Entries for SCMcDonnell

ASP.NET MVC is HTML's Last Gasp [ASP.NET MVC is HTML's Last Gasp]

SCMcDonnell — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:33:12 GMT

I recently went through a few demos of ASP.NET MVC.

I was thoroughly dissappointed.

This doesn't seem like a typical Microsoft product to me as in there is nothing truly innovative, unique, or even interesting about the implementation. It seems alot like Ruby on Rails (thank God they didn't use the whole 'ActiveRecord' crap) with a .NET Twist to it.

Also, if you take a look at the evolution of how Microsoft Products and Technologies are built, ASP.NET MVC is moving against the grain. For example, WPF uses the concept of separating markup from code. The same goes for Silverlight. ASP.NET also used a more lax model of this before ASP.NET MVC. Yet, with ASP.NET MVC we are shifting the paradigm back to integration of markup and code using those damned <% %> tags.

All of a sudden, I feel like I am coding in Classic ASP, PHP, etc. I don't like it. It lacks creativity and is a shift towards a boring standard of web development.

Also, I have been wondering if the creation of ASP.NET MVC is admission of failure on the part of ASP.NET WebForms?

Finally, I attended VS Live here in Orlando and there was one speaker who was excellent. He did some talks on Silverlight, SOA, etc. One thing he noted is that AJAX is the last gasp of HTML. I understand his premise now as I prefer to start using Microsoft Silverlight rather than ASP.NET MVC (which is the next version of ASP.NET from what I have heard). Silverlight offers the tools and experience that I am used to with other Microsoft Products.

ASP.NET MVC is an awkward step backwards that doesn't fit the mold of what Microsoft has produced for us developers to be creative with.

I understand why the ASP.NET team is moving in this direction but there has to be a better way - a Microsoft way to innovate this MVC concept.

Let's not change the mantra to: Your Potential. Our Passive Agressiveness. ;)

Peace.

-SM

in reply to ASP.NET MVC is HTML's Last Gasp

Microsoft to Open Source Windows Client, Server Protocols. Big Change in Interoperability Initiativ [Microsoft to Open Source Windows Client, Server Protocols. Big Change in Interoperability Initiativ]

SCMcDonnell — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:21:19 GMT

Link:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/feb08/02-21ExpandInteroperabilityPR.mspx

Story:

Microsoft Makes Strategic Changes in Technology and Business Practices to Expand Interoperability

New interoperability principles and actions will increase openness of key products.

REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 21, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. today announced a set of broad-reaching changes to its technology and business practices to increase the openness of its products and drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for developers, partners, customers and competitors.

Specifically, Microsoft is implementing four new interoperability principles and corresponding actions across its high-volume business products: (1) ensuring open connections; (2) promoting data portability; (3) enhancing support for industry standards; and (4) fostering more open engagement with customers and the industry, including open source communities.

“These steps represent an important step and significant change in how we share information about our products and technologies,” said Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer. “For the past 33 years, we have shared a lot of information with hundreds of thousands of partners around the world and helped build the industry, but today’s announcement represents a significant expansion toward even greater transparency. Our goal is to promote greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for customers and developers throughout the industry by making our products more open and by sharing even more information about our technologies.”

According to Ray Ozzie, Microsoft chief software architect, the company’s announcement reflects the significance that individuals and businesses place upon the ease of information-sharing. As heterogeneity is the norm within enterprise architectures, interoperability across applications and services has become a key requirement.

“Customers need all their vendors, including and especially Microsoft, to deliver software and services that are flexible enough such that any developer can use their open interfaces and data to effectively integrate applications or to compose entirely new solutions,” said Ozzie. “By increasing the openness of our products, we will provide developers additional opportunity to innovate and deliver value for customers.”

“The principles and actions announced today by Microsoft are a very significant expansion of its efforts to promote interoperability,” said Manfred Wangler, vice president, Corporate Research and Technology, Software and Engineering, Siemens. “While Microsoft has made considerable progress on interoperability over the past several years, including working with us on the Interoperability Executive Customer Council, today’s news take Microsoft’s interoperability commitment to a whole new level.”

“The interoperability principles and actions announced today by Microsoft will benefit the broader IT community,” said Thomas Vogel, head, Information Management, Novartis Pharma. “Ensuring open connections to Microsoft’s high-volume products presents significant opportunities for the vast majority of software developers, which will help foster greater interoperability, opportunity and choice in the marketplace. We look forward to a constructive, structured, and multilateral dialogue to ensure stakeholder-driven evolution of these principles and actions.”

The interoperability principles and actions announced today apply to the following high-volume Microsoft products: Windows Vista (including the .NET Framework), Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007, and future versions of all these products. Highlights of the specific actions Microsoft is taking to implement its new interoperability principles are described below.

•

Ensuring open connections to Microsoft’s high-volume products. To enhance connections with third-party products, Microsoft will publish on its Web site documentation for all application programming interfaces (APIs) and communications protocols in its high-volume products that are used by other Microsoft products. Developers do not need to take a license or pay a royalty or other fee to access this information. Open access to this documentation will ensure that third-party developers can connect to Microsoft’s high-volume products just as Microsoft’s other products do.

•	As an immediate next step, starting today Microsoft will openly publish on MSDN over 30,000 pages of documentation for Windows client and server protocols that were previously available only under a trade secret license through the Microsoft Work Group Server Protocol Program (WSPP) and the Microsoft Communication Protocol Program (MCPP). Protocol documentation for additional products, such as Office 2007 and all of the other high-volume products covered by these principles, will be published in the upcoming months.
•	Microsoft will indicate on its Web site which protocols are covered by Microsoft patents and will license all of these patents on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, at low royalty rates. To assist those interested in considering a patent license, Microsoft will make available a list of specific Microsoft patents and patent applications that cover each protocol.
•	Microsoft is providing a covenant not to sue open source developers for development or non-commercial distribution of implementations of these protocols. These developers will be able to use the documentation for free to develop products. Companies that engage in commercial distribution of these protocol implementations will be able to obtain a patent license from Microsoft, as will enterprises that obtain these implementations from a distributor that does not have such a patent license.

•

Documenting how Microsoft supports industry standards and extensions. To increase transparency and promote interoperability, when Microsoft supports a standard in a high-volume product, it will work with other major implementers of the standard toward achieving robust, consistent and interoperable implementations across a broad range of widely deployed products.

•

Microsoft will document for the development community how it supports such standards, including those Microsoft extensions that affect interoperability with other implementations of these standards. This documentation will be published on Microsoft’s Web site and it will be accessible without a license, royalty or other fee. These actions will allow third-party developers implementing standards to understand how a standard is used in a Microsoft product and foster improved interoperability for customers. Microsoft will make available a list of any of its patents that cover any of these extensions, and will make available patent licenses on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.

•

Enhancing Office 2007 to provide greater flexibility of document formats. To promote user choice among document formats, Microsoft will design new APIs for the Word, Excel and PowerPoint applications in Office 2007 to enable developers to plug in additional document formats and to enable users to set these formats as their default for saving documents.

•

Launching the Open Source Interoperability Initiative. To promote and enable more interoperability between commercial and community-based open source technologies and Microsoft products, this initiative will provide resources, facilities and events, including labs, plug fests, technical content and opportunities for ongoing cooperative development.

•

Expanding industry outreach and dialogue. An ongoing dialogue with customers, developers and open source communities will be created through an online Interoperability Forum. In addition, a Document Interoperability Initiative will be launched to address data exchange between widely deployed formats.

The Interoperability Executive Customer (IEC) Council, an advisory organization established in 2006 and consisting mainly of chief information and technology officers from more than 40 companies and government bodies around the world, will help guide Microsoft in its work under these principles and actions. The full text of Microsoft’s new Interoperability Principles, and a full list of the actions Microsoft is taking, can be found on Microsoft’s Interoperability site.

The interoperability principles and actions announced today reflect the changed legal landscape for Microsoft and the IT industry. They are an important step forward for the company in its ongoing efforts to fulfill the responsibilities and obligations outlined in the September 2007 judgment of the European Court of First Instance (CFI).

“As we said immediately after the CFI decision last September, Microsoft is committed to taking all necessary steps to ensure we are in full compliance with European law,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft general counsel. “Through the initiatives we are announcing, we are taking responsibility for implementing the principles in the interoperability portion of the CFI decision across all of Microsoft’s high-volume products. We will take additional steps in the coming weeks to address the remaining portion of the CFI decision, and we are committed to providing full information to the European Commission so it can evaluate all of these steps.”

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

For more information, press only:

Rapid Response Team, Waggener Edstrom Worldwide for Microsoft, (503) 443-7070, http://www.microsoft.com/presspass on Microsoft’s corporate information pages. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.mspx.

in reply to Microsoft to Open Source Windows Client, Server Protocols. Big Change in Interoperability Initiativ

Attention Deficit Disorder [Attention Deficit Disorder]

SCMcDonnell — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 15:57:48 GMT

Anyone here diagnosed when they were a kid and now is a genius programmer?

-SM

in reply to Attention Deficit Disorder

Everytime I see this line of config code... [Everytime I see this line of config code...]

SCMcDonnell — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 22:45:41 GMT

The immature side of me wants to laugh...

-SM

in reply to Everytime I see this line of config code...

Microsoft's Earnings [Microsoft's Earnings]

SCMcDonnell — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:19:02 GMT

It seems the numbers are really good.

"This fiscal year is off to an outstanding start with the fastest revenue growth of any first quarter since 1999," said Chris Liddell, chief financial officer at Microsoft. "Operating income growth of over 30% also reflects our ability to translate revenue into profits while making strategic investments for the future."

The reported earnings of .45 cents a share and analysts were expecting .39 cents a share. That's really good.

Microsoft's businesses of Client, Microsoft Business Division, and Server and
Tools grew combined revenue in excess of 20%, and experienced robust demand for
Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, Windows Server, and SQL
Server.

"Customer demand for Windows Vista this quarter continued to build with double-digit growth in multi-year agreements by businesses and with the vast majority of consumers purchasing premium editions," said Kevin Johnson, president of the Platform and Services Division at Microsoft.

During the quarter, Microsoft's two consumer focused divisions passed milestones with the successful close of the company's largest ever acquisition, aQuantive, and Halo 3 achieving the biggest entertainment launch day in history.

"Backed by an amazing product line-up, our sales force, marketing teams, and partners delivered another excellent quarter," said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft.

-SM

in reply to Microsoft's Earnings

This one time ... at troll camp... [This one time ... at troll camp...]

SCMcDonnell — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 19:18:29 GMT

This one time ....... here...

I am now forever ignoring non-tech related threads; however, I will still respond to Corona_Coder's threads because they are tech-related and make me laff. Yes, laff.

SM

in reply to This one time ... at troll camp...

Silverlight Team [Silverlight Team]

SCMcDonnell — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 13:18:29 GMT

First off, I must say again that Silverlight is the bomb and ya'll did a great job with the framework, architecture, design, etc.

That said, when can we expect the next version to be released? Thanks.

SM

in reply to Silverlight Team

Open Source is a Religion [Open Source is a Religion]

SCMcDonnell — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 21:45:40 GMT

Really, the title says it all on this one.

Maybe if I keep "believing" my dream will come true and Microsoft will go out of business because everyone has switched to the "penguin" software. I believe, therefore it will happen, right?

Open Source programming is a religion that comes from more of a political angle than anything else. It's sort of like pushing socialism within a capitalist environment.

"If only people understood my goodness!" "If only the world were like Star Trek and people worked for the greater good!"

Well, as of right now, we live as capitalists and I am pretty sure it is going to remain that way for some time.

In my line of work, I don't have to believe or hope that my technology (software that serves to get the job done rather than a software philosophy that serves to promote my belief) is going to serve a purpose. I happily and gratefully do the work assigned to me by my superiors and then I receive a paycheck that helps put food on the table for my family. Not only that, but I have a sense of fullfilment because I accomplished something. My programming serves the purpose of this world because it makes businesses profitable and therefore it expands the economy which eventually trickles down to a better salary, etc.

As of today (and most likely the continual future) the radical Open Source community does nothing but serve itself. It's a religion.

I invite those of you who disagree with me to respond but the fact of the matter is - the point is inarguable.

Peace,

SM

in reply to Open Source is a Religion

Forums Down? [Forums Down?]

SCMcDonnell — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 13:39:20 GMT

I seem to be getting an "Oops" error every time I try to get to the forums for some reason. Also, is there any specific area you would like us to test the beta? Thanks.

SM:)

in reply to Forums Down?

ReleaseComObject and -1 [ReleaseComObject and -1]

SCMcDonnell — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 15:34:33 GMT

Does anyone know why System.InteropServices.Marshal.ReleaseComObject would return a value of -1?

I haven't found anything in the documentation to support this return value. Thanks.

SM

in reply to ReleaseComObject and -1

NY Times: Microsoft Finds Legal Defender in Justice Dept. [NY Times: Microsoft Finds Legal Defender in Justice Dept.]

SCMcDonnell — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 01:46:49 GMT

Microsoft Finds Legal Defender in Justice Dept.

By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON, June 9 — Nearly a decade after the government began its landmark effort to break up Microsoft, the Bush administration has sharply changed course by repeatedly defending the company both in the United States and abroad against accusations of anticompetitive conduct, including the recent rejection of a complaint by Google.

The retrenchment reflects a substantially different view of antitrust policy, as well as a recognition of major changes in the marketplace. The battlefront among technology companies has shifted from computer desktop software, a category that Microsoft dominates, to Internet search and Web-based software programs that allow users to bypass products made by Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker.

In the most striking recent example of the policy shift, the top antitrust official at the Justice Department last month urged state prosecutors to reject a confidential antitrust complaint filed by Google that is tied to a consent decree that monitors Microsoft’s behavior. Google has accused Microsoft of designing its latest operating system, Vista, to discourage the use of Google’s desktop search program, lawyers involved in the case said.

The official, Thomas O. Barnett, an assistant attorney general, had until 2004 been a top antitrust partner at the law firm that has represented Microsoft in several antitrust disputes. At the firm, Justice Department officials said, he never worked on Microsoft matters. Still, for more than a year after arriving at the department, he removed himself from the case because of conflict of interest issues. Ethics lawyers ultimately cleared his involvement.

Mr. Barnett’s memo dismissing Google’s claims, sent to state attorneys general around the nation, alarmed many of them, they and other lawyers from five states said. Some state officials said they believed that Google’s complaint had merit. They also said that they could not recall receiving a request by any head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division to drop any inquiry.

Mr. Barnett’s memo appears to have backfired, state officials said. Prosecutors from several states said they intended to pursue the Google accusations with or without the federal government. In response, federal prosecutors are now discussing with the states whether the Justice Department will join them in pursuing the Google complaint.

The complaint, which contends that Google’s desktop search tool is slowed down by Microsoft’s competing program, has not been made public by Google or the judge overseeing the Microsoft consent decree, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the Federal District Court in Washington. It is expected to be discussed at a hearing on the decree in front of Judge Kollar-Kotelly this month.

The memo illustrates the political transformation of Microsoft, as well as the shift in antitrust policy between officials appointed by President Bill Clinton and by President Bush.

“With the change in administrations there has been a sharp falling away from the concerns about how Microsoft and other large companies use their market power,” said Harry First, a professor at the New York University School of Law and the former top antitrust lawyer for New York State who is writing a book about the Microsoft case. “The administration has been very conservative and far less concerned about single-firm dominant behavior than previous administrations.”

Ricardo Reyes, a spokesman for Google, declined to comment about the complaint.

Bradford L. Smith, the general counsel at Microsoft, said that the company was unaware of Mr. Barnett’s memo. He said that Microsoft had not violated the consent decree and that it had already made modifications to Vista in response to concerns raised by Google and other companies.

He said that the new operating system was carefully designed to work well with rival software products and that an independent technical committee that works for the Justice Department and the states had spent years examining Vista for possible anticompetitive problems before it went on sale.

He said that even though the consent decree did not oblige Microsoft to make changes to Vista in response to Google’s complaint, Microsoft lawyers and engineers had been working closely with both state and federal officials in recent days in search of an accommodation.

“We’ve made a decision to go the extra mile to be reasonable,” Mr. Smith said. “The discussions between the company and the various government agencies have been quite fruitful.”

Microsoft was saved from being split in half by a federal appeals court decision handed down early in the Bush administration. The ruling, in 2001, found that the company had repeatedly abused its monopoly power in the software business, but it reversed a lower court order sought by the Clinton administration to split up the company.

Google complained to federal and state prosecutors that consumers who try to use its search tool for computer hard drives on Vista were frustrated because Vista has a competing desktop search program that cannot be turned off. When the Google and Vista search programs are run simultaneously on a computer, their indexing programs slow the operating system considerably, Google contended. As a result, Google said that Vista violated Microsoft’s 2002 antitrust settlement, which prohibits Microsoft from designing operating systems that limit the choices of consumers.

Google has asked the court overseeing the antitrust decree to order Microsoft to redesign Vista to enable users to turn off its built-in desktop search program so that competing programs could function better, officials said.

State officials said that Mr. Barnett’s memo rejected the Google complaint, repeating legal arguments made by Microsoft.

Before he joined the Justice Department in 2004, Mr. Barnett had been vice chairman of the antitrust department at Covington & Burling. It represented Microsoft in the antitrust case and continues to represent the company.

In a recent interview, Mr. Barnett declined to discuss the Google complaint, noting that the decree requires complaints by companies to be kept confidential. He defended the federal government’s overall handling of the Microsoft case.

“The purpose of the consent decree was to prevent and prohibit Microsoft from certain exclusionary behavior that was anticompetitive in nature,” Mr. Barnett said. “It was not designed to pick who would win or determine who would have what market share.”

“We want to prevent Microsoft from doing those things that exclude competitors,” he added. “We also don’t want to disrupt the market in a way that will be harmful to consumers. What does that mean? We’ve never tried to prevent any company, including Microsoft, from innovating and improving its products in a way that will be a benefit to consumers.”

Prosecutors from several states said that they believed that Google’s complaint about anticompetitive conduct resembled the complaint raised by Netscape, a company that popularized the Web browser, that was the basis of the 1998 lawsuit.

Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general, declined to talk about the substance of the complaint, or which company made it. But he said the memo from Mr. Barnett surprised him.

“Eyebrows were raised by this letter in our group, as much by the substance and tone as by the past relationship the author had had with Microsoft,” said Mr. Blumenthal, one of the few state prosecutors who has been involved in the case since its outset.

“In concept, if not directly word for word, it is the Microsoft-Netscape situation,” Mr. Blumenthal said. “The question is whether we’re seeing déjà vu all over again.”

The administration has supported Microsoft in other antitrust skirmishes as well.

Last year, for instance, the United States delegation to the European Union complained to European regulators that Microsoft had been denied access to evidence it needed to defend itself in an investigation there into possible anticompetitive conduct. The United States delegation is led by Ambassador C. Boyden Gray, who had worked for Microsoft as a lawyer and lobbyist.

Robert Gianfrancesco, a spokesman for the delegation, said that Ambassador Gray had not formally removed himself from involvement in Microsoft issues but was not involved in the complaint to European regulators, which was handled by other American diplomats in the delegation.

In December 2005, the Justice Department sharply criticized the Korean Fair Trade Commission after that agency ordered major changes in Microsoft’s marketing practices in Korea.

And in 2004, the Justice Department criticized the European Commission for punishing Microsoft for including its video and audio player with its operating system.

Antitrust experts attribute the Bush administration’s different approach to Microsoft to a confluence of political forces as well as significant changes in the marketplace.

A big factor has been the Bush administration’s hands-off approach to business regulation. For its part, Microsoft, which spent more than $55 million on lobbying activities in Washington from 2000 to 2006 and substantially more on lawyers, has become a more effective lobbying organization.

“The generous and noncynical view is that there has been a fundamental change in philosophy about the degree to which antitrust should be used to regulate business activity,” said Andrew I. Gavil, an antitrust law professor at Howard University who is a co-author of the Microsoft book with Professor First, the New York University law professor. “In the Microsoft case, you can see how that change has manifested itself.”

in reply to NY Times: Microsoft Finds Legal Defender in Justice Dept.

Signing in... [Signing in...]

SCMcDonnell — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 19:58:01 GMT

Has the Windows Live/Passport feature been removed from the sign on process?

SM

in reply to Signing in...

DailyKos [DailyKos]

SCMcDonnell — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:55:45 GMT

Ok, first off, this is not a political post. I state that because http://www.dailykos.com is an extremely political website.

That said, I recently created an account at DailyKos and I am shocked at how well designed the forums are from a usability perspective. You can only see what I am talking about if you create an account and look at one of the blog posts.

Basically, the site is very much Ajaxified. As I am reading through the user comments on one post, I am immediately notified via a small popup at the bottom right-hand corner when another comment has been added to that post.

When going to add my own comment (a test comment because I tend to swing to the right), the textbox for composing my message is brought up via client-side code and even posted in realtime without a postback. It's sweet.

Also, the ability to "troll-rate" user comments is a great idea.

FreeRepublic.com looks like it comes from the stone ages versus DailyKos.com

Well done.

SM

in reply to DailyKos

Beta is Creeping Together [Beta is Creeping Together]

SCMcDonnell — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:37:13 GMT

Oooooo... the error page looks nice.

http://beta.channel9.msdn.com/Error/Default.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/Default.aspx

SM

in reply to Beta is Creeping Together

Wireless Power (WiTricity) is now a Reality [Wireless Power (WiTricity) is now a Reality]

SCMcDonnell — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 03:03:41 GMT

This is really sweet:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=460602&in_page_id=1965

SM

in reply to Wireless Power (WiTricity) is now a Reality

These Linux People Are A Hoot [These Linux People Are A Hoot]

SCMcDonnell — Mon, 21 May 2007 01:45:35 GMT

I have to admit, I am getting a kick out of some the posts regarding the coming tide of Linux desktops to the market. Don't get me wrong, I have respect for Mr. Torvalds (saw him speak in Chicago a few times and the man is beyond brilliant), but the idea that this is the year of the "Other OS" because of Dell's move to start selling Linux desktops just isn't the reality that people want to make it.

Dell, as an entity, is really suffering this year and while some people want to blame it on Vista, Microsoft, etc. it really comes down to a lack of leadership of innovation. Adding Linux to their repertoire is not really innovation as much as it is a desperate attempt to gain attention in a business that is slowly becoming like the grocery business (whereas computer-sales will be come a thin-margined yet neccessary business like the sale of food and groceries).

From a pure business perspective, if you take a look at the performance of DELL versus other companies in the same industry like HP, etc., the truth is that DELL's market cap is declining severely whereas HP's market share is experiencing rapid growth.

Honestly, I think if Linux were to truly gain amongst the Windows OS it would be really good for Microsoft for a number of different reasons. First, competition is ALWAYS a good thing. Second, it's always good for people to see Linux in action and undoubtedly come to the conclusion that there is a reason Microsoft Windows is the best.

Respectfully,

SM

in reply to These Linux People Are A Hoot

Linq [Linq]

SCMcDonnell — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 17:06:44 GMT

Downloaded Orcas Beta 1 over the weekend and I have to say that LINQ is one of the most impressive built-in features.

LINQ really has the potential to revolutionize how developers get their data from the database.

I love the idea of not having to write stored procedures anymore. Nice job MS and people at the Linq Project.

SM

in reply to Linq

Gates Wants More Illegal Immigrants [Gates Wants More Illegal Immigrants]

SCMcDonnell — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 23:27:08 GMT

Interesting article...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/473893dc-ccde-11db-a938-000b5df10621.html

SM

in reply to Gates Wants More Illegal Immigrants

Delete Me [Delete Me]

SCMcDonnell — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 17:47:24 GMT

Advice Taken

in reply to Delete Me

Interesting Query Problem in Sql Server 2005 [Interesting Query Problem in Sql Server 2005]

SCMcDonnell — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 02:35:40 GMT

I have a stored procedure that looks something like this:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM Accounts

This table contains about 30,000 records and when executing the proc on my testing and staging servers it works fine. Please note that I am executing it from within .NET code (ExecuteScalar).

However, when moving the proc to a production environment where I have 2 load-balanced web servers and a clustered SQL 2005 server (Standard Edition), the proc times out every single time.

Any ideas?

SM

in reply to Interesting Query Problem in Sql Server 2005

Why They Attack and Troll at C9 [Why They Attack and Troll at C9]

SCMcDonnell — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 02:51:38 GMT

It's simple why this site has become such a target for trolls:

C9 is everything that the Unix-Flavored community has ever dreamed of.

SM

in reply to Why They Attack and Troll at C9

Windows Vista Event Viewer [Windows Vista Event Viewer]

SCMcDonnell — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 17:18:41 GMT

The Windows Vista Event Viewer (Build 5384) is probably the best enhancement/feauture I have seen yet.

I can subscribe to events.
Rather than constantly hitting refresh, the Event Viewer tells me when new Events have been published.
I can have Tasks execute when certain events occur.

Props go out to the people who wrote this enhancement.

SM

in reply to Windows Vista Event Viewer

Cardinals and White Sox [Cardinals and White Sox]

SCMcDonnell — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 01:15:23 GMT

This is embarassing. End the inning. Please.

in reply to Cardinals and White Sox

Java Succumbing to .NET in the Government [Java Succumbing to .NET in the Government]

SCMcDonnell — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 14:17:43 GMT

In my opinion, this is the beginning of the end of open-source freeware technologies.

http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=40611

Java Succumbing to .NET in my Organization

Posted by: Neil Chaudhuri on May 24, 2006

I work for a federal government contractor outside Washington, DC, and I am part of a small group within my organization that produces small- to mid-scale applications, mostly websites hitting a database, for our clients. The management of my group, who are not technologists, has decided to embrace .NET wherever possible for our applications. They cite that Java applications take longer and run into more significant problems than their .NET counterparts.

After talking with some of the developers who are in the trenches, most of them are happy to move to .NET. This even includes some who, like myself, have been certified in and built a career on Java. Apparently, Java is just too hard and too intimidating, especially for beginners.

Java and .Net are comparably powerful technologies. As one who has experience with both, I will say that I prefer the Java experience (especially for developing business logic), so I find it discouraging that Java is losing ground in this way in our organization. I have thought about the reasons why and have come up with some reasons (and I acknowledge I am probably not the first to offer these explanations):

· Too many frameworks

If I want to design a website look-and-feel and page flow in .NET, I use ASP .NET. That’s it. If I do so in Java, I use JSP. Or I use JSP and JSF. Or Facelets and JSF. Or Echo2. Or Tapestry. Or Velocity. The number of choices can be intimidating. And that is just for web design. With persistence frameworks, .NET developers have ADO .NET. Java developers have entity beans and JDO as Sun standards or open-source options like Hibernate, Torque, Spring JDBC, and on and on.

Given all the choices for the web design, the middle-tier, and the back end, developers are overwhelmed by the number of permutations of possibilities. I could go JSP/JSF, Spring, and entity beans; or Tapestry, session beans, and Hibernate; or JSP/JSF, session beans, and entity beans; or ... You get the idea.

· Too many IDEs... all with weaknesses

Closely related to the issue of framework proliferation is the issue of IDE proliferation. Consider IntelliJ IDEA, my favorite IDE. It is an amazing piece of software, but it was really behind the curve on JSP development. And that is a Sun standard! IDEA is also completely unaware of JSF, another Sun standard that has been around quite a while and one whose goal was primarily to facilitate web development in IDEs. If IDEA has this much trouble with Sun standards, imagine how it does with open-source solutions like Spring and Hibernate. Sure there are workarounds and plugins and so forth, but those take time .NET developers don’t need to take.

Of course, if, for example, developers want to use JSF, then they can go with NetBeans, which is offered free from Sun. But then they forego the incredible refactoring capabilities and “smart coding” capabilities that make IDEA so great. For Java developers, it becomes a matter of deciding which IDE is the least incomplete for their needs. Developers in .NET have no such decisions to make.

· Too many infrastructure component possibilities

Developers in .NET have Windows Server and IIS. That’s it. All development organizations have professionals devoted to these technologies. Java developers have Tomcat or Apache, for example, for the web server. If they need to deploy to a full-fledged J2EE server, then there’s WebLogic, OC4J, JBoss, and on and on. Developers need infrastructure staff trained in the organization’s preferred server, and the staff might need to be retrained should this change. In my organization, there is no such staff dedicated to J2EE infrastructure as there is with Microsoft infrastructure.

It should be noted that deployment to IIS is a simple matter for developers—as simple as copying the project to the wwwroot folder. Java developers must build WAR files or EAR files in order to deploy across servers. Not terribly difficult thanks to Ant, but still more work than a simple copy.

What bothers me the most is that these problems negate two distinct advantages that the Java community has over .NET:

· Open-source energy

Microsoft has a lot of talented people working to improve .NET, but no single entity is capable of the creativity of many entities. There is also the possibility that Microsoft creativity may be somehow subject to the company’s corporate aims. Both of these factors can potentially limit the ability of developers to deliver the highest quality software in the least amount of time.

Because no one quite owns Java, much to the chagrin of Sun, there are a lot of great open-source tools out there like Spring, Hibernate, and Struts that result from the efforts of many brilliant, dedicated individuals. The Java community should be able to benefit from this universal effort, and it should be an advantage over .NET. Yet instead it has become a detriment.

· Manifestation of agile methodologies within tools

The Java community embraced agile methodologies well before .NET did (if it even has). Tools created to facilitate agile practices like JUnit, Ant, and CruiseControl, all of which are open-source incidentally, were developed in Java for use in Java projects. Moreover, many leading IDEs like IDEA embraced these tools as core components. The result was a generation of IDEs that served as a one-stop shop for coding, configuration management, automated unit testing, and automated builds.

The .NET community, on the other hand, lagged behind the Java community in all these areas except for configuration management. And even there, Visual Studio .NET only integrates with Visual SourceSafe, another Microsoft product, rather than the all the other choices like ClearCase, Subversion, etc. In the area of other tools related to agile methodologies, only after some time did the fledgling open-source community on the .NET side create equivalents—NUnit, NAnt, and CruiseControl .NET—to their Java counterparts. Agile methodologies transcend implementation technology, yet Microsoft seems to not be quite on board. Only the most powerful, and most expensive, edition of Visual Studio .NET 2005, has NUnit integrated. No such luck with NAnt.

As with open-source energy, the agility advantage has not proved to be a boon for Java. This is because the business community has not grasped the business value of agile techniques—particularly in my organization. Therefore, the advantage Java has in this regard is meaningless.

Again, the technologies are comparable, so the issue is development speed and ease. Ultimately, I think it comes down to the IDEs. If Java development tools allow for rapid development and help to ease a lot of the pain associated with configuration and such, then this would narrow if not close the gap with .NET. Visual Studio 2005 has a number of really compelling features that make development fast and easy and far more palatable to my management. It is no small challenge, however, for the Java realm to accomplish such a feat with the myriad of frameworks out there.

Perhaps the answer is IDE standardization. JSR-198 is a very weak start but a start nonetheless. All IDEs could be built with some minimum standard functionality—like support for all production standards from Sun like JSF and JDO and standard development functionality like drag-and-drop web design. Another standard capability, as Eclipse has pioneered, would be plugin integration and a standard interface for development with the plugin inside the IDE. It would be the responsibility of open-source framework developers to build their software so that it can be incorporated into the standard IDE according to the rules for plugin integration. In this way, Java developers could leverage the power of the open-source movement and agile methodologies while maintaining the simplicity enjoyed by .NET developers.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. How can I convince my management not to abandon Java?

in reply to Java Succumbing to .NET in the Government

Enterprise Library v2.0 and the GAC [Enterprise Library v2.0 and the GAC]

SCMcDonnell — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 17:30:09 GMT

Does anyone know if there is an appropriate way of building the Enterprise Library v2.0 in a way that signs it and prepares it for installation into the GAC?

I know that with v1.1 you had to edit the assemblies manually and put they key in and wasn't sure if this was still the case. Thanks.

Shaun

in reply to Enterprise Library v2.0 and the GAC