Installing .NET 3.5 from scratch was the answer. This took two attempts; the first failed because the installer told me that 3.5 was already installed! The only things I could find which suggested 3.x was the XPS Viewer, which appears under .NET Framework 3.0 in the ‘Windows Features’ part of the programs control panel applet. Anyway, with 3.5 installed, the VC# 2008 installer finally ran to completion and VC# appears to run fine.
Why did this have to take so long and give me so much grief? Why doesn’t Vista display the .NET framework in the add/remove programs panel? Googling about this I discover that Microsoft wants us to consider the framework as part of the OS, and not something which can be installed or removed. This seems ridiculous, given that you can download and run the installers for the various frameworks and it can still be important to know which version(s) are installed.
This is another one of those stupid, stupid, unnecessary things which will drive some folk away from Windows and into the arms of Apple (or even the Linux community).
Well, the network install fared no better. This is very frustrating and also puzzling, because this is a new Vista install (albeit an OEM install on a new laptop) and as far as I can tell there are none of the VS2008 or even .NET Framework 3.5 components already installed: I’ve suffered in the past when trying out early-access releases, when stuff isn’t properly uninstalled, but in this case there’s nothing to uninstall.
So, next step is to start with the .NET framework alone, and work up from there.
Bit disappointed with the latest VS Express 2008 installer – I’ve download the ‘kitchen sink’ ISO image (containing all the VS Express editions), but when I try to install VC#, I get these errors:
and this one:
Because this is a new laptop (therefore a fresh Vista install) I did wonder whether this was a Windows Installer service issue, but the service is there and appears to be the latest version. I’m puzzled, and more than slightly irritated. It must be something simple – I’ll no doubt kick myself when I discover what it is. Meantime, I’ll try the network install.
This is obligatory ‘first post’ to see that it works. I don’t know whether I’ll post regularly here or stick to using WordPress on my own site.
I’ve used Amazon (.co.uk) quite a bit. I’ve bought quite a range of stuff, from books and CDs right up to my latest digital camera. So far, I’ve been a very happy customer: prices have been keen, stuff has arrived quickly, been well packed and always exactly what I ordered.
So I’m feeling a bit bruised today, after discovering that the delivery charge for the two Compact Flash cards I’ve just ordered will be around 40% of the item price! About 9 pounds postage, on a twenty-two pound bill! These are small, light objects and they’re being sent from inside the UK. Outrageous.
The Amazon webpage for the item is here.
Notice the headline price, and the fact that there is no indication of the delivery charge. Of course, I should have carefully read the subsequent pages before clicking on the ‘confirm order’ button, but I just didn’t expect that I would need to check an Amazon order (even involving an Amazon Marketplace seller) for this sort of thing.
The marketplace seller is called _memorymegastore_ — I’ll wait to see how fast a delivery I get for my 9 pound, then leave them some feedback. I’ve emailed Amazon too, but don’t expect much…
Caveat emptor…
I can’t believe that I missed the news that Jim Gray had been reported as lost-at-sea. This is just terrible. Jim Gray is one of the greatest minds around. Whenever I’ve heard Jim speak, or read one of his papers, I’ve been struck by the depth of his insight and the power of his quiet, engaging style.
The last time I saw and heard him in person was at PDC2003. He talked about high-performance computing (and distributed copies of this paper), discussed the building of very large servers (e.g. for the SkyServer project), and said something which stuck in my mind ever since. He was talking about the problems of processing very large volumes of scientific data and building petabyte-scale computing facilities (later expressed in this paper). He said (this is not a verbatim quote), “We’ve got to start thinking in terms of moving the program to the data, instead of the other way round, which is what we’ve been doing for years”.
This is a profound idea, which is workable now that we have almost ubiquitous networking, grid-computing, and fast, cheap hardware (CPU and storage). Network bandwidth, though improving all the time, is not increasing fast enough to keep track with the increase in data we need to analyse.
Maybe Jim is still out there on the Farallon Islands, getting away from it all. I just wish he’d let us know he’s OK.
Just been sent a link to Stevey’s Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile: This is simply priceless polemic, well worth taking the time to read right through. The early paragraphs take apart Agile and XP, aka ‘bad agile’. It’s funny, but I’m convinced it’s also grounded in truth. I especially like the Scientology analogy. Then he gets into describing ‘good agile’ which is, apparently, what life at Google is like. The prose turns from scathingly cynical (but entertaining) to slightly gushing and evangelical, as we’re introduced to the over-the-top, out-of-this-worldness that is Google on the inside. It really does sound scarily ideal…
There’s so much here which chimes with my own instincts (and prejudices). There are serious points being made, too, but I’m not even going to try to summarise them: you can’t boil this stuff down into sound-bites or bullet-points. In a way, that’s part of the message; our industry has wasted a lot of time and effort trying to do just that, and look where we’ve ended up.
Anyway, this guy really can write. Subscribed.
People are always putting quotes in blog posts, web pages or (heaven forbid) email signature lines. Normally, I ignore these but this one really stopped me in my tracks.
