Archives
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Regular Expression Content Processor
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Something brewing at ShadowFax land
I think Ron Jacobs (Microsoft PM) must have the old whip out - I see a lot of activity at ShadowFax land. I received three emails in a day alone and I also see quite a few recent releases. The Virtual TAP is something worth pursuing for projects that don't have much stakeholder equity (euphemism for 'not much responsibility involved'). Seriously, pick a small project where you can apply ShadowFax and learn from it.
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Groove software is core component of Homeland Security Network
Groove Networks announced that its software is a core component of an information-sharing network of the Department of Homeland Security. The Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) will be expanded to "all 50 states, five territories, tribal governments, and 50 major urban areas" and eventually to the private sector so it can coordinate preparedness efforts with government officials". From the IT perspective - if there ever was a technical solution that perfectly fits a business requirement then this is it. Read Ray Ozzie's blog posting for more insights.
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Building an Internet Coffee Maker & Toaster
OReilly has a new book out - Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks. There are a couple of free chapters that shows you how to build an Internet Coffee Maker and Toaster. The book also has a chapter on 'How to Build an Aquarium Inside a Macintosh'.
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ShadowFax TAP Program extended to Feb 25th
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SharpMT v2.2 released
RandyRants has released a new version of SharpMT (v.2.2). In addition to a new Help System and an updated Toolbar, it has a RSS Aggregator support that allows to work with plug-ins. One feature that caught my eye but have yet to explore is the 'Now Playing' music plug-in..
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MSF Resources [Lorenzo's]
Good listing of resources concerning MSF (Solutions Framework) at Lorenzo's weblog site. Worth noting (as he'll be updating it as well).
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Sorting Out Microsoft's Collaboration Technologies
John Durant has an article on MSDN which gives an excellent overview of MS Collaboration Technologies. I do work with collaborative systems, primarily with SharePoint and Groove. I was hoping that there would be some mention of Groove in John's article - after all, MS does have a considerable stake in Groove.
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Two interesting Longhorn sites
Now that I have the Longhorn bug in me - I am foraging for Longhorn related information. I came across two very interesting websites - 'Academic Longhorn' and 'Longhorn Tweak Guide'. The latter has a fix for the 'Infamous Explorer Memory Leak'. I am sure there are many more out there (I mean Longhorn websites)..
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Building Distributed Systems (vertical industries)
Phil Stanhope has some interesting points to add to Sam Gentile's posting on 'Building Distributed Systems'. We are certainly in the midst of a change not just in technologies but the methodologies to go with it. Back in the late '80s and early '90s - I had spent considerable time on developing systems for the Insurance industry. While the technologies evolved, the methodology (predominantly the 'waterfall') remained the same. It was only after the works of Boehm ('spiral'), Davis ('software engineering') and others ('XP') had permeated, did the industry make its changes (it's still evolving). Phil's point on vertical industries is a good one but different industries take different schedules in adapting to something new.
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Are Programmers Engineers? (some thoughts on Eric Sink's thoughts)
Maestro Eric Sink answers a very pertinent question - Are Programmers Engineers? I think a lot has happened to the software development field since we started in it (Eric - I'll raise your T-Square with my 1401 punched-card deck). I think the folks at Carnegie Mellon would concur as well. The question really to ask is when or what project does one have to be (or behave like) a “professional engineer”. I think engineering for most part and regardless of type (mechanical, electrical et al) is one of discipline and attitude. Software development is having a difficult time showing its engineering stripes since the placement of its effort has been difficult to classify/categorize only until recently (see graph & Scott Ambler's article).
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Should I buy ECC or non-ECC RAM?
While prepping my new machine for 'Longhorn', I had a decision to make - Should I buy ECC or non-ECC RAM? ECC RAM costs a bit more but by not that much. ECC RAM are a necessity on servers and have now trickled down to (high-end) workstations, granted there are some performance losses (very marginal at best). Oliver Aaltonen's excellent Unofficial FAQ about the Dell PowerEdge 400SC series has a very informative explaination on why ECC RAM is certainly worth it. By the way - if you are a Dell PowerEdge 400SC owner, I highly recommend Oliver's website (and support it too).
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Carl to speak again..
Carl Franklin's prior presentation on 'Whidbey' was cancelled due to a snow-storm. He's back again on Feb 24th at the Connecticut .NET Developers Group meeting. Looking forward to it.
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What 'Indigo' does..
Software industry pundit David Chappell's column 'Indigo: The end of the rainbow' explains why this forthcoming effort by Microsoft is radically different. Worth reading if you have to explain to your boss what it's all about. “In a world that has both .NET and Java, the announcement of Indigo is an unassailably good thing.”
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'Pareto' (Dell PowerEdge 400SC) - my new Longhorn machine
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Free book chapters about UML (Activity & Use Case Diagrams)
Free book chapters - Learning UML (Activity Diagrams) and UML Pocket Reference (Use Case Diagrams).
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Free book chapter: XLink - XML Linking language
From Erik Wilde and David Lowe's XPath, XLink, XPointer, and XML: A Practical Guide to Web Hyperlinking and Transclusion. Describes the XML Linking Language (XLink), which defines how hyperlinks can be used in an XML-based environment (in PDF format).
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Programming Microsoft InfoPath: A Developer's Guide.
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New England (well, Connecticut) .NET Dev bloggers evening (with Rory)
This is a tentatively scheduled event - New England (well, Connecticut) .NET Dev bloggers evening (with Rory) on March 5th or March 6th. This is being done under the auspices of Franklins.Net who'll bring in the guest of honor, the indefatigable Rory Blyth. Carl will decide upon the location which may be in New Haven, Middletown or the old Dutch Tavern in New London. The latter may be familiar to .Net Rocks listeners. Stay tuned.
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running with InfoPath runtime
A good posting from LauraJ regarding the 'runtime version of InfoPath'. The feedback from Chris Kunicki asks the question - “So would an InfoPath Viewer or even an InfoPath runtime editor be of value to you?” But of course!! Forms-based systems are crucial in enterprise business processes and competing products from Adobe (and they really do their homework) shows that emphasis - Adobe Form Designer, Form Server, Form Client, etc. Any flexibility with InfoPath will go a long way in the market.
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Architectural thinking..
Michael Platt has a couple of good postings regarding 'Architectural Thinking'. He mentioned a few approaches that are undertaken during the process, notably, 'divide and conquer' and 'simulated annealing'. Thinking about architectures is a very intuitive and thus, a personalized phenomena that encompasses many facets, including social ones. One approach that I have found to be beneficial is the 'Pareto Law' - tackle 20% of the problem space that gives you 80% of the solution space at the first round. There are exceptions of course, and is dependent upon the nature of the problem to be solved.
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Greater Hartford Chapter of ACM meeting on Feb 10th - UML 2.0 Presentation
Greater Hartford Chapter of ACM meeting - UML 2.0 Presentation on Feb 10th. More details here.. On March 9, Joe Stagner [Microsoft] gives a presentation on .NET.
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Ignoring dynamic languages in .NET
Thought provoking columnist, Larry O'Brien has an interesting article 'Ignoring The Scripts' in the current issue of 'Software Development Times'. I know of another prolific developer Hugh Pyle (see his July 16 '03 posting), who would agree with Larry - the necessity of having dynamic languages with dynamic typing. Larry is a bit critical in pointing out that Microsoft is 'ignoring' such language development (on the .NET platform). Jon Udell, on the same topic, provides some more insights on dynamic languages and how others are developing the languages themselves. It certainly has its place.