As one of Microsoft latest publicity efforts they offered Joel Spolsky (Joel on Software) and other bloggers a new Ferrari laptop with Windows Vista to keep, in return of his opinion of Windows Vista. They got what they bargained for and a bit more. Check out his latest blog post to get the details.

I must say I admire Joel as one of our best bloggers out there and he really knows how to attract an audience. I’m not sure if I have dared to blog about this in the same way as Joel and I'll give him credit for that, but why on earth did Microsoft offer him this deal if they knew who he was? I’ve read quite a bit of his work including his Joel on Software book and this is not the first time he’s brutally honest about these things. I remember quite a few references back to the Excel team where he once worked at Microsoft. Very interesting reading.

Anyway my humble opinion is that this happens all the time and I guess it’s up the each and every one of us to decide for our self what to do. I agree with Joel in great extent, but as I said I don’t think I would have blogged about it. But that’s probably why he has a trillion readers and I have 7. But at least I got a brand new hot tub 6 months ago… Still waiting for that Ferrari though... Yeah, in my dreams!!

When I moved my blog from Blogger to DasBlog I wanted to keep rss.xml and atom.xml, and redirect them to the new DasBlog url’s. I googled a bit but didn’t find much. And the ones I found I wasn’t able to use (maybe because I’m running Vista RC2). Anyway, last night enough was enough and I decided to put this to an end. I started to look at IIS’s config file applicationHost.config (usually found at C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config) and one section got my attention: <httpRedirect enabled="false" />

The problem was finding schema documentation for this element. After a while I found this (http://www.iis.net/default.aspx?tabid=2&subtabid=25&i=946&p=24). To solve my problem I used this:

<httpRedirect     enabled="true"

exactDestination="true”

httpResponseStatus="Permanent">

        <add      wildcard="/rss.xml"

destination="/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRss" />

        <add      wildcard="/atom.xml"

destination="/SyndicationService.asmx/GetAtom" />

</httpRedirect>

So if you have a similar problem I hope this helps.

Update:
I upgraded to Vista Release and suddenly the redirect didn't work anymore. I tried and tried and tried and gave up. I tried again and came over this:

That nailed it. Don't know why I didn't see this before, but it would be nice though if the error message said something about enabling this feature.

I mentioned earlier that I was playing with DasBlog, but had some problems getting it running on Windows Vista. Well now I’m live with my new DasBlog site (v 1.9.6315.0)! I have made some changes to the layout and added some new graphics, so if you’re reading my rss take a look at my new site to get the “real” experience. Talking about rss I have now a new rss url (http://blog.torresdal.net/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRss). The old rss and atom feeds are still there, but they only provide a link to the new rss feed. Hope you like my new site.

There has been a lot of confusion around web2.0. Who’s better to reduce this confusion than Martin Fowler! Check out his latest blog post about this topic. I especially found this interesting:

"A common misconception I run into is that Web 2.0 is all new stuff. Most of the ideas under Web 2.0 are actually quite old and have been used on the web from early on, for instance Amazon's community or the use of Wikis. The point is that then they were the minority. The Web 2.0 shift is about the principles that were used by a few in the 90's becoming the majority in the future."

And just to clarify even further, Web 2.0 is not a product; you cannot buy it in any store! :)

During the day I found two new releases. Asp.net Ajax RC is out (http://ajax.asp.net/) and Visual Studio 2005 SP1 is released (http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/support/vs2005sp1/default.aspx). I vote for Monday releases, so we can get paid testing them. Since I can’t keep my hands off these two, my weekend is ruined! :) Enjoy!

Update: You might want to have a look at Scott Guthrie’s blog before running the installation. He has some tips you should have a look at. Both for pre Vista and Vista operation systems. You'll find his post on vs sp1 here and vista here.

This weekend our company had a get together at a ski resort at Geilo, Norway. Here I had a talk about Scrum4Suits. My company is rapidly growing and we saw the need for some changes. One of these changes is Scrum. The problem with changes is that everyone outside of that department also needs to be in on it. The “suits” needs to change as well to make this work. So I decided to try to explain to our suits what Scrum is, why we have decided to adopt it and what they must do different to make this work. The feedback was great. They really understood the problems at hand and immediately understood why Scrum was the solution for us. Now we have to wait and see if they REALLY got it and if we can take advantage of Scrum the way we want.

I love finding new cool feature rich 3rd party components that give my apps great look and feel. During the past six years I’ve tried a bunch of them. Back when I was a consultant this was a breeze. Find a component, pay for it, problem solved. But now when I’m working for an ISV and actually have to maintain the software we build, we suddenly came across this huge problem (or challenge for the consultants out there).

We have two packages from two of the most famous .Net component vendors out there. We bought these about 3 years ago and come to think of it, it’s no secret that the components come from Infragistics and DevExpress. In the beginning we where upgrading when new versions came along, but as the time went by the upgrade frequency dropped. So now it’s little over a year since our last component upgrade and quite a few things have happened since then.

At the time of writing I’m planning how we are going to migrate from .Net Framework 1.1 to 2.0 and that’s when these problems came to light. I’m not very keen on running our software in 2.0 and having our 3rd party components targeted for 1.1 running in 2.0. So the best thing to do is to upgrade the components as well. The only problem is that their API’s have changed and the migration toolkits they offer don’t really work that well. So know I’m sitting here trying to calculate the complexity of this migration (which was complex enough already), trying to figure out where we need to make changes in our code, how long it will take us, how much it will cost us to renew licenses, how happy our developer get when they hear about this plan and that I haven’t bought a single christmas gift yet! Right now it makes my head spin, so if anyone have any good recommendations on how to solve this little issue, please let me know!

I found this blog post on Roy Osherove’s blog. David Litchfield at Next Generation Security Software Ltd published an article about security in Sql Server 2005 and Oracle (Oracale vs. Microsoft). You’ll find the article here : http://www.databasesecurity.com/dbsec/comparison.pdf, but this graph sums it up:



If this is true it’s a great achievement by Microsoft. Not because their better than Oracle, but because they don’t have any reported security flaws since its release!

On Thursday 7th of November I’m having a lecture about Memory Leaks in .Net at NNUG in Stavanger. In addition to memory leaks Per-Ove Joakimsen (from WebStep and leader of NNUG in Stavanger) is talking about his experience at TechEd in Barcelona. He’s also doing a short intro to WPF, WCF and LINQ. Go to http://www.nnug.no/Avdelinger/Stavanger/Moter/Brukergruppemote-desember-2006/ to register for the event.

If you don’t live in Stavanger but another city in Norway and are interested in .Net, don’t forget to register at http://www.nnug.no/Profil/RegistrerDeg/ and you will be updated on NNUG happenings in your city. As of now we have NNUG in Bergen, Kristiansand, Oslo, Stavanger, Tromsø, Trondheim and Vestfold. For those of you who don’t know about NNUG, it is an independent INETA .Net usergroup. These usergroups exist all over the world, so if you live outside of Norway, look it up and you probably find a user group near you. If not you can start one!