History in the making: democracy meets TV 2.0

Well, this time I want to share my enthusiasm for the democratic party we are living in the States. As I write this post, the 2008 Democratic National Convention is underway in Denver. I don't know much about politics, nor I am particularly interested in adhering to any political cause, but I am all for whoever and whatever may actually contribute to putting this country back in shape. Enough politicking... For the best Democratic Convention video experience, live, right here in your computer, your will need the Microsoft Silverlight plug-in, and the move networks media player, that acts as an operating system for video. Move networks (their slogan aptly says This is TV 2.0™) is a company headquartered in Utah, incidentally the same Rocky Mountain state where WordPerfect Corporation was born—and don't forget how they revolutionized the rising PC world in the '80s...

2008 Summer Olympics streaming over the Internet. Easy.

Who's in charge of the 2008 world’s largest sports-related IT contract? Who takes care of 17 days of competition, 28 sports with 38 disciplines and 302 events in 7 cities? That was the original idea of this post but I ended up instead learning about how Internet TV is in full bloom as seen in the NBC Olympics Web site (run by Microsoft), which rivals The Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games (in 5 languages). For the NBC Olympics site Microsoft passed over the ubiquitous Adobe's Flash to run its own Silverlight technology in a sort of "coming out party" (see how video is streamed from China to your PC). In addition, you can download and watch full length Olympic events through Windows Media Center as shown here, also available for 64-bit Vista. [Atos Origin is the company in charge of the whole IT operation of these and previous Summer Games. Microsoft has a strategic global alliance agreement with them. I did not find out to what extent Microsoft is part of this huge IT operation, though].

SOLUTION: when updating to Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is half-done

When upgrading to the newly released Visual Studio SP1 you have to make sure the software gets actually installed. In other words, the lower progress bar (as shown) should go all the way to 100%. I say this because at some point during the upgrading process you get a message (I got it actually twice) asking you to reboot your system and then whether you ignore or continue the result is the same: the upgrade is NOT installed. When you try to run the program again, it runs as if nothing has happened and at some point you find out that (this was my case) you have to stop the "Machine Debug Manager (MDM)" service, AND the Windows Sidebar (apparently an important cog in the Vista wheel). After doing that I was able to to finally see the dialog box with the message "the software udpated has been installed successfully." Don't forget to take a look at, and save in another location, the installation log, an HTML file with very useful information called
%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Temp\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1_20080812_135937998.html (HOMEDRIVE is usually C:\ and HOMEPATH is the name of the currently logged user. To find out run Explorer using WinKey + E, and look up the first item on top, beneath Desktop).

SOLUTION: Installing Windows PowerShell, a sophisticated tool

Since Windows Vista (XP and Server, as well) doesn’t store its management data in text-style representations, but rather in "datacentric stores" with thousands of classes /objects, and a graphical tool may be too cumbersome when dealing with hundreds and thousands of machines at the time, a cool tool using the command line, released in 2006, is good to have for Vista and Windows Server. That tool is the Windows PowerShell. Instead of just passing text (like the old DOS shell), PowerShell passes objects! .NET objects, to be exact. However, installing it in Vista was somehow confusing. Either I had PowerShell already installed in my system and that's why I got the puzzling message shown here, or this is the message that one anyhow gets after installing PowerShell. To start go to the Windows PowerShell 1.0 Installation Package for Windows Vista page. After going through the instructions you will end up downloading a file called Windows6.0-KB928439-x86.msu, which happens to be a "Microsoft Update Standalone Package (also known as Windows Vista hot fix Updates)", go figure. In addition, "you cannot upgrade a Windows-based operating system when you have Windows PowerShell 1.0 installed", should you need to upgrade your system. But as that page warns if you disable Windows PowerShell by using the Turn Windows Features on or off option, this does not satisfy the Compatibility Check process. You must uninstall Windows PowerShell. The solution (?) proposed here is to ignore the message (as shown above) and then hit the Start button or press the WinKey and type PowerShell to get to a link that will take you to this new Windows tool. Another clue to know if PowerShell is installed: the presence of a directory called %HOMEDRIVE%\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0 where HOMEDRIVE is usually C:\, but it could be any other partition.

Time for a new browser: Internet Explorer 8

All right. After some hesitation, because I don't actually like to run beta versions in my flawless Vista environment, I went ahead and installed the new Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 to see the "new features designed for developers including a developer toolbar and improved interoperability and compatibility", which in fact exist already in Firefox 2.0. However, one of the key new features of IE 8 is its compliance with most standards. In fact, my latest web creation did not show as intended in IE 8, nor in the new Opera 9.51, as in did before with IE 7, Firefox and even Safari. Apparently, all those "tricks" you do with your CSS may have to be revisited. Other than that, so far so good!

Windows Vista: perception or reality, what counts for me is that IT WORKS!

I have been reading about some "specialized reports" and "surveys" that I don't care to mention here in which the performance, relevance, importance, you name it, of Windows Vista are questioned, "analyzed", etc. But, you know what? I really don't care, mostly if I'm running an operating system that is beyond the previous one (Windows XP) and which basically WORKS FINE. Let me say it again: this OS gets the job done and I like it. Says who? A power user of Windows since version 3.1 who has gone through all the versions and have used all of them for a considerable amount of time to know better: Windows 3.1 (3 years), Windows 95 (3 years), Windows 98 (2 years), Windows 2000 (2 years), Windows XP (6 years), Windows Vista (6 satisfactory months!).

Live OneCare and other useful security suites

I'm currently running a 90-day trial version of Windows Live OneCare, a great security suite, which, by the way, that's how software companies present nowadays anti-spyware, antivirus, performance tune-up and backup and restore software in one single package. I decided to give it a try after using other great security suites like System Mechanic, which I dumped after realizing that the (old) version I was running was giving me the infamous "rundll32 has stopped working" and the venerable ZoneAlarm (which I used for many years as Windows XP user). I totally forgot about Norton whatever because I found it very intrusive and disruptive, only because I was a fan of Norton Utilities from the times of DOS and then Windows 95. In this day and age you definitely need all these tools by the very nature of the Internet and the fact that we live in an interconnected world with pirates and crooks lurking around.

SOLUTION: When IIS7 does not work in VS 2008

I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to create an ASP.NET application running in the new IIS7 because I kept receiving the same error message: "Unable to create Web site ABC [because] FrontPage server extensions are not installed and 'IIS 6 Metabase and IIS 6 configuration compatibility' is not enabled." The annoying part was that the IIS6 Metabase was already activated and go figure what Frontpage server extensions were doing there! After fiddling with this install/uninstall, activate/deactivate conundrum, I decided to completely uninstall IIS7 and then reinstall it and Bingo! Now it works! This video in MSDN Channel was kind of helpful after having read and re-read the manual and various help forums, to no avail. I still don't know what Frontpage server extensions have to do in an IIS7 environment, though.