Remember, that on tuesday the 6th of February, Mads Torgersen (my former teacher in Progarmming of Large Systems, dPass) will visit DAIMI.

Mads is now a Program Manager at Microsoft in Redmond, with responsibility for the C# programming language. When he's not out spreading the gospel, he is a core member of the C# design group which currently focuses on the language and library aspects of the LINQ technology. He coordinates and communicates between designers, implementers and testers and with other product groups, and writes too many specifications and other documents for his own good.

Before joining Microsoft, Mads was an associate professor here at DAIMI, the Computer Science Department at Aarhus University, where he worked for four years on programming languages and type systems. The most visible outcome was the wildcards feature in Java generics, which was designed and implemented by Mads and his group at DAIMI.

On tuesday, Mads will be talking about LINQ.

Language Integrated Query in # 3.0 Leave Plumbing to the Plumbers

.NET Language Integrated Query (LINQ) unifies querying across programming languages and across data sources. Most application developers work with external data in various formats, such as relational tables or XML documents. Currently, reaching across the gaps of different data representation and different access methodologies is a major challenge in every single application. APIs are often unsafe and error prone, and always specific to the data source.

With LINQ, queries are written directly in your programming language, using the same strong typing and deep tool support as the rest of the application. A uniform querying syntax allows developers to focus on the programming, not the plumbing.

Any data source provider can plug into the LINQ framework. Already in the box are LINQ providers for XML, relational data and in-memory queries. LINQ is API based and can be used from any .NET programming language, but the experience is greatly enhanced by a number of extensions to C# and Visual Basic, many of which have their origins in functional and metaprogramming.

This talk dives deep into the guts of LINQ, focusing on how it brings together many different technologies under the hood to provide a smooth experience on top.

But when and how?

You have to show up on tuesday the 6th of February from 9-11 in "Det store auditorium" in IT-huset.

See you there

If you are studying at DAIMI and running Vista you probably want to connect to the DAIMI network during your daily work. To do this, you need the Cisco VPN client for Vista. You can download the client here: https://www.daimi.au.dk/~staff/VPN/clients-ssl/vpnclient-win-msi-4.8.01.0590-k9.exe

To setup the client, you need the following parameters:
https://www.daimi.au.dk/~staff/VPN/clients-ssl/params.html

In a few days, the DAIMI staff should have a nice guide you can follow, if you can't make it work yourself. The guide will be available here:
http://www.daimi.au.dk/local/system/accessing-the-network/getting-vpn

As the header tells, finally Vista can be found at e-academy.com It has now been available more than a week, but it is first now, it is possible to both do the download of Vista and request a license key at the same place.

So, if you want Vista (which I know you do) and you study at DAIMI, you can download it from the above link. If you have any problems downloading Vista or requesting a key, please contact microsoft *AT* daimi *DOT* au *DOT* dk

In my last post I said, that we expected Vista to be available on MSDNAA after the 11th of December 2006 - but it is still not available I'm sorry to say, that currently we don't know when Vista will be available on MSDNAA... but remember: I still have some Windows Vista Business licenses for people studying at DAIMI! Send me an e-mail, if you want one of these

My e-mail address: nlbeck *AT* daimi *DOT* au *DOT* dk

What a great day! Nearly 100 Vista Business licenses are now spread all over DAIMI Mark and I had invited the students here at DAIMI to come and hear a little about Vista and Office 2007. Michael Westergaard had brought his Mac on which he installed Vista yesterday. It was great to see, that suddenly a Mac could be useful

A lot of people dropped by and it got a little crowed when they all wanted to be the first to get a license to Vista. But luckily they all got a copy - Merry Christmas!

If you are studying at DAIMI, are participating in the MSDNAA program and didn’t get a license today – send me an e-mail and I shall see what I can do If, however, you read this after the 11th of December 2006, I expect that Vista is already on MSDNAA.

If you are the lucky owner of a tablet PC, you will love the new character recognition in Windows Vista. In Windows XP the recognition was not that good, but in Vista it's incredible how well it recognizes what you write.

Unfortunately it doesn't work if you set the input language of your computer to Danish So what you can do, is to use the language bar to switch between Danish and English. You can then switch between English and Danish using the good old Alt+Shift shortcut. Then you of course use Danish when you use the keyboard to enter text and English when you use the writing pad in tablet mode. This is not a good solution!

The best solution I know of is a bit strange, but it works very well. What you have to do, is you have to set the input language to English, but the keyboard layout to Danish. So how do you do that? Well, go to the start menu and use the new search box (I never use the "All Programs" anymore - always the search box). Type "regional" and the only item that should appear (at least on a fresh installation) is "Regional and Language Options". So press Enter to get the regional settings dialog. Go to the "Keyboards and Languages" tab and choose "Change keyboards".

So now we have to add English to the list of installed services. Click the "Add..." button. Find "English (United States)" on the list and under "Keyboard" you select "Show More...". Now you must find "Danish" in the list and mark it. Under the main "English (United States)" item you go into "Other" and mark "Ink Correction". Now you are done and can click "OK".

To make it all work well, you select "English (United States) - Danish" in the "Default input language" dropdown and click "Apply". Now it's possible to select "Danish (Denmark)" in the list of installed services and the click "Remove". That's it. Click "OK" and the "Writing Pad" will now work just as you expect it to do But remember, that the "Writing Pad" aren't made for Danish, so it will still use a English dictionary trying to figure out what you mean.

Of course this also work for other languages than Danish. Just do as described above, but replace every occurrence of Danish with the language you want to use when typing on your keyboard.

Hope this helps

Have you ever tried using the famous Equation Editor in Word 2003 and earlier? Then you probably know why many people prefer pen and paper or LaTeX rather than typing in equations in their Word documents.

In Word 2007 Microsoft has made your job as an equation-writer much easier. Go to the Insert tab, click Equation and then Insert New Equation (Alt+n+e+i). You are now in a new and improved version of the old equation editor. You can use the ribbon to enter equations much faster than you could in the old Equation Editor – and it is much easier, due to the ribbons great grouping capabilities.

But wait! There is an even easier way of doing it! The method explained above works great if you only have to enter a single equation or two, but if you have to enter lots of equations the mouse will kill you! So, when you want to write an equation, press Alt+= and now you are in math-mode – much faster than Alt+n+e+i Now you are ready to type in your equation (yes sir, type it in – look mom, no mouse ). Let’s take an example.

In the Insert/Equation menu there are several built in equations you can use. We will enter the Binomial Theorem by hand. The first part of it says . So we start the math mode with Alt+= and now we simply type (x+a)^n where ^ means superscript. When we press =, Word will convert our text to a real equation – cool! We now have to enter the second part of the equation:

To get the summation symbol stuff we write \sum_(k=0)^n and press space to make Word convert our text into an equation. \sum is a Math AutoCorrect rule that converts to a summation symbol and _(k=0) makes k=0 a subscript of the summation symbol and as before ^n makes n a superscript. Easy? Yes sir!

For the last part we write (n\atop and press space so Word can convert \atop and then k)x^k and press space again and finally a^(n-k) and space. Now our equation should look like the built in formula:

A pretty nasty equation to construct using the mouse – but pretty simple in Word 2007

 Unfortunately Microsoft did not put all the \functionname-stuff in the screentips (a new word for the advanced tooltips that is used in Office 2007). So it’s not that easy to learn how to write the equations. But if you have the link to Murray Sargent’s Unicode Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics, you will have a very good reference

This feature is fantastic! So good luck with your next equation

Yes sir! Microsoft Windows Vista RTM is up and running on my tablet Nice to finally have the final version - now it's time for my Media Center to get rid of RC2  

Since Office 2007 beta 2 was released I've been using it on my primary computer. And I just love it! The ribbon bar is just great to work with.

Unfortunately Outlook 2007 has started coming with an error telling me, that there are errors in my .pst-file and that I can use scanpst.exe to repair the errors. I've tried using scanpst.exe, but it can't fix the errors The error appears when I try to move particular e-mails from my inbox to a folder. So also if I try to delete the e-mail I get the error (the e-mail must be moved to the "Deleted items" folder). The only thing I can do whith the particular e-mails, is to delete them permanently (Shift+Delete on the keyboard).

My assumption is, that it is Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) Beta 3 that is causing the problem. I have never seen the error before I installed WMDC. If it really is WMDC that is causing the problem, I don't know why it's doing it, because I never synchronize my e-mails with my mobile...

Nice to wake up to this view from our balcony

Why is it, that I just don't want to cycle 4 km to the university, to have two hours of cryptography right now? 

Anders Hejlsberg is visiting ITU at the 10th of November. Anders will talk about C# 3.0, including LINQ. 

If you aren't attending Tech-Ed - you have no excuse not going to ITU!

You can read more at Henrik W. Hansen's blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/henrikwh/archive/2006/10/27/invitation-to-guest-lecture-by-anders-hejlsberg-the-man-behind-delphi-and-c.aspx

I've been running Vista on my Media Center since beta 2 - and I just love it! When Vista RC2 came I finally took the chance and installed it on my precious tablet PC, which are the computer I use at work and at the university. I was a little afraid it would give me a lot of trouble, as beta 2 simply sucked on it (it wasn't beta 2 itself, but the crappy drivers).

Well, I must admit that RC2 is not just a good looking OS, but also a very fast OS. I have 1,5 Gb RAM in my computer, but after installing Vista RC2, it feels like I've upgraded the amount of RAM. My computer is actually a lot faster than it was in XP. I think it's because of better swapping algorihms - but who knows, maybe Microsoft just used their magic wand?

So, everything is fine... except of one small detail! I miss the "Ask me what to do"-option in "Power button and lid settings". When I have my computer in tablet mode, it's very easy for me to press the power button by accident. So - do you know how to get the "Ask me what to do"-button back? Please, ask me what to do...

On Friday I've invited the students from University of Aarhus and Engineering College of Aarhus to Microsoft Development Center Copenhagen (MDCC) in Vedbæk near Copenhagen. The intention of the visit is to show the students what products Microsoft is developing here in Denmark, how it is to work for Microsoft and of course show them some of the new technologies Microsoft plan to launch within the next few months.

The plan for the day:
Kl. 05.00 We meet at the university in Aarhus and get some breakfast
Kl. 05.30 We jump into the bus, which will take us to Vedbæk
Kl. 10.00 Welcome by Michael Nielsen, Product Unit Manager, Dynamics Tools
Kl. 10.15 Working for Microsoft and life on MDCC campus/ Anja Leschly
Kl. 10.45 Microsoft Imagine Cup/ Henrik Westergaard Hansen (MSDK)
KL.11.05 Mobility/ Niels Bo Theilgaard (added)
Kl. 11.35 Tour of MDCC Campus
Kl. 12.00 Lunch in the café
Kl. 12.45 Demo/presentation of Dynamics AX/ Arvid Nielsen
Kl. 13.15 Demo of Vista & Office 12/ Pau Larsen (MSDK)
Kl. 14.15 Demo/presentation of Dynamics Tools/ Michael Tyrsted
Kl. 15.00 Demo/presentation of Dynamics NAV/ Michael Rosenørn
Kl. 15.30 It's time to go home...
Kl. 20.00 Finally, home again

So far there are 66 people who wants to spend a day at MDCC. We have a few empty seats in the bus, so contact me as soon as possible if you want to join us

Hi, my name is Niels Ladegaard Beck. This is my first post on this brand new site. I'm 26 years old and study computer science at University of Aarhus, Denmark. What I'm going to blog about here probably isn't my studying at the university, but more about my big passion for Microsoft and their products. I'm Microsoft Student Partner at University of Aarhus which means, that I'm telling the students about the wonderful world of Microsoft

In the past month I (and my fellow Student Partners, Mark Rasmussen, Claus Nielsen and Jakob Andersen and Henrik W. Hansen from Microsoft Denmark) have given lectures about ASP.NET 2.0, Atlas, Workflow Foundation, securing .Net code and VSTS. These were given at University of Aarhus, University of Aalborg and Engineering College of Aarhus. I talked about Atlas which I find is a very exciting topic. If you want, you can view my slides and my final demo code (the slides are in Danish - a very-easy-to-learn-language ).

A part of being a Microsoft Student Partner is talking about new technologies. So how do I learn about these new technologies? Well... next week I'm going to Barcelona, Spain, to the Tech-Ed conference Simply can't wait!

Wow! That was my first post - cool Let's see, maybe there will be more than this one some day...