Technical
Someone in the blogosphere (can't remember who) had recently said they would like to see Microsoft start working with open source projects, include it in their products and yet leave it unchanged and open source, all the while contributing back to the original project. Well, they're going to include JQuery in Visual Studio going forward as well as other products. It will have IntelliSense support, too! This is great news from Microsoft and hopefully the beginning of much more support for open source projects.
The announcement by Scott Guthrie is at http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/09/28/jquery-and-microsoft.aspx
Here's another announcement by a member of...
I'm reading/learning/studying LINQ using the book "Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008" by Joe Rattz. First, I must say it's an outstanding book - the writing is clear, littered with code, easy to read and sometimes even funny. On page 226, Joe makes the statement:
LINQ to XML actually makes traversing an XML tree fun.
OMG, I am such a geek, because I was thinking almost exactly that as I read the code sample in question.
2008-05-08 Update:
Before I posted what I found, I had searched the web and found a usenet posting by Peter Zimmermann of www.ambit.ch asking the same question I was trying to answer. I sent him a note about what I'd found. He said they had dug through it and found the root of the problem is having contact with a blank last name. Indeed, I found that on the page in question there were contacts that had been imported with no last name. Thanks to Peter for the update and the further investigation.
-- end update --
After upgrading a customer from MS...
As a side note to my post about my machine freezing while reinstalling Windows Vista Home Premium on my new Dell Inspiron 1720, I used the Dell Outlet to purchase the laptop as a refurbished machine.
I got a great price ($655 after shipping & tax) for a laptop with a 1.5 GHz Intel dual core processor, 2GB RAM, a 160GB hard drive, a webcam, a 17" screen plus a few other things I probably forgot about and I must say I'm pleased (so far). Not only did I get a good deal, but I also get the full warranty. Hard...
I recently ordered a Dell Inspiron 1720. After I got it, the first thing I did was to reinstall the OS (Window Vista Home Premium) to really clear out the crap that Dell installs with it. Uninstalling the software wasn't clean enough for me. When I did, I ran into a problem with the reinstall where it would get to the fifth step, "Completing Installation", freeze and just sit there looking at me. The progress bar stopped and nothing happened.
After trying it a second time and having that fail, I started considering options. Then I remembered having seen on the...
Entry updated 2008-02-13...
I've figured out the actual cause of error message "The virtual machine is using a video mode that is too large for your monitor" and a way to solve the problem without a reboot. Consider the following scenario:
You have 3 computers: a work PC (a physical machine), a home PC (also a physical machine), and a VPC running on your work PC. You have a nice big 20" monitor at work and set the video mode on the VPC to a resolution to take advantage of your work PC's display capabilities (say, 1600x1200). It's capabilities, however, are beyond...