Channel 9 - Discussions by esoteric

Coffeehouse - Interesting papers

Bent Rasmussen — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:33:00 GMT

Lovely.

I wonder if the Phoenix guys are thinking D'OH! right now. This approach looks quite compelling.

There's been several interesting ideas introduced lately, some new, some not so new. The new TraceMonkey Javascript VM, working on the new idea of trace trees. I believe the researchers behind the idea applied this to Java as well and got a very high performance VM, comparable to the one of Hotspot, which has God knows how many man-hours put into it. Isn't it wonderful when new and simple ideas shatter old and complex ones? Beautiful code.

Then there is SquirrelFish Extreme and V8 Javascript engines which both appear to be using some of the same techniques from the Self implementations - re/compiling to classes because most often, prototypes do have a fixed layout, even if they may be completely dynamic - adding and removing properties and methods at runtime.

Coffeehouse - Mgrammar Language Catalogue

Bent Rasmussen — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:12:02 GMT

Is there such a thing as a central Mgrammar language catalogue? It would be really great with such an index of existing languages so no duplicate effort was wasted and people could easily reuse existing languages reverse-engineered with Mgrammar. Say for example CSS, C#, Javascript, etc.

Coffeehouse - So in '7 ready for your desktop?

Bent Rasmussen — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 10:57:26 GMT

Bas said:

PaoloM said:

*snip*

So, if I look at my notification area now, I have just Messenger, the WHS connector, and the power management/network/volume trinity there. But if I expand it to show the hidden icons, I see a whole bunch of stuff. AnyDVD, Dell QuickSet, Sidebar, Live Mesh, the Fingerprint Reader Suite... all stuff I want to have running in the background all the time, but I rarely interact with them. I just don't need to see those icons, that's why I hid them in the notification area. If Windows 7 is going to push always-running applications out of the notification area and onto the taskbar to avoid cluttering up the notification area, the result will be that the taskbar will get cluttered... which is worse, because now I'll be forced to look at a whole range of buttons that I'll never interact with, with no way to hide them.

How is Windows going to combat that problem? I'm really not looking forward to constantly having to look at that smug AnyDVD fox that does nothing but take up space on my taskbar.

A good point there. This decluttering can lead to more cluttering...

Coffeehouse - So in '7 ready for your desktop?

Bent Rasmussen — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 19:40:11 GMT

7 is running fine on both my laptop and my desktop (depicted).

The desktop did have a driver failure during 7 install, but it appears to basically work. Still, it's a bit sad that "self-healing" doesn't really account for this. The most fundamental kind of healing, it would seem, would be to ensure all system files are present. But so far no big deal - it's only Sticky Notes that complains over a missing Ink dll.

Coffeehouse - IE 8 is far away from prime time...

Bent Rasmussen — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 12:14:37 GMT

PaoloM said:

spivonious said:

*snip*

I'm using Chrome and it's all fast and stuff, but it croaks on a number of sites (codeplex, etc). So it's still IE at Casa Paolo...

That describes my use of Internet Explorer as well - as a fallback. Still, beta is beta and there is a chance that the UI can become less bloated and it can become faster. I doubt half of that though ("by design" | "wohn't fix").

Coffeehouse - Apples beats estimates - MS cuts 5000 jobs

Bent Rasmussen — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:56:46 GMT

"paint"

- Not so hard, Jamie

The quicklaunch is not such a big miss really - except maybe the ability to configure that running applications are always kept adjacent in the taskbar.

Coffeehouse - Live Mesh & Skydrive

Bent Rasmussen — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:19:16 GMT

CKurt said:
They said Live Mesh integration with other Live products is comming in the next release of the Windows Live Platform, wave 4 as you may say.

So they will do it eventualy, but first the Live Framework CTP needs to be put togetter with the current version of Mesh running, so everybody's local MOE.exe become a local LOE.exe and we can get going with adding application to our real mesh.

Sounds good.

Coffeehouse - Live Mesh & Skydrive

Bent Rasmussen — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:19:02 GMT

magicalclick said:
Put storage aside since I am sure it will get larger in the future. I thought about SkyDrive and LiveMesh together, but then, I wanted it to be separate later on. SkyDrive is safe from ME. There is no way I am going to accidentally delete a file from SkyDrive. But Live Mesh gives me chillz. Not only it was buggy before, but I am buggy myself. A workspace is good, but not like SkyDrive I can do backup without worrying I mess it up myself.

In this regard Dropbox is quite neat, as it will actually not erase files you delete, rather they become shadow files that you can choose to purge completely from the system, but you have that extra level of safety. Of course any such feature could be abused for artificially adding more space - unless anything that doesn't fit get auto-purged. Volume Shadow Copy for Mesh/SkyDrive?

Coffeehouse - Live ID : A state of limbo

Bent Rasmussen — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:47:27 GMT

"Have you ever, ever felt like this. When strange things happen. Are you going round the twist."

I just wanted to mention a poor experience with Windows Live ID, in particular Windows Live ID "rename" - yes there is such a function. It will allow you, in most cases, to change your Live ID e-mail address - but only if that e-mail address is outside the domain of Hotmail or Llive - to my knowledge.

The problem is, now many days after, the Live ID is now in a strange state of limbo where it superficially appears to have changed and indeed, it is possible to login with this new Live ID, but it hasn't really fully changed. That manifests itself in that e.g. Windows Live Messenger does not update contacts so they get the new address. Instead it appears to all contacts that my new Live ID is offline and vice versa. It manifests itself in that Windows Live does not allow me to have full control over editing certain entities like music and movies.

Just a word of warning as I've now reported it to the Live ID newsgroup and to their support but if you are considering it, be mindful of this risk. It looks like I'll have to disengage from this defect ID and create a new account and new matching gmail account alongside with it (I dare not reuse the old one out of angst to foobar the system even more).

Coffeehouse - The Radio

Bent Rasmussen — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 23:56:01 GMT

Maddus Mattus said:

CannotResolveSymbol said:

*snip*

Yes!

Some random guy with a meter beer!

That's so... one-dimensional. Here's how to measure it - by square meters

- And how to open one!

Coffeehouse - Live & Translation

Bent Rasmussen — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 09:33:28 GMT

I wonder if Windows Live will have translation features built-in. Due to the fact that this writers native tongue is Danish, it is very useful to be able to serve both a Danish and English audience without having to divert from native tongue. So translation features for keywords would be quite useful. But that's one of those features that are quite obvious, so I suspect that this is preaching to the choir.

Coffeehouse - Oh no! My win7 install is screwed :(

Bent Rasmussen — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 09:23:09 GMT

I feel your pain. I had the blue screen of death during install - four times (32 bit twice, 64 bit twice); the last install was 64 bit and then for the fun of it, I tried booting - which succeeded. So my Windows 7 is in an undefined state. There is a recovery tool - maybe that can go through all files and replace anyone with a mismatched hash. Pure dumb luck has it that the system does appear as good as fully functional.

Coffeehouse - Any X-Men fans?

Bent Rasmussen — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:13:24 GMT

More of a FF and Hulk fan myself.

Coffeehouse - Mono Downmix

Bent Rasmussen — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:11:26 GMT

W3bbo said:
Tried looking at the settings control panel for your soundcard? That way you can get it for all programs.

The Analog Devices chipset in my desktop has this feature, so it's worth checking out.

...and what's with the foobar bashing?

I have nothing against foobar - in fact it's a great minimalistic app. But now, for the first time, I really feel Windows Media Player is becoming truly useful. Besides, even though I love foobar, it often crashes on library scanning. That is not so with Windows Media Player.

Coffeehouse - Mono Downmix

Bent Rasmussen — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 16:22:38 GMT

In various players there's DSPs to downmix to mono. The problem is, I'd like to use Windows Media Player. Is there a mono downmixer for it somewhere? If not, then how - is there a mono DSP for Windows itself that can just be plugged in? (Using 7)

And so why on earth use mono? Well if one of your speakers aren't working then it's real handy to not hear only one channel in the other speaker.

Any help appreciated. Last line of defense is to revert to foobar...

Coffeehouse - Windows Library

Bent Rasmussen — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 13:27:43 GMT

Is this a new feature for Windows 7? - I just noticed that it's possible to add arbitrary folders to the Windows Library, meaning audio scattered on various drives can be added. This is something that really made Library useless to me previously, but now it rocks. Well, regardless of it being new or not, I love it!

Coffeehouse - Live & Windows 7 sticky notes

Bent Rasmussen — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 12:31:44 GMT

GoddersUK said:

Snipping tool isn't new to Win7 - it was present in Vista too.

Anything new with it?

Coffeehouse - Live & Windows 7 sticky notes

Bent Rasmussen — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:05:02 GMT

Bas said:

DCMonkey said:

*snip*

Which is actually much more useful behavior for a sticky note.

No disagreement there. Let's observe W++
(I hear some distant laughs: It's the sticky notes!

- forget about performance, it was all just about the sticky notes!)

Coffeehouse - EU: No IE in Windows

Bent Rasmussen — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:02:47 GMT

DCMonkey said:
Only sell one version in EU; Windows European Ultimate Edition. It comes with nothing (no IE, WMP, Calc, Notepad, Wordpad etc. No themes either. Only battleship gray). All of those apps are downloadable as European Ultimate Extras. Charge full Ultimate price (plus whatever other "premium" EUer usually get stuck with).

Oh come on. I honestly do not fear, loathe or have the slightest against unbundling, even forced unbundling. It's not so hard to press that download button. I would object if they wanted to unbundle the network stack tho.

Coffeehouse - Live & Windows 7 sticky notes

Bent Rasmussen — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:38:59 GMT

DCMonkey said:
It's kind of odd to me that they've added a full blown app for sticky notes and removed the sticky notes gadget. It seems like the later would be more appropriate for such a thing.

What can the new Sticky Notes app do that the old gadget couldn't?

"Full blown", well you could say that perhaps, except that does not really mean anything. Isn't it a very "small full-blown app"? [I didn't check its profile.]

Appropos, how about pens, if you have a digital pen and want to write a note.

Coffeehouse - EU: No IE in Windows

Bent Rasmussen — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:35:05 GMT

Bas said:

esoteric said:

*snip*

...it has no RSS reader.

That's what Google Reader is for. I have two text-less bookmarklets on the link panel: one to add a page feed to Google Reader; one to go to Google Reader. Cloud storage ftw. (By the way, isn't the name Cloud a bit misleading; I tend to think a cloud is more P2P oriented instead of massive datacenters, but...)

Coffeehouse - EU: No IE in Windows

Bent Rasmussen — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:34:45 GMT

jamie said:

Minh said:

*snip*

re: If you happen to type in a URL into the Explorer address bar?

yes - before it would stay one window - not force launch the same &^%$ thing in a new window

Edit: Tin Foil Hat: I find it funny that anything to do with more security -= removing functionality that gives you control

Forget web standards / guts for a minute. IE6 was the apex of browser control (from ms anyway)

ps - this thread reminds me of my threads here from 4 years ago! blast from the past eh eagle? full screen!

IE 6 was nice, it was also pioneering some new technologies, albeit non-standard but it was ahead of its time, at least in terms of features. And it was quite fast as well, wasn't it...

Coffeehouse - EU: No IE in Windows

Bent Rasmussen — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:28:05 GMT

Google Chrome. No need for anything else. It's fast, it's lean, it just works (except for Windows 7 beta downloading but I can live with that). Perf ftw. IE is no serious loss, seriously... Let's see how the final turns out; bets are on that it is aligned with the Windows 7 timeline. But so far, no negative thoughts sent towards Brussels from this point. I like the tagline that Windows 7 is the Chrome of Windows.

Coffeehouse - Office 14 Screenshots

Bent Rasmussen — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:26:43 GMT

esoteric said:

W3bbo said:

*snip*

(Sorry dupe - looked like my previous posts were lost. I refreshed several times here and did not see them.)

Color does not disrupt geometry. It does not mess with the overall UX. Rather it helps distinguish between applications, giving them a distinct, yet familiar look and feel. Also the new "colors of Windows 7" are very soft and easy on the eyes and the transition between them is soft and easy.

I wonder more about Visio 14. It now has the Ribbon control, which is great, but does it have more streamlined diagrams and graphics. Visio 13 leaves something to be desired, to be honest - although it is possible to make smooth graphics with it.

Is Visio 14 using MIL or WPF. Is it using a new graphics engine or will it basically be the Ribbon plus some new diagrams and diagram extensions. That's really my main concern there.

A completely different question: Is "Quadrant" the basis for a new Visio? - Looks like there's some overlap there.

Coffeehouse - Live & Windows 7 sticky notes

Bent Rasmussen — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:19:06 GMT

DCMonkey said:
It's kind of odd to me that they've added a full blown app for sticky notes and removed the sticky notes gadget. It seems like the later would be more appropriate for such a thing.

What can the new Sticky Notes app do that the old gadget couldn't?

No idea. I didn't use the old gadget