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<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Microsoft pulls Vista SP1 prerequisite update: reboot loops, data ... Australian Personal Computer, Australia - 33 minutes ago In the Windows Vista Team Blog, Nick White commented that “…immediately after receiving reports of this error, we made the decision to temporarily suspend ... More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

As Dean announced, a beta version of Internet Explorer 8 will be released in the first half of 2008. The HTTP headers of every web request contain a simple string called the "User-Agent" that allows servers to identify the type and version of the visitor’s browser. For a deeper understanding of the User-Agent string, please see Understanding User-Agent Strings. When released, the IE8 beta will introduce an updated User-Agent string. For IE8, we’ve simply replaced "MSIE 7.0" with "MSIE 8.0". For example, on Windows Vista, IE8 sends: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0) Best Practices Websites that are sensitive to changes in the User-Agent string may need to be updated to support IE8. During internal testing, we have encountered a small number of sites which fail to recognize IE8 because they are performing exact string matches to look for specific IE version strings. Those checks will need to be removed or updated to accommodate IE8. The article Best Practices for detecting the Internet Explorer version provides suggestions and code samples. As noted in the Best Practices article, it is not recommended that you block access to content based on the user-agent string of the browser. If you do have to offer different content to different versions of the browser due to improved capabilities, you should ensure that future versions of the browser are not blocked. Serving content based solely on the user-agent string is often an unreliable way to detect the full capabilities of the browser, because the user might have adjusted some settings, such as disabling script or extensions. Detecting Beta Versions For IE7 beta, a "b" was added to the User-Agent string Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0b; Windows NT 6.0 ... to identify the browser as a beta release. While this was consistent with prior IE releases, it caused many site compatibility problems. Server code tried to cast the string between MSIE and the next semicolon into a floating point number, and failed when the "b" was encountered. To prevent similar problems in the IE8 beta, we will not include the "b" in the IE8 beta User-Agent string. Pages can detect if they are running inside a beta version using the following script: if ((null != window.navigator.appMinorVersion) && (window.navigator.appMinorVersion.toLowerCase().indexOf("beta")>-1)) { window.alert("This is a beta browser.") } else { window.alert("This is NOT a beta browser."); } User-Agent Spoofing If you’d like to see how your sites react to the new IE8 User-Agent string today, you can use the existing registry-based User-Agent override mechanism to cause IE7 to masquerade as Internet Explorer 8. For the convenience of beta users, a new menu option is available in beta versions that will enable the IE8 beta to masquerade as IE7 without restarting. When the “Report IE7 User-Agent string” option is checked, IE8 will send the IE7 User-Agent to allow beta users to interact with any sites that have not yet updated to support IE8. Eric Lawrence Program Manager http://blogs.msdn.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=7841790 More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Smoke and Mirrors: Microsoft Pledges Four 'Interoperability ... Wired News - 5 hours ago ... will publicly release over 30000 pages of documentation outlining the inner workings of its high-volume software applications like Windows Vista, the . ... More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

http://ms-os.com/ Portal IT <img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Microsoft removes another one of WGA’s fangs ZDNet Blogs - 1 hour ago Previously, with both Windows XP and Windows Vista, the end of the grace period meant you had to activate, period. If you let the clock run out without ... How to downgrade from Windows Vista to XP Eetasia.com (subscription) Microsoft suspends distribution of Vista SP1 prerequisite update ZDNet Blogs all 4 news articles More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

http://ms-os.com/ ZDNet Blogs <img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Microsoft removes another one of WGA’s fangs ZDNet Blogs - 26 minutes ago Previously, with both Windows XP and Windows Vista, the end of the grace period meant you had to activate, period. If you let the clock run out without ... More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Microsoft Pulls Vista Update Causing Reboot Problems Microsoft Certified Professional - 33 minutes ago ... of the update to avoid further customer impact while we're investigating the problem," wrote Nick White on Microsoft's Windows Vista Blog on Tuesday. ... More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

Author: Hi, I am Daniel Moth :-) Introduction: When you install Visual Studio 2008 you also get the additional assemblies that make up version 1.0 of ADO.NET Sync Services. More importantly, there is a nice wizard in VS2008 that does the hard work for you. In this 18' video we create from scratch a project that uses Sync Services to synchronize data between a local cache and the server. To get the code and read more about Sync Services please visit my relevant blog post: ADO.NET Sync Services. Video download: Click on the image to play the video (from a streaming Silverlight wmv file). If you'd prefer to download a non-Silverlight wmv packaged in a zip file, you may do so here. http://channel9.msdn.com/Photos/384948.jpg Watch the screencast(WMV) More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

ive been getting a ton of this lately from my c9 email 8*(916)*790 84 20 etc... anyone else? the funny thing is ive been transferring some mining ads to Russian*this week so they looked right at home in my inbox More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

Mr. Grant is going to Washington! Earlier in the month I flew out to Redmond on a cold day (here, rainy there) and had a full day of interviews with the Windows Home Server team which lasted ~8:15 (letting me finally leave campus @7pm). The next morning I had breakfast with the team's GM (who was unavailable the day before) who let slip that I'd likely be receiving an offer. On the way home that night I got a voice mail from the recruiter. After a bit of telephone tag the next day I received an official offer, and the day after that I accepted. Bo ya! Come March 24th (so long as nothing else changes) I'll be joining the Windows Home Server team as an SDE and from the sounds of it... I'll be owning large portions of the SDK. See ya this summer littleguru! (The reason I waited a bit to announce this was was a twinge of paranoia about the background check which at last came back clean today (9 business days after it began)) More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

SJVN on Linux-watch has a report from cnn money that proves how inadaquate and useless Windows is in big internet companies. Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo because M$ knows Vi$ta and Windows is a dead platform. Its good to see that professionals see the writing on the wall. The guy has a point. There is absolutely no big internet company that runs Windows. Microsoft is done for better switch now before Microsoft winds up like SCO. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS8001941484.html More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

Hello Channel9 I've been using the Windows Communication Foundation Peer 2 Peer functionality for quite some time now, and I'm really impressed with how easy it is to create a P2P application! However, I would like to get some more information on the workings of the P2P engine. Is it possible that you could record a video with some of the WCF guys, whknow the insides of P2P? I read an article once about how many neighbors a client is satisfied with, but that was pre .NET 3.0, so it was based on beta software. It might have changed, and it might not - anyway I would like to know, and know even more :P Hope you guys can help! Thanks! /cln More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

I am trying to learn how to do WCF, and so I am using the VB.NET 2008 version of the samples as an example.* I choose the application MagicEightball to learn from.* I am translating it to C# so that I can "go through the steps", so to speak. There is one line of code, in the VB example, which I do not get.* That line is: Dim svc As New Microsoft.ServiceReference.Samples.MagicEightballServiceClient Where does the "Microsoft.ServiceReference.Samples" come from???* And why, from within the client app, would you reference MagicEightballServiceClient?* Why not reference MagicEightballService instead? More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

Does anyone know of any service that allows for .Mac type service but for Windows? Preferably for free... Note: If Microsoft did something similar it would rock...it'd also stop Geocities and all those stupid providers in their tracks. More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Airfoil Adds Apple TV Support, Updated for Windows TidBITS - 45 minutes ago They also released Airfoil 2.5 for Windows (2000, XP, and Vista), which brings that release into feature parity with the Mac OS X version. ... More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

I just got home and saw a new windows update, so I click on the icon "Windows Vista Service Pack 1 x64 bla bla", wow nice I thought! Out of old habbit, I right click on it to "View details" and right there is sais "BETA" ! I went wtf !? So I clicked on "Check for updates" again and now it sais "No updates available" I don't believe in "God" but I could swear to "God" I saw this SP1 beta on my windows update! More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Smoke and Mirrors: Microsoft Pledges Four 'Interoperability ... Wired News - 39 minutes ago ... will publicly release over 30000 pages of documentation outlining the inner workings of its high-volume software applications like Windows Vista, the . ... More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

Hi all, I am attempting to automate a mailmerge (for email)*through word 2003. I have already skimmed through the documentation here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/301656/ But it seems the sample code in that documentation does a lot*stuff I shouldn't have to do. And is a bit confusing. The document I want to use for the merge*is already created.*The that will be used are also already placed in the document. With that said, all I should have to do is set a datasource to the document and execute, right? This is where I run into a problem. In the documentation above another word document was used as the datasource. I would prefer to do one of these options. 1.Set the datasource for the mail merge to a*data set, table, or view in my application. 2. Set the datasource to a query already*saved in an access 2003 database. However,*the query I want to use*will change.*Is it possible to*save a query in access 2003 through vb.net? Could*someone please explain how I would automate a*mailmerge with*my conditions? Thanks in advanced for any help. More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

This is great news!! Windows Live SkyDrive out of beta. Capacity increased to 5 GB. This release also includes bug fixes and improvements to make the site even faster and more reliable. SkyDrive is also available now in 38 countries/regions. In addition to Great Britain, India, and the U.S., we’re live in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Finland, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Turkey. Bigger Better Faster SkyDrive More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Microsoft shares trade secrets of Windows, Office ITWorld Canada, Canada - 32 minutes ago Russell McOrmond, policy coordinator for the Canadian Linux Users’ Exchange and contributor to IT World's Canada Enterprise Insights blog, ... More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Microsoft lets loose Vista SP1 for x64-based systems engadget, CA - 14 minutes ago Not a whole lot to say here, but if you're running Vista on an x64-based system, you've probably already noticed a little surprise courtesy of Windows ... More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

You'll be wanting this (visited in FF and couldn't install unknown plugin) - Server Error in '/' Application. Value cannot be null. Parameter name: s Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. Exception Details: System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null. Parameter name: s Source Error: An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below. Stack Trace: [ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null. Parameter name: s] System.IO.StringReader..ctor(String s) +2762331 Cardspace_Introduction.Reading.signin2.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) in C:\Documents and Settings\barryd\My Documents\Conference Presentations\An Introduction to Windows CardSpace\Cardspace Introduction\Cardspace Introduction\Reading\signin2.aspx.cs:27 System.Web.Util.CalliHelper.EventArgFunctionCaller(IntPtr fp, Object o, Object t, EventArgs e) +15 System.Web.Util.CalliEventHandlerDelegateProxy.Callback(Object sender, EventArgs e) +33 System.Web.UI.Control.OnLoad(EventArgs e) +99 System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +47 System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +1436 Version Information:*Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.1433; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.1433 More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

I'm working on an unmanaged C++ project that has extremely long link times (2 and a half minutes), even when a single .cpp file has changed, and incremental linking is turned on. I added /test to the linker options in the VS IDE, and it has started giving me a project build error: "Project : error PRJ0002 : Error result 6 returned from 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\bin\link.exe'." I have no idea what error code 6 means, and google doesn't seem to know either. I added /verbose to the linker options as well.* In this case, I can see that when I get this error, the linker is actually doing an incremental link (only the file I changed is considered). My suspicion is that when /test is not specified, the IDE or the linker is seeing this error code 6, and silently relinking. Can anyone shed any light on this?* I've probably spend DAYS waiting for the linker at this point. Thanks! More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

<img alt="" height="1" width="1"> Vista SP1 glitch file forces Microsoft to freeze system updates The Tech Herald, IN - 23 minutes ago ... to temporarily suspend automatic distribution of the update,” outlined Vista program manager Nick White in an explanatory Windows Vista team blog post. ... More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

Link: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/feb08/02-21ExpandInteroperabilityPR.mspx Story: Microsoft Makes Strategic Changes in Technology and Business Practices to Expand Interoperability New interoperability principles and actions will increase openness of key products. REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 21, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. today announced a set of broad-reaching changes to its technology and business practices to increase the openness of its products and drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for developers, partners, customers and competitors. Specifically, Microsoft is implementing four new interoperability principles and corresponding actions across its high-volume business products: (1) ensuring open connections; (2) promoting data portability; (3) enhancing support for industry standards; and (4) fostering more open engagement with customers and the industry, including open source communities. “These steps represent an important step and significant change in how we share information about our products and technologies,” said Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer. “For the past 33 years, we have shared a lot of information with hundreds of thousands of partners around the world and helped build the industry, but today’s announcement represents a significant expansion toward even greater transparency. Our goal is to promote greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for customers and developers throughout the industry by making our products more open and by sharing even more information about our technologies.” According to Ray Ozzie, Microsoft chief software architect, the company’s announcement reflects the significance that individuals and businesses place upon the ease of information-sharing. As heterogeneity is the norm within enterprise architectures, interoperability across applications and services has become a key requirement. “Customers need all their vendors, including and especially Microsoft, to deliver software and services that are flexible enough such that any developer can use their open interfaces and data to effectively integrate applications or to compose entirely new solutions,” said Ozzie. “By increasing the openness of our products, we will provide developers additional opportunity to innovate and deliver value for customers.” “The principles and actions announced today by Microsoft are a very significant expansion of its efforts to promote interoperability,” said Manfred Wangler, vice president, Corporate Research and Technology, Software and Engineering, Siemens. “While Microsoft has made considerable progress on interoperability over the past several years, including working with us on the Interoperability Executive Customer Council, today’s news take Microsoft’s interoperability commitment to a whole new level.” “The interoperability principles and actions announced today by Microsoft will benefit the broader IT community,” said Thomas Vogel, head, Information Management, Novartis Pharma. “Ensuring open connections to Microsoft’s high-volume products presents significant opportunities for the vast majority of software developers, which will help foster greater interoperability, opportunity and choice in the marketplace. We look forward to a constructive, structured, and multilateral dialogue to ensure stakeholder-driven evolution of these principles and actions.” The interoperability principles and actions announced today apply to the following high-volume Microsoft products: Windows Vista (including the .NET Framework), Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007, and future versions of all these products. Highlights of the specific actions Microsoft is taking to implement its new interoperability principles are described below. •Ensuring open connections to Microsoft’s high-volume products. To enhance connections with third-party products, Microsoft will publish on its Web site documentation for all application programming interfaces (APIs) and communications protocols in its high-volume products that are used by other Microsoft products. Developers do not need to take a license or pay a royalty or other fee to access this information. Open access to this documentation will ensure that third-party developers can connect to Microsoft’s high-volume products just as Microsoft’s other products do. •As an immediate next step, starting today Microsoft will openly publish on MSDN over 30,000 pages of documentation for Windows client and server protocols that were previously available only under a trade secret license through the Microsoft Work Group Server Protocol Program (WSPP) and the Microsoft Communication Protocol Program (MCPP). Protocol documentation for additional products, such as Office 2007 and all of the other high-volume products covered by these principles, will be published in the upcoming months. •Microsoft will indicate on its Web site which protocols are covered by Microsoft patents and will license all of these patents on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, at low royalty rates. To assist those interested in considering a patent license, Microsoft will make available a list of specific Microsoft patents and patent applications that cover each protocol. •Microsoft is providing a covenant not to sue open source developers for development or non-commercial distribution of implementations of these protocols. These developers will be able to use the documentation for free to develop products. Companies that engage in commercial distribution of these protocol implementations will be able to obtain a patent license from Microsoft, as will enterprises that obtain these implementations from a distributor that does not have such a patent license. •Documenting how Microsoft supports industry standards and extensions. To increase transparency and promote interoperability, when Microsoft supports a standard in a high-volume product, it will work with other major implementers of the standard toward achieving robust, consistent and interoperable implementations across a broad range of widely deployed products. •Microsoft will document for the development community how it supports such standards, including those Microsoft extensions that affect interoperability with other implementations of these standards. This documentation will be published on Microsoft’s Web site and it will be accessible without a license, royalty or other fee. These actions will allow third-party developers implementing standards to understand how a standard is used in a Microsoft product and foster improved interoperability for customers. Microsoft will make available a list of any of its patents that cover any of these extensions, and will make available patent licenses on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. •Enhancing Office 2007 to provide greater flexibility of document formats. To promote user choice among document formats, Microsoft will design new APIs for the Word, Excel and PowerPoint applications in Office 2007 to enable developers to plug in additional document formats and to enable users to set these formats as their default for saving documents. •Launching the Open Source Interoperability Initiative. To promote and enable more interoperability between commercial and community-based open source technologies and Microsoft products, this initiative will provide resources, facilities and events, including labs, plug fests, technical content and opportunities for ongoing cooperative development. •Expanding industry outreach and dialogue. An ongoing dialogue with customers, developers and open source communities will be created through an online Interoperability Forum. In addition, a Document Interoperability Initiative will be launched to address data exchange between widely deployed formats. The Interoperability Executive Customer (IEC) Council, an advisory organization established in 2006 and consisting mainly of chief information and technology officers from more than 40 companies and government bodies around the world, will help guide Microsoft in its work under these principles and actions. The full text of Microsoft’s new Interoperability Principles, and a full list of the actions Microsoft is taking, can be found on Microsoft’s Interoperability site. The interoperability principles and actions announced today reflect the changed legal landscape for Microsoft and the IT industry. They are an important step forward for the company in its ongoing efforts to fulfill the responsibilities and obligations outlined in the September 2007 judgment of the European Court of First Instance (CFI). “As we said immediately after the CFI decision last September, Microsoft is committed to taking all necessary steps to ensure we are in full compliance with European law,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft general counsel. “Through the initiatives we are announcing, we are taking responsibility for implementing the principles in the interoperability portion of the CFI decision across all of Microsoft’s high-volume products. We will take additional steps in the coming weeks to address the remaining portion of the CFI decision, and we are committed to providing full information to the European Commission so it can evaluate all of these steps.” About Microsoft Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. For more information, press only: Rapid Response Team, Waggener Edstrom Worldwide for Microsoft, (503) 443-7070, rrt@waggeneredstrom.com Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass on Microsoft’s corporate information pages. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.mspx. More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds

"L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace!" ("Audacity, audacity - always audacity!") - Georges DantonImagine this... you are in the enterprise software market competing against global players.* Not only that, but you are the technical director making decisions about the future technical direction of your product suite.* Would you make the bold move of embracing cutting edge technology?* In this episode we meet Elias Theocharis of SingularLogic who made just such a move. Listen to the podcast(MP3) Listen to the podcast(WMA) Download the Video Watch the Video More... View All Our Microsoft Related Feeds