Opening Computer Management under XP Pro the disk was listed as a “GPT Protective partition” and no options were available for doing anything to it under the Disk Management applet. A GPT partition is a GUID Partition Table and is usable by Macs and Windows Vista and greater — but not XP which is what what I’m running.

A quick search found this procedure:

In Windows XP Professional, if you cannot access or modify GPT disk, you can convert a GPT disk to MBR by using the “clean” command in the command line application DiskPart, which will remove all data and partition structures from the disk.

1. Go to the DOS command line (click on “Start Menu”, then “Run”, type in “cmd” in textbox, and hit “OK”)

* Type in “DiskPart” in command line.
* Type in “list disk” in command line to show all disks in this machine.
* Use “select” to set the focus to the specified partition, for example “select disk 1″.
* Use “clean” command to remove GPT disk from the current in-focus disk by zeroing sectors.

2. Go back to Disk Management, the disk should be “unallocated” now. Right click on disk info, choose “Initialize Disk” then format it.

Warning: Duh: This command will of course erase all data on the disk, but if you got here, you couldn’t access it anyway!

I find I need to re-learn DOS (and *nix) command line stuff every few years and then I completely forget how to do it and have to learn again.

Resources that I find useful:

The Windows Command Line

Microsoft Windows XP – Using batch files

This will make a great programming-class homework problem.

Here are the choices I made.

Start with C++

If you want to be a professional programmer for the rest of your days, you should be an expert in C++. It’s all there: pointers, Object Oriented Programming, complex build issues: all the experience you’ll need.

Get a book to structure the “class”

All books suck to some extent. Just pick one and go. I chose Sams Teach Yourself C++ in One Hour a Day (6th Edition). It is big on C++ syntax, light on Computer Science topics.

Assign outside projects

I’m assigning tasks like a console Hangman game, The Game Of Life, things like that. Nothing makes concepts concrete like actually building a program that does something.

Teach Computer Science as taught at a great university

To be a professional programmer you need to be literate in computer science. Like any other self respecting astrophysicist (and therefore professional know-it-all) I tried for years to avoid it but finally gave in and learned CS.

After my student makes a pass through the Sams book above, I’ll start using the curriculum available free online at MIT’s Open Courseware. We’ll be starting with 6.00 Introduction to Computer Science and Programming

Could I ever! I don’t know. Could I??

I’m old. I’m not so sure I’m a good example. The generations of my programming learning:

1. 1970’s — Poking around using BASIC on pre-PC microcomputers.

2. 1980’s — Writing a fair bit of software on my Timex ZX-18 using their BASIC.

3. 1980’s — Fortran 77 on PC and SunOS.

4. 1980’s — Writing a fair bit of software on PCs running DOS with Turbo Pascal.

5. late 1980’s — FTP, lots of ftp. Starting to use email. Writing Fortran apps on mini computers and using my PC as a VT-100 terminal with Kermit and a 1200 baud modem. Learned vi. Turbo C 1.0 (pre-ANSI standard).

6. 1990’s — Lots of Fortran 90 written under HP-UX and VMS. Starting to use C to interface with hardware.

7. 1990’s — CDROM based “Multimedia” projects. Silly aquarium games. Very painful under Windows 3.11.

8. 1990’s — WWW, the internet, HTML, cgi-bin scripts in Perl. Spending lots of time configuring web servers.

9. late 1990’s — The dot-com boom. All web, all the time. Microsoft ASP (classic: VBScript). Learned COM, ATL to enhance big MS technology web servers.

10. 2000’s — Big non-Microsoft web technologies. Linux, Java, Tomcat, other application servers.

11. 2000’s — Post dot-com: back to Microsoft with .NET! Love it. Back to client applications.

12. 2000’s — back to the web: ASP.NET. Love it.

13. 2000’s — set your way back machine: A huge project pulls me back to ATL/MFC/C++. Coding like it’s 1990 (Vista systems).

14. 2000’s — Computer game technology: classic C++, wicked algorithms, cool deep technology stacks like rendering pipelines, AI, terrain.

Looking back, what have I learned? A lot and especially that not all learning pain is gain.

I have growing respect for technologies that have evolved and stand the test of time. Looking down the list the Internet, client applications, and web-connected applications ebb and flow but feel like they will be around for awhile.

C++ is awesome. C#/.NET is way up there too. C# feels like C++ but someone has been in and tidied everything up. HTML has got to be one of the most ubiquitous formats on the planet.

Bruce Schneier pointed the way on his recent post May 6, 2009
Secure Version of Windows Created for the U.S. Air Force.

The Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC) is described here.

Some nifty tools are at Blogs.Technet: Federal Desktop Core Configuration and Blogs.Technet: Utilities for automating Local Group Policy management.

We need to find a good, easy to use software program for generating the [website name here]. PC based. Any suggestions?

My snappy answer is

WordPress

WordPress.org       WordPress at Wikipedia

Why?

I’ve used notepad, vi, VisualStudio, Netscape Gold, DreamWeaver, … All kinds of different tools. On the server side: Netscape Server, cgi-bin with perl, IIS (since NT 3.51), all sorts of pre-IIS app servers I can’t even remember the names of, Java technologies and LAMP.

I’ve used those bastard website-in-a-box things almost every ISP offers.

Way too many times.

Looking back I have to ask myself: which techniques and technologies stood up to the test of time? Which do I look back at with no regrets?

1. WordPress on LAMP or IIS
2. IIS/ASP and IIS  with ASP.NET

On the desktop editing/managing side? VisualStudio and Visual Source Safe

That’s it. I assert that you can build ANYTHING with these technologies. I routinely build sites that use BOTH 1. and 2. — like polyweb.com.

If you are a beginner: go pure WordPress. if you need more site functionality there is almost anything you could want available as a wad of PHP you can tack on.

If you need a real web application — and you think it is going to get large: ASP.NET is astoundingly powerful and lots of standard functionality is available out of the box. Especially identification/authentication and data driven UI functions.

Note that as of this writing, you need to use a daily build version instead of any stable release if you are using the latest SVN client version.

Installation is easy and in use it works much as Source Safe integration did:

Yell if you want but I still like how Visual Studio integrates with Source Safe.

Actually, I should have said “miss” how Visual Studio integrates with Source Safe since I see VSS in use at fewer and fewer workplaces — except my home. People point out that’s kind of sick.

However, IntelliSense is your friend.

In Visual Studio, just type Ctrl+J anywhere and there’s your buddy. Great for crappy typists like me.