What the... Hey!

I finally have Orcas loaded

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 02:31:48 GMT

With the Beta 2 release of Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas), I decided that it was time to load it. I’m really interested in Silverlight’s capabilities. I think it may be the final answer to the problems of developing web applications in HTML and JavaScript. Flash comes close, but ActionScript isn’t much differnt from JavaScript. With Silverlight 1.1, I can write a web application in C#, not just an HTML/Javascript emitter (like ASP).

Great idea, but Orcas wasn’t cooperating. I got an error -2147467259 when trying to install. I played with the installer settings, no good. I downloaded the Pro version instead of the Standard version, no good (and why do the installers for these two versions look so different???). I checked the web for days, and no answers. I even found a Microsoft feedback issue around this error. MS said that they couldn’t repeat the error and closed the issue .

Finally, on Saturday, someone said to check if the Web tools were already installed, and if so remove them. Well, I didn’t have Web tools installed, but I did have the CTP of Expressions Web Developer installed. So, I uninstalled that (and a bunch of foreign language dot net stuff). Bingo, Orcas is now installed. Now, I just have to figure out how to do anything useful .

What the heck is going on here???

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 18:48:28 GMT

I just read from Microsoft Watch that Microsoft has released a “follow-on” to the RC1 for Vista. Back in the old days, release candidates were supposed to be just about ready for complete release. Now Microsoft isn’t just doing multiple candidates, they’re shipping “bug fixes” for their release candidates! Boy, these guys are in serious trouble…

The fog starts to clear: Amazon Unboxed and the "Fast Forward" problem.

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 17:17:39 GMT

I was using my Media Center (where I ran into the Unboxed issue I talked about earlier) and discovered a couple of things: Amazon does, indeed, use Microsoft technology for their videos: The Mythbusters video I bought automatically appeared in my Media Center Videos list; the file is actually a WMV file. The Fast Forward / Seek problem that I had with it also happens with Media Center.

After a quick Google search, it turns out that FF/Seek only works on indexed files. So:
1. This is not an “Amazon Player” problem per se, since all WMV’s exhibit the same behavior
2. The video player in Media Center is different than Windows Media Player: When I ran a video with WMP outside of the Media Center software, it acted like it had never been run before.
3. The Media Center video player can’t FF/Seek indexed videos (that seek fine in Real Player or Divx Player).

My conclusions:
1. Amazon is sitll not off the hook, because: There were a lot of problems other than the lack of seek support; if they’d just indexed the file, Seek would have been supported with other players.
2. The Media Center video player also needs work. FF/Seek works fine for recorded TV shows; it should work for pre-recorded shows as well (at least those with the necessary indexing).

Amazon, Microsoft, get with the program! I just might have to try out the new ReplayTV software after all…

Amazon's Unboxed should be called "Not Ready"

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 17:17:26 GMT

When I heard about Amazon’s new video downloading product called “Amazon Unboxed”, I figured I’d give it a try. The only criticism I heard was that it took too long to download a show, but I regularly record and watch shows days after their broadcast, so that wasn’t a big deal to me.

To test out the system, I downloaded an episode of Mythbusters, a 45 minute show (no commercials ).

First problem: content availability. There was very little content available. It reminded me of what I see when I use Comcast’s OnDemand service: Most of what I want to see isn’t available.

Next problem: download speed: It was pretty obvious from my download session that they were limiting my download speed to some ridiculously slow number, which they didn’t do for downloading the software itself.

Next problem: Fast Forward didn’t work. Even though they had a Fast Forward button, and a way to move the play point to anywhere in the video, they didn’t work. Clicking the button didn’t change the play position, and moving the play point resulted in it immediately snapping back to the beginning when the recording started to play. I ended up watching the first half of the show multiple times .

Next problem: Running the diagnostics destroyed my copy of the show. When Fast Forward refused to work, I ran a built-in diagnostic of the software. It found no problems, but trashed my copy of Mythbusters! On the plus side, they allow you to re-download the show (after all, I bought it!), but that meant having to deal with the slow download yet again.

Final problem (the last straw): The whole recording refused to play! The first time I watched the program, I got about 30 minutes (2/3, remember no commercials), and then stopped watching. After that, the program would only run about 20 minutes through (which I had to watch again, see above), and then ended!

That was it, I’d had enough at this point. I had been skeptical of Amazon’s ability to really deliver here, since I know their attention to their customers is almost nonexistent. They lived up to my low expectations. Hopefully, Rhapsody will offer video downloads soon…

Strange Computer Myths

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 18:57:47 GMT

Joel Spolsky posted an interesting entry to his blog today. He’s using a Mac Pro from home, and is wondering why “people” say that Macs never crash, since his unit is requiring a hard reset about every two hours.

I’m constantly amazed at the number of people who believe that the Mac is un-crashable. The same thing about Linux systems. I used to be a system operator for several Unix-based computers, and we were happy if our systems didn’t crash each day.

I’m also entertained by the new Mac commercials, since they do such a good job of ignoring the current state of the art in computer software …

Joel on Bill

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 17:24:21 GMT

Joel Spolsky, of Joel on Software fame, posted an interesting article on his first real experience with Bill Gates at Microsoft. It’s a very interesting read, that gives insights into both Bill himself, and how the rest of “techdom” view him (or at least those that know him).

I’d heard similar stories before, though it was interesting hearing Joe’s version. However, the thing that really struck me was that, this isn’t the way its done at Microsoft today and hasn’t been the way for quite some time. In the old days, Bill was central to the company, even after it became “big business”. This was how the now legendary “Internet shift” could happen. I think Bill liked having things this way, and he’s less interested in being just a “figurehead” for the company. This is probably central to his decision to wean himself from Microsoft and concentrate on his foundation, where he can have this kind of central role.

Good luck, Bill. It’s been a fun ride.

As a side note, I thought that it was interesting that last week’s Newsweek included a story on second careers for boomers, even before Bill’s announcement came out.

Adobe vs Microsoft

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 16:51:03 GMT

Adobe is finally talking about its threatened suit vs. Microsoft regarding PDF writing support in Office 2007, and Microsoft’s new electronic document format, XPS. Of course, they’re talking anti-trust and Monopoly, having taken a page from Sun’s strategy in their lawsuits against Microsoft. Several thoughts come to mind:

1. The Justice Department should examine Adobe for anti-trust. After all, based upon Judge Penfield Jackson’s sliding scale approach to Monopolies (Microsoft has a Monopoly on OS’s running on computers able to run Microsoft software, the other computers, like Mac’s and Mainframes, and Unix machines don’t count), Adobe has a monopoly on PDF technology (it’s the ONLY electronic document format, and they own it).

2. Adobe should remember what happened to Sun: after winning their suit, and getting Microsoft to agree to remove Java from their OS’s, they had to go back and get Microsoft to agree to leave in their JVM to prevent Java usage from imploding since very few computer vendors seemed interested in shipping Windows with Sun’s (or anyone else’s) JVM pre-installed.

3. Microsoft also did a job on Sun by placing the C# language definition under the control of ECMA. What happens if they do the same thing for XPS? Just how does Adobe sue Microsoft for implementing an ECMA standard?

Adobe could find its core technology undermined in a big way if it tries to play hardball over this. Remember Ashton-Tate and Dbase: they sued Borland for copyright infringement and instead, wound up losing their own copyright over the database language.

Beginning of the end

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 22:46:37 GMT

News.com is reporting that Bill Gates is stepping down as Chief Software Architect. He’ll stay on for a couple of years, transitioning from time employee to part time employee and chairman. Ray Ozzie (the current CTO of Microsoft) will take over as Chief Software Architect.

This is the start of Bill’s retirement, and typical of entrenched execs who are moving to retirement: they have to wean themselves from their company (and vice versa).

Palm Postscript

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 18:27:15 GMT

I tried to send my previous post directly to Palm, and found that there was no way to do that. Hopefully, they’ll find my post directly. Not a high hope though.

New Palm, new adventure

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 17:54:15 GMT

I’ve been having “slowdown” issues with my Palm LifeDrive. It’s a great PDA/MP3 player, but has a huge flaw: Palm decided to treat the HD storage like internal (Flash) RAM instead of as external storage. This means that applications are stored in it and must be swapped to RAM to run. This causes a noticeable delay at both startup and when switching applications, and can be really annoying when all you want to do is check your appointments for the day.

I considered just resurrecting my T3, since I was happy with it (other than having decent MP3 capability). However, I realized that I’d miss having WiFi capability (the T3 only has Bluetooth). I remembered that Palm now had the TX model out, and sure enough, it has both Bluetooth and WiFi built in. It also has 100 MB of (available) Flash RAM, so it sounded like a serviceable MP3 player too (like the LifeDrive, it comes with MP3 player software). Since the price was right, I went for it and picked one up.

It turns out that the TX has a few flaws in its OS … Everything went well until I tried to synch up with my LifeDrive’s backup: the synch locked up in the middle, and the TX started resetting repeatedly. The only way I could stop it was to reset it back to factory defaults.

Now, a little history. I’ve been using a Palm OS device since the Palm IIIx days in the mid ‘90s (gadzooks! just about 10 years!). I’ve gone through several “device transfers”, and they’ve all gone without a hitch. Even when there were hardware / OS changes, the system was smart enough to handle it without any major work on my part. So, this reset problem was extremely unwelcome.

I did some Googling on the problem, and found a couple of articles on how to handle it. Apparently, mine was not an isolated case. Plan A and plan B both failed (soft reset, hard reset). Plan C finally got the device working (reset to factory defaults, remove all backup records from the HotSynch database before synching up for the first time). Then, I had to load the missing applicatons piecemeal from my old backup. After a few hours of work, I (finally) have a working TX with my old data intact.

Then, I ran into my next hurdle: While the Life Drive will work as a virtual disk drive through its hotsynch cable, the TX doesn’t. I was surprised by this, since its a standard feature of Palm’s only real competitor, Microsoft. Luckily, I found a third party app (kudos to the Palm development community; they’re the main reason I’ve stuck with Palm over the years) that provides virtual drive support to the external SD card. This actually provides me with potentially MORE storage than I could have had with the Palm’s Flash RAM, since I can get up to at least a 1 GB SD card into that slot. This is MORE space than I was using on my Life Drive.

Anyway, today I’m finally up and running on the TX. So far, now that my startup pain is over, its living up to its promise: its nice and snappy, and has all the nice features that I used with the Life Drive. As an added bonus, the Grafitti 2 interface seems to work better with the TX than it did with the Life Drive. Frankly, I have mixed feelings about the current Palm devices. Both the TX and the Life Drive before it showed a much lower level of quality than the previous units. Frankly, I’d be switching to a Windows Mobile device, except I have experience with it as well, and the quality there is even lower: Microsoft doesn’t seem to understand the handheld market anywhere near as well as Palm does. So, I’m sticking with Palm for the duration, hoping and praying that they get their technological act together. Needless to say, that I’ll be sharing this story with anyone interested in hearing it…

Dell's using AJAX

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 21:53:26 GMT

Here’s an interesting thing: Dell is now using AJAX technology (I presume) on their web site, so system config changes now dynamically change the system price, you no longer have to press a “recalculate” button and do the post back. Also, a price window floats down the page as you scroll (this is more a Javascript gimmick than AJAX).

Microsoft continues to aim squarely at their own foot

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Wed, 17 May 2006 15:35:23 GMT

Today, Microsoft unveiled CodePlex.com, a new SourceForge-style collaboration site. For years, we’ve had their GotDotNet.com site for this, and it seems to have worked fine. Now, all of a sudden, we have a second site. What’s the difference? I don’t know. I doubt if anyone knows. Once again Microsoft has gone out of its way to confuse its own development community.

Technological Myopia

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Tue, 09 May 2006 17:46:07 GMT

Today, as part of his column on The Microsoft Search Tar Pit, John Dvorak criticizes the attitude at Oracle and Sun that “shrink wrap software is dead”. Dvorak points out that shrink wrap software has been around for at least 30 years, and the attitude of Oracle and Sun seems to be tied to the fact that they don’t sell shrink wrap software. This seems to boil down to a kind of technological myopia on their part.

Now, the thing I find interesting about this is, a few months ago, I heard Dvorak and Leo Laporte say on Leo’s “This Week In Tech” show that most people use Firefox, not IE. The basis of that comment was that they and everyone they know use Firefox. This is just so much more technological myopia. Now, it could very well be that the vast majority of techy-types use Firefox over IE, but that is certainly not the case in the real world, where most people are quite happy sticking with the browser that came with their PC.

Here we go again

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Tue, 02 May 2006 23:18:09 GMT

Microsoft Watch is reporting that the Gartner Group is postulating that the consumer edition of Vista will be delayed until Q2.

Now, first of all, I don’t think this will happen. For those fogeys out there that remember the Windows 95 launch, it was reported late in the game that Microsoft had huge memory problems with Windows 95 that would cause a significant delay, and that didn’t happen. Also, it’s pretty clear to me that the VS 2005 release should have been delayed until it was both stable and complete; it wasn’t (its still not either; I’m waiting for SP 1 due out this summer).

Secondly, I don’t think the average customer cares about Vista anyway.

But, I think the following will happen:

1. Microsoft will “make” their current “release date”. Quality will probably suffer, and maybe some features too, but it will be “released” in January 2007.

2. Due to the quality issues and missing features I mentioned above, Microsoft will get really horrible press over the release. Frankly, it would be next to impossible for MS to get good press. Let’s face it: the press enjoys a good MS-bashing article: it sells copies.

3. At some later date, MS will release SP1, which will be what they should’ve released in the first place. Consumers won’t care (except those unlucky folks who were stuck with the released Vista when they bought new computers), but the press will then gush all over Vista, saying what a great product it is and how everyone should move up to it.

Why do I think that this is how it will go? Because this is how it all went in the past.

Microsoft does it again

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 18:23:20 GMT

Well, the folks that gave us such brilliant product names as Microsoft.NET (search for THAT on the internet) and Windows DNA (what the heck does that mean???) have decided in their infinite wisdom to rename the Monad shell to”Windows PowerShell”. What a stupid, stupid name. When will the powers that be at Microsoft wake up and realize that their marketing people are idiots?

72 inches...

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 22:48:06 GMT

LG is bringing their 72 inch plasma display to the US (it’s been out in Korea for a year and a half)…

And it’s only $28,000.00

(info thanks to Engadget)

Boy, that was fast

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 16:48:43 GMT

Yesterday, Apple announced Boot Camp, their soon to be released system to allow dual booting of Intel-Macs between Windows XP and OS X. I commented to someone that while this was good news for Mac users who want/need to run Windows applications, a virtual machine solution would be better, so they could run both OS’s at the same time (We’re using VMware now to do this, and it’s great).

Today Parallels, a VM producer, announced Parallels Workstation 2.1, that supports Intel-based OS X as the host OS and allows other Intel based OS’s as guest OS’s. So, there you go: Windows XP running as a guest OS on top of Mac OS X. Just what the doctor ordered. And it only took a day …

A new category

blog@rapozab.org (Bill Rapoza) — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 16:33:13 GMT

It seems that I need a new category: technology. Now I can tag entries that deal with tech that might not deal with development. One less thing to throw into "general" :)