Tim Long

Buena Vista: Action packed

I previously wrote that I had given up trying to install Windows Vita beta 2 because it gave me too many problems.

Well, I'm not one to give up on something like that too easily and two things coincided which prompted me to try again. First, I read a blog post by The Office Rocker himself that Office 2007 beta 2 seemed happier running on Windows Vista beta 2 and my Action Pack shipment arrived containing a shiny new copy of both betas. Well, to cut a long story short, I don't know what on earth Culminis/TechNet sent me that claims to be beta 2 (build 5308), but the beta 2 (build 5384) from my action pack is like a completely different product! For a start, it works. Well it looks like third time lucky, at long last I have a build that I can run on my tablet PC. Vista Lives!

I had a hard time getting the Aero interface to work. My Acer tablet PC has an nVidia GeForce 6200 Go, which the upgrade advisor informs me should work with 'no action required'. I've found that if I go into the visual appearance settings and check 'use transparent glass' nothing happens. I accidentally found a workaround that jump starts it though: open 'Open classic appearance properties', switch to Windows Vista Basic colour scheme, apply the settings, then select Windows Vista Aero and click OK. Should now be working. Odd.

Joined my SBS domain OK, but I did it manually, not using the SBS ConnectComputer web site, which I think has known issues with Vista. first problem: ISA 2004 firewall client is incompatible, but so far things seem to work without it. I'm running as a standard user using my domain login and so far nothing is broken. Let me just say that again - I'm running as a standard user. This is a big thing. Whenever Vista needs to do something sensitive, it just prompts me for my local admin credentials - I think I can live with that, it is much more convenient that having to use RunAs all the time. The default SBS setup is to make each user an administrator on their own computer, so this is an important change that I hope will propagate into SBS in the Longhorn era.

So far it has been a good experience this time around, but I'm still in my first couple of hours with it.

Useful presentation tips from the Office Rocker

An Open Letter to Telligent Systems

Dear Telligent, I’ve used the free/express version of your Community Server software for some time now and I love it. However, as a Small Business Specialist, I think there is a gap in your licensing structure. Why don’t you follow Microsoft’s example and introduce a Small Business Edition? Case in point: Microsoft Windows Small Business Server. Small businesses these days need all of the features that larger enterprises expect, but on a much smaller scale, typically limited to a single server or a small (75) number of users and at a very aggressive price point. That’s exactly what Small Business Server does and Microsoft clearly hopes that as the small business grows, they will upgrade to the full “enterprise” versions. That’s why Microsoft expects more than 80% of its server sales to be SBS.

Your Community Server product fits hand-in-glove with SBS but users having the free or standard licenses currently cannot use email integration or single sign-on, which are features you’d expect to get in an SBS deployment, which includes Exchange Server and Active Directory. I think you need a license positioned between your standard and professional editions – close to the Standard edition in terms of price, but which gives the full professional edition features plus Exchange email integration. The license would only allow the product to run on Microsoft Windows Small Business Server and could be limited to 75 licensed users in line with the SBS maximum, for those features that are licensed per user. When the company grows out of SBS, they would then have to buy a professional or enterprise edition license.

I think this is a win/win scenario. It would get small business users using your software at a price they can afford while setting the scene for future upgrades. I also think if you get the price right, you’ll get some upgrades from those who are currently using the free/express edition.

Please consider it!

Brynllefrith Observatory gets IAU number J58

The UK summer heatwave has brought with it some lovely clear nights. In the UK at this time of year the sky never gets fully dark - the astronomical definition of darkness is when the sun is 18° below the horizon. Nevertheless, there are about 3 hours a night when it's dark enough to image some of the minor planets (asteroids). The opportunity has been seized and I managed to get a run of 3 successive nights to observe, photograph and measure the position of 14 minor planets. Each asteroid is exposed for about 45 seconds on three seperate occasions each night. The exposures are guaranteed to be 45 minutes apart, which is enough time for the object to move several pixels on the CCD detector (while the stars in the background remain fixed). These moving objects can later be detected by software and their positions determined very accurately, using the background stars and a stellar astrometric catalogue as reference. The observatory and all its various software applications are a true thing of beauty to see in operation, completely automated, or should I say choreographed, once the observing plan has been submitted. I even get one of the MS Agent characters, Merlin, on screen giving me a running commentary of what the software is doing, which means I don;t have to watch the screen to keep tabs on progress. The telescope, dome, CCD camera, focuser, filters and adaptive optics unit are all automated by a piece of software called ACP - Astronomer's Control Program.

So my observations were submitted early Monday morning and today I have my observatory code, "J58". This means that the Minor Planet Center (which operates under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union or IAU) has examined my observations and is happy that I am able to meet the standards of accuracy required for minor planet (asteroid) observations. The next step is to set up a regular sky survey and try to discover something new! This is real science.

Vista apathy?

Well it would seem so, at least in the developer community. From this week's poll on CodeProject:

How do you feel about Windows Vista?

Option	Votes	%
I'm excited to use a functional, stable and secure, not to mention good looking, Operating system.	226	13.2
I'm excited by the new features.	136	8.0
I'm generally looking forward to it	367	21.5
meh...	417	24.4
I'm not looking forward to it.	182	10.7
I'm bored and fatigued by the constant hype, delays and feature reductions.	380	22.2
Responses	1708

I'm not sure how representative CodeProject is, but from those results it seems that the majority of developers are at least apathetic, although I suspect that is more a reflection on the Microsoft hype engine than the product itself. An interesting result though, because developers are often enthusiastic about new stuff.

Windows Desktop Search unstable after installing Office 2007?

When Outlook 2007 beta 2 is installed on a system running Windows Desktop Search, Outlook prompts to install an upgrade to WDS 3.0 which is also a beta product. I've heard a number of people mention that their WDS keeps crashing and I've experienced the problem myself. I discovered that there is a known problem with Outlook 2007 and the Adobe PDF iFilter so I removed the iFilter and my WDS is now much more solid. If you have the PDF iFilter installed, try the following workaround courtesy of Slipstick Systems:

1. Go to Add/Remove programs and uninstall the Adobe PDF iFilter
2. Open a command prompt end enter the following comands:
1. net stop wsearch
2. net start wsearch

You should be good to go.

Office 2007 SharePoint Server setup fails on registry permissions

During setup of Office 2007 SharePoint Server (beta 2) I encountered problems running the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard. The wizard stops with an error reporting that ‘an ACL was not in canonical form and therefore could not be altered’. ACL = Access Control List, in other words permissions. A bit of digging in the setup logs revealed that the problem registry key was always

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0

Solution:

1. Open RegEdit
2. Locate the above key, right click and select Permissions. An error message pops up stating that the permissions are not ordered correctly.
3. Click OK to dismiss the error message.
4. Click OK again to dismiss the permissions dialog. You don't have to actually change any of the permissions, just opening the dialog and selecting OK saves the permissions in the right order.
5. Now, Re-run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard and it should complete successfully.
    

I’m not certain, but I think the permissions might get hosed when the product is uninstalled so the problem crops up on the subsequent install.

(ps. Susan, yes I did "bug it").

Why do people cling to the wreckage of Visual Basic 6?

I’m really on my soapbox today. I was prompted by someone in a mailing list who posted the following:

While support for all possible com ports would be nice, you probably shouldn't expect more than 16, since that is all the standard VB6 com control supports. I think most drivers are still developed in VB6, and most developers don't want to invest in a third party control or manage the serial port at the API level. The .NET SerialPort class is much more powerful, but it will be a while yet before .NET becomes the standard for new driver development, I think.

I really don’t understand it. Visual Studio .Net officially launched in February 2002 and the .Net Framework (the runtime kernel and class libraries) is not far off version 3.0, yet many developers doggedly cling to Visual Basic 6.0. Why is there this fascination for a development platform so out of date that the vendor has dropped product support and it’s now really difficult to buy a license? How long must we wait before .Net is considered the “standard” development platform? Until it is obsolete?

In the old days, when men were men and programmers didn’t eat quiche, there was Visual Basic and C++. Back then, the choice was simple. VB was a language that almost anyone could pick up and get reasonable results with, though it was not object oriented and didn’t exactly engender good software engineering discipline, while C++ was the choice of the professionals, a powerful and flexible language but not for the feint hearted. The polarisation of programming cultures is explored quite well by Nigel Shaw in his article Not Another C# vs VB Article. I expanded on that theme in my earlier article Learning Computer Programming - What Language?

Here are some of the reasons why I think everyone should drop VB6 like a hot potato and learn a .Net language…

• You’re expending effort developing obsolete code. Sooner or later, VB6 will be dead. Tried buying a copy lately? Any code you write now in VB6 probably has a very limited life span. Sooner or later you’ll have to migrate, so stop wasting development effort that you’ll have to re-do. Take the pain now and save effort further down the road. I refer you to my article Sharpening the Saw (Why early adoption of new technology is good) where I explore this theme even further.
• Every new programmer who learns to program from this day forward is likely to use a .Net language. No new programmer would consider starting out with an obsolete platform, even if they could find a copy on the shop shelves, would they? It would be insane! These new programmers (and some older ones who have already converted) have a reasonable expectation that the world will keep up. Initiatives such as ASCOM (the Astronomy Common Object Model) are in danger of falling by the wayside because of the head-in-the-sand attitude towards .Net technology. Unless they migrate, they will lose the support of their experienced programmers who will move on to more interesting projects.
• You are denying yourself the wonderful, wonderful treasures that the .Net Framework and the Common Language Runtime holds in store for you. Using .Net languages you can easily accomplish tasks that were unthinkable in VB6. You can easily read, write and parse XML files, manipulate web content, interact with web services, design components that work across the .Net family and much more.
• You’re in denial about your programming skills. Visual Basic was always a quick-and-dirty language that affords bad programming practices. It’s easy to get into bad habits and really you owe it to yourself to learn a more structured programming language. Migrating to VB.Net will be a good first step and will give you a glide path into other .Net languages such as C# and J#. OK, VB.Net is now a full-blown object oriented language and a full citizen of the .Net family, but I refer you to Nigel Shaw’s article on the culture that VB evolved in and why it affords poor programming practice.

I’m sure I could think up more, but for me, continuing to expend development effort in an obsolete platform is the clincher. I will never throw good money after bad.

Another counter-argument to migrating that is sometimes put forward is VBScript and the ease with which it is possible to produce scriptable COM objects using Visual Basic. Again, going back to ASCOM (an effort that I am fairly involved with) scriptability was a fundamental tenet of design. However, even VBScript has a new challenger on the horizon in the form of Windows PowerShell aka MSH (code name ‘Monad’ and currently at Release Candidate 1). MSH can use .Net assemblies as easily as it can use COM components and is a far more powerful scripting language than most shells that have gone before. Everything that can be achieved in VB6/VBScript/COM can also be achieved in .Net, usually more easily. There is no reason to cling to the wreckage of VB6.