I am a regular on this blog. It’s on my RSS list ;)

It was a tongue in cheek comment :P

;)

Regards,
“Anon”

a) It lets them know they can install the update (or a later version) to fix the problem if they had it (and it was a big problem for some people).

b) It tells people about the issues they’ll have to deal with if they go back to an older driver for some reason (which happens a fair amount; e.g. when people discover certain things look/perform/work poorly with a new driver but were okay with an older one).

There is a balance to strike between tedious minutiae and a total lack of detail, but this bug was enough of an issue that the change log should’ve said “* Fixed handle leak in Stereo 3D Vision service” or something similar.

Still, at least there is a change log. Most of the time when I update my iPod’s firmware I’m told the update contains:

* Bug fixes.

(Even when it contains new features…)

OTOH, NVidia didn’t completely fix the issue with the Stereo 3D Vision service… namely why the hell is it set to auto-start on my machine when I do not have the hardware to use it? At least it can be stopped and set to manual. Shame we have to remember to do so every time we update the drivers to avoid wasting resources & boot time on something we’ll never use.

@Raf: That sucks, man. On one hand, you called them out on their issue but they could have been nice enough to somehow acknowledge what you did; even a simple, “thank you” email would’ve been much better than a sweep under the rug. I’m sure they would just brush it off as having already been a, “to-do” bug on their list prior to you posting about it, anyway.

Speaking in general now, I’m still baffled by how many people call these two companies with their technology, “crap.” Sure, sometimes they put out some really shoddy drivers, but it’s going to happen. Likewise, when they develop their technology, they can’t accompany for EVERY SINGLE scenario! It’s no different with Windows or any other piece of hardware/software that can be ran under just about any given environment. Personally, I understand it from that perspective and in the long run, I’d rather have some issues to bitch about to have them eventually fix than to not have the technology at all. If you think you can do better or (better yet) help everyone else out as well as yourself, by all means! Rafael did.

With that said, while I personally understand the process of development and the fact that these people can’t accomodate every single thing with every single release, what I DO NOT agree with is the very thing done (or not done, as the case may be) to Rafael here on the part of NVIDIA. It may seem trivial and of course it was Rafael’s decision to dig as deep as he did and post the information, but not even so much as a nod from NVIDIA… that’s just plain crappy. No other way to put it.

-Stephen

BTW for some unknown reason this bug doesn’t show up on my computer with 190.38. Which is good, because I have and use 3D Vision.

Doe blame ya ;)

Now to see how long it takes nVidia to sort out the localised version – English (UK) is still on 192.38.