Robert McLaws: FunWithCoding.NET

What is a Flog? Well, according to the Republican National Convention's website at GOP.com, it's a Fact Log. And what is GOP.com's Flog running on? None other than .Text. I had a hint based on the layout, but my suspicion was confirmed by clicking on the "Flogger" link under the definition. You're taken to http://www.gop.com/flog/Skins/Marvin3/newpost.aspx. Marvin3 is one of the skins that comes with .Text.

News.com has an interesting rundown of the use of technology by this year's Presidential candidates. Interesting. Very interesting indeed. A few people pointed this out a while back, but it's good that the mainstream media picked up on the current incarnations of politics and technology.

I'm still at a loss as to why the J# Redistributable is required for VS2005, even when I don't want J# as a language. Is there any explanation as to why the install process has to be longer because of this? I'd really rather it not be installed if it doesn't have to be.

What is the "v1 Uncertainty Theorem". It's a term I've created to explain a common phenomenon in the sofware industry. It states "The rate of adoption for any software product will be minimal as long as it is still the first major release." In a nutshell, it means that harly anyone uses v1.0 of a product, no matter how cool it is.

So I've downloaded all of the VS2005 ISOs, and they're all burned to CDs. Here's my first bit of feedback. Microsoft: Why did you make a 3MB ISO (AmberPoint)? Isn't that a waste of, among other things, a CD? My suggestion for the final release is to combine the Visio Tools, AmberPoint Express, and the Remote Debugger into one CD. Make it the "Visual Studio 2005 Extras" disc, and bring the CD count down from 8 to 6.

Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 is now live on MSDN. Get it while it's hot.

Addressing some of Matt's issues with the last B3 build, I've updated the download. Anyone who was using the 2407 build, just use the same download link to download the updated zip file. Fixed in this build:

I'm really pissed off. This comes as news to probably about 3 people, but this time, I have good reason. It's about 11am Europe time and the announcements are all up on the MSDN home page, so I'm finally able to talk about this without breaking all my NDAs (I'm currently under 7 different Microsoft NDAs).