Random Rants & Raves

One of the new things that happens in SQL Server 2008 is that it prevents saving table structure changes that require the table to be dropped and re-created. While this is a great feature to prevent accidents from occurring, on a developer machine it can be quite frustrating. This is the dialog you get when trying to make changes in a table design.

Unfortunately, this dialog doesn’t tell you where to turn this feature off! Clicking on the small “?” on the title bar does get you to a help page that tells you how to do it.

Anyway, the place to do it is Tools > Options > Designers > Table and Database Designers > Prevent saving changes that require table re-creation. Turn this option off and you will be able to save the tables again.

I always found the Apple "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads funny when I saw them - but not for the reasons that Apple thought. Their claims were fairly weird considering > 95% of the world uses PCs with Windows. and not only that, the PCs come in a gazillion different combinations with another gazillion types of hardware and software setups. Whereas Apple has complete control over the hardware and the software that gets installed on their machines - so making their systems work is the least they can do.

 The PC (and by this I mean the generic PC combination whether it be desktops or notebooks + Windows) is a much, much more versatile device and can do so much more. And finally Microsoft is showing people the true story with their new ads. The video ads show people from normal walks of life and some celebrities - all who use PCs for a huge number of varied tasks - showing the true power of the PC. And combined with the Windows Mobile platform (for PDA/SmartPhones) and Windows Live (for services on the 'Net), the PC is at a much more powerful stage than it ever was.

The best part is that you can upload your own videos as well to say how you have been using your PC and how it has affected your life, work and personal way of working. Think of this as a way to show your appreciation for this system.

I've just enabled a WebSlice on this blog. You can now view the latest post on this blog by subscribing to the "Vinod's Latest Post" WebSlice if you have Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2. This can be done in two ways.

1. Hover your mouse over the first blog post till you see a green rectangle and an icon. Click on the icon to add the WebSlice to your favorites bar.
2. Click on the icon on the toolbar to add it.

Now whenever the blog is updated with a new post, you will see the subscription turn bold. Click on it to see a small preview window with the entire post. You can also click to view the entire page in a normal window - say to read the rest of a long post or to comment on it.

To create a new WebSlice for your site, you can follow these tutorials: Shekhar's Blog Post, Subscribing to WebSlices (MSDN).

I'm sitting here watching the news about the serial terror blasts that have shaken the national capital - New Delhi. As of this time there are 18 dead and 80 injured in 7 blasts across the city. An e-mail from the "Indian Mujahideen" have claimed responsiblity for this dastardly act.

This is about 2 months after a series of serial blasts across other cities in the country - all by this same terror group. The Chief Minister of Gujrat, a state highly affected by these blasts, proposes a new (though wierdly named) GUJCOC anti-terror law. The Home Minister, an obvisouly senile Mr. Shivraj Patil, along with Human Terror Rights groups, refuse it.

The UPA government has compeltely failed the Indian people. And other than playing minority (religion, caste, gender) based politics, they haven't done anything. And like Obama says, it is high time for change - and not just for one term but for multiple terms to undo all the problems this set of moronic politicians have done to our country (Article 370, Kashmir problem, Tamil problem, Punjab problem, religious appeasement, caste quotas to name just a few). As an Indian, I'd not like to see these people who are more concerned about appeasing a minority group than providing security for the people ever come back to power.

If you're a Vista Sidebar gadget freak like me, then this one is for you. I ran across a gadget called System Monitor from BuildAGadget.com. This is one that can show you a whole bunch of information about your currently running system. This includes:

1. Date
2. Time
3. Single, Dual, Quad core usage stats
4. Memory usage stats
5. WiFi signal strength
6. Battery status and remaining time
7. IP Address - both internal (NAT) and external
8. Network tools - like WHOIS, Ping, Trace route, IP and Domain lookups

This basically lets you replace a bunch of other system Sidebar tools. The nice thing is that you can easily enable or disable any of these "monitors" and individually configure settings for them such as what to display (text or graphics), color of the display bar, and other specific information (number of cores/which IPs to show, etc.).

This is a great tool to be quickly informed about a number of system resources and a must if you use the Vista Sidebar.