Thursday, April 27, 2006

Hmm. Here's hoping it runs better than it installs

Finished up my sessions here at the MySQL Users Conference and decided I
would take a moment to install the freshly minted RC1 of Windows Power
Shell.  <pause while booming voice resonates/>


I had Monad beta 2 on this laptop so the installer politely told me I had to
remove that first.  No problem.  Uh, well.  There is a
problem.  Monad beta 2 on this machine was the first beta 2 shipped that
was built against .NET beta 2.  I've since removed that and upgraded to
Visual Studio 2005 and the RTM version of .NET 2.0.  The uninstaller
quickly alerted me to this fact and declared flatly that it could not remove
it.


Not really wanting to uninstall VS 2005 and reinstall .NET beta 2, I played
around with editing my machine.config to get the uninstaller happy.  After
several failed attempts, I simply decided to blast the monad install folder and
rip out the registry key.  I checked the GAC and saw no signs of MSH in
there so maybe I'm safe.  Proceed to install.


Bzzt.  About 70% through the installation, the installer declared that
it was having network difficulty reading from msh_setup-i386.msi.  There's
really two problems with that.  I'M NOT INSTALLING OVER A NETWORK AND THE
MSI IS NOT NAMED MSH_SETUP_I386.MSI!  Sheesh, is it really this hard to
release a product that installs.  Holy crap who's building this
stuff! 


So I made a copy of my PowerShell-i386.msi installer and named it
msh_setup-i386.msi.  The installation of PowerShell completed successfully
then.  I hope.  I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Pretty interesting read

This article brings up
some good points related to supporting an OS from an OEM
perspective.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Repeat after me: decouple, decouple, decouple

Just saw the post on /. about the release of PowerShell RC1.  Exciting
but then I read this:


"PS won't be shipped with Vista or Windows Server 2007 but it will debut
with Exchange 12."


Huh?  PowerShell will ship with Exchange?  Ok, I understand that
Microsoft has to sell products to stay in business but they could still sell
Windows, Office, Exchange, and all their other products while decoupling major
components such as Explorer, Internet Explorer, PowerShell, and several
others.  By decoupling these, it does several things not the least of which
is forcing their devs to develop more rigid interfaces between the components
and allowing Microsoft to ship these components on a schedule different than the
base products. 


Who among us would not love to have a shell circa 2006 instead of the crappy
Windows explorer we have now?


What's next?  The only way to get the HD-DVD addon for XBox360 is to buy
Biztalk 2007?

Monday, April 24, 2006

VSIP goodnes

I'm working on a Visual Studio package for MySQL and discovering that it is
possible to write hundreds of pages of documentation and still not be able to
answer some of the most basic questions.  Microsoft does it over and over
again. 


In this case I'm using managed code to create a custom editor for our
database objects (think Server Explorer).  I don't want to register a file
extension.  After considerable trial and error, I got  a chunk of code
working.  This code called IVsUIShellOpenDocument.InitializeEditorInstance
and IVsUIShell.CreateDocumentWindow and my editor appeared.  However, it
would not prompt to save when the window pane was closed.  GetDocumentInfo
showed an edit lock on my document but UnlockDocument could not remove it.


I replaced this code with simpler code that called
IVsUIShellOpenDocument.OpenSpecificEditor and my documents suddenly started
prompting to save properly.  I had wanted to avoid going this route because
it requires an editor factory class that I thought was unnecessary.  Oh
well.  Unnecessary working code is better than sleek busted
code.

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Heading to the UC

In a few hours, I'll hop a plane to Santa Clara for the 2006 MySQL Users
Conference.  There will be many great MySQL people so I'm sure there will
be excellent blog coverage the entire week.  I'll try to post a few
thoughts myself.

Oh, and in case anyone missed it, the Visual Express products are now free
permanently.  On Windows, I expect Visual C++ Express to be the preferred
"free" tool for building MySQL.  As of right now, we build MySQL on Windows
using Visual Studio 2003.

Monday, April 17, 2006

Someone is always damaged

This morning I read some reports on the reaction to Sun's recent discussion
on open source DRM.  The reaction from the Stallmanites was not
surprisingly negative.  From what I gather, no DRM is the only solution
that would be acceptable however this has left me somewhat confused. 
Perhaps someone could leave me a comment and help me understand how this is
supposed to work.


Here's what I've got so far.  Stallman cites four basic freedoms. 
The freedoms to run the program you wish, to change said program, to distribute
said program, and to distribute said changes.  These freedoms fit neatly
into a software world but are being applied to the digial media and DRM
argument.


Apparently, according to Stallman, I should have the right, as the consumer,
to share with all my friends the music and movies I am listening to or
watching.  This sounds like a great deal.  No more heading down to the
music store to pick up that latest cd and no more grumbling because the one song
you like is not released as a single so you are forced to buy the whole crappy
album.  If I want a song in my collection, I simply fire up my BitTorrent
client and grab a copy.


Except what about the rights of the band or artist that produced the
music?  Living in Nashville and being friends with people who have made it
big in music, I can tell you that they work hard to produce good albums. 
What about their rights?  What rights do they have?  I suppose
Stallman would argue that they should give their music away and make money on
concerts.  However, doesn't that impose restrictions on their rights? 
Isn't that denying some of their freedoms for our sake?  What if they don't
want to spend months on the road away from their families?  What if they
want to simply participate in the normal producer-consumer cycle and produce an
item that has a worth such that someone is willing to give them money for
it?


Do you see where this is going?  With no way to protect the content,
music producers will simply stop producing professionally recorded discs of
their music and they will only perform live concerts.  In this
scenario, we all lose.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Somebody has to look down the road


I just read this
article
on how Wal-Mart controls the content of video games with it's
massive retailing power.  They "force" game studios to create certain types
of games by refusing to carry what they perceive to be objectionable
content.  Good for them.


I'm not for censorship and I firmly believe in a person's right to enjoy
whatever type of entertainment they wish (currently legally allowed) however
those individuals that slam corporations like Wal-Mart for refusing to carry
certain items are just not seeing the big picture.  They will cry that
rights are being violated, which is stupid.  Wal-Mart certainly isn't
obligated to carry every game made and it's the game studios (wise) decision to
not develop a game that Wal-Mart will not carry.  It's simply
economics.


Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe it is better if Wal-Mart carried all the games
that are made.  Perhaps society would be better off if we had more games
involving nudity, sex acts, cop killing, prostitution, and vulgar language and
behavior.  You think I'm kidding?  Look at the BMX XXX game, or the
Grant Theft Auto series.  Game studios would make far worse if they could
get by with it.  Maybe there is a place for X-rated and very violent games
in our society but the store shelf at Wal-Mart in front of every 8 year old on
the planet is not it.




 

Monday, April 3, 2006

I'm sorry


I deeply apologize for the objectionable material that
was recently placed on my site.  It was not my doing but was my
fault.  I failed to properly secure my ongoing test of DotNetNuke and some
idiot took advantage of that.  I think I've removed all traces of this hack
and secured the enty points and I'll keep a close watch on the site for further
shenanigans. 


Again, I'm sorry.