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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
...at least in the eyes of one or two.The discussions with Podshow are at an end and as of today I'm working with them to help get things rolling here in the UK. Not really much more I can say about what's ahead - because right now I don't know a great deal - but I am in the very advantageous position of being able to phase out a number of currently running projects before things take over completely.
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
According to Brad Abrams, the Windows Forms documentation team published a new whitepaper about how to create a great layout using the new features of the WinForms in .NET 2.0... meaning you don't have to create the same old “grey” applications everyone has come to know and love. ;-)
I've read through it and it's got some great information. Especially if your interested in knowing how to tweak the new toolstrip control to look however you wish.
Although the article is in VB (which I'm extremely happy to see), the code samples are in VB and C#.
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
Now official - http://comingzune.com/
Also Zune Insider - the inside scoop from Cesar Menendez working on Zune.
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
Now official - http://comingzune.com/
Also Zune Insider - the inside scoop from Cesar Menendez working on Zune.
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
I thought I’d finally take a look at Mongrel and see whether it was worth changing my configuration from Lighttpd/FCGI. So far it’s been pretty stable (with only the odd restart needed every few month or so), but Mongrel’s had such a good response I couldn’t resist.
However, it looks like Ruby Gems is failing to work on my VPS. Below is what I run and the output:
[paul@engross ~]$ sudo gem install daemons
Password:
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
Killed
I was originally on an old version of Gems, so I downloaded the latest release (0.9.0), but same result.
If I run the same above on my PowerBook G4
pablo:~/work/mephisto/trunk pingles$ sudo gem install daemons
Password:
Attempting local installation of 'daemons'
Local gem file not found: daemons*.gem
Attempting remote installation of 'daemons'
Updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
Successfully installed daemons-0.4.4
Installing RDoc documentation for daemons-0.4.4...
D’oh. Not too sure what’s causing it, and a quick poke around Google and Google Groups didn’t yield any information about log files etc. Does anyone have any suggestions?
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
I thought I’d finally take a look at Mongrel and see whether it was worth changing my configuration from Lighttpd/FCGI. So far it’s been pretty stable (with only the odd restart needed every few month or so), but Mongrel’s had such a good response I couldn’t resist.
However, it looks like Ruby Gems is failing to work on my VPS. Below is what I run and the output:
[paul@engross ~]$ sudo gem install daemons
Password:
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
Killed
I was originally on an old version of Gems, so I downloaded the latest release (0.9.0), but same result.
If I run the same above on my PowerBook G4
pablo:~/work/mephisto/trunk pingles$ sudo gem install daemons
Password:
Attempting local installation of 'daemons'
Local gem file not found: daemons*.gem
Attempting remote installation of 'daemons'
Updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
Successfully installed daemons-0.4.4
Installing RDoc documentation for daemons-0.4.4...
D’oh. Not too sure what’s causing it, and a quick poke around Google and Google Groups didn’t yield any information about log files etc. Does anyone have any suggestions?
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
I was having a chat in the pub after the UC User group on Thursday night and the conversation got around to blogging and why so many Microsoftie's blogged. Everyone I chatted to was really positive about the access to the "inside view" of Microsoft that bloggers gave them. They were particularly complimentary about the fact that we presented the human face of Microsoft, were transparent, accessible, approachable, and always responded to the comments on our blogs.
In the UK we've had the team contact email addresses on the TechNet site for some time, it gives us the opportunity to be contactable at any time, so I've asked my team if they wanted to follow my lead and put their cell phone number on their blogs too (mine is on the left hand side of my blog home page). The thing that I've been really impressed about is how having this number on my blog has changed the tone of conversations to me. The calls I've received have been really positive about the fact that I'm available for anyone to call, and whilst I've not always been able to give an instant answer to the questions I've been asked, I'm a point of contact and escalation if needed. Robert was always really proud of the fact that he could display his cellphone number on his blog in the knowledge that this wouldn't be abused, and he would accessible when needed. Well I'm following his advice and so far - it feels rather good to be accessible......
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
The Extend Mode in Microsoft Word is an artefact of the early computing era before the mouse was invented (and the natural evolution of that gunky stuff that builds up on your mouse's bottom). Few computer users make use of this feature today because they've learned how to scoot around their documents with the mouse and on-screen scroll bars. But the Extend Mode can still come in handy every once in a while when you need to select sections of text.
This works in both Microsoft Word and Microsoft Outlook (if you use Word as your email editor). To enable the Extend Mode, press F8. Now try moving the cursor using the cursor control keys (not the mouse) and you'll see a selection appear from the point where you first activated the Extend Mode. If you wanted, for example, to select all the text from your current cursor position to the word "catapult" you would turn on Extend Mode by pressing F8 then press CTRL+F (for Find) then type in the word Catapult then press Enter. Finally press Cancel to close the Find box and your text is selected. To turn off Extend Mode simply press the Esc key.
Using the Extend Mode can feel a bit clanky at first but with practice it can be a useful extension (sorry...) to your keyboard and mouse navigation tools. Give it a try.
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
On the principle that a picture is worth a thousand words here is how Software + Services fits together:
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
Yes, we’ve got one of those as well ? In fact, many of our consumer products help reduce your productivity!
Like Zune, I guess...
Xbox Live has now clocked up more than 2bn hours of online play. How is that for a productivity waster? Hence the reason why the rest of the business is working so hard to help save valuable productivity seconds, so that we can free up all the play time!
And while I mention Xbox Live. Ian mentioned that my blog don’t contain enough “management” content... Did you know that the live Xbox Live data centres are monitored by Microsoft’s Operations Manager, MOM? (OK, Ian, I know you knew that, but for the other reader :))
And before you say “of course, they have to”... “they” don’t. When “they” built the billions of dollars (guess) Xbox Live infrastructure and hanged our multi-billion dollar brand to it in a real time environment that can’t be down even for a few minutes over Christmas (or any other time day or night, think about it), we had to have the best tools to monitor the data centre health, and MOM 2005 was chosen. Impressive, don't you think?
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
Yes, we’ve got one of those as well ? In fact, many of our consumer products help reduce your productivity!
Like Zune, I guess...
Xbox Live has now clocked up more than 2bn hours of online play. How is that for a productivity waster? Hence the reason why the rest of the business is working so hard to help save valuable productivity seconds, so that we can free up all the play time!
And while I mention Xbox Live. Ian mentioned that my blog don’t contain enough “management” content... Did you know that the live Xbox Live data centres are monitored by Microsoft’s Operations Manager, MOM? (OK, Ian, I know you knew that, but for the other reader :))
And before you say “of course, they have to”... “they” don’t. When “they” built the billions of dollars (guess) Xbox Live infrastructure and hanged our multi-billion dollar brand to it in a real time environment that can’t be down even for a few minutes over Christmas (or any other time day or night, think about it), we had to have the best tools to monitor the data centre health, and MOM 2005 was chosen. Impressive, don't you think?
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
Ahhh - and we've heard about Zune at MGX - very cool, so cool that,
despite the fact that we're trailing behind iPod and iTunes, this will
ensure that we provide very strong competition (ultimately benefitting
the consumer again) in this space. It's funny: I had a phone/pocketPC
that could play music digitally ripped from my CDs years before iPod was
around, but Apple executed better on the full package solution. And now,
we'll have to be very smart to catch up and surpass their offering...
but from what I've seen and heard, I think we'll do that well, soon.
The name for our new gadget will be "Zune". Think iPod Video + iTunes +
Media Center + ease of use + flexible + many more things, and you're
close.
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
Ahhh - and we've heard about Zune at MGX - very cool, so cool that,
despite the fact that we're trailing behind iPod and iTunes, this will
ensure that we provide very strong competition (ultimately benefitting
the consumer again) in this space. It's funny: I had a phone/pocketPC
that could play music digitally ripped from my CDs years before iPod was
around, but Apple executed better on the full package solution. And now,
we'll have to be very smart to catch up and surpass their offering...
but from what I've seen and heard, I think we'll do that well, soon.
The name for our new gadget will be "Zune". Think iPod Video + iTunes +
Media Center + ease of use + flexible + many more things, and you're
close.
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
Gareth's team is currently looking for developers to join them in working on aspects of Visual Studio such as the Domain Specific Language tools and the Guidance Automation Toolkit.
There aren't many opportunities to do development work for Microsoft in the UK and even fewer that would give you a chance to contribute to Visual Studio itself so if this is of interest to you then check out the UK Jobs page for the full description.
Good luck with it if it's of interest to you and you decide to take it forward :-)
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
I found some baffling behavior in my OneNote 2007 recently. I’m using the excellent new functionality that lets me store notebooks on my file server and open them on more than one machine. OneNote 2007 keeps automatic offline copies of these notebooks in this case, synchronizing offline changes back into the server side versions when [...]
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
At a recent London .NET users group meeting, Dr Neil Roodyn spoke about Extreme Programming. He mentioned the core values for this now include "Respect", and the people involved in a project should be considered before the methodology or technology.
I take the term "Respect" to mean that we should all work to ensure that every person or organisation involved with a project perceives they benefit from the project, and not selfishly to gain at the expense of others.
It is easy to assume that people are “like us” and want the same things. However, this is not the case and we should understand what everyone's individual motivations are. I think motivations can be divided into three areas, quality of life in the workplace, qualify of life outside the workplace and prospects for the future, and there are several things you need to understand in each of these areas.
Quality of life in the workplace
- Is the stakeholder working with people they like? (which may be different from people you like).
- Is the stakeholder using technologies and methodologies they enjoy using? (which may be different from technologies and methodologies you enjoy using).
- Does the stakeholder perceive the working environment to be pleasant to them? (we place different values of things like fast computers, comfortable chairs etc).
Quality of life outside the workplace
- Does the stakeholder have time for a high quality life outside the workplace (are working hours reasonable, do they need to spend a long time travelling, and do they have to work away from home?)
- Does the stakeholder have money for a high quality life outside the workplace
How will these change in future?
- Does the stakeholder have the opportunity to learn skills to develop their career in the way they want to (in some cases this will be to move into senior management, in others to learn technologies, but this is different in individual cases)?
- Does the stakeholder perceive their situation to be secure (the answer to this question may be different for someone with family commitments who cannot easily move to another area)?
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
Advanced Micro Devices, the chipmaker that makes processors for Dell computers, agrees to buy ATI for $5.4bn.
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
MySpace's cleaning lady unplugged the servers this weekend so she could hoover around the office.
Hours later, she's still hoovering. Must be pretty mucky around there.
I wonder what all the MySpace fans have been doing with their time over the last few hours. Rediscovering personal interaction? Writing a letter to Grandma? Hah. They're probably all texting each other asking "Is MySpace working in your browser? No? Jeez."
Get the meat of the subject (thanks to chuquet.com) from these butchers:
Mashable: MySpace Goes Offline
Om Malik: MySpace Down Again
Bloggers Blog: MySpace Offers Pacman During Power Outage
technorati tags:myspace, outage, offline, pacman
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
minimsft has new a blog containing the comments that didn't quite make it to the main blog.
http://minimsftcrf.blogspot.com/
Interesting because of the commentary that mini provides on why not.
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
Microsoft's Zune portable music player may let people share tracks via wireless, reports suggest.
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
Microsoft has kind-of announced Zune, a new portable media and gaming device.
There's a lot we don't know yet about the device; but it seems that whatever this mobile entertainment market is all about, Microsoft wants a part of it; and apparently neither the current crop of Windows Mobile devices, nor the 3rd party Plays For Sure devices are up to the job.
Part of the problem is that iPod rivals need standards, as I blogged 18 months ago. Zune will have an accessory market, which has to help.
What is remarkable, looking at the comments on Engadget, is the degree of hostility the Zune announcement has already provoked. Why? The answer is that this is not about technology. It is about fashion and lifestyle. The hardest task ahead of Microsoft is not making Zune good, but making it cool.
Tags:
zune
ipod
apple
microsoft
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
MySpace, the world's most popular social networking website, is shut down after a power outage.
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
Brisk sales of the DS and DS Lite game systems help Nintendo lift its quarterly profits by 10.2%.
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
Time for a new blog posting, I got a mixed bag of responses back from the DDD3 stuff. I feel that quite a few folks recognised that I dumbed down from the original presentation I was planning and I think quite rightly felt cheated. If I do another one of these I think I'll pick a smaller subject area and do it in more detail. Anyway you live and learn.
The big Rock Xtreme64 has been off for repair for nearly three weeks (faulty memory) and according to my wife has now arrived back at home so it's time for the great software reinstall again. A boring task as it takes the best part of a day to get everything put on right.
Liam Westley who did one of the talks at DDD3 correctly points out that if you supply your own computer (Like a lot of contractors) then having a workable spare is pretty important. In my case its the old Samsung T10 that had a mid-life upgrade with more memory and a faster HD a while back, the only thing wrong with it was the PSU went on the fritz (now replaced with a spare from Maplin) and the power connector on the back is a bodge job I did after it broke a while ago, it means I can carry on working. Liam did however raise an important point, if you have two identical laptops then when something breaks you can try swapping it. In my case the Vista memory tester did say there was a memory problem, but since I didn't have access to spare memory and I'd never run the tester before the machine broke it was difficult to say if it was a red herring or not. If I'd had a spare identical machine I could have tested it's RAM then done a swap.
Thankfully I grabbed most of the contents of the HD from windows safe mode onto a 160Gb USB HD from Maplin (£70), one problem is that the drive is formatted with FAT32 so a regular backup was out of the question, once I'm back in business reformatting the drive to NTFS and doing a full backup is the next job.
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
With there being an upgrade path from beta 2 of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007, we decided to take the plunge at work and create a server that we would be using to store ‘real’ project and company documentation. This is great for me as I’m getting real feedback from users now whereas before I’ve been learning stuff either for presenting to the user group, or just for the sakes of learning it. The guys at work have really taken to it as well. Perhaps a bit of my ethusiasm for SharePoint has rubbed off. We had a SharePoint 2003 portal up and running but it’s never really been used heavily and a lot of discussions and documents were still emailed around. Now we’ve taken the 2007 step though everyone is keen to build up a good knowledge base and make project communication and brainstorming of ideas a lot better. I’ll be posting a lot more over the next few weeks about how we are getting on. Just need to make sure the backup and restore is working ok in beta 2!
One thing to note if you are using beta 2 in live environment and plan to upgrade, you need to do the inbetween step of upgrading to beta 2 technical release when it’s out. See here!
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
Problem
You are building an Intranet expense report application for your organization, and want to enable role-based authentication and authorization capabilities within it. Specifically, you want to create logical roles called “approvers”, “auditors”, and “administrators” for the application, and grant/deny end-users access to functionality within the application based on whether they are in these roles.
Because your application is an Intranet solution, you want to use Windows Authentication to login the users accessing the application (avoiding them having to manually login). However, because the roles you want to define are specific to your application, you do not want to define or store them within your network’s Windows Active Directory. Instead, you want to define and store these roles within a database. You then want to map Windows user accounts stored within Active Directory to these roles, and grant/deny access within the application based on them.
In addition to using roles to authorize access to individual pages within the application, you want to dynamically filter the links displayed within the site’s menu navigation based on whether users have permissions (or not) to those links. And lastly, you want to build-in a custom role-management administration UI directly within the expense report application for “expense app administrators” to manage these roles and control who has access to the capabilities of the app:
Solution
I've put together a detailed post that walks through step-by-step how to implement all of this. You can read it here, and download the completed sample I walk through how to build here.
Hope this helps,
Scott
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
Its official, ATI and AMD have merged. heres a pic from DailyTech's news article about it.
AMD announced the deal is valued around $5.4B USD: $4.2B in cash and 57M shares of AMD common stock will be used to purchase the ATI in a takeover bid. A little more than half of the cash to be used from the transaction will come from a $2.5B USD loan from Morgan Stanley
Very interesting times ahead... especially considering DirectX 10/Vista/+HDCP cards are just over that hill in the distant...
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
Its official, ATI and AMD have merged. heres a pic from DailyTech's news article about it.
Awwww a happy snappy!
AMD announced the deal is valued around $5.4B USD: $4.2B in cash and 57M shares of AMD common stock will be used to purchase the ATI in a takeover bid. A little more than half of the cash to be used from the transaction will come from a $2.5B USD loan from Morgan Stanley
Very interesting times ahead... especially considering DirectX 10/Vista/+HDCP cards are just over that hill in the distant... and the talk of integrating a GPU and CPU taken from yet another DailyTech article:
Specifically, it appears as though AMD and ATI are planning unified, scalable platforms using a mixture of AMD CPUs, ATI chipsets and ATI GPUs. This sort of multi-GPU, multi-CPU architecture is extremely reminiscent of AMD's Torrenza technology announced this past June, which allows low-latency communications between chipset, CPU and main memory. The premise for Torrenza is to open the channel for embedded chipset development from 3rd party companies. AMD said the technology is an open architecture, allowing what it called "accelerators" to be plugged into the system to perform special duties, similar to the way we have a dedicated GPU for graphics.
Hmmmm interesting...
Furthermore, AMD President Dirk Meyer also confirmed that in addition to multi-processor platforms, that "as we look towards ever finer manufacturing geometries we see opportunity to integrate CPU and GPU onto the same [die]."
*wonders what Intel's got planned*
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Published on 24 Jul 2006 from
A survey of UK mobile phone usage finds most people cannot get through the day without using their phone.