Comments

Amazing tour.

 

Do you have any idea or quotes about what the ROI is on one of the new containers? How long does it take the savings of one of these containers, over a typical container Microsoft is using, to pay back the cost?

I love that you were concerned about the performance of the sample code.
if(maxid - currentMax > 10) hehehehe

This is one blurry video. What happened?

I even cleaned my glasses and monitor twice just to make sure.

As an aside, since you found the "one dev" in that building, are you surprised that she owns a whole lot of features?

"Man, System.Web?! That was YOU?! Awesome. What were you on when you created Viewstate?"

Actual IM conversation I just had about this screencast.

Scott says:
No more having to write "make backup copy" DTS tasks for your multi-gigabyte Access exports<grin>
brian says:
hehehehehe
brian says:
I'd probably do that anyway, just for nostalgia's sake.
Scott says:
Yeah, but make it transactional.
brian says:
Make everything transactional.
brian says:
You get interrupted while taking a whiz?  Whoosh, it goes back in.
Scott says:
each keypress or mouse move should have commit and rollback capabilities.
brian says:
indeed
brian says:
We should totally be product managers.

A summary of the interview by a friend of mine who used to work with Scott.

Here's a question!

<scott starts talking for .5 seconds>

Here's a sarcastic comment!

<scott acknowledges comment and starts talking again for .5 seconds>

Here's a lame non-sequitur...

<scott rolls his eyes>

LarryOsterman wrote:

For example, how do you express that audio from videos rendered through the WMP OCX should go to the headphones, while audio from WMP should be rendered through the desktop speakers without involving the application in the discussion?

Well if both sets of audio are sending input to the OS sound system, can't you create a UI that lets the user determine which physical device the output should be sent to? Is it possible for the sound system to determine which process/application is sending sound, enumerate them for the user,  and allow the user to redirect the sound to a different output? Almost like hardware mixing with a "multi-track" system?

You still have to involve the application in the discussion (unless you were able to create application classifiers and assign the output on a per "class" basis) but the choice still ends up being made by the meatware.

bobEnglish wrote:

Wow
Does ths not look like FoxPro? Where you can intermingle SQL with structure code in your source file? And get SQL extracts right into local vars?
Is it just me or are we back some 15 years' time?

No, FoxPro was 15 year ahead of it's time.

A lot of the functions remind me of Ruby blocks and iterators. Don Box did a series on implementing Ruby continuations in C# 2.0 a while back that was fascinating.

He is a guy that rocks. I met him at a geek dinner once. Spends 1/2 the year in Australia and the other 1/2 in the US if I remember correctly. He wrote a book on using Extrememe Programming with .NET.

jamie wrote:

which one? Mick?

See, I was going to make an "old man" joke, but couldn't come up with one that quick. Good job.

scobleizer wrote:

>(ooooh, we don't joke about Bob)

Not with Bill we don't. His wife was the program manager on Bob.

and it was a good idea, one that stuff like the OS X Dock, ObjectDock, and the sidebar apps still try to implement. You can still see ideas borrowed from it in apps like OS X Dashboard and Konfabulator.

I liked his answer to "why do you still work?". I've always thought that the whole "kill/smash the competition" came more from Balmer and others on the board and that Bill just believed that his solution was the best. Why bother with the others? I've never thought the "innovate integration" stuff came from a desire to have the computers work better, not to stifle competition (at least from Bills POV). And I've noticed there's no "Balmer foundation".

I think I'd have a more interesting time talking to Bill Gates than I would Steve Jobs.