US Price on US Site: 3609.00 (AUD 4031.05 at time of writing)
AU Price on AU Site: 8239.05
Really Lenovo? Really?
This is just one example of how overseas companies have a field day here in Oz. Dell. HP. Apple. Microsoft. They all do it and we stand by and let it happen.
What a sad and sorry state of affairs.
So today I was mucking around with the ASP.NET SiteMap for a client web site that we are creating. One of the things that we wanted to use was the SiteMap, as it is an easy win and means that we do not have to muck about with the navigation.
So I created a site map as below:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<siteMap xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/AspNet/SiteMap-File-1.0" >
<siteMapNode url="~/default.aspx" title="FVR Data Entry Home" description="FVR Data Entry Home">
<siteMapNode url="" title="Administration">
<siteMapNode url="~/Admin/FVRAdmin.aspx" title="FVR Data Admin" description="FVR Data Admin Home" />
<siteMapNode url="~/FVRDataEntry.aspx" title="FVR Data Entry" description="FVR Data Entry" />
</siteMapNode>
<siteMapNode url="" title="FVR Management">
<siteMapNode url="" title="New..."></siteMapNode>
<siteMapNode url="" title="Edit"></siteMapNode>
<siteMapNode url="" title="FVR Definitions">
<siteMapNode url="" title="New"></siteMapNode>
</siteMapNode>
</siteMapNode>
</siteMapNode>
</siteMap>
You will notice that the nodes that are just placeholders have empty URLs. Now to me, this is logical. That is, there is *no* URL that the node corresponds to: it merely acts as a tree node that holds child nodes.
Imagine my frustration when it did not render the nodes that had no URL’s, and as a consequence, the child nodes.
So off to Google –but no luck. Even MSDN is vague (if not downright secretive) about how to do this.
I eventually tried something on the off chance that it would work:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<siteMap xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/AspNet/SiteMap-File-1.0" >
<siteMapNode url="~/default.aspx" title="FVR Data Entry Home" description="FVR Data Entry Home">
<siteMapNode url="~/#0" title="Administration">
<siteMapNode url="~/Admin/FVRAdmin.aspx" title="FVR Data Admin" description="FVR Data Admin Home" />
<siteMapNode url="~/FVRDataEntry.aspx" title="FVR Data Entry" description="FVR Data Entry" />
</siteMapNode>
<siteMapNode url="~/#1" title="FVR Management">
<siteMapNode url="~/#1.1" title="New..."></siteMapNode>
<siteMapNode url="~/#1.2" title="Edit"></siteMapNode>
<siteMapNode url="~/#1.3" title="FVR Definitions">
<siteMapNode url="~/#1.3.1" title="New"></siteMapNode>
</siteMapNode>
</siteMapNode>
</siteMapNode>
</siteMap>
Lo and behold. It worked.
So chalk that one up for trying something that I thought would never work.
I have a problem. (Well, several actually, but let’s not go there). You see, I am an ardent Microsoft supporter, through and through. I have grown up using Microsoft products. In fact, I am in a minority that thinks that Microsoft has actually been good for the tech industry,and technology in general. They produced some of the best software ever (Excel, .NET) and were, in the early days, extremely developer centric. Microsoft “got it”. They realised early on that their success depended on Developers using their system. They were instrumental in bringing out portable devices that could be used in Line of Business apps, and even drove adoption of consumer electronics.
But they Lost the Plot
But somewhere along the way, they lost it. Google saw this, and pounced. Microsoft, so satisfied with itself and it’s successes, ignored what they did not, even could not, see. The internet caught them with their pants around their ankles in the toilet after a drunken night out. They were befuddled, and like all befuddled, hung-over people, swung out at the nearest. In that case, it was Netscape. When they won that fight, they sat back and smirked. They surveyed the tech landscape, and thought that all was good with them. They were on top, and they could see everywhere. Everyone feared them. they were the king of the land.
Except that they weren’t. Google snuck up behind them, and started to nip at their heels. When Microsoft turned to face this new challenge, others saw, and they were no longer scared of Microsoft. Firefox came out swinging, and landed what I would call a death blow to Internet Explorer. [Seriously Microsoft –> just give up. Webkit is handing you your ass every single day, and you do nothing to combat it, expect to sit there and say that “our browser is ok” . It isn’t. Is is slow. It crashes so frequently on a default install of Windows 7 that it is unbelievable. You had the lead and blew it. Get over it. Concede and move on]
While that was happening, Apple quietly watched, and waited, and took their opportunity. They saw the dis-focus that Microsoft had assumed, and narrowed themselves to one thing: Produce the best music player that you can possibly produce. Work through every use case you can think of, and make sure that the software and hardware work. Simply. Easily. They saw something that Microsoft had forgotten. The average person does not care about complexity. They care about simplicity. Enter the iPod. The one device that has totally changed the game for Microsoft. the one device that has turned the light on Microsoft, and what we see now is an organisation that has lost consumer focus, and instead gone for the big money. They have turned into IBM. Plain and simple. They have abandoned their consumer focus in favour of the Enterprise.
Now there is nothing wrong with that at all. In fact, that is where the big money is: servers operating systems, Office, and developer tools.
But no one told Microsoft that. They still, as an organisation, see themselves as relevant in the consumer space. Now this may be true of Office and Windows 7. Windows 7 is truly a great product. It is what Vista was meant to be, and brings so much more simplicity to the operating system, that people will “get it”. However, when you cast around inside Microsoft further from the Windows 7 and Office shining lights, there is a different landscape.
Certainly Not Media Savvy
The landscape is dotted with individual empires that are competing in a winner loses all competition, oblivious to the forces outside that are ignoring everything that MS do in favour of doing it right. What was Microsoft's answer to the iPod? the Zune. A device that is only available in the US, where Apple has already won the war. They failed abysmally to take what might have been a good concept 4 years ago, and turn it into a true competitor. They compete within Microsoft for a slice of the media pie. So, instead of saying “hang on a second guys, why don’t we make the media experience consistent and absolutely awesome across ALL our platforms.” But what do they do instead? They develop Zune, which is a niche product at best. They stop developing Windows Media Player completely (where is the integrated podcast support? Where is the integrated syncing support? [I know it is there, but you try and figure out how it works. Plug in a phone and try it. Plug in an iPod and it just works. No mucking about]). They produce another media player with Media Centre (which I think is good, but once again a niche application. Very few people are going to hook up their PC to a TV and use this –> We have Tivo, Foxtel, others. Why do we need this as well?). They also have a different media player on XBox. (Don’t get me started with this. Home Groups is a totally broken mess. I have yet to get it to work. I cannot share my media with my XBox, because I happen to use my PC for virtualisation, which means I have an un-trusted network, which means that Home Groups does not work.)
And then we come to Windows Mobile 6.5
Then we come to Windows Mobile. Poor old windows mobile. Poor, sad, old Windows Mobile. An aging OS for an aging paradigm.
I bought a top of the line Windows Mobile phone 4 months ago. It looks good, has a kick-ass keyboard, an awesome screen, so much latent potential. But it came with Windows Mobile 6.1. And it had a dumb-ass USB connector instead of a 3.5mm jack. Find me a Windows Phone that has not been released in the last few months that has one. Go on. I dare you.
When I bought the phone, there was a promise to release a 6.5 upgrade. Awesome I thought. Finally going to do something about this. But I had to wait until mid December,as I happen to live in an area of the world which is quite frequently forgotten when it comes to these sorts of things. Anyway, I eagerly installed, and was immediately disappointed. The All Programs menu is so ridiculously awful, I cannot believe that it was released. There is no way to organise it. Scanning down the list jars the brain, when one has been conditioned to see these things in an order array, not offset. I cannot get used to it. It appears totally random, and confuses me. [Some people may say that I am easily confused –> they may have a point, but if I am confused, how would the average consumer feel?]
But Where’s The Podcast?
But it doesn’t end there. I decided to try and use this as a replacement for my iPod’s. you know, use it as a PDA, a Phone, and a Media device.
So after finally figuring out how to get Windows Media Player to sync podcasts (after actually managing these in iTunes), you would expect the same sort of functionality that people have come to expect with an iPod. take this scenario for instance>
1. Listen to a podcast on the way to work in the car.
2. At work, switch to a playlist of music to code by
3. On the way home, switch back to the podcast that you were listening to.
Now I would have expected the podcast to start off where it left off. But no. It starts from the beginning again. I mean, honestly. That is so totally broken it is embarrassing. And no one seems to have the balls to tell MS this. At least, no one inside MS. They all wring their hands and say that there is nothing wrong with this, and plead with us to wait for the next version, where it will be better. Except that it won’t. It will only be available on new devices, so us people who tried to keep the faith get slapped in the face.
There’s No App for That
Then we have the Marketplace. An attempt so piss poor that a University student would be embarrassed. I mean, really. Why do I only see 100 apps? How many does the Apple App Store have in my locale? Greater than 90, 000. Sure, most are rubbish, but they are there. That is the point, Apple is backing their product. No-one is backing the Microsoft product. No-one appears to be backing Microsoft [At least, that is how it feels]. And as for the design of it. Really. Amateurish at best. There are problems on problems. Do not tell me to be patient. We have been patient for years with no support from you.
And We Come to the Crux
So, after much soul searching, and wringing of hands, of feeling guilt over abandoning an old friend, I have made the decision. I am going to get an iPhone. I know, I feel dirty, and traitorous. But I am so sick of sluggish performance. Of a device that offers no support. Of software that is so tied down to an old paradigm.
The prospect of having to wait for another 12 months before Microsoft “get their *** together” must strike dejection and fear into all Windows Mobile followers. I truly feel so very sorry for the developers that have worked so hard to try and turn this pig around. They have tried to work miracles, but have been let down repeatedly by their partners and Microsoft management. They truly do have my sympathy.
However, I, for one, am no longer content with feeling unloved and unsupported by Microsoft. Microsoft, come back and talk to me when you have real story to tell. One that actually resonates with your customers.
Let the flames begin :)
I came across this problem a few months ago, and forgot to write it donw. Today, another developer was having the issue, so I decided to write it up here.
For some reason, when opening Performance Monitor and attempting to add performance counters, no counters are available. There is a KB article from MS that gives a solution to the problem:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q248993
Essentially, you need to set a registry key called Disable Performance Counters to 0. There may be more than 1 of them, so search from the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services to find them all.
Hope that helps someone
I have had a HTC Touch Cruise for about 6 months now. It is a very nice phone with GPS, turn by turn software, wi-fi, camera, expandable memory and more, and I have been fairly happy with it. The HTC UI certainly masked the underlying Windows Mobile 6.0 OS, with a more finger friendly UI. With this UI, you could swipe to view different “sides of a cube,and this was pretty cool.
A few months after this was released, HTC released another phone called the Touch Diamond. This had a lot of the features of the Touch Cruise, but looked a bit better. What was a lot better was the UI. They totally reworked the UI to be far more finger friendly. They also released a ROM upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.1.
Soon after this, HTC released a ROM upgrade to Windows 6.1 to the all geographies except Australia. This really dissapointed me. And I was starting to notice the deficiencies of the SPB shell, which was starting to make the device a bit unstable.
So I started hunting around for alternatives. In my travels I stumbled across the xda-developers site, which hosts a number of forums dedicated to various HTC phones. I started browsing the HTC Polaris forum (Polaris is the HTC name for the Touch Cruise), and was immediately lost. So I gave up for a while.
Recently though, I was getting more frustrated with the device,and was really hunting for a fix to the phone keypad. The one annoying feature of the phone keypad is that there is a 1/2 second delay between pressing the number on the screen and the tone sounding and the number appearing on the screen, and also looking for a Windows Mobile 6.1 ROM. During my hunting, I became intrigued by the prospect of installing a new ROM, and started hunting for a Windows Mobile 6.1 ROM. I read a *lot* of forum posts before I made the decision to install a new ROM.
So with my courage held in my hand, I found a download for the World Wide English version of the ROM, and tentatively started flashing the ROM. My heart skipped a beat when during the initial flash stages, it errored. Having bricked a motherboard doing just this ort of thing a few months back, I hastily restarted the process and thankfully it worked.
I was impressed by the new ROM and the few new features that Windows 6.1 brought.
But I was not totally satisfied. During my research, I became even more intrigued by “cooked” ROM’s. I settled on a ROM by Itje called a M2D 3.6 ROM. This ROM seems to be a dump of the Touch Diamond ROM and ported to the Touch Cruise. I bit the bullet and installed it and man, was I impressed. One of the things that the guys on the xda-developers site have done is to implement a new graphics drivers (which HTC seemed less than enthusiastic in fixing) which really made the device sing. What was a usable but sluggish UI, became a very fast, fluid UI that to me rivaled the iPhone for fluidity.
After a day or so I started to notice a few issues with the ROM, so decided to attempt another ROM. I settled on a ROM by M-Amine. Well, I was even more impressed with this ROM. It finally made the device truly usable. All my apps still worked (including my copy of Copilot Live).
The only issue I seem to have had so far is with the Daylight Savings time. Since I am in Brisbane, and we are a bit behind the times, we do not observe Daylight Savings. However, Windows Mobile 6.1 and Outlook 2007 seem to have trouble with it. My calendar times were out by an hour, the time would always be wrong. I found a fix online that required a registry hack on the device, and this seems to have worked a treat. (The fix can be found here)
The final bit of goodness for me, was the accidental discovery of how to stop the phone keypad from delaying showing the pressed numbers on the screen. I simply turned of the keypad tones.
So I now have a device that is a great business tool now. It is also a fun tool (I really really like the Weather widget: If the forecast is for rain, the weather pane shows drops falling on the screen, with a windscreen wiper to clear it. Not terribly useful, but cool nonetheless.) Also, the inclusion of a You Tube App, and a Google Maps Search applet really makes this ROM a very nice one. One other benefit I have found is better reception and battery life.
Pardon me while I rant.
This afternoon I was looking at my finances. Not a terribly exciting task, but a task that needs to be done. When I last rebuilt my PC, I had neglected to install my copy of MS Money 2004. This was not a great issue, as I had been using a spreadsheet for a while.
But something was missing. You see, I am planning a few OS trips next year, and need to plan the finances. I needed to see that my assumptions would hold up. In short, I wanted to see pretty pictures, and I am lazy enough to not want to bother with the analysis etc of creating these.
So I started looking about for some alternatives to MS Money. I did this because it seems that Microsoft have left Australia off the map again (not surprising considering our small population) and the only versions available are now US only. This rankles, but I can understand the reasons for it.
Quicken is top of mind as an alternative of course. I used to use Quicken a few years ago, but was “forced” to go to a competing product due to their draconian licensing practices.
Let me explain. I had Quicken 2002 installed, and was very happy with it. It did everything I wanted it to do. 2004 came around, and they started bombarding me with upgrade notices, essentially telling me that I would no longer be able to use the product to its full as they were stopping support etc. Instead, they wanted me to upgrade to the newer version. The one catch with this, however, was that it now required activation.
This is not a problem in itself, but the licensing terms were draconian. For example, if I needed to re-install the software (for example due to re-imaging, hard ware failure etc), they would charge for re-activation. This was going to far in my mind. I mean, I am not even using their services, and have a legitimate reason to re-install, yet am treated like a thief. As a direct consequence of this, I switched to MS Money, as they did not have this requirement. They did, however, have something almost as bad: having to login to the file using a passport account. I was ok with this, as I had one anyway.
MS Money has served me well for the last 4 years, but the interface etc is looking a tad old and worn and I am hankering for a change.I thought I would have a look at Quicken, and see if they had mended their ways.
Well, I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. After trawling through their site, I downloaded a trial of Quicken Plus 2008. No problems. Installed and ran. This is where I started to get annoyed.
The program crashed a number of times. Now, I admit that I am running Vista 64 with all the latest patches, and that they say that 64-bit is not supported, but I mean, really. This is 2008 guys. Kinda unacceptable, particularly when you are looking at shelling out AUD$170!
Then I tried to import my MS Money file. Amazingly, they do not have an import utility. Something so simple, yet they do not have it.
Then I noticed on their online store, that the only way to purchase Quicken Plus 2008 is via a subscription. A AUD$65 a year subscription. What they fail to mention is that if you go and *buy* the software from a retailer, that you can get the non-subscription versions. AND they still require activation and force you to pay for re-activation. I don’t know about you, I don;t buy a car and ask the dealer every time I want to park it in a new garage whether I can do it or not. Why do we, as consumers put up with this crap?. It seems that they have been taking their ideas from the Music industry.
Just out of curiosity, I browsed to the American site, and lo and behold. There is no activation requirement, and there is even a place for customers to give feedback, and function conspicuously missing from the Australian site. And software companies wonder why their software gets pirated? If you get ripped off, don’t you feel like ripping them off back?
The saddest thing about all this is that there are no real alternatives here. You have Quicken, and you have Money. Quicken is like sleeping with a morally corrupt politician (they will take your money and promise the earth but actually do nothing), while MS Money is sooo not interested in you.
I think that I will stick to my trusty spreadsheet, and spend the time to create the charts etc.
Thank you for your patience during this rant.
This morning was the coldest ride I have been on. When I left home at 6:20 AM, the apparent temperature at Archerfield was -1.2 Celsius. As I went through the park to get to Paradise Road, I snapped this picture:
And yes, that white stuff is frost!
My cheeks were aching with the cold. I must be totally mad.
I remember when I was at University and we were taught this new thing called UML that was going to change the world and make all software development predictable and manageable. Like most things that you are taught at University, the teaching is disconnected from reality: no one knew about it, it was hard to grasp, it went against all conventional wisdom, etc. For an industry that changes so rapidly, there are plenty of examples of the inertia that people in the industry exhibit.
So I come to the question of whether using UML is a good thing. Logic would say that it is a good thing: the ability to model a software artifact before coding holds the promise of better implementation, less time spent in coding, etc. This is in contradiction with the current wave of agile methodologies, which espouse overall design and instead focuses on short development spurts to deliver small pieces of functionality. Does UML have a place in this new world?
So what is a Software Architect to do? Well, for my 2 cents, using a great UML tool allows the modeller to abstract the design from an implementation, which makes the model more flexible. However, this does bring a lot of issues to the surface, such as the developers losing control of the design process, and developers then being relegated to nothing but code monkeys. Management loves this idea, because it allows them to "offshore" the actual building of the model, lowering costs. Developers must, therefore, change the what they do, which can be very hard due to the inertia that a lot of developers display. From my observations, resistance to change is very high, and brings a whole new set of stresses to the Software Architect.
So back to the question in hand: Is there a place in this new agile world for Model Driven Architecture? Well, I guess that depends on the size of the software model. For an enterprise, using a Model Driven Architecture approach brings great benefits in terms on standardisation, and adherence to a plan that is more aligned with the business. The downside is that the business may not be as agile as a smaller organisation that does not use an MDA approach.
- Really good article on Database Modelling. It explains some of the proposed extensions to the UML to cater for Data Models.
I am being slack today and only posting the links
Today I got all excited about Inversion of Control after listening to a a .NET Rocks Podcast by James Kovacs on IoC. Trouble is, I was tired as heel, so here are the links that I did not get around to reading (weekend task I suspect)
I stumbled across this today while I was trying to figure out who the better carrier/plan is.
http://www.mobchoice.com.au/compare-cap-plans-spreadsheet
Give it a go - you might be very surprised. I also had a look at the forums of Whirlpool.net and found them extremely helpful.
Just goes to show: The mobile phone market is so confusing it takes a hell of a lot of research to make sure that you are not being ripped off.
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