Entries for DCMonkey

Beware Zune users [Beware Zune users]

DCMonkey — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 08:35:46 GMT

If you haven't yet installed the new Zune 4.0 client and/or 3.2 firmware for pre-HD devices, you might want to hold off on both. A number of people over on the Zune community forums are finding their Zune's bricked after installing one or both of these updates. For me it was just the Zune 4.0 client. My Zune is dead. Until I hear of an official free of charge fix, it will remain a paperweight. I've switched to my iPhone until then. Doesn't do everything the way I'd like but it's working out OK.

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Silverlight Player and IE8 Zoom Still Broken [Silverlight Player and IE8 Zoom Still Broken]

DCMonkey — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:27:34 GMT

The embedded Silverlight player still doesn't calculate its vertical size correctly when the IE8 zoom level is not 100%. This means the toolbar is off the edge of the video frame.

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No toolbar in SL3 player - Updated [No toolbar in SL3 player - Updated]

DCMonkey — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:55:22 GMT

The toolbar with the timeline and other controls doesn't show up in the SL player when in "embedded" mode. It does show up (permanently, I thought it used to popup, but I'm not sure).

This is with Silverlight 3.

Update: It only seems to be gone if you start the video in IE8 at a zoom level > 100%.

In contrast, try starting a video at a zoom level less than 100%. The toolbar will show up in the middle of the player.

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MS puts C# and CLI ECMA specs under Community Promise [MS puts C# and CLI ECMA specs under Community Promise]

DCMonkey — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:36:20 GMT

Basically they promise not to sue over patents on implementation of the ECMA specs for C# and CLI. Mono will be splitting their source code distro into ECMA code and the rest (ASP.Net, WinForms, etc..) that isn't covered by the ECMA specs for those worried about potential patent claims on the later.

Miguel De Icaza's blog post: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Jul-06.html

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So, did anyone here get a new iPhone? [So, did anyone here get a new iPhone?]

DCMonkey — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:53:58 GMT

Well, did you? Did you already have one? Did you switch from another smartphone?

I picked up a 32GB 3GS. My contract was up on my AT&T 8525 (WM 5.X) and I'm tired of waiting for MS to put out a decent mobile OS UI. Maybe in another 2 years I'll take a look at WM7 (if it's out by then), but for now I can at least have a usable mobile browser, dialer keypad screen (black and white with full screen keys, what a concept!), and can navigate most everywhere in the OS (and type) with my thumb on one hand.

Even though I got the 32GB, I'm going to stick with my Zune for music for the time being. I like the subscription model, and the Zune lets me queue multiple albums. Having a separate battery for each device seems like a good idea as well.

I just have to keep them in separate pockets so they don't fight.

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Windows 7 E [Windows 7 E]

DCMonkey — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 19:15:22 GMT

Apparently MS is only going to offer Windows 7 without IE in the EU. OEMs will have the option of including it and/or other browsers.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10262630-56.html?tag=mncol;txt

I still think Windows EU (eww) would have been a better name.

in reply to Windows 7 E

Reply Add Cancel buttons messed up in Chrome [Reply Add Cancel buttons messed up in Chrome]

DCMonkey — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:36:58 GMT

In Chrome, the text for the Add and Cancel buttons run together and the "Add" text runs outside of the actual button box. This only happens when posting a reply, not a new thread (like this one).

Edit: Seems to be fixed now. Not sure if it was a c9 fix or the new version of Chrome that did it.

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NY Times Reader v2 [NY Times Reader v2]

DCMonkey — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:19:55 GMT

Some of you may remember the NY Times Reader app as a WPF showcase app for reading NYT RSS news feeds with a snazzy interactive UI. Well, they've released version 2 and it uses ... Adobe AIR.

What happened? Was WPF too heavy? Did they want cross platform support? Are they just trying out the various technologies out there to see which one suits them best?

And why not Silverlight? Probably because SL doesn't support FlowDocuments and the offline capability won't be there until SL3.

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Duke Nukem ForNever [Duke Nukem ForNever]

DCMonkey — Thu, 07 May 2009 05:05:46 GMT

Oh Man, 3D Realms shut down! 12 years!?! what the hell were they doing with all that time?

What will be the next sign of the apocalypse?

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/58519

in reply to Duke Nukem ForNever

Borland is Dead [Borland is Dead]

DCMonkey — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:13:47 GMT

After selling off their underappreciated Delphi RAD IDE/Language/Framework to Embarcadero last year to concentrate on "application lifecycle management" corporate shelfware, Borland is now being bought by MicroFocus, known mostly (to me at least) for their COBOL compiler.

What a sad end to a once great company.

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Minor Quibbles Wth The Silverlight Player [Minor Quibbles Wth The Silverlight Player]

DCMonkey — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:47:57 GMT

I've noticed that when you pause a video and then start it again using the button that pops up in the middle of the video, the buffering animation/percentage thingy shows up and there is always a stutter as it plays the first second or so twice. Pressing the pause/play button in the lower left doesn't do this.

What's up with that?

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MS Live Labs no longer large [MS Live Labs no longer large]

DCMonkey — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:21:29 GMT

Apparently they've broken up the Live Labs group. Some will work on search and others have been sprinkled across other product groups.

http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-microsoft-dismantles-its-live-labs-group/

Seadragon (Deep Zoom) and Photosynth are neat technologies, but it seems like the kind of thing MS Research should have been producing in addition to (or instead of?) their pure research. Maybe this is a good thing in the long run.

Edit: Changed title to more accurately reflect situation (Changing titles does actually work now doesn't it? I guess we'll find out).

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C9 Web Slice Doesn't Work [C9 Web Slice Doesn't Work]

DCMonkey — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 06:34:59 GMT

It's blank :(

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MS Events and Webcasts spam [MS Events and Webcasts spam]

DCMonkey — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 07:12:46 GMT

Someone calling themselves "Fred Mackie" is posting links to various Microsoft Events and Webcasts on threads that are only generally related and often months or years old.

A little Live Searching reveals that this may actually be someone known as Margery Spears, a supposed SEO expert. Since I can't fathom why someone not working for MS would be posting these, I'm guessing she is indeed working for that part of MS.

If there is someone by either name working or consulting for that department in that capacity, could someone give her or someone in charge of her a call and tell her to stop spamming our forums?

Thanks.

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Thank you for removing Winlogon notify packages in Vista [Thank you for removing Winlogon notify packages in Vista]

DCMonkey — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:57:59 GMT

Unfortunately that didn't help today when I had to remove a trojan notify package on an XP machine that had injected itself into the winlogon process and was watching when I tried to launch a certain process monitoring tool that can kill winlogon. Fortunately I found one that it didn't know about and was able to kill winlogon and delete the dll out from under it.

Windows will be better and better, the fewer ways it has to automagically load and execute code.

And I'm still worried that this one got past our AV.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc721961.aspx

in reply to Thank you for removing Winlogon notify packages in Vista

"More Information" ["More Information"]

DCMonkey — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 07:40:53 GMT

Every once in a while, when I see a driver update on Windows Update, I click that "More information" link in the hope that it might actually lead to, you know, More Information. Someting like a list of what the driver fixes would be wonderful. Instead it's always the same generic page. "A driver is software that allows your computer to communicate with hardware or devices." No s**t sherlock.

Why even bother putting features like this in if you aren't going to actually link to useful content on the back end. Do any drivers actually link to useful information?

in reply to "More Information"

Add button broken [Add button broken]

DCMonkey — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:42:01 GMT

If I visit a thread via the timestamp and try to add a reply, the Add button doesn't work.

If I visit the thread via the subject link, it does.

I'm pretty sure this isn't a new bug.

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This is why you fail (Live Search for WM edition) [This is why you fail (Live Search for WM edition)]

DCMonkey — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:05:59 GMT

So, I was sitting on the can with my WM smartphone and decided to search for something using the Live Search for mobile. It offered a new update so I said sure. It downloaded, installed and failed trying to update my Compact Framework to 2.0. That's not the problem.

The problem is that the error dialog contains the notice that I need to upgrade CF, instructions on whether to click yes or no, the error notice that the upgrade has failed, followed by what I assume is the same text in French and who knows what other languages all in one single string. The gist of it is that the yes and no buttons are somewhere off the bottom of the screen and I'm going to have to reboot the phone to get rid of it. Note that using the programs list to close app programs doesn't work becuase it only lists programs with a main window.

Add these to the list of reasons why trying to shoehorn a windowed GUI onto a device like a phone is a bad idea.

PS: At least it isn't a modal dialog.

in reply to This is why you fail (Live Search for WM edition)

What's a Wonderwall Anyways? [What's a Wonderwall Anyways?]

DCMonkey — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 18:15:35 GMT

Apaprently it's a snazzy new MSN website for celebrity news/gossip.

With a snazzy Flash interface.

Not Silverlight.

I guess it's because it was designed by an agency outside of MS.

http://www.wonderwall.com/

in reply to What's a Wonderwall Anyways?

Office 14 Screenshots [Office 14 Screenshots]

DCMonkey — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:51:08 GMT

There are some leaked Office 14 screenshots over at Ars Technica
http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2009/01/15/leaked-first-office-14-screenshots

I see they're going with the new menu button style like in the Ribbonized Windows 7 apps.

It might be a discoverability improvement over the menu orb from 2007, but I think it looks like a mess.

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Windows 7: Where are my files exactly? [Windows 7: Where are my files exactly?]

DCMonkey — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 08:28:54 GMT

So, I managed to get the ISO and install Windows 7. I'm liking it so far. It looks really nice on my 40" TV :)

But I have a few gripes (yes there's that feedback button). One involves the folders under c:\users\username

We have this new Libraries feature. It sounds neat and possibly useful. The various default libraries are the default save locations for the bundled apps. That's fine. I started experimenting with them. For example I wanted to see what happens when the same file is in both the private and public documents folder (both are default locations of the Document Library). Well, it showa them both with no clue where they come from. Hmm. That could be problematic. So I look to see if there's a Path column to turn on and there is. That should help. That's when I notice that one of the files is in "My Documents".

"My Documents"?!? WTF? I go to my top level user folder and there they are; My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, My Videos. Is the "My" prefix seriously back? For some reason I go into my documents and click on the breadcrumb bar to see the raw path. Wait a minute. Now it says this is the: "documents" folder. What's going on here?

I open up a command prompt and cd dcouments. There are my files. I back out and cd "My Documents". Hmm no files in here

I back out again and dir /ad. Yep, My Documents is a Junction. Like all of those AppData etc folders in Vista were. Lovely.

It's one thing to make all these screwy junctions with folders only programmers and IT techs will see, but it doesn't seem wise to make user's folders this byzantine. What was wrong with the non-"my" folder names and then libraries on top of that?

in reply to Windows 7: Where are my files exactly?

Now This is UI innovation! [Now This is UI innovation!]

DCMonkey — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:03:17 GMT

Behold the MacBook Wheel

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Anyone doing anything interesting for New Years? [Anyone doing anything interesting for New Years?]

DCMonkey — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:03:15 GMT

I'll probably just be MMOing or something.

in reply to Anyone doing anything interesting for New Years?

I don't know what's worse [I don't know what's worse]

DCMonkey — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:51:45 GMT

That an annoyingly long url in a non-functional chunk of html has been screwing with the forum layout all day or that the url now resolves and I've got to stare at this guy's ugly mug now.

Must post it off the page.

in reply to I don't know what's worse

Silverlight can get you fired [Silverlight can get you fired]

DCMonkey — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:36:02 GMT

Sucks for those 50 employees, but I found this interesting:

"For those of you who watch movies instantly on your PC or Mac, you may have noticed our player is much easier to install and use now with Silverlight. The good news is fewer problems for you. The bad news is that we are now overstaffed with technical specialists in our Customer Service (CS) group.

So last week we announced internally some changes in CS. 50 of our technical specialists will work through December, then be let go in early January after the holidays. 15 of our technical specialists will take new roles in the main CS group."

-- http://blog.netflix.com/2008/12/changes-in-customer-service.html

What did they use for their streaming player before Silverlight? I've had Netflix for a few months but I've never used the streaming service.

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