So I installed Vista on Monday evening, and have been puttering around with it since then. There will probably be dozens of people writing about their Vista experiences, so I figured I would join the fray.

Everyone has different needs when it comes to their computers and operating systems. Some people are dazzled by the look and feel, others are strictly into the back-end services and functions, others care about functionality — what can it do?

And of the latter, there’s a wide range. Some people care about what games come bundled, others want to know how easy it is to get around. And so on.

I’m not that interested in the look of things, although I never used the Windows XP interface because it was ugly, especially that unchangeable green Start button. The Windows “classic” interface begun with Windows 98 was fine.

Still, Vista is pretty and I appreciate that. It’s taskbar is too dark, though, and can’t be changed — at least not through the OS itself, and I haven’t found a tool online. Yet.

For me it’s more about what it can do, and whether it does those things well.

The hardest part about the Vista switch (after five years of using XP) is that things have moved. I’m used to thinking in a particular folder structure, and it’s different enough in Vista that I have to think about where things are.

For example, both XP and Vista have folders for each user’s documents. In XP it’s My Documents; in Vista it’s simply Documents. (In XP the My Documents folder was inside \Documents and Settings\user, while Vista puts it in \Users\user.)

But in XP, the My Music and My Pictures folders — indeed, all the “My” folders — were inside My Documents. In Vista they’re on the same level.

This is, of course, no big deal. But it takes some getting used to.

There are other things that are making work for me.

In XP’s Control Panel, you changed your display settings — all of them — with the Display control. In Vista you “Personalize” it, and that control has a variety of sub-menus.

The big problem so far is that Display starts with “D” and Personalize starts with “P.” The Control Panel icons are alphabetized, so I always look for that control at the top, then remember that it’s been renamed and go searching.

Vista’s control panels are all fancier. They’ve got sidebars with all sorts of suggestions, such as what other controls you want. You can’t turn them off, though, as you could with XP. More things to get used to.

Other Control Panel applets have been renamed, or things have been moved, so there’s more hunting going on. But then you bump into an area where Vista shines: search.

Search is everywhere. Looking through the list of applications but can’t find the one you want? Enter part of its name in the search box and you’ll find it — Vista knows that you’re search for a program, not a document.

Browsing Control Panel and looking to change your password? Enter password in the search box and you’ll find Control Panel applets that have something to do with passwords — Vista knows you’re searching for a control.

It took me a bit to remember to use that robust, ubiquitous search, but I’m getting better at using it.

I’ve already found some bugs, of course. Most notably, Windows Explorer crashes regularly when I few a particular folder that has images and videos in it. No idea why, but it have have to do with a thumbnail problem.

Meanwhile, I’m busy tweaking (using the terrific TweakVI program I found), making everything work the way I like. Gone are the super-smooth animations of text boxes and such; now it’s snappier and less “mushy.” Gone are cluttered sidebars and menus from the various folder boxes. Gone is the annoying desktop Sidebar, which inexplicably covers a huge chunk of real estate even if it’s virtually empty. (I like the clock, so I dragged it off the Sidebar and onto the desktop proper.)

I use Thunderbird for my e-mail, but I was going to give Windows Mail a whirl… but it won’t start. Maybe tonight I’ll see what’s up with that.

In a few days, I’m sure, I’ll have tweaked to my heart’s content and will have everything working the way I like it. And then, like Windows 98 and XP before it, Vista will just fade away into the background.

I’ve upgraded to the latest version of WordPress. As a result, some things might not work right away while I tweak things.

I usually love the Washington Post — great reporting, good writing, in-depth investigations, and so on. But the paper really blew it with it story on January 29, “Can Food From Cloned Animals Be Called Organic?”

First and most blatantly, it gets a basic fact wrong in the headline and the very first paragraph — the lede.

There’s nothing like a tender steak from a free-range, grass-fed, hormone-free, antibiotic-free, organic and — oh, yes — cloned cow.

Stop right there. The discussion is not about selling meat from cloned animals. It’s about selling meat from the children of cloned animals. That’s a major difference; those animals would be born naturally, not built.

It’s just much more sensational to talk about meat from “cloned animals.”

Second problem: The article is incredibly lopsided — it’s full of comments from people against the idea of calling the meat from the children of cloned animals “organic,” even if those animals are raised completely naturally. But it has precious few comments from people pointing out things like I did above.

It is, in fact, all about the unfounded fears of people with a vested interest in the most narrow possible interpretation of the “organic” label.

And some of those comments are off the wall. Take this one:

“It’s like putting artificial apples in an apple pie,” said Joseph Mendelson III, legal director of the Center for Food Safety, a consumer group in Washington that has petitioned the government to more strictly regulate the sale of clone products for human consumption. “People would consider that a downright violation of the American way.”

Er, no. It makes for a good scare tactic, but it’s nonsense.

Ever take a cutting from a plant — cut off a branch and plant it separately? If it grew into a tree, would its fruit be somehow “artificial”?

Now, what if you took a fruit from that tree, planted a seed from it, and grew a new tree? Would fruit from that tree be “artificial”?

Not a chance. It’s a full generation removed from the cutting stage, just as the meat we’re talking about would come from animals a full generation removed from the cloning process.

Ever eat a seedless orange?

If you want to label the children of cloned animals as somehow “non-organic” (which is nonsense, if you ask me), then the children of any animals that were genetically tweaked would also have to be labeled that way — and that includes selective breeding, which has been practiced for millennia.

If you want to say that meat from cloned animals should be kept out of the food supply, fine. But no one is talking about that. You cannot equate that with putting the meat from their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren in the supply… unless you’re more interested in scaring people than in educating them.

Naturally.

So here comes the hyperbole and incorrect information. The thread on Slashdot is titled, “Microsoft PR Paying to “Correct” Wikipedia” and says in part that Microsoft was “looking for an intermediary to make edits and corrections favorable to them” and would pay for this.

Trouble is, that’s not exactly true. But who needs truth when it’s easier to get worked up over the (false) idea that Microsoft was paying someone to change Wikipedia entries for them?

Lost in the noise, sadly, is the comment from Microsoft’s Doug Mahugh, the guy– who, incidentally, doesn’t work for the PR department — who made the request of Rick Jelliffe. he explains what actually happened:

Nobody ever contacted Rick and asked him to “make edits and corrections favorable to” Microsoft. Also, nobody from Microsoft PR contacted him. I am the person who contacted Rick, and I am a technical evangelist specializing in the Open XML file formats. And here is what I asked Rick to do:

“Wikipedia has an entry on Open XML that has a lot of slanted language, and we’d like for them to make it more objective but we feel that it would be best if a non-Microsoft person were the source of any corrections … Would you have any interest or availability to do some of this kind of work? Your reputation as a leading voice in the XML community would carry a lot of credibility, so your name came up in a discussion of the Wikipedia situation today.”

“Feel free to say anything at all on your blog about the process, about our communication with you on matters related to Open XML, or anything else. We don’t need to “approve” anything you have to say, our goal is simply to get more informed voices into the debate … feel free to state your own opinion.”

And yet the headlines come, like this one from The Age: “Microsoft ‘tried to doctor Wikipedia‘”.

Soon, alas, this will enter the popular lexicon as truth, and you’ll see articles talking about “the time Microsoft tried to pay someone to edit Wikipedia.” [sigh]

Huh? you say. Let me rephrase.

Information about digital photos is stored in the photos themselves, and there are two kinds. One is EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format), which consists of various camera settings — aperture, shutter speed, lens, etc.

The other is IPTC (named for the International Press Telecommunications Council). It allows the photographer to add a title, caption, keywords, etc. Adobe’s XMP metadata format incorporates IPTC.

Anyway.

The important thing is that these are standards. If you use software that lets you tag or caption images without using a standard, and you ever give up that software, you’re screwed. But if you use EXIF and IPTC data, you’re set for the long haul. Lots of software supports both. (I’ve written about this before.)

I use a wonderful program called Pixvue to quickly edit my photos’ IPTC info — adding titles and captions, mostly. That’s because Windows itself didn’t support it. If you right-clicked an image and messed with the Properties dialog, you were messing with proprietary Windows stuff, not standard IPTC.

But now, finally, Microsoft has released a free tool that lets you view and edit EXIF and IPTC info in your digital images. Whoopee! You can get it from Microsoft, or you can get it right here.

More info from Microsoft here.

If you have more than a handful of photos, you really need to add IPTC data to them, and this is an easy and standard way to do it.

Song for Three Soldiers (1940)
By Stephen Vincent Benét

- - -

Oh, where are you coming from, soldier, fine soldier,
In your dandy new uniform, all spick and span,
With your helmeted head and the gun on your shoulder,
Where are you coming from, gallant young man?

I come from the war that was yesterday’s trouble,
I come with the bullet still blunt in my breast;
Though long was the battle and bitter the struggle,
Yet I fought with the bravest, I fought with the best.

Oh, where are you coming from, soldier, tall, soldier,
With ray-gun and sun-bomb and everything new,
And a face that might well have been carved from a boulder,
Where are you coming from, now tell me true!

My harness is novel, my uniform other
Than any gay uniform people have seen,
Yet I am your future and I am your brother
And I am the battle that has not yet been.

Oh, where are you coming from, soldier, gaunt soldier,
With weapons beyond any reach of my mind,
With weapons so deadly the world must grow older
And die in its tracks, if it does not turn kind?

Stand out of my way and be silent before me!
For none shall come after me, foeman or friend,
Since the seed of your seed called me out to employ me,
And that was the longest, and that was the end.

- - -

Why is this here? Because although Benét’s work is known — he’s most famous for the short story “By the Waters of Babylon,” this particular poem of his is all but absent from the Net. (Benét’s Wikipedia entry doesn’t even list it!) This is my way of helping it be found.

Every now and then I’m struck with the desire to get a little more detail on something that I’m sure a lot of people already know backwards and forwards.

You’ve all seen the ribbon block that soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines wear on their dress uniforms. I knew, vaguely, that each represented some event or citation, but finally gave in and found a complete list. (Lists, actually — one for each service.)

File under “FYI.”

Army ribbons.
Navy ribbons.
Air Force ribbons.
Marine Corps ribbons.

Cool! Cool!

“Are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?” — Delegate Frank Hargrove, Hanover County, during discussions over whether Virginia should formally apologize for slavery. He added, “[B]lack citizens should get over it.”

Oh, and when a Jewish delegate, David Englin, Alexandria, said he was offended by the comment, Hargrove responded, “I think your skin is a little too thin.”

After George “Macaca” Allen, and Virgil “Muslims shouldn’t hold office” Goode, I wonder what this little remark will do to cement Virginia’s reputation.

USDA Forest Service Reins in Freewheeling Woodsy the Owl

It’s huge, but it may not be obvious for a while. In June, Netflix will allow subscribers to watch any of 1,000 movies on demand through their broadband connections. (The library will expand — it has the support of most major studios.)

I’m going to cover this in my column in more detail, but this certainly adds another dimension to Apple TV (which was overshadowed by the iPhone announcement) and Microsoft’s Windows Media Center Edition (overshadowed by, well, everything).

Netflix’s pricing scheme works out to $1 per hour on demand — if you have the $6 monthly plan, you get six hours; the $18 plan gets you 18 hours.

Not clear is whether these come in addition to your physical disks, or instead of. Also not clear is what happens if you have two hours left and try to watch a movie that’s 2:05.

So I guess the question soon will be, why bother owning a movie at all?

Well, there are a lot of things. But at this moment I’ll point out one.

Reporters do not write headlines. Neither do their editors, usually.

Headlines are written after the reporter and editor are done, by someone at the copy desk — the person who is correcting any style errors and worrying about libelous statements.

I mention this because I found this blog post that suggests otherwise. For example, I didn’t write the one attributed to me. Nor, I’ll wager, did Phyllis Furman of the New York Daily News, Jim Rossman of the Dallas Morning News, Ellen Lee of the San Francisco Chronicle… you get the idea.

Sometimes there are incredible heds I wish I had written. Sometimes there are awful ones that make me want to throttle a copy editor. Either way, reporters can’t take the credit or the blame.

I usually leave it to my wife to post great sales and freebies on her blog, but here’s one worth pointing out.

We print a lot at home, and had been using an inkjet, like I think most people. Problem is, they’re hideously expensive — that is, the ink cost means you pay a lot per page. Laser printers are much more economical. (Save the inkjet for printing photos.)

I did my research to balance print quality, speed, and media cost and settled on a Samsung ML-2510. It’s about $125 (only $20 or so more than its lower-end brother, the ML-2010), and it’s excellent — fast, quiet, and gives great prints.

Even better, toner is cheap compared to inkjet ink, and, unlike with inkjets, you can get great results with third-party refill kits. Bottom line: If you print mostly text, a laser is the way to go.

Which leads me to the fact that Samsung is now offering a $60 rebate on the ML-2510, making it an incredible deal. Staples has it for $130 (that is, $70 post-rebate), with free delivery, too.

I have no clue how long this lasts, but if you’re looking for a great black and white printer, this is it.

Minor update: I printed envelopes with the 2510 for the first time, and the envelopes came out perfectly the first time without my tweaking the settings. So I’m impressed.

Not long ago, I wrote a column about how Microsoft had screwed up the new versions of both Internet Explorer and Office. I won’t go into details here — read the column for that — but let’s just say that I’ll stick with Office XP or 2003 as long as I can, or switch to OpenOffice if I must.

Today I see that David Greiner has found yet another reason to avoid Office 2007: Outlook has apparently been crippled. Well, maybe not crippled, but its handling of HTML messages (which, like it or not, a lot of people send) was ‘taken back five years.’

Redmond, it seems, has lost its way.

Oh my gosh, I dared to criticize something Apple in my column, and out of the woodwork, as always, come the Mac fanboys, with their ever-so-polite and mature commentary. I save some of the mail I get, and the folder structure shown below should tell you all you need to know. (And yes, it’s real — it’s been that way since the first screaming Mac-fan fits. 

John Dvorak has a perfect take on it. Update:: It’s amusing to me that MacDailyNews gives a list of “related” articles that includes many of the things I’ve written about Apple products… except, oddly, this one: New report spells trouble for music industry, not Apple. Why? Because I had something positive to say about Apple, and perish the thought that they would let people know about that!

From the BBC:

Police hunting mystery swordsman

Police on Tyneside are seeking a man carrying a sword who came to the aid of plain clothes officers during a burglary attempt.

The officers were threatened by a man with a knife after they discovered armed men trying to break into a house in Laygate, South Shields.

Another man armed with a samurai sword appeared and attacked the man with the knife, before leaving the scene.

Three men have been charged with aggravated burglary.

One faces an additional charge of attempted wounding with intent to resist arrest.

Here’s my idea: Any legislator who votes against stem-cell research should be banned for life from every receiving any kind of treatment that results from it.

It’s going to be done, either by private industry, by states, or by other countries. But the people who would rather see embryos destroyed than be used to potentially find cures for a myriad of diseases should never, ever, be allowed access to those cures.

Nor their children. If they are willing to try to prevent my child from ever receiving this kind of treatment, they damn well better be willing to sacrifice their own children’s opportunities.

You may already know that Cisco is suing Apple over the iPhone trademark, which Cisco owns. The two companies had been negotiating Apple’s potential use of it, but no documents were signed when Steve Jobs made the announcement Tuesday.

Some people are saying, incorrectly, that Cisco registered the trademark to “squat” it — that is, to be able to sell it to Apple if Apple ever developed a phone. (”iPhone” being a good guess at the name.)

Cisco pointed out today that that isn’t correct:

Cisco owns the iPhone trademark. We have since 2000, when we bought a company called Infogear Technology, which had developed a product that combined web access and telephone. Infogear’s registrations for the mark date to 1996, before iMacs and iPods were even glimmers in Apple’s eye. We shipped and/or supported that iPhone product for years. We have been shipping new, updated iPhone products since last spring, and had a formal launch late last year. Apple knows this; they approached us about the iPhone trademark as far back as 2001, and have approached us several times over the past year.

Just so that’s clear.