The Galactic Patrol

Interested in Indigo?

bwill — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 02:42:00 GMT

I've been posting some comments about Indigo on my other blog - feel free to subscribe if you're interested in Indigo. Here are some of the Indigo entries I've written:

http://galactic-patrol.blogspot.com/2005/02/indigo-is-re-released-into-wild.html

http://galactic-patrol.blogspot.com/2005/02/to-indigo-clr-contract-is-not.html

http://galactic-patrol.blogspot.com/2005/02/serviceoperation-wheres-message.html

http://galactic-patrol.blogspot.com/2005/03/indigo-testing-take-pretty-things-and.html

http://galactic-patrol.blogspot.com/2005/03/got-indigo-questions.html

http://galactic-patrol.blogspot.com/2005/03/whats-right-way-to-dispose-channel.html

Fair warning, I do occasionally blog about non-technical topics.

new blog feed at http://galactic-patrol.blogspot.com/atom.xml

bwill — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 23:39:00 GMT

To answer a question from my comments, the subscription feed for my moved blog is:

http://galactic-patrol.blogspot.com/atom.xml

this blog is moving to http://galactic-patrol.blogspot.com

bwill — Sun, 07 Nov 2004 13:37:00 GMT

I find that (a) I don’t tend to write very many technical entries on this blog (which offends some readers), and (b) I feel constrained about posting on possibly-controversial topics, like politics or religion. Not that my thoughts are *that* controversial – and Microsoft has never explicitly prohibited me from saying anything I want – but warranted or not, I can’t help but feel a certain implicit responsibility when posting to an msdn.com site.

Therefore, I’m starting a new blog at http://galactic-patrol.blogspot.com. It will be mostly the same stuff that I have on this blog; probably more of my personal opinions on things. Don’t expect to see anything that is likely to get me fired. <grin> However, once the current rev of Indigo leaves NDA-land, you can expect to see some posts about it.

Our hearts are with you, Pat

bwill — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 07:32:00 GMT

Pat Helland just posted some terrible (and terribly personal) news on his blog – my heart goes out to him!

http://blogs.msdn.com/PatHelland/archive/2004/10/28/249133.aspx

Microsoft Garage Band

bwill — Thu, 14 Oct 2004 12:01:00 GMT

Reason #193 why I like working for Microsoft:

I’m leaving work today, and as usual I take the elevator down to the lowest level of the underground parking (there are four underground levels). I get off the elevator and there, in the elevator entry room I see three of my team mates. One is on drums; one is on guitar; and the last is on bass guitar. They’re standing there in the sub-sub-basement, practicing their music.

Now *that* is a garage band!

kudos to Home Depot as well

bwill — Sat, 02 Oct 2004 05:03:00 GMT

It seems like the week for good customer service on the blogs I read – here we see an example of Home Depot doing right by their customers.

Kudos to BankOne

bwill — Thu, 30 Sep 2004 02:42:00 GMT

You so often hear about crappy service from credit card and financial services companies; it was a delight to read this very positive report by Chris Sells on BankOne’s actions in response to credit card fraud on one of his accounts:

“Apparently somebody got a hold of the number and started making charges with it today. A $19 charge was approved, but the $331 charge swung the BankOne AI software into action and the charge was declined. They called right away to confirm the activity and when I didn't recognize it, they credited me the $19, canceled the card, put a new one in the mail, sent all three major credit card agencies a notice so that my credit rating wouldn't be affected and put an affidavit in the mail so that I could swear that the $19 charge wasn't mine. All of this defense against identity theft cost me 5 minutes on the phone, a few days wait while I receive my new card, a signature and $0. Amazing.”

Cool GUI for editing parameters in visual studio - vote for it!

bwill — Wed, 18 Aug 2004 06:43:00 GMT

Mitch Denny proposes a very cool idea for popping up in-place GUI when you need to edit a formatted string or other parameter in source code. He has posted his idea up on the Ladybug site; I’ve voted for it, and you should too!

There are only two kinds of developer...

bwill — Wed, 18 Aug 2004 05:17:00 GMT

Mark Pilgrim explains how there are only two kinds of developer: assholes and morons.

Microsoft and Indian Academia: Progress, Problems, and Opportunities

bwill — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 12:25:00 GMT

A friend of mine recently posted about the Microsoft presence in Indian schools. He points out the great progress that Microsoft has made at Indian universities, and also points out some key areas for improvement. I hope Microsoft India is reading…

treasured blogger comes to Microsoft

bwill — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 05:39:00 GMT

I read here that Rory is coming to work at Microsoft. Outstanding! I have to admit that when I do my daily blog reading, I often skip over Rory’s, perhaps just admiring the titles, but leaving them unread on my to-do list – because I’m saving them up for a special time when I can really sit down and savor his bits of humor and wisdom. Skimming just won’t do when it comes to Rory’s posts; oh, no!

Welcome!

avoid dialog boxes while refactoring

bwill — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 01:12:00 GMT

I was reading a post about Visual Studio refactoring support in the next version, and I noticed that it described the process of refactoring the order of parameters for a function as something like this:

1. click on a function name

2. select refactor->reorder parameters from the menu

3. adjust the ordering on a dialog that pops up

4. click OK to apply the changes everywhere

This seems unnecessarily cumbersome to me. The same post talks about the existence of “smart tags” in the UI. You should be able to grab the smart tag for a particular parameter, and just drag that parameter into a different position in the list. This should do the full refactoring, including fixing up all the calls to that function. You should be able to grab the smart tag and “throw it away” too – just like you can do to column headers in Outlook. That would do a “remove parameter” refactoring.

Its like playing 'Quake', but in the real world

bwill — Fri, 23 Jul 2004 23:47:00 GMT

Despite my skepticism about head-mounted displays, I remain enthusiastic about the possibilities of ‘augmented reality’ – it is just too cool for words! Here you see a research project that lets folks run around a (real not virtual) college campus, and shoot at monsters from the game ‘Quake’ that are superimposed on their vision. The game knows about the real geometry of the campus, so it can present or hide the monsters appropriately.

There are so many interesting directions this technology could go – games, information about real-world objects and events, even replacing a real object with a different representation of it. In theory, for example, you could make everyone you meet look like a dinosaur. (Not sure why you’d want to, but hey – different strokes for different folks!)

Think the product feedback rating system is wrong? go vote!

bwill — Sat, 17 Jul 2004 11:47:00 GMT

If you think the MSDN Product Feedback Center rating equation isn’t right, go vote for this bug:

http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback/viewfeedback.aspx?feedbackid=00bf32ec-50e7-4def-8464-7e19cc4812ba

TiVo should support external hard drives

bwill — Fri, 16 Jul 2004 00:15:00 GMT

I noticed a post recently that commented on TiVo’s upcoming support for larger hard drives. This reminded me of another idea I had – TiVo should support additional external hard drives. After all, when I see something like La Cie’s new 1.6 TB external hard drive, the gadget freak in me immediately wants to order one. Unfortunately, I can’t quite rationalize it to myself – my little 60GB laptop drive seems to be doing a fine job of holding all my digital pictures, why do I really need 1.6TB? If TiVo allowed me to plug that drive in, however, I would be much more motivated to buy that honkin’ big drive!

Heck, TiVo and La Cie should do some kind of cross-branding promotional thingie – they could make bank!

fetching you a bottle of water does not motivate me

bwill — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 13:29:00 GMT

This is the story of an inspirational speech that, well – wasn’t.

I went to a divisional meeting recently – lots of people, lots of powerpoint. The topics were a bit dry, and the last speaker was clearly trying to drum up some excitement and enthusiasm. He started telling us a story about Lance Armstrong. “People think of him as this amazing solo performer,” he said, “but he relies on his team to make him a success.” He goes on to tell us about the nine other people on the tour-de-france bike team with Lance. They are so motivated. They are so dedicated. He tells us how they let Lance draft behind them. He tells us how they sprint ahead to tire out all the other competitors. He goes into this long sequence about how one of Lance’s teammates, tired as hell, still turned around, went back down the hill, grabbed eight bottles of water, and then sprinted back up the hill to give the water to Lance. I have to tell you, the whole presentation left me flat – if anything, it unmotivated me.

Its possible I was just in a bad mood that day. Its possible that I’m just not a big cycling fan. (Heresy for a Redmond resident, I know.) But really – if you want to motivate me, tell me that I can be Lance Armstrong – not just his waterboy.

How well do you know your Microsoft acronyms?

bwill — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 05:30:00 GMT

I made the following challenge over on Channel 9 – anyone care to take up the gauntlet?

“That takes me back - when I started at Microsoft eight years ago, I worked in the Windows build lab. This was back when we were working on SUR, and IIS 1.0. We used SLM instead of SD, and there were no VBLs. Working in the neck of the software development funnel was quite an experience back then - and I'm sure the challenges of the job have not decreased over the past eight years.

10 points to anyone who can identify all the acronyms I used above. (Ok, only 5 points if you are an MS employee.)”

[UPDATE: Kevin Dente got them all right - I suggest guessing before reading the comments on this entry if you want to play along.]

obfuscated C code, for fun and profit (ok, just for fun)

bwill — Tue, 22 Jun 2004 21:25:00 GMT

If you’ve ever coded in C, you owe it to yourself to check out the (fully functional) programs at this link:

http://remus.rutgers.edu/~rhoads/Obfuscated_C/obfuscate.html

Here is one of the programs presented:

char*lie;

        double time, me= !0XFACE,

        not; int rested,   get, out;

        main(ly, die) char ly, **die ;{

            signed char lotte,

dear; (char)lotte--;

        for(get= !me;; not){

        1 -  out & out ;lie;{

        char lotte, my= dear,

        **let= !!me *!not+ ++die;

            (char*)(lie=

"The gloves are OFF this time, I detest you, snot\n\0sed GEEK!");

        do {not= *lie++ & 0xF00L* !me;

        #define love (char*)lie -

        love 1 *!(not= atoi(let

        [get -me?

            (char)lotte-

(char)lotte: my- *love -

        'I'  -  *love -  'U' -

        'I'  -  (long)  - 4 - 'U' ])- !!

        (time  =out=  'a'));} while( my - dear

        && 'I'-1l  -get-  'a'); break;}}

            (char)*lie++;

(char)*lie++, (char)*lie++; hell:0, (char)*lie;

        get *out* (short)ly   -0-'R'-  get- 'a'^rested;

        do {auto*eroticism,

        that; puts(*( out

            - 'c'

-('P'-'S') +die+ -2 ));}while(!"you're at it");

for (*((char*)&lotte)^=

        (char)lotte; (love ly) [(char)++lotte+

        !!0xBABE];){ if ('I' -lie[ 2 +(char)lotte]){ 'I'-1l ***die; }

        else{ if ('I' * get *out* ('I'-1l **die[ 2 ])) *((char*)&lotte) -=

        '4' - ('I'-1l); not; for(get=!

get; !out; (char)*lie  &  0xD0- !not) return!!

        (char)lotte;}

(char)lotte;

        do{ not* putchar(lie [out

        *!not* !!me +(char)lotte]);

        not; for(;!'a';);}while(

            love (char*)lie);{

register this; switch( (char)lie

        [(char)lotte] -1 *!out) {

        char*les, get= 0xFF, my; case' ':

        *((char*)&lotte) += 15; !not +(char)*lie*'s';

        this +1+ not; default: 0xF +(char*)lie;}}}

        get - !out;

        if (not--)

        goto hell;

            exit( (char)lotte);}

granted provided this this copyright and notice are included in its entirety

and remains unaltered. All other uses must receive prior permission in writing

from both Landon Curt Noll and Larry Bassel.

amazing new antenna technology

bwill — Thu, 17 Jun 2004 21:46:00 GMT

Apparently a professor (and ham radio enthusiast) from the University of Rhode Island has invented a new kind of radio antenna that performs as well as antennae three to nine times larger. The article mentions walkie-talkies as a possible application – I wonder if this could be used to shrink those big cell phone towers that seem to be sprouting on every hill?

[update: Bernie tells me my original link causes malicious popups, so I've replaced it with a link to the original URI press release.]

managed COM+ objects that don't derive from ServicedComponent?

bwill — Wed, 12 May 2004 00:49:00 GMT

I notice Sam Gentile references a tool for registering managed objects in the COM+ catalog even if they don’t derive from Serviced Component. Oddly, I have recently read an internal mail thread on a similar customer issue. The upshot of the mail thread was that if you don’t derive from ServicedComponent, then your COM+ context info won’t get marshaled correctly on remote calls. Bluntly, this means some stuff will work, and some won’t. So please continue to derive your managed COM+ objects from ServicedComponents, and understand the risks if you choose not to.

I would have just posted this as a response to Sam’s entry, but he has comments disabled.

who is Bipin?

bwill — Sat, 01 May 2004 05:09:00 GMT

I was just doing some ego-surfing on technorati, and I ran across a link to http://bipinv.blogspot.com/. Looking there, I don’t actually see any links to my blog, but I do notice several of my blog entries have been copied verbatim into that site, without attribution. There are no comments or advertising (well, except for the blog*spot ad at the top, but it’s a blog*spot site), so I’m guessing that Bipin just happened to like those posts, and copied them. No big deal, but it would be nice if he included a little credit or link for the author. Unfortunately I don’t see any way to contact him from the web site, bummer.

page 23

bwill — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 12:05:00 GMT

I’m joining the current blog meme…

“But worship was not on the docket that night, let me tell you.”

The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, page 23

Instructions: Grab the nearest book, open it to page 23, find the 5th sentence, post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

The Bugatti Veyron - an incredible 250 MPH roadster

bwill — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 05:49:00 GMT

Wow, this car is incredible. Its price tag is a few orders of magnitude out of my league, but a man can dream, can’t he?

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/bugatti.htm

· A W-16 engine that can produce 1,001 horsepower

· A top speed of 250+ mph (400+ kph)

· A zero-to-60 time of three seconds

· A zero-to-180 time of 14 seconds

· A price tag somewhere in the $1 million range.

WS-Eventing and WS-Addressing

bwill — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 23:45:00 GMT

Hank Wallace posted a question recently about the <NotifyTo> element in a WS-Eventing subscription request, and whether it really needed to contain an <Address> element or not. You can read my response in the comments, but while I was looking over the specs I realized that the presentation of this containment is a bit confusing.

In WS-Eventing, the <NotifyTo> element is defined as follows:

<NotifyTo>endpoint-reference</NotifyTo>

In WS-Addressing, an endpoint-reference is defined as follows:

<Address>xs:anyURI</Address>

</EndpointReference>

(Note that I’ve left out namespaces and optional elements for clarity.)

Gosh, this looks like you not only need the <Address> element, but also this <EndpointReference> guy! Maybe something like this?

<Address>http://MyServer/MyService</Address>

</EndpointReference>

</NotifyTo>

Wrong! Bad Bruce! You see, a closer reading of the WS-Addressing spec reveals this interesting tidbit:

“/wsa:EndpointReference

This represents some element of type wsa:EndpointReferenceType. This example uses the predefined <wsa:EndpointReference> element, but any element of type wsa:EndpointReferenceType may be used.”

And another look at the WS-Eventing spec reveals more:

“/s:Envelope/s:Body/*/wse:NotifyTo

Where to send notification messages. MUST be of type wsa:EndpointReferenceType.”

So it turns out that the <NotifyTo> element is in fact an instance of the EndpointReferenceType; <NotifyTo> and <EndPointReference> are the same. For the more colorfully-minded:

<NotifyTo>endpoint-reference</NotifyTo>

<Address>xs:anyURI</Address>

</EndpointReference>

Red elements are the same as red elements, blue are the same as blue. So the correct merging of the WS-Eventing and WS-Addressing specs is as follows:

<Address>http://MyServer/MyService</Address>

</NotifyTo>

The real reason to get a tablet PC - TextTwist!

bwill — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 22:33:00 GMT

My wife recently needed a new laptop, so we splurged and got her a TabletPC. At first, I have to admit I was somewhat underwhelmed – it was a convertible model, and I noticed that she was always using it in laptop mode, not tablet mode. However, we recently found the app that justifies the platform:

Text Twist!

This is a word game on the MSN gaming zone site, similar to the word jumble puzzles in the newspaper. It’s a timed challenge, and you have to come up with a large number of words based on the jumble of six letters. Let me tell you, it is so much faster and easier to play this game with a pen, rather than a mouse; and don’t even get me started on trying to play with a laptop mousepad! I can never get all the words with the mousepad, but often get them all with the pen. We use the machine in tablet mode all the time, now.

I bet there are some lessons that other apps could learn from TextTwist, about how to make a tablet-friendly application.

The Galactic Patrol

Interested in Indigo?

new blog feed at http://galactic-patrol.blogspot.com/atom.xml

this blog is moving to http://galactic-patrol.blogspot.com

Our hearts are with you, Pat

Microsoft Garage Band

kudos to Home Depot as well

Kudos to BankOne

Cool GUI for editing parameters in visual studio - vote for it!

There are only two kinds of developer...

Microsoft and Indian Academia: Progress, Problems, and Opportunities

treasured blogger comes to Microsoft

avoid dialog boxes while refactoring

Its like playing 'Quake', but in the real world

Think the product feedback rating system is wrong? go vote!

TiVo should support external hard drives

fetching you a bottle of water does *not* motivate me

How well do you know your Microsoft acronyms?

obfuscated C code, for fun and profit (ok, just for fun)

amazing new antenna technology

managed COM+ objects that don't derive from ServicedComponent?

who is Bipin?

page 23

The Bugatti Veyron - an incredible 250 MPH roadster

WS-Eventing and WS-Addressing

The real reason to get a tablet PC - TextTwist!

fetching you a bottle of water does not motivate me