Managed World

It's moments like these that make me proud to be a Microsoft employee. Here's an excerpt:

Students have scheduled appointments with teachers, typed into their online calendars, instead of being limited to structured times for classes. Their laptops carry software that assesses how quickly they're learning the lesson. If they get it, they'll dive deeper into the subject. If not, they get remedial help.

Lessons will have more incorporation of current events to teach subjects. For instance, a question of whether Philadelphia is safe from the avian flu will teach students about geography, science and history.

"Learning is not just going to school," said Shirley Grover, the school's energetic principal who came from the American School in Milan, Italy. "Learning is equal to life."

If this proves to be viable and we find it happening elsewhere, it just may be a way to save our public education system. Perhaps if this trend continues, I'll revisit the decision to home-school my kids (no I don't have any yet, but my wife and I are hoping to :D) and send them to public school instead.

Way to go Microsoft (and BillG) for stepping up and trying to make this country better. Everybody knows that MS has performed some "questionable acts" in the past, so it's nice to see the company start "walking the walk" when it comes to changing the world for the better.

My hope is that this news sparks a competitive attitude from Apple. With how much Apple has dominated the education system as the vendor of choice, I hope they try their own "school of the future" project. This kind of competition would be a win-win for everyone. Imagine, two of the largest OS companies in the world competing to see who can make the best school? How cool would that be?!?

I'll be updating this post over time to reflect new resources that are made available regarding the transactions platform in Windows.

Websites:

• [Transactions] Transactions Programming Forum - MSDN
• [Transactions] Transaction Management in Windows - Microsoft.com
• [TxF] TxF Documentation - MSDN

Blogs:

• [Transactions, TxF] Jim Johnson
• [Transactions] Florin Lazar
• [TxF] Jason Olson

Specific blog posts:

• [Transactions] An MSDTC proxy enhancement (MLTM) - Jim Johnson 
• [TxF] Integration between System.Transactions and TxF - Jim Johnson
• [TxF] What is TxF and why do I care? - Jason Olson
• [TxF] Introducing TxF - Transacted File Delete - Bart De Smet
  

Media:

• [Video] [TxF] Transactional Vista: KTM and Friends - Channel 9
• [Video] [TxF] Vista: Transactional File System - Channel 9
• [Webcast] [TxF] The Revolutionary Vista TxF Infrastructure - MSDN
• [Webcast] [TxF] Developing Applications For Windows Vista With Transactional NTFS - MSDN
  
• [Screencast] [TxF] Developer, Meet Server - Transactional NTFS - Channel 9
• [Screencast] [TxF] Developer, Meet Server - Transactional NTFS + WCF - Channel 9

If you feel I have left any out, please let me know so I can update my list :).

After my post the other day linking out to a post about authoring file systems on Linux with Mono, I decided that I wanted to try it out myself. So, I went and grabbed the latest Ubuntu, and sojourned out to install it under Virtual PC 2004.

I remember trying to do this 6-12 months ago and having it fail _miserably_ for me (or most of the Linux distros for that matter) when trying to install under Virtual PC 2004. Eventually, I just gave up. Now that I have a little more knowledge on Linux and virtual machines using Virtual PC/Virtual Server, I decided to try again. Luckily, I'm now up and running with Ubuntu in a virtual machine. It wasn't without its hardships though.

Since I don't really use my virtual machines for multimedia purposes, I haven't bothered looking into whether the sound is working properly or not. Besides, my largest problem was with the graphics display. And if I can't even see what the hell I'm doing, how am I suppose to figure out if the sound is working :). Basically, when booting up Ubuntu, the graphics would freak out, go into a total whacko resolution, and there was no usage-o going on-o. This was easily fixable though. First, on the boot menu, I chose a display of 1024x768. Second of all, I forced it to boot with the vesa driver. You can either use the "boot with safe graphics" option or simply add "xforcevesa" as a boot option to the regular boot (which I ended up doing even though that might be the only difference between the two options. After doing that, my graphics were fine and I was living happily in Ubuntu land (as an aside: now I see why people are so excited about Ubuntu; it comes a _long way_ in bridging the "usability gap" between Windows/MacOS and Linux for the "typical" computer end-user (not the geek, mind you)).

Of course, after all this, I found this article on the Ubuntu site describing how to install it under Virtual PC 2004. How in the world could I have missed that article six months ago? I'm hoping it's just because the article is new and not because I'm a total tool.

So, to make a long story short, if you're wanting to try out Ubuntu under Virtual PC 2004 (and why wouldn't you considering everything you need is free :D), make sure to check out the guide from Ubuntu. It will save you time and heartache if you're not a Linux guy.

While I'm on the topic of Transaction resources out there, I might as well give a more detailed list. Just off the top of my head, here's the resources you should definitely be checking out if you want to get into transactions on the Windows platform (or even if you are already using transactions on the Windows platform):

Microsoft Sites:

• Transactions Programming Forum on MSDN
• Transaction Management in Windows

Blogs:

• Jim Johnson
• Florin Lazar
• Well, and I hope, me :).

If I have left out any obvious ones, please let me know so I can update my list :).

I came across this article today by Sahil Malik. If you are wanting to get up to speed with System.Transactions in general, as well as how it integrates with ADO.NET, make sure to check it out. He also covers some general concepts regarding transactions as well. So, if you are wanting to understand and be able to explain concepts like Transaction Managers, Resource Managers, Durable Enlistments, etc., also make sure to read it :).

Enjoy!

Jim Johnson has a new post about how to use TxF with the new model in Vista RC1. You will obviously need the RC1 bits to mess around with it.

I'm hoping to expand on this topic in the future to show some code samples of using it not only by itself, but also using it with SQL and the like. I'll also have some "context" posts around that describing the architecture and relationships around TxF so you can better understand the articles.

Until then, go check out Jim's post :).