Posted on April 16th, 2007%
CSSFriendly, the ASP.Net CSS Friendly Control Adapters, is an open source project I contribute to. Source code, issue tracking, and other services are provided using CodePlex, Microsoft’s alternative to SourceForge. Since last week, our source control server (Team Foundation Server, or TFS) has been down.
The reason for the downtime, as reported by someone on the CodePlex team:
At 3pm PDT on April 11th an operator error occurred that caused source control and issue tracker data on one of the Microsoft CodePlex servers to be accidentally overwritten. During the standard data recovery effort, a recovery backup configuration oversight was discovered in the routine backup process for this CodePlex server which is currently impacting immediate restoration of the data.
Fortunately, thanks to my years of experience in medium and large organizations, I can translate this into layman terms:
At 3pm PDT on April 11th someone screwed up and accidentally blew out one of the CodePlex servers. When we looked . . .
→ Read More: CodePlex: Did they forget to back up a server?
Posted on March 7th, 2007%
Back in late 2006, I modified Microsoft’s CSS Friendly ASP.Net 2.0 Control Adapters to be distributable as a single DLL. Since that time, the code I wrote was downloaded from this web site, and everything seemed good, at least until the server crashed. After being prodded by a few people in the ASP.Net community, I moved this little project over to CodePlex. Before doing so, I checked to make sure this was OK with Scott Guthrie, the grand poohbah of ASP.Net at Microsoft. (You’ve got to cover your basis!)
Anyway, today I read a post on the ASP.Net forums stating that Microsoft OKs community development of the CSS Friendly Control Adapters. In short, this is a good thing for the users of this product, for reasons that are explained in that thread, and it looks like I’ll be more involved with the ongoing development of these adapters in the future. It’s also nice to see your efforts . . .
→ Read More: Microsoft OKs community development of CSS Friendly Control Adapters
Posted on February 12th, 2007%
Microsoft, the company who provided the products and tools for millions of people to build careers off (myself included), has often forgotten that the simple solutions are often the best. In a recent blog post, hammett wrote about Microsoft’s missteps in this area and their focus on YAGNI (You Ain’t Gonna Need It) — at least, where “You” refers to most people.
[Digression: Someone at some point commented on Microsoft Word that "90% of the features are used by 10% of the people". If I was designing a product and 10% of my features were used by 90% of the people, and the other 90% of the features were used by 10%, I'd either write two products, or I'd write one product that was incredibly extensible using a plug-in architecture.]
This feature-bloat approach to technology reminds me of Microsoft’s Enterprise Library and the Data Access Application Block (DAAB). In the first release of the DAAB, you can . . .
→ Read More: KISM: Keep it simple, Microsoft
Posted on October 30th, 2006%
Yesterday, while starting up my PC out of hibernate mode (an activity done about 250 times before), after entering my username and password, Windows stared at me with a blank blue screen and a task bar (i.e. the desktop color and nothing else). Windows was certainly doing something, because the disk was thrashing. This went on for about five minutes. No activity on my part (CTL-ALT-DEL, CTL-SHIFT-ESC for Task Manager, etc.) brought about a response during those five minutes. After banging my keyboard countless times (it’s amazing I don’t break more than one a year), Windows suddenly sprang into service as if nothing out of the ordinary happened.
Can someone please tell me what the #&^$&#^ Windows was doing during those five minutes, and if it was such a mission-critical operation that NO OTHER ACTIVITIES could be taken while they ran, why there is no notice in the event log? Heck, a progress bar or meaningless popup message would have been nice.
Today, . . .
→ Read More: What the #&$^# is Windows doing this time? (and other Microsoft gripes)
Posted on December 8th, 2005%
On December 6, 2005, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office issued Patent #6,973,669 to Microsoft. The patent is for “Pausing television programming in response to selection of hypertext link.”
Here is the crux of the patent’s claim:
In an interactive television system … a method for pausing the display of a television program that is displayed at the television system in response to a selection of a hyperlink that is displayed with the television program…
In other words, an on-screen pause button that you click on to pause, and subsequently resume, the program.
Where does this fail the patent test (useful, novel, non-obvious)?
It’s potentially useful, though I’d say a remote control with a pause button is many orders of magnitude more useful than clicking on a hyperlink.
It’s marginally novel — VCRs have been displaying on-screen pause indicators for years. The only difference is clicking on an on-screen hyperlink instead of a (more user-friendly) pause button.
It’s definitely . . .
→ Read More: Microsoft patents an on-screen pause button
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