It was a good day on the software front with several notable releases.
Apple pulled off a big launch with new versions of iTunes for both Windows and Mac OS. I’m trying it out now and initial impressions are very positive. It looks like they did a much better job than with QuickTime. Features include access to the iTunes Music Store (of course), music sharing between Windows and Mac versions, CD burning, and free MP3 or AAC encoding at a full range of bitrates.
On the Mac side, Fire has been updated to 0.32g, which finally fixes interoperability with MSN after Microsoft’s “security” lockdown. Finally! I can log into my MSN account without using an official client.
On the PC side, Nullsoft has released the first beta of Winamp 5 and I’m sure they’re hoping to finally win over all the users who never stopped using the venerable Winamp 2.x series even after 3.x was released. I’m a member of said group.
I’m having serious file integrity issues on Aqualung—a very, very bad thing. It’s something I first noticed back when I got my hands on the Halo beta; all the archives checked out just fine and the image would extract without complaint from either WinRAR or 7-Zip and then the installer would cough up hairballs on random cab files. After some experimenting I discovered that the extracted image file was getting a different checksum every damn time! I know that the problem doesn’t lie with the source files because they work fine when I copy the files to other machines. Now if this isn’t apt for splitting hairs I don’t know what is. Well, I’ve ignored it for about a month since it only happened occasionally and only when I extract from RARs, or rather that’s the only time I’ve noticed it. I downloaded some “Maharomatic” this evening and guess what, it’s doing it again! Now, the more this happens, the more it disturbs me. It raises all sorts of unsettling questions like, “How many of my files are really corrupt?” The answer is that I don’t know and it scares the hell out of me. It’s a dark day when you can’t trust your computer with your data.
I worked in the VLSI lab for another couple hours this evening after Statistics.
I watched episodes #19 and #20 of “Wolf’s Rain” over various meals. The story is finally in full swing again. Episode #20 was particularly good.
