DevBlog

The settlement in the Microsoft/DOJ case has been upheld by an appeals court. Massachusetts and two industry groups had appealed. The actual decision is here.

Microsoft is working on three service packs for the .NET framework.

You can get the tech preview for the .NET Framework 1.1 (2003) here.

If you're running on Windows 2003 with v1.1, the tech preview is
here.

Or, if you're using the .NET Framework 1.0, the SP3 tech preview is here.

Recent security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer have caused many people to recommend (again) that you should switch to a different browser. The Register is reporting that CERT "is advising people to ditch Internet Explorer and use a different browser after the latest security vulnerability in the software was exposed." I've looked through the CERT website and cannot find any such advisory. In fact, what I can find encourages users to install the latest patches from Microsoft and to run an anti-virus program.

You may feel the need to use a different browser. Opera seems to be the browser of choice among those who have switched. I'm sticking with IE mainly because I don't like the tabbed browsing supplied by Opera.

Update: Ted pointed me to the CERT warning here. However, The Register, was not completely honest their reporting. CERT gave several options to resolve the issue, the last of which was to use a different browser...and it by no means was given emphasis over other solutions. In the past, I have had some doubt as to the quality of reporting in The Register. The shoddy job done here definately shows a lack of journalistic credibility.

Yes, you read that right. Microsoft has released something into the Open Source community. That something is Windows Installer XML (WiX) toolset. It's been propogating around the SourceForge CVS servers. More info here. [Scoble]

An AOL employee has been arrested for stealing 92 million screen names and selling them to a spammer. [CNN]. I hope he gets the maximum sentence.

Burton is the code name for the upcoming Visual Studio Team System (VSTS). It integrates dev, test, bug reports, and a WHOLE lot more. A couple of people from the VSTS team were at the Redmond geek dinner last night and gave an impromptu, two hour demo after the dinner. Steve Maine Scoble for the link) blogs,

Now, having seen the Burton tools in action with my own eyes, I can confidently say Burton is cool. Like mind-blowingly, oh-my-god-I-can’t-wait-to-use-this cool. And by “cool” I mean “solves a ton of problems that I definitely have right now.”

You really need to read the whole thing here. Subscribed.

KC points to some references about how to get an RSS feed from your Windows event log.

Hentzenwerke will be publishing New in Nine: Visual FoxPro's Latest Hits later this year. The book is being authored by Tamar Granor, Doug Hennig, Rick Schummer, Toni Feltman, and Jim Slater. You can preorder now and begin downloading chapters in July.

Ken Levy, the VS Data Tools Product Manager, has been blogging on the VSDT team blog, but has now started his own personal blog. It begins with Ken's Europa in Europe tour.

If you live in the western US, it's likely that you have Qwest as your local phone service. If you do, you won't be surprised by what I'm about to tell you. I don't use Qwest.

I don't have a phone in my home. I haven't for almost two years and I haven't missed it. I only have a cell phone. All I've missed are calls from telemarketers.

For about a year, I've been noodling at running my web server at home. My service agreement with Comcast cable prohibits my running a server, so I called Qwest about DSL. Well, it seems they bundle their products in a number of ways, with local phone service or without local phone service, with MSN or without MSN. However, there is no way to get DSL service from Qwest without local phone service and without MSN. So I have three choices: 1) Get local phone service with Qwest. 2) Use MSN. 3) Don't get DSL as Qwest is the only company in Utah that provides residential DSL service.

Is this bundling legal? I have filed a complaint with the Utah Public Service Commission. Letters will be sent to my state legislators in the next day or so. Hopefully the recent US Supreme Court ruling on local phone companies opening their lines to competitors will cause a change.

Qwest's current ad campaign uses the slogan, "The Spirit of Service". How is this product bundling providing me with the service I want? For now, I am going with option three...no DSL. So, for the time being, my web hosting stays put.

Ted makes some good points today about compatability when upgrading the OS. I remember when Windows 2000 shipped and hearing a Windows Program Manager say, "We had to sacrifice some compatability to make the system more stable." So, what's more important, stability, security, or compatability? I think the answer depends on who you ask.

I'm all for having the system more stable because that means fewer crashes. I'm also for having a system that's more secure. Ted wonders what Microsoft means by security, because he asks to be secure in his feeling that applications will continue to work. But I think what Microsoft is after is making the system more secure from worms, viruses, denial of service, and other such attacks. In this case, I vote for security.

Where does that leave compatabilty? Is it more important than the others? IMO, in most cases, it's third in the list. This will usually mean upgrading, rewriting, or replacing existing software. You may say this is a bad thing for you. That FoxBase DOS application that you had written for you in 1993 may do everything that you need, but could a new application do things better for you? Sure, I can design a house with a t-square, a pencil, and a few other tools, but would my job be easier and done better with a CAD package? When built, the house probably wouldn't be any better from one design to the other, but the design process itself would have improved.

Next time you're faced with a decision that will force you to upgrade software that "works just fine and does everything you need", take a look around at the options. You may just find that a little, temporary pain to upgrade, rewrite, or replace is far outweighed by the benefits gained.

If you live here in the US, you've probably seen a commercial or two about some medication. They all seem to have lines like, "Ask your doctor is Remedex is right for you". They all seem to show people who are very happy, presumably because they've been taking RemedyX. However, the commercial never says anything about what the drug does. It's supposed to get you to think, "Hey, those people are happy. If I take Remedex, I'll be happy too. I'll call my doctor right now." But, it just doesn't work that way. The ad should tell me what the drug is for. Then, if I think it'll work, I'll ask my doctor.

One of the RSS feeds I subscribe to is Microsoft Downloads. It tells me when MS has new files that are available. Granted, I'm not interested in most of them, but given the number of files MS posts, this means I don't have to wade through a list of old things.

Today I got notice that two new downloads are available, "Premier Datasheet" and "Essential Datasheet". The descriptions tell me nothing about what the downloads are about, just like the drug commercials tell me nothing about the medication.

What does this mean for you as a developer? If you create a product, tell your users about it in your advertising. If what a specific feature does isn't clear from the menu or tooltip, you're doing something wrong. Be clear in your descriptions.

The downloads turned out to be descriptions of paid support options. It would have been to make the descriptions, "Premire Support Datasheet" and "Essential Support Datasheet".

Calvin Hsia, the development lead for VFP has started a blog. Way to go Calvin! It's about time. Subscribed. Thanks to Andrew MacNeill for pointing to this.

Update: yag reminds me that Calvin has been blogging on the VS Data Team blog for sometime. I knew this and should have mentioned it. What's different now is that Calvin has his own blog.

Microsoft has just published this guide. The download page states,

The Antivirus Defense-in-Depth Guide provides an overview of the types of malware and their risks, planning an effective antivirus strategy for your organization, and responding quickly and effectively to infections or incidents when they occur.

Download here.

I'm always looking to improve my conference and user group presentations. John Porcaro points to a great blog, beyond bullets, that gives new perspective on using PowerPoint. Subscribed.

Indigo will be one of the major technologies in Windows Longhorn. Don Box is working on the design of Indigo at Microsoft. He says, "We're also allowing COM interfaces to be treated as indigo service contracts." This is good news for VFP developers as we'll be able to take advantage of the new technology.

Joe Wilcox at Microsoft Monitor talks about viruses hiding in the special "restore partition" of hard drives. Ouch! Nasty problem. I agree with his conclusions. If you're purchased a PC configured this way, you need to be aware.

From the Brady Tester, (referenced by Garrett). There's some great stuff here. Even if your a Dev and not a Test, you can still get some good info for your unit testing. Subscribed.

SnagIt is a wonderful tool for capturing screen images. You can grab a particular window or just part of it. I first started using SnagIt when I wrote CrysDev and I continue to use it today. Rick Strahl has just blogged about automating SnagIt with VFP. Good stuff.

There is a security flaw in some Crystal Reports versions that ship with Microsoft products that could allow someone to retrieve or delete files on your computer. Products that include Crystal Reports and are therefore vulnerable to the directory traversal flaw in the software include Visual Studio .NET 2003, Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager and Microsoft Business Solutions CRM 1.2. Today security patches from Microsoft will fix this and a vulnerability with DirectX. [Ent News]

Well, I'm back from Kansas City. I didn't blog from there as much as I wanted to. Perhaps a wrap up entry in the next day or so. Right now, it's time to wade through emails and such and my user group meeting is tonight. I'll be presenting the first half, Reporting with Visual FoxPro 9.0, of my DevEssentials presentation.

As I write this, I'm sitting here at DevEssentials in Ted Roche's session on blogging and RSS. It will be interested to see if this shows up in Ted's aggregator during the session.

I'm sitting here at Dev Essentials. Wireless connections are great. I attended Cathy Pountney's VFP 9.0 Report Writer session. As I write this, Doug Hennig is disussing Event Processing in the the Report Designer's new ReportBuilder.app. The last session of the day will be Doug's session on the new ReportListener base class.

Earlier today, Ken Levy gave the Essential Fox keynote. He did a brief overview of most of the new features. Also tonight will be the speaker's dinner.

As usual, I have gotten little sleep. It was after 1:00 AM last night before I got to bed and then up at 8:00 for Ken's key note.

There is lots of excitement here about VFP 9.0. There are TONS of new features that will take lots of exploration. I've spent almost all my time in the Report Writer in preparation for my presenation here in Kansas City. If you don't have the VFP 9.0 beta, get it now. Recompile your applications to see how they work. Then, start playing with the new stuff.

Late yesterday, Microsoft posted the Visual FoxPro 9.0 beta. You can download it here. While a vastly improved reporting system (designer, printing, and previewing) are the main enhancements, you'll find much, much more. In Ken Levy's June newsletter, he lists some of these enhancements. Mary Jo Foley writes about VFP 9.0 here. Discussion about the beta on the Universal Thread is running high, with great excitement about the new features.

I'm off to Kansas City tomorrow for the DevEssentials conference. You can check back here throughout the weekend for blog postings from there.

For months I've wanted to install a Linux server in my home office, but priorties keep changing and it's never made it high enough up the to do list. Now, it may happen. I have a client that wants me to do some web development for them using MySQL and PHP. Their server is a Mac, so I'm not sure that the Linux server will help out here. However, I have downloaded the Windows versions of the needed products and will be installing them soon and will document my efforts as things progress.

A new effort by VFP developers world wide, known as VFP Revolution, is anything by revolutionary. In fact, it drudges up many of the same old arguements people have been making for years about a lack of VFP marketing. Yes, people are signing the letter, but let's look at where the letter and logic posed by its authors is flawed.

Due to a question of unworthiness and ideology, we feel motivated to try to do something to revert the tendency which has been predominating for some time; this tendency is not a result of VFP's lack of quality, but speculative manipulation of the market.

Now, the argument here is that the lack of marketing for VFP does provide a negative manipulation. However, EVERY company with many products will ALWAYS push one in favor of another. They'll even drop entire lines, as General Motors did with Oldsmobile and Chrysler did with Plymouth.

Dear Mr. Ken Levy

Ken can do nothing to change the realities of VFP marketing. He is given a budget and a direction from people much higher up in the company.

The International community of Visual FoxPro (VFP) Developers and Users asks for an open communication channel.

There IS an open communication channel. Microsoft has stated several times that the amount of marketing given to VFP will be in relation to the number of users and that .NET is the developer product that will get the attention. If the statement means that the signers want to have an open communication to Microsoft, they don't need to. Microsoft executives, from Bill Gates on down, are fully aware of the concerns the letter raises.

Our wish is that VFP continues to be developed with the commitment of a long life perspective.

Microsoft just isn't going to do this. VB was once the "darling" language of choice by MS and it was dropped like a hot potato when .NET came along. VB .NET is not VB.

However, what we have noticed over a period of time is that due to a strategy - or lack of a strategy – inside Microsoft’s corporate marketing, there has been a reduction in the employment market for VFP Developers.

Is it Microsoft's job to maintain or grow the employment market for VFP developers? No.

We all know that VFP has been improved dramatically, but we feel that its own manufacturer has inhibited its sales and marketing. We not only believe in, but invest in this powerful tool. Nevertheless, we see ourselves as a rare species on the verge of extinction: a Microsoft fatherless child.

Once again, I point to VB 6.0. If you doubt there is a problem there, seek any any number of VB developers, including many MVPs. Once again, Microsoft has never promised that the tool would be around forever. In fact, Microsoft has, on many ocassions, encouraged all developers (not just VFP) to improve their skills so they remain marketable.

There does not seem to be a true marketing effort on Microsoft’s part to bring new enterprises to VFP. It is only being used by the companies who insist on it.

Here, the letter is dead-on, but Microsoft will not change what they are doing. .NET is and will continue to be the tool that gets the marketing efforts.

Large corporations do not invest in a development tool, which the owner/manufacturer does not advise its use, even though it may be more productive and have better performance than other development tools. It is a paradox that everyone seeks for the qualities which VFP offers, but very few ever get to use it. One of the main causes for this situation is that there is an uncertainty about VFP’s future. No one knows how many versions Microsoft will support. Will it stop at Version 10? Will it go forward? For how many more years will Microsoft support VFP?

The term "does not advise its use" is a bit disturbing. Doesn't GM advise it's customers to buy one vehicle over another? Of course it does. All the time. As for how long Microsoft will support VFP, this is information has been published.

Academics simply are not aware of VFP; it is unknown on campus. When someone talks about it here in Brazil, everyone thinks it is like CLIPPER. No one knows that it is a Microsoft product. And the worst is that they do not know how powerful it is.

There are still millions of Computer Associate-CLIPPER users who have not found out about VFP. Millions of potential customers are being lost.

Did marketing efforts by Microsoft to push VB get these same Clipper developers to switch? How about Delphi? or Powerbuilder? or Java?

All of us have seen some, or many, of our colleagues leaving VFP, trying other tools such as Delphi, Java, etc. This is a pitiful situation, because it is a matter of survival. A few days ago, we had an event in which Les Pinter, a VFP MVP, finished his lecture by advising us that if we do not adopt .NET, that we will have to become Taxi drivers very soon. His words started quite a commotion among our VFP users.

Les is stating his opinion. Being an MVP in no way means that you can't state your opinion. Don't take what an MVP says as gospel...it's his opinion. Oh...and yes...I'm stating my opinion here on this blog too. I'm stating an opinion contrary to that of the letter writers, since the have chosen to only allow those who sign the letter to post a comment there.

We believe that Microsoft is not including certain new technologies into VFP, because this is their intention.

What new technologies?? If you really want Microsoft to listen and do something about it, be specific. I read this as .NET, but I can't be sure because it isn't listed. Assuming it is .NET, it wasn't a decision by Microsoft to not include VFP in .NET, it was a decision by VFP developers. I heard Microsoft ask on several occassions and in multiple forums if VFP should be included in .NET.

We feel that VFP integration into web development can be much better. If others Xbase can, Why not VFP?

Sounds like a good wish for VFP 10. Why hasn't it been added in previous versions? It's a matter of man power and priorities.

I have elected to not sign the letter, just as I did not sign a similar letter a couple of years ago. It is a battle that can't be won.

I'll be in Kansas City on Friday to present "Reporting in Visual FoxPro 9.0". This is a pre-conference seminar that covers new reporting features in VFP 9.0 and integrating Crystal Reports. You should know that Crystal Reports is not the new VFP 9.0 Report Writer. As part of my presentation, I needed to write speaker notes that covers my presentation material. Now, I usually post these speaker notes about six months after the conference. However, this time I'll post them sometime this weekend. This should give you some additional documentation as you start to wade through the VFP 9.0 public beta, due this week.

John Koziol blogs about an exciting new feature coming in VFP 9.0 that will allow you to (finally!) hook into Windows events. Unfortunately, it didn't make it into the public beta coming later this week.

From Ted, who links from OSNews.

Software development is an iterative process that benefits from coordination between developers and with historical archives. To facilitate such practices, developers can turn to special versioning software. In this article we will explore Subversion, one of the most recently released version control suites.

Subversion is built on the ideas of CVS, which is an Open Source version control system. What I find interesting is that Ted is moving to Subversion. AFIAK, Ted wrote the only book on using Microsoft Visual SourceSafe.

This month's book is Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content by Biz Stone, ISMB 0736712999, New Riders. If you're new to blogging, this book will get you started and help you understand the concepts and technologies. If you've been blogging for a while, you will probably find little in this title.