There’s a lot of bad information going around about a defect in the Windows 8 Metro developer license setup pass for Metro development on the Windows 8 Consumer Preview.
Specifically, the license servers are overloaded, and mostly-failing.

The way the MSVS panel responds is to give the message

We couldn’t get your developer license for Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Please check your network connection and try again

Error 80004005

However, what’s actually going on is simpler: MSVS is calling some command line program, and that command line program, when it doesn’t get an answer from the other side, assumes your side is broken (thus the comment about checking your network – something it could easily – and should – do itself.)

Honestly, this is like a popular eBay auction – just keep trying, and hammer the servers until they do their job.

You could do that by closing and re-opening Visual Studio 2011, but honestly, who wants to do that?  It’s invoking a program called “Show-WindowsDeveloperLicenseRegistration“.  Just open a shell or a PowerShell and run that.  You’ll probably see the same error message; keep trying.

It took me six tries.  Once that command completes, opening MSVS will just work.

Honestly, someone really should update that tool to fail in a more transparent fashion; people are re-installing operating systems to get around what should be “try again in five minutes.”

Read it from them. IE <= 7 dies.

The media invariably seems to think that the problem with the 3DS is that it’s too expensive (after dollar value adjustment it’s not as expensive as almost any of Nintendo’s other portables have been,) or that somehow this is Apple’s doing.

This is all bullshit.

The problem is simple, and it’s the same thing that has crippled many, many platforms in the past. It’s what’s killing Win7 phone today.

There are no desirable software packages for the platform. I’ve had one since launch day, and I still haven’t bought any games other than the one I bought on launch day, because they’re all the same garbage that’s been being sold for ten years, and none of them do anything interesting with the new hardware.

Nintendo needs to wake the fuck up and change its software production availability to small producers, or *that* will sink the company. The platform has been out for six months and there are barely 40 games (for comparison, the DS launched with nearly double that, and people screamed at the sky for the limited game catalog.)

The iPhone gets about that many games released PER HOUR.

I hate playing games on my iPhone, but at least my iPhone has games I want to play.

Wake up, Redmond; Japan isn’t going to fix this.

I just noticed that I haven’t written about code in literally years.

For shame, fat man.

THIS SHALL NOT STAND.

One of my favorite, unbelievably under-appreciated tools – PrinceXML – is in beta of version 8, and that beta includes JavaScript.

WHICH MEANS IT’S TIME FOR PDFS FULL OF FUCKING CHARTS, YO.

Time to dust off one of my old unused domains. 

At this time the Protovis example gallery’s HTML is not shipping a doctype, meaning that IE eats that page in quirksmode, so the graphs don’t show.

However, if you hit F12, pull Document Mode down and hit IE9 Standards, suddenly they nearly all work. To fix this permanently, all the Protovis team needs to do is add a doctype (preferably HTML 4.01 strict) to their pages.

Currently, streamgraph, bubble charts, force directed layout, dymaxion maps, conway’s life, belousov-zhabotinsky, n-body and automaton explorer are broken. Everything else works flawlessly, and the rotated tiny text is *gorgeous*.  The animated and live graphs are lightning fast, and sparklines are perfectly positioned.

So, I go to install my Creative Suite 5 Web Premium upgrade, and I’m looking at version 4, and there’s a bubble in the disc.  Rageface.  Call the company preparing to have to spend $40 to have a DVD mailed to me two weeks from now.

Nope.  Put in the old serial, the new serial, put in Adobe’s version of a mouse Konami code, get a challenge code to give to the phone guy, give a magic number back, bang, CS5 installs.

A-fucking-plus, guys.  That was awesome.

Six months in, and Civ5 still can’t get basic network play running. Call 2k? They just insist nothing’s wrong.

Why must the most brilliant game ever made be so broken? 

Know about a bug?  Add it to comments here please.  They turn a blind eye to the forums. 

The kind of bilious, hate-driven homophobic nonsense spewing out of the mouth of Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, R-NC, makes me ill.  I know a lot of smart people in North Carolina.  It remains unclear to me how they could allow a monster like this to govern them.

Unsurprisingly, at this time, the good Congresswoman is unavailable for comment by any phone number I can find (I’ve tried eight so far; they all just ring, or go to voicemail.)

http://www.americablog.com/2009/04/republican-congresswoman-says-matthew.html

If you are a republican, it is people like this which are why your political support has dropped to a historic low of 16%.  For reference, 14% of americans support the legalization of Heroin; you’re near absolute clue zero.  If you’re from North Carolina, I sure hope you’re a Democrat.  If you aren’t, and you know what happened here …

I cannot imagine how Virginia Foxx came to the notion that the Matthew Shephard tragedy was “a hoax.”  This woman should be ashamed of herself for making such a claim.

Please let the congresswoman know what you think.

Phone: (202) 225-2071
Phone: (336) 778-0211
Phone: (828) 265-0240

If this woman retains her seat past the next election, North Carolina will join Texas and Alaska as states full of people with absolutely unfathomable priorities.  Just unbelievable that this woman is willing to show her face in public after perpetrating such obvious hate driven fiction.

I would consider this a new low for a place like Westboro Baptist, the people who stalk funerals.  For this to come out of a seated congressperson’s mouth after 1850 is just stunning.

And here I thought Raleigh-Durham and Chapel Hill were representative of the state.  Makes you wonder what Rep. Brad Miller thinks; he’s forward enough to understand why Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is destructive.

I am setting my prediction in stone.  I predict a 57% electoral college win for Obama, and 43% to McCain.  At the time of this writing, no results are in for any state.