Scott Hanselman

Well, this is an interesting development at Google Labs.

http://labs.google.com/location?q=professional+developers+conference&geo_near=los+angeles%2C+ca&Search=Google+Search

I was wondering when this was going to happen.  I'll need to use it a few times to see if it's as useful as it sounds, but it's surely a good example of why Google is (and will continue to be?) on top.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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I'm ready for a change.  I'm ready to be impressed.  If you know me, I'm all about Microsoft.  I dig them, their tech, especially their people.  While I've worked in Java on Solaris talking to Mainframes, I really cut my teeth on writing thunking code during the 16-bit/32-bit transition.  I know I'm not an "old timer."  I've never seen a punch card. (Although I've read Cryptonomicon. ;) )  I'm Generation X or Y, not Generation U or V.

I'm from a middle place.  I'm younger than some, but older than others.  I've coded on TRS-80s, TI99/4a, C64 and Apple.  I've used 8" floppies.  I've lived in DOS from >= version 3.  I've run NeXT, Amiga, GEOS, CP/M, OS/2, Desqview, Windows 3.0, 3.1, 3.11.  I've run Snowball, Chicago, Nashville and Memphis, worked in Daytona and Cario.  I love Whistler, look forward to Longhorn and really don't understand how Blackcomb fits in.  I scored 60.85% on the geek test.  No doubt, you and I are alike.

I was on AOL 1.0, Compuserve, GEnie, Prodigy, all from DOS.  I've surfed with Lynx, read mail with pine.  I ran Mosaic, I now run Firebird. I ran vi, emacs, pico, PaperClip, WordStar, WP5.1, and Office 2003 Beta. 

I had 8k of RAM and now I have 1.5 gigs of RAM.  I had no hard drive, then a Winchester Hard Drive, now I have 425+ Gigabytes at my desk.  I had a keyboard, then a mouse, then a mouse with two buttons, now a wireless mouse and keyboard with 5 buttons and a scrolly-thing.

I remember Shift-F7 would print in Wordperfect, I'm not sure why I haven't overwritten that mental cluster with more useful information.  Certainly I've at least marked the braincell for deletion with the first character as E5h or something.  Now I have a GUI, which brings me the the point of this rant.  I certainly haven't seen it all, but darnit I've seen some of it.

I admit it, while I'm privvy to many a Microsoft Pre-Alpha, I have not seen anything of Lornhorn's "real" UI, nor what I'm really interested in - Avalon. 

If you do one thing before you go to PDC - look at the demos of Mac OS X's Panther.  What I want is for Avalon to blow this away.  I want to be impressed.  I want a WHOLE new world.  I want to see some Microsoft UI Research and Usability to really come to a dramatic fruition.  I know Avalon is a next-gen graphics subsystem, but I want to see what totally new UI paradigms (read: moving past Windowing and the Start Menu) can be built on it.  I want to make my 256 meg Video Card dual-head Video Card WORK.

I'm coming to PDC thoroughly hoping and expecting to be impressed with the promise of the future.  Am I impatiently expecting a revolution in UI, while Avalon may be a just stepping stone on the way to...?

Will I be disappointed? 

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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There's nothing quite like the smell of a fresh Windows box.  After that first reboot, seeing that clean, smooth desktop brings a tear to my one good eye.  Everything is possible with a fresh Windows box.  Everything runs faster with a fresh Windows box.

Then I plug into the network and I'm immediately attacked by Popup Ads, Gator (evil), DoS attacks, Messenger Service Popups, HTTP requests for /system32/cmd.exe and clever neighbors trying to print to my printer. 

How should we protect our fresh Windows boxes, these new fawns, just before we hurl them into the abyss?

Well, here's the first things I put on ANY Windows box.  This is the "don't leave home without 'em" list.  This is the "You're not seriously going out without your _______" list. 

"Anti"-Things you must install on your fresh Windows box in the 21st century

1. Firewall
   At a minimum, enable the Windows XP built in firewall.  This will protect you from MSBlast (which I removed off half a dozen relative's computers).  Other folks use Tiny Personal Firewall, and others, but if you're serious (and you love your family) just buy ZoneAlarm Pro.
2. Anti-Virus
   In the old days, (last year) you could be clever and avoid viruses.  Don't open anything, don't talk to anyone.  But now, with attachments being sent to my Mom with names like babypics.jpg.exe, I just can't trust her to be THAT clever.  Heck, I don't know if I am that clever.  I use either Panda, ETrust, or Norton...but my preference is Norton.
3. Anti-Spyware
   The #1 least understood problem on PCs today, IMHO, is spyware/malware/scumware.  A friend of mine visited recently from Malaysia and brought his laptop.  He's a technical guy, and a developer, but he was complaining of weird popups and odd behavior in his browser during development.  We ran Ad-Aware and counted up 357 different components of spyware.  He had at least 20 different evil (but not viruses!) bits on his box, including CometCursor, Gator, SafeCast, Hotbar, and a particuarly evil bit of spyware that actually chained and appeared in the TCP/IP Properties and literally sniffed traffic at the protocol level.  I install Ad-Aware and run it on Startup.
4. Anti-Spam
   Everyone has their favorite, but I recommend SpamNet, it's like Napster for getting rid of Spam.  When you block a spam message with SpamNet you are "voting" for that message as Spam.  The more people vote, the more accurate SpamNet gets.  It's at least 99% with VERY few false positives, since actual humans are involved.  On the server-side for a Spam solution, I'm going to check out SPAMSoap.  I'll just change the MX record on my mail server, and mail will route through SPAMSoap first, then to me.  It appears to be a nice, cheap way for me to protect all my hanselman.com users.

If you're not running these particular tools, make sure you are at least running something to address these issues.  And seriously, run Ad-Aware if you haven't.  You'll be surprised.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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I woke up today and checked my Outlook Calendar first thing, like I do every morning, just to make sure I wasn't missing any 8 am meetings, and dammit if I didn't completely forget that like 6 months ago I scheduled a MCSD.NET test for Exam 70-300: Analyzing .NET Requirements.  Original MCSDs were given a free coupon for the new 70-300 but only if they took it by September 30th.  I got the coupon, cheapskate that I am, and immediately schedule the exam WAY out in September (today) figuring, "Hey, I've got months to worry about this."

This is the test with all the "new" kinds of questions.  It's got a chunk of multiple choice questions, but as soon as you get comfortable, you're faced with some weird E-R diagram with an interface that's straight out of Windows for Workgroups.  It's the Year-of-Our-Lord-Two-Thousand-and-Three and I'm taking this brand new test on 16-bit Windows.  I swear it was the same computer running the SAME software at the same testing center that certified me on WfW in 1993.

But, long story short, I passed it in about 40 minutes and made it back in time for lunch.  Now I can go back to my personal hypocrisy of bad-mouthing certifications.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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A very suspiciously-shaped package from a random distribution-warehouse-sounding address just arrived - what's inside?  Well, none other than a Replacement Backpack from TechEd U.S.  You might rememember that at TechEd by the end of the week many folk's bag's inner linings had ripped and at the end of the week there was an announcement that the bags would be replaced.  I still use my bag (I just hang on to a bag until the next conference, then I use that bag...wonder what we're getting at PDC?) and it's ripped all over.  At a recent garage sale I sold about a dozen bags for about $5 each, some going as far back as a SiteBuilders conference in the mid-90's...re-selling conference bags to the general public could become a lucrative side business for me.  I should probably read the bag's EULA, though. ;)

Anyway, I'm not sure what critical structural reinforcement or steel beams have been added to this new bag; it looks just about the same to me.  Either way, kudos for MSFT for making good on their promise.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

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