This dialog box is so annoying, and it's compounded by the fact that when the user clicks "Later" - basically "Sod off you stupid dialog box" the situation is made worse by another dialog box telling the user that they will be updated anyway the next time they restart. At this point the natural reaction is "I DON'T CARE GO AWAY".

Software Update is something that users expect to be pretty transparent, and the fact that it isn't in a lot of software is a cause of annoyance (and occasional hilarity).

One of the worst offenders I think is Adobe. Today I'm going to bitch about their updater. It pops up every time Crap-o-bat is started, offering some cryptically worded and I'm convinced irrelevant update to one of the myriad pieces of shared code junk Adobe software installs onto my computer. In general, the Crap-o-bat user experience is among the worst of desktop software, but I'll stay focused on the updater. I swat this annoying dialog box away over and over, until eventually other circumstances cause me to have to restart the computer.

At startup, Windows does its usual charming thing of showing the desktop approximately 3-4 minutes before anything's actually interactive, and so I sit here dumbly waiting for all the startup items and tray icons to load. After a short while, the Adobe updater appears. I figure what the heck, I've rebooted, let's let it do its thing.

One of the first rules of progress meters is to make sure that progress is shown immediately and that it's constantly updated, even if the steps are very small. This provides the user with a sense of satisfaction that something is happening and that they are slowly getting towards their goal state. The Adobe Updater appears and sits for about 2-3 minutes with an empty progress bar. Is it hung? No, the window is still interactive. I wonder if this is not some retarded Windows MSI database checking phase. Eventually the updater begins chugging through each update. The best (and by best I mean worst) part is that Adobe seems to have invented a new kind of progress meter, which shows indeterminate progress within a particular step of a multi-step install progress within a single master progress meter. The updater achieves this by having the progress meter step up, and then once it reaches some arbitrary limit fall back to where it was at the start of the step, and repeats this process over and over until that step is complete. This is very disconcerting to the user since it looks like something is failing causing progress to be reset. Since little in the UI changes, I began to think the updater had jammed and was about to close it until after another 3 minutes or so it continued on to the next step and I figured out what it was doing.

In all, the process took about 20 minutes to complete, which is staggeringly long considering the software being updated. In the process, the updater dropped an unwanted Crap-o-bat icon on my desktop. Why they felt the need to do this I'll never know - especially since Crap-o-bat is one of those pieces of software that actually needs no icons anywhere on your computer, since the way you typically launch it is either through its browser plugin or by double clicking on a PDF file in Explorer. Why their updater felt like their software deserved a spot on my precious desktop is beyond me, except perhaps to think that their marketing department holds users in utter contempt and that simply branding people's computing experiences with unnecessary junk bearing their company name is worthwhile.

This is not realistically possible. Not without a truckload more kitchen sinks, ruinous lies and other deceit at least.

Despite what the MSM says, Obama's 168 delegate lead is not "fragile." It's a lead in pledged delegates - support from voters, and it's 13.5% of Hillary's entire pledged delegate count. This is no razor thin margin.

And even if it was a thin margin - since when does coming second, no matter by how much, mean that you should be crowned victorious? What was that old quote about how an election won by just one vote should be cherished as much as one won unanimously?

So, given the lack of realistic chances of Clinton winning with the numbers she needs to to reverse Obama's lead, and the very realistic likelihood that she will bring out more of the bad stuff and attempt to ruin Obama, if the superdels want to wrap this up early, feel free. It can end as soon as this week if they want it to, Florida and Michigan can save a bunch of money, and work can start to unite the Democratic party now and get started preparing for the November general. Every day this mess drags on, the uphill climb to the general will be all the steeper.

Oh and this idea that caucuses should be made to count less by considering the "popular vote" as equivalent in importance to delegate count is stupid. If you're going to sanction a particular type of election and use it to accumulate delegates - the standard of success as defined by the rules - then don't change those rules in the middle and say that since the voting system was less representative that those delegates don't count as much. Either use caucuses and back their results fully, or don't use them at all.

"Look, we believe that the road to 1600 Pennyslvania Avenue goes right through the state of Pennsylvania, and if Barack Obama can't win there, how can he win the general election? I mean he doesn't seem to be passing the Commander in Chief test, he's not passing the Steward of the Economy Test, and it looks like he's saying he won't pass the Keystone Test."

We're now into the realms of the patently disgusting.

Hillary Clinton can no longer win this fair and square, aside from Barack Obama dropping out or some other similarly dramatic change in the race.

Despite this she pushes on, pouring on these destructive attacks that give fuel to the Republicans' (or more specifically their 527s) campaigns in the fall. Her hope is clearly that she can conjure up some way to steal the nomination despite the will of the people.

My idealistic wishes:

• Hillary Clinton realizes the writing is on the wall and graciously bows out, which would help unify the party and make everyone who had lost respect for her during this process regain a whole lot of it.
• The Democratic Party should censure her campaign for damaging tactics.

I hope that if Barack Obama becomes the nominee he does not make Clinton his VP - for an unusual reason: given the levels she's stooped to (as demonstrated above), he would have to watch his back in the very literal sense. Just a thought.

Tell me how unity is fostered by having some mad cow steal the nomination when her votes and delegates dont support it?

For those saying Obama would have a shot at the presidency again in 8 years I direct you to Al Gore, who Leslie calls "Our president in exile." Do we really want the effects of another 8 years of Clintonian politics?

Hillary Clinton, Fratricidal Maniac - Jonathan Chait, The New Republic

It's Still Over For Hillary - Dick Morris, The Hill

The Clintons, a horror film that never ends - Andrew Sullivan, The Sunday Times

Breaking the Final Rule - Gary Hart, The Huffington Post

Clinton's experience claim under scrutiny - Mike Dorning and Christi Parsons, The Chicago Tribune

The Monster: A Loyal Clinton Soldier Turns In His Badge - Seth Grahame-Smith, The Huffington Post

With every day, it becomes clear that Hillary will not be able to win the nomination fair and square. The question is - will she let her personal lust for power destroy the party? This business of Obama as VP is just a distraction and is frankly disgusting and a sign of a desperate campaign. iIt's time for her to step down.

• Navigating cascading menus is hard. On Windows XP the Start menu is implemented as a one. Cascading menus are notoriously hard for users to navigate without a lot of hand-eye coordination with the mouse. Microsoft seems to have learned this lesson and remedied this in Vista by embedding a tree view inline.
• Every app and their cousin build ridiculously complex folder hierarchies, sometimes for no reason other than pure vanity. Having to burrow through hierarchies like this: Start->Programs->TurdSoft->TurdSoft Crapr 1.0->TurdSoft Crapr are not uncommon. How often do you really want all this junk in there? Also many Open Source tools and command line utilities that have no real front end install shortcuts to documentation here. Ick!
• Because of the crappiness of Windows' Uninstall UI ("Add/Remove Programs"), every app feels compelled to also litter the menu with Uninstall shortcuts, causing each program to require a subfolder just for itself - its launcher and its uninstall shortcut.
• On Windows XP, the menu takes an unbelievably long time to generate. I have no idea why it's so hard to display a list of items. For my system, the dropshadow of the menu draws then some time later the menu pops in. It can take over 2-3 minutes for the menu to actually appear.
• On Windows XP, applications starting can steal focus from the start menu and close it up. This happens at system startup if you have a bunch of apps configured to start automatically - their windows appearing cause the Start Menu to disappear, which is frustrating if you've just waited 3-4 minutes for it to populate!

Microsoft seems to have largely given up on "All Programs", and have improved the usability of this menu a great deal in Windows XP with the most often used programs section. But the ghetto within is a sorry reminder of good intentions gone wrong, abuse of privilege by application developers and the shortcomings of other aspects of Windows.

At what point does the Clinton family's lust for coronation become so great that it causes them to destroy the very things that they are supposedly fighting for? No politician is perfect, but this is just gross.

There's a song by the Kaiser Chiefs called "I Predict A Riot", and it seems applicable now.

It isn't a victory if you're the only name on the ballot...

The problem facing Howard Dean now is as follows. Obama has been able to rally a huge turnout to support him, including a large number of young and first time voters. These voters have been electrified by his message. My theory is that these voters may not turn out to support Clinton as the nominee, especially if her campaign ends up stealing the nomination via back room deals. At that point, the despair will be tangible, and I don't expect this generation of voters will forgive or forget easily. Nor will many of them fall into line behind Clinton, because so many of them are responding to specific elements of his message. While I don't know what they'll vote for McCain, I think it's definitely likely that many would just abstain completely. If the race remains close, as it looks to be, Dean should tread carefully, because a generation of Democratic voters could be in the balance.

Disclosure: I favour Obama, but I can't vote, so I just sit on the sidelines and throw peanuts. The specific area of his policy I like the most are his positions on network neutrality and government transparency. Transparency is key to successful, healthy open source projects, and I my hope is that it would help heal the fractured relationship between the government and the people, too.

Words fail me really, but it seems the DNC would trade the disenfranchisement of an entire country with that of voters in a couple of states. If they do this, and it swings the nomination one way or another, I sincerely hope it causes the party to break apart and ultimately destroy itself.

This is my "first run" experience.