Bob Dylan as DJ? Cool!

I don’t care one bit about Howard Stern, but this news makes me want to sign up for XM Radio:

[Bob Dylan] has signed on to serve as host of a weekly one-hour program on XM Satellite Radio, spinning records and offering commentary on new music and other topics, starting in March. The famously reclusive 64-year-old performer said in a statement yesterday that “a lot of my own songs have been played on the radio, but this is the first time I’ve ever been on the other side of the mike.”

I just noticed yesterday that DirecTV is now offering a limited selection of XM channels as part of its subscription (no extra fee to XM required), and I can also get access to a selection of XM channels via Media Center. If they were available as podcasts, I’d be deliriously happy!

Double Beta Land

For the past week or so I’ve had my head down building the outlines for Windows Vista Inside Out and Special Edition Using Office 12. Experience has taught me that the only way to write an excellent book about a new version of Office or Windows is to live with it – “dogfooding,” as the ‘Softies say. So, for the next nine months or so, I’ll be living not just in Beta Land but in Double Beta Land.

Running a beta over a beta? Am I crazy? Well, yes. What’s going to make life here even crazier is that the nondisclosure agreements associated with both programs are very different. The Windows Vista team says I can write about and show screen shots of anything in the product. The Office team says I’m skating on thin ice just telling you that I’m in the Office 12 beta program. I can work around that restriction by limiting my posts to things I read on other, publicly available sites, but still … I wish the Office team would relax those rules.

So, expect to read lots of stuff about Windows Vista in the coming months, and a lot less about Office.

Q&A: Getting into a Microsoft beta program

In the comments to an earlier post, Carl asks a good question:

Microsoft’s Windows beta programs have always been a mystery to me. I’ve worked with Windows as a Sysadmin for 9 years, and I still don’t know how to get into the Windows Beta program. I’m aware that the Vista beta is available to Technet Plus and MSDN customers, but I don’t need MSDN and don’t see the value of Technet Plus at the price Microsoft charges. I’d really like to test Vista, but don’t know how to do so legally. Any insight?

The secret is to think way ahead and to nominate yourself. Microsoft sent out the original invitations for the Windows Vista beta program last July, and the list was probably put together months before that. The team that runs the beta test program tries to put together a diverse group that represents a broad cross-section of potential customers, so having enthusiasm and a willingness to participate is more important than technical chops.

How do you get considered for a future beta program? Watch news sites to see when beta nominations open. Typically, you visit a Web site and log in with a publicly available user name and password. You fill out a questionnaire, and then you wait.

Don’t limit your request to just Windows, either. If you can get yourself invited into a related program and then actively participate in it by filing quality bug reports, you’re more likely ot get invitied to a future beta program.

Locking down Windows Vista

This report by Todd Bishop in the Seattle P-I appeared a few weeks ago, but I just noticed it. I had heard the news from other sources, and I’m glad to see it officially confirmed here:

Microsoft … is aiming to integrate all of Windows Vista’s planned features into the preliminary version of the program by early next year, said Amitabh Srivastava, corporate vice president in the Windows Core Operating System division.

Such a step is significant because it lets software development teams focus on fixing bugs in established features, rather than making new features.

Users of the preliminary version “will have a feature-complete Windows Vista sooner in their hands than any previous Windows release,” Srivastava said in a conference call Tuesday.

It’s one in a series of engineering changes that the company has instituted in an attempt to create a greater level of stability and security in Windows Vista. Previous versions of the operating system have routinely been criticized on both fronts.

When we were working on the original edition of Windows XP Inside Out back in early 2001, the constant flurry of changes to core features drove us crazy. As I recall, there were significant changes even between so-called release candidates, one of which was significant enough that we had to rewrite a chapter at the last minute to get the details right.

Everything I’ve seen so far suggests that Microsoft really has changed its engineering processes. That bodes extremely well for the initial release of Windows Vista. It also means that we might have an easier time writing Windows Vista Inside Out.

Firefox 1.5 versus IE

Asa Dotzler of the Mozilla Group is on a slow burn, headed toward a rolling boil.

He writes today:

I’ve seen a number of articles comparing the currently available Firefox 1.5 with the still not available and probably not released for some time Internet Explorer 7. What’s wrong with this picture? Firefox 1.5 should be compared against the competition, not against something that may or may not be released sometime in the future.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t include any links, so I have no idea where these comparisons are. A search at Technorati using the terms IE7 and Firefox turns up only a few developer-focused articles and much praise for the recent Firefox 1.5 release. (Changing the term IE7 to Internet Explorer 7 results in only three hits in the last 10 weeks.)

A similar Google search turns up mostly stuff from last February, when IE7 was announced. So what set off this rant?

Where are all the Firefox 1.5 versus IE 6 articles? It does no service to users to tell them how Firefox stacks up against some future offering from Microsoft. How about telling users how Firefox 1.5 stacks up against the outdated, insecure, and difficult browser they’re using today? (or if they just have to report about IE 7, then how about comparing it to the equally unreleased Firefox 2 or Firefox 3?)

I use Firefox as my main browser. Does the world really need a Firefox 1.5 versus IE6 review? No, that would take about three paragraphs. I suspect most people want to know what’s new in Firefox 1.5, whether it works with the Web pages they visit most often, and whether their favorite extension is compatible. (I’ve found some serious problems with at least one major Web site – americanexpress.com – and have had to ditch a few extensions that I really didn’t care all that much about.)

I guess the browser reviewing press really don’t care about actual users who are suffering an increasingly painful and dangerous web. Microsoft announced IE 7 in February of 2005, very nearly a year ago. They claimed at the time that it would be available in the Summer of 2005 and here we are about to enter 2006 with nothing close to a finished browser from Microsoft.

The February announcement said a beta would be available in Summer 2005:

… Gates announced Internet Explorer 7.0, designed to add new levels of security to Windows XP SP2 while maintaining the level of extensibility and compatibility that customers have come to expect. Internet Explorer 7.0 will also provide even stronger defenses against phishing, malicious software and spyware. The beta release is scheduled to be available this summer.

Beta 1 was indeed released in July. It was nothing to write home about, but it was indeed shipped.

The Beta 1 announcement said nothing about final ship dates.

It has been clear in everything written about IE7 to date from Microsoft that it is a core component of Windows Vista and that the XP version is dependent on that release.

I just don’t understand where Asa is coming from. Firefox is getting great press. It’s been downloaded more than 100 million times. Market share is growing. So where’s the conspiracy?

A useful Office 2003 troubleshooting tool

If you use Office 2003, you should know about the Office 2003 Local Installation Source Tool. You may never need to use it, but if you do run into a problem with the Local Installation Source (LIS), it can save you hours of frustration. (If you use Office XP or Office 2000, see the note at the end of this post.)

A brief explanation: When you install Office 2003, all of the setup files are copied to your hard drive in a hidden folder called Msocache. This uses about 400MB of space but allows you to repair your Office installation or add new features without having to track down the original CD.

The problem occurs if the Msocache folder gets corrupted, or if you delete it the wrong way (using Windows Explorer), or if the disk on which it’s located becomes unavailable for any reason. Yesterday, I bumped into this issue when I tried to export a list of addresses from Outlook. As part of the process, Outlook wanted to install a converter, but the LIS was nowhere to be found – it had originally been on an external drive that I had reformatted for use on another computer. The result? I received a string of error messages , most in the format “Error 1327. Invalid Drive: f:\” and was unable to complete the export, even when I made the Office CD available.

The LIS Tool fixed the problem. I was able to find a copy of the Msocache folder on another computer, copy it to my C: drive, and use the tool to point Office to the new location. You can also use it to enable or disable LIS.

A bit esoteric, but extremely handy.

(Note: If you get an error 1327 with Office 2000, see Knowledge Base article 217666. To resolve this problem with Office XP, see Knowledge Base article 290356.)

Sony releases a rootkit remover

If you’ve been attacked by Sony’s XCP rootkit software, you can finally remove it. Here are the download links.

Remarkably, Sony has finally admitted that the XCP software is dangerous. Their announcement confesses:

CDs containing XCP content protection software developed by First4Internet for SONY BMG may increase the vulnerability of your computer to certain computer viruses.

The uninstaller allows you to completely remove the XCP software (good idea) or update it to a newer version that Sony claims is free of the rootkit component (do you feel lucky?).

Not so remarkably, Sony can’t resist the urge to say dumb things. Like this:

Please be advised that this [update/uninstall] program is protected by all applicable intellectual property and unfair competition laws, including patent, copyright and trade secret laws, and that all uses, including reverse engineering, in violation thereof are prohibited.

Yes, it certainly wouldn’t be appropriate for any security researchers to look closely at this software and determine whether it’s safe and effective. Especially given Sony’s track record so far.

IE7 for XP? You’ll have to wait some more

Over at the IE Blog, this news flash just appeared:

We’ll post an updated pre-release build of IE7 for Windows XP publicly – no MSDN membership required – during the first calendar quarter of 2006.

At first I didn’t understand why this is taking so long. Then it dawned on me: The feature set of IE7 has to be in perfect sync between Windows Vista and Windows XP. And now that Windows Vista Beta 2 has been pushed sometime into the New Year, that means IE7 has to lag as well.

Good news for the Firefox folks, who just shipped version 1.5.

How to buy your parents a PC

Remember when your parents bought you gifts for the holidays? These days, it’s the other way around. If your parents are still using the PC you bought them just before the turn of the millennium, it’s time for an upgrade.

Microsoft’s Juliana Aldous Atkinson just wrote a nice piece that lists 6 steps to follow when buying your parents a computer.

It’s not overly technical, and her checklist covers all the basics, with some nice links to additional resources.

Windows Live gets bigger

Wow. A lot of really interesting stuff on the Windows Live Ideas page.

I’ve been using the Windows OneCare Live beta for a couple months. It’s been exceptionally stable and unobtrusive – enough so that I’ve completely dropped my previous favorite, Trend Micro PC-cillin.

If you’re looking for an antivirus/firewall/backup package, this is a good one to try. It’s free now but will be a paid service (no hints of ultimate cost) eventually.

I’m also planning to sign up for the Windows Live Mail beta today.