Microsoft layoffs? - [4:47 AM]

Mini-Microsoft: "Rumors. Microsoft layoff and cut-backs and Reduction In Force rumors. That's all I have for you. Rumors and second-hand speculation and the comments left by the fine, good-looking folks who participate in the conversation here. So pour yourself some holiday cheer and dive in." - Mini may finally get what he's wanted all these years, a reduction in force. The comments tell the story so make sure you read through those.

Labels: Microsoft

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More Visual Studio 2008 ick - [8:49 AM]

I love Visual Studio. I need a little badge I can wear around that says "I (heart) Visual Studio!" I do, I really, really do. But... and there's always a but isn't there?

The latest release seems to have really gone the wrong direction for the C/C++ developer, in my humble opinion. Editing, debugging, all great. The problem seems to lie in the auto completion/browsing capability. It's horribly slow. This morning, after 30-minutes, I finally had to kill off Visual Studio after right-clicking so I could "Go to Definition" of a method. Yes, I had other stuff to do so I left it alone hoping to come back and the hour glass disappear so I could work, no luck. Nuke it.

So, here I sit, waiting on a build to complete, and I make the mistake of right clicking on method name again. The IDE is now out to lunch, sorry Rob, no right mouse clicks for you, and you can forget ever seeing that menu you'd like to see.

Thing is I'll bet the C#, and Visual Basic crowd, are pretty pleased with it. All those nice little pop-up tool-tippy style helpers that allow you to dig into objects to inspect their values is pretty darned nice. Too bad it comes at the expense of the C/C++ side of the equation.

Maybe, just maybe, there are some settings I'm not aware of that will allow me to get better responsiveness from the bits I do like? I'll need to dig around and see if I can turn off some stuff to improve performance.

PS, I wonder, if the DNA of Visual Studio has a built in defense mechanism that causes it to misbehave in a VM on a Mac? It could happen...

PPS, it's still better than Vi, emacs, and gdb on Linux. Heaven forbid I have to work in that all day, every day.

PPPS, Note to the Linux world. Check out the great job the XCode guys did on their IDE. It uses gdb under the hood and allows you different views of the debugger, gdb console view and a nice GUI view that allows you to set breakpoints interactively.

PPPPS, I need to look at KDevelop again. Maybe it's much better than I give it credit for.

Labels: C++, Development, Microsoft, Visual Studio

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IPy 2.0 - [8:17 AM]

Harry Pierson: "This is a very pretty sight. It’s a screenshot from the IronPython CodePlex home page showing that 2.0 is the 'current release'. Yes that’s right, dear reader, IronPython 2.0 has officially been released!" - The dynamic language guys have been doing a great job, we have IronPython, IronRuby, and the DLR thanks to them. Well done, and congratulations.

Labels: .NET, Development, Microsoft, Python, Ruby

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I'm a PC - [8:47 AM]

Kim, my lovely wife, surprised me the other night, here's how the conversation went...

Kim: "Rob, you should make one of those 'I'm a PC' videos."
Me: "Yeah?"
Kim: "Yeah, you could say 'I'm a PC and I'm old, tired, and I hurt all over', just like Windows."
Me: Laughing too hard to talk.

Labels: Fun, Microsoft

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Dumping ground language - [3:28 PM]

James Robertson: "The next time someone claims that C# or Java are 'easier' because they use 'standard C style syntax', this is worth pondering: a comment I saw pass by on Twitter" - Wow! When I read that I thought to myself, No way there's that many keywords! Well, I was wrong. According to this page there are 77 keywords and 16 contextual keywords. I really hope C# doesn't continue to become a dumping ground for features. Like LINQ support, why? Sure it makes the code look a bit cleaner, I guess, but why add that directly to the language? I thought that's why the CLR is open? So someone could come along and create the "Database Programming Language" and it magically works with the other .NET languages?

Labels: .NET, Microsoft

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BASIC is back! - [10:52 AM]

MSDN DevLabs: "Small Basic is a project that's aimed at bringing "fun" back to programming. By providing a small and easy to learn programming language in a friendly and inviting development environment, Small Basic makes programming a breeze. Ideal for kids and adults alike, Small Basic helps beginners take the first step into the wonderful world of programming" - BASIC has a special place in my heart. My first professional programming job was writing accounting software in BASIC, Microsoft BASIC 6.0 as a matter of fact, what a great language, it was what's referred to as Street BASIC because it was structured.

Labels: Development, Fun, Microsoft, Tools

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Microsoft Interview Tips - [10:21 AM]

Michael Hunter: "Take, for example, the coding you will almost certainly be asked to do. I have never had anyone complete my coding question. This does not bother me. I do not care whether the person I am interviewing knows C# inside and out if they haven't a clue how to solve problems they have never seen before. Nor I do care (much) how awful their code is so long as I feel their approach(es) to solving the problem is effective."

Labels: Microsoft

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Brilliant! - [10:08 AM]

Engadget: "Microsoft is expected to be handing out pre-betas of Windows 7 to devs at WinHEC and PDC soon, and it looks like it's settled on an official name for its next-gen OS -- ahem, Windows 7." - It's about darned time they went back to using version numbers, I never liked the year model naming and the goofy, meaningless, names like XP and Vista needed to go. I like the idea.

Labels: Microsoft, Windows

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Must have apps - [8:38 AM]

I'm officially a Mac fan, can't help it. The user experience it just too good. The OS is clean and most of the applications I use on a daily basis are very clean. However... I just couldn't live with one application, OmniGraffle Pro. No offense folks but it's not Visio. For some that will be a plus, for me it's a definite minus. I missed Visio so much I went out and purchased my very own copy to use on my work box. I installed it yesterday and got to work on a new drawing, it worked just like I remember.

Hello old friend.

Labels: Microsoft, Visio

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XP SP-3 suckage - [10:35 AM]

I installed Windows XP SP3 yesterday only to discover they've removed something I use every day. It's a little thing, but why they'd remove it is beyond me. I'm talking about the Address Bar. You know the one you can show down in the Task Bar that allows you to type a drive, directory, network share, or URL and it pops open Explorer to let you browse. Like I said, little, but why remove it?

Ah, according to this TechNet post, they had to remove it due to legal restrictions.

It's been there for how long, and now there are legal issues related to it?

I don't think this will make me upgrade to Vista guys. In the end I only use Windows XP as a development tool, it allows me to do my job, but it's no longer my platform, or OS, of choice.

Mac OS X is my OS of choice today. I need to get a job writing code for the iPhone, or OS X.

UPDATE: I've found a replacement to the Address Bar, it's called MuvEnum Address Bar, and it's free. I'll try this for a while and see how it goes.

Labels: Microsoft, Windows

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Ballmer's on crack - [4:14 PM]

9 to 5 Mac: "And it gets better, 'I'm not saying there isn't a threat' from Apple, he said. But if Microsoft and its PC partners 'do our jobs right, there's really no reason Apple should get any footprint in the enterprise.'" - Time for Steve to go bye-bye, he's lost his marbles, but then again he is getting spanked by the other Steve. But what do I know, I'm a great big nobody.

Labels: Apple, Microsoft

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The new IBM? - [9:33 AM]

James Robertson: "Microsoft's response to this kind of thing seems to be an utterly stupid advertising campaign. I fully expect Microsoft to get a lot smaller before they find their mojo - pretty much just like IBM back in the 80's. I especially like the rationale HP gives for this effort:" - I think James really nails it here. Microsoft needs to get refocused, and to do that they'll probably have to take a big hit to do so. I still believe the Windows Kernel (NT) is a rock, but maybe it's time for a radical change above, and I don't mean change the paint on the shell. If HP is really off doing their own OS Microsoft needs to make sure it's built on top of the NT Kernel. It's completely capable of having different looks placed on top of it. Remember the OS/2 shell that lived on top of it for a few releases?

Labels: Microsoft

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Interesting Sinofsky comment - [11:13 AM]

Engineering Windows 7: "In fact as I type this I received sequential emails one saying “[N]obody cares about touch screen nonsense” and the other saying “[Win7 needs] more advanced/robust ‘touch’ features”. When you just get unstructured and unsolicited input you see these opposites quite a bit. I’m sure folks are noticing this on the blog comments as well." - The real hidden nugget in that comment? If memory serves, Sinofsky hated the tablet from day one and since he ran the Office unit he didn't care to add great table support to the Office apps. Visio could've been the premier application for the tablet but it wasn't allowed to be. That's ok, business decisions and all, but now Apple has entered the market. Touch is in, and Apple will perfect it, while Microsoft allows it to possibly die on the vine.

Strange, isn't it? It's not always the leader into the market that wins, it's the guy that can bring it home in the hearts and minds of users.

Labels: Microsoft, Windows

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Yeah, right - [8:27 AM]

CNet | The Open Road: "Columnist John Dvorak thinks that Adobe Systems has a Microsoft problem and that Linux provides a clear solution:" - This has already been done for Adobe, it's called Mac OS X. Now, the one cool thing about this idea is simple. If Adobe developed their own Linux OS we'd finally get a real end-user version of Linux. Do they need it, no, would it make for interesting choice, yes.

If they did it I'd toss out KDE and Gnome, and start from scratch, freshly grown shell from the ground up. Keep the kernel and all the nifty hidden stuff. Add real developer tools, Xcode is a tremendous IDE that makes use of the open source toolchain, gcc and gdb.

Linux doesn't have to be for the hacker only. I work with a few guys, hi Tony and Stuart, that make Linux sing, but 99% of the population don't care to hop into BASH and type arcane commands to get what they want. They want to point and click.

With the proper focus, and a world class company like Adobe, they could make it happen. Problem is, it doesn't really make sense for Adobe. They're all about their applications running across OS'es and making money, not creating the OS.

It would sure be fun to work on! But, it doesn't really make sense.

Labels: Adobe, Apple, Linux, Microsoft

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Windows seven weblog - [10:00 AM]

Engineering Windows 7: "Welcome to our first post on a new blog from Microsoft—the Engineering Windows 7 blog, or E7 for short. E7 is hosted by the two senior engineering managers for the Windows 7 product, Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky. Jon and Steven, along with members of the engineering team will post, comment, and participate in this blog" - I'm not sure there's time to include any feedback from this weblog for Windows Seven? If there's any talk of a new OS I'd start with the Windows NT Kernel and build from there, new API's, new shell. Maybe managed? Yes, it'll take years, if they decided to do it. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Apple proved it could be done and OS-X is elegant and powerful. They also managed to prove you could hide great power under a beautiful UI. The Linux crowd could learn something from that.

Labels: Microsoft, Windows

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Visual Studio 2008 lesson - [7:45 AM]

Wow, I just ran into a really freaky behavior in Visual Studio 2008. I'd set the Configuration Properties > C/C++ > Output Files > Object File Name to a custom path, and I forgot to include the trailing backslash, which caused me all kinds of grief.

E.G.

c:\dev\mycustompath

Instead of

c:\dev\mycustompath\

Basically the compiler happily created one file with the same name over and over and over and was actually able to successfully link, not sure why that worked, but it did.

So when I went to link to this particular library I'd get a whole mess of unresolved external references.

I finally saw my problem this morning. So, word to the wise, remember the trailing backslash. Yes, this was a user error, but it was sure very easy to make that mistake.

Labels: Development, Microsoft, Visual Studio

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XBox Live Abuse - [11:28 PM]

Tonight I decided to play a couple games of Call of Duty, I'd had a long day, and wanted to do something that didn't require a lot of thought. We played one game, I was having a good time, then we were hooked up with a group of less than stellar human beings. The verbal attacks were childish, and quite frankly infuriated me. I had to quit.

Thing is, I don't think these guys would do this in person. They're so darned cowardly. In person if they did something like that I'd just kick the poo out of them and move on. Please, have the common courtesy to keep crude comments to yourself.

Does anyone know of a public list of XBox Live gamers to avoid? How about a way of getting their real names? Any information would be appreciated.

I've already reported them, I have their gamer tags, and a couple of voice messages from them, for some reason I couldn't play them, but I wil, and I'd like to see their XBox Live accounts suspended, and the individuals banned.

I have a feeling Microsoft doesn't have the guts, or the desire, to do that.

Labels: Games, Microsoft, XBox, XBox 360

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Wii WOW! - [8:04 AM]

James Robertson: "That's a ton of consoles. The other thing you have to keep inmind is this: while MS and Sony lose money on each console sale (and hope to make it up in software), Nintendo profits on each Wii. Oh, and all the speculation about how people buy a Wii, and then only play Wii Sports?" - Wow, go read this. I'm going to guess we'll see Sony and Microsoft releasing similarly priced consoles, or not producing a next gen console. I don't know much about Sony but Microsoft has, in the past at least, had the courage to scrap projects that didn't make money. Nintendo, the little company that everyone had written off, is making out like bandits!

There are other things to consider. Nintendo creates fun games with great characters. We still have our Nintendo 64 for one game, Mario Kart. Yes, it's that much fun. Something else to consider. We recently experienced the Red Ring of Death on our 360 console. Of course that prompted me to look around for solutions to the problem and read all kinds of horror stories. I've seen accounts of up to six, yes six, returns for a single person. That is a nightmare for Microsoft.

I'm hoping our repaired box will hold up for years to come, we'll see.

Labels: Microsoft, Nintendo, PlayStation, Sony, Technology, Wii, XBox 360

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That's a new one? - [9:50 PM]

Recently we upgraded from Visual Studio 2003 to Visual Studio 2008 for our Windows products and I've been having one heckuva time trying to build. I keep getting the following error...

fatal error C1090: PDB API call failed, error code '23' : '(

One interesting hit on Google produces this, a bug report marked as By Design. If you look in the comments for the report you'll see two comments saying it's still around. Why, yes, yes it is, and I'm experiencing it.

Hopefully I'll be able to find a workaround, or a fix for it, and soon. It's strange it's only happening for this one particular codebase, I've been building other things with Visual Studio 2008 for a while now, without issue.

Time to dig around a bit.

Labels: Microsoft, Visual Studio

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XBox garage games - [10:35 AM]

Wired: "Microsoft said that hobbyist gamemakers would be able to price their creations between 200 and 800 Microsoft Points, from $2.50 to $10. Of that, Satchell said that the creators would receive "up to" 70 percent of the revenue." - I think this is a great idea, an idea that sounds familiar, but great none-the-less.

Labels: Microsoft, XBox 360

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Then again... - [8:46 PM]

XBox.com: "Los Angeles—An exciting new home theater experience is coming to living rooms this holiday season. At E3, Microsoft and Netflix, the world's largest online movie rental service, today unveiled an exclusive partnership to offer the ability to instantly stream movies and TV episodes from Netflix to your television via Xbox 360®." - This deal is a win for Microsoft. I'd been considering an Apple TV box, but now, well let's just say we'll put that idea on hold and see how the 360/Netflix deal works out.

Labels: Microsoft, XBox 360

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I had a feeling - [8:23 PM]

IT PRO [via NerdyNews]: "All the components are in place – Windows Mobile as the underlying OS, the Zune user interface for the front-end, tweaked and extended using the team and technology at Danger (the company behind the front-end ssoftware for the Sidekick smartphone, which is based on Windows CE)." - I had a feeling something like this would happen. I have a friend there that said he was working on a "really cool" bit of mobile technology he couldn't talk about, but when I said If you're working on a device that plays music, you have a big hill to climb, and I hope you do a lot better than the Zune things got real quiet. That and the iPhone and iPod are a huge success.

Well, like I said, good luck with that Microsoft. There are a bunch of iPhone wannabes showing up now and I'm sure they're not fairing very well. In a way Microsoft has become the underdog even though they still own a gigantor share of the PC market. Apple recovered, but Jobs had to come back to do it. Jobs brought focus back to the company. Microsoft is just doing too much. They need to focus on something and get their mojo back.

I'm not sure a new smartphone platform is it.

Labels: Apple, Microsoft

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What a nut - [11:28 AM]

BBC: "Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and the rest, offer you software that gives them power over you. A change in executives or companies is not important. What we need to change is this system." - This guy is a complete nut job. He wants to trade paid software for free, why can't we have both? There's nothing wrong with someone making a living writing software and there's nothing wrong with giving your software away. You choose, but quit banging the drum for everything to be free. There's a price to pay for free software as well. I can't hack up Linux and sell it without making those changes available to everyone, right? Where's the freedom in that? It forces me to give away the changes that make my system better. That's not freedom, it's a dictatorship. I'm not against free software, I do, however, have a problem with people telling me what I can and can't do.

If Open Source software were truly open I'd be able to distribute it in whatever form I see fit. I know there are licenses that allow this sort of distribution, but Stallman's idea of open isn't one of them.

Labels: Adobe, Apple, Linux, Microsoft

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Check your facts please - [9:46 AM]

Have Mac will Blog [via James Robertson]: "For all OS X’s excellence, it should be remembered that OS X is a good deal younger than Vista, with the Mach microkernel sitting under BSD and a coherent interface layer sitting above it. Windows has archaelogical layers of software buried under the covers, because Microsoft chose to provide a great deal of backward compatibility." - That statement is only partially correct. NT began life in 1989, Mach in 1985. The NT Kernel is newer. As to the backward compatibility layers on top of an otherwise excellent kernel, well, he's right there.

If Microsoft were to create a new OS they should start with the NT Kernel and go from there. Microsoft could survive creation of a new OS, just as Apple did, and they can be heroes on the other side. Keep the Win32 API's in the OS as a compatibility layer, just as Apple has Carbon, and introduce the "new" way to do things, slowly turning developers to it, with a conversion deadline of a number of years, say ten. If you remember back to the initial release of NT it included two shells, Windows and the OS/2 shell. Yes, you could put a new UI on top of NT. I used to know the complete details, but my old brain is failing me at the moment.

In a nutshell Microsoft could strap the .NET runtime up on top of the NT Kernel, as the new API, just as Apple did with Cocoa, and move toward a much easier development model. Of course that's a big oversimplification of the real work, but they could do it.

There's no doubt Windows is carrying around old baggage, but the OS as a whole is not a complete loss as folks would lead you to believe.

Labels: Microsoft, Windows

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RRoD - [9:58 AM]

Yes, our lovely XBox-360 has started acting up, we got the dreaded Red Ring of Death. Last night Kim was off killing folks in Call of Duty and the box would hang about every five to ten minutes, requiring a reboot, which makes for terrible game play. It's kind of frustrating it happened over the summer, when the kids and Kim are out of school, it's prime gaming time!

Oh well, the repair center was very polite. We're going to ship off the box as soon as possible so we should get it back just in time for a week of play before school starts again.

Labels: Microsoft, XBox 360

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Visual Studio Command Window - [8:10 AM]

Sara Ford: "To create an alias, open up the Command Window (or anywhere you can type in VS commands) and type in something along the lines of..." - I've always wondered how to use the Command Window, but I've never taken the time to look into it, much less use it. I love the the alias "?", shades of Classic Visual Basic.

Labels: Development, Microsoft, Visual Studio

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Pulling the plug on Microsoft - [10:44 PM]

MSFTextrememakeover: "It's sobering to realize that during Ballmer's term as CEO, MSFT has underperformed almost all of its top tech peers (including AAPL, IBM, HPQ, SAP, INTC, CSCO, SYMC, NOK, ORCL, ADBE, RIMM, QCOM, Ebay, and AMZN), and badly lagged the major averages. We may even see our third plunge to test the 2000 lows during his watch. Unbelievable." - So long Mr. Makeover, it's been nice reading ya.

Labels: Microsoft

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Apple gets it - [10:36 AM]

Microsoft should take a page from Apple's playbook, streamline the OS, go work on the guts, forget adding features, in fact it might be a good idea to remove a few!

Hat tip James Robertson.

Labels: Apple, Microsoft, Windows

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IronRuby on Rails - [8:06 PM]

twitter.com/john_lam: "ironruby running unmodified rails!" - That's pretty darned sweet.

Update: John Lam: "IronRuby doesn’t just let you run Rails; it lets you interact with the rich set of libraries provided by .NET. You’ll be able to use IronRuby to build server-based applications that run on top of ASP.NET or ASP.NET MVC. You’ll be able to use IronRuby to build client applications that run on top of WPF or Silverlight. You’ll be able to use IronRuby to test, build and deploy your .NET applications. You’ll be able to run Ruby code in your web browser and have it talk to your Ruby code on your web server. That’s a feature that we feel that many folks will enjoy." - Wow.

Labels: .NET, Microsoft, Ruby

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New Touch Windows - [12:32 AM]

BBC: "Microsoft's next operating system will come with multi-touch features as an alternative to the mouse." - It's surface, in a smaller size!

Labels: Microsoft, Windows

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Sorry, you can't record that - [8:34 AM]

ars technica: "Handfuls of Windows Vista Media Center users found themselves blocked from making recordings of their favorite TV shows this week when a broadcast flag triggered the software's built-in copy protection measures." - Microsoft's bad karma continues. Will they ever stop the bad press? With each new article I think to myself "It can't get any worse than this", and then it does.

By the way, can't you record shows on a TiVo without restrictions? That's an honest question, I don't own a recorder.

Labels: Microsoft

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Leaving Adobe for Microsoft? - [9:03 PM]

John Nack: "Mark is not going to go work on other digital imaging tools. After 17+ years of driving Photoshop & subsequently Lightroom, he's looking for a complete change of pace & wants to work on operating system technologies related to user experience. Given that Mark has always been a huge Mac guy (developing Lightroom first on the Mac, etc.), it's kind of a Nixon-goes-to-China moment." - What's bad for Adobe is good for Microsoft. Mark has the opportunity to make the Windows user experience better. With the sad state of Vista, there's nowhere to go but up.

Labels: Adobe, Microsoft

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Well said - [7:33 AM]

James Robertson: "Ultimately, this is a conservative offering aimed squarely at Microsoft's installed base. There's nothing wrong with that, and it might well help to retain that base in the 'paying customer' column. It's hardly game changing though." - Mesh isn't bad, it isn't great, it just is. It's not something that'll make me go out a purchase Vista, or a Windows Mobile device, just so I can keep everything in sync. If I already have an investment in the Windows platform it may prove useful, but it's not an earth shattering, must have, technology.

Hey, now could be the time to join Microsoft if you have great ideas. They're losing ground rapidly and could use some new, innovative, thinking.

Labels: Microsoft

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What a bozo move... - [8:21 AM]

MacWorld: "What this means is that after 31 August, music fans who want to shift their sounds from one computer to another will be blocked from doing so. It also means that once all five Windows PCs a user can have authorised for music playback have failed, they will lose their music." - So, you have the Vista debacle, iPod rules the roost, the Yahoo! acquisition is going well, and now you're going to shut down people who legally purchased music from you? Wow.

On the bright side, there's always Mesh?

This company seems to have things figured out.

Labels: Microsoft, Music

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DLR Tutorial - [11:05 PM]

DotNetGuru.org: "The Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) is a layer on top of the .NET Framework 3.5 aiming at help you to build dynamic languages in .NET. Languages created with the DLR could be a language embedded in an application (like before) or a new language for the .NET platform like IronPython or IronRuby provided by Microsoft."

Labels: .NET, DLR, Microsoft

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Idea for Visio - [10:49 PM]

Ok, it's a strange idea, but what do you expect for free? Who knows, maybe you can already do this, and I'm just so out of touch with Windows development, and Visio, I've missed it?

Anywho, here goes...

Wouldn't it be nice as a Visio developer to be able to perform queries against a drawing, page, or shape?

Visio.Shapes shapes = from Shape s in Page where s.Height = "1.75in." select s;

... Or something like that.

Labels: Development, Microsoft, Visio

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IronPython and Visual Studio - [5:49 PM]

Harry Pierson: "We've hired a few people around here recently (including me obviously). However, if you have a burning desire to work on IronPython (or IronRuby) and Visual Studio, we're still hiring" - This is exactly what's needed to make IronPython and IronRuby really slick! Complete integration into the Visual Studio IDE. Make them first class citizens.

Labels: .NET, DLR, Microsoft, Python, Ruby

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Keynote vs. PowerPoint - [7:56 AM]

Macworld: "PowerPoint has caught up to Keynote in many areas and surpassed it in some. But Keynote’s workflow and overall feature set remain superior. Practically speaking, your choice of software probably depends more on the hardware you’ll be using to deliver your presentation (and the software installed on it) than on the features of your authoring program. For that reason, unless Apple releases a Keynote player application for Windows, which isn’t likely, PowerPoint may be a more sensible choice for many speakers." - Interesting wrap up. It looks like Apple has done a great job, as usual, of catching up to the leader, Microsoft in turn has responded. The idea of a Keynote player for Windows isn't such a bad idea, do one for Linux as well to cover all your bases.

The bottom line: Keynote 4.5 mice, PowerPoint 4 mice.

Labels: Apple, Mac, Microsoft, Windows

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Hey Microsoft - [1:43 PM]

The Unofficial Apple Weblog: "Throughout the years, Mac OS X has definitely seen its share of changes. In these 7 years, OS X has been through 6 versions (7 if you include the first public beta version)." - Microsoft should consider releasing an update, not labeled as a Service Pack, every year. Something that improves on the Vista experience, be that performance, or a nice subtle UI improvement. It might make people feel a bit better about Vista given it hasn't been well received.

Labels: Apple, Mac, Microsoft, Windows

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The Voice of Reason - [9:14 AM]

Jay Kimble [via Jason Bock]: "I want to ask you to stop trying to tempt me to come join your company unless you want to make some changes to your corporate policy. I love a number of your company's products and really would want to work for you except for 1 thing: Redmond, Washington (or anywhere that isn't my chosen location)." - The best company I've ever worked for, Visio Corporation, allowed me to work remotely from 1997 to 2003. As part of the deal I had to fly to Seattle once a month for a week. It was a great arrangement. There were four of us with the same deal. It was the best time of my professional career and ended two and a half years after Microsoft acquired Visio because "We needed to be on the campus so we could have hallway discussions." Something most people in the world don't understand is this, Redmond is the center of the known Universe, so as an employee you need to be on site. It's true! Microsoft believes that so much they couldn't deal with the Visio team being in downtown Seattle so they moved the group to Redmond so the management didn't have to cross the lake for meetings. Visio was more progressive in 1997 than Microsoft is in 2008.

One of these days a technology will be created that will allow people to communicate from anywhere in the world, their computers will be connected, they'll have fancy cameras built into their computers, and we'll have software that will actually allow you to see the person on the other end. Voice, video, and data will travel over some magic pipeline. I know, I know, it's a big dream, but maybe some day we'll be able to pull it off.

Jay, don't hold your breath, you'll just pass out, get a massive headache, and nothing will change.

Labels: Life, Microsoft

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Mini on the warpath, again! - [12:32 PM]

Mini-Microsoft: "Some weeks you just feel like Wile E. Coyote, beat up and dazed at the bottom of a canyon you just crash landed onto, wavering back and forth in the swirling dust while new knots grow out of your head and little concussion spirals spin above your black and blue eyes. And there's a shadow. A shadow that's growing bigger and bigger around you, and you wonder, where did that new Acme anvil get to, anyway, and what's that whistling sound?"

Labels: Microsoft

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Building on the DLR - [3:00 PM]

Matthew Podwvsocki [via Harry Pierson]: "So, I can admit, I've been on a bit of a kick with compilers and such after my posts on DSLs, Compilers and the Irony of it All and Lang.NET and Rolling Your Own. Today is no different, but this time, I'm just intrigued by targeting the DLR instead of the CLR. Thankfully there are a few great references that people are doing right now for these little adventures. One day once I'm more finished with the deep dive into F#, I'll dig a little deeper." - Maybe someday I'll be able to take a look at this, right... Anywho, Matthew has a nice list of examples for building on the DLR.

Labels: .NET, DLR, Microsoft

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Mini pulls out the BFG 9000... - [10:48 AM]

Mini-Microsoft: "Firing tens of thousands of Microsofties? Allow me to raise my hands in the air, wave them about, and yell out, Hallelujah brother, praise the RIF!!!" - Mini is sounding like the Mini of old. Calling, once again, for a reduction in force.

Labels: Microsoft

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Mac running Windows - [9:28 AM]

The Unofficial Apple Weblog: "Actually, let's not do this. Let's realize that Microsoft is a company and Apple is a company, and while yes, in some fields they are competitors, let's just put the whole Apple vs. PC idea to bed. Guess what: a Mac actually is a PC. It's a very, very well-made PC (in fact, the best made, in this blog's humble opinion)." - Yes, the Macintosh is a great Windows box. Just check out the hardware, who wouldn't want that kind of power behind Windows? And, yes, I'm fairly certain the Linux crowd would be happy with a Mac as well, but I wouldn't want to do that to my Mac, it would be like putting a pig on lipstick. You read that right "Putting a pig(Linux) on lipstick(Mac)."

Labels: Apple, Linux, Mac, Microsoft, Windows

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Microsoft Yahoo! - [2:57 PM]

Wired: "Johnson's comments seem aimed at responding to Yahoo's decision to adopt new severance plans earlier in the week. All the company's full-time workers who lose their jobs without 'cause' or quit 'for good reason' after a Microsoft takeover would continue to receive salary and health insurance for four to 24 months, plus other benefits." - This is going to get interesting.

Labels: Microsoft

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Following the leader - [8:53 AM]

Microsoft is now a company that just follows the leader. They're losing to Google, so they're attempting to acquire Yahoo! Now we have news they've acquired Danger, which would seem to follow the tremendous success of Apple's iPhone and Google's Android. In response to the success of the iPod we get Zune. Microsoft is taking the lead in the high-priced gadget table market, but we don't yet know if it'll be a big hit. No, really, it is very cool, it's just not something common folk like myself would purchase.

Will they ever get back to leading? Hopefully Ray Ozzie has some tricks up his sleeve.

Labels: Microsoft

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Dynamic C# - [2:20 PM]

Charlie Calvert: "All the code that occurs in a dynamic block will potentially support dynamic lookup; even if the accessed members are not known by the C# compiler to exist, it will allow the code." - Does C# have to become a kitchen sink language? Why not let IronRuby and IronPython become the leaders in this regard and keep C# as clean as possible? One of the arguments presented for the inclusion of dynamic support is that PIA's can be expensive. If someone needs to use a COM component generate an assembly in a language that supports dynamic lookup and use that.

C# doesn't need to be all things to all people.

Labels: .NET, Development, Microsoft, Visual Studio

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So? - [12:49 PM]

Slashdot: "If the marriage of Microsoft and Yahoo were to be consummated, GNU/Linux would be hindered, argues Roy Schestowitz. Yahoo's funding of open source initiatives would dry up." - Well, maybe, but why does that matter? It's open source, anyone can contribute, isn't that what makes it so attractive? A better argument against it would be lack of sense it makes for Microsoft to go into debt to purchase Yahoo!

Labels: Microsoft, Open Source

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Microhoo! - [8:43 AM]

The Huffington Post: "Far too few, though, are writing about the impact of a sale on employees' work and morale. What analysts seem to forget is at the end of the day employees are what make a company worth anything at all." - In my experience I don't think Microsoft cares too much about the employee's in such a deal. The collection of 'old-timers' were encouraged, as is the culture at Microsoft, to move on, get a job in another group. I still believe on the whole Microsoft didn't really get Visio but they were certain they did and when the old-timers called bologna they were ignored and and seen as pariah, IMHO.

I'm fairly confident you'll see HUGE layoffs; goodbye Sales, Marketing, HR, etc... The engineering teams are important for the time being to keep the ship afloat. The Visio team managed to retain 99% of the engineering team during the transition, one guy couldn't stand the thought of working for Microsoft and bailed to Adobe within a week. We were a total Windows shop, on the bleeding edge of everything Microsoft created, we rode their coat tails to success. It was intentional. The leadership at Visio was very bright and knew how to succeed. I can see mass defections at Yahoo! if this deal is approved. Why? Well, I work with a bunch of Linux/Open Source type folks that don't care too much for Microsoft and probably wouldn't work for them given the choice between Microsoft and, say, Google or another successful Open Source based company.

That said, Microsoft turned Visio into a billion-dollar business, so they're clearly doing something right! And as I've said may times in the past, I'd go back to work on Visio in a heartbeat given the opportunity, and you can take that to the bank.

Labels: Microsoft, Open Source

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Wow, that's a lot of moolah! - [10:29 AM]

Mini-Microsoft: "So, if your team is naturally at risk due to the acquisition I would start checking in on your local network and see what's going on elsewhere in Microsoft. If there's someone within Microsoft you've always wanted on your team that has some turbulence ahead due to the acquisition (yeah, I know, Ballmer's telling us "stay on target") check in with them and tell them the groovy things your group is doing."

James Robertson: "Going back to my earlier post, this is exactly why there's going to be internecine warfare: the Yahoo staff ihas one technology stack, and the Microsoft side has another one. There will be enormous pressure to rewrite into the MS stack, but - the Yahoo side will resist, citing perfectly valid business cases along the lines of 'if it's not broke, don't fix it'."

Dare Obsanjo: "Obviously, this is the top story on all the tech news sites this morning. My favorite take so far has been from a post on Slashdot entitled Implications for open source which is excerpted below"

Having gone through an acquisition as an employee with Visio I can tell you it's very exciting at first. Microsoft pretty much left the Visio gang alone for the first year, then moved their folks into key positions in the second year(folks that didn't understand the product or the customer base, IMHO), and in the third year began making radical changes. The entire team was moved from Seattle to Redmond, because it was too far for the Redmond folks to travel for meetings, all telecommuting employees positions were relocated to Redmond because we couldn't be as productive outside the halls of Microsoft, and the team size was cut way back by giving folks 3.0's, and through natural attrition. The development team is now a skeletal 20+, which probably isn't a bad thing given the maturity of the product that this juncture. Having said all that I'd most certainly love to go back to work on Visio given the opportunity, but that's not going to happen.

Anywho, if this deal happens I can see layoffs happening, and we'll see attrition due to 3.0's (or their new counterpart) so folks will naturally begin to flock to other companies. I'm sure there are going to be many overlapping jobs; HR, Marketing, Sales, etc, that will be naturals for layoff, and there will be that certain type of Yahooligan that will absolutely refuse to be a Microsoft employee. I can't see wholesale change on the technological side, why break it if it works, but I can see a slow transition to Microsoft technologies. As Yahoo! begins to develop new applications I can see them being designed with Microsoft infrastructure in mind. It would make sense to not rock the boat too much or you'll see a mass exodus which would cause extreme pains for both sides as well as the end user.

Labels: Microsoft

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You know you've arrived when... - [4:59 PM]

Don Box: "Java has achieved cockroach status and its inventors should be proud."

Labels: Microsoft

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.NET Source Code - [4:54 PM]

Scott Guthrie: "Last October I blogged about our plan to release the source code to the .NET Framework libraries, and enable debugging support of them with Visual Studio 2008. Today I'm happy to announce that this is now available for everyone to use. Specifically, you can now browse and debug the source code for the following .NET Framework libraries:" - Neat.

Labels: .NET, Microsoft

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More on Emacs.Net - [4:46 PM]

Very cool, my post the other day lead to a great comment and a link to more talk on Emacs.Net.

Here's a great article on Dataland, the gentleman that left the great comment with a link, and an article on ZDNet by Mary Jo Foley [via Dataland.]

I've been using Microsoft based editors and debuggers for many, many, years. Can you say PWB? If you know what PWB is you're old. I remember the transition from PWB to Visual Studio 1.0. I was pleased to have a GUI based IDE but bummed because it was missing features I had with the console version of the tools. Since then I've been very happy with each release until Visual Studio 2k3 and 2k5, they're really great if you're doing C# or VB.Net, or the like, but for the C++ developer they're a bit slow at times. Don't get me wrong, even with the slowness having a great IDE blows the doors off any Linux solution I've used to date. And yes I mean C/C++ IDE's because it's what I do each and every day.

As for having an Emacs.Net based editor. Ok, I guess. I can't foresee using it because I don't use emacs and don't have a use for it. It's old and arcane, but old developers get used to certain toolsets, and I can't blame them for the desire to create something they'll live in each and every day, but don't expect it to be overly successful, especially if you charge for it. On Linux I'm part of a newer crowd using KDevelop and I like it. Then again, who knows, they may create something so compelling I won't be able to resist it! If it is an IDE I be more apt to use it, I like having an integrated debugger.

Oh, yeah, one other thing. I don't think Visual Studio is built as a .NET program. I think it uses .NET components but I'd be shocked if it were 100%, or even 50%, .NET. Microsoft doesn't like to throw out codebases.

One more thing. I worked with a fella that went to work for the Visual Studio team at one point and hated it. It was so focused on adding features for .Net developers and fit made him sick. The money was coming in from C++ and Visual Basic Classic and they were spending tons of time writing code for the C# developer.

Labels: Development, Microsoft, Tools

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Emacs.Net? - [4:13 PM]

DouglasP: "We are looking for developers/testers to build a tool that I will roughly describe as 'Emacs.Net'." - Who care to work on Emacs? If you want people to come to work for you sell them on something new Douglas. Not rehashing the past, the ancient past to be a bit more accurate. Move on folks, we need the next big thing and something you compare to Emacs certainly doesn't sound very exciting.

Now, it could be I've misunderstood the "Emacs.Net" label, maybe it's meant to say "We're working on something that will do for computing today what Emacs did in 1976." I dunno, your guess is as good as mine.

Labels: Development, Microsoft

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Does it work with... - [10:37 AM]

I'm sure you've all seen the Ford Sync commercials. How many folks will see that and think "Cool, I can now use my iPod in my new Ford car!" I'll bet quite a few that aren't techno geeks. So, will an iPod work with Ford Sync?

The answer is a surprising YES!

Labels: Microsoft

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SQL Express Life Saver - [2:33 PM]

Note to self: osql is a life saver.

osql -E -S MACHINENAME\SQLEXPRESS
1> EXEC sp_grantlogin 'MACHINENAME\ACCOUNT'
2> GO
1> USE databasename
2> GO
1> EXEC sp_grantdbaccess 'MACHINENAME\ACCOUNT'
2> GO
1> exit

Helpful links:

ASP.Net Forums
MSDN Forums
Microsoft TechNet

These three links just saved me!

Labels: Development, Microsoft, SQL, Visual Studio, Windows

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It's a short term fix - [11:50 AM]

PC World [via James Robertson]: "According to accounts published last month, XP SP3 will feature more than 1,000 hot fixes and patches that have been issued in the past three years, as well as at least four new features, some of which will be ports of Vista tools." - The Windows codebase will move forward, they can't turn back now. The idea that they'll port some Vista tools back to XP seems reasonable. They'll get more time to bugfix Vista and get folks using XP acquainted with Vista features. It's a short term fix. When Vista is solid they'll shut the door on XP.

Labels: Microsoft, Windows

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WPF, Win32, and DirectX - [10:41 AM]

MSDN: "Attempting to render WPF pixels over Win32 leads to undesirable results, and is disallowed as much as possible through the interoperation APIs." - Must read this.

Labels: DirectShow, Microsoft, Windows, WPF

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WordPress on Server Core - [9:55 AM]

Dennis Chung: "Wow. Take Windows Server 2008 Server Core + PHP + IIS7 + MySQL + WordPress, mix them together, will they blend well and work out as a nice concoction? Matty challenged me to this blend, and guess what, we have a powerful cocktail to offer after all!"

Labels: Microsoft, Windows, WordPress

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Visual Studio 2008 - [7:49 AM]

John Lam: "Well, lots of other folks beat me to the punch about the announcement, but I was busy installing the product yesterday :) It's a popular product *inside* the company as well, and it took about 5 hours to grab from our internal share ... You can grab trial copies from here, and you can download the free (Express) editions from here." - John also links to a poster for C# keybindings, some of us still use an old outdated language called C++, so here is the poster for C++ keybindings.

Labels: Development, Microsoft, Visual Studio

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James, you sound like Mini - [12:24 PM]

James Robertson: "If they were smart, they would break the company into multiple pieces, and let each one try to get back to being lean and hungry. I don't expect to see that anytime soon, though." - James is of course talking about Microsoft. They are now the IBM of the 80's.

Labels: Microsoft

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Google the Old Microsoft? - [11:25 AM]

Dare Obasanjo: "n thinking about the Google OpenSocial Announcement I realized how much some of Google's recent moves remind me of Microsoft of old " - It's strange hearing this from a Microsoft insider that's on a team dedicated to web stuff. From the outside what I see is Microsoft trying to become Google. So what does that mean about Microsoft? Are they forever stuck in their old ways, and they can't see the forest for the trees?

Strange.

Labels: Microsoft