the store:

As I said — you can never be sure of anything these days!

I thought IE8 was a good idea. Until I read this: IE8 Blacklist: forcing standards rendering opt-in. I'm so not impressed with Microsoft!

America has been seeing loads of snow for a while now, and this morning I found this picture in my inbox from my friend David in the UK:

In London it's even better (or worse, depending on your point of view) - enough snow to stop tubes, buses, trains and planes.

But.. what do we get here in Holland? Yup, nothing. Some half-hearted promises by the weather forecast people, but really, as you can see on this picture I took of the path behind my house, this was the best we got:

And it was gone in 2 hours as well :-(

About a year ago, my brother bought a laptop with Windows Vista on it, but when he connected to my wireless network, he didn't gain access to the internet. He could see all the computers in the network and access shared files, but no internet. Vista showed the connection as "Local access only". We tried all kinds of settings in Vista, but no luck. In the end we figured it must be the way my network was set up, and we gave up - he was only visiting for a day, and at home he would have direct internet access, no network settings needed.

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Hyves.nl is a Dutch profile site, and like any profile site, they have a Privacy Policy. The very last line of that policy says: "Privacy is a sensitive point, and rightly so. I hope it is clear that this is extremely important to us."

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Hot, home made apple beignets. They lasted not even 2 minutes...

For quite a while now, I've been skipping one of Windows' Updates, the Malicious Software Removal Tool. I don't want it on my computer, because I'm (irrationally perhaps, but still) afraid it might remove something that Microsoft deems malicious, while I intentionally installed it on my computer for whatever reason that's none of Microsoft's business.

However, it turned out that the opposite can happen too: AVG anti-virus found a "virus" on Windows XP computers and removed it. Unfortunately it was an important Windows file, user32.dll, without which Windows XP just doesn't run. You can read the details here, but.. if your computer didn't start up, would you have a clue that it was caused by the AVG anti-virus program you had installed? Would you have a computer to surf around and look for answers to the problem? And even after you've gone to a neighbour to use their computer to find the answers, you'll read that you need the Windows XP cd to start to solve it. How many people do not even have a Windows XP cd because their computer came from the shop with XP pre-installed? They're stuck with these instructions (for which you'll still need an extra pc).

For me it's just one more reason to not allow any programs to automatically remove anything from my pc.

Here I am, sitting at my desk, minding my own business (and that of my clients), when totally out of the blue, John sends an IM saying "Arrrrr, lass, bring me my boots!". Huh? John usually talks Dutch with me, and also I've never had him tell me to bring him his boots (and I'd advise him not to start either! ;-)). So, I sit there staring at the screen, my brain running full speed trying to figure out what in the world he could mean by that. I think it took about 10 whole seconds, before I realised:

It's Talk Like A Pirate Day today!

Lucky for me, I'm not a guy, so I can talk without going 'AAAARRRRR' all the time :-)

The news today: Google Maps has a new feature for the mobile phone. Street View.

Keen to see for myself, I followed the link to google.com/gmm, which redirects to http://www.google.com/mobile/default/maps/index.html. The instruction there is very easy: just visit m.google.com/maps with your phone. (or enter your phone number, but that only works if you're in the US, so no go for me European person living in Europe)

I visited the link with my Nokia N73, downloaded a newer version of Google Maps than I already had, installed it, opened it, and... nothing. No Street View. Did I miss something in the instructions?

Looking at the info page again, I notice the small print below the title: "Personalize this site by choosing a phone". It's a link that leads to a page with 9 different models of phones to choose from, each showing a description on the right when hovering over it with the mouse. Nokia S60 phone seems to be the one for me, as it says it includes all N and E series, as well as other Symbian S60 Nokias. However, when I click that phone to see features Google Maps offers for my phone, the page all of a sudden does not show Street View anymore!

I'm okay with the fact that the iPhone can't have it yet (iPhone is a special case of course, plus I don't have one, so why bother ;-)), but.. a Symbian S60 should certainly be able to, right?

So, what about that other Nokia phone? It's the standard Nokia phone. The description says this is for phones that run on S40, or legacy Symbian S60 sytem. It specifically says, that these phones are not part of the N series. But if I click that phone, Street View becomes an option. Hang on - can this be right? Do I need an older version of Symbian to be able to see Street View? It certainly seems to be so.

Despite Google saying you need a Java enabled phone (which mine is), if they can't detect that when I visit the proper download page, there's not much I can do. That is, until I read Sarah Perez' post on ReadWriteWeb about the new Mobile Street View. She included a direct download link to the Java file. I downloaded that file, installed it on my phone, and voila - Street View on Symbian S60 :-)

Update February 2009

In the mean time a true Symbian S60 version of Google Maps came out, with both Street View and Latitude. Just go to www.google.com/latitude/ where you can can choose your country and get the correct link sent to your phone.