MSI, Orca and file permissions: or it's 2011 and installers still suck

I had to create an MSI for distributing some software. After installing, I noticed that one of the files didn't allow read/write permissions to my application. You'd think that would be easy to fix: just go into Visual Studio, select the file and change the security permissions, right? Wrong.

If you have the same problem, one way to resolve it is:

1. Download Orca (it allows you to edit MSI files)
2. Run Orca and open an MSI file
3. Go to the LockPermissions table
4. Add a new row and fill in four of the five fields (see image). The fields are:
   
1. LockObject (the ID of the file, this is found in the File table);
2. Table (the name of the table that you're editing, in this case the "File" table, but it could be "Registry" or something else);
3. Domain (I left this bank);
   
4. User (I put in "Everyone" which is incredible insecure, but I really don't care);
   
5. Permission (the meaning of the numbers is explained here);
5. Save the MSI and exit Orca
   

Usually, installed files take on the permissions of the directory they are installed to. If you install to "C:\Program Files," your files will get the permissions that the program files directory has. However, using LockPermissions will overwrite all of these permissions and just assign SYSTEM and the permissions you added in the LockPermissions table. This is super-dodgy, but then, the whole thing is super-dodgy. Other people recommend using a custom action as part of the installation, e.g., using "ICacls". This is probably a better way to do it, I was just running out of time.

1 in 70 trillion

I was talking to Liz about Aida (our new child) the other day. She wanted to see a catalogue of what all the different versions of our children would look like. "Hmm...", I thought. "I think that would be quite a big catalogue." It's currently impossible to produce such a catalogue as we don't know all the genes that contribute to appearances. However, I did figure out how unique Aida is.

There are 46 chromosomes per individual. During reproduction 23 chromosomes come from each parent. Therefore, there are 2²³ (8,388,608) different possible reproductive cells per parent. Each egg could combine with any of the 2²³ different sperms, so there are 8,388,608² or 70,368,744,177,664 (70 trillion) different combinations of people that could result between any human couple.

Aida is not so much one in a million, but 1 in 70 trillion. (This does not take into account random mutation.)

If we were going to look through the catalogue, at one snapshot a second, it would take a million years to see every possible combination.

If Liz and I were any other of the great apes, Aida would be far more unique, 1 in 281,474,976,710,656 (281 trillion) as most of the great apes have 48 chromosomes rather than 46 (one of ours got fused along the way).

WPF copy/paste column names on DataGrid

I always forget that you can easily include column names when copying a DataGrid by setting

ClipboardCopyMode="IncludeHeader"

in the XAML of the DataGrid.

Death in Haiti

From my sister:

One of my neighbours, Abner, caught cholera a few weeks ago. He is the baker and the father of the girls who fetch my water, do my washing and occasionally cook for me.

Anyway he spent a week or so in hospital, was let out, went to someone we would probably call a witch doctor, and then returned home yesterday on a stretcher, no longer able to speak. He died last night, his daughters and wife started wailing at 2am in the morning - the traditional way of expressing grief and letting everyone know that he passed away. Of course, the worse part is that he leaves behind his family of 4 daughters (one of whom has a 4 month old baby) and 2 sons (one 4 years old, the other a teenager). I have no idea how they are going to survive this. I suspect the girls wont be going to school for much longer.

Cholera has returned to my zone, after a brief reprieve... I just wish they’d wash their bloody hands.

Just one person dead, yet it made me feel a lot more sad than "By late January 2011 some 4,131 people have died and 117,312 are hospitalised." (wikipedia) Of course, I already knew it would, but even as someone who has tried to think/feel in large numbers and concepts, to feel worse about a single case than other 4,130, is really pathetic. Truly pathetic. Even more so because the cholera outbreak is a tiny number of people. As far as deaths go, this has only just surpassed the most over-hyped event of the naughties. (Though, to be fair, millions of people had their lives ruined because of it - 1 & 2) Compared with other events, it's not even worth mentioning (and isn't mentioned). It's an order of magnitude less people than the earthquake in January 2010. Not even worth mentioning.

The second thing that affects me is "I just wish they’d wash their bloody hands." I know exactly what my sister means. It seems utterly absurd. A simple, obvious, easy solution. It's as though Haitians are willing themselves to die. Are they simply stupid brown people? I think a lot of people in the West would answer "yes" to that question. I lot of people I know would answer "yes" to that question. The same people who live their lives drowned in their own absurd beliefs and superstitions. This society functions - its modus operandi - is faith and superstition. Just because our beliefs don't have us dying of easily preventable water-born diseases, doesn't mean that our own absurdity doesn't cripple our existence as obese, angry, faithful, TV watching drones.

It's sad, it's strange, but it's perfectly understandable why someone wouldn't think to wash their hands and go to a witch doctor instead of getting proper treatment.

It's a fucked-up world and all I know is that it doesn't actually have to be like this. The solutions exist already - the solutions to cholera, obesity, faithfulness and irrationality all exist. But finding that path out of madness, that's the only difficult problem left to solve.

The worst thing about Entity Framework

Generally, I like Entity Framework, especially the newest version (part of Visual Studio 2010). The absolute worst thing about it is the error message you can get when you are hooking-up your POCO files to an entity model. The error message is: "Mapping and metadata information could not be found for EntityType [...]"

EF tells you in which class the error is located, but that's it. It could be any of the properties that don't work! If you have a database table with 20 or 50 fields, good luck in tracking down the error. The best info I've found is that the error can be caused by:

• Misspelled properties (case-sensitive!)
• Properties missing in the POCO class
• Type mismatches between the POCO and entity-type (e.g., int instead of long)
• Enums in the POCO (EF doesn't support enums right now as I understand)

It has got to be the worst error message I've seen from Microsoft in a long time.

Original Dungeons and Dragons

More investigations into role-playing games (mostly to plunder them for ideas) led me to a couple of re-writes of the original Dungeons and Dragons game (the red and blue books! Remember?) The games are Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry (White Box Rules). And you know what? Original D&D sucks. Badly.

There are horrible tables (attack roll tables?!), saving throws, experience points, ability scores, spell levels, Vancian magic systems, alignments, arbitrary weapon restrictions (as if clerics don't shed blood, come on! The crusades, anyone?), etc.

The idea of moving away from D&D 3rd and 4th edition is a good one. Not moving back to AD&D 1st or 2nd edition is also a good idea. But moving back to original D&D? Not a good idea.

What the authors should have done: Taken the idea of "simple" and applied reasoning to it. Take the nostalgia and remould it into a simple and yet modern RPG. The great thing that original D&D has over 4th edition D&D is evocation. Reading about Charm Person is a lot more evocative than reading about Ray of Enfeeblement. These OD&D games have the evocation but they're extremely tedious, power-gamey and complex.

Who are these RPGs even aimed at? I can't imagine how anyone new to the past-time would be even slightly intrigued by the complexity and weirdness of the books. They're not logical nor do they create a space for players to envision their characters. Therefore, I can only imagine that the new releases are for old-school players. If that's the case, why wouldn't we just grab our old red and blue books from the attic, basement, parents' house, siblings' house, etc.? I know I could, but I'm not going to.

HeroQuest comments

I looked at HeroQuest while looking for a RuneQuest replacement. It's the other Glorantha RPG. It's almost a good replacement. There are few special rules. Keywords, derived from a character's description, are tied to numbers from 1 to 20. Rolling below this number (on a d20) determines success. That is basically it.

The maths, however, like most RPGs, is a fail.

HeroQuest abilities are scored on a range of 1–20, but are scalable. When you raise a rating of 20 by one point, it increases not to 21, but to 1W. The W signifies a game abstraction called a mastery. You have now reached a new order of excellence in that ability. (HeroQuest 2nd edition, pg 19)

To fix this deeply broken idea, the game-master is expected to keep pace (of course):

Supporting characters, with whom you have relationships, improve over time. Values for their ratings are comparative to yours. As you improve, so will they. Narrators needn't track the improvement over time, but simply update their ratings whenever they reappear in the storyline. (pg 61)

And to justify it, the author declares:

Why Advance Characters At All?

Few of the adventure genres we draw inspiration from actually feature significant character improvement through the course of a series. Mysteries, pulps, military adventures, westerns, and space operas tend to feature characters who are highly competent from the outset. Occasionally a secondary character, most often a male ingénue, starts out as a greenhorn and proves himself in the course of the story. (Just as often, a once-competent secondary character redeems himself and returns to his legendary past level of competence.) Other, grimmer genres, like horror, satirical SF, and arguably post-apocalyptic survivalism, keep their protagonists relatively weak throughout.

Fantasy is a prominent exception: it is not uncommon to follow a character from humble beginnings to epic achievement.

Rate of improvement is basically, then, a genre element. Narrators who want a rapid growth curve should decrease the costs of ability improvement. Those who want slower growth should increase them.

That said, roleplayers really enjoy increasing their PC’s abilities on a regular basis. Regular ability boosts helps to keep them invested in their characters, and thinking of their futures. This is one area where HeroQuest bows more to the demands of the roleplaying form than to precedents set by the source material.

In series fiction, relationships are another common exception; highly competent heroes often make friends or contacts they meet again in a sequel. Narrators can encourage this with directed improvements. (pg 58)

This justification is muddled. Within fantasy, "it is not uncommon to follow a character from humble beginnings to epic achievement." Epic achievement maybe, but that isn't the same as numerical advancement. Not at all. There is little "advancement" in the classic of all fantasy novels, The Lord of the Rings. The characters develop, undeniably, but do they advance in any way reminiscent of RPGs? Gandalf does, perhaps, when he becomes Gandalf the White. Nevertheless, the changes aren't similar to the way one advances in RPGs. The other characters, Boromir, Legolas, Gimli, Strider and the hobbits just don't advance, yet they all achieve great things. Frodo, if anything, regresses. The weight of the ring bares down on him. He barely survives and is certainly no stronger for it.

The conclusion is "This is one area where HeroQuest bows more to the demands of the roleplaying form than to precedents set by the source material." Screw that! All we need do is teach roleplayers basic arithmetic and then move on to great achievements, huge rewards, challenging and fun stories. We just don't need grade 3 sums to do that.

And the rest of the HeroQuest? I don't know, I didn't read too much more. I was too enraged and wanted to ride my hobby-horse. However, I think I should return because there are lots of ideas about how to play an RPG, something that is deeply lacking in RPGs these days.