Image credits: http://xkcd.com/221/

I believe it is very funny and it actually happened, a few days ago, to me. Here is my ”random” code that was caught in a code review by the eager eye of a colleague:

//Pass random language. It doesn't really matter
string assemblyPath = ProxyHelper.GenerateAssembly(ProxyLanguage.CS);

And the code review comment: “Although it is hard coded to CS.  :)”

If you are from Europe (as I am), you probably know that youtube has ads in the form of AdSense delivered as small popups at the bottom of the player. Here, in US, there are video ads delivered before the actual content. So, before being able to watch a video, one has to enjoy a 10-15 seconds commercial (luckily, longer ones get a Skip button after about 15 seconds).

Southpark Studios (the official site) delivers about 3 sessions of commercials/episode. Well… they need someone to sponsor the free videos but the same ad is delivered twice or even trice in a row. It might be a bug in their player but still this is no excuse. I know the IE9 and  Jack in a Box commercials so well now that I can predict the next frame… oh, and there is a new one with a guy that gets hit by a frisbee – very annoying.

I was very surprised when I received a call, on my cell phone, which turned out to be an ad. Basically, it was a recorded message trying to sell me something. This is unbelievable because the number was 1 day old, only the phone company had it and I am pretty sure that I unchecked any “I want to be spammed box”. I was even called once by a real person who was trying to sell something.

Television used to be made of TV show with some ads… Here is ads with some TV show. Approx. every 15 minutes, the movie gets interrupted by 5 minutes of commercials. Also, my provider has an interactive TV guide from where I can pick the show that I want to see. The guide is full of ads and today something happened, something that made me write this post: during a movie I got an interactive (!) ad at the bottom of the screen. The commercial was asking me to press some button on the remote control if I want more details. WTF?? This is hilarious, I am being flooded with commercials…

The last example of ads-world is Amazon’s Kindle. They offer a $30 discount for Kindle, but there is a catch: “You’ll receive special offers and sponsored screensavers directly on your Kindle, including AmazonLocal deals in select cities. Your offers display on your Kindle’s screensaver and on the bottom of the home screen—they don’t interrupt reading”. So, what is this actually? It means that they will give you the Kindle cheaper but it will display ads forever.

The American society has many positive and negative aspects but the quantity of delivered ads is not the former class.

• “MySuperS“,
• “MySuperSXX”,
• “MySuperSUselsessCharacters”

because only the bold part gets validated making 8+ characters passwords as strong as those with 8 characters.

Immediately, I sent a message to customer service:

Dear sir/madam,

[...]If I set a password with more than 8 characters then only the first 8 are validated at SVN login, making possible to access the repository by just using the first 8 characters of my password.

[... the rest of the message with details and repro steps]

They have a good (but useless, as will be seen soon) customer services. I got the response after 3 hours:

Hi Victor,

This is not so much an issue with our Subversion servers its more a feature of apache bassed systems.

I’m interested to understand why you think this is a security issue though.

Please let me know if you need any further assistance?

Cheers,[...]

Do I need to add any more comments? WTF? I explained the guy why I think that’s a big issue and he closed the thread without any extra comments.

The sad part is that a few hundred companies pick them, every week, for hosting projects (that’s what their website says)…

The video includes (quote from the press release):

• Fast launching of apps from a tile-based Start screen, which replaces the Windows Start menu with a customizable, scalable full-screen view of apps.
• Live tiles with notifications, showing always up-to-date information from your apps.
• Fluid, natural switching between running apps.
• Convenient ability to snap and resize an app to the side of the screen, so you can really multitask using the capabilities of Windows.
• Web-connected and Web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript that have access to the full power of the PC.
• Fully touch-optimized browsing, with all the power of hardware-accelerated Internet Explorer 10.

I don’t think any more details are necessary. Just enjoy the video:

The read the press release.

1. Generate a report for today
2. Check if the date printed on the report is today's date

The question is: how can this test case fail?

The obvious answers may include:

• The report is not generated
• The date is in the wrong format
• The date filed contains an incorrect date

Let’s focus on the last situation. What does it mean if the date is incorrect? The answer is not always “there is a product bug that prints an incorrect date on the report”. It can also mean that there is a test issue… Below an example of execution (with timestamps) that triggers a test bug:

[23:59:46 May 1] 1. Generate a report for today
[00:00:04 May 2] 2. Check if the date printed on the report is today's date

The report was generated on May 1^st but the date check against “today”‘s date happened on May 2^nd. The test fails though the report is correct => test bug.

How do you mitigate this?

PS: That’s a test case that I wrote for one of the features in AX2012. It has been executed almost daily and it failed, for the first time, after 3 months.

Basically, f.lux is a free, lightweight application that adjust the temperature the colors on the display in order to match the natural lighting conditions. While the sun is up on the sky, the screen displays normal colors. During sunset, a slow transition to night colors is made. After this, the colors are colder and, for example, white becomes brownish. It might sound strange but it really helps.

f.lux can br download it from the official website and it is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. On the same page, is a research on sleep and more details about how f.lux helps.

For example: I was using Microsoft Live Mesh in order to synchronize and backup my files with the cloud. But MS also offered the Office Workspaces where you could store documents. So, I was using 2 services but it was impossible to edit/view a document from Mesh in the SharePoint workspace.

Another example is SkyDrive, with the new feature for editing documents (Office Live Apps). A nice addition, but my documents were in Mesh, not in SkyDrive. So, again, I had everything except the interaction between applications.

I am really excited to say it: they finally (started to) merge all the services! Seems that SkyDrive will the place where everything goes merged:

• SkyDrive offers 25 GB for storage
• Live Mesh will be replaced by Live Sync, which will upload the files on SkyDrive (just 2 out of 25 GB storage limit – strange)
• Office 2010 supports loading and saving from and to SkyDrive
• Office Live Apps are on SkyDrive and documents uploaded through Sync can be edited there Seems that synced files cannot be edited :(
• Live Workspace will be replaced (integrated?) by Office Live Apps

With the Outlook connector I can keep my calendar, contacts and e-mail synchronized with the same cloud. Hopefully a feature for synchronizing tasks will be added soon. Also, mobile synchronization is a must – for my WM phone.

Is really nice that MS is doing a homogeneous environment where everything can be accessed from everywhere. However, the integration is not complete and it would be nice if they could integrate everything from My Phone to Messenger and social networks. Just imagine a single place from where you can do everything without being forced to use many services… [I'm dreaming, right?]

1^st place (HandyBackup Professional): Timotei Dolean

2^nd place (HandyBackup Standard): tisi, Ursul

Winners: please check your e-mail Inbox and Junk folder.

Today is a big day for Windows fans. The final milestone in Windows 7 development process has been reached and the new operating system is general available.

Just two years passed since the release of Vista and many say that Windows 7 should be just a “super-service pack” for Vista.

If you are not a MS Partner and you don’t have a MSDN/TechNet Subscription then this is the first time you can get Windows 7 non-trial. Many shops already started to sale and deliver copies of W7 – got few mail in the morning with special offers.

The prices on Amazon are:

• Windows 7 Home Premium (Retail/Upgrade): $199.99/$119.99
• Windows 7 Professional (Retail/Upgrade): $299.99/$199.99
• Windows 7 Ultimate (Retail/Upgrade): $319.99/$219.99

And now two funny things: on Amazon you have “2 Used and new” copies of Windows 7. I wonder who has a used copy of W7 that has just been released :)

The image on the right I found it on Larry Osterman’s blog.

Most of you know Google Docs (GD) - the web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and form application offered by Google. Probably in the attempt to remove GD’s supremacy and to promote their new Office 2010, Microsoft is preparing a free online version of Office called Office Web Apps.

For the Technical Preview four application are available: Excel, PowerPoint, Word and OneNote. Each of them tries to reproduce the aspect and the functionally of their offline big brother. For Office 2007 users, the interface is well known. In the top side we have a Ribbon bar, the middle part is dominated by the working area and to bottom is reserved for an optional status bar.

In order to use Office Live Apps you need to have a Live ID and a Skydrive account. All these applications integrate with Skydrive and this is a curious fact because I would expect to be part of Office Live [very strange decision!].

The interaction with the live apps is not really fluid because it has a delay, especially in Excel, when you work with formulas – it takes 3-4 seconds to see the result. I understand Microsoft’s wish for adoption and interoperability with any browser without any addon, of the new product, but I think that a Silverlight interface would improve the usability or at least some drag/drop support and a right click menu.

Excel Live

Spreadsheets – this is Excel all about. The little brother of the offline version is, for the moment, limited to some basic spreadsheet operations. The are no more and no less then 3 sheets [does anyone know how to add/remove them?] on which you can put your data.

The simple tools available are: text format (color, font, size) and cell format (color, text alignment, data type). There is support for part of the formulas in Excel and one can use cell references to add dynamic data. There is some support for external data sources but it seems that data can only be refreshed if already exists – one cannot add/modify a data source.

Unfortunately there is no support for locked sheets, hidden sheets and data validation. If you try to open an uploaded document containing some of the previous you will get and error message for edit.

Excel Web Apps gets another minus because there is no support for diagrams/charts. It would be nice to have at least support for charts in a new sheet. Maybe in the next version?

I am thinking to migrate my expenses Excel document in Skydrive (Office Live Apps) even though it is quite limited.

PowerPoint Live

If you have to give a speech and you need to edit your presentation 5 minutes before start on a computer with no PPT installed then you will appreciate this.

“Tech Preview” is the word that describes PPT Live best. It is just a preview with the basic of basic most functionally of the offline version. You can add some text in predefined areas, some predefined graphics and images. That’s all. There is no theme support, not even background color and worthless to say, advanced features like animations.

However, there is support for slideshow – you can run your presentation in browser and you can see/edit the slide notes. If you want to make a simple presentation like Steve Jobs (one word/slide, white background), this is the tool for you :)

You can create as many slides as you want – don’t think it is a limit – and you can also copy/cut/paste/duplicate/delete any of them.

Word Live

Well… Not yet. Coming soon.

OneNote Live

I was so happy to see OneNote in the applications list but the happyness was ruined when I clicked the link. Just like Word, “Coming soon”. [Yeah.. Just reveal one corner... Make me wish it! :( ]

Conclusion

Not even far as powerful as Google Docs but with a bright future, Office Live Apps will attract a lot of Microsoft (Office) fans that want a consistent experience when switching from offline to online.

I see a lot of possibilities in education for this kind of online apps. You can do last minute changes to your presentations and/or papers (thesis?) or you can even write them on computers with no Office installed (however I don’t recommend writing your thesis in Word – try LaTeX).