Thanks to MikeG: 

See http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/evaluation/sysreqs/default.asp : "BizTalk Server 2002 will run on the upcoming production versions of Windows Server 2003 with the application of Service Pack 1 for BizTalk Server 2002. SP1 is scheduled for availability within 90 days of the Windows Server 2003 release to manufacturing."

So that's why it didn't work. Thanks. I should have checked myself.

Anyone had success installing Biztalk 2002 on W2003? On my system the progress bar stops at about 85% without any further indication of what it's about to do ...

Congrats from my side fly out to the Mindreef team and Sam who (independently) won two Jolt Awards. Wow. This really rocks!

Congratulations on passing the test teach with flying colors.

[...]

Welcome aboard Ingo!

I don't have to be silent.

Cool. Niels and Jason will also be around in London (together with some other no-blog-yet DM guys ;-)).

That's going to be some serious fun.

I'm off to London in a couple of hours. Sorry, Clemens.

This is going to be one of the most important "talks" in more than a year now and I'm really excited about it. If it turns out ok, I guess you'll hear about it from the usual suspect's blogs. Otherwise, I'll just tear out my calendar's page of March 27th [1], and will never mention this day's events again ;-)

Wish me luck, it's going to be fun!

[1] Which would be a pretty hard thing to do - considering my use of Outlook on a TPC.

Hmmm ... I'm not the first one to announce: The first issue of my Distributed .NET Newsletter has been sent to more than 1.500 subscribers today.

If you want to subscribe, you can do so at http://www.ingorammer.com/NL (it's free, it's bi-weekly). You can also check out today's issue.

InfoPath. I'm impressed. It so much rocks. It somehow feels like Web Services clients should simply be developed like this.

Now, let me - the humble person who I am - state some of my wishes:

• Just make it a development tool. I'd really like to embed InfoPath forms into my WinForms apps.
• Give me Events, give me the InfoSet. I'd love to fully integrate forms like these with my real apps.
• Let me redist it without depending on Office 2003. In fact, just include it in .NET and let me redist it for free. The reason for this final - and maybe aggressive - demand is that my client's customers [1] won't easily allow me to deploy Office 2003 with our applications. And that's not just for the cost of the licenses but instead for the testing and support issues involved. It's hard to get them to roll out .NET - it's absolutely impossible to make them roll out Office 2003 just for a small web services client.

Yesterday, I met the guys in Zurich:

.NET Bloggers: Ben, me, Sascha

Clemens has also been there - but he left before we took the photo. I guess that makes yesteday evening the largest .NET weblogger gathering in Central Europe (German-speaking parts). Unfortunately, Christian hasn't been around.

I'd so much like to get my hands on InfoPath.

Just some weeks ago - at a developer conference - we've been chatting about the current state of software engineering where I came to my sad conclusion:

What we have here, is a circular problem:

1. Right now, it simply takes too long for the customer's IT department to create a solution.
2. Therefore, some power users take the power in their own hands and write customer calculation sheet in Excel and share them with their department.
3. Some other departments happen to have similar problems and take a similar route to solving them.
4. The company ends up with multiple versions of a number of different Excel calculations for the same business transaction.
5. The company's customers complain because they get different information - and even different quotes - depending on which department they call.
6. The enterprise IT department decides to break the circle by completely replace all the 100s of Excel sheets by a real, full-blown, highly integrated CRM solution.
7. It takes some months or even years to do so.
8. In the meantime, the users need some calculations to be done.
9. Therefore, some power users take the power in their own hands and write customer calculation sheet in Excel and share them with their department.
10. GOTO 3 (anybody still wonders why GOTO is considered harmful)

Clemens nicely demonstrates different applications of a SOAP Envelope:

• Sign it, add some headers, and send it to a destination by specifying the ultimate endpoint and the first router
• Sign it, add some headers, and use it as a means of encapsulation for an RPC call
• Sign it, add some headers, encrypt it, and PUT it at a well-known uniquely identifiable location until someone later GETs it from there.
• Take a RESTful bubble bath

Warning: Only read in an environment where you laughing out loudly won't make your boss fire you.

The Horror Of Blimps: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=160851&perpage=50&pagenumber=1

As my week of vacation/speaking in the UK is about to end, I'm currently sitting at 23C (traveler's secret tip: this is easily the best seat in an A321) on OS 0456 from London Heathrow to Vienna.

The last week was absolutely brilliant. As it's been our first time in London, Katja and I really enjoyed this city for a couple of days.

But let's start with the conference. DevWeek rocks. I once again met a number friends whom I got to know at the previous cons: lots of folks from DevelopMentor, Wintellect and QA (one of the UK's training companies) were around. It seems as if I was one of the only independent guys presenting there ...

Spontaneous picnic in front of the speaker lounge.
Simon, John, Katja, Tim, Sarah, and Kevin

Fortunately for Katja and Sarah, we managed to reduce the amount of talking shop in our spare time to the bare minimum. Instead we were lucky to follow the locals to some great theaters, dinner places and the mandatory daily ice cream @ HD:

Queuing for Häagen Dazs
"No, this is 'Lester' Square. Leicester Square is just round the corner ..."

On the vacation side of this week, we did all the usual tourist stuff (open-top bus tours [++], London Eye [+++], London Tower [++], Tate Modern [++], Hyde Park & Speaker's Corner [++], Madam Toussaud's [--]):

The London Eye: The world's largest observation wheel

The London Tower: You can easily spend a full day there

The Tower Bridge

Speaker's Corner: "The end of the world is near" - or such

Tate Modern

On the negative side: If it's up to me, I could live without Madam Toussaud's. It's overrated, overly expensive and overly crowded. We queued for about an hour to shell out 40 UK pounds to be pushed through - together with hundreds of other tourists at the same time. This somehow doesn't really match my definition of fun ;)

Looking back at this week, Katja and I agree: London is a great city. And we checked out only a small part of the available attractions and sights. Hey, but it's only three weeks until I'll return back. Looking forward.

By the way: Any tech-bloggers in this area?