Spec# is a terrible name. C-clef would have been better.

Microsoft Research's RiSE has another pre-print out on Spec#. The Spec# specification language is old news by now, and so it's unfortunate that the name "Spec#" has not been changed because it means it probably is going to stick. Unlike the name "C#", "Spec#" is terribly unimaginative. It's like naming your first child "Hermione" and then naming your second child "Two".

Wouldn't it have made more sense to continue the musical analogy? For example, a C-clef is a conventional symbol from music theory that is used to specify the desired meaning of the lines that follow. Thus, it makes a lot of sense to use it as a name for specification language for C#, right?

Instead, we get Spec# (i.e., "specsharp"), which actually seems quite dull...

Microsoft's version of Google Scholar?

I accidentally ran into this today. Microsoft has their own version of Google Scholar:

• Microsoft Academic Search (aka Journalogy(.com)?):
  • http://academic.research.microsoft.com/
  • http://journalogy.com/

Among other things, it will even generate aggregate statistics on a particular author you're interested in (number of publications, number of citations, etc.). In fact, it can even generate similar aggregates for journals and conferences (which augments the metrics you can already get from ISI databases).

Unfortunately, some of the candy tools (co-author graph and path – tools that have little functionality but lots of coolness) require Silverlight. I tried running them with Moonlight, which crashed Firefox but seemed to work in Chrome. I say "seemed" because the Silverlight/Moonlight applet loaded fine but was populated with no information. Moreover, doing searches within the applet also returned no information. However, I haven't tried it on a Windows (nor Wine) machine for comparison, and so maybe co-author graphs/paths just aren't ready for production yet. I realized yesterday that it might be wrong to interpret MAS as a product for research so much as a product still being developed within Microsoft Research.

LIBRARY ACCESS UPDATE: As of March 11, 2011, it is very possible that your university's library proxy is not yet configured to allow access through Microsoft Academic Search. If you try to access the search engine through your library proxy and it fails at the MAS address, try it again at the Journalogy address. Strangely, these two names resolve to the same address, but neither is a CNAME. Moreover, neither uses a HTTP redirect to the other. Regardless, many library proxies search their database of allowable hosts by name, and so trying either name may help. If neither name works, contact your library and have them add MAS.

Trashy "untrash Ohio" campaign

UPDATE: I have received a response from the Executive Director of the campaign:

Hello Ted,

Thank you for your email. In this case, the apple core is the trash as it is waste out of place. The Trash Spoils Everything, Untrash Ohio campaign is specifically targeted at males ages 18-35. Research shows that the majority of littering is done by Caucasian males, aged 18 to 35-years-old. In fact, 71% of the litter found along streets and highways is caused by persons less than 35 years of age, according to the Institute for Applied Research. Most individuals litter because they have no sense of ownership or responsibility to the property they are trashing and assume someone else will pick-up what they have left behind. Of course, not all males in this age range litter and we know that.

This age group does use the environment for activities they enjoy but do not think about the trash they leave behind. The idea of the campaign is to show how one piece of trash spoils the environment for everyone and the activities that they enjoy. I understand your thoughts on the apple core but the idea is to get people to think about proper waste disposal and not just throwing their waste on the ground, whether it is biodegradable or not. No, apple trees are not littering when their fruit falls on the ground, but when people put it there it is litter. KOB is addressing litter in this campaign, not the issue of golf courses.

I hope that this answers some of your questions. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.

Sincerely,

Kerry

Kerry Crossen
Executive Director

Keep Ohio Beautiful
P.O. Box 12776
Cincinnati, OH 45212-0776
614.604.2136
www.keepohiobeautiful.us

On Ohio roads, you can now find billboards for the new untrash Ohio campaign. One of them that I see daily is

It confuses me. Which one is the trash? Is it the biodegradable apple core that will rot away in a week? Or is it the golf ball that will sit in that spot forever until some animal chokes on it and dies?

What's worse? An apple tree dropping lots of apples or a golf course dropping lots of golf balls? Evidently untrash Ohio has something against apple trees.

I haven't done the leg work, but I bet that untrash Ohio is just a front for some shady collaboration between Microsoft and the NGCOA...

Thanks, Microsoft, for SP3. I was getting tired of being happy.

UPDATE (THE FIX!!!): I decided to search Google again, and I found that several days after my support request, a new Microsoft support article (KB951830) was posted that describes the SAME problem as the old one (KB951446). However, in the new one, a HOTFIX is given. Strangely enough, that hotfix is NOT being distributed via Windows Update, and so you'll have to manually download and install it. I have informed the Microsoft support engineers (I've racked up two of them by now) about all of this.

NOTE: It might be important to note that before applying this patch, on the advice of the Microsoft support staff, I removed all registry keys that started with "$%&'()*+." (without the quotes). Evidently these keys are created by the SP3 install, but McAfee (which I was unable to disable due to network policy) wouldn't allow it. There were HUNDREDS of these keys (in each HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet*) and I had to delete them in SAFE MODE (to disable McAfee).

I also was asked to remove the keys (wordwrapped here):

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root\LEGACY_CCPROXY
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root\LEGACY_LIVEUPDATE_NOTICE_EX
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root\LEGACY_LIVEUPDATE_NOTICE_SERVICE
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root\LEGACY_LIVEUPDATE_NOTICE

None of those keys existed on my system.

UPDATE: After weeks of back and forth between me and Microsoft support, I'm finally in touch with an "Escalation Engineer" who is trying to get to the bottom of the problem.

Every morning, I'm still manually restarting my SharedAccess service after reconnecting my laptop. Otherwise, the Windows firewall blocks my access to the DNS running on the gateway. However, every other service gets through fine. That is, if I hard-coded my laptop's DNS, I think everything would be fine.

IF this problem is not a universal bug in SP3, it's something that was caused by installing SP3 with McAfee turned on (I can't turn it off due to network policy).

The Escalation Engineer seems to think that the problem might be fixed by installing a third party unsupported VBS script from some random blog by some Microsoft "MVP", but as far as I can tell, that fix prevents rebooting when SP3 is installed on some AMD systems. My system is an Intel Xeon system, and so I don't think it will make a difference. In fact, if I run it, it tells me that I don't need to run it because I'm on an Intel system. That's a good thing, because otherwise I'd have to uninstall SP3 and then run it. I would have been PISSED if the Escalation Engineer told me to uninstall SP3 and run the script just to find out that I had an Intel machine and the fix had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.

Hopefully a hotfix is coming soon...

What a stupid fucking bug (KB951446) posted on May 6 with no indication that it will ever be fixed.

So, if you have a single computer (e.g., a laptop) connected to your ICS machine via a crossover cable, every time you disconnect that single computer, your ICS is going to die. The next time you reconnect, you have to restart the ICS service MANUALLY.

Remember that scene in High Fidelity where Rob explains to Barry that he just wants noise on in the background that he can ignore? That's the way I feel about Windows. I don't use it. I don't need it. I don't want it. I just have to have it for a few tedious things, and so I'd like it to sit back and do its thing without getting in my way. Right when I start forgetting that it's there, Microsoft goes ahead and does something to remind me it's still around. It's like some disease that just won't go away.

I've also heard a rumor that XP3's ICS restricts you to sharing your connection with no more than 10 other computers. That's pretty dumb too.

Aurora: Ribbit all grown up

I just found out that Ribbit, the program that gave LaTeX support to Microsoft® Word (on Microsoft® Windows), has changed its name to Aurora and has lots more features. From its web page:

• No more mouse-hunting for symbols—enter great-looking math quickly and efficiently using the standard language of scientific typesetting.
• Express any scientific concept from mathematics, computer science, chemistry, engineering, and many other areas.
• Full integration with Microsoft® Word, PowerPoint®, Visio®, and Excel®.
• Built-in LaTeX document converter.
• Advanced support for equation numbering.
• Works with any Windows application that has an “Insert Object...” function or lets you paste images.

In short, Aurora brings to Windows what a countless many applications (e.g., LaTeX Equation Editor) bring to OS X.

There's a 30-day free trial. After that, Aurora is $45 for regular users and $35 for academic users. If you don't have MiKTeX (or some alternative) installed, it can install a free micro version for you.

Other notable examples of Windows applications with LaTeX integration include AbiWord, OpenOffice (see OOoLatex), and TeXmacs.

My LaTeX-using colleagues would want me to reminder the reader that if you know enough LaTeX to be entering equations using it, you probably should just be using LaTeX directly. Why fake it? Despite Aurora's claim that it is "even better than the real thing," it's a distant second at best. That being said, it is SO much better than the Microsoft® Equation Editor, which should absoultely never be used.