ADO Guy_s Rants and Raves

Could I get anyone who agrees with me to vote on this bug in Microsoft"s Connect Site?

The problem is:

The "Add New Items..." dialog is too hard to find the right item you want to add to a project.  We need it to be sortable so we can find what we"re looking for.  Preferably, a ListView so we can view a "Details" view.

Here"s a link to vote:

https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=263623

2 Comment(s) | digg this

Could I get anyone who agrees with me to vote on this bug in Microsoft"s Connect Site?

The problem is:

The "Add New Items..." dialog is too hard to find the right item you want to add to a project.  We need it to be sortable so we can find what we"re looking for.  Preferably, a ListView so we can view a "Details" view.

Here"s a link to vote:

https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=263623

While I haven"t blogged about the MVP summit before, I have decided to mention a couple of things that have happened at the MVP summit. None of this is secret or private Microsoft information and I am not breaking any NDA"s.  These are just some reflections on a week on campus.

• The summit is about connections, not information. I come to the summit more to visit with fellow MVPs, my MVP lead as well as some exposure to the product teams.
• This year"s summit was extraordinarily planned. I think Microsoft wanted to treat us all special, and I think (with few exceptions) they succeeded immeasurably.
• Much of what I saw this week was available in the March 2007 VS Orcas CTP.  It is available as a VPC so I suggest everyone go get it and have a gander.  Now is the time to laud/complain.  Don"t wait until release to find out your favorite feature isn"t working or your most annoying bug wasn"t fixed.
• While LINQ was well demonstrated, don"t forget that Orcas is also about the ADO.NET v.Next (e.g. Entity Framework), XML Literals, language enhancements, better intellisense, and .NET 3.0 designers (WCF and WPF).
• To everyone I met, it was a pleasure and I am apt to have forgotten names and faces by next MVP summit.  For that I apologize.  Father time is indeed catching up with me.

2 Comment(s) | digg this

While I haven"t blogged about the MVP summit before, I have decided to mention a couple of things that have happened at the MVP summit. None of this is secret or private Microsoft information and I am not breaking any NDA"s.  These are just some reflections on a week on campus.

• The summit is about connections, not information. I come to the summit more to visit with fellow MVPs, my MVP lead as well as some exposure to the product teams.
• This year"s summit was extraordinarily planned. I think Microsoft wanted to treat us all special, and I think (with few exceptions) they succeeded immeasurably.
• Much of what I saw this week was available in the March 2007 VS Orcas CTP.  It is available as a VPC so I suggest everyone go get it and have a gander.  Now is the time to laud/complain.  Don"t wait until release to find out your favorite feature isn"t working or your most annoying bug wasn"t fixed.
• While LINQ was well demonstrated, don"t forget that Orcas is also about the ADO.NET v.Next (e.g. Entity Framework), XML Literals, language enhancements, better intellisense, and .NET 3.0 designers (WCF and WPF).
• To everyone I met, it was a pleasure and I am apt to have forgotten names and faces by next MVP summit.  For that I apologize.  Father time is indeed catching up with me.

It looks like Microsoft has cancelled FoxPro 10 and will be open-sourcing the work they"ve done on it.  I worked with it, but that was pre-MS and many many years ago.  I feel for the FoxPro MVP"s that heard this today.

1 Comment(s) | digg this

It looks like Microsoft has cancelled FoxPro 10 and will be open-sourcing the work they"ve done on it.  I worked with it, but that was pre-MS and many many years ago.  I feel for the FoxPro MVP"s that heard this today.

I am in between meetings near the Microsoft Campus today and wanted a coffee so I headed to a nearby Starbucks.  I wanted to check my e-mail, ut I had given up my T-Mobile account (at $40/month) because there is so much free wireless in my neighborhood. I wrestled with spending $10 for a day pass just to check e-mail when I noticed that Vista users would get a free trial to T-Mobile hotspots. 

I took the trial and I got a free month of access. No credit card required (so no nasty...trial, but we"ll bill you if you forget to cancel nonsense).   I did have to install an ActiveX component to check to see if IE7/Vista was in use.  Voila...free e-mail checking...

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I am in between meetings near the Microsoft Campus today and wanted a coffee so I headed to a nearby Starbucks.  I wanted to check my e-mail, ut I had given up my T-Mobile account (at $40/month) because there is so much free wireless in my neighborhood. I wrestled with spending $10 for a day pass just to check e-mail when I noticed that Vista users would get a free trial to T-Mobile hotspots. 

I took the trial and I got a free month of access. No credit card required (so no nasty...trial, but we"ll bill you if you forget to cancel nonsense).   I did have to install an ActiveX component to check to see if IE7/Vista was in use.  Voila...free e-mail checking...

New Features Should Always Support Disabling 

I use a Dish Network satellite dish for my TV.  They pushed an update last week to all their subscribers.  This new feature is a great idea: if an HD channel is available for a channgel (e.g. ESPN, Local Channels), tune the HD channel instead of the non-HD version.  Normally that would be perfect...except...not all HD versions of channels have the same programming.

For example, Discovery channel ahs an HD version they call Discovery HD Theatre.  They are actually two different channels with two different programming.  For example, two of my favorite shows are not shown on Discovery HD because they aren"t in HD (Discovery HD is completely HD, they never show non-HD shows (AFAIK)): Dirty Jobs and Mythbusters.

The way they implemented the feature is that in their guide it shows both channels and lets you pick which one you want. For most users of the dish this works fine.  They can pick which channel they want. 

For me I don"t watch much live TV.  I record most shows.  When my PVR thinks its recording Mythbusters, it changes the channel on the dish to the channel #.  But now the Dish changes to Discovery HD which has a completely different show on.

Dish Network acknowledged to me today that the feature should have a way to disable it but it doesn"t. When I called them to find out how to fix it, they said that I couldn"t...but if i"d give them a month to fix it, they"d credit me for a month of service.

The lesson here is that no matter how good a feature you think you are about to push out to customers, you should always have a way to revert the feature. As developers, we are usually nothing like our customer base so we often can"t see the forest through the trees when it comes to new features. Its a lesson I have certainly learned before...