I’ve been using Windows 7 ever since the first beta was made public. I have been using Sensible Vision’s FastAccess on every build I’ve used so far. Currently, my laptop is on Windows 7 build 7137.

I have 3 major issues with FastAccess.

1. On every boot, it refuses to log me in. But if I logout/lock workstation and return a few times, it starts recognizing me. It seems as though it is not able to store its data and every reboot needs it to be recalibrated (even though there are different texts for the first software boot as opposed to every other time it starts up, it just seems that way).
2. This is not really a Windows 7 specific bug but why can’t Sensible Vision start its software after the camera boots up? Not doing so seems pointless to me.
3. Fine, you can’t bring the camera drivers up the boot order. I think I’ll just type in my password if you don’t mind. But FastAccess does mind. It actually logs me out 5 seconds after I logged in. I find this extremely irritating.

I have tried googling up for Windows 7 support and there seems to be none. In fact, when searching for “Sensible Vision FastAccess Windows 7″ on Google the second result you see is of this blog :|

First, I’d like to hear feedback from any FastAccess users out there who are on Windows 7.
Second, I’d like Sensible Vision to let its users know about its Windows 7 plans and whether it is planning to use something like the Windows Biometric Foundation (WBF) (Assuming they are applicable).

Note: As far as I’ve read so far, WBF seems to be for Fingerprint sensors though I’m hoping they might provide support for other kinds of biometric data such as facial recognition. Still looking into things though.

Before I begin, I’d like to thank Microsoft for having us in Seattle despite the prior two scheduling issues. More importantly, I’d like to thank Jas who did a great job of not only showing us around campus but around Redmond, Seattle, Bellevue, Kirkland and other neighboring places always making sure we get the best experience during our trip, getting a chance to try out different things and to keep each one of us happy. He really did make the trip perfect in every respect and for that I’d like to thank him on behalf of my entire team. Of course, thanks to the Interop team as well for having us there and giving us the opportunity to interview. The experience we bring back from meeting all those great people will indeed carry us a long way.

There are quite a few things that I saw a lot of which, I wasn’t allowed to take pictures of. If I was, I have uploaded them to my Picasa Web albums here.

Beware, the post is (4500 words) HUGE. Sorry about that. :P Without further adieu, let’s begin!

Day 0 (Trip to Seattle):

We left on the 8th of June via AF134 to Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris (again!). The trip there was fun as usual. We had a 3 odd hour break before hopping onto another Air France Airbus A330-200 this time over the Atlantic. Was I worried? Hell yes Of course not. I double checked the flight components myself I had full confidence in Air France’s equipment :)

We landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport around 11AM. Took us a while to get past immigrations but eventually we were in America! We didn’t have much trouble locating the Shuttle pickup thanks to the detailed information provided in the email. After a brief 10 minute wait that I spent looking at how they ran operations (which I must say, I liked :)) our ride had arrived! We were the only 4 people in the van and the guy driving us (Gabriel) explained a few concepts such as the HOV lane for the first timers in the group :) He dropped us off at the Redmond Inn, where we’d be staying for the week. On checking in, we were told that Jas, our Microsoft Point of Contact (I believe that’s the right term) had left us a message which was basically to check our emails and be ready by 8.30 tomorrow since we had to reach the campus by 9.

We retired to our rooms and took some rest. Normally, we’d be tempted to sleep but we had been briefed on the evil that is Jet Lag by our Mark, Microsoft India ADE. Thanks a lot! We rested a bit until it was around 5 when we decided to go out and explore for a bit. We were told that the Redmond Inn provides complimentary shuttle service in a 5 mile radius (basically anywhere in Redmond) which is great news for people like us who had no other means of transportation ;) We took a drive to the Redmond Town Center where we spent a couple of hours exploring. Me and Sam went into a couple of stores such as the Mac Store (blasphemy, I know but someone wanted a gift back home.. don’t look at me) and REI. We then went into Ruby’s Diner for dinner and boy, was it some dinner. Only regret I have is that I went there on a day when I was already feeling half full :( We all ended up getting different kinds of burgers with fries and a shake. We could hardly finish our food.. the servings were HUGE! I barely managed to finish my burger, complete shake and 60% of my fries.. if I would have had another French fry, I’d have exploded. Anyway, it seemed like a nice place. My favourite part was the 2 train sets going round on the ceiling. I loved watching them while eating :) We called up our hotel and requested a pickup and before we knew it, we were back in our rooms ready to sleep.

Day 1 (First day on campus):

We got up early in the morning and got all ready. We had read the schedule and we hated the fact that we were going to start off with interviews on the first day itself. In fact, it was the 2nd thing we’d do, first being meeting the GM of the interop team. We took the hotel shuttle to building 24, our would be home outside the home we call home outside India for the week :P We got signed in and headed on in. We were greeted by Ms. Edelweiss who showed us around and into a room where we could crash while we’re in the building for the week. We’ve all only heard of Jas but never actually seen him. We were told that he’d be coming in about an hour or so. At 9, we headed in to meet Jean Paoli. For those who don’t know, he co-authored XML. Wow, meeting an Architect of XML on my first day on campus. Seems like a good way to start things off. He even showed us the original XML Document Specification v1.0 that he has lying around his office; a piece of history folks :) He went on to tell us about his work at Microsoft and Microsoft’s Interop work in general.

Around 10 AM, we finally met Jas, the man behind the e-mails! We had a small chat with him and I was informed that I’d be one of the first two to go in for my interviews. There isn’t much to say about the interview since it was all pretty general. I can say that I wasn’t asked any of the typical “Microsoft Interview Riddles” which I must say, was a disappointment :( I was asked a couple of purely tech questions based on how I would make a solution to a given project and one where I was asked more about program and resource management like questions. There isn’t any thing special that I could really share with you that you (assuming you’re reading this hoping to gain info about how they interview) already know/prepare for an interview anyway. Everything is dependent on the place you’re going to interview for and who is interviewing you :) You could be asked eccentric questions but I certainly wasn’t. They say if you are still there past lunch, that’s a good thing but for us, they had comitted to 3 interviews (as written in the schedule) so that saying doesn’t really hold true.

We headed out for lunch with around 10 people to an Italian place for surprise surprise, pizzas! :P We had an interesting conversation over lunch about what technologies we used and why we used them. We also talked about our experiences with Microsoft technologies and what we felt they were doing right/wrong and where we feel things could be improved. After lunch, we headed back to b24 where our interviews continued. While most others had 2 on the day, I seemed to have all 3 of mine while Amith had just 1. So basically, I was swamped for the entire day. While heading out, I spent some time appreciating the campus. b24 is right in front of a couple of soccer fields, something people used extensively keeping in mind the great weather. For those who don’t know, Seattle is overcast most of the time and has occassional showers but during our stay there, we were blessed with beautiful sunshine which I must agree, made it look like possibly one of the most beautiful places on the planet. I almost wished I could move there and Microsoft had nothing to do with it :P

Current Channel 9 logo

After being done with our interviews, we headed up to the first floor which housed the Chan9 team among other famous people :P We met Laura Foy and even Jeff Sandquist iirc. We did pick up a few freebies (yes, I for one love freebies. Brand me if you want, if its cool, I’ll use it :P). We got a black full sleeve tee which celebrated the 5 years of Chan9 and small Chan9 logo soft toys. We then did a couple of hallway drive bys. Don’t worry, we didn’t shoot any Microsoft Devs/Evangelists. We simply popped our heads in to see who’s there before having a conversation. We met quite a few very interesting people each of whom gave us insight on everything from life at Microsoft to starting up.

We then took a small walk to building 20 and the “Studio”. I always knew that my dreams of actually seeing something like Natal would go down the drain quicker than Blackholes could suck in matter but at least I got to fulfill my other wish. We hunted down a Surface table in the building and played on it for a while. We took a couple of pics and videos but I’m waiting to get them from Amith :)

Earlier in the day while we were driving back from lunch, Jas asked us if we wanted to meet anyone on Campus. Amith immediately asked for Scott Hanselman and what do you know, Jas happened to know him! :o He set up the dinner and asked us if there was anyone else we’d like to meet. Amith asked for Phill Haack but he seemed to be busy :( Next up was a unanimous call for Scott Guthrie but that wasn’t going to happen seeing as he’s a CVP now, one of the busy folk ;) Asking for Mark Russinovich yielded the same result, oh well!

We met Scott Hanselman for dinner at the Mediterranean Kitchen in Bellevue. The dinner was really fun. Scott is really hilarious. We  totally loved him speaking in Hindi and even singing a couple of lines from a Bollywood flick :P We got a couple of pictures and some videos of Scott saying stuff in Hindi such as “Mai Creative Riot ka sabse bada fan hoon!” (I am Creative Riot’s biggest fan). During dinner, Phill Haack happened to call Scott and he dropped by to join us. After dinner Scott showed us what I can only quantify as a huge boulder with Quad core processors, 16 gigs of RAM and a secondary monitor :P

Day 2 (MS Home and CIW day):

The day started off with us meeting the Interoperability and Standards Marketing team where we talked about Microsoft’s Interop Strategy and their pursuit for standardization. Then we had to head over to building 115 to meet Jennifer Perret who is the MSP Program Lead and is a part of the Academic Team at Microsoft. This gave us a chance to appreciate just how big the campus really is. It took us nearly 20 minutes to find the building. We kept going round the 110-114 and 116-119 trying to figure out where exactly 115 is. Eventually we found the building and we went up to meet Jennifer who greeted us and took us out to coffee where we had a conversation about our experiences so far on campus, what we’ve done so far after the Imagine Cup and our future plans. Jennifer told us about her experiences at Microsoft in general, in the Imagine Cup and everywhere it took her.

Immediately after, we met Rogerio Panigassi for lunch where we talked about his work prior to and at Microsoft and how he became an integral part of the whole Imagine Cup experience. We also talked about India and Brazil in general and the similarities and dissimilarities in the two countries. Later we went to up to his office where we recieved more freebies, a 2 ton Microsoft coffee cup enough to drive your caffine levels way above the legal limit and a USB speaker, just want every travelling music/movie loving geek would want ;)

Next up on the itenary was the Executive Conference Center where we were to visit the Microsoft Home of the Future and the Center for Innovation Work. What people must know is that neither of these is a simple walk in. Most people who’ve worked at Microsoft for years haven’t even seen these. Its meant for Executives and since we don’t really fall under that category, Jas had to book slots for us 3 months in advance! I’m glad he did because it was totally worth it. The Microsoft Home has a strict no picture policy so if you want to have a look, you can always see virtual press pass gallery and some nice videos ;) The Microsoft Home experience was phenomenal but then we were taken over to the new Center for Innovation Work (CIW) of which Phase 1 is complete. Phases 2 and 3 are under construction and should be up in a couple of years. The CIW showed Microsoft’s 2019 vision which is viewable on the OfficeLabs website. Here we viewed a variety of concepts showing how impressive Microsoft imagines the future to be. Hopefully, I’ll be around to see the realization of such concepts.

We then took a walk around building 33 going to the Microsoft Walk of Fame! You can see quite a few classic  products having their own tiles, some not so famous and some name seriously outrageously (like “Microsoft How The Leopard Got His Spots”) :P After laughing out loud and taking in the campus, we walked over to Balmer’s building in hopes of may be catching him in his office. It seemed he was in a very important meeting (we caught as much from the 2 limos outside even before the receptionist said so) so instead we went down to the game room and enjoyed some Fooseball :-D Me and Noel won both matches but are you really surprised? *cough* :P Soon after Jas took us on a drive around Seattle driving past the Museum of Flight (too late to go in anyway ;(), Safeco field, lakeside, Space Needle and quite a few neighbourhoods around Seattle. Then he took us to Queen Anne where he knew exactly where to snap the perfect shot from. We could see the lake, downtown Seattle and the Space Needle. The view was truly majestic. Seriously, what would we have done without Jas?

Earlier in the day, we had met Kumar, one of Noel’s old friends. We had decided to meet up for dinner. After returning to our rooms at 10 PM, we left for dinner by about 10.30 PM. See the problem there? Most of Redmond is already closed by that time. We ended up going to Palmers (after a fair bit of searching) where we heard some Karaoke and had some grub. We returned home after having a nice chat with Kumar who told us about his earlier days in Mumbai and his life at Microsoft, Redmond. Once done, we headed straight home. We felt tired cause it had been a long day but little did we know, the next day would be the longest.

Day 3 (Shopping day!):

This was the day when we finally got to meet 4 Interns from IITs across India who were working with the Bing team. We headed over to the commons where we met them and had Thai food. For those who don’t know, the Commons is like a HUGE mall on campus which has all kinds of cuisines and shops with alcoholic drinks in the evening with some live music. We were there during lunch time and it seemed pretty crowded. You could see how huge this thing really was just by walking through it. I think that Inorbit, Vashi (for those who have been there) would be dwarfed by the Commons and that’s saying something! Lunch was interesting as each group asked the other questions about how they got to where they were and what they were working on. It was good to learn from people who were our age from more or less where we were and interning at Redmond. The experiences they shared with us were truly invaluable.

Following this, we headed over to meet Team Multipointweb who are the IC ‘09 SDI winners from the USA. They were visiting Redmond for tips on their project and presentation to prepare themselves for what Egypt had waiting for them ;) We were then interviewed for MSW, Microsoft’s Internal newschan. Immediately after this, we spoke to the fine people at Unlimited Potential who talked to us about our projects. Following this we left for the new Visitors Center (which is now in building 99). While waiting for team Multipointweb, we walked into Microsoft’s library and took some snaps. Also, we had a look at 2 interesting things. One was a display showing what you get when you complete 5, 10, 15 and 20 years at Microsoft (at 25 years, your name gets embedded on crystal and put on a wall; one we saw the day earlier at the Visitor’s Center). The other was a 30 some inch display which had a UI which worked without touching. It had a camera on either side which detected the movement of hands and caused the system to reach appropriately. I have a video that I might re-encode one of these days and put up online :)

Once team Multipointweb arrived, we went into the visitors center to see the globe showing live search results as a mashup on the globe. The Microsoft Museum was right next to it with pictures of all the founders and some of their new technologies on display (World Wide Telescope, a couple of XBox 360s and one XBox 360 hooked up to a 100+ inch wall projector, Surface and Zune). After snapping a few pics, not only for ourselves but a couple for Microsoft for their internal publications, we went on over to the Company Store! The one thing that I picked up that’s worth mentioning is the Microsoft Sidewinder X8 at company discount ;) Anything other than hardware/software can be picked up by us with no issues but anything that’s either hardware or software needs a Microsoft employee to check out so thanks Jas! ;)

Next we headed over to Fry’s electronics (which I must say was waaaay out of town) for picking up a new laptop for Sam. His 4 year old Dell didn’t cut it no more :P Now, this was my first time in the states so I must say, these Megamarts seem like a Geek’s dream! I mean, they have a whole section larger than the size of my room just for hard disks. Same for any other computer hardware. We spent nearly 2 hours there and Sam ended up picking a Toshiba for around $530ish. On the way out, I picked up some candy, gum, Oreos and other such typically American stuff to eat on the way home :P

It was already past 10 by the time we reached Bellevue so we couldn’t find a place to eat. Jas worked his magic again and found a place which not only had food but had live music too! That’s two things off my list in one shot! The band was great and we were lucky enough to get the second booth from the stage. We ordered some mini burgers and fries with coke but most of us were more interested in the music at the point than the food. The lead singer actually walked up to our booth twice, for no apparent reason once during a 15 minute break to ask us how they were and once after the show had ended. Anyway, it was great. Definitely, a night to remember :) Good food and great music always make a good combo.

By the time we headed back home, it was way past midnight. We were informed that tomorrow, being the last on campus day, was going to be an early start. We had to be on campus by 8. Shit.

Day 4 (Final day on campus and meeting Todd Bishop):

Speedtest result over Wi-Fi on the campus

The final day began early and we didn’t really seem to mind. The guys had their left over interviews while others waited in the designated office surfing the internet. 802.11n is totally win! I’m sorry but its something I just had to check. Of course, we weren’t downloading anything but checking the speed was something I just had to do :P

After a couple of hours of waiting for interviews to be done, we said our final good byes and took snaps with the DP&E team around b24. We then moved on to see Microsoft’s servers on campus where they test products. In particular, we went to the Microsoft-Sun Interoperability lab and checked out the set up. Of course, no pics of that :P

After this we moved on to meet the Senior PR manager of Interop, Microsoft Corporate Communications. After the talk over at building 8 and then lunch, we moved on to the MSR building for being interviewed by Todd Bishop. We had team Multipoint web along with us and the interview went on for a while after which some pictures/videos were taken. You can read the article here. We then returned to b24 to say goodbye to Jean and take some pictures with him. Soon after, Jas dropped us off over at Redmond Inn because he had an early flight out of Seattle. We said our goodbyes and thanked him for all he had done.

We rested in our rooms until one of Sam’s and Noel’s friends came over in the evening for a chat. We went to a South Asian place over at the Redmond Town Center and had interesting conversations over dinner. That was basically it for the day.

Day 5 (Exploring Seattle):

We had a late start to the day (bad idea, I know). We decided to wait for Noel to leave for Houston where he was going to visit his brother. His pickup was scheduled for 11 soon after we made a move. We walked till Redmond Town Center and after a bit of searching, managed to figure out where the bus stop for the 545 to Seattle was. I believe we got down at Jackson street (a bit too early if you ask me) and walked to a Nike store in search for a RF cap that one of Amith’s friends had requested. After disappointment there, we headed over to Pike’s place where we watched the fish being thrown around from side to side. :P After walking through Pike’s place and enjoying the stuff to see on display. 3 foot Salmon for $10 in my opinion a steal, sadly we didn’t have the resources to cook it. :( We then headed over to the first ever starbucks and ordered some drinks. I got some Caramel drink, supposedly their most famous and it didn’t disappoint. I’m still craving one now and I wish I knew of a good alternative here. We then walked over to the Space Needle stopping on the way in a park with a Lake Side view. We took in the rather relaxing view and got some good snaps out of it. Continuing on the path to the Space Needle, we realized that it was at least 5 odd miles away and by this time we decided that we need to figure out a way to get back that didn’t involve walking!

We walked through the Space Needle (not going up because my friends didn’t like the Eiffel Tower as much ;() and went on to the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum. As we went up to take tickets, we were alerted that we just had 50 minutes to see the entire thing while they recommend 2 hours to walk through. Disappointed, we instead roamed the free sections hitting the souvenir shops where I picked up a gift from my music hungry cousin :) Now it was hardly 6pm when we were kicked out of the EMP/SFM with nothing to do. Well, there was a theme park in the back with a decently good roller coaster in the back. I haven’t been in a roller coaster in years but I must say, I found most roller coasters in India boring due to their old design. The ones here seemed to provide a lot more G-Force (read: a lot more fun ;)). We ended up going on the thing 3 times, second being shot by Sam while watching me and Amith ride the roller coaster and the third with me riding front row with a camera in hand. Thank god for Camera Safety straps, not that I needed it ;)

On our way back, we took the monorail from the Space Needle to the Bus Station. The so called bus station seemed more like a mall and we finally managed to grab a bite. We then walked a couple of blocks to a bus stop which was basically a pole with the route numbers on it. We had the bus schedule with us and it said that on Saturdays in the evenings, there was only one bus every hour! We stood there, out in the cold waiting for the bus for over 50 minutes. Now here’s the funny part, we didn’t see any other busses on the street so at points, we were actually worried if the schedule was wrong or something. So you have 3 guys, clearly not locals sitting on a bench on the side walk next to a high end restaurant waiting for a bus which doesn’t seem to want to come. So what do we do? Did we panic? Not really. We made jokes about it :P After about 35 minutes a lady came and sat on a bench 20 feet away. I walked up to her and asked her if the busses were still working. After recovering from the shock of seeing me (it was either my black jacket or her thinking of something in her own head) she told me that she was waiting for a 545 as well so it was indeed working. An hour later, we were home!

Day 6 (Trip back home):

Why am I writing about this? Its just 2 flights back home right? Well, yes. But I’d like to make a plea to the guys who booked our tickets. If it is possible, please avoid giving anyone a ticket to a 8-10 hour flight on a Boeing 767 which has no on demand in flight entertainment :( The flight from Seattle to Amsterdam had the best set of movies and tv shows I had ever seen but the Amsterdam to Mumbai flight was the worst I’ve ever had, including the Bangaluru to Mumbai flight last year where I couldn’t sit on my seat comfortably because of lack of leg room. So please, if options are available, could you try not to send people on such flights?

I’d like to remind you that the photos are available on my Picasa Web albums.

Once again I’d like to thank you for skimming through the post (if no skipping to the absolute end :P). I know it was long but leaving out any more would mean not telling people about the other experiences we had. I’ll add another post soon with a picture gallery and some videos ;)

Have a nice day :)

I don’t go for Hello World programs. Apart from C, the first code I’ve written in every other language (since I heard this question) has been the same. Keeping up tradition, here’s the F# port.

let Check (x: int) = float(int(sqrt(float x))) = sqrt(float x)
for x = 32 to 99 do
let sqVal = pown x 2
if (Check(sqVal / 100) && Check(sqVal % 100)) then
System.Console.WriteLine(sqVal);
done

This code aims to find every 4 digit number that is a perfect square whose upper and lower two digits are both perfect squares. This question was part of my sem 1 C paper and got me a 0/10. Clearly the examiner didn’t understand my answer. :P In honor of the great act of stupidity on my side (of writing such a solution in an exam), I recreate this in every concievable language as my first code :)

This is my first piece of code in a functional language so if I could have done this better, please let me know. Now to try out Haskell :)

A note about the VS 2010 F# editor. I know its not meant for performance but compiling clearly takes a couple of seconds. The IDE also could do with a bit more work with its intellisense because it didn’t like remembering System.Console and instead searched for the string everytime meaning I would hit System.Configuration instead (I am used to hitting enter after ‘Con’ due to C# :))

I have already spoken about the Win+(1-9) to activate programs in Vista’s Quick Launch Toolbar and its transition to taskbar applications in Windows 7. Of course, everyone knows about Win+Tab activating Aero Flip 3D but there is more to this.

Here is one that really strikes me as super-useful. On Windows 7, you can now use Win+Up to maximize a window, Win+Down to restore a maximized window and minimize a restored one, Win+Left/Right to Aero Snap it to the left/right of the screen. Keyboard warriors such as myself are going to love this! :)

I’ve already fallen head over heals for Aero Snap on my 1080p laptop monitor. It kind of makes up for my need for dual monitors. Aero snapping with the laptop track pad was a tad bit inconvenient. Issue no more! :)

Here’s a list of Win shortcuts I can think of which work in Windows 7. I have found that a lot of keyboard warriors don’t know quite a few shortcuts. Sharing always helps ;)

• Win: Open/Close Start Menu
• Win+F: Windows Search
• Win+Tab: Aero Flip
• Win+Up: Maximize a restored window
• Win+Down: Restore a maximized window or minimize a restored window
• Win+Left: Aero Snap to the left of the screen
• Win+Right: Aero Snap to the right of the screen
• Win+D: Show desktop (Forced)
• Win+M: Minimize all windows
• Win+M+Shift: Restore windows after Minimizing all of them
• Win+(1-9): Activate Window from task bar
• Win+X: Open Windows Mobility Center (Non Desktops only)
• Win+L: Lock Desktop
• Win+Space: Show sidebar (in Vista); Possibly doing the same in Windows 7 (different Sidebar functionality in 7)
• Win+E: Open My Computer
• Win+B: Jump control to (select) Notification Area (System Tray)
• Win+Pause/Break: Open System Properties
• Win+P: Computer Projection modes
• Win+F1: Open Windows Help and Support
• Win+R: Open Run Dialog

Well, I’ve been browsing through Visual Studio 2010 for a while now. I’ve not gotten into coding but did get a chance to have a look at the User Interface for this product. Here are some of the things I’ve noticed.

1. WPF is in: Oh yes, you heard right! The start page uses WPF for a clean and slick use. Have a look at the start screen (image in the gallery at the bottom)
2. New context highlighting: Its bigger and better than ever! The editor looks slicker that ever before and I’m loving every byte of it ;)
3. Changed Intellisense drop down menu: I must admit, my favourite part of the VS editor is its code intellisense and they have changed things up a bit in this department. I must admit though, I haven’t figured out what the Ctrl+Alt+Space exactly does :(
4. Inbuilt support for Office projects: Want to write managed code extentions for Office products? Go right ahead. Start your work out of the box ;) I believe you don’t need to export PIA with your projects any more. (More on this in a technical detail post)
5. F# supported OOB: I’m sure you have heard of F#, the object oriented functional programming language. Well, it isn’t an outcast any more. :P Visual Studio 2010 has full support for the language. No more need for downloading and installing separate binaries. :)

One thing still remains the same. The installer takes a lot of time to finish up the entire process. Also, .NET Framework 4.0 Beta 1 asked me for a reboot before proceeding with the rest of the installer (Don’t remember 3.5/2.0 asking for reboots in prior Visual Studios). I dislike installers asking me to reboot but I especially hate it when it doesn’t give me an option to restart later ¬¬. The installer isn’t going to go ahead either way. The rest will be completed after reboot. You should let me restart later ;( I’ll make sure I mention that in my feedback to the VS team :)

There are a lot of videos out there about Visual Studio. You might want to check out channel 9 for 10-4. The 10-4 shows are downloadable so you can get the weekly video podcast whenever you want :)

Here are a few screenshots for you people to gobble up. Hope you find them as tasty as I did ;)

Next up in VS talk shall be the different technical aspects of what has changed in VS and the new .NET Framework. Also, I might look into the new kid on the programming linguistic block, F#.

Au revoir!

Microsoft has come up with the RTM for Vista SP2. They have asked manufacturers to start shipping with Vista SP2 until 7 comes out. But they seem to want to hold off the release (for some reason not clear to me) until the original release estimate they had given, the end of Q2 (end of June).

May be it has something to do with what Bill Veghte had to say..

“If you’re just starting your testing of Vista, with the release candidate and the quality of that offering, I would switch over and do your testing on the release candidate, and use that going forward.”

- Bill Veghte, Senior Vice President for Windows Business @ Tech Ed 2009

So I’m guessing Microsoft wants to push Windows 7 further. They are marketting it towards that set of population which didn’t like Vista, either because of the Mojave factor or its “high” hardware requirements (mostly the former I presume). As for organizations, if XP legacy is an issue, surely Windows 7’s XP Mode is there to help ;)

I still feel Vista doesn’t get its due credit, may be not as bad as Windows ME but Vista does deserve more credit. Most techies will tell you how much they love Vista but most laymen users generally prefer XP. I for one haven’t had many compatibility issues, nothing Compatibility Mode didn’t solve.

I like Windows 7 but at least for now, I shall still be in love with Windows Vista despite my systems having already moved to Windows 7. For its time, it was a truly great OS. It had tid bits of features that gave users a better UX and simultaneously had showstoppers to provide the WOW effect ;)

The one last machine I have on Vista is going to updated with SP2 tonight. I suggest you do the same :)

Initial reports state that the editor now uses WPF at points, has a brand new editor and improvements in syntaxes. Another thing they have changed is VS 2010 now has native support for F# :o This release isn’t really high on performance and optimization but gives you a good look as to where this project is going. Seems really exciting the things they have done. You can have a look at the Visual Studio 2010 Training Kit VS 2010 TS B1 :)

All this and much more in this release. I’ll have an initial review up by tonight when I get my hands on it.

People who are waiting to download it can do so off MSDN Premium, Microsoft Downloads or try the Web Installer. I’m sure there are other not so legal ways to do it as well :P If you are looking for a x64 VS 2010 Team System then don’t. There isn’t one :( So its x86 for all of us! Don’t worry, the following OS’ are supported:

• Windows 7 RC (x86 and x64) Ultimate Edition
• Windows Vista (x86 or x64), all editions except Starter Edition
• Windows XP (x86 or x64), Service Pack 2 or later, all editions except Starter Edition
• Windows Server 2003 (x86 or x64), Service Pack 1 or later, all editions
• Windows Server 2003 R2 or later (x86 or x64), all editions
• Windows Server 2008 (x86 and x64) or later (all editions)
• Windows Server 2008 R2 RC (x64) Enterprise Edition

Windows 7 might be supported in this release but Microsoft doesn’t really recommend using VS 2010 B1 on Win7. Why? I guess as with most betas, you want bug reports that are purely based on your product. Two betas working together could do a lot more weirder things than just one.

If you already have Visual Studio 2008 on your machine then don’t worry, VS 2010 B1 will install beside it without disturbing your precious VS 08 install ;) As with any beta, don’t rely on it for your major dev work and avoid installs on your primary machine.

Not many know this but despite mIRC scripting being non mainstream and not a perfectly good platform to do a lot on, I spend a lot of time (perhaps more than I should) working on it simply because its fun. It might be because I do spend a lot of my time on IRC on a certain network for helping users of a certain software :P I have been battling with myself to make the scripts (for myself and maybe even the ones for others) I’ve written public but I never managed to win that debate.

Another such example is my work in PHP. I am not much of a web designer but god knows, I’ve tried my hand at it :) I do however enjoy the occasional web development most of which arise from a need to do something. One such example would be a web scrapper I developed to get information about future Manchester United matches. I was on the brink of making it SMS me results and notify me of future matches but then my source, the Manchester United Official website decided to change its data format. A small fix would bring things back on track but with 2 matches left in the season (one league and one Champions League final) I didn’t see any point in doing so. I was planning to expand this and include feeds for Real Madrid’s matches which my dad follows along with league tables for both the leagues but all of these are things that will remain known to only a handful of users (at the moment, 3 to be precise)

I have spent most of my spare time in the last 2 months working on Project Euler. I haven’t written many solutions since mid way April when college exams began but that is where I have spent at least a couple of weeks of good development time. Why? I like solving computational problems. I enjoy finding efficient solutions.

The popular view (at least here) is to judge a developer on the basis of his performance on the work he has done. Now my discussion today is limited to students. One (commonly used) yard stick (at least here) would be the number and more importantly the quality of projects one has worked on. People judge the grade of the work and things such as the technologies used. Also, the technologies one is familiar with is also granted as a plus.

I for one, find this extremely flawed. The above yardstick doesn’t go too well for programmers who spend less time developing full fledged software and are more into component based development. For example, writing a script in mIRC where you need data from an application running on your machine would require you to make a dll to get this data for you. Thus, what seems like a script in mIRC is actually a script along with a dll probably made in something like C++ or Delphi. The number of technologies one is familiar with does not show the level of fluency and in depth knowledge.

This “method of judging” I speak of is one used when you don’t have direct physical communication with the person in question or when you have to have a first glance impression of someone. Sure, first impressions are quite often incorrect. But given a choice, wouldn’t you want to make an accurate judging of someone’s skill at first glance. So if you have limited access to them, say you only hold to their resumes, how do you judge them?

Which path of developing should students choose? One path would certainly be to dedicate myself to making big time projects; applications that would have wide scale appeal. Another would be to work on those projects as them come but along side work on small scale pieces of code. The latter allows a developer to indulge in what he enjoys until he strikes and idea worthy of pursuing. If a potential employer asks you of the things you have developed, small scale experience in the above stated platforms wouldn’t have too much commercial application (PHP yes, but I certainly am no expert. I could be with a bit more practice :) mIRC scripting is certainly non commercial).

How do you judge yourself as a developer? Especially when you are a student who spends his “free” time writing code, what parameters do you use to judge yourself. One (commonly used) yard stick (at least here) would be the number and more importantly the quality of projects one has worked on. But doing so, a developer who works on various non-commercial platforms wouldn’t rate too high.

I for one feel that this yardstick isn’t fair. I know a lot of developers who work on small time components which are crucial to achieve targets. Others work on different platforms, quite a few of which aren’t all that commercial. Most of them are really talented and when needed they will move to any necessary platform and get the job done (which is what a good developer should have the ability to do; take concepts and apply them to different situations). Sure, a lot of young coders out there are into popular platforms such as Ruby For Rails, Perl and Python. Just because others aren’t, does that make them any less of developers. Is it a combination of the type, size and quality of projects along with the platforms you’re good at that make you a good developer (basic versatility) or is it something else?

How would you describe a fresher (student with experience working in an organization) as a good developer? If its past records are the way to go, how much does experience in non-commercial platforms weigh in against commercial ones?

That’s 5 questions I’d like people to answer. I had a discussion along these lines with a friend recently and thought I wondered what others felt. Do let me know what you think :)

Wolfram|Alpha is an answer-engine developed by Wolfram Research headed by British CEO and founder, physicist Stephen Wolfram. It is an online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer instead of providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer. It is an effort to make all the information known to man to be made available to everyone at their computational fingertips ;)

Cyc founder Douglas Lenat was one of the few given an opportunity to test Wolfram Alpha before its release:

“The resulting mosaic covers a large portion of the space of queries that the average person might genuinely want to ask. [...] It handles a much wider range of queries than Cyc, but much narrower than Google; it understands some of what it is displaying as an answer, but only some of it [...] The bottom line is that there is a large range of queries it can’t parse, and a large range of parsable queries it can’t answer.”

Wolfram Alpha is built on Wolfram’s earlier flagship product, Mathematica, which encompasses computer algebra, symbolic and numerical computation, visualization, and statistics capabilities. It is written in 5 million lines of Mathematica code and runs on 10,000 CPUs (though the number is upgraded for the launch).

You can watch the launch live on the Wolfram|Alpha launch webcast and you can see an Introduction to Wolfram|Alpha by Stephen Wolfram which shows you the basics of what will be available during today’s release. If that introduction video doesn’t blow you away, I don’t know what will (other than a F5 :P)

I do believe the Wolfram engine has the capability to be the next Google. I’m not saying that Google will lose out because it still serves a distinct purpose. If you need to find webpages, you still need Google. But I believe Wolfram won’t take time to eat up Google’s information based search market as long as Wolfram can solve their performance issues (load handling and providing good response times mainly).

Update: 10 mins since “release” time and all the Wolfram sites seem to be down. Even the blog. Another DDOS in the making and I’m not surprised. I guess users will have better luck over the next few hours/days :) Its a service which seems worth waiting.

So here are a few things I’ve found interesting in Windows 7 that should make your Windows 7 User eXperience a lot more enjoyable.

1. Basic Application Overhaul: This one is something that us users have known would be part of Windows 7 for months prior to the first Public beta. Windows ships with a lot of basic applications that make life so much more awesome. These applications have been more or less the same for ever now. Well, its 2009 and its time for a facelift and some bottox ;) The most notable ones are Paint, Wordpad and Calculator
2. Virtual WiFi: Bhavik Vora told me back in 2007 about Microsoft working on a certain technology to connect to multiple WiFi networks virtually by using continuous switching. I was excited back then to see this in action but the lack of an actual WiFi device other than my Windows Mobile made practical applications limited. You’ll be happy to hear that Windows 7 is shipping with this technology (limited a tad bit though) allowing you to do more with your Windows. Read the original post by Long Zheng on Windows 7 adding native Virtual WiFi technology from Microsoft Research. If you’re asking yourself why do you need Virtual WiFi, refer to my reply to AI’s comment which says..
   

   @AI: Why wouldn’t you? :P Ad hoc networks are totally awesome. With the ability to (virtually) connect to multiple networks, you can create mesh and relay wireless networks. Say user A is in range of an access point X but user B isn’t. But user B is in range with user A. User A could relay the connection from X to B providing B with an active connection to the network.
   Also, you can play multiplayer games without need for any ethernet cables on your laptops or any other infrastructure for that matter. No need for a router or any other hardware to create a local area network ;)

   If you can have all this, why wouldn’t you want virtual WiFi? ;)

3. UI Standardization: Windows 7 products UI consistent with first looks at Office 2010 previews. A couple of days ago Long posted some blurry screencaps of Office 2010 which are consistent with the UI seen in Windows 7. Do you notice the similarity in the new Ribbon on the two products? Not that Vista and Office 2007 weren’t in sync, its just that a lot of the applications packaged with Windows Vista weren’t all in the same UI style. Some still seemed to style legacy looks. Windows 7 does seem a lot more complete though there are still some exceptions.
   
4. Open in new process: Here is something new. Pressing shift+right clicking on a folder/app allows you to launch it in a separate process. If you do this to open a folder, you will see a second explorer.exe in your task list. This could open up whole new avenues for polygamy ;)
   
5. PowerShell is in!: And its about freaking time! I first came in contact with PowerShell a day after its v2 release (a coincidence). I needed to use it to do a couple of things and it did it really well. I loved the power it possessed but I never really needed it again. I was always wondering why they took so long to make it main stream. I’ve known about it for years now, blame Matt for it :P
6. XP Mode: Do you have applications that don’t work on Vista? Usually using Vista’s compatibility wizard helps. Still, there are some which don’t work. Windows 7 has a much more elegant solution (at least in my opinion). Install XP in Virtual PC and start up XP mode ;) For more information, read the Life Hacker page on Setting Up and Using XP Mode in Windows 7
7. In-built and custom create-able Troubleshooting wizards: Windows 7 became the first operating system that I know of, at least in the Windows line up that has in built support to fix issues. Jus click start and search for “Fix” and the first result you get should be “Fix problems with your computer”. If you have issues listed there, the tool will provide you with a chance to fix it ;) How does it work? Simple! Its a collection of uber-powerful Powershell scripts. Can you make your own? Sure you can! Just head on over to WithinWindows.com and Rafael will explain the rest ;)
8. Popular keyboard shortcuts all retained: I don’t know about you but I certainly loved Windows Vista. I wasn’t a fan of its UAC, but I liked the OS. One of the things that made me love the OS so much were the nifty keyboard shortcuts which keyboard lovers like me can’t live without ;) Two of my favourite ones were the Win+<num> to access quick launch icons and Shift+right click to open command prompt in specified folder. Considering that the new Windows 7 Superbar has no such thing as a quick launch, the Win+<num> shortcuts now refer to the icons on the superbar ;) The shift+right click to open command prompt in specified folder sure does save a lot of time for users like me who are command prompt addicts. ;)
9. Remembering System Tray Icon Status: This is one that almost everyone would know out there but its important enough for me to put up because it was really irritating for me in Windows’ past Operating Systems. Now, if you ask Windows to hide an icon in the System Tray and then the application crashes, you no longer need to reset the status (Hide always, Hide when not being used or Show always) when restarting the application. Sure, you still need to wave your mouse over the icon to make it disappear and until then, two copies are shown but that’s still better than having to reset the status.

Also there are a few things that need to be fixed.

1. Maximum usage = 101%? :D Just have a look at this screenshot and it should be clear what I mean :-D This one is included for the lulz :)
   

   Have a look at the Maximum Frequency and you'll see what I mean

2. New User Account Control: Well, I’ve already made it clear that I find UAC on Vista extremely irritating bugging simply because I needed to (at least in Vista RTM) acknowledge an action multiple times. Microsoft did make a few changes to UAC since then to make it single prompt but it still remains off on my desktop. On my laptop, considering I don’t often do work that would set off UAC (unlike work on the desktop), I let UAC stay. When it comes to Windows 7, Microsoft has made a few changes to the implementation to make them “less irritating” by allowing auto-elevation of processes. A few concerns were raised by certain tech users made popular by Long Zheng and Rafael Rivera in posts such as Malware can turn off UAC in Windows 7; “By design” says Microsoft. Clearly, Microsoft needs to move back to Secure Desktop for changes to UAC. We don’t mind UAC prompts as long as we don’t have to go through multiple windows like Vista RTM where you’d have to sometimes go through a normal prompt and a secure desktop to perform a restricted action (For example: addition/modification/deletion of Start Menu entries).
3. High Quality Icons: As I’ve already mentioned in my previous post, with the arrival of Superbar, the icons being shown need to be of a much higher resolution to avoid tearing. Yet some icons are still not up to the mark. This is like Windows Vista’s non-standardized UI all over again just not as bad. Microsoft has put in a lot of effort into revamping the UI on most applications but I guess it has missed out on a few. Nothing that can’t be fixed in a giffy ;)

There are more features in Windows 7 just waiting to be discovered. Windows 7 RC does look quite promising. These are just some of the things that make this such a great OS. Quite a few of them are minor, probably don’t feel like much when being mentioned while others are fixes to old problems that have plagued users for many a year but all of it contribute to make this a worthy successor to Windows Vista :)