Loath as I am to admit it, I know why Microsoft products all suffer from creeping featuritis. It’s because users are so damn creative.

In developing modules for CMS Made Simple, I’m continuously receiving feature requests. Some are reasonable. Many are not.

Reasonable:
“Could you extend your can opener to handle sardine tins as well as standard cylindrical cans?”

Unreasonable:
“I know it’s supposed to be a can opener, but I find it works well in extricating people from burning wreckage, so I was wondering if you could add a fire-hose feature, and maybe a siren or flashing lights.”

The skill I need to develop is saying “no” in an acceptable way. It’s easy when the requester phrases the question like “add this, or I won’t use your stupid system!” Yeah. Well. Golly, I’ll be awfully sad to see ’em go. Similarly, the ever-popular “it’s embarrassing to tell my client that I can’t provide them feature Y because you didn’t implement it!” always brings me copious, bitter tears at the thought of their shame and tragedy. Cry me a river indeed.

It’s a bit harder when the request is along the lines of “to be a truly professional system, it really should have feature Z,” because then I have to assess whether or not it really would be a professional grade feature.

Hardest yet is when someone requests a feature and gives at least a basic explanation of why it would be good for the project as a whole (in addition to their specific need). Even if I can’t see that I would use the feature myself, this will often sway me and I’ll add features, even against my better judgment.

Then, of course, there’s cash, which has a peculiar way of getting features added, no matter how ridiculous.

So we had a jpeg image from someone, and were distributing it through a web-based system (note that all non-technical details in this whole posting will be presented in annoying vague language). The web-based system is PHP and uses GD-lib. GD-lib successfully thumbnails the images, but when the images are downloaded, both Firefox and IE7 complain that the image has errors:

The image file "foo.bar.baz.quux.jpg" cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Windows image browser shows the image successfully, and Photoshop happily opens it. Looking at the file itself, I can see that it *is* a JFIF file (e.g., a valid jpeg). It starts with the FFD8 header, etc. It does have some strange characters in the IPTC data. This turns out to be a red herring, however. The problem turns out to be that it’s a jpeg image, but it’s using an 8-bit CMYK color space, which isn’t supported by Firefox, IE6, or IE7.

Firefox/Mozilla will be supporting CMYK jpegs in the future. Opera already does. I’m not sure if IE8 will.

Later, I found a blog entry on this very topic, that, strangely I didn’t find when I Googled the error message. But there is good information out there. In fact, if you know to include the term “CMYK” you get tons of useful responses.

Person 1: We didn’t do as well in the yoga competition last weekend.

Person 2: Really?

Person 1: The room was kinda cold. Since I do Bikram, it really cost me against the Power Yoga guys.

Person 2: That sucks.

Person 1: Well, it’s OK. I’ve started doing some cold-room training for the statewide in February. I’m feeling good about it.

Person 2: Well, go get ’em. Show them what yoga’s all about, man!

Little do they know, I’m going to show up and school them all in the freestyle personal meditation category!

Had some updates to the backup script which I never published.

Here it is.

Enjoy!

Backup Scripts

(for background, see Automated Backups.)

So, last night, I had a nasty situation with a Vista Home Basic install. It wanted to install some important security updates, and, after rebooting, it said:

“The Windows Vista Home Premium product key you typed is invalid for activation.”

It offered me three options: Access with reduced functionality (e.g., only use Internet Explorer, and for no more than an hour at a time); Type a new product key; Contact Microsoft to try to resolve the issue. I tried option three. I spoke with someone in Bangalore who got peeved with me when my screen didn’t match what it was supposed to look like according to his script.

It was a little Kafkaesque. I’d read to him every word on the screen, and he’d say “OK, click on the activation button,” which was not one of the items available. I’d say that I’d just read everything that was on the screen, and he’d say “no, you should have an activation button.”

He kept wanting to fob me off to a different customer service group who only answer the phones between 8am and 5pm (this was at 9pm). I explained that I couldn’t use the machine, and I didn’t want to wait until the next day, but he kept giving me nonsensical orders: “Well, don’t reboot, then.” I’m not sure he ever really had a handle on what was wrong. Eventually, he seemed to have a new idea, and said the problem could only be handled by a different group, and he’d connect me with them. Then he forwarded the call to the group who was closed for the night; their system told me to call back the next day, and hung up on me.

Bloody Microsoft! I called again, and got another agent who explained that I must not have a genuine copy of Vista, and only the other group could help me. In other words, their copy protection scheme thinks I’m a thief, so I’m screwed until they feel like helping me.

I was able to roll back to a backed-up disk state from before the upgrades, and could successfully boot. I installed the Genuine Advantage utility, which verified that I did, in fact, have a legit copy. When I installed the security updates one at a time, I was successful. No activation issues. I still don’t know what went wrong. There went three hours I’ll never get back.

Lest I sound like I’m exclusively Microsoft bashing, lemme start on Apple.

I placed an order for iLife ’08 and Leopard. When the box arrived, it contained only iLife. So when I called to complain, they said they’d investigate and follow up. But what that meant is that they then went into some lengthy dialog with FedEx about whose fault it was — whether it had been stolen from the box (no evidence whatsoever to support this idea), or simply the box had not been packed correctly. It took almost three weeks to resolve, and a replacement should be arriving tomorrow. Now, I can understand this kind of process if, say, I’d ordered a $2000 notebook and it had gone missing, or even a $250 iPod. But a software DVD? That costs them fifty cents or less to print? Why not just start by sending a replacement?

Grumble grumble grumble.

And dodn’t get me started on those people at Red Hat, who didn’t include the ponies and rainbows in the last ISO I downloaded!