It was wonderful to see that Microsoft have finally realized that the lack of standards compliance in their web browser is actually holding back the internet. Regrettably, they still seem to have a long way to go.

In the Microsoft Developer Network Blog Chris Wilson, an IE Platform Architect, writes that IE 8 will have an extra mode where it actually complies with the World Wide Web Consortium standards.

Unfortunately, the IE8 team have decided that the best way to comply with web standards is for all authors to add their own non-standard meta tag to indicate that the content is compliant, otherwise they intend the product to render content in their own irregular way.

Full marks to Microsoft for finally realizing that standards are essential, but probably the solution to backward compatibility deserves a D-.

A better solution would have been to render pages that are served to IE8 in the new “super standards” mode, and to render broken, or IE5, IE6, or IE7 specific pages in a compatibility mode, whilst displaying a message warning users that the page is flawed. This would encourage web developers to comply with web standards and would reduce the risks from malware that relies on quirks in rendering of malformed HTML.

In Java, it is necessary to put a letter “L” after a numeric constant when it of type long.
Although Java permits a lower case “L” it is better to consistently use an upper case “L”, as the lowercase “L” can be easily confused with a numeric 1, when reading code.
For example, both variables x and y, are assigned the same value here, but can easily be read as having different values.

long x=10l; //watch out, this has a lower case "L" not a numeric 1 at the end.
long y=10L;


WordPress have recently released a security update for their blogging software.

The security updates have been downloaded from http://wordpress.org/download/ and installed.

WordPress makes the upgrades trivially easy, as long as you have direct ftp access to the server.

Having spent the last day and a bit re-installing software on my Dell Inspiron 530, I was disappointed to find that the “Send To” option in Microsoft Office 2007 was greying out “email recipient”, despite having a fully working Copy of Mozilla Thunderbird to communicate with.

I assume this is an error in the installation, rather than a protectionist measure by Microsoft, although it may be there to encourage people to install Microsoft Outlook, or use the Microsoft mail client that is built into Vista, as a replacement for Microsoft Outlook Express.

There is a fix, but it does require a registry edit that worked for me on Microsoft Windows Vista Premium. It will probably work on other versions of windows.

You should only attempt this if you are happy editing your windows registry with Regedit and understand that there are terrible consequences if you make some errors.

1. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Messaging Subsystem
   Locate the following registry values. Typically, these values are listed in the Windows Messaging Subsystem key.
   
Name Type Data
MAPI REG_SZ 1
CMC REG_SZ 1
CMCDLLNAME REG_SZ Mapi.dll
CMCDLLNAME32 REG_SZ Mapi32.dll
MAPIX REG_SZ 1
MAPIXVER REG_SZ 1.0.0.1
OLEMessaging REG_SZ 1

2. If any of these registry values are missing, follow these steps to add the values:
   1. Click the Windows Messaging Subsystem subkey, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click String Value.
   2. Type the name of the missing value, and then press ENTER.
   3. Click the new value, and then click Modify on the Edit menu.
   4. In the Edit String dialog box, type the correct value for the missing string value in the Value data box.
   5. Repeat steps a – d for each value that is missing from the table that is in step 1.
3. On the File menu, click Exit

Finally, when you restart your Micorsoft Office 2007 application, the “send” option on the file menu will include “Email” as a functional option and Microsoft Word or Excell will be happy to send documents as attachments using Mozilla Thunderbird, or some other Email client.

The new shiny Dell Inspiron 530 has finally arrived. It appears that Dell have moved away from their old dark grey to a shiny Steel look.

The computer seems robust and well made – I only hope it lasts longer than the Fujistu Siemens machine.

I learnt from my previous PC that apart from some software incompatibilities, Windows Vista does not support the majority of powered USB Hubs.

Fortunately for me, the Dell Inspiron that I have ordered has 8 USB ports, which means I probably won’t need a USB hub for all my devices.

I would hope that Microsoft could see its way to creating a patch for Vista which will allow all the XP compatible Powered USB hubs to work.

Apparently most unpowered USB 2.0 hubs do appear to work on Windows Vista, but that means it is essential to pick and choose which devices are connected through such a USB hub. Device that are self powered, such as printers and UPS’s will be fine, as will other very low power USB devices, but items that charge from a USB port, such as mobile phones and MP3 players, need to be connected directly to the PC.

After the failure of the Fujitsu Siemens PC I’ve ordered a new Intel Quad Core Inspiron 530 to replace it.

With my new PC only just a month old, there has been a catastrophic failure of the hard disk drive. Windows Vista initially reported issues with the USN journal on my data partition.
Vista suggested formatting the drive.
Instead, I managed to get it back temporarily using a chkdsk /R and backed up the data.
With the data safe, I allowed it to attempt to reformat the data partition – it failed claiming that there were errors.
I tried a full system recovery, first from the recovery partition and then from the recovery DVDs I’d created when I received the machine.
The computer refuses to recognise the hard drive completely now, and has been returned.
John Lewis, who sold me the computer have refunded the money, as they were unable to replace it.