Archives
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Mix06 demo part 1: the accordion control
I thought I'd write a few posts about the controls I've created for Brad's Mix06 demo, which you can download from his blog:
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XNA Framework
We’re not the only ones busy around here :). My friend Julien as well as other very smart people are building the next generation development system for Xbox and PC games, XNA. Part of this work is to build an implementation of the .NET framework for the Xbox 360. This means considerably reduced development costs for casual games and... who knows what's next? This is just going to be great as it's going to lower the entry bar for game development. I hope this is the return of the time when people like me, with the help of a few friends, could develop a reasonably successful game. This brings back 20-years old memories of the time when I was building video games with my friend Fabien for the TI99 and Atari 800...
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Live from Mix 06
Mix is going really well. We have a much more diverse public here than at the usual Microsoft dev conferences. I've never seen that many Mac laptops at an MS conf. We're getting absolutely great feedback from attendees. Here's a sample from a conversation: "If you had told me two years ago that I would be at a Microsoft conference one day I would have just laughed at you, but this is great, it seems like you guys actually like us."
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Ruby for .NET? This is going to be interesting...
There have been a few bridging projects in the past that aimed at using .NET libraries from Ruby. Now, this is different, this is an actual implementation of the Ruby language for the .NET Common Language Runtime. Seeing how .NET finally seems to be more than OK with dynamic languages (see the amazing IronPython project), this could prove to be a very interesting turn of events. The open-source project, initiated by the Queensland University of Technology in Australia, is in its early phases with only some of the standard Ruby libraries implemented. This is not very surprising as the most difficult parts of porting a language is usually that the language itself is not enough, you also need its base class library if you need more than a familiar syntax and if you want that to have more than marginal usefulness. J# suffers from the same kind of problem with its class library.
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Did standards sterilize or enrich the web?
I know, I know, it is not very nice even to ask this question, especially coming from a Microsoftee. But really, I'd like to know what you think. We have had many discussions on this subject in the team and many of us have very sharply defined opinions one way or another.
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Can tidal power plants have an effect on the Earth's rotation?
I just read an interesting article on the project to build power plants that tap into tidal energy. It's really weird to see that article now because I was discussing that exact subject with Fabien on the Stevens Pass chairs last Saturday.
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Virtually drive through Seattle and San Francisco using Virtual Earth
They're at it again. They've added an amazing feature to Virtual Earth:
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The duck's wake
This is the first translation I'm doing of one of my French science popularization blog posts.