Comment Feed for TimP

Re: Mark Russinovich: On Working at Microsoft, Windows Server 2008 Kernel, MinWin vs ServerCore, HyperV,

TimP — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 19:34:00 GMT

This showing up just made by day. The last interview with Mark is one of my top three favorite videos of all time on C9.

posted by TimP

Re: JAOO 2007: Joe Armstrong - On Erlang, OO, Concurrency, Shared State and the Future, Part 2

TimP — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 18:33:45 GMT

mpcm wrote:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5140917568901801025&q=erlang&total=16&start=0&num=10&so=1&type=search&plindex=6

Erlang in telcom...

Watched it last night, definitely a must see.

posted by TimP

Re: JAOO 2007: Joe Armstrong - On Erlang, OO, Concurrency, Shared State and the Future, Part 1

TimP — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 21:00:32 GMT

The download link is currently broken.

posted by TimP

Re: JAOO 2007: Bob Martin and Chad Fowler - Debating Static versus Dynamic Typing

TimP — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:38:08 GMT

I thought it was interesting how dismissive they were of LINQ and functional programming additions to C# 3.0, since they're highly touted around here.

posted by TimP

Re: Ricardo Mendes on Host Integration Server

TimP — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 01:20:27 GMT

Awesome video. I do z/OS software support at work so it's cool to see it featured. While I don't do application development, I've had to pull data from the mainframe to Windows for macro programming on several occasions, so I know some of the pain involved.

I've been down to the data center a few times at work and seen the mainframes, DASD, and tape drives, etc. so I'd be very interested in seeing Microsoft's own mini-HIS data center (probably the only platforms in Redmond that MS doesn't do native application development for). I'd love to hear anything and everything else Ricardo has to say about HIS, so keep em' coming!

And if Ricardo is reading, you're obviously very familiar with IBM host environments, were you a sysprog in a previous life or have you acquired it through app development?

posted by TimP

Re: Mark Russinovich: From Winternals to Microsoft, On Windows Security, Windows CoreArch

TimP — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 05:05:46 GMT

After watching the whole thing, I have to agree with the other comments that this is a fantastic video. Mark explains everything crystal clear. I really liked the explanation of the different user roles.

posted by TimP

Re: Mark Russinovich: From Winternals to Microsoft, On Windows Security, Windows CoreArch

TimP — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 00:01:51 GMT

Great interview so far (still watching). Any reason it was cut at around 31:02?

posted by TimP

Re: Windows Home Server

TimP — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 07:33:59 GMT

Cool video. The ability to connect directly to the machine with Remote Desktop is a great feature and definitely makes it more appealing. I was glad to hear the operating system will be available separately for the DIYers.

Since it seems like these machines won't have CD-ROM drives, what happens if the operating system needs to be reinstalled? Will the user have a disc they can restore from with a USB CD-ROM drive or is there a partition on the hard drive to recover from? Since it looks like these machines don't have video cards either, the process would have to be entirely automated.

posted by TimP

Re: 'SQL Everywhere Edition' - What. How. Why.

TimP — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 16:55:21 GMT

This has been around for a while. Apache Derby (formerly IBM Cloudscape) is DB2 compatible, open source, and written entirely in Java. It can be embedded in an application or run as a server. If I recall the footprint was only like 2MB.

posted by TimP

Re: Virtualization

TimP — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 03:22:32 GMT

I love to see videos on Virtual PC/Virtual Server/virtualization in general. This is definitely one I plan on watching.

posted by TimP

Re: Erik von Fuchs - Tour of Hardware Lab, Clip One

TimP — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 04:05:25 GMT

I want three things:

An Insert key
No F-Lock
Correctly spaced F keys (F1-F4, F5-F8)

posted by TimP

Re: Simon Guest - Mainframe Interop with Avalon

TimP — Wed, 18 May 2005 20:34:47 GMT

Thanks for the in-depth explanation, Peter.

posted by TimP

Re: Simon Guest - Mainframe Interop with Avalon

TimP — Wed, 18 May 2005 00:46:07 GMT

That was a fantastic demo. I'm a mainframe enthusiast myself although I've never had direct access to a real one, I use the open source Hercules mainframe emulator with MVS and other free operating systems. I assume you're using the FLEX-ES commercial emulator in your demo running what looks like OS/390. I have a few questions about how NetManage works, since I've only used older IBM operating systems before the advent of TCP/IP. Is the web service running directly on the mainframe or would it run in a middle tier Windows/Linux server with some sort of application server (IIS or otherwise)? Where does the screen scraping take place? This relates back to my previous question. Is the screen scraped on the mainframe which then sends out the final data or is the entire screen scrape sent to another server for processing which then finally exposes the web service? Finally, if you wanted to expose a portion of a mainframe application which actually modified data rather than retrieving it, would you need to add a special step to tell the application to take input from another source and then automate the confirm step?

Thanks,
Tim

posted by TimP

Re: Corey Hynes (Sunaptein Computer Consulting) - Behind TechEd's Labs

TimP — Thu, 05 May 2005 22:51:31 GMT

That app looks really cool. It's a shame that there's no API for Virtual PC and that Virtual Server 2005 will only run on Windows Server 2003 (and costs $499). Are there any possibilities of Virtual PC getting its own API, even if it's just a minimalist subset of the Virtual Server 2005 API?

posted by TimP

Re: Tony Donno - Testing out Virtual Server

TimP — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 04:08:18 GMT

I just finished watching the clip and I was really impressed. Despite the negative press ActiveX has been getting and the calls to get rid of it outright, this demo really shows the power of the technology. One of the things I really envy about Virtual Server 2005 that VirtualPC 2004 and VMware are missing is the open API. The web interface is also very cool. All in all a great interview/demo.

posted by TimP

Re: Tony Donno - Testing out Virtual Server

TimP — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 03:04:00 GMT

You guys read my mind! I was going to ask if there would be a Virtual Server 2005 demo too since most people haven't used it.

posted by TimP

Re: Ben Armstrong - Running Virtual PC and Virtual Machines

TimP — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 01:45:56 GMT

I'm glad you got an interview with Ben. His blog is one of my favorites. Will there be more interview segments?

posted by TimP

Re: Chris Gray - Building your own home server

TimP — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 03:45:16 GMT

Manip,

I don't think he's trying to win the coding award of the year. He repeatedly says how insecure the setup is and how you SHOULDN'T use his code in a production environment. He was just trying to show easy it is to create a basic moblog in .NET. Picky, picky, picky.

posted by TimP

Re: Brian Groth and Mark Berman -- Demo of SOA application

TimP — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 02:56:37 GMT

I really enjoyed this video. Is it possible to get any more demos/videos from this department of MS or about HIS/BizTalk? Possibly a tour of the hardware lab running the mainframes, too?

posted by TimP

Re: Euan Garden - Tour of SQL Server team (Part IV)

TimP — Wed, 08 Dec 2004 02:38:16 GMT

Thanks for the link! There's a lot of great info in the full disclosure report.

posted by TimP

Re: Euan Garden - Tour of SQL Server team (Part IV)

TimP — Wed, 08 Dec 2004 01:15:51 GMT

What's the estimated cost for the whole machine (Superdome + hard drives)?

posted by TimP

Re: Gary Daniels and Evan Goldring - Mock whiteboard problem

TimP — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:38:29 GMT

Out of my own curiosity, I did a few tests to test performance. I'm no performance test guru, but what I did was use an array of 271 palindromes and an array of 271 non-palidromes, then tested the array for x Iterations. The score on top is using the Array.Reverse method (the method I posted second) and the bottom score checking character by character (the method I posted first). The score is the average number of ticks per method call. The average non-palindrome was longer than the average palindrome, so that may account for the slightly slower performance.

Palindromes:

1000 Iterations
18.1072177121771
1000 Iterations
12.1946568265683

5000 Iterations
17.8115896678967
5000 Iterations
12.046842804428

10000 Iterations
17.2203335793358
10000 Iterations
11.4925402214022

15000 Iterations
17.121790897909
15000 Iterations
11.6280364083641

20000 Iterations
17.1833800738007
20000 Iterations
11.5294937269373

30000 Iterations
17.2080157441574
30000 Iterations
11.7019434194342

Non-Palindromes:

1000 Iterations
21.8025682656827
1000 Iterations
15.1509372693727

5000 Iterations
21.6547542435424
5000 Iterations
15.2248442804428

10000 Iterations
21.8764752767528
10000 Iterations
14.6335881918819

15000 Iterations
21.777932595326
15000 Iterations
14.6089525215252

20000 Iterations
22.0981963099631
20000 Iterations
14.6890184501845

30000 Iterations
22.3075995079951
30000 Iterations
14.7444487084871

The character by character method beating the Array.Reverse method on non-palindromes is a no brainer, because it returns false after the first check, where as the Array.Reverse has to reverse and test the whole string every time.

I was a bit surprised by it winning on palindromes, though. If anyone has any insight into this, I'd love to hear it. All I can assume is that a character by character check is more efficient than putting a string into an array, reversing it, and putting it back into a string.

posted by TimP

Re: Gary Daniels and Evan Goldring - Mock whiteboard problem

TimP — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 23:47:31 GMT

public bool IsPalindrome(string palindrome)
{
   if(palindrome == null || palindrome.Length == 0)
      return false;
   palindrome = palindrome.Replace(" ", "").ToLower();
   char[] reverse = palindrome.ToCharArray();
   Array.Reverse(reverse);
   string s = new string(reverse);
   return palindrome == s;
}

Here's a case/space insensitive and smaller palindrome checker.

posted by TimP

Re: Gary Daniels and Evan Goldring - Mock whiteboard problem

TimP — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 23:36:15 GMT

public bool IsPalindrome(string palindrome)
{
   if(palindrome == null || palindrome.Length == 0)
      return false;

   palindrome = palindrome.Replace(" ", "").ToLower();
   int start = 0, end = palindrome.Length - 1;

   while(end - start >= 1)
   {
      if(palindrome[start] == palindrome[end])
      {
         start++;
         end--;
      }
      else
         return false;
   }

   return true;
}

This will validate palindromes without case sensitivity even if they have spaces, for example: A man a plan a canal Panama

posted by TimP