It's hard to miss the irony in the fact that the Visual Studio debuggers are riddled with bugs. As one of the most widely-used programming tools I'd expect it to be polished beyond reproach, however even in the managed world the debugger is - to put it mildly - not perfect.

The VS2003/.NET 1.1 debugger is particularly susceptible to threading issues. It stalls, it barfs, it lies, and now it even triggers exceptions in your code that aren't even documented in MSDN - I was getting ThreadStopExceptions on some of my threads while stepping over instructions. There was no way to know when it might happen and no way to reproduce it consistently. I was reluctant to blame the debugger at first, but this thread provided both the culprit and the solution: close all locals, autos and watch windows and you should be right as rain.

Part of a very large project we're working on stopped working oh-so-suddenly for one of my colleagues. An exception would be thrown on initializing .NET Remoting - specifically when instantiating a TCP port. Here's part of the exception content:

System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted

at System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels.Tcp.TcpServerChannel.StartListening(Object data)
at System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels.Tcp.TcpServerChannel.SetupChannel()
at System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels.Tcp.TcpServerChannel..ctor(IDictionary properties, IServerChannelSinkProvider sinkProvider)
at System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels.Tcp.TcpChannel..ctor(IDictionary properties, IClientChannelSinkProvider clientSinkProvider, IServerChannelSinkProvider serverSinkProvider)

... (deleted)

Running netstat -b proved that some process or another was indeed listening on that particular port, however it failed to say which process is responsible (just said "System".) Running the excellent SysInternals utility TCPView also proved futile, as it displayed a prominent <non-existent process> in the Process column.

As usual, at this point I turned to the 'net; a quick search provided a hypothesis that IIS was somehow responsible for hogging the port; this didn't seem to make sense because IIS was not involved (the channel was not hosted in IIS, nor was it an HTTP channel to begin with) and shutting the IIS services down didn't help any either. Listing the active services via tasklist /svc proved useless as well, as did a reboot.

After some serious searching I picked up this thread in the pgsql.hackers newsgroup; apparently they had similar issues with broken security (AV, firewall) software not uninstalling properly; a lot of security-related software products (called Layered Service Providers, or LSPs) install their own TCP/IP handlers into an appropriate chain in the Windows TCP/IP stack. Although that wasn't the case here, we figured it can't hurt to try the solution pointed to by the newsgroup participants; LSP-Fix is a utility that rebuilds the appropriate registry entries in an effort to restore the handler chain to a working condition. One reboot later and everything was back to normal.

I'm still not clear on the cause of the issue, but this information might prove useful up ahead...

The immediately good news: the 2.0.1 version of Hebrew OpenOffice.org is out - go and download it! It features a whole bunch of bugfixes, primarily fixes to the way tables in Word files are imported. I don't use Word much - particularly not for Hebrew files - so I can't righly comment on it, however I've been told by friends and peers that this bug was one of the biggest issues they had with the 2.0 Writer.

Also, a tip: it's not obvious nor exactly trivial, however it IS possible to do regression analysis and include trend lines in Calc sheets and charts; check this tutorial out (via xslf on the OOo.il forum).

Although I enjoy using GAIM, it has several issues - most notably a very poor UI experience, which is being worked on in the 2.0 betas (which are perfectly usable, by the way). The second most obvious problem I've been having is to get GAIM to receive Hebrew messages from buddies on ICQ. This issue can be easily fixed by accessing the ICQ account properties and changing the Encoding field:

The default encoding is ISO Western (ISO-8859-1); to get Hebrew properly just disable the account, change the encoding to Windows Hebrew (Windows-1255) and re-enable it. Although not technically correct, ISO Visual Hebrew (ISO-8859-8) seems to work too.

I'm not sure if the Western encoding is indeed the default - I've been importing my account settings since GAIM 1.3 or so - but I'll look into it and file the appropriate bug report (encoding should be set to what is appropriate according to the current locale, at least in Windows).

Check this out, then stop wasting our collective time and send a supportive e-mail to alexness at toysforbob dot com.

GET ON WITH IT!

The other day my laptop started acting up - it slowed down to a crawl then barfed on burning a disc (which I originally attributed to irregular I/O behavior on the side of µTorrent); that in itself was annoying, but it only raised warning signs when another burn (this time without any active background applications) failed in the exact same spot.

I decided to run scandisk (which, being that I'm running only one partition, would not run until the next reboot), and over the next three hours I could do nothing but stare at what any seasoned computer professional will sadly tell you is one of the most horrible sights in existence:

Three hours later I have a fully-functional laptop with over 5MB of bad sectors (and, as the same seasoned computer professional will tell you, the problem is only exacerbated with time) that runs somewhat slower than it ought to on I/O operations. Luckily the warrantee is still in effect, but invoking it means having to spend days without my laptop.

Almost makes me wish I bought an HP (unless I'm mistaken, they have a "if it breaks we'll replace it for you at home within 24 hours" kind of policy), but then I remembered that my laptop has been customized by the shop in which I bought it (with a 7200RPM Hitachi drive instead of the standard 5400RPM one). Since I'm not even (remotely) new to hard drive crashes I knew what this meant - a trip to the store, which sends the drive to the local importer, waiting for days while it's being "examined" and then another trip to the store to get it back. What makes it even worse is that the shop where I bought the laptop (Lamir) is situated in another part of the country.

Luckily the lab guys were kind enough to allow me to remove the hard drive and send it to them via courier, which should save me a couple of unnecessary trips to the centre of Israel. I'm not sure how support services work in other countries, but this is quite unusual here - normally warrantee on branded products is voided if you tamper with them (even if it's something as trivial as removing or installing a hard drive yourself), so in that I have to thank them. I just hope the rest of the experience is as pleasant.

Now I'm off to get myself a NAS device to back up my stuff on.

There's a recent fashion among blog-savvy developers in looking for the "ultimate programming font." This has been around as long as programmers, but the discussion has recently been sparked again by the impending release of Microsoft's Windows Vista along with its slew of new fonts. I'm not the early adopter type so I couldn't really be bothered and stuck with the default fonts, until I got a new monitor at work and figured it was about time to ditch good ole Courier New try for something with a little more panache.

A good couple hours later I had a large selection of fonts; the selection is actually quite overwhelming, however there are very few actually good fonts (for example, the Proggy fonts are generally considered some of the best around, but I can't stand looking at them) and fewer still could actually dethrone the aging but solid Courier New.

At first I actually considered using Consolas, although it's not easily obtainable. A quick Google Images search provided me with the necessary visual example of what the font would look like (screenshot courtesy of Jeff Atwood):

Honestly? The font looks horrible. I find the fuzziness introduced by the ClearType rendering very hard to swallow (the font looks as though it's suffering from colour-bleeding, even though it's not). I couldn't be bothered to even try installing the font.

A casual comment from a reader in one of the blog posts I've read struck me as brilliantly simple: I've been using OpenOffice.org for quite a while now (give it a try!), and the default font for Writer is a relatively new font from Bitstream (via GNOME) called Bitstream Vera. It originally struck me as an impressively neutral font - pleasing to both eyes and mind. Apparently a monospace version of the Bitstream Vera Sans font is included with OOo (and additionally available via the previous link); it's professional, it's free and it looks great (screenshot shamelessly stolen from this place):

I heartily recommend the Bitstream Vera Sans Mono font for programmers (note that it takes a bit of hacking for it to work with Visual Studio 2003, although it works just fine with 2005).

Finally, if neither of the above fonts suits you, there's a huge list of programmer fonts here; one alternatives you should look into is Andale Mono, which is very slick and functional.

Windows is anything but user-friendly if you're not a local administrator, or so I learned when my dad asked to be able to convert CDs to MP3s so he can listen to them on his PDA. A simple enough task, I figured I'll just configure Exact Audio Copy to "dumb mode" and leave instructions on how to use it (basically, double-click the icon; select the appropriate drive; Alt+G to get the information from freedb; select relevant songs; F5).

For some reason my dad (whose user is not a local admin so as to keep spyware and other crud off our system) couldn't access any but the generic (Daemon Tools and other emulation layers) CD drives. It took me two hours (!) to figure out that:

1. Windows 2000 and on does not come with an ASPI layer installed
2. Most software (including EAC) has been updated to use the native API calls instead and do not require ASPI
3. The native calls fail for non-administrative users (!)

Installing an ASPI layer is supposed to remedy the situation; I've opted to use ForceASPI 1.8 (instead of the default Adaptec installer) but that did not have any effect. To make a (very) long story short, the way to handle this is to use Frog Rights, which finally solved the problem.

To add to my frustration, however, after screwing around with ASPI drivers for hours Nero would no longer recognize my DVD-RW; I figured I'll just intsall the latest Adaptec ASPI drivers which completely screwed up my system - Windows XP would no longer boot and the only clue a logged boot would provide is that something goes very wrong loading the fastfat.sys driver. Nothing I did over the next four hours would allow the computer to boot; oddly enough, my brother managed to boot the machine by simply removing the empty DVD-R media in the DVD burner (a major WTF). We're still not clear on the problem.

Update: Apparently Nero has its own tool for this purpose called Nero BurnRights, which works like a charm.

I've been playing around with Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide for the PocketPC for a couple of days now, trying to find a useful program for cataloguing and keeping track of my DVD collection. I couldn't find any free software that didn't outright suck, so I turned to commercial software instead; LMMG seemed to fit the bill - mini-database of DVD releases, the ability to easily categorize and keep track of my DVDs and all sorts of nice features.

I did find out, though, that I'm sorely missing an import/export feature. It would be cool to be able to post my movie list somewhere, or send reminders to friends to whom I"ve lent movies that those movies are due back and all sorts of neat stuff that you can only do if you have access to the movie list.

Not even a customer yet, I've fired an e-mail to LandWare's support department:

I'm seriously considering purchasing the Movie Guide (I've been testing it thoroughly for the last hour or so), but have one serious qualm with it: my movie collection can not be imported/exported (preferably to a well-documented CSV or XML-based file format). Additionally, although my PDA does not feature internet connectivity it would be great if movies could link to IMDB/some other online movie repository (either directly or via title search).

Are either of these features likely to be included in the software? The import/export feature is practically a show-stopper for me (I'd like to be able to e-mail my DVD list to friends and that sort of thing).

A day or so later I get the following reply:

Hi Tomer,

As of last night, Movie Guide for Pocket PC now provides an import/export feature, using tab-delimited files.

Product info: http://www.landware.com/movieguide/ppc/
Conduit Documentation: http://www.landware.com/movieguide/conduit/ppc/

I'll log your other comments for our developers; what exactly are you looking for with regard to online connectivity?

Josh

If that isn't good service, I don't know what is. I'm sold.

Reading a couple of posts on The Old New Thing (Raymond Chen's blog) made me realize that compatibility issues, except for being a general headache, have a lot of nontrivial repercussions. Take this example of a network interoperability issue: Samba, the standard Linux implementation of an SMB server, supports a feature called fast directory queries. Apparently the feature had been (until recently) broken, and because Windows XP never made use of the feature this was a non-issue until internal tests with Vista brought it to light.

A naïve developer would, at this point, assume that Microsoft would let the responsible party know that they have a bug and move on. Things are obviously not that simple, but for reasons you wouldn't expect: exactly because Samba is such a widespread product, any user encountering the bug (assuming he/she'd even notice something was wrong - the bug in question is not easy to spot) for the first time would automatically assume a bug in Windows Vista (a fairly reasonable assumption considering you could never hit that bug with older versions of Windows). Worse still, although the bug was fixed quickly there is no guarantee that the fix will actually be installed on the problematic devices. For starters, there is a chain of responsibility which starts with the administrator of the offensive device and ends in the product vendor; this means that in some cases the vendor will not install the bugfix by default and will void the support contract if a "vigilante" administrator installs it locally. Second, Samba is often used in embedded devices (such as network attached storage [NAS] devices) which may or may not be firmware-upgradable by the user.

Regardless of the solution Microsoft decides on (Raymond is actively seeking ideas - if you have any, make sure to drop a comment), some of the proposed solutions have even subtler repercussions that need to be considered. For example, one of the proposed solutions is to detect and maintain a list of "bad" servers for which fast queries will be disabled. Apparently this is a potential security hazard, because a malicious user can make use of this feature to launch denial of service-like attacks on the client (it's not obvious how this can be done, so Raymond elaborates on this point in a follow-up).

One of the disadvantages of working on relatively low-profile software is that you hardly ever get to tackle security issues such as these, so you only get food-for-thought by reading articles and blogs. But I guess that's what the blogosphere is for in the first place, no?