Yay! Post 600! I will post about a new song that you have certainly heard during movie trailers or if you watched Requiem for a Dream: Lux Aeterna, composed by Clint Mansell. No video for this one, even if the embed is from YouTube.

It's just nice and hints on the rithm of development of both myself and the blog ;) Have fun!

I had not read a scifi book in quite a while, but then I heard of Alastair Reynolds, once an employee of ESA, and now turned hard sci fi writer. I just had to read something by him and I started with Revelation Space, the first of the Revelation Space universe books, which spans 5 books and several short stories and novellas.

What can I say? I loved the book. Not in a very intellectual way, though. Certainly the universe in which the action takes place is very ingenious and the story full of twists and hi-tech marvels, however, I felt like the writing style was not completely to my liking. The characters are all very much alike, the leaps in logic are pretty big and only to support previous ideas that the book had put forward. It seemed lazy to me. But I did say I loved the book, once I got over the "revelation" that the PhD in Astrophysics and the ESA work did not compel Mr. Reynolds to be very thorough. Besides, it's only the first volume. Maybe the next ones will be more natural, now that a first book has established the rules of the universe.

Prepare to delve in a place where technology is way more advanced than today, but faster than light travel is not yet possible and the lives of people on spaceships, frozen in stasis and moving at relativistic speeds, feel like weeks have passed between a world and another, while for the people on the planets decades or even centuries have passed. Extinct races, time spans of billions of years and impressive armament (both in the physical and virtual realms), favourably offset the fact that humans are pretty much the same and they all sound like Asimov characters :)

As you have probably noticed, a lot of my recent posts have been about WPF. Having to do a demo in this new (for me) technology I had a lot of thing to learn and a lot of brick walls to hit. It was exciting, but also difficult, with new concepts that felt awkward, mind twisting. I even burst one day shouting "I hate WPF".

However, I am now working, temporarily, with ASP.Net (no Silverlight) again. And guess what? At every step where I need to design something, I think in the WPF way and find the web way lacking. Riddle me this, riddle me that. :)

Of course, some might say that this is another proof of my whiny personality. I hate when people say that about me!

I have this Genius Comfy KB-16e model K640 keyboard. I went to the Genius web site and downloaded the drivers and Media Key application which is supposed to control what the "media" keys are doing. But the application is crap. It only shows some of the buttons I have and some I don't. Most annoying, I don't have listed the buttons for previous/next track.

The solution is to modify the registry. If you go to the Media Key installation directory (typically in Program Files) you will see a registry file called Magickey.reg. It holds all the information loaded in the reg by the installer of the Media Key application. Open it with notepad (not by double clicking!) and search for "Function Table". You will see a bunch of equalities like:

"0000000B"="Show MediaPlayer"

You will need to write somewhere the numbers associated with the keys that don't appear in the Media Key application. In my case

"00002000"="Previous Track"
"00002005"="Next Track"

Ok, now run regedt32.exe from the command line (or Run command in the Start Menu) and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\WayTech\Versato\System. You will see there stuff like button1, button2... and their values 0000XXXX or some string holding a path. All you have to do is double click on the buttons that hold the numbers you wrote down as the value (in my case 2000 and 2005) and write instead of the value a path to a batch file or an exe file. I use bat files so I can change them later.

So, in my case I double clicked on button17 and button18 and filled the value with C:\Batches\prevTrack.bat and C:\Batches\nextTrack.bat. And now it works. I am sure you can change something in the registry to actually make the buttons visible in the Media Key application, but I don't care about that. If you do it, please let me know.

If you have the same problem as I do and all you want to do is set up your Music, PlayPause and Prev/Next buttons, take the text below and write it into a file with the .reg extension, change the paths to your own batch files, then double click on it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WayTech\Versato\System]
"button7"="C:\\Batches\\playpause.bat"
"button8"="C:\\Batches\\playlist.bat"
"button17"="C:\\Batches\\prevTrack.bat"
"button18"="C:\\Batches\\nextTrack.bat"

I know, Might and Magic IX is an old game, but I haven't played it because, after being a HUGE fan of Might and Magic 1 through 5 I got really dissapointed with versions 6,7 and 8, which used 3D technology, but presented a lot less as the game story and playability was concerned. Then I played the tenth version, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, which was a completely different game, more of an Arx Fatalis 2, rather than M&M 10. Not that it wasn't very very cool, just wasn't what I had expected from an M&M game.

Enter Might and Magic IX. From the start it looked less modern than versions 6-8, which prompted my friend to think that he played more recent versions of the game. It became soon apparent that it was an attempt to go back to the roots. The game was complex, the map large, the monsters inventive and the storyline pretty interesting. Also, they returned to the old solution of dungeons, where entering a place was moving you to a new map, rather than a small part of the larger one.

I loved every moment of it until close to the end. The cities at the end of the game had less stuff in them, less monsters around and of a more poor quality. I kind of expected that, since it must have been a long software project plagued by a release deadline in the end. However, when I had to spend hours trying to get around dungeons filled with powerful yet silly monsters just to get to the end, I got very bored. I actually did not finish the game, only about 95% of it.

The game had an unhealthy amount of undead creatures, which made Turn Undead a very useful spell. Unfortunately, I think it was a bit buggy. After a strong Turn Undead monsters continued to run, even if the spell wore off. Another really nice spell was Enrage, which allowed one to make monsters fight each other. Wizard Eye was a bit annoying, since it lasted a too short a time.

I recommend you check the character development tree (Druid, Healer, Lich, Gladiator, Assassin, etc) and decide from the very start which character in your party will be what. Pay extra attention to the promotions. You may be able to promote more characters in the same time, but then you are commited to that path with all of the characters. Try to build each character in a different class. Some allow for very powerful spells that one cannot learn or use otherwise.


I don't want to spoil anything, so I will let you play it and enjoy. I applaud the return to the old values of Might and Magic, even if those older games had a lot more brain and humour in them and this had a lot of braun. The ending was inconsistent with the M&M storyline so far which was disappointing.

Bottom line: greatest of the true Might and Magic 3D games, I wish I was young again and full of free time so I can play it without looking at the clock all the time. If you somehow missed it, do play it.

Something really cool from the TED blog, this image is an optical illusion of grand scale. See the Cyan/Green spirals? Well, they are the exact same color. Trust me, I opened Paint.NET and checked their RGB values. Event at immense zoom, the colors still appeared as different.

I know it is not the very best method of implementation, but I had to make due with the "client only" Blogger solution. There is a link in the left bar called 'Low band version'. Click on it and it will set a cookie for 30 days and then refresh the page. Then you should be able to see the backgroundless, barless, label-cloudless blog version. You can also add a #lowBand hash at the end of any blog link to force a low band. Something like this: https://siderite.dev/2009/06/low-band-version-of-blog.html#lowBand.

Keep in mind that this relies heavily on javascript and cookies. If you have either one disabled, you're in a world of trouble. It seems that the blog will appear in low band mode all the time if you have javascript disabled and always normal mode if you have cookies disabled and you have not used the hashed solution for the low band.

Please tell me if anything causes problems so I can fix it. As far as I know it works on latest IE7, FireFox3 and Chrome.

Ok, would I like to make a music video and then all the people watching it on YouTube instead of buying the record? Well... actually yes! If they like the song they will either buy the record or download it from a peer to peer network. And it beats people NOT watching my videos and listening to my songs.

I may not be the perfect example of a musician, since I don't sing, play or dance, but still, what happens on YouTube just doesn't make sense: Most of the cool videos of original songs were deleted! Even those with scenes from movies and such. Are actually the band members surfing the net, fishing for videos of their band and requesting their removal? NO! It's (again) the distribution companies, the record companies, that think this is some sort of way of either

1. decrease piracy
2. make some money out of Google

. And , at least for me, this makes me even less likely to apreciate that band and buy their album.

It all reminds me of what happened in my home country of Romania. After the revolution, nobody could be bothered with copyright laws, therefore the streets were littered with people selling pirated CDs. Then the economic stability brought some law enforcement (and widespread Internet) and now you can't find pirated CDs on the street anymore. Do people buy more music albums now?

In the end it is all about the ease of purchase. If you stumble upon a nice CD from a band you love, you will buy it, provided you actually use a CD player anymore. No one goes out of their way to a store specifically for music unless they are collectors. It's so much easier to just watch TV, listen to the radio or watch/listen to their Internet versions. Online stores are not much better. They anally query for all of your personal details in order to buy a crappy thing. It may work for electronics, but not for data!

Probably some day a brilliant idea - like combining IM identities with pay later accounts, or maybe vending machines with USB ports and touchscreens to load any music on your MP3 player for a fixed fee - will work, but until then, people will do what is the easiest thing to do. I mean, if writing music CDs and then distributing them is so damn expensive, why should I pay for it when getting the music online?

Do I feel a little guilty for listening to music and not paying for it? Yeah. But not that much.

What has gone into Siderite and made him rave mad? Is he high? Everybody knows that software patterns are all the rage and the only perfect and delicious way to make software. You can't just go "cowboy style" on software, it's an industry after all.

Well, I am not saying that (although you can probably guess from my impression of my virtual/inner critic that I am a bit partial to the cowboy approach). All I am saying is that once you identify a pattern (and yes, to open another parenthesis, a pattern is identified not learnt) one should never stoop low enough to use it. Some software should do that for him!

One good example is the Iterator Pattern. It sounds so grand, but the software implementation of it is the foreach command. Does anyone actually think while iterrating through a collection that they are using a pattern? As I said before, patterns are identified. You think of what you have been doing, see a pattern, make some software to take care of similar situations, then get on to identifying another pattern.

Well, yes, but you can't entrust everything to a software, Siderite! You will bloat your code, create tools that will do less than you wanted and still end up doing your own efficient code. I know, I've seen it before!

Well, thank you, critic! You have just identified a pattern! And any pattern should be solved. And yes, I agree that software can't do everything for you (yet!) and that sometimes the tools that are designed to help us with a problem become a problem themselves. But instead of having "two problems" you have a bad solution to a previous problem. Fixing the solution would fix everything and the problem domain is now one level of abstraction higher.

Stuff like managed code, linq, TDD, ORMs, log4net... just about every new technology I can think of, they are all solutions to patterns, stuff that introduces new problems on a higher level. What C# programmer cares about pointers anymore? (developers should still be aware of the true nature of pointers, but care less about it).

There is one final issue though, the one about the actual detection of patterns. Using "prediscovered" patterns like from the classic Gang of Four book or anything from Martin Fowler is ok, but only if they actually apply to your situation. That in itself shows you have to have a clear image of your activity and to be able to at least recognize patterns when you see them. Sometimes you do work that is so diverse or so slow that you don't remember enough of what you did in order to see there is a repetitive pattern. Or, worse, you do so much work that you don't have time to actually think about it, which I think is the death of every software developer. Well, what then?

Obviously a log (be it a web one or just a simple notebook or computer tracking system) would help. Writing stuff down makes one remember it better. Feeling the need to write about something and then remembering that you have already done so is a clear sign of a pattern. Now it is up to you to find a solution.

Back to the actual title of the post, I recognize there are situations where no automated piece of code can do anything. It's just too human or too complex a problem. That does mean you should solve it, just not with a computer tool. Maybe it is something you need to remember as a good practice or maybe you need to employ skills that are not technical in nature, but should you find a solution, think about it and keep thinking about it: can it be automated? How about now? Now? Now?

After all, the Romans said errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum. The agile bunch named it DRY. It's the same thing: stop wasting time!

HBO has done it again. I am not a great fan of the HBO channel. The movies I see on usually suck ass, the series are cut short, it's a consumer thing. But the HBO produced movies and series are something else. Very often I am amazed of the orginality of a series idea and the quality of the show and then I see it's HBO productions.

Entourage is one of these gems. A show loosely based on Mark Wahlberg's personal experience as a rising actor, it features four childhood friends, one of them quickly becoming a major Hollywood star. Mark Wahlberg is another guy I like without him being a mainstream accepted actor and also an executive producer for Entourage.

Anyway, through all the good and the bad, these four guys stick together. This alone is something to watch the series for, but the acting is very good, too. The whole show shines, yet to tell you the truth, I think that the real stars are Kevin Dillon and Jeremy Piven, who are actually secondary characters.

Again it is proven that great stories are the ones based on reality and you can see that the show has soul, it's not just a winning recipe applied again and again. And even better, I am at the end of the second season and it has not become any worse, so it is not just a one season wonder that quickly collapses after, but something solid. Also an interesting thing is how they have a guest star or two in every episode, playing often themselves, sometimes completely different people.

So watch it!

A while ago I saw the anime Fullmetal Alchemist and I was really starting to like it. An interesting melange of dark horror, funny kid stuff and magic in a very consistent alternate universe. Unfortunately the anime ended, in a somewhat unsatisfactory way.

Enter Brotherhood. This is the "continuation" of the original series to match the progress of the manga. I believe it will quickly tell the story up until the end, then ignore the previous ending and continue in a new way. Unfortunately I already know what is going to happen, having read the manga, and also don't especially like that storyline either. I hope it will not suck like Berserk did. After a brilliant start it just failed utterly.

Anyway, hopefully the anime story arches will be more interesting than those in the manga.

I was just installing a new system, with all the necessary tools of the trade (Visual Studio(s), Sql Server, etc) and after I've installed VS2005 I noticed that there was no entry for the Business Intelligence Studio. I've tried all kinds of "solutions" on the net, varying from using some complicated command line to running vs_setup (exe or msi) or even reinstalling everything (which I refused to do).

In the end the problem was simple enough: Visual Studio installed some SQL Express version and the SQL Server 2005 setup thought I already had Business Intelligence Studio installed, so it never did reinstall it. The solution is to run this command line:

setup.exe UPGRADE=1 SKUUPGRADE=1

on the SQL 2005 installation kit.

Warning:

• the parameters MUST be upper case, otherwise it will not work
• it may be that only one of those parameters is actually necessary, but I have tried them both, anyway

.

A while ago I was writing about the novel Infected, a sci-fi thriller written by Scott Sigler. In it, an automated alien probe was using biological reconstruction to create a portal for unspeakable (and not described) evil that awaited on the other side. Alien probes being as they are, the operation failed, but not permanently, since the probe remained undiscovered and ready to plan more mayhem.

Enter Contagious, Sigler's latest book, also freely available in weekly installments on his personal blog in both MP3 and PDF versions. Is the guy too nice or what? Today the final episode was released and I can finally comment on the book.

It is clearly a better book than Infected. Not by too much, but definitely more intense. It's like Aliens to the Alien film, only for Infected :) The probe is logically doing all kind of stupid stuff, including duplicating part of his functionality in the brain of a little girl. I mean, we humans have enough trouble as it is with girls, be them small or grown up, albeit the alien probe had no idea I suppose. The US centric approach was kept, there are more explosions, lots of killing, contagious yet centralised alien organisms... in other words, a decent sequel. The only thing I couldn't really get is the father-son relationship between Perry and Dew. Couldn't believe that for a moment, although it may be my fault.

All in all I read all chapters with pleasure, anxiously waiting for the next episode. It would make a nice manga :) I can only thank mr. Sigler for allowing me to read his book without feeling like a thief getting it through a file sharing service.

So, is humanity doomed in this one? Well, yeah... I mean, we still have girls... and besides, I can't possible spoil the ending now, can I? Rest assured that there will be a third book and our favourite aliens may still get rid of the human infestation and bring the love of God on our planet. Hmm, why did I say that? My tongue feels funny, too.

I haven't watched too many movies recently because I've mostly switched to TV series. They're more comfortable as they last under one hour, I don't have to waste a lot of time negotiating with my wife which film to see and they're regular. Bottom line, they're like soap operas for old people. And I am, inevitably, getting old. There should be a whole blog post about that, though, so back to the subject at hand: the list of TV series I have been watching.

This is a bit depressing, almost everything I have been watching is either at the end of the season or the end of the series. The economic crisis and everything, I suppose, or maybe people have finally started to move off TVs and switch to computers, as I have, and the income for any TV production has decreased dramatically.

So Stargate, both SG1 and Atlantis, has finally ended. A new Stargate Universe series in on the way, something a little darker, so something like the Deep Space Nine of the Stargate franchise. That should probably be the best series, and yet I predict the worse TV ratings. And that's because people are morons. Not to mention that at least a quarter of the original Stargate fans (those that weren't in the gun battles) were watching the series because of the green scenery on alien worlds.

Battlestar Galactica 2003. A brilliant reinvention of the old BSG concept, with a fantastic first season, faltering second season and abysmal third and forth seasons. This series has ended as well, and in the worse possible way: "God did it!". There is a spin off prequel, though, called Caprica. The pilot was released already and it was decent enough, although the religious crap is there from the very beginning.

Doctor Who 2005. Another remake of an old classic. Weird and ... weird. I can't stop watching it, but I also can't say why I do. It's a sci-fi, supposedly, and it's British :). Not to mention Christopher Eccleston played as the doctor for the first season, accompanied by beautiful Billie Piper as the female sidekick. This series has not ended, but it is on hiatus, one that will only end next year :(

And since I mentioned sexy Billie Piper, here is a non sci-fi series for you: Secret Diary of a Call Girl, where she is a call girl. Based on a book written by the infamous Belle de Jour, it is funny, honest and not so full of bullshit. And it's British :) Ok, enough with the British smiley, but you have to admit, being the second class citizen as TV series are concerned makes room for a lot of ingenuity and originality. The series has two seasons already and a third on the way, after Billie recovers from her pregnancy.

Eureka. Another sci-fi I am watching only because it is sci-fi. A wonderful concept, where a small village is actually a think tank of all the most brilliant scientists America has to offer. Of course, this would have been a fantastic show if made by the Russians. But being as it is, it is mostly a comedy, with the science put there only as comic prop. The say a fourth season is planned for mid 2009, but with TV series dropping like flies, who know.

Regenesis. Canadian show. Had 5 seasons then it died. Interesting topic, about an international team tasked to prevent and fight off disease outbreaks. It was pretty nice in the beginning, then it went all sci-fi and then it just collapsed. Think of it as 'Doctor House works at the CDC'. Too bad they had to abandon all pretense of reality. As we can see, disease outbreaks are as real and present as they can be these days.

And speaking of House MD, I am watching it, too. Only this time it's all because of inertia. My wife likes it, and I prefer it to romantic comedies. With the fifth season ending with House being taken to a psychiatric hospital, who knows if there will even be a sixth season. The medicine was gone from the show a long time ago, anyway.

Jericho. The US is nuked. And not just once, but a nuke in every major city. What will the average small town American do in a time of chaos and lawlessness? Great concept and a great first half season. Then it all went south. It was still decent, although infected with the Lost bug, when they cancelled the show. Fans were outraged, media companies did not care. As usual. And they wonder why they are losing money and audience like the Titanic took on water.

Numb3rs. Started great and it is still decent at the end of the fifth season. I will continue to watch it, even if the math has gone from it and it basically is now a police procedural series. What I do like about it is that the dynamic of the characters is very well designed. People really are people in the show, not just cardboard characters. It could turn out to be a show about nothing, and I would still watch it. Good job, Scott brothers!

Lost. This is a show I hate with all my heart. I am not watching it, my wife is, enough said it starts with some people crashing on a deserted island and now people die and get resurrected from episode to episode. J. J. Abrams, I hope you die a quick death and roast in hell forever! This horrible thing has reached the end of the fifth season and people still want more, so it will probably get to season six. Meanwhile, all shows have begun having pseudo mystical crap mixed in with simple scenarios and having big booming sounds whenever some crisis of absolutely no magnitude is born. Lost has invented the sound effects for dramas just as some show invented laugh-over for comedies.

Grey's Anatomy. Beautiful looking doctors that are always in some crisis or another, all of them emotional, while trying to avoid showing anything about actual medicine. Wife watches it, I stay away. Season five just ended and the show is going strong.

Private Practice. A Grey's Anatomy spin-off!! Second season just ended.

Ugly Betty. After three seasons of tortuous mental ineptitude, even my wife can't watch that crap anymore. That doesn't mean it is not high in the ratings.

Prison Break. I actually watched the first season and I thought it was nice. I could barely watch the second season and somewhere in the middle I just stopped. It's a show about absolutely nothing. Fourth season just ended (or is about to).

Criminal Minds. This is a police procedural about a crime unit tasked to profile serial killers and find them. It shows at least in principle how the mind of the killer works and it is not solely focused on the law enforcement agency. Most episodes are just watchable, but some are really nice and make everything worthwhile. The last good episode was about a guy killing people in red cars because his wife was killed in an accident involving a red car. By the end of the series we find out that the killer was driving the red car at the time and he suppressed the memory.

Terminator - The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The Terminator has evolved from hunky Schwarzie to liquid Robert Patrick to manipulative bitch Kristanna Loken to teenage girl Summer Glau. Lucky for us, the new Terminator Salvation movie is not about a child Terminator. Or is it not? Actually, this Terminator series was quite decent. Not good, but definitely watchable. So guess what? Low ratings! The show was cancelled after only two seasons.

Southpark. This animated parody series was brilliant when it started and it is still brilliant after 13 seasons. Usually an episode is a parody to a movie or a real life situation, all involving 4Th grade school children in a backwater town called Southpark. Sometimes they get to use too much toilet humour, but more often than not, the Southpark episodes are great.

Dexter. Oh, this is a show that I just love. Psychopathic killer Dexter Morgan is a Miami police crime scene technician and his policeman father, recognizing his mental persuasion, has taught him "the code" or "how to kill only serial killers and not get caught". Based on a book that I found worse than the show, the show has reached season 3 and I can't wait for the fourth season to start.

Big Love. This is a strange one. It is a series detailing the life of a Mormon family, one guy, three wives. As this marital arrangement is both illegal and controversial (since one major religion embraces it) there are all kinds of interesting developments. I for one think it is a very brave thing to do to make a show like this and Tom Hanks is one of the executive producers! The third season just ended, but I think the quality of the show is starting to go down as it turns more and more to cheap and unrealistic drama.

Fringe. J.J.Abrams again. He takes X-Files, adds a mystical twinge to it and the infinite puzzle of starting story arches and taking them nowhere and he creates Fringe. I am not watching it anymore, but for the episodes I did watch at least half the credit is due to John Noble, interpreting Dr. Walter Bishop.

Eli Stone. This was crappy to begin with. And it ended in a shameful cancellation after only two seasons. Imagine a lawyer that is also a psychic. Actually, he is a prophet of God. Geez!

Heroes. "Oh, you have to watch Heroes, it is so cool!". After my initial fear of starting to watch something about super heroes, again!, I got convinced by all the people telling me to watch it. Unfortunately, that only has proven I keep stupid company. The show is not only bad, it is beyond stupid. Third season has ended, the fourth is on its way.

Legend of the Seeker. Well, when I heard the people that made Xena and Hercules were doing another show I thought I would never enjoy it. But I do. It is still rather idiotic, but at least it doesn't turn battles into comedy scenes. People really do die, even if in the most clean ways. What a good horror series this would have been. The first season is close to its end and I suppose it will have a second season at least.

True Blood. I had to see it to believe it. Vampires in a small American town in which everybody actually behaves like in a small isolated town: they are superstitious, bigot, stupid, sneaky, mean. The story is a bit weird, but I allow it :) Second season is set to start on the 14Th of July.

Californication. Oh, oh, oh! David Duchovny has just become my personal idol. His character is a writer, intelligent, middle aged and totally cool. A bit too sexually active, but that plays well into the cool description. This is just one of those shows I can't not love. I can barely wait for the third season, sometime in late 2009.

Breaking Bad. I can't really relate to the main character, but the show is sound. A chemistry teacher finds out that he has terminal cancer. In an attempt to make a lot of money quickly in order to leave his family with a decent life, he starts cooking methamphetamine and selling it with the help of a local pothead. It is a show both funny and scary. His family doesn't know a thing, which adds to the tension. Not as good as Dexter, but pretty close. Can barely wait for the third season to start.

I am also starting to watch Entourage. Mark Wahlberg is playing a young actor "making it" in Hollywood. At least this is what I have read about it. It already has 5 seasons and I wonder if there is going to be a sixth. But I have still to start watching it and telling you what I think.

And at the end, last but not least, the anime series: Naruto Shippuuden and Bleach. I only started watching Bleach because of a friend liked it. I think it is barely watchable. I do read the manga, though, and that has gone way further than the anime. Surprisingly enough, though, the anime has some mini story aches that are not found in the manga. Licencing issues? Of Naruto I have already spoken of. I think it is pretty nice, although only at an emotional level. The manga is also way ahead and both manga and anime have story arches the other doesn't have. Both these series are shounen, meaning the type of story where the male character goes through increasingly difficult challenges which he overcomes, mostly through strenght of will and not something real like lots of work and exercise :) They still feel good, though, to immature males such as myself.


And that was it. Hopefully you will forgive me for not providing links. Just google it! :)

I was installing a Visual Studio project made by a very cool team and, as they are very cool, it had this very complex folder structure for every little class and test and long names on the folder and so on and so on. Therefore, when trying to create a file on my Windows XP computer, the installer of the project failed with the strange error: 'the file name you specified is not valid or too long'.

I was under the impression that the path was no longer limited to 255 characters in Windows XP, but I was wrong. The MAX_PATH constant in Windows XP is 260. Everything over that causes an error unless specifically using a UNC formatted path (starting with \\?\). Weird huh?

Here is a technical description of the path concept in Windows: File Names, Paths, and Namespaces.
And here is the KB article with the "solutions": You cannot delete a file or a folder on an NTFS file system volume.