Comment Feed for RichardRudek

Re: Ray Ozzie: Introducing Live Mesh

RichardRudek — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:04:31 GMT

I don't know why Dan doesn't post the low res link, [but here it is] 131.6MB.

I right-click then choose save as file.

posted by RichardRudek

Re: Ken Levy and Aaron Marten: Visual Studio 2008 Extensibility

RichardRudek — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 05:11:51 GMT

Dan wrote:

RichardRudek wrote:
I'm starting to feel like a junk-yard dog...

It's taking too long to download. Can you guys try to have a little consistency between you. I prefer a lower resolution video. The 320x240 512Kbps is fine for whiteboard stuff (not that I know whether it's in this video or not), and when you zoom in, it's also fine for the videoed 'screencast' stuff too.

Actually, it would help if you started to rate the content, so we can make informed choices about what to download - ie maybe this one only needs the audio...

I can add the low-res version, but I'm not quite sure what you mean by ratings or how ratings would help you choose whether you only need the audio. Can you explain a bit more?

First off, thanks for the video. Though, I can't help the feeling of [deja vu]...

Ratings is probably a bad word to use to describe what I meant. Basically, if the content is just head-shots and talk, then that would be an audio-only recommendation.

White-board only would be a low res video recommendation.

Video recorded screencasts, with lazy camera operation (not zooming in close as approriate with the conversation) would be a high res recommendation.

Now if your really into editing/post production, you could take a portable hard disk with you, and save a proper screencast to it. Obviously, the screencast machine will need to have Window Media Encoder (or a commercial product that does it), but at least you get a full-res, high quality, low bandwidth (separate) recording that you could render into a single video stream, later. Better still, produce a multiple stream source that switches appropriately between the screencast and video streams. The best of both worlds for the end users, though a huge PITA for you guys... [A]

Thanks for the video

posted by RichardRudek

Re: Ken Levy and Aaron Marten: Visual Studio 2008 Extensibility

RichardRudek — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 02:57:29 GMT

I'm starting to feel like a junk-yard dog...

It's taking too long to download. Can you guys try to have a little consistency between you. I prefer a lower resolution video. The 320x240 512Kbps is fine for whiteboard stuff (not that I know whether it's in this video or not), and when you zoom in, it's also fine for the videoed 'screencast' stuff too.

Actually, it would help if you started to rate the content, so we can make informed choices about what to download - ie maybe this one only needs the audio...

posted by RichardRudek

Re: Ted Kummert, S. Somasegar (Soma), Bill Laing: On Trifecta Launching and Working Together - Enter SQL

RichardRudek — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 02:42:25 GMT

I don't know what to think about this 'new style'. At the start, there was too much camera hopping, which made me stop the video, and try to come online and complain.

As the site was (is still) having trouble, I decided to try watching it again, and eventually the camera hopping subsided to a more acceptable level, instead using slow zooms.

Content-wise, there wasn't a lot of value, so if it wasn't for my aggravation with the production, I wouldn't have commented...

posted by RichardRudek

Re: Miguel de Icaza and Dragos Manolescu: On Open Source, Mono and Moonlight

RichardRudek — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:38:05 GMT

THIS IS OFF TOPIC.

I've been trying to wait patiently for the low res link to come live, but no. I'm now downloading the full resolution one.

But seriously, are you guys keeping track of how many people are downloading the low res one even though it's not well highlighted ?

I'd suggest that if you swapped the links around (made the low res then main, with the high res being the exception) you would see the numbers change. Often, the hi-res is just way over the top, considering the content.

It's not that I don't have the bandwidth. I just hate having to manage the disk space so often, and it just smacks of egotism (or should that be pomposity)...

posted by RichardRudek

Re: This Week on Channel 9: Feb 15 with Scott Hanselman!

RichardRudek — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 21:51:07 GMT

Ha ha:
You can't light a porcupine on fire and get liquorish...

I suppose it depends on what it's been eating... sugar beets...

posted by RichardRudek

Re: Burton Smith: On General Purpose Super Computing and the History and Future of Parallelism

RichardRudek — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:26:46 GMT

Excellent nothing. That was a brilliant video.

Thank you Burton, and thank you Charles.

PS: As for Dave Cutler. I certainly don't want to disrespect him in any way, but my mischievous side just can't resist: My take is that he spends a lot of his time in the primitive world of the Operating System Kernel, etc, and has thus adopted primitive beliefs about Cameras/Pictures stealing people's souls... Either that or he can't trust himself to keep a secret...[A]

posted by RichardRudek

Re: Erik Meijer: Functional Programming

RichardRudek — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 22:42:05 GMT

stevo_ wrote:

So ok, great, we have a system where everything is 'honest' about it's workings, why is that useful?

It's useful because it not only allow more robust systems, but also allows various other "optimisations".

This idea of (bad) side-effect free permeates most of modern day computing. For example, at the macro-level, we have Operating Systems with protected memory systems, privilege levels, etc, which then allows robust multi-tasking, etc.

Moving to the micro-level, we have instruction-level parallelism, which CPU designers (at the chip, transistors level) needed in order to improve throughput [1]. Things like super-scalar, pipelining, out-of-order execution, etc, I believe, can all trace their roots back to this idea of (bad) side-effect free operations. Sure, they had to introduce a slew peripheral hardware to cache or hide the various (good and bad) side-effects, but they did it.

Now were moving into the age where they are trying (again) to do it at the programmer level. At least, that's my take on it...

[1] The root causes for this are many. But from my perspective, the primary cause is the unwillingness of the 'industry' to move to vastly faster memory sub-systems - orders of magnitude, in some cases. (And yes, it would be extremely expensive, which is why it's not being done, considering ->). So far, they've been able to hide the huge differences between the the throughput achieveable from the various 'levels' in the memory heirachy: register to register, register to L1 cache, register to L2 cache, etc.

posted by RichardRudek

Re: Erik Meijer: Functional Programming

RichardRudek — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 04:30:38 GMT

That was an excellent video.

As an old-school, impure programmer, I especially liked the way you cleared up what is meant by functional - in my old-school (C++) ways, I kept thinking 'volatile results'...

One could argue, though, that your starting premise is what is wrong with regards to the 'contract' each function call has, at least in terms of adding 'functional' features to an imperative language. And I suspect Charles may have thought that as well, which is why I suspect he asked about wether it was worthwhile to be able to 'flag' a call/routine as being 'functional' - f(x) called with the same 'x' returning the same result. Always. That is, we know our (default) implementation of an (imperative) function (routine) is not pure, but look here, this function (routine) is meant to be pure, so please beef up the (static?) analysis, and tell me if this gets broken.

Anyway, thanks Erik and Charles. Excellent... [A]

posted by RichardRudek

Re: IE 8: On the Path to Web Standards Compliance - ACID 2 Test Pass Complete

RichardRudek — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 05:39:24 GMT

creditcard wrote:

So um, how about a release?

If IE8 releases before Firefox 3 you can deliver a fatal blow to Firefox standards complience claims.

I think I'd prefer that it was done right, rather than release early, just to start a fight...

posted by RichardRudek

Re: ntdebugging blog talk about on desktop heap

RichardRudek — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 01:03:12 GMT

This is probably going off topic here, but as I don't seem to be able to get any useful response from other sources, so what the heck...

Basically, I'm trying to avoid having to use two separate computer systems in an embedded design. The basic problem is that I need to drive a 3840x2400 pixel display. BUT, not have this high-res display actually attached to the user's "normal" Desktop. In other words, have the high-res display connected as a peripheral display. Nothing, other than my program, is allowed to draw or touch anything (dialog boxes, blanking, etc) on this display.

Now the problem is that nVidia, the display card manufacturer (Quadro FX), does not support operating the display without it being connected to a "Windows Desktop". My attempts to gain access to their driver people have (effectively) been ignored. Worse still, I don't have the time, and client doesn't have the resources to fund any type of driver development.

So I've been trying to think of ways of working around this rather sticky problem - thinking about wether it was possible to create a second "Windows Desktop". Then I remembered a product that used to ship here in Australia, that turned a Windows NT4 system into an old-school Mutli-User system [1].

Is it possible, under ANY current version of Windows that allows you to have two (or more) real users being driven entirely by one PC with Multi-Display cards, etc - ie an "old school" Multi-User system ?

The basic idea here being wether I could setup a second user Session to run in Kiosk-mode, but rendering to the high-res display. The "normal desktop" session 0 (1 for Vista), using a lower-res display, such as a PCI SVGA display eg 1024x768.

Any thoughts ? ... go away ?...

[1]: There used to be a product here in Australia, which I believe was bought-out and then released as Citrix MetaFrame (WinFrame ?). That used a "Hacked" NT 3.5 / NT 4 Kernel - apparently, they had purchased a Kernel source-code license. But when it came to Windows NT4/2000, Microsoft tied them up and essentially made them enter into a cross-license arrangement, and thus was born Terminal Services.

Anyway, the point being, that there were PCI cards, typically 4 Display with matching Keyboard and Mouse ports, that used a high denity connector, which you then broke out into separate display/keyboard/mouse "terminals" - there was nothing else but the breakout box on the user's desk (no computer). From what I can tell, this is no longer supported in either MetaFrame or Terminal Services, at least out of the box.

posted by RichardRudek

Re: Greg Leake: Stocktrader Demo, 2 of 3

RichardRudek — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 00:12:40 GMT

Ah, my old friend, DCOM... [A]

Actually, how close is the new WCF binary serialisation to DCOM's ?

PS: I really like these types of Videos.

posted by RichardRudek

Re: The MicroISV Show #21 - Dr. Edward Hallowell - Crazy Busy

RichardRudek — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 04:22:01 GMT

Good stuff. I remember in the early days of the Internet, where I used to spend quite a lot of my time in Usenet (newsgroups). I finally came to the realisation that I was spending way too much time on it and email, so I went cold-turkey - changing email addresses, very cautiously giving the new ones away, deleting the Usenet setup and history, etc. The best thing I ever did.

Well, I did loose a lot of "customers" over this. But in reality, they were mostly scavengers, rarely every paying for any of my time or assitance. So apart from the loss in some self esteem, I was better off.

I suppose the time will come when I'll have to do the same with Ch9. Though, I do have better discipline, these days...

posted by RichardRudek

Re: James Clarke: Creating Silverlight Media with Expression Media Encoder

RichardRudek — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 01:08:40 GMT

An interesting video. Thanks.

PS: Tim, I can be a pedantic sod, at times. Which means that when I notice a problem, I tend to be distracted by it, and investigate. I figure there might be a few other like me, so letting them know up front may allow them to see pass it. Good work, anyway. I doubt I could operate a camera AND engage in a coherrent conversation at the same time - assuming you weren't cheating...

posted by RichardRudek

Re: James Clarke: Creating Silverlight Media with Expression Media Encoder

RichardRudek — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 00:26:12 GMT

Yeah, I'm streaming at 331Kbits / s, just in case you have multiple streams setup. It's definately a problem with the stream.

posted by RichardRudek

Re: James Clarke: Creating Silverlight Media with Expression Media Encoder

RichardRudek — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 00:12:25 GMT

Whoops. 404 error on download, and only right-channel audio on media stream.

posted by RichardRudek

Re: HanselMinutes on 9 - #2 - Weapons and Debugging the .NET Runtime

RichardRudek — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 00:00:33 GMT

For anyone that's interested in what vance is (un)doing, LarryOsterman recently explained it bit when he talked about [Frame Pointer Ommision].

That's what he meant by that "EBP" stuff.

posted by RichardRudek

Re: Mark Russinovich: From Winternals to Microsoft, On Windows Security, Windows CoreArch

RichardRudek — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 23:38:25 GMT

Yeah, the first edit-point does break the thought, so here's a filler for you...

I wrote a short (colourful) article (many years ago) that talked about being aware about unexpected behaviours, which I think is relevant to this topic of UAC spoofing. The article I wrote was specifically about floppy-based virus infections, and how, through the dicipline of keeping the write-protect tabs in place at all times (yes, 5.25" floppies), I was able to detect suspicious behaviours, like the floppy being accessed at (repeatedly) inappropriate times.

By familarising myself with what were expected behaviours, awareness of any unexpected ones [1] would trigger an investigation, checking for viruses, etc.

So in the case of UAC spoofing (without the Secure Attention Sequence - Ctrl-Alt-Del), if you see more than one elevation request, be suspicious !

Do I think that's a sustainable practice, having to train users into what are expected and unexpected behaviours ? No, but until UAC is nailed down and "hardened", so that it does become a (first-class) security boundary, then you are stuck with having to re-live (some of) the past...

[1] Because one of the aims of a virus (at that time) was to spread itself via floppies, a virus would repeatedly attempt to write itself to the floppy until it finally succeeded. In some cases, however, the virus would continue to (regularly) check, even though it had successfuly written itself (infected) a floppy. Given that the floppy drives were quite noisy, it wasn't difficult to notice.

posted by RichardRudek

Re: Windows Vista PreOS Environment: What happens before the OS loads

RichardRudek — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 12:13:34 GMT

So does this mean we are going to get a WinRE video ?

Like with my skillset, I'm seriously considering wether there's any opportunity for someone like me, creating "addons" to WinRE, or perhaps convincing them into allowing some kind of addon API.

Now a direct question for Jamie/Andrew.

I ran into an issue a couple of days ago which I thought had been fixed since Windows 2000 sp2. That is 48-bit LBA on ATA (IDE) Hard disks.

In this case, there was an existing Windows 2000 Server where the Admin needed to setup a parrallel install of Windows on a second D: volume. Now this was a 250MB basic disk volume, and was ~60-70% full. The Admin booted off his Windows 2000 sp4 CD (slip-streamed) and proceeded to through the text-mode setup, installing to D:\WINNT. Upon reboot, entering what should be the 2nd stage, GUI part of the installer, you get a BSOD and a message about D:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\NTOSKRNL.EXE being missing.

Upon my investigation, it became apparent that NTOSKRNL.EXE was well beyond the old 28-bit LBA limitation (~128GB point). But I wasn't able to investigate any further, due to urgency. Is this likely an issue of a bad service pack integration of the Windows 2000 Server CD. That is, the CD was still using the old, pre 48-bit LBA IDE/ATAPI driver(s) ?

PS: I side-stepped the issue by resizing and moving the partition up, leaving a 2GB partition at the start of the disk for the new parallel install.

posted by RichardRudek

Re: The MicroISV Show #15 - Phil Wright - dotnetmagic.com

RichardRudek — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 01:30:16 GMT

This was a timely stumble, giving me some more things to think about.

Thanks.

posted by RichardRudek

Re: Jon Udell and Mary Czerwinski on interruptions, context reacquisition, and spatial/temporal memory

RichardRudek — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 00:36:13 GMT

An interesting podcast.

I suspect that what I'm about to say is already understood, but the thing that bugs me about this personalisation stuff is that it does it without my permission, and typically, in a half-arsed (appendaged/simple) fashion.

I would probably use at least some of it, if it instead collected the appropriate information (tightly integrated), and then only after it has figured out that there would be a significant improvement in my productivity, make an offer to personalise the program. The offer should provide supporting evidence, and appropriately focused solutions, much like you have would to do in the real world. eg:

"Hey, I noticed that you keep opening and closing the object browser. You don't have any of the accessibility features enabled, and you have enough screen real estate, did you know that you can dock it so it is now accessible via a Tab ?" with options for "Show me" and "Bugger off"

Or the opposite, "Hey, I noticed that your screen redraws are piling up because your using the Visual Studio IDE via Remote Desktop. If you unpin these panes..."

Just like in the real world, these offers should only occur at appropriate times (scheduled ?). Naturally, this includes the ability to completely turn this stuff off. Logging and all...

posted by RichardRudek

Re: Steve Teixeira and Bill Dunlap: Visual C++ Today and Tomorrow

RichardRudek — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 01:06:14 GMT

staceyw wrote:

RichardRudek wrote:Unless your unfortunate enough to do some sub-contracting work for a large Corporation or Government who are just now deploying Windows XP to Desktops with IE6 and Office 2003...

In that case, why not just deploy .Net 2.0 with the image?

What image ? You mean the new desktop deployments ?

Note that as a sub-contractor, I have very little say about how the client runs their IT departments or infrastructure.

To that end, these types of clients are so anal about what is supplied to them, that even when you follow everything to the letter, it takes a year to deploy really simple stuff.

I can understand their motivations, ALL of the stuff which becomes part of their SOE (Standard Operating Environment) needs to be regression tested, which includes security audits.

So the reality of the situation is that deploying something like the .NET framework to desktops or servers will fail the security audits, because they are basically overworked (perhaps lazy) and/or incompetent - the better safe than sorry principle ; when in doubt, leave it out... To achieve "breakthrough", there has to be a significant amount of back-pressure from many vendors. Usually yielding without having actually performed any competent form of security audit...

Hell, just trying to have them setup Integrated Security between their Servers is a non-starter. So you have this insane situation where as a developer, you have to involve myself in their security administrivia - violating the "need to know" security principles. Stupid stuff, really.

But then again, these IT departments are just appendages - their core business/purpose is not IT.

posted by RichardRudek

Re: Steve Teixeira and Bill Dunlap: Visual C++ Today and Tomorrow

RichardRudek — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 11:05:50 GMT

ScaleOvenStove wrote:

They finally got it right with Vista, but now it will be 3-5 years before saturation.

Unless your unfortunate enough to do some sub-contracting work for a large Corporation or Government who are just now deploying Windows XP to Desktops with IE6 and Office 2003...

posted by RichardRudek

Re: Sampy Gets Shot in the Face - A Channel 9 Exclusive

RichardRudek — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 02:45:07 GMT

But you fell for the old HR trick, where they make you think you can only attack your own instead of them...[6]

posted by RichardRudek

Re: Anders Hejlsberg, Herb Sutter, Erik Meijer, Brian Beckman: Software Composability and the Future of

RichardRudek — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 10:45:33 GMT

I think the reason why you had compiler developers saying that "F# was their favourite dynamic language" is more due to an issue of your refined (limited) definition of "dynamic", in this context. ie A question that (mischievously ?) sets up the answerer to fail your implicit, scope-limited defintion... [A]

This kinda reminds me of some experients that were done on children of varying ages when asked "which of these two straws is taller". The children were individually sat down at a table with two identical straws (length, colour, etc). However, one of the straws was moved further away. The three year olds (I'm not actually sure of this age, but it'll do) always selected the straw furthest away. In other words, the problem was actually a mismatch between the experience of the questioner and answerer. The questioner's definition of "taller" was more refined than the child's. However, once those children had been shown what was actually meant by the question, they moved the straws next to each other, and (effectively) answered "they are both the same".

PS: Hey, I couldn't resist given Anders' little dig about Academics and functional programming...

REALLY good interview !

posted by RichardRudek