WiX installer

WiX is the best thing to illustrate the Bad Tool Design. It's absolutely fine as long as your application's install process only consists of copying the files and creating the shortcuts. You just write 20 lines of XML and it works. But when you need to add a couple of custom steps to the wizard, you have to copy all the code related with standard steps and fix it as you want. No ways to extend it, you either take what they give, or implement 90% of things from scratch. I know about Microsoft Installer limitations and all other stuff. But what the fuck? Why don't they do all this stuff the right way? There's no way to inherit the UI. If you create the dialog, you have to implement all the stuff it should do. You have to describe all the controls from scratch. Moreover, the manner you should do it is like X=10, Y=20, Width=100. What the fuck is Width? Why do I have to spend my time for deciding whether 100 is enough for "qwerty"? I DO FIRMLY believe that WiX is ideal crap.

Disappointment of the year

Hello [here comes my name],

We have some exciting news to share. Intel Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Advanced Publishing have made a $30 million investment in Kno.

As part of the deal, we are working with Intel to accelerate the design of education tablet computers for students around the globe. This partnership allows us to focus on creating the world's leading education software for different devices and platforms. It also means that we will no longer be manufacturing and distributing the Kno tablet.

I wanted to personally thank you for your support and contributions in helping us reimagine what is possible in education. We’re currently baking up some amazing products and we will continue to call on you for your feedback and advice. To stay in the Kno on what were whipping up in the kitchen, like us on Facebook.

Thanks again for your continuing support.


Osman Rashid,
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder

I DO FIRMLY believe that in a year we'll have 14" tablets from Shenzhen. Just for $100. With free shipping.