Get stuck in to Visual Studio 2008
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LINQ big, better teamwork needed Review Visual Studio is more than an integrated development environment. It is a strategic tool intended to promote the Microsoft platform.â¦
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Sean Coates has a reminder posted to his blog for all of the aspiring PHP speakers out there to get their proposals in for this year's (well, next year's) php|tek 2008.   I just want to drop a quick reminder that the php|tek 2008 Call for Papers is about to close (on Oct. 31), so if you've been dragging your feet, now would be a good time to stop doing that and send in your proposals.   Some of the topics they're interested in this year are rich application development, PHP4->PHP5 migration and looks head at PHP6. Check out the Call for Papers page on the php|tek site for the full list of information you'll need to include along with the summary for your proposal.
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Is the desktop dead?  Microsoft can't even make its updates sexy anymore.
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Compatibility issues A delayed update to Microsoft's application development suite looks unlikely to fully work with Windows Vista.â¦
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The clock is ticking: Microsoft will end OEM and shrink-wrapped sales of Windows XP on June 30, 2008, forcing users to shift to Vista. (System builders, meaning those who do white-box PCs, can sell XP through December 31.) Don't let that happen!                                                      Millions of us have grown comfortable with XP and don't see a need to change to Vista. It's like having a comfortable apartment that you've enjoyed coming home to for years, only to get an eviction notice. The thought of moving to a new place -- even with the stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, and maple cabinets (or is cherry in this year?) -- just doesn't sit right. Maybe it'll be more modern, but it will also cost more and likely not be as good a fit. And you don't have any other reason to move. That's exactly the conclusion people have come to with Vista. For most of us, there's really no reason to move to it -- yet we don't have a choice. When that strong desire to stick with XP became obvious in spring 2007, major computer makers such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard quietly reintroduced new XP-based systems (but just to business customers, so as not to offend Microsoft).But come June 30, even that option goes away. (See InfoWorld's live XP countdown clock. To use this clock on your own Web site, please e-mail Executive Editor Galen Gruman for the code snippet.)So what to do? Let Microsoft decide where your personal and enterprise software "lives"? Or send a loud and clear message that you don't want to move?We're going for the loud-and-clear option. Join us, and tell Microsoft that you want to keep XP available indefinitely. Not for another six months or a year, but indefinitely. Sign InfoWorld's petition today. And consider submitting a "Save XP" video to our site to help spread the word.And ask your friends and colleagues to join in, too. Just point them to SaveXP.com.Don't think Microsoft will listen? Consider this: Although Microsoft denies that anything is wrong with Vista or that most people don't want it, the company has already postponed XP's demise by six months. That's a start, but it's not good enough.Microsoft doesn't have to admit failure; it can just say it will keep XP available indefinitely due to customer demand. It can take that opportunity to try again with a better Vista, or just move on to the next version that maybe this time we'll all actually want.There is a precedent for that, too: In many respects, Vista is like the Windows Millennium Edition that was meant to replace Windows 98 in 2000 but caused more trouble than it was worth. At that time, Windows 2000 was promising but didn't support a lot of hardware, so users were stuck between two bad choices. Without admitting Millennium's failure, Microsoft quietly put Windows 98 back on the market until the fixed version of Windows 2000 (SP1) was available. Microsoft needs to do something like that again today.Make your voice heard to Microsoft. Sign our petition to save XP today. We will present it to Microsoft.For more on why Vista isn't the right replacement for XP, check out InfoWorld's analyses: The (post-SP1) Vista verdict: Wait for Windows 7 Randall Kennedy's assessment is that for the vast majority of enterprise IT shops, Vista is not -- and likely never will be -- the right choice for their immediate desktop computing needs.Service pack vs. service pack: XP SP3 beats Vista SP1 According to tests by Devil Mountain Software comparing the release candidates for the last Windows XP service pack and the first Vista service pack, XP SP3 performs twice as fast as Vista SP1 on the same machine -- and slower than the initial release of the Vista OS as well.Businesses having second thoughts about Vista Fewer businesses are now planning to move to Windows Vista than seven months ago, according to a survey by patch management vendor PatchLink.Forrester: Businesses still saying no to Vista An anticipated rush by businesses to adopt Windows Vista hasn't materialized as IT managers stick with familiar systems and wait for the release of Vista Service Pack 1.Microsoft: Vista follow-up likely in 2009 With Vista just out the door, Microsoft is now drawing up plans to deliver its follow-up client operating system by the end of 2009.Farewell Vista, hello XP From PCWorld.com: How to make the switch back and deal with the gnarly problem of transferring your Vista e-mail, contacts, and user data back to the old standby operating system.HP CEO: Vista never had its moment in 2007 From CIO.com: Wondering what's happened to momentum for Microsoft's Vista operating system in corporate America? Fact is, enterprise IT has continued to decline the Vista plate like it's an undercooked holiday casserole. Listen to what Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd said: HP never saw a "Vista moment at any time over the past year."UK government report: Don?t upgrade to Vista Report warns British schools not to upgrade to Microsoft's Vista OS and Office 2007 suite, and to avoid Microsoft's OOXML document format because of compatibility concerns.
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Redmond&#39;s not extending its basic support for NT 4 and Exchange 5.5, but it is extending custom paid support for the product. While Microsoft continues to emphasize that it is not extending its basic support
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Q: I recently installed Service Pack 2 on my Windows XP machine, and now the system&#39;s gone all screwy: Internet Explorer won&#39;t display animations right, I can&#39;t play WarCraft III, and Yahoo Instant Messenger is toast.
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DecemberÃ¢ÂÂs Patch Tuesday finds Vista in the bad guysÃ¢ÂÂ sights. Plus: Get Office 2007 SP1, get your fix for Flash, and avoid an HP laptop disaster.
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What does one do when modern transport just can't get the shopping to the front door?
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Office for Mac 2008 incorrectly assigns ownership of some files, Microsoft has confirmed, creating a potential security problem for businesses installing the new application suite.Joel Bruner, a Chicago-based Mac consultant, was the first to notice the ownership snafu. "[Microsoft] moved to Apple's Package Maker (.pkg) installer files, good news for the enterprise, [but] unfortunately, they've created all the packages to install most all of the files with the owner set to 502."In a shop where employees run with limited privileges -- a practice very common in an enterprise -- and IT is the only user with full administrative rights, Office 2008's ownership assignment means that a user who wasn't supposed to have complete control over those files actually does. In other words, whomever is assigned user ID 502 has full read/write access to Office's files."So let's say, Mr. IT installs this on a user's machine where the first user is the admin[istrator] (501) and the standard user is Joe User (502)," said Bruner in a post to his blog on Monday. "Well, when after all's installed, it will give Joe User (502) ownership of these folders and their installed contents:/Library/Automator/ (if it doesn't exist already) /Library/Fonts/Microsoft /Library/Application Support/Microsoft /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008"The screw-up could present a corporate security problem, at least internally, said Bruner, if that Mac's second, standard user -- user 502 -- decides to make changes to the folders and files by, say, deleting some or moving others.A Microsoft developer left a comment at Bruner's blog confirming that the company knows about the problem. "The MacBU (Mac Business Unit) is aware of this issue," said Erik Schwiebert, a software design lead in the group.Microsoft, however, did not immediately respond to queries about how it intends to correct the problem and what users can do in the meantime.Other commenters at Bruner's blog hesitated to blame only Microsoft, however. "The truth is that this is a long-standing flaw in Apple's Installer," argued someone identified as Not Required. "Maybe Microsoft should have known better, but maybe Apple should also have improved their installer years ago. Apple clearly hasn't cared enough about smaller developers to make a fix, so hopefully Microsoft has a high enough profile that something finally gets done."In a follow-up post also on Monday, Bruner added that all the Office for Mac 2008 files owned by user 502 are also erroneously set as executable. "Now tell me does '/Microsoft Office 2008/Read Me.html' need to be executable for you to look at it?" asked Bruner. "Tick, tick, tick, *ding*! No. It does not."
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Microsoft is launching free software to make it easier for developers to create software compatible with Windows Server 2008.
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The tools, part of an upcoming Visual Studio update, is focused on making it easier to create customized Web applications.
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In a new tutorial posted to his blog today, Pierre-Alain Joye shows how to generate backtraces on a Windows machine without the need for a compiler installed.   How to get a back trace on windows without having to compile PHP has been an impossible task for many of us. The difficulty was to first succeed to compile php (given that you have a visual C++ installed). If you are in the middle of a bug hunting session, no need to say that setting up a windows build system is the last thing you like, especially if it is your first time. Thanks to Edin's window binary and MS Diagnostic Debug , it is now possible to have a backtrace in a couple of clicks.   To use the method you will need a few pieces of software to help out but all are available for free. Next up are the steps to get things set up (simple) and the creation of the backtrace to catch the error, complete with screenshots for the whole way. The end result is a nice, pretty error message output to the browser (Internet Explorer) that also dumps the backtrace for you to use.
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BREAKING NEWS - In the clearest sign to date that not all is well in the state of Redmond, Microsoft cheerfully announced this morning that the release date for Windows Server 2008 is being pushed back to Q1 2008.
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InfoWorld - Windows Vista&#160;isn&#39;t the only recently released Microsoft software that will give users headaches when they upgrade their systems. Corporate users, partners, and analysts said upgrading to Exchange Server 2007 from previous versions also may be a lengthy and painful process for companies, which may want to take a wait-and-see approach to the new software.
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Blog: The software maker has a testy back and forth with a software maker that has created a utility that interacts with the free version of Visual Studio.
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(InfoWorld) - Windows Vista will not support older versions of Visual Studio, a move that will require many developers writing applications for the forthcoming operating system to upgrade to Visual Studio 2005, a Microsoft executive said Tuesday. Developers writing Vista-compatible applications will be unable to use Visual Studio 2002 or Visual Studio 2003 if those are running on top of the new operating system, wrote S. Somasegar, vice president of Microsoft's developer division, in a blog entry. The requirement was included as part of announcement of Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2005, which was released Tuesday on the Microsoft Connect Web site for developers. Microsoft is making the move to accommodate major changes in the way Vista works, said Jay Roxe, group product manager for visual studio. New features such as Windows Presentation Foundation and Aero and Glass take such a vastly different approach from previous operating systems that they wouldn't be well served by older development programs. "You need the new tools to take advantage of the new features," Roxe said in an interview. Developers may still write Vista software using older versions of Visual Studio as long as they are running on Windows XP, he said. Somasegar's blog entry also told developers who run SP1 on Vista to expect "compatibility issues." Roxe said incompatibilities include the inability in most cases to register com components, requiring the use of a command line. To work around other problems, developers may need to run SP1 on a Windows XP, he said. Microsoft plans to offer a Visual Studio update fixing the short comings after Vista is released to consumers, Roxe said.