No Dancing! ???

According to recent news, there's a ban on "Social Dancing" in New York City. It's a prohibition-era law apparently now being enforced by the "Cabaret Division" of the city's consumer affairs office. Remind you of an old Simpson's episode, or what? It's hard to gather from the AP reports exactly what is going on here, but it seems that under the guise of protecting neighborhoods from too much noise the city wants to close some doors. So their way in is to require licenses for dance clubs, which allows them to limit where they are and when they operate.

But what problem are they really trying to solve? Here's a quote from Mayor Giuliani from the CNN article:

It's a quality-of-life issue, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani says.

"It's a good thing," he adds. "And if we were to move away from it because there's some pressure, because a couple of high-profile places are putting the squeeze on, you're going to see real difficulties in the neighborhoods in the city."

It's already being tested in court by a place called the Gotham West Coast Swing Club. My mind in the gutter as usual suspected they were the ones the city was targeting due to some ethical issues (read "swingers" here). But this is a real dance group with an interest in something close to the Lindy Hop you've seen in lots of old movies. So this is just an interested party working to keep doing what they're doing without going to the city for a license.

I have to assume now that there are some very specific neighborhood spots that the city is upset with, but have no other means other than enforcing an odd 80 year old law that disrupts enjoyment for a much wider group of the community. I'm interested to see this enforced.

Tyson (Mike, not the chicken)

I'm not a boxing expert. I wouldn't even really call myself a fan. But I do enjoy occasionally staying up for a decent, hyped HBO fight once in a while. I know a few of the names, especially the heavyweights, and enjoy watching a good fight. With that said:

I turned on HBO tonight to see "Boxing: 2006: Corey Sanders vs. Mike Tyson" (in high def). First, I had no idea this wasn't a very recent thing, but it was from Oct 20, 2006. It was just an exhibition fight against a 300lb punching bag wearing headgear. Basically a huge waste of 20 minutes.

I can't say I was ever a Mike Tyson fan. He was so hugely popular, you had to love to hate him. Rooting against him was kind of silly for a while though -- those punches were among the hardest ever in the sport. Plus, he was the youngest champ ever. So credit where credit is due, the guy is tough. But he's also a rapist. And to boot, he was found with like 30 pounds of pot and coke. That's 30 pounds. These are drugs people buy by the gram. If you're a hardcore smoker, maybe you buy a "qp" = quarter pound (4 ounces) to sell to your friends. He was busted with 30 pounds. I know he's a big guy, but c'mon. Some of my fraternity brothers were big guys too. And a quarter ounce could get a good number of your friends baked. Anyway, where was I? Oh, he's also an ear biter. That goes beyond dumb. He didn't get into a bar fight with Holyfield -- it was a scheduled, real boxing match. They were professional fighters, doing what they do professionally. And he bit the guy's ear. Took a chunk right out. There's a chemical imbalance going on there. Did I mention he's also a rapist?

So WTF is this guy doing on my TV at 10 pm at 40 years old fighting a lardass in what should have been a gym fight, not a pay-per-view event. Of course, I never heard about this to start with, so clearly it wasn't that huge of a deal. It went the scheduled 5 rounds, with Iron Mike landing a few good ones. But a waste of 20 minutes. And I justed wasted 10 more writing this. Hopefully you read faster than I write :>

But a little more: my fondest memory of Mike Tyson is really Mike Tyson's Punch Out for the original Nintendo (NES). I spent a lot of time kick Glass Joe's ass, but between my brother and I playing on a 13" TV at the end of our dining room table, we did eventually get to Mike himself. Like most video games, it's really just learning enough of the secrets so you can get to the next level. No. Wait. That's Scientology. Video games too, though. With the right amount of patience, anybody can fight their way through and the finally kick Mike's ass too. Then there was the way that most 30+ year old guys could rattle off like their first girlfriend's phone number: 007 373 5963. I doubt the NES would ever have been as popular as it was without cheat codes. I'm kind of glad I don't know anything like this for my XBox 360 games.

Windows Home Server

I just ran across the Windows Home Server Blog today (also see Paul Thurrott's preview). It's an interesting concept.

Here is some of their data on the target market:

• On average, these households have 3 "active" PCs with the majority running a mix of Windows XP Home and Windows XP Professional
• Over 90% of these households own a digital camera
• Over 95% own a color printer
• 70% own a game console
• Less than 20% feel they have a good backup solution

That's a pretty good fit as far as I can tell. If you exclude households with a resident computer geek (either father or older teenager), this is an excellent mark. If you can let a typical house like this share printers, share pictures, backup their stuff independently and such easily it will be a good solution. Of course, you'll need to do it cheaply and with their existing hardware -- most of the groups that fall into this category aren't going to spend another $800+ on another computer to stick somewhere.

There's another point in another post that most home users are happy with their email solutions, so they'll keep Exchange out of this product. Makes sense on a cost and complexity issue, but some of us would really like to have an affordable Exchange solution too.

If it can do all these things and also provide remote access so I can take care of their house computers when I'm on the road, I might even buy this!

BTW, I have noticed lots of posts recently are Microsoft-based from VBA to XBox. I swear I'm not chugging their kool-aide, but there's just not a lot of Sony or Linux news I care about

Vista SP1

Seems that Microsoft is starting to understand their customers. We have learned from Windows XP and even Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 that it's generally best to hold off on upgrading to a new Windows operating system until the kinks have been worked out. This mark is generally the first Service Pack release. Of course, Microsoft wants to drive adoption of its new OS. But except for brand new Dell-type systems and ye scurvy pirates with 10 home computers, upgrading your OS is a very conscious choice that must be carefully considered. The result is that Vista was just released for public sale a couple weeks ago and Microsoft is already talking about SP1. There were mentions of this dating quite a while back, but more recent news from eWeek (Spencer Katt's Rumor Central column) and other places like TrustedReviews and apc indicate we're looking at a December release. This might line up with the server version of Vista (Longhorn) too.

I personally don't know when I'll upgrade. My main desktop will stay XP (dual boot Windows Server 2003 64-bit) until it needs to be replaced. I'm getting a new laptop for work, and I'm not sure what that will have but I expect XP -- we're looking to get a Vista machine in-house for testing at work, but it might be a while before we see new laptops coming through with it. Then again, I don't know if I want to wait until December to replace my desktop and move to Vista SP1 either. The main problem for me will be drivers for my Canon MP730. There were no XP64 drivers for it, otherwise I'd be running that full time. When I tested that out, Canon denied there were problems, but XP64 won't let you install 32-bit drivers, so no go for me. But this thread links to Vista drivers; I'll need to test that somehow before fully committing.

XBox Flash update

I usually edit my blogs to add updates, but that one was already too long.

To start, my blog on flashing should point out that I have the Toshiba-Samsung TS-H943 (25s) DVD drive inside -- this is the original and easiest to flash. The 28s requires some extra steps, and the Hitachi-LG drives also need some extra work. Being an early XBox adopter helps in this case, so if you have questions for this easy case, feel free to ask me -- but if you have those other drives, be sure to read the guides carefully because some are drive-specific.

On this note, a recent Microsoft announcement indicates they're replacing all the existing models with a new BenQ VAD6038 model. The topic of the announcement concerns the loudness of the original drives. This is of course bypassed with the updated low-speed firmware . But of course this new drive is supposed to be quiet and fast. If you get one of these new ones, you'll need to keep an eye out on the modding scene to determine if 1) these are flashable and 2) to get updated guides and firmware. But for me, I'm still a happy camper with my slower drive that will read DVD+R discs.

And finally, there's a lot of hub-bub around concerning brands of media for XBox 360 backups. Almost everyone swears by the Verbatim DVD+R DL 8x burned at 2.4x. No doubt this is excellent media, but it can be hard to find and kind of pricey unless you buy a spindle. Taking this to heart, but having no local stores that carry it, I opted instead for Memorex DVD+R DL 2.4x burned at 2.4x. A 3-pack cost me $15 at the local Staples. I'm happy to report this media works just fine. I figure any high-quality name-brand DVD+R DL will be OK. Be sure to burn with CloneCD too.

XBox 360 Flahsy Flashy!

I just couldn't resist any longer. I had to break open my XBox 360. Yes, it voids my warranty (but I want a Wii anyway ). On the longer range agenda, I'll be replacing the bright white case with something black, maybe with a cool blue LED to match the Onkyo. In the shorter term, I've been reading a lot about flashing the firmware for the DVD drive. Basically, you can't play back-up copies of your games because the DVD reader checks what type of content is on the disc, and then what type of media the disc is. IF (game && !pressed) THEN no play for you! The idea of flashing the firmware is that the check always returns a condition that allows the game to be played.

There are various guides and YouTube movies out there, so Google for yourself (I'm not going to try to keep links updated). The short of it is that you crack open the case, plug the DVD drive into a PC (SATA support required), run a program that re-writes the DVD drive's firmware with a modified version, then put it all back together. The latest version of the most popular firmware is 5.2 and is pretty mature. It comes in 4 flavors that has to do with the drive speed. I want options, but I also want to preserve the life of my drive, so I selected the "d" option that defaults to a slow read speed, but you can use the faster speed if needed.

All in all, it was an exciting afternoon to break open what's basically a small computer and play with its guts. The flash part hiccuped at first because I couldn't identify which drive was which. So I disconnected couple to help narrow things down. Note that the maturity of the software really shows here because I was successfully reading firmware, but it wasn't the size expected, so I got lots of warnings. Finally I got a good backup copy of the original firmware for my drive, then I flashed it with the 5.2d version. I closed everything back up and went to test.

"Open Tray"

Every disc I had -- original game, backup game, original DVD, backup DVD, audio CD -- EVERYTHING -- gave me this "Open Tray" error. So I started reading some more. Turns out, flashing the firmware can make the drive's laser lose it's sense of positioning and will read areas where there's no data. There's a fix: tie a little piece of rubber band around a rail inside the drive to create a bumper. Which means opening the DVD drive itself -- more that what I had bargained for. And the thing is, version 5.2 was supposed to fix these errors. Did I have a bum drive? Right now, the drive was useless, so I had to try. Later in the evening, I broke the case open again with the intents of doing the rubber band fix. And what did I see?

The Xbox's SATA drive cable just dangling loose. I plugged it back in, and before putting it all back together again, tried out all the various media. EVERYTHING WORKS! Closed it up, and all has been well.

Game load times are a little slower with this version of the firmware, but the console doesn't sound like a jet airplane getting ready for take-off anymore. So that's a win too. Will post more when I upgrade my case.