IMDB goes one up with sign-up challenge

I just created an account at IMDB (because irritatingly they don't let you even read user comments unless you sign up) and noticed their image based sign-up challenge went one up on other systems I tried. I faced the usual distorted image of some letters and maybe numbers, the point was I couldn't really tell, it looked kind of like mobonna or it could have been mo6onna. However they sneakily relied on the fact that the word was a movie or movie star name. So in fact it was "madonna" - something no automated OCR code could get right first time.

Its clever to use the context and human domain knowledge to disambiguate possible interpretation of the image. Not that this is fool proof - I can imagine if someone really wanted to hack into IMDB and create false accounts they would quickly code up something to do a fuzzy match of possible character strings against movie and movie star names. In addition you know that IMDB can only use a small number of move names and movies stars because they want to make it as universal as possible. That may actually make the job of the sign-up spammer easier.

Still, it is an interesting direction to move in. I'm sure there are other more reliable fuzzy match tactics that could be used in this never ending war against spammers.

Backup luv

Finally I have found a backup program I can love - Acronis True Image 10.0 (Home). The praise may be slightly premature since I've yet to apply the product in a restoration situation but so far I can say that True Image is at once both powerful, fast and yeah - SIMPLE! That last one is really important to me, not because I have problems understanding stuff like backup sets, volumes and sessions (terms my current solution EMC/Dantz Retrospect uses), but because everyone I recommend a backup solution to must be able to use it without needed to call me to do a restore for them.

I've previously used Acronis' disk migration tools with zero problems and have always been impressed with their simplicity. I really don't have any doubts that True Image will be able to restore its partition images without problems. And I've always longed for something as simple as a whole partition backup solution for fast and easy whole disk restoration after a drive crash (something that seems to be in the air at the moment) while maintaining the ability to restore single files and folders if necessary. That Acronis does this, and incremental and differential backups is even better. That they have a completely straightforward backup scheduling interface is even better still. That I can not only browse a backup but also mount it as a regular lettered drive and use it is just icing on the cake.

So far I've been very impressed with the blinding speed of Acronis backups, to my local Firewire external drive it is storing about 1GB (that's one gigabyte) per minute or 133 Gbits per second - probably about 1/3 the theoretical max but far in excess of what I've ever managed to get out of Retrospect. So one of my typical desktop machines with about 40GB used can be completeley backed up at the partition level and read verified in under an hour - something I can easily afford to schedule every day. My standard two week alternating schedule with weekly complete backup and daily incremental or differential is even easier to contemplate. Acronis provides further flexibility by allowing scheduled backups to run at a latter date if the computer is off at the time of the scheduled backup - something that Retrospect expects you to shell big extra bucks for (boooo).

Thus far the only thing I've found missing in the True Image Home product is some kind of email notificaiton of backup warnings or errors. I think that isn't really essential for a home backup system, its more something that is useful for remotely managed machines and hence falls into the enterprise category that Acronis have a whole different product version for.

One would be tempted to compare this product to Norton Ghost which has been around for years. I've used earlier versions of Ghost in a purely archival mode and been less than impressed. It was slow and installation of any Norton product is always horrendously intrusive since Norton seems to want to take over your entire machine and push every single Norton add-on product down your throat. Ghost now has a "Save and Restore" version with a more Backup focused market in mind but comes in at $69.99 per computer and does not appear to have incremental or differential capabilities that Acronis is offering. Given my previous bad experiences of everything Norton I think I'll give it a wide miss...

Even though at $49.95 per computer True Image will cost more than Retrospect for a family or small business with more than three computers I think I'll be recommending it in the future, assuming some trial drive restorations go okay. My hat is off to Acronis for releasing such a solid, powerful and yet simple product that really can be used by a typical home user.

No Internet Exploder for you!

Since I hardly ever use Internet Explorer it may seem strange that I'm in a hurry to install IE 7.0 which just came out today (well yesterday now). However I'm an early adopter right, so I'm predisposed to installing all this stuff ASAP, as a matter of fact I first tried out an IE 7.0 beta over a month ago. Hardly a record but earlier than most.

So I'm somewhat unhappy to say that after more than half a dozen attempts and reboots I still can't install IE 7.0 because every time it just announces without reason that the installation failed and I needed to reboot right away because the failed installation may have broken my machine. It took a couple of goes to realize that after rebooting there is an IE bookmark dropped on my desktop with a link to a MS knowledge base article. Through that I was able to discover the IE 7 installation log but unfortunately it matched none of the symptoms described other than maybe I needed to turn off my antivirus software.

So I did turn it off and retried the install with no luck.

By searching for the one error I did find in the setup log (which was "DoRegistryUpdates:UpdSpInstallFromInfSection Failed for ProductInstall.GlobalRegistryChanges.Install error: 0x5") I was then able to locate another KB article that described turning on verbose setup logging which of course required a registry hack. After rebooting and reinstalling and refailing I was able to locate nothing new in the log so I'm none the wiser. I suspect the problem is a registry permission error but I have no idea what entry needs fixing.

Oh well, I'll just keep on waiting, maybe by the time Microsoft decides to push Explorer 7.0 out using Windows Update they will have fixed this little installation SNAFU. What I find really amazing though is the hoops I had to go through to do even a little investigation of the problem - most consumers would have given up right then and there and installed Firefox instead. Really the level of knowledge I had to use to follow their diagnostic instructions was at least that needed for a typical Linux install issue, so how great is that?

Microsoft adds Genuine Advantage plugin for Firefox

I noticed today that Firefox users no longer have to go through as many hoops to pass Microsoft's "Genuine Advantage" test if you are downloading software from them. You used to have to download an external executable, get a code and paste it into the browser, now there is a Firefox plugin you can download that behaves just like the Internet Explorer ActiveX plugin. The result is smoother hassle free downloads without firing up IE.

This is definitely an indication that the 20% or so of non-IE users is starting to make it's mark at Redmond. Now all we need to do is have them create a Windows Update plugin and we can ditch IE permanently (not that it is something you can actually uninstall though).