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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
Microsoft UK job - Portals Specialist Sales ... you will be a member of a specialised team of worldwide sales professionals responsible for delivering the information worker value proposition around portal, collaboration and content management solutions built on Microsoft Office System, to Business Decision Makers and Technical Decision Makers. You will own a sales quota for Sharepoint Portal Server , Content Management Server, and servers such as SQL Server, the eBusiness Servers and development tools, as it relates to portal solutions solutions.
Must have all paperwork in place to work in the UK.
Email: blog '@' markharrison.co.uk
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
Coming up in a few weeks on the show is Josh Goldman, chief executive officer of Akimbo.
Akimbo is a Video on demand service for Media Center and today they added Fawlty Towers to there service
I grew up watching that show, classic stuff!
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
SMO (SQL Management Objects) in SQL Server 2005 replaces SQL-DMO that was present in the earlier versions of SQL Server. SMO provides a better performance using lazy loading and has a better coverage for database objects. You can generate scripts for objects in basic and advanced modes. Michiel Wories has more on scripting using SMO.
The nice thing about new managed APIs in SQL Server 2005 is that SQL Server Management Studio interacts with the database using exactly the same libraries so you can make sure you can manage your databases in the same way you would do it using Management Studio.
As an example, the following piece of code iterates through the databases in SQL2005 instance and enables auto update statistics for any non-system database if it is currently disabled.
(a reference to Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo and Microsoft.SqlServer.ConnectionInfo is required).
using Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Common;
using Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo;
.
.
private void updateStatistics()
{
Server myServer = new Server(@"localhost\SQL2005");
foreach (Database database in myServer.Databases)
{
if (!database.IsSystemObject && !database.AutoUpdateStatisticsEnabled)
{
database.DatabaseOptions.AutoUpdateStatistics = true;
database.Alter();
}
}
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
I have started work on a new test runner that will allow any Visual Studio 2005 project to be built and tested using .NET 1.1. In order to do this I'm using the MSBuild Extras Toolkit for .NET 1.1 "MSBee". Here is an example of what you can expect:
First select the test(s) you want to build and execute using .NET 1.1.
Assuming MSBuild/MSBee is able to build the project (and dependencies) using .NET 1.1, your tests will be executed inside a .NET 1.1 process.
If you look at the test code, you can see our test was successfully built and executed using .NET 1.1.
Before I release anything I'm looking for some alpha testers. If you're prepared to give some early feedback on this feature, please drop me an email. I'd be interested to know a little about the solutions you will be trying it with. In particular what languages, how many projects and what project types (Web, Windows Forms etc.) This way I can make sure I have most bases covered before I make it more widely available.
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
I'm going to SXSW in Texas next week, and I'd really like to take a laptop with me. Only I don't own one. If anyone would like to lend me one (preferably with wireless connectivity), please let me know: simon [at] harriyott [dot] com. Cheers.
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
What's worse than Hungarian notation? Wishful Hungarian notation, as I discovered
when the following was true today:
VarType(intSomeValue) = vbString
The horror...
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
Still pondering that laptop thing – in response to yesterday’s post, someone pointed me to the Acer TravelMate 8204WLMi, which I had actually already seen in a review. I had not given it any further attention, partly because the review wasn’t completely positive, but now I find that this must have been about the only [...]
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
After using Google’s Analytics for a little while I decided I’d plunk the $30 and try Shaun Inman’s Mint. So far I’m not that disappointed. It has a lovely interface and does display most of the things I need. Getting it installed was a little bit of a nightmare.
See, previously I used Apache 2 as a proxy between you webbers and Lighttpd (since I have a number of Rails apps). I use Apache to access my various Subversion repositories, I didn’t want to change DNS entries, and I also didn’t want to have to configure PHP (that I was using for my webmail). Unfortunately (being a bit of a *nix and Apache newcomer) I couldn’t figure out how to set it up so that it would proxy all requests except those for mint.
In the end I went for a custom PHP compile (good sense anyway, the version on my VPS was quite old, and I’ve heard that Lighty/FCGI/PHP is actually better under load anyway). Then I followed Lighttpd’s own instructions for getting PHP under way. Fortunately, it all seems to have worked reasonably well – I nabbed a few bits ‘n pieces from Geoff Grosenbach’s notes.
So, time to give you a quick overview about my impressions so far.
What better way to start than with the things I really like:
- Freshness. The fact I can see results in realtime is great, I used to check Google each morning to see how I was doing (egotistical or what? :p), and this satisfies my urge for more frequent updates.
- Extensible. I like that it’s extensible and largely open-source (albeit under a commercial license). For instance, one of my favourite add-ins (in Mint speak – pepper) is Session Tracker which shows me recent sessions, and how they got here! I can also have a panel showing info from FeedBurner, so I don’t need to visit 2 sites.
- Clean. Everything is visible through the one page, and updates are performed in a behind-the-scenes-AJAX-goodness kind of way. Google was a bit too clunky for my liking – it seemed to jump and move around everywhere.
However, there are a few things that I do prefer Google for:
- Exit ratio’s. These let me know the number of users that would head off elsewhere from a page in my site, this gave me an idea about the stickiness of content – whether I had posts of a high enough value to keep people looking around.
- Pages per visit. As far as I’m aware this isn’t supported directly in Mint (perhaps there’s some pepper to do this?) and it was again useful to determine how active users were once they came to my site. All helpful in tuning content. For instance, I found that with a few of my Rails articles, over 50% of visitors then visited other pages on my site. A good indicator I’m getting some good traffic of people interested in Rails.
- Depth of data. Google Analytics also had a number of extremely useful widgets to let me see various bits of info about my top visited content – compare visits over the last month for instance, or show the top referrers for any given page.
- Length of Visit. I can see how long people spent on any given page, for instance on average people spend around 2mins looking at my homepage, and approximately 5mins for my article on Rails’ validation. Again, this is very useful to determine whether someone is actually reading the whole piece, whether they see it’s not for them soon (or just give up with the incoherence ;).
So, if you like your stats simple, clean, and fresh I’d highly recommend it, especially at just $30. The difficulty I had with installation was largely down to a slightly non-standard configuration. However, I don’t think it provides (nor really intended to provide) statistics as detailed and deep as Google’s.
Anyone have any great Mint add-ons they’ve found and could recommend to fill the stats holes I have?
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
I've tinkered with Rails, drooled vegitatively over metaprogramming, and survived
Dwemthy's Array with my towel unsoiled. But today, humble as it is, I present my first
piece of production Ruby code:
def permute_alphabetically(chars) chars.sort! if chars.length == 0 [] else
head = chars.shift rest = permute_alphabetically(chars) [head] + rest.map {|c| head
+ c } + rest end end
So, for example:
irb(main):012:0> permute_alphabetically %w(B A C E D) => ["A", "AB", "ABC",
"ABCD", "ABCDE", "ABCE", "ABD", "ABDE", "ABE", "AC", "ACD", "ACDE", "ACE", "AD", "ADE",
"AE", "B", "BC", "BCD", "BCDE", "BCE", "BD", "BDE", "BE", "C", "CD", "CDE", "CE",
"D", "DE", "E"]
In real life it does some boring real life stuff to do with product codes, but I will
leave it here in its pure abstract beauty.
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
Shares in internet search giant Google recover slightly after Tuesday's 10% plunge in value.
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
A controversial deal on the future of the .com domain has been approved by the net's overseeing body.
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
I am so pleased today to announce that a new beta build of IE7 (I call it the MIX 06 release) will be available from MIX 06, March 20th to 22nd. The new browser will be handed out at MIX and will then hopefully be available from MSDN.
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
No rush, but if you want to speak at DDD3, the call for speakers closes mid-March...
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
With the introduction of the new Mac Mini it's finally fast enough to run FrontRow, and the latest version is included along with a remote. I believe that the Mini is one of the best looking computer ever made, and it'll look great under my TV and there's no doubt that many people are considering one for the same reason. The thing that everybody comments about is the fact that you can't record TV on it (here for example) and I've seen a couple of people say to wait until the version is released that has full PVR support. These people are, I think, totally missing the point; there will never be a built in way to record TV in a Mac. Why? iTunes of course. Apple sell content and that's the model they're going to go for.
Is this a good idea? I'm not sure as I can't use iTunes to buy TV so I've never tried it. If I was downloading TV from the internet then yes, it's a perfect setup. If you're rippping DVDs to your hard disk then it's perfect. If you have a satellite TV service that you can't get a decoder card for your computer then it's a perfect setup. If you want to record TV then get a USB TV tuner solution that can save the recorded shows into iTunes. You'll still have to use a mouse to set the shows to record, but that's not too bad. Does Frontrow allow plugins? The moment it does then we're sorted, but don't expect Apple to add this support themselves in the short term.
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
I have started work on a new test runner that will allow any Visual Studio 2005 project to be built and tested using .NET 1.1. In order to do this I'm using the MSBuild Extras Toolkit for .NET 1.1 "MSBee". Here is an example of what you can expect:
First select the test(s) you want to build and execute using .NET 1.1.
Assuming MSBuild/MSBee is able to build the project (and dependencies) using .NET 1.1, your tests will be executed inside a .NET 1.1 process.
If you look at the test code, you can see our test was successfully built and executed using .NET 1.1.
Before I release anything I'm looking for some alpha testers. If you're prepared to give some early feedback on this feature, please drop me an email. I'd be interested to know a little about the solutions you will be trying it with. In particular what languages, how many projects and what project types (Web, Windows Forms etc.) This way I can make sure I have most bases covered before I make it more widely available.
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
Even though there are a few elements to be worked out in the middle, the opening 30-40 minutes are tightly formed (as is the very end) and I suspect will need little structure change over the next two and a half weeks I have to complete a decent draft.Work up to now has been structurally based: deciding when to reveal the antagonist, how to introduce the protagonist or how much back-story to show (and when to show it).... As a minor consolation, I passed his name over to one of the more minor yet regularly appearing characters - demoted, but at least he still had a job.In developing the horror story I do hope I will not like the characters too much or it might inhibit my ability to let them die in increasingly horrible ways.
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
Good to see, trip to borders for me to track this badboy down.
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
Today there is a disconnect between the hype or insight - you choose - over dynamic languages, and the fact that most enterprise development is done with static-typed languages such as Java, C# and C++. Visual Basic sits somewhere in between. I also realise there is more to dynamic languages than dynamic typing, and that both Java and .NET can do dynamic kinds of things. An interesting question though is how this disconnect will be resolved. A couple of things may happen. First, we might change our minds again and retreat back to the supposed safety of static languages. Seems unlikely at this point. Or second, enterprise developers might start migrating towards dynamic languages.
If they do, where will they go? Richard Monson-Haefel says it will be Groovy, the official JVM-based scripting language currently in development. I'm not so sure. The question is: if you don't want Java, do you want the JVM? Monson-Haefel says you will, because he can't see the enterprise ever moving away from its huge investment in Java. I doubt that is a safe assumption. Interoperability is essential, but that need not tie us to the JVM. By contrast, Peter Williams argues that for the most part, dynamic languages need to stay off the JVM, and I'm inclined more to his point of view. The current lack of buzz around Groovy strikes me as a bad sign.
In this context, I find it odd that Microsoft makes so little noise about Iron Python, the implementation of Python for .NET now at beta 3. It doesn't help that ironpython.com is 18 months out-of-date and has no link to the current project; many will find that page and conclude that the project is dead. Microsoft does not seem to be making much of its opportunity here, to take a dynamic language that is fashionable and prove that it is is a real contender for Enterprise development. I suspect there is too much emotional and financial investment in C# and VB for the company to make room for Iron Python as more than as a bullet-point for .NET marketing.
As if to prove the point, several .NET developers I met at a recent conference were interested in migrating to a dynamic language, but they had not heard of Iron Python; they were thinking Ruby. I'd be interested in hearing from other .NET or Java developers considering a move; of course many are happy to stay where they are, but watch this space.
Tags: programming
java
groovy
ruby
python
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
Security Configuration Wizard (SCW) makes it so easy to roll back a policy that I nearly didn't record this blogcast. I went ahead as I appreciate that you may not have had chance to try this for yourself and it's always nice to see someone else demonstrate something before you go ahead yourself.
Click here to view a blogcast showing how to roll back a server to it's previous configuration following the application of a (SCW) policy.
IMHO SCW's roll back feature is one of it's most important capabilites as it enables the over-zealous administrator to recover from a situation whereby they've locked the system down to the point that it's absolutely useless!
This blogcast forms part of a SCW series which includes the following earlier parts:
Do your systems meet your security policy? Here's an easy way to find out
How to create a new policy for Security Configuration Wizard (SCW)
How to dramatically reduce your system's attack surface - use Security Configuration Wizard (SCW)
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
I found myself needing to extract the current user’s full name from our Active Directory today. For a variety of reasons, I’ve not done too much work in this area, so I had to hunt around for a few minutes before arriving at a solution.
Firstly, I had to add a reference to System.DirectoryServices to [...]
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
Dave Winer announces a draft OPML 2.0 spec for review:
"Today the public review of OPML 2.0 begins, with the publication of the DRAFT spec and the opening of a mail list for the purpose of reviewing the spec."
Here's the the draft spec. From the Roadmap:
"Version 2.0 will be the last version of OPML. Any further development will take place in namespaces, new outline types, per the Extending OPML section of this specification; or in formats derived from OPML with different names. "
Support for namespaces. Sweet.
Public review mail list here.
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Tags: OPML, OPML2.0
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
The number of Freeview set-top boxes and digital TVs sold in the UK surpasses the 10m mark.
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
Information aesthetics points out a site that categorizes BBC News Headlines as 'good', 'bad' or neutral" called Mood News:
"a linguistic system categorizes news headlines as different 'moods' using keyword scoring from a vocabulary of 160 words & phrases, after which the ratings are visually represented through a simple color spectrum ranging from green to red."
So, now you can decide whether you want the good news or the bad news first (or at all). Mood News is a proof of concept created by Davy Mitchell.
One of the bits of good news I found was that optimists less likely to die of heart disease or a stroke. Good news if you are optimist (I have an optimistic disposition - yipee!). Not such good news for the pessimists...I suppose they were right.
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
I remember that when I first started moving from VB6 to VB.NET, I really missed the comfort zone of the relatively easy to use control array in Classic VB. But I soldiered on and got to grips with all that business of creating a new control, setting properties, adding it to the Form’s Controls array and creating an event handler.
I think that learning to use AddHandler was probably the biggest leap from Classic-Think to
.NET-Speak.** You know the sort of code I’m talking about:
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
Dim PB As New PictureBox
With PB
.Image = Image.FromFile("h:\oscar.bmp")
.Location = New System.Drawing.Point(50, 50)
.Size = New Size(90, 90)
End With
' Add to the Controls collection
Me.Controls.Add(PB)
' Wire this control up to an appropriate event handler
AddHandler PB.Click, AddressOf MyPicClicked
End Sub
' The aforementioned Event Handler:
Private Sub MyPicClicked(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs)
' Code in here to react to the Click event
MessageBox.Show("You clicked the new PictureBox")
End Sub
Just leafing through one of my books the other night, I discovered by chance that all that AddHandler angst was probably wasted aggravation. Simply declaring your planned new control(s) using the WithEvents keyword anywhere in the Code Window outside a procedure will give you access to the whole range of Events for that type of control by default.
Something like:
Dim WithEvents PBWE As PictureBox
Private Sub Button2_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button2.Click
PBWE = New PictureBox
With PBWE
.Name = "PBWE1"
.Location = New Point(200, 50)
.Size = New Size(70, 70)
.Image = Image.FromFile("h:\oscar.bmp")
End With
Controls.Add(PBWE)
End Sub
And with that code in place, you can go into the code window, select “PBWE” from the left hand side ComboBox and all the available Events will appear for your selection as normal in the right hand box.
So, taking the Click event as a random example, you code this event just as if the control already existed at Design Time (although it won’t actually exist until that button is clicked at Run Time, of course) .
Private Sub PBWE_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles PBWE.Click
MessageBox.Show("You Clicked on PBWE")
End Sub
This “revelation” has probably been documented hundreds of times around the place but for some strange reason I have never come across it before.
Not entirely sure how useful it will be to you, but having made the discovery I thought I'd blog it.
** The irony is that as I sit here now and type this I realise that using AddHandler seems the most natural thing in the world. But back at Day Zero of the two year Classic-to-Net learning curve it all seemed very complicated indeed!
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
Internet and mail-order CD and DVD retailers who are having to move out of Jersey are told they will not be welcome in Guernsey.
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
US movie fans have the chance to download Oscar-nominated short films from iTunes for the first time.
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
Gaston Milano and friends have been busy writing some handy little tools for Visual Studio 2005.
Blog entry here, download here.
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
Microsoft is developing a portable media device to offer wireless web access, music, video and games, reports say.
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
Four men plead guilty to being part of a ring that distributed illegal copies of music on the internet.
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
Out of the box the C# code snippets are a tiny subset of what you get with VB.
That particular disparity has been resolved with the release of many new snippets from Microsoft:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/downloads/codesnippets/default.aspx
HTH
Ian
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
The net is helping to connect donors and lenders in the US with small entrepreneurs in developing countries.
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
Scoble and Shel’s new book got delivered this morning thanks to Amazon. Just on the last chapter of ‘The Search’ and then I can get cracking on it!
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
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You’ve heard the “If Microsoft made cars…”
story before. Now see “If Microsoft
made iPods”. I love my Creative Zen Micro – it’s easily
as cool as any other device out there, but sometimes we (pointing a finger at
myself as Microsoft marketer), are do something so right that it’s wrong!
Enjoy the laugh at our expense.
I trust we, as MS marketers learn from this and continue the
good work at www.origamiproject.com.
+on+how+not+to+do+branding&referrer=)
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
You’ve heard the “If Microsoft made cars…” story before. Now see “If Microsoft made iPods”. I love my Creative Zen Micro – it’s easily as cool as any other device out there, but sometimes we (pointing a finger at myself as Microsoft marketer), are do something so right that it’s wrong!
Enjoy the laugh at our expense.
I trust we, as MS marketers learn from this and continue the good work at www.origamiproject.com.
+on+how+not+to+do+branding&referrer=)
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Published on 01 Mar 2006 from
After talking about SMS 2003 for such a long time, it's going to be a bit strange talking about SMS 4, but I've noticed that the SMS homepage allows you to have a look at the SMS 4 beta and download it. So in addition to downloading SMS 2003 R2, you can also register and download the SMS 4 beta. You do need to have the following software installed before downloading SMS 4 though - so be aware of this list:
ire the following software:
SMS site systems also require the following software:
Site systems require Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 or later if they will perform any of the following site systems roles:
Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS)-enabled distribution point (requires BITS server and Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning [WebDAV] extensions)
Management point (requires BITS server and WebDAV extensions)
State migration point (requires BITS server and WebDAV extensions)
Reporting point (requires Active Server pages)
Server locator point
All SMS distribution point systems using BITS bandwidth throttling require BITS 2.0 or later.
System health validator points require that the Network Policy Server service is enabled.
The SMS site database server requires Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2000 SP3a or later.
All site systems require Internet Explorer 5.0 or later.
All site servers must be a member of a Windows 2000 or Windows 2003 Active Directory domain.
SMS primary site servers, secondary site servers, and any computers running the SMS Administrator console require Microsoft Management Console (MMC) 3.0, which is available at Microsoft Management Console 3.0 Pre-Release (RC1 Refresh).
All computers running the SMS Administrator console require the .NET Framework 2.0
