Entries for Wil

Intel chooses to stick with XP? [Intel chooses to stick with XP?]

Wil — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:26:21 GMT

Accoring to this article in the New York Times, Intel Corp. has found "no compelling reason" to move from XP to Vista on the PCs used by its 80,000 employees. I would think that MS will come up with a number of compelling reasons why they had better do so...

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Peek inside Google [Peek inside Google]

Wil — Fri, 30 May 2008 22:17:29 GMT

I dunno about you, but I found the reports of the Google I/O presentation about its data centers to be quite impressive. There's not too much here that we didn't already know, but the sheer scale of it is awesome. When they do start being able to move processing among separate data centers, will Google be the Internet? It's about time to put all the fiber to use, apparently.

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CS students are ignorant, and it's Java's fault [CS students are ignorant, and it's Java's fault]

Wil — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 18:52:50 GMT

Sorry if this is old news, but ...

Slashdot has picked up on an article written for a Defense Dept. journal by two retired CS profs from NYU (who now run an Ada software company): "Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?" The article (online here) claims that CS students aren't being taught the basics:

"Over the last few years we have noticed worrisome trends in CS education. The following represents a summary of those trends:

Mathematics requirements in CS programs are shrinking.
The development of programming skills in several languages is giving way to cookbook approaches using large libraries and special-purpose packages.
The resulting set of skills is insufficient for today’s software industry (in particular for safety and security purposes) and, unfortunately, matches well what the outsourcing industry can offer. We are training easily replaceable professionals."

The authors claim that a big part of the problem is the use of Java as the first programming language taught in the curriculum.

"Because of its popularity in the context of Web applications and the ease with which beginners can produce graphical programs, Java has become the most widely used language in introductory programming courses. We consider this to be a misguided attempt to make programming more fun, perhaps in reaction to the drop in CS enrollments that followed the dot-com bust. What we observed at New York University is that the Java programming courses did not prepare our students for the first course in systems, much less for more advanced ones. Students found it hard to write programs that did not have a graphic interface, had no feeling for the relationship between the source program and what the hardware would actually do, and (most damaging) did not understand the semantics of pointers at all, which made the use of C in systems programming very challenging."

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Oh my God, I am so old!!! [Oh my God, I am so old!!!]

Wil — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 22:17:07 GMT

The most depressing thing you can possibly imagine has just now happened to me. For reasons that are not at all clear, I suddenly realized from just out of the blue that it was forty years ago this very month (I don't remember the exact day) when I wrote my first-ever computer program.

I hope to have it debugged "any day now".

:( :( :( [C]

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MS developing software to identify you from your online habits [MS developing software to identify you from your online habits]

Wil — Tue, 22 May 2007 08:14:04 GMT

Forgive me if this is old news (the story is dated May 16, and it reports on a conference that was held the week before that) which has already been discussed, but I just now got around to reading an article in the Web site of "New Scientist" magazine.

Speaking at the World Wide Web 2007 Conference in Banff, Canada, last week, software engineer Jian Hu from Microsoft's research lab in Beijing and colleagues said his team is developing software to use of a wide range of profiles in a probabilistic analysis to use your browsing habits to determine information about your identity. Hu reports that the software so far currently deduces only people's genders and ages with any accuracy, but the team say they expect to be able to "refine the profiles which contain bogus demographic information", and one day predict your occupation, level of qualifications, and perhaps your location.

OK, even with the crudest probabilistic analysis, you can deduce that someone who surfs a lot of Web sites devoted to the trendiest alternative bands or to TV shows and movies featuring the hottest teen idols probably isn't a 55-year-old guy in Dubuque, and someone who spends most of their online time checking out sites about prostate health, 401(k) plans, and golf courses probably isn't a 13-year-old girl in Manhattan. But clearly this MS team in Beijing has their eyes on a much tigther profile better defining just who you are, and perhaps that should make us a bit nervous. I suppose it is hardly unexpected that, with the trend toward acquisition by Google and MS of on-line advertising companies, the developiing of profiling software would be given a push, but just how far does MS intend to push this?

Anyway, the full article is here.
"

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DARPA seeks shape-shifting robots [DARPA seeks shape-shifting robots]

Wil — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 18:50:26 GMT

Forgive me if this is old news, but it had escaped my attention. According to the news report, DARPA is soliciting proposals for "chembots", robots built of shape-memory materials that are capable of morphing into a new shape so that they can squeeze into openings smaller than their original form and that can then reconstitute themselves on the other side. Now that's a robot that is a real weapons system, you bet! The T2 is being funded, even as we speak!!!!

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FORTRAN inventor John Backus dies [FORTRAN inventor John Backus dies]

Wil — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 19:41:30 GMT

One of the industry's greats, a man who in fact is largely responsible for there even being an IT industry of the scope and magnitude it now is, has died. John Backus, who led the 10-person team at IBM that invented the first widely used high-level programming language, FORTRAN, and that developed the compiler that generated amazingly fast executables (by the standards of late 1950s hardware), died on Saturday at the age of 82. A very interesting obituary about him (especially the description of his professional career, on p. 2) from the NY Times is online here.

This evening, when you start to write a DO-loop (in whatever language you are using), pause to remember a giant.

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MS management shake-up attributed to new emphasis on the Web [MS management shake-up attributed to new emphasis on the Web]

Wil — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 18:13:18 GMT

This report about MS's move towards a revenue stream based on advertising, rather than on either the sale of software licenses or on software subscriptions, attributes last week's post-Vista-delay restructuring of the Windows Platform & Services Division to that move.

"Customers' changing expectations are behind Microsoft Corp.'s decision to offer some of its applications over the Web, in the form of free services supported by advertising, a company executive said Monday. The change in course led to last week's management shakeup, he said."

That explanation would at least be consistent with the move from a Windows-uber-alles model to a WPF/E model as MS's main thrust. The post-bubble attitude of "Browser bad, Windows good!" that has given Firefox (and Google) its opening seems to be replaced by a "Web (or Atlas?) good, Windows less-important" viewpoint. If so, then the management structure over which Jim Allchin has ruled is a model that had to be changed by putting Windows Live, rather than the Windows desktop, at its focus.

I wonder, though, how committed they are to an advertising-supported revenue model. Before Hailstorm crashed and burned, they were really hyping up software as a subscription. As much as I would resent paying MS a monthly fee to use Windows and Office, I would resent even more having an MS Web app cluttered with ads.

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Vista to debut on Oprah???? [Vista to debut on Oprah????]

Wil — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 15:43:58 GMT

I don't know where this "10" thing that Scoble was talking about fits into this, but MS is planning its marketing blitz for Vista, and it will be intense indeed (not just to persuade users to buy Vista but especially to buy the super-duper jumbo-sized day-glow premium version with sausage, pepperoni, extra anchovies, whipped cream, pecans, and chocolate sauce). See the report. What interests me most (other than the prospects of Oprah's grilling the MS representatives about whether they fabricated Vista's marketing claims!) is Bill Gates' desire for the self-generating hype that would result from having news reports about people lined up to buy Vista at midnight of the day it goes on sale. Do you suppose they will pay people to do that? Maybe that's what the "10" initiative is all about - "Here's 10 bucks, now go camp out in front of the computer store and get your picture on the TV news!!!" :)

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Hardware requirement for Vista: 16 hard drives??? [Hardware requirement for Vista: 16 hard drives???]

Wil — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 20:22:44 GMT

Well, Voodoo seems to think so, if you want to work with video. Hey, it will set you back only $8K or $9K. See the story.

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UK objects to MS's C++/CLI proposed standard [UK objects to MS's C++/CLI proposed standard]

Wil — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 19:07:03 GMT

Story here. There'll always be an England...

(BTW, note that the article says that "the next version of the OS, Windows Vista, will be built on .Net." Apparently they missed the word about the decision to use Windows Server 2003 as the code base instead.)

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C/C++ Users Journal folds [C/C++ Users Journal folds]

Wil — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 18:21:54 GMT

Today when I went to my mailbox, I got the Feb. 2006 issue of "C/C++ Users Journal", and on its front cover was attached the following note:

"For nearly 30 years, the C/C++ Users Journal has provided resources and information to serve the constantly evolving community of C and C++ developers. More recently, however, we at CMP Media LLC have come to the difficult realization that the best way to serve this community in the future is to focus on new Web sites, magazines, and events. What this means is that you are holding in your hands the last issue of the C/C++ Users Journal. As a result, Dr. Dobb's Journal, which has published C and C++ articles ranging from the days of Small-C to C++, will expand its coverage of these important programming languages even more."

Is this just a case of a magazine's running out of steam after 30 years and now failing to attract enough advertisers and readers? A sign that C/C++ is simply no longer cool enough to have a magazine devoted to using it? (Note the number of Java magazines that rushed to market during the dot.com bubble.) A sign that C/C++ is in fact on its way to becoming as much a niche language as COBOL? (Do new programmers learn it in college any more?) Or quite the contrary, a sign that C/C++ is so omnipresent that a magazine devoted to it is superfluous? (After all, how much market would there be for a "Refrigerator's Users Journal"?)

In any case, it will be sorely missed by many of us, certainly!

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MS + Yahoo vs. Google + AOL... Who'd win? [MS + Yahoo vs. Google + AOL... Who'd win?]

Wil — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 15:46:54 GMT

So, has MS decided the Internet is too big a place for them to conquor on their own, no matter how many chairs they toss at the opposition? Or is this just blog FUD from MS? See the reports.

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"Gang of Four" design pattern guru dies ["Gang of Four" design pattern guru dies]

Wil — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 14:59:55 GMT

I don't know whether this has been mentioned herein previously, but I hadn't read anything about it until I saw today's newspaper. IBM's John Vlissides, O-O programming expert and one of the famous "Gang of Four" authors of "Design Patterns", the text that had and continues to have a profound impact on how objects are implemented in practice, has died of a brain tumour at the alarmingly young age of 44.

I'm not sure whether this site requires a (free) registration or not to read today's paper, but in any case here is a link to his obituary.

R.I.P., Dr. Vlissides.

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Sun says Solaris Enterprise System suite is now open-source [Sun says Solaris Enterprise System suite is now open-source]

Wil — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 20:25:28 GMT

Sun announces today that they are making a software bundle consisting of Solaris, the Java Enterprise System, their compilers and development tools, etc., available as open-source. So, when you can't sell enough of something, you might as well try a business model based on giving it away?

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MS begins its foray into supercomputing [MS begins its foray into supercomputing]

Wil — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 16:57:39 GMT

We all saw how, a couple of weeks ago, Bill G stepped into the lion's den of Linux/UNIX clustering geeks to give the keynote address at a supercomputing conference. Presumably it is MS's intention to use the OpenMP, 64-bit capabilities of the clustering version (now in beta #2) of Windows 2003 Server to break into this decidely non-desktop market. Today, we see that MS is putting their money where their mouth is - they're hiring the big-name guys.

I suppose this move into a field that's light-years away from MS's microcomputer roots is a good thing, since it may lead to some useful trickle-down technology for improved compilers for dual-core and multi-core PCs, etc. The thing that worries me, though, is considering just what supercomputers are actually used for. In addition to code-cracking, weather forecasting, pharmaceutical and industrial design, petroleum exploration, etc., one of the major uses of the very largest supercomputers is the running of numerical simulation codes for testing the reliability of the USA's aging nuclear stockpile. I suppose we can all take comfort at the prospects that nuclear warheads will be judged safe based on versions of those codes that are ported to Windows, right? After all, surely the MS supercomputing OS won't be susceptible to a Blue Screen of... Whoops...

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What the heck gives with the new MSDN home page? [What the heck gives with the new MSDN home page?]

Wil — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 18:29:08 GMT

Whose idea was this? And why?

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Sun stockholders vote to enable sale of the company [Sun stockholders vote to enable sale of the company]

Wil — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 14:10:52 GMT

By an 84% vote(!!!), Sun MIcrosystems stockholders approved the removal of "poison pill" provisions that were in place to guard against a hostile takeover, it says here.

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Re: General Relativity Resolves Galactic Rotation Without Exotic Dark Matter [General Relativity Resolves Galactic Rotation Without Exotic Dark Matter]

Wil — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 18:30:20 GMT

shooby wrote:

personally, the existance of undetected anything to satisfy the outcomes of a theory leaves me wanting.

Of course, for many years until someone finally detected one, the neutrino was basically a euphemism for "the unseen particle that keeps the law of the conservation of angular momentum from being violated".;)

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Will Vista lead to environmental catastrophe? [Will Vista lead to environmental catastrophe?]

Wil — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 18:58:01 GMT

As has been noted/bemoaned, Vista will be endowed with Output Content Protection to ensure that hi-def DVDs using next-gen DRM software will produce only a fuzzy picture, or none at all, on any monitor that isn't equipped with HDCP, which very few of them now are. I thus read with interest MS's statement that "It is worth noting that PVP-OPM will not impact content that is available today, and that any Longhorn PC (Vista PC) will be able to play next-gen DVD content provided it is connected to a compliant monitor." Scant comfort, I say! What a toxic hazard it will be, when everyone in the world (everyone who installs Vista, that is!) throws out their old monitors because the OS won't display the new DVDs on them. We shall be buried to our necks in discarded CRTs and LCDs!

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