Ubuntu 8.04 Sound Problem

This morning I upgraded my laptop from Ubuntu 7.10 to Ubuntu 8.04.  The whole process took almost exactly 4 hours.  The only significant problem was that sound was no longer working properly from within Firefox.  BBC Radio was silent on the BBC iPlayer, and when I selected to play it in RealPlayer, I got only garbled speech.  However, I could listen to it by starting RealPlayer10  outside Firefox and manually entering the URL of the .ram file.

A quick search on Google revealed  a post on Ubuntu Forums that suggested it might be a problem with the Totem plugin, and that the MPlayer plugin might be better.  I started Synaptic package manager and  completely removed the totem-mozilla package and installed mozilla-mplayer instead.  Now both the BBC iPlayer and RealPlayer work from within Firefox!

Installing BizTalk Server 2006 Trial Version on Windows XP

I had recently been fiddling with BizTalk at work and thought it might be nice to have the trial version to play with on my Windows XP Pro PC at home.  This turned out to be quite a bit more difficult than I had expected.  What follows is an outline of how I finally managed to do it.  This is not a complete how-to (you will probably need to refer to Google, MSDN, and the MS document "Installing and Configuring Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 on Windows XP" for details) but it could save you many hours of frustration.

1. Biztalk 2006 requires a non-express version of Visual Studio 2005 to be installed first (Visual Studio 2008 won't do, neither will the Express version of 2005).  I downloaded the 90-day trial Professional version from here  (requires registration).
2. This is a 2.7GB DVD image in ISO-13346 format. This format is apparently currently only used by Windows Vista, which I don't have access to, so I couldn't write it to a DVD.  Instead I downloaded the unsupported Microsoft tool Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel from here  (under More Information) and mounted the image as a virtual CD drive (see the readme file). Then I was able to install Visual Studio 2005 by going into the \vs\setup directory on the virtual drive and running setup.exe.
3. Visual Studio 2005 also installs SQL Server 2005 Express.  Biztalk 2006 requires the SP2 version of the latter (though it doesn't tell you until near the end of its install). I uninstalled all the existing SQL Server 2005 packages (Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs) and  then downloaded and installed Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express SP2 from here.
4. BizTalk requires Internet Information Services (IIS).  I installed them through Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs -> Windows Components (requires Windows XP installation CD).
5. BizTalk also requires the MS Management Console (Windows XP Update KB 907265).  I downloaded and installed it from here.
6. The BizTalk install needs to be run in the Windows XP System account.  If it isn't you get COM+ errors near the end of the install. I downloaded the Microsoft Sysinternals utility psexec.exe from here.
7. I downloaded the 120-day trial version of BizTalk Server R2 from here  (requires registration), unzipped it to C:\build,  copied psexec.exe into C:\build.  I then ran the Biztalk install in the System account as follows: Start -> Run -> C:\build\psexec.exe -s -i c:\build\setup.exe.  
8. I chose the default options at all stages (I think!) and where it asked for a username and password I gave the same administrator account and password each time (clicking Yes at the warning messages).  Eventually I got it so the BizTalk Server Configuration console showed that Enterprise SSO, Group, BizTalk Runtime and Business Rules Engine were enabled and only the HWS, BAM and EDI/AS2 components were disabled.  That was good enough for what I wanted to do, I hadn't expected the latter to work anyway.
9. I was then able to use Visual Studio and the Biztalk Server Admin console to create, deploy and test a simple BizTalk application.

The Superiority of Debian Package Management System

From a blog post by Eugueny Kontsevoy:

Most of curious souls who try to compare Linux to Windows usually start by picking Windows features one by one and comparing them to how Linux does that.  That's just wrong. Because there are things (at least in Ubuntu/Debian) that Windows simply doesn't do.  Take their package management system for instance.  Finding free software and installing/removing it from a central repository is awesome.  Windows, with its always broken registry and freakish MSI, makes it scary and generally "not safe" to install new software. In fact, Windows gradually gets more and more broken as you install something.  Hey, computer geeks, how often do you get a call from a friend, complaining that "My Windows computer got a lot slower"?  And what can be said about an OS that discourages you from installing software on it?

Exactly!  I can remember just the other day thinking to myself how superior the Debian package management system was (as exemplified by Synaptic on Ubuntu) when compared to the program installation and remove system on Windows.  The dependencies seemed to be tracked precisely and you are given the option of doing a complete removal which also deletes any associated configuration files that have been created.

How To Disable Firefox Quick Find

[Note added 2009-07-19: The advice given in this post is now out of date.  In modern versions of Firefox it is possible disable Quick Find using the menus.  On windows, click: Tools > Options > Advanced > General and deselect Search for text when I start typing.  On Linux click: Edit > Preferences > Advanced > General and deselect Search for text when I start typing.]

Recently I have found that when I start typing into a text box in Firefox I often get a Quick Find bar coming up at the bottom of the screen.  This happens if I am typing ahead.  Firefox seems to be interpreting characters typed at a web-page as a search string.  I don't remember having asked for this behaviour and I find it rather annoying.  I would much rather have Firefox silently ignore the type-ahead characters.  At least then I would not have to go to the trouble of removing the unwanted Quick Find bar (or sitting and waiting until it removes itself).  Fortunately a little research revealed the following fix:

Enter about:config in the Firefox URL line and click Go.

Select the line starting accessibilty.typeaheadfind and double click it until the Value field is false.

Windows Dead Messenger

For several years my daughter Zoe has been a avid user of MSN Messenger.  She uses to keep in touch with her friends after school and at weekends.   A few months ago I upgraded from MSN Messenger to Windows Live Messenger (WLM for short).  A week or so ago, WLM stopped working in Zoe's account (It would still work in administrator accounts).  The signing-in window would come up but when she typed in her user name the characters would be redrawn very slowly, with gaps of 5 or 10 seconds between them.  Password entry was quicker but then this error message would pop up:

Signing in to Windows Live Messenger failed because the service is temporarily unavailable.  Error code 800401f3.

(As an aside: this message was actually misleading: for Zoe the service was permanently unavailable.  People who write error messages should not make guesses.)

On the web I came across various suggestions for fixing the 800401f3 error: uninstalling and reinstalling WLM, re-registering some DLLs, etc, but none of them worked.  I eventually lost patience and just uninstalled it.

Then, today I remembered that Zoe had been chatting quite happily to her friends on Ubuntu using GAIM, so I thought I would see if I could install GAIM on Windows.  The first thing I found was that GAIM has been recently renamed Pidgin and has a nice friendly purple pigeon as a logo.  The installation process seemed clean and friendly too as I was doing it.  And then Zoe tried it out and she independently said she found it to be simple, friendly to use, and quick.

Now I think about it, I am surprised it has taken me so long to switching from MSN Messenger/WLM to GAIM/Pidgin.  After all, it is many years since I switched from Internet Explorer to Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox.   I think this must be down to the very low opinion I have of instant messaging in general: mindless drivel dressed up with garish emoticons and Liberace fonts .