Geffy had a complaint about an annoying aspect of Windows Update earlier today. The problem is that after the Automatic Update feature in Windows downloads and installs updates that require a reboot, the system pops up a dialog box informing the user that the machine will automatically restart after a specified period of time. You can postpone the process, but if you're away from your computer at the time, as Geffy was, Windows will simply close every app that you have open and restart itself when the countdown hits zero. My brother ran into the same issue a few months ago while running a MATLAB simulation.

I think this behavior is just plain irresponsible on Microsoft's part.

So I'm going to tell you what you can do to avoid being bitten in the future. These steps should apply to Windows 2000 SP3+, Windows XP SP1+ and Windows Vista.

• Click Start, Run and enter gpedit.msc in the Run dialog box to open the Group Policy Editor.
• In the left-side pane, drill down to "Computer Configuration - Administrative Templates - Windows Components - Windows Update"
• In the right-side pane, double-click the "No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Updates..." item, and set it to "Enabled"
  

If you're using one of the Home SKUs (XP Home, Vista Home Basic, or Vista Home Premium), the Group Policy Editor isn't included, so you'll need to add a value to the Registry. You can either use the instructions below to do it manually, or download this file, unzip it to your desktop and double-click the disable_au_restarts.reg file to apply the setting.

• Click Start, Run and enter regedit in the Run dialog box to open the Registry Editor.
• In the left-side pane, drill down to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Policies \ Microsoft \ Windows \ WindowsUpdate \ AU"
• Right-click in the white space in the right-side pane, and select "New > DWORD value"
  
• Set the name to NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers and set the value to 1.
  

In January, I posted a Folding@home monitoring gadget for the Vista Sidebar. Since that gadget only monitors the progress of one F@h worker process, you have to use multiple instances of the gadget if you're folding on a multi-core/multi-processor machine.

So I've now created a more compact gadget for dual-core machines, with new Vista-esque progress bars. Here's a preview:


The gadget has been posted on the "Stuff" page, which will be the landing page for any new goodies that I release from this point on. The old gadget is still available for folks that are folding on single-core, single-processor machines.

Comments are welcome! :)

In December last year, I wrote about Beyond the Red Line, a Battlestar Galactica sim built on the FS2Open engine. The much-anticipated first demo has now been released and is available for Windows and Mac OS X, with a Linux build coming very soon.


I just installed it and played the training mission, and I think they've done a frakin' awesome job so far. :) The opening menu, missions, ships, weapons and planet models have all been completely redesigned, making it almost feel like a brand new game, but with the same, familiar Freespace 2 controls. There's also an online multiplayer mode, which I haven't had a chance to try yet, but I bet that's going to be a blast.

If you're a BSG fan, go check this out. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go sharpen up my Viper pilot skillz and kick some toaster-ass. ;)

A couple of months ago, Steve Jobs posted a great piece about the state of digital music sales, in which he proposed the abolition of DRM as consumer-friendly move, and mentioned that Apple would "embrace it in a heartbeat."

About two months later, EMI has made its entire catalog available without DRM restrictions, and Apple has followed through by making all these tracks available on the iTunes Music Store, alongside regular DRM-protected ones. Sure, each unprotected song costs 30 cents more, but you also end up with a higher quality file - the new tracks use 256 kbps AAC encoding compared to the 128 kbps encoding that DRM-protected iTMS tracks use.

Props to EMI for being the first big label to offer a catalog full of DRM-free music. Apple also deserves kudos for taking this step in the right direction; actions speak louder than words, after all. Today's event marks a big win for consumers. Let's hope more labels follow suit soon.

I'm in San Jose this weekend for the regional semi-finals of the Imagine Cup software design contest.

We were at Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View yesterday, first for the contest itself, and then for a small "Tech Fest" event that they organized for attendees. The contest was not bad, but I didn't make it to the national finals. Since I just graduated, I wouldn't have been eligible anyway. Based on my score in the semis, they offered me an interview in the evening for a full-time position at Microsoft, but I already have other plans, so I didn't go ahead with it.

The MSTV/IPTV group at the Tech Fest had one of the new, black Xbox 360 Elite units running an internal version of the IPTV software that they're expecting to release towards the end of the year. That was pretty cool. Other than that, not much that I hadn't already seen before. All-in-all, a fun weekend trip though.