Sk4rlath

• Manuel Clement and others - Introducing Sparkle

  Sep 15, 2005 at 11:29 AM

  "Sparkle" for the interactive designer?

  Am I the only one thinking "Sparkle Motion"?

• Robert Brown -- New Speech API beta revealed

  May 28, 2005 at 1:58 PM

  The switchboard demo reminded me. Have any of you Channers activated a product on the phone before? It's an automated system just like that. Being a real geek, I probably think it's way cooler than it actually is, but hey - I got a big kick out of it. Next time you activate, try it over the phone!

• Martin Taylor and Bill Hilf - Linux at Microsoft, Part I

  May 04, 2005 at 1:12 AM

  Beer28 wrote:

  
  ...some great stuff about open source...
  
  That's some of the real power of open source.
  

  
  
  (Note: the author of this post has no idea what really happened in regards to the kernel bug fix story and is merely using your example to show his point. Please don't bash me into the ground with mighty semantic issues.)
  
  You're absolutely right. With the power of open source, a major bug was found and fixed!
  
  The story doesn't end there.
  
  So the kernel team fixed the bug. What happens now? How does the bug really get fixed? How does it propagate to every server and desktop out there? Is there an update system in place? What about for this distro over here? What about the guy who hasn't patched since 3 minor versions ago since the new kernel 'broke his box that one time'? Are you just going to rely on the maintainers of all those distros to update and then get the updates to their users? Are you also going to rely on sysadmins to go out and read the news and see that there's a new patch they need to apply and spend the next week figuring out why their 15 year old app now barfs on the new kernel? Seems like a mighty big buck you're passing around there.
  
  The way I see it, that's the big difference between closed source and open source. Open source is pretty much all do-it-yourself. Some people have made kits, but you still gotta get your hands dirty and mangle the kit into your workspace and remember what manglings you did to get it there (which can be pretty fun if you're not in a hurry or in a bad mood). But with closed source there's a company to take care of all that for you. If something isn't working, They have to fix it for you since you gave them money for their software (despite how it often happens in the real world, that's the general idea). But then again, you have to wait for them to do it. You don't have the code so you can't do it yourself. Then there's companies that bridge this gap and maintain open source things and make money only on support, but it's late and I don't quite feel like typing much more.
  
  Yes, the fact that 'millions of eyes are looking over the code' does mean that more bugs get caught and fixed. But I think the open source community still has a long way to go in terms of doing all the other work needed after you hit compile, run your tests, and check in for the night.
  
  I'm not saying that Microsoft is the ultimate example of exemplary coding and bugfix deployment technology (though Windows Update is very nice) either.
  
  And waaaaay back a bunch of posts, you said something about how X had network support and Windows Messaging didn't and you seemed to imply that it was sort of a handicap of Windows Messaging. Well, correct me if I'm horribly wrong, but doesn't X transfer screen bits across the wire? Isn't that a little slow? And doesn't having this feature built-in tempt users to just use it instead of doing it the harder way and getting better performance? Just a thought - both ways have their advantages and disadvantages.

• Karsten Januszewski - Home video of Avalon presentation at Flash Forward conference

  Apr 27, 2005 at 8:57 PM

  I must know. Was Halo a listbox control?

• Ori Amiga - Tour of mobile devices with Visual Studio for Devices team

  Sep 25, 2004 at 3:08 PM

  Does that "Blue Angel" Pocket PC have a VGA screen as well?  That seems to be the only thing keeping it from being the most perfect Pocket PC in existance... =D

• Gavin Bierman - Microsoft Research in UK works on database query language

  Sep 20, 2004 at 8:18 PM

  Crazy awesome - I would install that preview right now if it didn't need 2003 (all I have is 2002).
  
  So, what's up with the stream type?  Doesn't that totally blow away pointers in unsafe blocks?  Couldn't they just use *type, or type% or type<insert other symbol here>?

• Joe Stegman - Developing rich user interfaces with Windows Forms

  Sep 10, 2004 at 7:27 AM

  Totally sweet - Whidbey WinForms are lightyears ahead of everything else.
  
  But...
  
  Can you guys make me a ControlList or something?  I find myself wanting to make a 'list of controls', sort of like a custom-drawn listbox, but instead of having to write all that paint logic I can just point the list at a control type (or fill the list with controls). That way I could have a button list, etc.
  
  You do make great strides in this direction though.  I'm currently abusing the FlowLayoutPanel to do just what I've described. But having to wire up event handlers for resizing can get to be a pain (god forbid I, a developer, actually write any code! <g>).

• Stephen Toulouse - What does &quot;responsible disclosure&quot; mean to you?

  Aug 31, 2004 at 9:09 PM

  This video really made me smile.
  
  If more people knew what the security teams and developers at Microsoft had to deal with, then I think there'd be a lot less hate going in their direction.
  
  Why don't they tell you intimate details about security flaws in the software? This video explains that excellently.
  
  Why don't they make their software standards-compliant? If they did and they broke even one single app that depended on that non-standard behavior, then you'd hate them for that instead.
  
  Once again, keep it up guys! Just letting you know that you've still got at least one fan cheering you on!

• Scott Currie - Demo of Quake on .NET

  Aug 31, 2004 at 9:04 PM

  Manip2-
  
  True, but did they simply add a switch to their compiler to do it?
  
  (Note: I do know why you posted that comment. It was in response to the comment insinuating that you couldn't do such a feat inside the Java Virtual Machine. Your comment made no reservations about the way the program was ported, only that it is indeed possible to run Quake II inside the Java Virtual Machine. I am merely saying that the .NET version was a quick add-a-switch-and-fix-a-few-bugs addon, while the Java version required rewriting portions of the code in Java.)
  
  (Note: Did you see that the quake2java link is in fact pointing to a project with an empty CVS and no released files?)

• Stephen Toulouse - What is a virus?

  Aug 31, 2004 at 12:59 PM

  Thank <applicable higher power>!  I will make everyone I talk to about how a virus infected their computer watch this video.  So glad to see that someone else out there still makes the distinction between virii, worms, and trojans!
  
  Whoo!

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