Race to Linux Project Announced

An anonymous reader writes "According to Internetnews.com The Race to Linux project was announced Wednesday at the recent Microsoft Professional Developers Conference. The challenge: port an existing ASP.NET application to Linux using any cross-platform tool of choice, including Mono, Grasshopper and PHP. (Mainsoft offers tools that let Visual Studio users build applications that run natively in the Unix, J2EE and Linux environments.) Yaacov Cohen, CEO of Mainsoft stated: 'Linux is too big and ubiquitous to ignore.'"

Comments

Embrace, extend, extinguish...

[paranoidpenguin]

Is this Microsoft's plan? I'm so sick of stuff like this...

Re:Embrace, extend, extinguish...

[SpaceLifeForm]

PP is not off-topic.

Don't get yourself tainted messing with this 'project'.

Race to Linux?

[Matarick]

I thought somebody announced for a reward to port Linux to the Xbox 360? I guess I misread the topic.

what happened to "just a bunch

[Anonymous Coward]

"just a bunch of unix guys running around" ?
Then it was "cancer" and if you ask Balmer hs still wants to ignore it.

I thought Vista

[hungrygrue]

Was Microsoft's "Race to Linux" project?

Re:I thought Vista

[tuxguy]

Naw, Vista was Microsoft's 'race to Tiger' project ;)

Re:I thought Vista

[dot.solipsist]

Previously known as:

'Race to Puma'
'Race to Jaguar'
and
'Race to Panther'

Of Course

[Luke Psywalker]

.....but thats not what this article is about.

MainMicrosoft

[thedogcow]

Yaacov Cohen, CEO of Mainsoft stated: 'Linux is too big and ubiquitous to ignore.
Mr. Cohen spelled Mirco wrong.

Re:MainMicrosoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you spelled it wrong.

Re:MainMicrosoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, he spelled "Mirco" correctly.

First thoughts

[LiquidCoooled]

I first thought of porting "Hello World!" to linux.

Then I realised that the .net version is 17mb compressed and covers numerous files and resource images.

Re:First thoughts

[spongman]

Close, it's 3,072 bytes.

Your point is well taken, though. I think...

Re:First thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

where did you see the link to the source?
i couldn't find it.
could you please submit the link to get the code?

coward

Re:First thoughts

[shobadobs]

That's a lot of millibytes!

Re:First thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

Millibits. Little "b".

Re:First thoughts

[mrRay720]

3072 bytes? Well I guess that's good old M$ bloat in action! Why on Linux such a hello world app only takes up 3065 bytes, proving just how bloated, evil, slow blah blah M$ is!

Stop destroying the world with bloated 3072 byte hello world apps!

(Hey, biased religious insanity is the correct way to counter a factual statement disproving an incorrect sterotype regarding Windows, right?)

Re:First thoughts

[kesuki]

Now that's slashdot for you ;) someone posts a claim that hello world is 18 MB compressed in ASP.NET, and someone finds out it's 3072 bytes. complete with shebang it's 28 bytes for my program 'hw' which consists of "#!/bin/sh
echo hello world!"
but I hear what he's saying about 'compression bloat' with tar bz2 compression hw becomes 154 bytes

Re:First thoughts

[Nutria]

3072 bytes? Well I guess that's good old M$ bloat in action! Why on Linux such a hello world app only takes up 3065 bytes, proving just how bloated, evil, slow blah blah M$ is!

Stop destroying the world with bloated 3072 byte hello world apps!

$ cat src/c/hello.c
#include
#include
int main() { printf("Hello, World!\n"); }

$ gcc -O3 -o hello src/c/hello.c

$ dir hello
-rwxr-xr-x 1 me me 6966 2005-09-17 21:05 hello

$ strip hello

$ dir hello
-rwxr-xr-x 1 me me 3176 2005-09-17 21:05 hello

me@haggis:~$ gcc --version
gcc (GCC) 4.0.2 20050821 (prerelease) (Debian 4.0.1-6)

Re:First thoughts

[xouumalperxe]

actually, this bit of code: #include int main(int argc, char** argv) { printf("hello world!\n"); return 0; } just compiled to 12K with GCC under linux. go figure... those 3K hello worlds really are evil!

Re:First thoughts

[xouumalperxe]

I'm sorry. That should've been

#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{ printf("hello world!\n");
return 0;
}

Re:First thoughts

[DJStealth]

Try without -O3, optimizing the code makes it faster, but it takes up more disk space as a result.

Re:First thoughts

[Perky_Goth]

WHOOSH!
actually, being an interpreted executable, it seems rather large.

Re:First thoughts

[digidave]

Why would you tar a single file?

Re:First thoughts

[Professor_UNIX]

Just around 17k on my MacOS Tiger machine with gcc 4.0. Stripped down to 14k.

Re:First thoughts

[heinousjay]

But the last thing you want is a slow hello world!

Re:First thoughts

[vcv]

My hello world batch file is 17 bytes

Re:First thoughts

[misleb]

Economies of scale.

Re:First thoughts

[samael]

20kb for the version with a form with a button that pops up a Hello World Messagebox.

16kb for the Console version that just spits out "Hello World".

Re:First thoughts

[Nutria]

Try without -O3, optimizing the code makes it faster, but it takes up more disk space as a result.

Not in this tiny trival case.

A stripped "regular" hw is 3192 bytes, 1 quadword longer than the -O3 binary.

Since they both fit on a disk page, it doesn't really matter anyway...

Re:First thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, being an interpreted executable, it seems rather large.

The file sections are given large alignment, and I think the last one is padded out, for paging efficiency.

Re:First thoughts

[RupW]

A stripped "regular" hw is 3192 bytes, 1 quadword longer than the -O3 binary.

-O3 has permission to make the file much larger in order to run quicker (e.g. extreme loop unrolling and inlining, etc.). -O2 and -Os, for example, don't.

But frankly 3K is reasonable for the CRT start-up, etc., anyway.

Re:First thoughts

[FidelCatsro]

Hello World! on linux in 29 bytes

#!/bin/sh
echo "Hello World!"

Re:First thoughts

[DJStealth]

Unfortunately MS has an advantage on this one.

@echo Hello World

18 bytes

fall back to plan B - EOM

[Anonymous Coward]

EOM

Forget Software

[Walzmyn]

I want to see my mom and my wife ported to Linux so I can stop dual booting my machine and only have to keep up the non-profit tech support for one OS.

Re:Forget Software

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to see my mom and my wife ported to Linux so I can stop dual booting my machine and only have to keep up the non-profit tech support for one OS.

Isn't rude to dual boot your wife and mom and call them machines?

Re:Forget Software

[Anonymous Coward]

only for him, for everyone else it's "Saturday Night!"

Re:Forget Software

[Anonymous Coward]

I ported and duel booted your mom and wife a night last night. Wore me out!

Re:Forget Software

[Hosiah]

I want to see my mom and my wife ported to Linux so I can stop dual booting my machine and only have to keep up the non-profit tech support for one OS.

I used to have that problem. Then I said to myself, "Slowly quit being so good at solving Microsoft problems and keep solving Linux problems!" The problem went away a few months later!

Re:Forget Software

[holy zarquon's singi]

I used to have that problem. Then I said to myself, "Slowly quit being so good at solving Microsoft problems and keep solving Linux problems!" The problem went away a few months later!

It was more instant for me. I went from "I'll have a look at that if you want", to "Sorry, I'm a mac|unix guy. I don't know anything about Windows". Problem solved, instantly.

Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

if Microsoft really is a software company, they should get their products working on everything, who cares about the OS the customer chooses , Microsoft should support it regardless,
of course if they are *not* a software company then being a 1 trick pony is what we would expect

Re:Makes sense

[gallondr00nk]

I agree. Microsoft should port Office 2000 to my Commodore 64. That'll seperate the men from the boys!

Re:Makes sense

[RAMMS EIN]

``if Microsoft really is a software company, they should get their products working on everything, who cares about the OS the customer chooses''

Well, Microsoft does, and they very well should. If people can run MS Office, Exchange, etc. on better systems than Windows without jumping through hoops, businesses and schools may well decide they don't need Windows anymore. That would kill one of Microsoft's two cash cows. Since Office - the other cash cow - is already starting to lose popularity, that would be a very bad thing.

I seriously think that Microsoft is currently at or over their peak. Their flagship called Windows has made it to the ocean called 'Internet', but is found not to be seaworthy. Malware is penetrating it at an alarming rate, and it's only a matter of time before it will sink. It remains to be seen if their next OS will be any better. At the same time, their Office software has about reached the point where no new features can be important enough to attract many new customers, and since they have pretty much the whole market, they can only go down from here.

In both markets, they are receiving competition from opponents that they can't kill. Open source projects just won't die while there are still people using them. Right now, open source is still all potential and no real growth in the market that Microsoft is in. However, with cross-platform products like Firefox and OpenOffice.org slowly creeping in, it is only a matter of time until the benefits of jumping ship from Windows to Linux overcome the resistance, and then the self-sustaining system of platform lock-in will come crashing down.

Whether or not Microsoft actually loses most of their market share, the truth is that they will be forced to innovate and forced to compete, both of which eat into their profits. The days of them being a virtual monopoly are numbered.

Re:Makes sense

[markwalling]

how many cassete tapes is that going to use?

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately Microsoft wasn't split into OS company and software company (Thanks to G.W.Bush). That way they'd probably produce cross-platform software.

Re:Makes sense

[SeaFox]

if Microsoft really is a software company, they should get their products working on everything, who cares about the OS the customer chooses , Microsoft should support it regardless,

Of course, a software company being a type of business, Microsoft should port products to platforms if it will actually get a return on the effort. Just because an OS exists does not mean Micorsoft has some implied responsibility to support it. They develop based on the idea they will earn more money in sales than they spend on the writing/marketting of it. And such a return is not gauranteed with every OS.

Re:Makes sense

[mrRay720]

Funny, I thought that the idea of companies was to make money.

Supporting your major applications on a minority platform where a large number of the users have an irrational hatred of your company anyway?

Why the absurd claim that by not supporting every single minority OS out there, MS are not a real software company? That's like claiming that dogs aren't animals because they don't wqear contact lenses - the two ideas are completely different.

Looking at it the other way, code should never be GPL'd. A real developer wouldn't care about the license the user of the code wants to use.. Who cares about the license the customer choses, you should support it regardless.
Of course, with the OSS community being a 1 trick pony, I wouldn't expect anything else.

Re:Makes sense

[rm69990]

Yes, I'm sure the CIO's at corporations migrating to Linux on the desktop have an intense hatred of Microsoft and stay up until 4 in the morning posting about it on Slashdot.

Re:Makes sense

[vcv]

They certainly are not over with record profits. And at their peak, doubt it. Whether or not Vista is a good product (i think it will be), it will be hyped to high hell and it will push their profits even higher. If their peak is going to fall, it wont be in the next year or two.

Re:Makes sense

[public transport]

Funny, I thought that the idea of companies was to make money.

Funny, I thought the idea of companies was to make products, and that money is a means to that end.

Why the absurd claim that by not supporting every single minority OS out there, MS are not a real software company? That's like claiming that dogs aren't animals because they don't wqear contact lenses - the two ideas are completely different.

You are right, of course. They can choose the platforms to support. I think the belief many of us have is that if MS Office was producted by an independent company, it would have been ported to Linux by now. Of course, we don't know that.

Looking at it the other way, code should never be GPL'd. A real developer wouldn't care about the license the user of the code wants to use.. Who cares about the license the customer choses, you should support it regardless.

Who suggested that MS Office should change it's license? And do you think you can pick your license if you choose a commercial product? Many who use GPL do in fact offer other licensing options for a fee.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and Microsoft can make money by selling software for other platforms. Microsoft even made software for other platforms that they did not charge money for, for example, Media Player for MacOS and OS X. Microsoft can make money by selling software on any platform, not just Windows.

If they only make money on Windows and Office, that does not really make them a real software vendor, it does just make them a one trick pony. Currently the impression is that the only software worth buying from MS is pretty much Office and Windows, and if they are only making money by selling new versions of that software over and over it will not last forever.

An OS and an office suite isn't the most rare software these days and there are many versions, not just Microsoft's. Microsoft needs to give consumers something nobody else can provide them to stay relevant. What exactly is that?

Re:Makes sense

[mrRay720]

Funny, I thought the idea of companies was to make products, and that money is a means to that end.

You have it completely the wrong way around. The majority of companies exist for the sole reason of making money. It's the products that are a means to an end.

You are right, of course. They can choose the platforms to support. I think the belief many of us have is that if MS Office was producted by an independent company, it would have been ported to Linux by now. Of course, we don't know that.

Maybe, maybe not. So what though? I don't see why MS should be blamed for not actively supporting a product that competes with their flagship product.

Who suggested that MS Office should change it's license? And do you think you can pick your license if you choose a commercial product? Many who use GPL do in fact offer other licensing options for a fee.

Nobody suggested that, I was using as an example to point out how absurd the "Microsoft should do XYZ cos I say so!!" claims are.
The only reasons MS should ever have to do anything is (a) to create value for their shareholders and themselves, and (b) because they'd be breaking a law if they didn't.

Re:Makes sense

[public transport]

Seen from the company, the incentive is to make money. From societies point of view, the purpose of companies is to produce. We support capitalism / market economy because has proven the most efficient system to produce what we need for our welfare. However, it is not perfect, and this shows very in the case of a monopoly, esp. when it makes both OS and applications.

Now, this is not directly related to your post, but the relevace of the second view is that we as citizens we have the right to speak up when products which are economically viable by themselves are blocked by strategic considerations. It's a matter of pressure and possible invokation of antitrust. These are logical adjustments to the economy to account for the discrepancy between the monetary incentive of companies and their productivity. I will not defend the badly argued AC post you replied to, only point out that by perpetuating the "idea of companies are to make money" half-truth, you are effectively stating an opinion.

First..

[qa'lth]

they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.

Then you win.

Re:First..

[Anonymous Writer]

Then... Profit!!!

Re:First..

[eclectro]

Then... Profit!!!

No - then get modded down.

Will this lead to enlightenment?

[RAMMS EIN]

Interesting. I wonder if now, some people are going to discover that some of the tools and languages that work with Linux are really very convenient and superior to their Windows counterparts. Or that Windows using developers will finally be have some real arguments to back up their claims that their platform is superior as a development environment. At any rate, some people will learn how to write software that works on Linux (and likely other unices), which can only be a Good Thing.

Re:Will this lead to enlightenment?

[Anonymous Coward]

All I have to say is V4L2. Video=easy with linux. If we ever get to that "complete media system" utopia linux will be the embedded system of choice.

Re:Will this lead to enlightenment?

[mikael]

At the same time, Microsoft would also learn of the weaknesses in the Linux application development environment, and would use that against Linux. This will be from the viewpoint of an .ASP developer, rather as only a C/C++ developer.

Re:Will this lead to enlightenment?

[griffjon]

Honestly, it'll probably be such a foreign environment to most of 'em that they'll kvetch and complain... ...until finally someone says to them; "did you google for it?" or "did you ask in #whatever on freenode?"

Then they'll blink for hours, as a man coming into the light after years sitting in a cave watching shadows...

(apologies to Plato)

I win! I win!

[lisany]

echo "Hello World!\n";
?>

Re:I win! I win!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shorter version (in PHP):

Hello World!

FogCreek should enter

[discordja]

They already have an ASP to PHP compiler which they use to build their FogBugz software. Note this is not available to the general public, just bringing it up in relation to the topic.

Granted, I don't know if it's the .NET environment to PHP but I'd wager it probably is knowing FogCreek.

I always find Joel on Software to be an enjoyable read.

Re:FogCreek should enter

[QunaLop]

ASP is leagues behind PHP... and ASP.NET is leagues ahead of PHP... they really should not be compared at all. roughly, ASP is like VBScript for the web while ASP.NET is much more like JSP, but more powerful imho

Re:FogCreek should enter

[mrRay720]

No, as far as I'm aware, it's original ASP to PHP. Since both are plain scripting it's (relatively) easy, but going from ASP.NET to PHP would be completely different.

Reading about it on JoS a while ago, he says that it's not a general converter either - it only works because they follow certain strict rules when coding, that the translator can take advantage of. Let is loose on masses of random code written any which way and you'd probably find bad things happen.

A general purpose translator for this sort of thing is 5% of the work. The other 95% of the effort is in getting all of the corner cases and other oddities working right. Joel got around this by skipping the 2nd 95% and just coding in a certain manner.

Danger Will Robinson!

[Anonymous Coward]

Danger Will Robinson! The fox has entered the henhouse...

Race Times?

[hagrin]

Starting Monday September 19, 8AM US Pacific Time: To be announced.
Starting Friday September 23, 8AM US Pacific Time: To be announced.
Starting Monday September 26, 8AM US Pacific Time: To be announced.

How retarded? So to compete and be competitive, I need to take off from work as I live in New York and this is right during the middle of the work day? This basically eliminates any US coder with a full-time position.

Re:Race Times?

[Karma_fucker_sucker]

This basically eliminates any US coder with a full-time position.

Also those of us who are out of work an not living near the competition. I can't afford to fly out there.

I wonder when...

[Torinir]

I wonder when we're gonna see the new "Winmacux" OS?

With all the time and energy spent cross-porting applications from Linux to MacOS to Windows et al, I'd not be surprised if someone didn't attempt to make a hybrid OS that at least tries to bridge the three OS's together under one banner. It'd likely be the biggest piece of bloatware to ever grace a HDD, but it would prove interesting to see a system running MacOS, Windows, and Linux apps at the same time.

Of course, if that were to ever happen, I could see M$ trying desperately to buy the technology out. heh

Re:I wonder when...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun already did this.

It's called Java.

Re:I wonder when...

[ilyanep]

no problem...if I code that and get $2 mil from MS, then I'm happy

and they can handle the legal problems with any 'stolen' code from apple :D

Re:when are you going to learn...

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux does not suck. Power and security do not suck, unless you are a skiddie. To answer your question, "when Al Sharpton becomes President."

Orkut

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.orkut.com/ Is in asp.net and is a Google service. It is very slow(compared to other google services). This needs to be ported and brought up to speed!!!

Sounds Like A Useless Cluster Fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

In what form is the specification of the ASP.NET program provided? Working code, a web site, or a written specification? [Note that the first would be the most difficult form, since it would require reverse-engineering the app and would possibly NEVER produce the same application.]

How will the judges make their decision: on the quality of the (required) documentation, the config file's completeness, how the code handles entry errors or whether the program works?

This is not IMNSHO a worthwhile endeavor.

Linux port of HJ-Split

[wiresquire]

I've recently completed a port of HJ-Split to Linux.

So far, I've only completed a command line interface which I've called 'split' and 'cat'.

It should be available on most distros. Let me know what you guys think!

Re:Linux port of HJ-Split

[misleb]

Heh, and here I was dd'ing my files (incrementing the 'seek' value) to "split" my files. You are a godsend! Thank you!

-matthew

Good News, Bad News

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess this is a good news, bad news situation.

Good News: More Linux native games
Bad News: What .Net will do do Linux's security

This will lead to a "buyout"

[Dr_Marvin_Monroe]

I'm guessing that this will lead to a buyout of Mainsoft by Microsoft. There's no way that Microsoft can allow a free plugin that works with Visual Studio and ports to Linux to exist in the marketplace. I think that's exactly what the Mainsoft folks had in mind too...

Yeah, I know all that the stuff people want to say about "illegal" and whatnot...I used to think like that too. I've seen Microsoft get away with criminal activity too many times now to think it's NOT some type of conspiricy with the government. MS doesn't care about illegal, think of Balmer's recent press regarding Google..."I'm gonna kill that pussy.." They're not gonna let this place exist for any length of time... It's like putting raw meat in front of a bear...

Mainsoft's gonna get swallowed up whole. Microsoft will put up a press release about how "innovative" Mainsoft is, how they are going to provide plug-ins for Microsoft now, and then the product's gonna be cancled... End of story...

Why not...

[RoadkillBunny]

...just port ASP.Net to Linux?

Re:Why not...

[adolfojp]

They already did, it is called MONO. It runs my ASP.NET apps in apache or through its own portable XSP server rather well. A little slower actually but with an acceptable performance cost ratio nevertheless.

Don't knot your knickers

[Gribflex]

Before you get your knickers in a knot, I sugest that you read the article.

No, MainSoft is not a typo for Microsoft; MainSoft is an independent software company that makes a tool that allows for cross-platform development.

During the PDC, which was organized by Microsoft, one of the exhibitors (mainsoft) announced this contest which was intended to show off their products.

This is not an attempt by Microsoft to do any kind of cross-platform development.

To the best of my knowledge, neither of the groups organizing the event (MainSoft and CodeProject) are owned in whole, or in part, by Microsoft.

If you read the disclaimer on CodeProject, you will find the following groups barred from the contest:

• The Code Project
• Mainsoft Corporation
• Novell
• Zend
• Macromedia

Microsoft Employees are not on this list. I really don't think that Microsoft has a great deal to do with this event.

Complete port?

[SJasperson]

Do I need to replicate all the bugs and random crashes to win?

Re:Complete port?

[Strixy]

If yes, then may I contribute...

body {
background: blue;
color: white;
font-size: 16px;
}

Wake up everyone!

[The Slashdolt]

People seriously need to wake up. The whole mono thing isn't about windows people moving towards linux, its about linux applications moving towards windows. People already have windows. They bought their computers from dell with windows preinstalled. Now they are looking for fun and useful applications, not to reinstall an alternative operating system.

OK, here is a hint. The REAL application that matters is the office suite. Particularly word, excel, and powerpoint. The day you see MS write these applications in .NET and then have them run on linux is the day it will matter. MS ain't that dumb guys....

Re:Wake up everyone!

[misleb]

AFAIK, this isn't about desktop users. This is about servers. ASP.NET is for web servers.

-matthew

Amen, brother!!

[SolitaryMan]

Amen!

Slashdot

[vcv]

Slashdot is nothing but a big circle-jerk for the communist linux geeks. Bash Microsoft to impress your /. buddies! Rehash easily accessible info for karma points! Praise OSS no matter what to impress others!

Someone should get circlejerk.org and redirect it here.

Well, I thought that I'd keep an open mind....

[ACORN_USER]

.. and then I tried to register. Not that I write in C#, but I often debug C# code for ms-weenies. So, hurdle 1: register for a race number.

Dumb arse ASP page gets stuck in an infinite loop of asking me to confirm I've read the rules and conditions.

Click yes. -> Please confirm you have read the rules and conditions -> fine, I read them -> Confirm -> Please confirm that you have read the rules and conditions -> ooh, that's an interesting ad -> click confirm -> Please confirm you have read the rules and conditions -> confirm -> Please confirm you have read the rules and cond... -> bored now -> *Shoot window*

When will I learn?

Re:Well, I thought that I'd keep an open mind....

[Anonymous Coward]

Just tried to register and it worked fine.

Mind you I'm using IE on Windows... :)

XBox here I come... :D

Re:Well, I thought that I'd keep an open mind....

[ACORN_USER]

Interesting, I just tried it with IE and it works. Nice one Bill!

So the contest has started and I'm suspicious

[ACORN_USER]

I accept that registering with codeproject.com sounds fair. After all, I've got to register to participate, however this seems like an MS PR scam to me. I'm now forced to register with Microsoft's www.ASP.net site in order to download the application which has to be ported.

"Let's compile a big database of loyal coders to seduce with even more of our .net crap. But what of all those corrupted Mono guys?

hmm. I have an idea. A competition to make them all fall before us. Perhaps we can get them to sign up on our site and look at our beautiful examples of code - although, written by those traitors stolen from us by the Evil Google, these samples are Blessed by the Holy Bug Enhancer (tm).

Hell, what about all the MS and infidel non-MS developers on the face on the Earth! All the .net and non-.net developers!

Yes, we'll even get PHP developers looking at .net examples. And for a prize.. Well we'll give away an MS based platform. The X-Box! Yes, all those Linux programmers will have their brains fried with our games-console. I am the Bill and you will all be assimilated! Ha Ha!"

And the IssuerTracker application crashed!

[ACORN_USER]

This is very funny. Whether or not this is a PR stunt, it's really quite funny. I downloaded the sample Issuer Tracker application and tried to install it on my windoze box. I was worried at noticing that I'm installing something called the "AP.NET Starter Kit," however I was amused on seeing:

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
0 An unhandled exception has occured
0 in your application. .. blah .. blah
0 ....
0 Unknown error(0x80005000)
0 ^ [Details] [ continue ] [ Quit]
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Exception handling MS style. How verbose! I could learn a thing or two.

Yes, a truly wonderful PR stunt!

Easy Peasy....

[Anonymous Coward]

I DL'ed the issue tracker starter kit (CS version for VS.NET) and it downloads, installs and compiles fine.

I'm off and porting....

Is this competition going to be too easy???

Re:Easy Peasy....

[ACORN_USER]

This is the beauty of the windows platform. Wheather it dl's and installs will depend on how grumpty your OS is feeling. Or how cheesed off it is with all the other apps you have installed.

Well, good luck.