i.justrealized

The most annoying things about iTunes are:

1. Each time I launch iTunes, it gives me a quick black screen, I don’t know what’s that for but it’s uncool.
2. I never understood why dragging and dropping music into iTunes’s Music sometimes work and sometimes don’t.
3. On a maximized iTunes, you cannot move your mouse cursor to the top right and click to close iTunes. You end up clicking on the application behind and that typically would be maximized for me and I always ended up closing Firefox this way. It’s just because iTune’s windows have curved corners all around.
4. iTunes randomly eats up my cover art and I have no frigging idea what’s going on.
5. Glorified spreadsheet is ugly, grid layout is simply requires too many clicks to move around and the cover layout - oh don’t get me started.
6. iTunes’ volume changes are not reflected the Volume Mixer of Windows Vista.
7. And the fact that it somehow needs Bonjour and Apple Mobile Devices and kindly installs those services without telling you.

Apple is just there to destroy Windows users experience. I can imagine they’ve got a bunch of really dedicated staff who actually would probably fix these things but were told to prioritize on useless shit like Bonjour for Windows.

When using Windows Vista, I can almost feel Apple screaming to me “Switch switch switch”.

Honestly one day I probably would switch but I can’t help but not like the company. Think of it as Microsoft. Lots of people claim that they dislike Microsoft online but few actually bothered to move away from Microsoft years ago. If you hate the operating system so much, why not move? It’s just because Microsoft got some things wrong and a whole bunch of things right. And Apple too, gotten some things wrong like iTunes, but they’ve gotten a different bunch of things right.

Critical Internet Explorer vulnerability found, browser switch is recommended.

Serious security flaw found in IE

The flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer could allow criminals to take control of people’s computers and steal their passwords, internet experts say.

Microsoft urged people to be vigilant while it investigated and prepared an emergency patch to resolve it.

Internet Explorer is used by the vast majority of the world’s computer users.

Said Mr Ferguson: “If users can find an alternative browser, then that’s good mitigation against the threat.”

But Microsoft counselled against taking such action.

“I cannot recommend people switch due to this one flaw,” said John Curran, head of Microsoft UK’s Windows group.

He added: “We’re trying to get this resolved as soon as possible.

“At present, this exploit only seems to affect 0.02% of internet sites,” said Mr Curran. (Source: BBC)

Browsing vigilantly is not something a normal user can do unless only use your web mail. The internet is filled with links all around. Even once in a while I ended up on phishing sites I try hard to avoid. It could be just an innocent advertisement.

Description:

A vulnerability has been discovered in Internet Explorer, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user’s system.

The vulnerability is caused due to a use-after-free error when composed HTML elements are bound to the same data source. This can be exploited to dereference freed memory via a specially crafted HTML document.

Successful exploitation allows execution of arbitrary code.

NOTE: Reportedly, the vulnerability is currently being actively exploited.

The vulnerability is confirmed in Internet Explorer 7 on a fully patched Windows XP SP3 and in Internet Explorer 6 on a fully patched Windows XP SP2, and reported in Internet Explorer 5.01 SP4. Other versions may also be affected. (Source: Secunia)

I would recommend a temporary switch to a competing browser.

In a not-to-surprising move, Jerry Yang steps down as CEO.

Yahoo to replace Yang as CEO, ending rocky reign

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Yahoo Inc. co-foundr Jerry Yang is stepping down as chief executive, ending a rocky reign marked by his refusal to sell the Internet company to Microsoft Corp. for $47.5 billion — more than triple Yahoo’s current market value.

The change in command announced Monday won’t be completed until Yahoo finds his replacement. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company said it is interviewing candidates inside and outside Yahoo in a search led by its chairman, Roy Bostock, and the executive recruitment firm Heidrick & Struggles.

“Jerry and the board have had an ongoing dialogue about succession timing, and we all agree that now is the right time to make the transition to a new CEO who can take the company to the next level,” Bostock said.

Yang, who started working on Yahoo with Stanford University classmate David Filo in 1994, will revert to “Chief Yahoo,” a titular role he filled before replacing former movie studio boss Terry Semel as CEO in June 2007. He will also remain on Yahoo’s board of directors. (Source: Associated Press)

Yang has been criticized heavily not having shown support for the Microsoft proposed acquisition. Today Yahoo trades around 10 bucks and is not looking to recover too soon.

I personally feel a little sentimental to all these web companies. Hate to see them just disappear.

Not sure if you noticed how little I blogged last week. My previous keyboard was all to blame. The alphabet ‘e’ cannot work and no matter how hard I depress it, the cursor just blinks nonchalantly.

Since ‘e’ is the most common alphabet in daily English, I was type-impaired. Assigned the alphabet ‘e’ to Control+C works for 5 minutes but I given up typing soon after.

As a bonus, I never did as much studying for a week. Perhaps when examination nears I can consider wreaking my keyboard.

Anyhow, I bought a new keyboard. It’s the very same one from Microsoft. It’s the wired curve keyboard 2000 or something. I got so used to it I couldn’t feel right typing on something else.

That’s really odd statement, considering the fact that it originates from Microsoft.

The student put Ballmer on the hot seat by asking, “Why is IE still relevant and why is it worth spending money on rendering engines when there are open source ones available that can respond to changes in Web standards faster?”

“There will still be a lot of proprietary innovation in the browser itself so we may need to have a rendering service,” Ballmer said, adding, “Open source is interesting. Apple has embraced Webkit and we may look at that, but we will continue to build extensions for IE 8.” (Source: AppleInsider)

Seems like Yahoo’s Jerry Yang has changed his mind. Yang now wants Microsoft to buy Yahoo and was quoted saying “To this day the best thing for Microsoft to do is buy Yahoo.”

Yahoo played hard-to-get during Microsoft’s courtship. Fail!

Yahoo tells Microsoft: ‘Buy us’

The internet portal’s co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang made the comment despite the fact Yahoo rejected a $33 (£21) a share offer from Microsoft back in May.

Mr Yang’s suggestion also came hours after Google pulled out of an internet advertising partnership with Yahoo.

“To this day the best thing for Microsoft to do is buy Yahoo,” said Mr Yang.

During the on stage conversation in front of a standing-room only crowd, Mr Yang was asked why the company did not take the $33 a share offered back in the summer. The company’s share price closed Wednesday below $14 (£8.80) a share.

“They walked away from a public offering and we were ready to negotiate. We wanted to negotiate a deal. We felt we weren’t that far apart.

“At the end of the day, they withdrew and they have since been clear about not wanting to buy the company,” explained Mr Yang in a rare public appearance.

Microsoft did however come back and offer to buy the search part of Yahoo, but a deal was never struck.

Again Mr Yang said the offer then was not good enough but he still remained open to persuasion.

Mr Yang told the summit “I am passionate about Yahoo”

Mr Yang said he was “disappointed that they [Google] didn’t want to defend this deal.” (Source: BBC)

BUT it doesn’t work well in my browser. I couldn’t reply, I couldn’t get back to the inbox once I click on a message. The whole thing is just a disaster for me and I don’t know how to change it back. Seems like Microsoft is pushing this update batch by batch to their users.

Here’s a screenshot of the new interface:

(Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail does not play well with Firefox.)

Of course, it worked for Internet Explorer but…

Anyhow, I should note that I do like the cleaner design. The new calendar is better too. And the contacts. Everything’s better… if and only if it works.

[By the way, there is still a huge wide advertisement slapped above the mail interface. I just crop it away because it is an advertisement.]