What?! But I only know of the English A-Z alphabet… how am I supposed to include multiple alphabets in my password?

Oh wait… did you mean letters of the alphabet?

Hilarity: 1
Thoughtful Design: 0

The observant among you will also note that the explanatory text originally on the form informs you that passwords must contain at least one digit, but makes no reference to any requirement for letters — poorly thought out indeed. Not to mention, since the password can only be 6-8 characters long, I don’t know how I’d fit 26+ characters even if I wanted to!

(Besides, all this thing protects is the ability to check how many fuel discount vouchers I have… why the need for such a strong password anyway?)

So I’m sitting in the Maccas next door on Goerge St to the new Apple Store here in Sydney that’s just opened… isn’t it ironic? I’ve been here way before the likes of Adam, Johnny and Houmer… and I’m the one missing the Maclot gene.

Anyway, the line when I last saw it started around the block, halfway down Clarence St (the street behind Georget St). But at least Apple umbrellas were being given out to the faithful waiting in the rain!

And I think those white rectangular boxes they’re giving out contain a T-shirt and some propaganda… now I just have to wait till the others get here to head over and see if there are any left!

My Beloved Xbox 360
Launch Day to 20 Dec 2007
Rest in Peace

What a terrible time to have an Xbox to develop the Red Ring of Death. Not only is it Christmas and holidays (who knows how long it’ll take to repair), but it happened on the day I came home with Orange Box, Tomb Raider Anniversary and a new HD DVD drive too!

Yeah, pity me.

Well Steve Olsen has kindly put together collected evidence on why it’s meant to be pronounced “jif”. Thanks Steve, for the great service to humanity you’ve done!

It’s pronounced like “jif”. Period. The end. That’s final. End of story.

See The GIF Pronunciation Page.

Gamerscore Blog is reporting that Xbox.com has posted an open letter from Peter Moore announcing that effective immediately, all Xbox 360s worldwide are covered by a warranty extension to three years for any red ring of death issue. They are also going to do the right thing by existing console owners who have already paid for out-of-warranty repairs by offering them a refund.

You’ve spoken, and we’ve heard you. Good service and a good customer experience are areas of the business that we care deeply about. And frankly, we’ve not been doing a good enough job.

If we have let any of you down in the experience you have had with your Xbox 360, we sincerely apologize. We are taking responsibility and are making these changes to ensure that every Xbox 360 owner continues to have a great experience.

It’s important to note that warranty extension only applies to red ring of death failures and that all other issues are still only covered by the original one-year warranty.

My Xbox 360 luckily hasn’t had any major dramas to date and I already paid EB Games $85 for an extended warranty, but I’m still glad Microsoft has taken this really important step. While they should have acted sooner instead of until now denying that this problem exists, it is nonetheless commendable that Microsoft has publicly acknowledged the Xbox 360’s reliability problems and shown a commitment to fix them.

The one other really important thing that Microsoft needs to do is fix the current situation with Xbox Live Marketplace DRM lockout on replacement consoles. When you have a console replaced, you are locked out of the XBLM content that you have downloaded (and paid for) unless you are signed in to Xbox Live while you use it.

Microsoft are on their way to making all Xbox 360 owners feel a little more comfortable about owning a console with potential design flaws leading to early failures. Let’s hope they are prepared to go all the way.

Note the new sponsored creep enemies in the new version (enlarge)

There’s a new Ink Tower that you can build and a new form of enemy: the dark creep. Since DTD is a game where good players have well-tested, carefully-planned strategies and every second counts, players will have to learn to play to game all over again. This isn’t necessarily a problem, except that the new changes to the game seem rather superficial and not a great deal of fun, so it doesn’t seem worthwhile to relearn it again.

Oh and guess what? There’s a lot more in-game advertising. A lot more. In fact, some of the creep bear the sponsor’s letter ‘K’ logo, which is really annoying and I think just goes too far. The slightly improved graphics certainly don’t make up for it, and the new sounds seem rather too cheesy.

I’m worried Desktop Tower Defense may have just jumped the shark.

Listen, I understand that this is great news for FeedBurner and congratulations to them. But as a FeedBurner user, I’m somewhat worried. (The main blog and comments feeds here at Digital Kaleidoscope are run through FeedBurner.)

Will unwanted Google AdSense start appearing in feeds? What will change in the FeedBurner service as it gets Google-fied? What will happen to FeedBurner’s sense of humour? My feed is currently imported into my Facebook notes. Will that have to change depending on the situation with ads?

Speaking of Facebook, there’s always speculation about whether they will be acquired. Again, that’s another one I worry about. I currently trust a good amount of private information to Facebook and I’d hate to see them bought out by Google — I just don’t trust them with any of my data. Even Microsoft would be a better buyer, if Facebook was to sell at all. (Either way, I’d still worry about losing the crisp, clean interface that Facebook currently sports.)

Oh the things that keep me up at night… everything being swallowed up by Google. What has the world come to?

OMG OMG OMG OMG! It’s true! Forget Halo 3. Hell, forget everything else in life. Blizzard has finally announced StarCraft II!

Are they going to declare this day a national holiday in Korea? When can I pre-order? Has it really only been nine years? It seems like two eternities!

Help, I think I need a tranquilliser.

Anyway, I’m finally starting to get excited about Halo 3! I haven’t got into the multiplayer beta since I don’t have the time (and I don’t want to buy a copy of crackdown), but come the end of September, you’re more than likely to see me plonk down the equivalent of USD $130 to pick up a copy of Halo 3 Legendary Edition and disappearing for a few days.

Not to mention… apparently a version of Bomberman like the original (not like the Bomberman: Act Zero garbage) is coming to Xbox Live Arcade in a few months too! Now just when are we going to get Boom Boom Rocket here in Australia?

So then the only thing left… is the holy grail itself huh? Don’t worry, I’ll be watching what happens in Korea this weekend very carefully!

OK, take a look at the screenshot from my Tablet.

If I search from within an existing Windows Explorer window (using the search box in the top-right), it works fine. If I search from the Start Menu, it also displays the results in the Start Menu itself fine. Search in Outlook also works.

But if I open the Start Menu to search and then click the “See all results” link, I get 5 blank files displayed in the results area that I can’t interact with in any way. (what the above screenshot shows). If I open the Start Menu, click on Search, and then search using the search box, I also get the same error.

I’ve restored by Indexing Options to the default settings and rebuilt the database, but I still get the same thing.

I suspect some component of Windows Search just needs to be reregistered for the view in Windows Explorer to work again. At least, that would have been my guess for Windows XP. But this is Windows Vista. What gives?

(Update: I fixed it by uninstalling Nokia PC Suite. I have no idea how that could have been responsible, but it fixed it… even after a repair installation of Windows Vista failed to fix it. The most puzzling part is that I reinstalled Nokia PC Suite and it didn’t reproduce the problem.)