Channel 9 - Discussions by Rich2k

Coffeehouse - I unistalled my Vista

Rich2k — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 16:25:47 GMT

The only problem I have EVER had with vista was the occasional BSOD on waking from sleep mode. I tracked this down to a Beta copy of Checkpoint's VPN client for Vista. This was the only version available when I first installed Vista but they've now got the final release and I've not had a single crash, non-working application, freeze, etc since.

Coffeehouse - What's the Recycle bin for now?

Rich2k — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 10:06:05 GMT

Actually it might be related to this, the issue I'm having.

I occasionally store temporary files to the desktop e.g. exported an image from Lightroom and want to upload it to say Facebook or my Skydrive. Anyway I do so, then delete the file, clean out the recycle bin.

A few days later do the same, the original file is still there according the to file browser in IE when selecting a file to upload, I can still open it too, yet look on the desktop it's not there. Did I delete the file or didn't I, or did Windows Vista just pretend to delete the file for me?

Coffeehouse - Stop the Ding!

Rich2k — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:03:16 GMT

Thank you, thank you, thank you. It was soooo frustrating using WS_FTP and it ding'ing every time I selected a folder or file!

Coffeehouse - Anyone [else] rolled back to XP?

Rich2k — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 15:37:34 GMT

Surely the lack of EAX support isn't a Microsoft problem but a Creative Labs one. Yes Microsoft changed the way the audio system works but Vista has been released to the public for over 6 months now and who knows how long in beta before that. Creative labs surely could have got it working in that time!

Coffeehouse - Silverlight in 21 days!

Rich2k — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 14:59:18 GMT

I've not played with it, or looked at Moonlight but if it's not 100% complete, then how have they implemented it in 21 days? Seems to me they have some working examples but not a complete silverlight implementation.

Not to say they haven't done good work, because they have.

Coffeehouse - Awww the GPL won't invalidate the MS/Novell/Distro patent

Rich2k — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 14:57:37 GMT

Xaero_Vincent wrote:

blowdart, no. Only prior to March 28th (which also happens to be my birthdate, ironic). I believe the Linspire and Xandros deals occured after the fact.

Ah that's my birthday too!

Coffeehouse - How do I get the Channel9 guy?

Rich2k — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 20:09:17 GMT

I'd be interested to know too

Coffeehouse - Thumbnail preview of images in Longhorn, is this missing?

Rich2k — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 09:30:58 GMT

Strange works fine for me when I change the view to Medium Icons or above all Jpegs (or other image types) are thumbnailed. It's probably a missing registry entry as I believe Vista makes thumbnails using the default application itself for that file type and if it can't the preview is broken.

I'm sure someone who knows how this actually works can help with the details though!

Coffeehouse - What's your favourite Xbox 360 game ?

Rich2k — Mon, 21 May 2007 12:01:37 GMT

Sabot wrote:

My wife bought me a nice present, my lovely (if not darn noisey Xbox 360), connected to my 1080i HDTV via the VGA cable and I have Hi Def gaming and it's a thing of beauty!

OK, so I'm still a PC gamer, but whilst I have an Xbox 360 and sometime to use it and why not ? (I was in a car smash up recently so I'm not working till I'm a bit better hence having the time)

So I've been playing Crackdown to death, the new content is very good!

What other cool 360 games out there would you recommend to a newbie, and why ?

Oh and by the way my Xbox Live name is '"Dr Sabot" so please feel free to drop me a message if you want.

Personally I'm loving WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2007 at the moment, just got really into it, also I was liking Lord of the Rings, Battle for Middle Earth II but I've got stuck recently and when that happens I soon get bored of a game.

Coffeehouse - Office 2007 Ribbon and decreasing developer productivity. What a palaver!

Rich2k — Thu, 10 May 2007 23:21:41 GMT

vesuvius wrote:

Go here to view a "wicked" office ribbon bar developed by Juan Pablo G.C.. With the advent of "Orcas" and developer productivity increasing things like Linq, why then take a u-turn and decrease developer produtivity by not having the ribbon bar in Visual Studio and relying on add-ons, 3rd party suppliers and the time it takes to learn the implementation of the utility?

I have invested a great amount of time, effort and expense into MS products, why should I not have access to the ribbon to use in my apps?
Do the head honchos think it great value to lump their developer community with their 2nd choice UI, whilst promoting their latest technologies?

Honestly you pay (through the teeth here in the UK) for the OS and Office, that they use to develop this ribbon, then you get flim-flam! Do I sound ungrateful here?

The problem with that control is that it doesn't go far enough. I've read the office 2007 UI license and used the UI myself and basically it isn't enough to implement part of it, you have to implement pretty much all of it, including the application menu and right down to the key tips.

Coffeehouse - Installing Ubuntu on VPC, Anyone tried it?

Rich2k — Thu, 10 May 2007 10:55:30 GMT

Took forever to install though for me in comparison to Vista and XP on VPC

Coffeehouse - The Vista Pains.

Rich2k — Thu, 10 May 2007 10:53:24 GMT

Ray6 wrote:

Rich2k wrote:
Other than that, nothing but a fast, nice experience. I still have my old PC dual boot to XP but I never load XP now, not even for VS 2005 anymore. On my laptop it's purely Vista Business and no dual boot. Can't recommend Vista more!

Still sounds like a nice rig to me, but how about seeing Vista running on this monster?

Vastly overpriced I'm sure, but I want it, and I want it now.

The laptop is a dual core 2Ghz so it's not bad, but it just runs very fast.

In actual fact my old 2.4Ghz 2 year old machine still runs Vista faster than it runs XP though oh and it supports Aero!

I agree it costs too much, especially here in the UK, I still can't fathom how they came to work out that in the UK it should cost twice the price of it's US counterpart.... import and customs restrictions go nowhere enough to explain that!

Coffeehouse - The Vista Pains.

Rich2k — Thu, 10 May 2007 08:50:43 GMT

Not had a single issue that happened on that video or that other people harp on about.

I had one non-working driver, a 3 year old webcam that Logitech said they won't be writing drivers for (although saying that 3 months later I suddenly get a Windows Update downloading the driver for it, now that impressed me!)

The only other minor issue I had was Photoshop CS2. To get it to register I had to run it once as Administrator so it could write a registry key. If you don't do that it just asks over and over again to register. I imagine they've fixed this in CS3 though.

Other than that, nothing but a fast, nice experience. I still have my old PC dual boot to XP but I never load XP now, not even for VS 2005 anymore. On my laptop it's purely Vista Business and no dual boot. Can't recommend Vista more!

Coffeehouse - Installing Ubuntu on VPC, Anyone tried it?

Rich2k — Wed, 09 May 2007 09:43:07 GMT

I did, but unfortunately you have to install it in safe graphics mode. This issue actually isn't with VPC it's with a bad linux installer.

It detects the emulated video card and looks it up in a table of what it supports and then just uses that mode without even checking if the emulated video can actually run that mode (i.e. it makes assumptions it shouldn't do).

Basically they are trying to use 24bit colour depth when they should be using 16 bit.

You need to first make sure you boot the installer in safe graphics mode (note this is for Umbuntu 6.06 I've no idea about the newer versions).

There other methods too such as installing in no graphics mode, changing the xorg.conf file manually and then telling Umbuntu to boot to graphics mode instead afterwards.

Coffeehouse - c# Dragging and Dropping

Rich2k — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 08:58:17 GMT

Yeah it's on Vista with admin privliges.... I'll try compiling and running direct from the debug folder and see what happens.

Coffeehouse - c# Dragging and Dropping

Rich2k — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 20:02:51 GMT

That's what I've done unfortunatey the form still ignores it.

It was originally an upgrade from C# 2003 if that helps at all?

Coffeehouse - c# Dragging and Dropping

Rich2k — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 12:46:57 GMT

I thought so too but I thought I'd try to make it easy by doing a simple drag and drop from a text box on a webpage in IE to a text box control in the Windows Form, still nothing (and I've got example code from the web stating that it should be simple!)

Coffeehouse - c# Dragging and Dropping

Rich2k — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 12:18:15 GMT

Having a real issue with C# 2005, tried everywhere and can't find a solution so far. I've got quite a complex UI for an app but want to drag and drop from the IE addressbar to a tree control.

Now I'll be able to handle the actual dropped data, it's getting the drag drop to register that I can't solve.

I've got AllowDrop set to true on the tree control, I've got a dragenter and dragdrop event and I've simply set e.Effect = DragDrop.Link

Nothing happens. I've changed it to change the status bar text just to try to get DragEnter to do anything, still nothing happens, no cursor changes, no status bar changes, nothing... just a black circle with a line through it.

Anyone got any ideas? I must be missing something simple but I don't know what.

Coffeehouse - Adobe breaks record for UK price gouging

Rich2k — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 10:16:11 GMT

I'm really getting annoyed by this. Why, just because I live in the UK, do I have to pay double or more for exactly the same software... and get prevented from buying it online from the US and getting is shipped over.

All this rubbish about taxes and exchange rates can account for a small increase in the price, but over double is just making us look like fools.... ah well they'll pay it!

Tech Off - App ignores .NET3.0, requires .NET1.1 for install...

Rich2k — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 16:42:19 GMT

If I remember correctly .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0 (and thus 3.0) are not totally compatible with each other... so the app may truely require 1.1 to be installed regardless.

Coffeehouse - Visual Studio 2005 settings

Rich2k — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 00:08:48 GMT

I have a similar question. I get a license.licx error for my projects after moving their location to a seperate drive. I've tried all sorts, even deleting the license.licx files but not avail.

Coffeehouse - New Project - RSS Reader

Rich2k — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 21:32:50 GMT

Ray6 wrote:

Rich2k wrote:
Speaking of which I wrote one too, simply because I didn't like how any of the existing ones worked... and I'm pretty proud of the interface too (uses Office 2007 ribbon).

I'd be happy to give any advice from the problems I came across designing it.

Okay. I have a few questions, if that's OK.

Is that a .NET application? How long did it take you?

I'm thinking of doing a document manager/word processor type thing for my own use, and this looks like its part of the way there already.

To get to the current state it's taken over a year (but that's not full time coding and there have been versions in between and some code re-writing).

It's a .NET 2.0 application and it does have enclosure download abilities. My next task is to add a file and enclosure manager for it.

I'm quite excited that I got it in the Windows Marketplace and Digital Locker today

Coffeehouse - New Project - RSS Reader

Rich2k — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:09:59 GMT

Jung wrote:

Rich2k wrote:
Speaking of which I wrote one too, simply because I didn't like how any of the existing ones worked... and I'm pretty proud of the interface too (uses Office 2007 ribbon).

I'd be happy to give any advice from the problems I came across designing it.

very very nice, excellent website too.
if i was on the lookout for an rss reader i'd definitely plump for that. although ie and firefox suit me just fine tbh

I thought the same, but then I didn't like the IE or Firefox implementation of feeds either, although I did make sure you could use mine by importing IE7 feeds or allowing firefox to use it as the default reader. As time went on and I 'got into' feeds I found myself leaving the RSS reader open all day and simply using that, infact right now I'm actually posting this from within the reader.

The one thing that was a vast improvement when I moved from .NET 1.1 to .NET 2.0 was the browser plugin, it just worked better and exposed a lot more properties to 'play' with.

Coffeehouse - New Project - RSS Reader

Rich2k — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 11:05:16 GMT

Speaking of which I wrote one too, simply because I didn't like how any of the existing ones worked... and I'm pretty proud of the interface too (uses Office 2007 ribbon).

I'd be happy to give any advice from the problems I came across designing it.

Coffeehouse - Vista's Windows Explorer: bugs in Notification area...

Rich2k — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 14:04:13 GMT

I often get this two on a vista business laptop and an ultimate desktop. Seems totally random and a log off and logon seems to fix it until it decides to do it again. Sound and network both work just the status icons disappear and refuse to enable through the properties.