You've reached the internet home of Chris Sells, who has a long history as a contributing member of the Windows developer community. He enjoys long walks on the beach and various computer technologies.
Wednesday, Jul 23, 2003, 12:00 AM in The Spout
Using GotDotNet Workspaces For Commercial Work
Wednesday, July 23, 2003
When I visit Redmond, I share an office with Andy Oakley, the PM for GotDotNet Workspaces. Workspaces was recently released from beta to v1.0 and when that happened, Andy sent around feedback from users.
Of course, folks love it in general (even some hard-to-please MS internals), but I was surprised to see to some folks were using private Workspaces for their team's main source code base. I shouldn't have been surprised; this makes a lot of sense. Private workspaces provide a protected space for file sharing, discussion, bug tracking and source code control. The last time I set up a commercial software development team, I needed weeks to get all of this picked out, installed and working and I needed an IT guy to keep it running and backed up. I remember hearing about a 3rd party that was going to bundle all of this together for a fee, but never got around to it. With Workspaces, MS already provides the whole team development environment, including VS.NET integration and a web interface, and it's free! Plus, with a private workspace, only folks on your team get access.
IMO, the only big piece that was missing from Workspaces was a way to pull down all of the source onto a build machine for regular automatic builds. For commercial work, this is key. So, Andy, tired of my whining, built a command line tool for pulling down all source from a GDN Workspace (and put it up in it's own GDN Workspace). Personally, I'd be slightly happier if it took arguments from the command line instead of a .config file, but that's easily added from the Genghis CommandLineParser class for those that are interested. Enjoy!
Wednesday, Jul 23, 2003, 12:00 AM in The Spout
Windows XP Remote Assistance Rocks!
I just had a "Windows Moment." I was on the phone with my Dad who has Windows XP and was having trouble. Since he paid for my computer science degree, he assumes that I'll be his tech support. In fact, everyone in my family assumes I'll be their tech support; it's annoying as hell! I don't know how support folks diagnose and fix problems over the phone all day long. More than 5 minutes and I'm ready to say, "How much was that computer science degree, Dad? I'll write you a check."
Anyway, after trying it for about 20 minutes (and failing), I asked him if he had the Remote Desktop settings on his My Computer->Remote tab, thinking that I could use terminal services to solve his problem. Of course, since he was running XP Home, he didn't, but he did have Remote Assistance. So we tried it. And even though he's in the back woods outside of Fargo, ND and on dial-up (isn't this a commercial for Windows XP?), he was able to email me a request for remote assistance (Start->Help->Ask for assistance->Invite a friend to connect to your computer with Remote Assistance) and I was able to connect to his computer (through my firewall!) and solve his problem (half of Office '97 was installed on C: and half on D: and wasn't happy about it at all).
Wow. That's a feature that made my life better.
Tuesday, Jul 22, 2003, 4:29 PM
My $5 Digital Music Experiment
Here. The one where I really, really try to love BuyMusic.com.
Tuesday, Jul 22, 2003, 4:15 PM
Inscrutable Spam: "DWG Needed"
If this is spam, I fail to see what they're selling, but I was amused anyway: "I'm a time traveler stuck here in 2003. Since nobody here seems to be able to get me what I need (safely here to me), I will have to build a simple time travel circut to get where I need myself. I am going to need an easy to follow picture diagram for a simple time travel circut, which can be built out of (readily available) parts here in 2003. Please email me any schematics you have. I will pay good money for anything you send me I can use Or if you have the rechargeable AMD dimensional warp generator wrist watch unit available, and are 100% certain you have a (secure) means of delivering it to me please also reply. Send a separate email to me at: info@federalfundingprogram.com." I admit to sending an email with my regrets (what time travel-related plans I possess are incomplete), but expressed my willingness to accept "good money." : )
Tuesday, Jul 22, 2003, 4:11 PM
Nerd in Shining Armor
Here. It was completely vapid and intellectually void, but I stayed up 'til 2:30a last night reading it while various alpha bits installed on my laptop. Nice mental floss.
Tuesday, Jul 22, 2003, 11:13 AM
My First Visit to MS Studios
Here. The one where I get to see where BillG taped his anti-trust testimony.
Tuesday, Jul 22, 2003, 12:00 AM in The Spout
My $5 Digital Music Experiment
I *really* want to own my digital songs, so I've been dying for a real site to purchase them one at a time, instead of buying entire albums I don't want or ripping the songs off of the albums I do own. Towards that end, I was excited about BuyMusic.com and immediately spend $4.95 on five Avril songs. Overall, it was not a happy experience.
What I love about BuyMusic.com is the site:
- The web site is very usable and full-featured, making finding, listening to and ordering artists, songs and albums easy
- The price is right: $.99/song and $9.49/album
- I really wanted to immediately find the web service so that I could write a program to go through my wife's bootleg mp3s and purchase them
Unfortunately, I hate BuyMusic.com because of the Digital Rights Management (DRM) experience:
- On one machine, I could listen to all of the songs, but only after a "DRM upgrade" (whatever that means)
- On another machine, I had to do systems administration to play a song (DRM doesn't like it when you're a guest and an administrator in the same account). This is fine for me, because I can chase the error to the web page and do the systems administration on my account, but what about normal people? Then I had to do another DRM upgrade. *Then* I had to log in with my user name and password on *every* song! That means I have to roam around to every machine in my house that might possibly want to listen to the music, because only I know the email/password for the songs I buy. What a PITA!
- I'm allowed three machines? Why? I can take my CDs to any machine in the house and my cars. I want to own this music for life and I *know* I'll have more than 3 machines before the end of it. I tried it on four machines and it didn't turn me away, which is nice, but how long will that last?
- How are these WMA files going to work with my mp3 player? Even if the format works, will the DRM get in the way?
- What about if I download a bunch of songs on my way out the door? If I'm on an airplane, I can't jack into the Internet to obtain the license and there was no "pre-license" batch mode that I could find to save me from obtaining the licenses one at a time
The whole experience made me want to cry. The site was so great, but the playback was *so* hard. Why do I have to be treated like a child? I'm dying to pay for the music I want, but I don't want to be penalized for it. I really wanted to find the inevitable hacking tool to strip the DRM off of the music I downloaded so that I could use it more freely, but what's the point of that? This kind of hacking would break the license agreement and is no better than downloading mp3s (although the the latter is a hell of a lot more convenient).
Monday, Jul 21, 2003, 10:51 AM in .NET
.NET Delegates Are More Powerful Than You Think
Here. Don has a nice write-up of delegates vs. interfaces as points of extensibility. Bottom line: delegates are more flexible than interfaces.
Sunday, Jul 20, 2003, 7:57 PM
Get MS Knowledge Base Alerts via RSS
Here. "If you haven’t heard of kbAlertz, it’s a website I setup to email me (and other subscribers) when Microsoft publishes new KB articles for their technologies. I’ve finally gotten around to exposing the Kbs as a RSS feed. Basically, pick the technology you want to subscribe to, and I’ll expose the latest 10 Microsoft Knowledge base articles as a RSS feed."
Friday, Jul 18, 2003, 1:31 PM in .NET
HTML Writer for .NET
Here. Lutz Roeder (of Reflector fame) has started a workspace around WYSIWYG HTML editing in .NET.
Friday, Jul 18, 2003, 10:47 AM
RSS2.0 Copyright Transferred to Harvard Law School
Here. Dave Winer has transferred the copyright to RSS 2.0 to Harvard Law School as well as opened it up for more public feedback. This is good because RSS 2.0 is gaining in popularity but has come under fire lately for being controlled by Dave alone. Thanks, Dave.
Friday, Jul 18, 2003, 9:40 AM
Time To Sell Your Soul to the Devil?
Here. In spite of the mention of my site in this article, I consider it more of a "rent" then a "sell". : )
Friday, Jul 18, 2003, 9:18 AM
Higher Primates Can Program
Here. First companies move jobs overseas and now this…
Thursday, Jul 17, 2003, 12:00 AM in The Spout
My First Visit to MS Studios
I went with Erica Wiechers (.NET Show heart throb) to visit MS Studios today. Ostensively we were there to preview the Applied XML Developer Conference videos, some of which Erica will be turned into MSDN TV episodes. However, as long as we were there, Bob Snyder gave us the nickel tour.
The front entry was even more secure than the normal MS buildings, being encased in wire fencing and not yielding to my badge (we had to be let in from the inside). Once in, it was a big building with lots of open space and fun decorations. I got to see several blueprints of famous imaginary places, e.g. the spaceship from Lost in Space, the Addams Family house and the island from Gilligan's Island. I got to see the two green rooms where "talent" gets ready in the full locker rooms, then relaxes on the coach 'til it's their turn (although neither room is green). I got to see all of the studios, including standing on one of BillG's markers, seeing the set where he interviewed with Larry King and the other set where he recorded his antitrust testimony. I also got to see the set for the .NET Show, which looks like the inside of half of a giant bowl, so that they can blend in custom backgrounds, both physical and logical. I go to see all kinds of cool a/v routing and mixing equipment, putting my one little PC attached to my home theater system seem so pathetic in comparison. I even got to see some live footage of Steve Ballmer that they were filming that day (man, he gets excited when he speaks : ).
In general, I've been getting to see and do a lot of cool stuff here at MS. Recommended.
Tuesday, Jul 15, 2003, 6:00 PM
MS Trusted Most to Provide Security Systems
Here. "One of the most surprising results of the 2003 InfoWorld Security Survey is that more respondents trust Microsoft to deliver companywide enterprise OS security than they do any other vendor." Nice to know folks trust us about *something*. : )