Tag: software

Windows Vista SP1 RTM

winlogo This is very, very strange. Microsoft announced today that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) has been released to manufacturing, which should mean that it’s ready to go. Yet for some reason, they have decided to not make SP1 available until March:

In mid-March, we will release Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Update (in English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese) and to the download center on microsoft.com.  Customers who visit Windows Update can choose to install Service Pack 1.

The post talks about some driver issues, but as Long Zheng mentions, it doesn’t sound like they are going to use the extra time to fix those issues. You would think they could at least put the download up at the Download Center. I’m really hoping that SP1 will have a positive impact on performance and battery life and I’m eager to install it!

In other "RTM news" today, Windows Server 2008 was also released to manufacturing! That’s about on schedule. Don’t forget the launch events are happening later this month.

Read: Windows Vista Team Blog, Windows Server Division Blog

Community Server to WordPress: Part 3

wordpressMy blog is now running on WordPress! It was quite a bit of work, but the migration from Community Server is now complete. Here is what I wrote last July when I decided I wanted to switch to WordPress. You can also read part 1 and part 2 of the migration process.

Here’s what I did since part 2:

  • Removed some spam comments and invalid data from the CS database.
  • Finished up customizing the theme.
  • Spent far too much time trying to get email notifications working. I’m definitely not a PHP expert, but the way mail is implemented just seems bizarre. I eventually got it working, and decided to use the wpPHPMailer plugin for WordPress.
  • Installed some more plugins that I wanted to use, such as the wonderful Subscribe to Comments.
  • Made some additional adjustments to the code.
  • Upgraded PHP to the latest version.

I also setup a second WordPress installation and changed my website over to that.

After I ran the migration tool I had written, I did some more testing, and discovered a big problem with the redirections! In the C# code I had simply written “datePosted.Month.ToString()” and “datePosted.Day.ToString()” to build the URLs. The problem is that if the month was January, that would return a “1”. Community Server likes to have “01” however! Long story short – I just had to add some regex code to the list of redirections to make it work.

As far as I can tell, it’s all working wonderfully! I’ll be doing more testing over the weekend, and please if you notice anything wonky, let me know.

Next up: my Dad’s blog and the Blogosphere.ca blogs.

Community Server to WordPress: Part 2

WordPress Okay, time for another update on the blog migration. I stopped keeping track of hours, but I would guess I’ve spent about 9 hours or so on it thus far. Part of that time is for the theme though, and I tend to take quite a while working on those.

Here’s what I’ve accomplished since part 1:

  • Discovered that extracting the tags from existing posts was harder than I first thought! That’s because I’ve used three or four different styles for including tags over the years, so I had to update the code to take that into account.
  • Same problem affected the “Read” link at the bottom of a post.
  • Ran into a bunch of crap data problems in Community Server, mainly around trackbacks and and spam comments. For some reason they were appearing to me as posts. I solved the problem by deleting them in the source where appropriate, and accounting for them in the code otherwise.
  • Another crap data issue – one post had four entries!
  • Implemented and tested the redirection code necessary so that existing links will continue to work. I think this part is really interesting because I’ve basically got PHP and ASP.NET running in the same application.
  • Spent some time working on the theme, which you can see at the test blog. It looks more or less the same as this theme, but with some nice improvements.
  • Also spent some time looking into plugins and activated a few.

After some trial and error, I was finally able to import all the content from Community Server to WordPress successfully. Yay!

I didn’t start tagging posts until early 2005, so there’s around 400 or so that aren’t tagged, but even still I think the tag cloud on the test blog is really interesting. Looks like I blog about Microsoft quite a bit! Maybe even more interesting is the fact that I’ve used 1843 different tags.

So I guess I’m about ready to make the switch. Just a few more “clean up” things I need to do (like delete more spam comments). I think I’m going to replace my website with another WordPress installation too, but that shouldn’t take long. The current site is really old, based on ugly code, and it’s mostly out-of-date because updating the pages is so difficult. I think WP will work nicely (plus I can use the same theme).

I’d say the migration is going much more smoothly than I anticipated!

Six months with the day job – no thanks to school

Post Image Today marks six months of me working at Questionmark. I started there in July as a .NET developer, and so far I’m really enjoying it. The work is interesting, and the people are great. After focusing mostly on Paramagnus for the last couple years, I was kinda worried that the transition would be painful, but it hasn’t been.

Of course, transition may not be the best word as I’m still working on Paramagnus too (along with Dickson). Not as much as I used to, obviously, but Questionmark has been very accommodating thus far. The first month or two was a bit difficult, but I have more of a routine now, so that’s good. The vacation last month was a nice break from everything as well.

I think part of the reason that doing both Paramagnus and Questionmark isn’t impossible is that I’ve never worked solely on Paramagnus. Until April of 2007, I was still a full-time university student! And all jokes about skipping class aside, it still required a fair bit of time and effort. So in a lot of ways I have just replaced school with the Questionmark job.

Those of you who know me well know that I do not look back on my time at the University of Alberta with much fondness. I really enjoyed the Economics courses I took and a few of my options were pretty interesting too. My computing sciences classes, on the other hand, were largely a waste of time. I always felt that the things we were learning about were entirely irrelevant! It still bugs me, because I love technology and I love software development but I absolutely hated most of the CS courses I had to take.

I’ve always wondered if any of the CS stuff I learned would be useful in a real job. None of it was at Paramagnus (except maybe the two database courses), but I don’t think that should really count, because I have complete control over our development and how it works. Questionmark should count though, right?

I can honestly say that if I had to rely on the things I learned in computing sciences for my job at Questionmark, I’d be completely screwed.

Instead of a Bachelor’s degree in Computing Sciences, I should have gotten the BFA in Software Development, as described at Joel on Software:

When I said BFA, Bachelor of Fine Arts, I meant it: software development is an art, and the existing Computer Science education, where you’re expected to learn a few things about NP completeness and Quicksort is singularly inadequate to training students how to develop software.

Imagine instead an undergraduate curriculum that consists of 1/3 liberal arts, and 2/3 software development work. The teachers are experienced software developers from industry. The studio operates like a software company. You might be able to major in Game Development and work on a significant game title, for example, and that’s how you spend most of your time, just like a film student spends a lot of time actually making films and the dance students spend most of their time dancing.

That sounds like it might have been useful! Better yet, screw university and just start a company. I mean it – I have learned so much from Paramagnus. I can’t imagine where I’d be had I not started the company. I certainly wouldn’t have a job at Questionmark.

Is it my fault for going to the University of Alberta instead of NAIT? No, I don’t think so. The U of A is supposed to give you the best education possible, but that shouldn’t come at the expense of preparing you for the real world. Will I look back twenty years from now and find value in the CS courses I took? Never say never, but I seriously doubt it. The tech industry changes too quickly.

I think the current education model for software development is horribly flawed. Very few people want to be computer scientists, charged with proving theorems and all that other crap. I think a lot of people want to learn how to develop software, from start to finish. I laughed at first, but I think the BFA in Software Development idea is actually quite good. It could totally work!

If I’m ever in a position to make it happen, I absolutely will try.

NewsGator Goes Free

Post Image NewsGator announced today that effective immediately, all of its consumer software and services are completely free! That includes NewsGator Online, FeedDemon, Inbox, NetNewsWire, and a bunch of other applications. From Greg Reinacker’s post:

But I can hear you asking already…"why, Greg, why would you do such a thing?"

What we’re working to do is to saturate the market with our clients. Anyone who wants a rich experience for consuming content, or anyone who uses multiple computers or devices and wants a best-of-breed experience on each can now use our clients. Using a Mac at home, along with an iPhone? NetNewsWire and our iPhone reader will sync up. Have a PC at the office? FeedDemon will sync with your other two applications. And they’ll all sync with NewsGator Online. It all just works.

He goes on to explain that their strategy is to sell more copies of NewsGator Enterprise Server (NGES) along with other enterprise software and that the sell is easier when everyone already uses the consumer apps. Makes a certain amount of sense.

I’ve paid for a NewsGator subscription in the past, but lately I’ve become quite the Google Reader convert. I still think the synchronization story that NewsGator offers is awesome though, and I may have to give FeedDemon another try now that it’s free. I do miss the ability to take content offline.

If you’re in the market for a new aggregator (or family of aggregators) this is as good a reason as any to give NewsGator a try.

Read: Greg Reinacker

Outlook 2007 on Vista with RDC is driving me crazy

I have written about Outlook 2007 here before, usually in relation to performance. The hotfix that was released back in April has mostly fixed that problem for me, but I have a new problem.

Outlook 2007 on Windows Vista is a piece of shit when it comes to accessing it through Remote Desktop.

I haven’t been able to take a screenshot of this yet, but essentially it renders the computer (or at least the remote desktop session) unusable. Outlook 2007 works fine for a while, but minimize it one too many times, and the next time you try to bring it up the screen is washed out with windows appearing all over the place and everything is just garbled. You can’t see the start bar either, so figuring out how to close it or get rid of it is problematic. I have to close the session and sometimes restart Outlook on the actual computer before it’ll work again.

I don’t understand what the problem is. I have tried messing with all of the RDC settings, and I am running the latest version. All the updates are installed, on both machines. The only application I have this issue with is Outlook 2007. A search on Google for ‘why does outlook 2007 on vista suck using remote desktop‘ didn’t return anything helpful either. Heh.

It’s driving me crazy. I love Outlook, but the latest version has been a real pain in the ass at times.

Any suggestions on this one? Any softies out there reading this? Help!

Windows Live Writer 2008

Post Image I just downloaded and installed the latest update to my blogging tool of choice – Windows Live Writer. This version is the first to drop the "beta" moniker, but I don’t like the new name. I was kind of hoping that Microsoft could avoid the "year names" with their Windows Live products.

MSN Messenger and Windows Live Messenger have never used the year in release names, and I hope it stays that way. If we can’t have more creative names, then I’m happy with a version number. A version number conveys the same information as a year (which release is newer) while at the same time not sounding out of date the following year (when it may still be the latest release).

I know some people don’t like it, but Apple’s use of codenames in the actual marketing for OS X is pretty cool. Anil’s point is good – the name "Leopard" should appear in the actual product itself. Still, "Leopard" is much more creative than "10.5". Of course, version numbers shouldn’t disappear, as they do serve a useful function.

Separating the product name from the release name could do wonders for Microsoft’s notoriously horrible product/release names. The product is "Windows Live Writer" or "Office", the release could be so much more than "2008" or "2007". They’ve started to do this with consumer editions of Windows it seems, with XP followed by Vista. Why not for other products?

Read: Writer Zone

US students get Office 2007 for teh cheap!

If you’re a student in the United States with an email address ending in .edu, you can get Office Ultimate 2007 for just $59.95 USD. That’s an incredible deal considering the ERP on that SKU is about $679 USD. They call it “the ultimate steal“:

Seize the deal! Get Microsoft® Office Ultimate 2007 for just $59.95. It’s a total steal: save time and money with this premium offer. Office Ultimate 2007’s brand new features and fresh look will help you organize and get all your work done in the blink of an eye. The Ultimate Steal is finally here, so grab it now!

It sucks that the offer is open only to students south of the border. I guess students here in Canada will have to “steal” it the old fashioned way.

The other interesting part of the promo is the blogging contest. Write a blog post explaining how to you plan to use Office for your academic studies, and you could win a spring break getaway, an American Express gift card, or an Xbox 360 Elite console. Again, open only to students in the USA.

Come on Microsoft Canada, how come we don’t have cool promos like this?!

UPDATE: Disregard everything about Canada in the above text! Apparently this offer is available in Canada, and a bunch of other countries too. Their website strategy is shitty though, because the .com site totally doesn’t make that clear. The press release clearly states Canada however. I should have tried this earlier, but here it is: http://theultimatesteal.ca. Cost is $64 to buy, $22 to subscribe for a year.

UPDATE 2: Okay, either I was totally blind today, or they just added this sometime this afternoon, but there are little flag icons on the top of the website. Maybe their website strategy isn’t so shitty after all! I/O error I guess…anyway, wicked deal for students, and it lasts until April 30th, 2008.

Read: the ultimate steal

Come on Skype, tell us what really happened!

As you probably know, Skype went down on Thursday and didn’t resume to normal until sometime Saturday. Hundreds of bloggers have written about the outage, and the event has raised a number of really interesting questions, such as “how mad can we get when a free service goes down?” The answers may still be up for debate, but one thing is clear: Skype’s excuse is downright unacceptable.

Here’s what they wrote today on their blog:

The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users’ computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update.

Skype loses points not only for failing to accept any responsibility for the outage, but also for making such an incredibly dumb statement. As Long Zheng pointed out:

Think about it. If Windows Update did in fact cause the restart of millions of Skype users worldwide, which it can do without argument, then how come Skype doesn’t crash the second Tuesday of every month when of course Microsoft distributes its Windows patches like they have for the past 3 years and years of unscheduled patches prior to that? As far as I recall, last week wasn’t any different.

Am I missing something? I’m not saying it was not Windows Update, but why only last week did it do what it could have done 36 times already?

I get the distinct feeling that Skype is unwilling to admit they did something wrong. Even if this particular Tuesday did something extra special with the updates, and even if it caused a flood of requests, shouldn’t Skype have been prepared for that? In their explanation they say:

We can confirm categorically that no malicious activities were attributed or that our users’ security was not, at any point, at risk.

Does that mean that Skype was open to attack before this happened? A flood of requests from Windows Update should be no different than a flood of requests with malicious intent. Actually, you’d probably assume the latter would be worse.

Something just doesn’t add up.

Read: Skype Heartbeat

Get ready for a major Microsoft product launch in February

Post ImageNovember of 2005 was an important month for Microsoft developers as Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 were launched. Technically BizTalk Server 2006 was part of the launch too, but it kind of took a backseat to the other two products. I doubt that will happen with the next big launch, coming in February 2008:

Microsoft announced at its partner conference on July 10 that it will launch Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 together in a single launch on February 27, 2008, in Los Angeles.

Those are three incredibly important products for Microsoft itself, and for Microsoft developers around the world. Combined with Windows Vista SP1, expected to be released alongside Windows Server 2008, it’s going to be a very exciting time. I can almost see the free copies of Visual Studio 2008 now…

The above quote comes from Mary Jo Foley’s post, titled “Microsoft plans a triple-play”. I have to admit, for a moment I half expected to read about Microsoft jumping into competition with AT&T, Verizon, and others! In telecommunications, a triple play means a bundle of high-speed Internet, television, and telephone services.

Mark your calendars!

Read: ZDNet