As part of the settlement with Sun, all the products containing MSJVM will be discontinued from MSDN Subscriber download in late December (which means any day now). Here is the list of products you won’t be able to download after this: Microsoft Application Center 2000 Microsoft BizTalk Server 2000 Microsoft Commerce Server 2000 Microsoft Commerce Server 2000 Resource Kit Microsoft DCOM for Windows 95 v1.1 Microsoft Embedded Visual Tools 3.0 (2002 Edition) Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 & 2000 Microsoft FrontPage 2000 Server Extensions Microsoft Handheld PC 2000 SDK Microsoft Infrared Communications for Windows 95 DDK Microsoft ISA Server 2000 Microsoft Plus! 98 Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Microsoft Small Business Server 2000 Microsoft SNA Server 4.0 Service Packs 3 & Service Pack 4 Microsoft System Management Server 2.0 Microsoft Visual C++ (Alpha Systems) Microsoft Visual FoxPro 6.0 Microsoft Visual SourceSafe 6.0c & 6.0d Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 Microsoft Windows 2000 Microsoft Windows 2000 DDK Microsoft Windows 98 Microsoft Windows 98 DDK Microsoft Windows CE SDKs & DDKs Microsoft Windows CE Toolkit for Visual C++ 6.0 Microsoft Windows ME Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 DDK System Stress for Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 & Windows 2000 If you don’t have these on already, I would suggest downloading them and keeping them now. More information on this can be found here . ...

Here are a few more DOS pings from last night, I think these are poor souls who don’t know they have infected machines (or lets hope so). There is one (218.201.43.148) from China belonging to someone called Ming Chen in Chongqing, might have to drop his/her ISP an email. inetnum: 218.201.40.1 - 218.201.43.254 netname: CQ-CHONGQINGYIDONG country: CN descr: Chong Qing Yi Dong IDC Yong HU descr: 40-43 Duan Qi Yong ...

This is the not the first time this has happened, but in case you were seeing a few of my previous posts, no I am not listening to the same song by Bon Jovi (in a loop), but the media player blogging plug has bugs! It for some reason is stuck on that - does not matter even if I have Media Player even open or not. So its turned off for now, don’t have the time to find a fix. If someone out there knows a solution let me know. (BTW, I am running Media Player 10). ...

Well if you wondered what happens in a club, then check out this video (2.51mb) . :)

More news on Google, they have released two new extensions for Firefox, one is called Google Safe Browsing which detects any phishing and spoofing sites, and the other is for Blogger Web Comments - so you can see what others are saying about the page you are on, and even blog directly to your blog (running on blogger of course). ...

Cross posting from All about Interop ; System.Transactions has two timeout values that you can specify in configuration files. The default timeout for System.Transactions transactions is 1 minute. You can set it in either app config, web config, or machine config. (You can also set the timeout for a particular transaction programmatically within the application, by using one of the appropriate constructors for TransactionScope or CommittableTransaction). Setting the default timeout to 30 seconds in config code looks like the following. ...

You might have heard and seen this already, but GMail has has a few updates, now it supports RSS feeds and you can get it on your mobile/cell phone. Check out details here . [Listening to: I Am - Bon Jovi - Have A Nice Day (03:54)]

If anyone knows I would love to know what the reasoning was behind calling the Indigo (now WCF) namespace as System.ServiceModel ? Why Model, why not just Service (though it might get confusing with the Windows Services), or something else? To me its not very intuitive, I am use to it now, so its almost like second nature, but would still be good to know why. ...

If you are still in the market to build you MCE, ExtremeTech has an article talking about the best case, powersupply, etc. to pick for the job. You can check out my MCE configuration here. [Listening to: I Am - Bon Jovi - Have A Nice Day (03:54)] ...

If you have been following my Wireless blues here , you would know its been 48 hours (or so) and the new Wireless router is still going strong (touch wood) without any issues so far. This is what I had in the log so far (which is quite interesting when compared to Linksys as if I did have a similar log internally then I do not know how to get to it). ...

BBC is reporting that the copy protection on the XBOX 360 has been cracked by a group called the Team PI Coders. It is not quite at the stage where its usable, but this is definitely the starting point. Today you can get just some of the information, and cannot run the dumps, but the day you can, then it might be worthwhile investing on one. :) My biggest rant is the fact that I have a US XBOX, why can’t I play those games in a UK XBOX? ...

Say you want to test mathematical model of your friendly neighbouring snail, how do you test it? Why, with a robo snail of course! :)

This is not new, but I recently stumbled on it. If you are developing or wanting to develop for bluetooth developing for Bluetooth technology (exposing Bluetooth services, enumerating devices or services, and connecting to services) the Windows Embedded Source Tools for Bluetooth Technology program provides a Win32 API Wrapper that developers can expose in Visual Studio .NET or the .NET Compact Framework. The class library wrapper provided helps make development for Bluetooth Technology faster and easier by reducing the lines of code necessary to develop for Bluetooth Technology from hundreds to just a few and the components include: ...

Check out how Google managed things a few years ago. Thanks to Eli for the link. :)

If you recall my previous posts about Wireless blues I have been having I did decide to get the Belkin Pre-N device. Well after a order screw up with Amazon where they delivered someone else order to me (with the correct address), I did finally get the device delivered yesterday and set it up last night. First impressions have been good so far; it seems to be working good although its only been 8 odd hours, but atleast it seems to be promising. I’ll post back here with an update this weekend - by then I would have ti up and running for about a week and can give some real world feedback. For those curious, I did upgrade the Firmware with the latest on their Web Site, and I am using only 802.11g devices to connect to this. ...

Now this is something cool that almost everyone will find very handy. If you are a developer, engineer, architect or just an enthusiast and want to play around with a few different configurations, the best way to do that is using a Virtual Machine. So if you got a hold of some beta’s or demo VM and to use it till now you had to have a licence for something along the lines of Virtual PC or VMWare Workstation. Not any more! With VMware Player , you can “play” (i.e. run) those virtual machines without buying a licence. You cannot create virtual machines using this, but you can open them and run them - perfect for the handsouts from the PDC you have been attending. Not to mention, VMware can also read your Virtual PC images, how sweet it that? So, whats your excuse for not getting this? If you are interested you can compare the various versions here and see how they stack up. ...

eWeek has an interview with Don Box , where he talks about what is next from Microsoft in terms of the next-gen apps. He talks about what is most interesting in his space, between Indigo, WWF, LINQ, etc. Also what you should think of as an Enterprise Architect when designing your contracts - WSDL-First or Contract-First.

While I like the new Google Transit and idea you can use public transport to get from Place A to B including getting very specific like what time to get to a certain place by , currently they have data for only Portland. I think this would have been a much better experiment for a European city like London where public transport exists unlike most US cities! ...

From Engaget , just what was needed *groan*: Tesco, Britain’s largest retailer, is introducing the greeting card-inspired musical sandwich for the dreary lunch crowd this week. Now get this, according to a Tesco spokesman (who’ll remain anonymous to avoid your wrath) the music sandwich “is designed to provide busy office workers with relaxing music to make eating lunch at their desks more enjoyable than ever before.” Open the top of your prawn-and-mayo or perhaps, egg-and-pickle-bits sandwich and kick back to a soothing xmas medley dribbled over that piezoelectric tweeter. Is this a joke — are the four horsemen saddling up? Look, it’s bad enough that those one million desk-bound-lunching Brits are subjected to eating rubber-packed triangular sandwiches with salt-n-vinegar crisps every day until they die (or retire, whichever is first). But must they really be subjected to cheap tinny music to accompany those lonely culinary moments as well? That’s just mean. And certainly the only thing more annoying than listening to Jingle Bells is listening to it played from a nearby cubicle-monkey’s coffer. Please, we beg you, someone send us a video of this joyous experience…maybe we’ve got this all wrong. ...

Not sure why one would need this kind of power on a laptop (from a practical point of view), but if you do need it, then it seems like the new dual core laptops are just around the corner . Rumor has it that Dell is going to be releasing some in February next year and Toshiba in Q1. But if I was you, I would probably wait for a x64, instead of a dual-core on the laptop, but then thats me. :) ...

As you might be aware, Microsoft released its OneCare Live service in Beta, below are the screen shots of those on my machine. So far there is not any noticable deprecation in performance.

I am quite fedup of the Wireless Router I have at home; lots of connection drops, lots of reboots. If the Wireless is working then the router packs up or vice-versa. I currently have a Linksys WRV54G and it sucks! Don’t take one even if its free! So, now after living through its irritation for a year+ (what can I say, I am either brave or foolish), This is my second Linksys device with which I have had issues. We also have a Linksys WRT54G at one of our client offices which we use to connect and that is very moody as well, one day it would be perfect and other days it won’t be running for even 10 mins! ...

Karan pointed me this one, you need to read through the letter - its hilarious! And my dad has encountered a similar thing in real life, except from Australia.

I am quite happy with the case I have for my MCE, but I came across the following to new cases, which if I had to buy now I would seriously consider - they are on opposite end of the spectrum and depending on what you need and your budget one might be a better fit than the other. DIGN X15e Aluminium Enclosure Enlight 7473 Home Media Chassis Drool on! :) ...

A fellow Avanader is on the way to Seattle and I was helping him find deals for Fry’s and that that is probably the only thing I miss about the US! There is nothing close to that in the UK! The trip down memory lane has been quite nostalgic for me. :)