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January 2007 - Posts

Tuesday, January 30, 2007 1:16 AM

Contemplating ViM

A conversation with a colleague got me interested in ViM once again. I've used ViM on and off for a few years now but never gotten really adept at using it. For those that don't know, ViM stands for Vi Improved and Vi is one of the two dominant text editors
Posted by SteveRowe | 3 Comments
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Monday, January 29, 2007 5:33 PM

Mac Users Respond To Vista

I have heard several Mac users talking very kindly about our new OS. This is encouraging as these are a bunch that are pre-inclined to view Vista in a negative light. Impressing them is a hard task. It appears that, at least in some cases, we have done
Posted by SteveRowe | 5 Comments
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Friday, January 26, 2007 10:40 AM

History of Programming Languages

I saw this on someone's wall a while ago but just now ran across it on the web. This is a chart of all major programming languages, how they are related, and what years they were around. It's an interesting view of where we have come from. Two of the
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Wednesday, January 24, 2007 10:53 AM

Recommended Reading for New Test Developers

I've previously written about how to teach yourself to be a test developer. That post included an extensive reading list. It assumed that you were a tester and wanted to learn to be a test dev. What if you are a new CS grad and you just got hired as a
Posted by SteveRowe | 1 Comments
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Monday, January 22, 2007 11:03 AM

How Much Memory Does Vista Need?

With Windows Vista coming soon to a retail channel near you, one of the important questions to ask is, "How much memory does it really need?" There are the official minimum requirements of 512 MB, but we all know that minimum requirements don't translate
Posted by SteveRowe | 32 Comments
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Thursday, January 18, 2007 11:10 PM

Back To School

When I'm not trying to deliver the next great operating system or spending time with my family, I'm working on a masters degree in computer science. It makes for a busy life. As I'm doing this on the side, I'm only able to take one class a semester. Last
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Wednesday, January 17, 2007 1:22 PM

The Fat Man Speaks

George Sanger, aka "The Fat Man," is interviewed by The Escapist . George is the founder of Project BBQ which I mentioned a few weeks back. He's also a well-known game music designer whose credits include Wing Commander, Loom, and Master of Orion. In
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Tuesday, January 16, 2007 4:37 PM

Hiring Great Testers - Tester Roles

In my mind, there are basically three roles on a test team. These three roles are: developers, scripters, and those who execute the test cases (runtime testers). In reality there is a spectrum of capabilities on any team but I think most roles will be
Posted by SteveRowe | 14 Comments
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Monday, January 15, 2007 9:40 PM

Hiring Great Testers - Series Index

I'm going to be doing a series not on testing but on the people that carry it out. This will be a post on the subject of the testers themselves. I plan to describe what the various roles in testing are, what to look for in a good tester, what sort of
Posted by SteveRowe | 1 Comments
Sunday, January 14, 2007 1:51 AM

Duplication of Effort Is Good?

I was in a meeting the other day deciding what to do next in our testing efforts. Several times during the meeting someone made a suggestion which was countered by a statement something like this: "Shouldn't we let the centralized team handle this?" or
Posted by SteveRowe | 1 Comments
Monday, January 08, 2007 8:57 PM

Letting Test Drive the Process

When I read the term "test driven development" I usually think of the process of developers writing the unit tests before writing the code. Richard Collins, a Development Strategist, uses it to mean something different. He advocates that test be heavily
Posted by SteveRowe | 1 Comments
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Sunday, January 07, 2007 12:47 AM

Printer Problems on Vista x64

I've decided to take the plunge and I'm running Vista x64 on my primary home system. So far things are going well. I haven't found any x86 programs that don't run yet. I'm sure they are out there but I haven't run across them yet. The driver signing thing
Posted by SteveRowe | 14 Comments
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Sunday, January 07, 2007 12:43 AM

I'll save you some typing...

If you are one of those who read this blog directly in your browser and not through an RSS aggregator, I have added a new URL which can save you some typing. http://steverowe.net will bring you to http://blogs.msdn.com/steverowe/ now. I have had the domain
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Wednesday, January 03, 2007 9:48 AM

Interview With Office Test Director

Tara Roth, the newly annointed director of test for Office, was recently interviewed by Channel 9 . She talks about her role, what drew her to test, the attributes of good testers, the testing product cycle, etc. It is an informative interview about how
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Tuesday, January 02, 2007 2:14 PM

Project BBQ Reports Are Available

In October of last year I flew to Texas to attend what is called Project Bar-B-Q. It is promoted as "The premier interactive music think tank" and that pretty much sums it up. It is a gathering of 50 people from the computer audio and music industries
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Tuesday, January 02, 2007 9:58 AM

Welcome to 2007

Just a quick note to say welcome back to work. I'm sure, like I did, that many of you had some time off at the end of the year but that time is over (or will be soon). I hope that you all had a good year in 2006 and that 2007 treats you at least as well.
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