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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
My new laptop turned up today (finally) and so I'm now the happy owner of a MacBook Pro. Yeah, the name sucks but it's still better than the awful name "Inspiron". Mr Dell, if you're trying to hint that it may inspire me you're probably underestimating my intelligence. I guess nobody can name computers. iMac? Terrible name. Dimension 4300? Ok, Dimension is better but still not great. Mac Mini, well that' just the best of the lot because it does exactly what it says on the tin.
Anyway, MacBook Pro. Darwine (a windows emulator of sorts) went on fine so I can at least get my marked essays back for my degree. They have a great online submission and marking system, but a: you have to use Word and b: they return the assignments as self extracting executables. Actually I don't mind the word bit as OpenOffice is still awful, but the exes just make me wonder if they've ever heard of security. At least it's a history degree and not a computing one.
Hardware wise the MacBook does the two things I wanted it to: Be faster than my desktop and be very light and slim. It gets very hot, but no hotter than any Dell or HP I've ever used. The inbuilt camera is great for Delicious Library, Word runs great even though it's emulated, iTunes does as well and Spotlight is frighteningly fast. The remote is a lot more useful than I thought as it works with iTunes and QuickTime as well as FrontRow so it makes up for having no media buttons on the keyboard like my desktop does. The new-fangled magnetic power connector kept me amused for half an hour or so and I didn't realise that .Mac would also transfer my home wireless network details as well so I didn't have to set that up at all. All in all it's so much better than my desktop that it hurts and so my home PC is now relegated to the job of games PC only, and that's just until Darwine gets as far as being able to run Eve. World of Warcraft is installing as we speak as they were clever enough to ship a box that contained both PC and Mac versions on the same discs.
On interesting thing I hadn't considered was using the inbuilt camera as a very crude scanner, but I now have a laptop that is capable of recording low quality images of scribbled diagrams and the like.
So have I left the world of Windows behind? No chance. I still believe that .NET is the best development environment available and so I'm really glad to have Mono support for the Mac. Hopefully Darwine can run the rest of the applications that I need, although I'll miss visual studio. At least VPN support on the Mac always seems to be much nicer than on Windows so I can still Remote Desktop back into a PC when I need it so that's three ways to run Windows applications when I need them.
Am I happy with the Mac? So far it's the best laptop that I've ever owned, although my HP TC1100 isn't going on the scrapheap just yet because I can't give up on my Tablet PC fixes. The tablet is going to be used almost exclusively with OneNote, which is the best application in Office and looks strangely like a mode in Mac Word that the PC version doesn't have. I just wish that I could read OneNote files on the Mac, then I'd be very happy. Hey, Microsoft! Any chance of MacNote? OneMacNote? MacOneNote? Something along those lines. And while you're at it how about sending me a beta of OneNote 12? Or isn't it OneNote 2007 this week? Actually I'd place OneNote on my list of can't live without applications, which includes Logic Express, Eve, Visual Studio and Delicious Library. Hey, Microsoft still make a respectible showing on that list so I can't be that far gone yet.
Next up on my applications to play with is Eclipse. I know it's not going to be better than Visual Studio yet because I'm a a big debugger fan and even if Eclipse does support it the debugger in Mono is still rather underdeveloped. I have great hopes for it with the annoying text entering side of programming though.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
I saw this the other day, and thought it was worth reproducing to make sure that, if you're using MBSA, you can still keep yourself fully up to date...
As documented in KB895660, the MBSA 1.2.1 catalog (MSSecure.XML) that is used to provide security detection and deployment information to MBSA 1.x will be no longer be updated for use with MBSA 1.2.1 after March 31, 2006. The SMS 2.0 Software Update Services Feature Pack and the SMS 2003 Security Update Inventory Tool leverage the MBSA 1.x scan engine and therefore the MSSecure.XML file. To enable customers using SMS 2.0 Software Update Services Feature Pack and the SMS 2003 Security Update Inventory Tool, MSSecure.XML will continue to be updated for use with these SMS tools. The MSSecure.XML file will be updated until SMS 2.0 reaches the end of Extended Support in December 2010.
Newer Microsoft products cannot be supported with either the SMS 2.0 Software Update Services Feature Pack or the SMS 2003 Security Update Inventory Tool due to limitations in the MBSA 1.x scan engine. The Microsoft products not supported by these tools include, but are not limited to: Internet Explorer 7, SQL Server 2005, Windows Vista, Windows Server codename “Longhorn”, and any 64-bit products or platforms.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Well, having spent the last few days trying to migrate our website from Classic ASP and ASP.NET 1.1 to ASP.NET 2.0, I had just about given up.
A little background. The website I am talking of was written using classic ASP and is the backbone of the company I work for. Now, this website, does not actually need to be upgraded in order to suceed but the development costs and turnaround times of new features would be better served by using ASP.NET. So, about eight months ago, we decided to write all new products for the website in ASP.NET 1.1 with a view to upgrading these products and also classic ASP products to ASP.NET 2.0 when Visual Studio 2005 was released. So far so good. The path we chose was to have a single web project for each product which meant that if a product required updating, we would only need to update the .aspx pages and code behind files and then compile to a single DLL for that product and then upload those changes along with the DLL and the rest would be untouched and therefore, no chance of breaking something unintentionally. This has now worked fine for around five months.
Now came the time for upgrading these products into VS 2005 and I was more than perplexed to find that VS 2005 does not allow the same web project model as VS 2003 meaning that we would have to use the new Website Model which didn't really fit our needs, as most pages would be compiled into a single DLL with possibly support class' being compiled into seperate DLLs, but still not really following the structure that we had implemented and become comfortable with.
Now, you may be wondering where I am going with this ;-) I did a little research (and no doubt most of you would have found the same resources, but to save you the heartache...) and found a great blog entry from Scott Guthrie which details the excellent work that Microsoft has done to correct the issue of omitting this project template from VS 2005 in the first place. There is now a downloadable (albeit, still in beta stage) project template that gives you the same ASP.NET project template that you had in VS 2003 while still benefiting from all of the great enhancements in VS 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0. I encourage anybody faced with the same problem to check out the First Preview Download of VS 2005 Web Application Project Model Now Available and the download and tutorial links available at Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Project Preview.
I still have some testing to do, but I have successfully migrated the project over to ASP.NET 2.0 in around 3 hours and there is quite a bit of code so I was quite pleased with the time it took, but I am not happy with the fact that I now have ASP.NET 1.1 .aspx and .vb pages that don't make use of partial classes and such sitting in an ASP.NET 2.0 project. You can of course choose to upgrade each project to a Web Application but I found that this didn't work quite so well as you would end up with some page declaration code in your code behind file and some in the .designer file which I am not too hapy about. Instead, I have decided to take a longer approach to the migration in that I have created the same structure as I had in VS 2003 and will manually copy the code over bit by bit (admittedly, this should be quite quick due to the fact that of the 11 current products, 4 are support products with no interface and the rest will only require that I create the pages manually) and then copy the markup and code over. I do think I will be turning the XHTML checking off though for this stage of the migration as I don't know that I can face being told that I have hundreds of lines of code that are deprecated or not surround in quotes etc. ;)
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
I've made a substantial set of updates to my list of WPF bloggers - you might want to reimport the OPML or update your feed reader manually if you use this to keep track of news and events in the WPF community.
If you're missing from the list, please add a comment here and I'll check your site out.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Widespread access to wi-fi could be the force behind the net's next wave of innovation, say experts.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Tailrank, Memeorandum and Megite (no permalink, sorry) have a bunch of links to posts relating to the Live.com news.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Steve Yegg's language rant is a good read for any programmer and full of great quotes. Covers C, C++, Lisp, Java, Perl, Python and Ruby. And of course Emacs. Sample:
When in doubt, hire Java programmers who are polyglots, who detest large spongy frameworks like J2EE and EJB, and who use Emacs. All good rules of thumb.
Thanks to Bob congdon and James Robertson for the link.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Steve Yegg's language rant is a good read for any programmer and full of great quotes. Covers C, C++, Lisp, Java, Perl, Python and Ruby. And of course Emacs. Sample:
When in doubt, hire Java programmers who are polyglots, who detest large spongy frameworks like J2EE and EJB, and who use Emacs. All good rules of thumb.
Thanks to Bob congdon and James Robertson for the link.
Tags:
java
emacs
programming
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Here's another of those useful-but-dangerous features that I stumble across from time to time. It is possible to disable a warning for a chunk of code, thus:
public bool UsedExternallyOnly = true;
would generate a warning:
warning CS0219: The variable 'UsedExternallyOnly' is assigned but its value is never used
There might be really good reasons for not fixing this warning, like it's only
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Vodafone's chief marketing officer will leave the firm as part of a wider shake-up at the UK mobile phone giant.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Well ok so it starts tomorrow, but what are we to expect from the Consumer electronics only second to the Americans do (and lets admit it, they like to do things BIG).
Well you can have a look here. Or just wait till I tell you the best bits here...
One thing I'm hoping to hear about is the Microsoft Origami project... But I'm going to stick to my rule. Nothing about devices until they are press released... NO RUMOURS HERE MISSES...
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Some are still coming to love the features found in C# 2.0 (like Generics:D) but MSFT are already hard at work on C# 3.0, Neik on CodePost has posted an article summarising some of the new features coming in C# 3.0.
Certainly some nice additions (not sure on why a 'var' keyword was necessary but definately anonymous types!)
Cant hardly wait for the betas to trickle...
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Some are still coming to love the features found in C# 2.0 (like Generics:D) but MSFT are already hard at work on C# 3.0, Neik on CodePost has posted an article summarising some of the new features coming in C# 3.0.
Certainly some nice additions (not sure on why a 'var' keyword was necessary but definately anonymous types!)
Cant hardly wait for the betas to trickle...
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Here's a little tip. Actually, it's so small that it's probably no more than a Tipette, A Tipchen (for German readers) or a Tipling .... oh wait! Isn't that what I do every night after work?
Anyway, enough preamble. If you are in one of those not uncommon situations where you temporarily want your project to ignore a block of code, how do you do this? Maybe your preferred way is to comment out each of the lines in that code block? That is, manually go down line after line and insert the apostrophe, using the down arrow...? If so, I have good news for you: there is a much easier way.
Here's how. There is a really handy set of key press combinations you can use in Visual Studio.
To comment out a block:
1. Select the block you want to comment out by dragging over it with the mouse and with the left mouse button held down.
2. Press the Ctrl key and the letter K key at the same time. (Nothing visible will happen yet.)
3. Release those two keys.
4. Then press the Ctrl key and the letter C key at the same time.
5. Automagically, the selected code block will be commented out. It’s a real time saver.
To uncomment a block of code back in again, follow all the steps above, except that in Step 4 you use the Ctrl key and the letter U (for Uncomment) at the same time. Neat. Huh?
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
New guidelines published in the UK show how to make sites user-friendly for disabled people.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
The French government again tries to push through a measure cracking down on file-sharing on the internet.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Thousands fall for an email prank claiming Microsoft is about to introduce fees for its popular Hotmail service.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
I was working last week for a client and we came across a box whose admin password was not what we expected (or any of the many variations of what we expected), or any of the non expected variations. To no avail. However, one of our techs came up with thi
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Intel says it will bring forward the rollout of its new scheme for long-range wireless internet.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Last nights webcast "Preparing for Web Content Management with the Office SharePoint Server" is now available on-demand for online viewing or in downloadable format.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
So says this Gmail user. Unfortunate timing, just when the company is talking about storing all the world's data. Will be interesting to see if Google recover it.
Trusting free services with critical data is insane. The business model does not include a friendly support line in an emergency. You fire off your email to support, and wait, and hope.
Update
Some others are popping up with similar stories. Like this one:
...the exact same thing happened to me. I was completely crushed, and completely abandoned by Google customer support though I emailed at least 15 times and supplied all relevant data. My account was simply deleted. It was frustrating and I still have no idea how it happened.
Or this:
...this happened to me too. All the photos of my 1 month year old baby were in gmail, and now they are forever gone. :(
You can see these reports in the comments to the original post.
GMail is huge. It's hardly surprising that there are some mishaps. Even so, it neatly illustrates the potential downside of online storage.
Further update
Google support has responded to the user as follows:
We have investigated this issue, but because the results were inconclusive, we're not able to provide further assistance.
Gmail takes the privacy and security of our users very seriously. For this reason, we can't reveal any further information about this account.
This would drive me wild if it were my mail. What does it mean? Maybe Google isn't sure that the user seeking to restore the account is the user who opened it. If so, then "tough luck" hardly seems an adequate response. In a case of lost personal data, I'd have though whatever is inconclusive should be further researched, not left hanging. Caveat user.
Tags:
google
gmail
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
So says this Gmail user. Unfortunate timing, just when the company is talking about storing all the world's data. Will be interesting to see if Google recover it.
Trusting free services with critical data is insane. The business model does not include a friendly support line in an emergency. You fire off your email to support, and wait, and hope.
Tags:
google
gmail
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
I stumbled on the site Creating Passionate Users which has some great ideas about how to be better at what you do!
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
If you've never met Kimberley Tripp you really should and nows your chance. What Kimberly doesn't know about SQL Server isn't worth knowing, and even then she will probably find out the answer for you from the SQL team directly.
Kimberly is doing a couple of one day seminars on indexes and availability in the UK over the next month. These seminars are great because its such a small group so the level of interaction is really high. Its almost like having a 1-1 consultancy for a whole day.
The details of the seminars are as follows
Kimberly Tripp: Indexes from every angle (Full Day Seminar)
If you want to understand index internals, statistics, how the optimizer chooses indexes, strategies for index coverage, and optimization plans - and just want a better understanding of the SQL Server environment...this fast-paced and rare event is the place to be!
Applicable to both SQL 2000 and 2005, where differences exist they will be discussed.
http://sqlserverfaq.com?eid=71
14th March 2006
READING
------------------------------
Kimberly Tripp: SQL Server 2005 Practical Guide to Availability and
Recovery
This fast-paced, full-day workshop targets DBAs, IT Implementers, Architects and Developers who want to get a grasp of how to build a resilient system.
In this workshop, we will dive into some of the more important availability features including: Database Mirroring, Piecemeal Restore/Recovery, Online Partial Restore, Instant Initialization, Database Snapshots, Table and Index Partitioning, and Snapshot Isolation.
If you're a developer wanting to know what's possible or a DBA who needs to know what's critical and how to implement it, this is the place to be!
http://sqlserverfaq.com?eid=70
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
If you've never met Kimberley Tripp you really should and nows your chance. What Kimberly doesn't know about SQL Server isn't worth knowing, and even then she will probably find out the answer for you from the SQL team directly.
Kimberly is doing a couple of one day seminars on indexes and availability in the UK over the next month. These seminars are great because its such a small group so the level of interaction is really high. Its almost like having a 1-1 consultancy for a whole day.
The details of the seminars are as follows
Kimberly Tripp: Indexes from every angle (Full Day Seminar)
If you want to understand index internals, statistics, how the optimizer chooses indexes, strategies for index coverage, and optimization plans - and just want a better understanding of the SQL Server environment...this fast-paced and rare event is the place to be!
Applicable to both SQL 2000 and 2005, where differences exist they will be discussed.
http://sqlserverfaq.com?eid=71
14th March 2006
READING
------------------------------
Kimberly Tripp: SQL Server 2005 Practical Guide to Availability and
Recovery
This fast-paced, full-day workshop targets DBAs, IT Implementers, Architects and Developers who want to get a grasp of how to build a resilient system.
In this workshop, we will dive into some of the more important availability features including: Database Mirroring, Piecemeal Restore/Recovery, Online Partial Restore, Instant Initialization, Database Snapshots, Table and Index Partitioning, and Snapshot Isolation.
If you're a developer wanting to know what's possible or a DBA who needs to know what's critical and how to implement it, this is the place to be!
http://sqlserverfaq.com?eid=70
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
OK, I just love the Flickr photo site - to my mind, one of the best examples of this whole Web 2.0 "social software" scene.
At a recent Web 2.0 event, one of the speakers (Paul Browne) mentioned that Flickr often update their codebase every half hour... they basically have a continuous release cycle, and features on the site appear/disappear all the time!
Well, all of that is a slightly lengthly and cumbersome introduction to a cute little feature on the site which I just spotted: Flickr badges.
This is where I'd like to have put my Badge to illustrate the feature but the security settings on blog won't allow me to paste script, soz...
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Amazon will give you discounted shopping if you search using its A9 search engine. More details here.
I think this is worth some reflection. It's well known that Google pays good money to affiliates able to promote its search engine, toolbar and desktop applet: Sun, Opera and Firefox come to mind. Yahoo! does the same with Adobe and no doubt others. But this is a new twist, where the search engine company rewards individuals directly for using its web search.
Note that all you have to do to qualify is to search regularly; how often is not specified except that it is "as little as a few searches a week". The discount is currently 1.57% - not a huge fortune, but worth having.
Amazon/A9 is not doing particularly well as a search engine provider. It doesn't even figure in recent stats which show Google, Yahoo and MSN as the top three contenders. So Amazon needs to do something, and a discount incentive from one of the web's largest online stores strikes me as a canny move.
Nobody will accuse Amazon of being anti-competitive over this, because it currently has such a small share of search. What if Google did something similar? Search is sensitive because it is about finding information; like it or not, Google and its rivals now have a substantial and largely hidden power to influence our learning and our choices. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of being paid to use a particular search engine.
Tags:
amazon
google
search
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Amazon will give you discounted shopping if you search using its A9 search engine. More details here.
I think this is worth some reflection. It's well known that Google pays good money to affiliates able to promote its search engine, toolbar and desktop applet: Sun, Opera and Firefox come to mind. Yahoo! does the same with Adobe and no doubt others. But this is a new twist, where the search engine company rewards individuals directly for using its web search.
Note that all you have to do to qualify is to search regularly; how often is not specified except that it is "as little as a few searches a week". The discount is currently 1.57% - not a huge fortune, but worth having.
Amazon/A9 is not doing particularly well as a search engine provider. It doesn't even figure in recent stats which show Google, Yahoo and MSN as the top three contenders. So Amazon needs to do something, and a discount incentive from one of the web's largest online stores strikes me as a canny move.
Nobody will accuse Amazon of being anti-competitive over this, because it currently has such a small share of search. What if Google did something similar? Search is sensitive because it is about finding information; like it or not, Google and its rivals now have a substantial and largely hidden power to influence our learning and our choices. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of being paid to use a particular search engine.
Tags:
amazon
google
search
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
I decided to write an about me page for this blog.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
The point of no return at the end of Act 1, and the lowest ebb with the protagonist's motivation switcheroo at the end of act 2 (let's not get into a "three act structure is dead" discussion for the moment), were clear and distinct points in the movie, structurally positioned close to the optimum points based on the movie's length. There was little wholly remarkable about the movie, but it developed tension, gore-cringe and enough character interaction to make it an entertaining watch.The lesson: structure and plot formula are not necessarily bad things providing everything else is in place for a great movie experience.So my writing was curtailed last night, by the movie, a nasty headache and re-reading some of the awful dialogue I've written (!), so an early night was necessary.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Google won hearts everywhere with its clean home page. Today I opened up Google with the IE7 beta, and for the first time hit a page that by Google's standards is cluttered:
Google clutter
Let's be fair, it's still cleaner than average; no third-party ads. The other search engines have also learned from Google, though search.yahoo.com includes spurious news headlines and stock indices. Search.msn.com is nice and sparse, though still kinda ugly to my eyes. Search.live.com is just an input box with no accompanying text whatsoever at the time of writing - perhaps taking simplicity a little too far, though it does say "Live Search Sample", so this is likely to change.
Going back to Google, I guess this is the price you pay for holding out against the Toolbar.
Tags:
google
search
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Google won hearts everywhere with its clean home page. Today I opened up Google with the IE7 beta, and for the first time hit a page that by Google's standards is cluttered:
Google clutter
Let's be fair, it's still cleaner than average; no third-party ads. The other search engines have also learned from Google, though search.yahoo.com includes spurious news headlines and stock indices. Search.msn.com is nice and sparse, though still kinda ugly to my eyes. Search.live.com is just an input box with no accompanying text whatsoever at the time of writing - perhaps taking simplicity a little too far, though it does say "Live Search Sample", so this is likely to change.
Going back to Google, I guess this is the price you pay for holding out against the Toolbar.
Tags:
google
search
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Broadcaster ITV reports a 36% rise in profits and unveils plans for a new television channel.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Definitely worth looking at as I've been using the WinTarget iSCSI target software on trial for a while now. Microsoft has just acquired the WinTarget software product and will be incorporating it into future versions of Windows Storage Server 2003. A Microsoft native iSCSI target solution has been sorely needed for a long time (IMHO)! Press release information gcan be found here.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
This week's Cebit technology fair in Hanover is set to showcase the diversity of the hi-tech world.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Rob from Microsoft Ireland has just let me know of a nice little competion to win an Xbox 360 if you dev a site with Visual Web Developer (which is free by the way!!).
If you're interested, look here for details (and good luck!!).
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Matt Goyer has details of two new Online Spotlight application that launched yesterday
Yahoo Videos and Yahoo Photos, Matt has pictures on his blog
I have not tried them yet but as ever its great to see new applications coming on Online Spotlight
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Print-on-demand book firm Lulu announces plans for five new European sites as part of its global expansion.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Just visited live.com (it's set as my home page) and got a giant surprise: lots of new features for this rapidly advancing portal site. I spotted at least the following new features:
- Fantastic new inline window popups (hover your mouse over the [more] tag to see what I mean)
- Streamlined gadget directory
- Multiple pages with renaming
- New look and feel for the site and gadgets (check out the new weather gadget)
- Zoomable visualizations for search (summary to expanded results)
Looks very nice - good use of AJAX and probably the most functional portal out there right now. Obviously it's a pale shadow of what we'll be able to do with WPF when Windows Vista releases, but it's a big step forward from the old days of content sites that decided what news you saw and how it was presented. As RSS becomes all-pervasive, sites like live.com will become even more powerful as an aggregation point for things that matter, and of course with custom gadgets it's possible to take this still further and turn it into a company portal that combines internal and external content seamlessly.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Thanks to Tony Soper for his recent post on Internet Security and Acceleration's quarantine tool
Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 provides support for network quarantine which can be used to ensure that client computers meet to core aspects of your corporate security policy BEFORE they are granted remote access to your network. The quarantine feature manifests itself in the form of a client executable named rqc (Remote Quarantine Client) and an executable for the server named rqs (Remote Quarantine Service).
Take a look for yourself by browsing to the Remote Access Quarantine Tool for Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA) 2004. The web page leads you to download RQSUtils.exe which contains a script (ConfigureRQSForISA.vbs) and a document (rqs.doc). The document explains how to configure ISA to act as a rqs listener and hence integrate with the quarantine service.
Tony also mentions the Best Practices Analyzer Tool for ISA - it's well worth a look as it will help you to ensure that your ISA servers are well configured and free from hidden problems.
Steve Riley's recent post explains more about Remote Access Quarantine in plain English/American!
Tony also mentions the Best Practices Analyzer Tool for ISA - it's well worth a look as it will help you to ensure that your ISA servers are well configured and free from hidden problems.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
Since we often get asked about building collaborative applications, I thought I would highlight a few related articles on this:
PJ Hough posted on some of the WSS V3 enhancements for tracking applications:
http://blogs.msdn.com/pjhough/archive/2006/01/12/512300.aspx
Terry Myerson posted on the Exchange guidance for supporting and building new collaborative applications:
http://blogs.technet.com/exchange/archive/2006/02/20/419994.aspx
And news on migration tools and partners:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/jan06/01-17LotusMigrationPR.mspx
-- Jeff
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
The more I play with Ruby, the more I find myself doing things like:
require 'pathname'
class String
def begins_with?(start)
self[0, start.length] == start
end
end
class Pathname
def hidden?
each_filename do |name|
return true if name.begins_with? "."
end
false
end
end
p Pathname.new('/usr/bin/ruby').hidden?
p Pathname.new('/home/thom/.bashrc').hidden?
p Pathname.new('/home/thom/.kde/share').hidden?
Where I'd normally write a bit of code and a comment to explain what I'm trying to
do, I'll just give an object a method I wish it had (or that it probably already has,
but I'm too stupid to find it). But the more code I write, the more I end up patching
other types to make my code clearer (for me, at least). I wonder if this is what other
people do.
Seems to me that a lot of Rails involves hacking up existing classes to give them
cool new abilities. I love being able to say 3.years + 2.months etc,
but is there a chance that if Ruby continues to grow in popularity, these different
environments will start to clash? Are we going to start seeing different Ruby distributions,
each with its own list of modifications to a few standard classes? Are developers
going to sit down at different computers, and have to work out which set of modifications
has been implemented on top of the core functionality? Does it matter? Even if it
matters, does it matter that it matters?
Who knows. In the meantime, I won't claim to have a vice-like grasp of metaprogramming,
but I do like being able to create my own comfort-zone inside Ruby. It's just I find
that half of every program I write is meddling with someone else's stuff, and I keep
worrying that someone will tell me off.
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Published on 08 Mar 2006 from
A prostitute's diary and a guide to UK cafes are vying for the first literary award for bloggers turned bookwriters.