As most of you probably realize by now, I love birds -- especially parrots! One issue that always bothered me was how chain pet stores (in particular PetSmart and PetCo) emphasize responsible adoption of dogs and cats, while at the same time sell birds and small mammals from factory breeders (the bird and rodent equivelent of "puppymills"). I have yet to walk into a PetSmart or PetCo where the birds waiting for adoption look healthy and happy.

Well, love them or hate them, the always controversial PETA is on the case. No matter what your opinion of PETA is in general, this particular campaign of theirs is very important. It's quite simple. You sign a pledge that you will not shop at PetSmart (or PetCo or other chain store) until the sale of live animals has stopped and send a letter to PetSmart to let them know of your boycott. With enough people boycotting and enough negative exposure, they will stop this cruel practice on small animals, just as they already have on dogs and cats.

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I got the following email from Defenders of Wildlife the other day. It's about saving a small bird called the Red Knot. They had me at "bird." :-)

Take action! The Red Knot needs your help! From the email...

The red knot is a tiny shorebird that's struggling to survive. Please help me save these amazing birds by taking action at http://action.defenders.org/saveredknots.

I'm not sure if this is related to the installation of Service Pack 3 on this XP box or not, but I recently ran into the following error after running "Add/Remove Windows Components" from within "Add/Remove Programs."

For those unable to see the above image, it says, "Setup was unable to open information file msnmsn.inf. Contact your system administrator. The specific error code is 0x2 at line 0."

Then you click okay and you get the following dialog.

"The application could not be initialized." Ahh, the death throws of the Windows setup application...

Well, from the error, it sure sounds like something is failing to parse an INF file. But why? This sounds like a job for ProcMon!

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It's finally here! RD Tabs 2.1! More info at this link...

http://www.avianwaves.com/Forums/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=102

Happy isn't (or shouldn't be) driving around in a car as large as your house. But this article does make me happy.

Maybe the astronomical gas prices do have one good side effect. Now excuse me while I go take out a loan to pay for this week's commute to work.

I haven't blogged in a while, so I thought I would post another Russinovich-style "case of" post about a problem I ran into recently. I had a WSUS client machine that was failing to install two specific Office Outlook 2003 updates. This is a very specific solution to a very generic error, but I'm hoping it might help somebody out there.

The client computer is running Windows Vista Business (x86) and the Office version is 2003, SP3.

The generic error I was getting was 779. I clicked on the 'search for more information' link and all I got were the generic troubleshooting tips. A cursory search on the live search and the google revealed nothing other than "reinstall office" suggestions, which, in my opinion, is the lazy way out and should always be the absolute last resort.

I decided to do some digging. First, I fired up SysInternal's amazing Process Monitor (ProcMon) application. This is my favorite troubleshooting tool in my toolbelt. Next, I performed the update installation from Windows Update manually. (Unfortunately, I couldn't find the standalone installers -- which I prefer -- for these updates, but it didn't make much difference this time.)

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There was a pretty serious cryptopgraphic bug in RD Tabs prior to 2.0.x version 2.0.14 and 2.1.x version 2.1.8 Beta. Please upgrade to 2.0.14 or 2.1.8 Beta today!

More info...

Security Advisory: http://www.avianwaves.com/Forums/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=93
RD Tabs 2.0.14: http://www.avianwaves.com/Forums/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=94
RD Tabs 2.1.8: http://www.avianwaves.com/Forums/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=95

Quietly, and without much fanfare, nerds.de released an updated version of LoopBe30, a virtual MIDI patchcable driver, which now supports 64-bit operating systems, such as Vista 64 and XP 64.

Users of 64-bit operating systems have been getting the middle finger from many audio companies (such as these guys, although recently they have taken a slightly softer approach). It is/was really short-sighted, because 64-bit operating systems are, in general, higher performance and can address more RAM, which are both monumentally important to audio production. It doesn't matter that audio width greater than 32-bits provides little more (no perceptible) clarity than 32-bit. That is not the issue. If the OS has less overhead and greater bandwidth, more registers, and more RAM, the entire system will be faster, releasing resource pressure for the audio application, leading to overall higher performance. These guys understood and were the first to fully embrace 64-bit computing. Good for them.

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By default, ostensibly for security purposes, Microsoft makes it very difficult to modify folder permissions on C:\Windows\Tasks -- the "Scheduled Tasks" folder. You'll notice there is no security or sharing tab in the properties of this folder. The only way to modify it is to use CACLS.EXE, XCACLS.EXE, or XCACLS.VBS, or a similar program which manipulates the NTFS permission flags directly. This is not really the ideal way to do it. It's much easier to use Explorer's view, so you can be sure of the permissions you are assigning, without messing up other permissions.

I found a fairly reasonable work-around for this problem. It's a multi-step process, but it is worth the trouble. Although command line operations with CACLS is still required, you can use the Explorer interface to assign the new permissions before applying them to the Tasks folder.

Be VERY cautious when following these steps, or you may inadvertently open up serious security holes -- there IS a reason Microsoft locks this folder down tightly.

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