Comment Feed for contextfree

Re: Bart De Smet: LINQ to Z3

contextfree — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 20:46:39 GMT

I have a friend who works on another SMT solver, (that's actually available under an open source license instead of the onerous MSR-LA terms), CVC3. Hmm, a LINQ provider for it might be an interesting project ...

posted by contextfree

Re: New Windows Live Wave 4 Messenger Preview

contextfree — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 03:57:31 GMT

this actually looks great ... other than the ads which really sour me on the whole thing. I really hate the idea of ads in client software, and even looking at websites, ads in Facebook, Bing and Google don't feel nearly as intrusive. I also think that ads in an IM-like application feel especially bad because it's like they're intruding on you and your friends' social space.

P.S. windowslivepreview is currently giving me ASP.NET errors. somebody left debugging trace information open to the public, and also apparently the Windows Live team can't figure out Entity Framework 3.5 either ...

posted by contextfree

Re: E2E: Erik Meijer and Cormac Herley - Rational Rejection of Security Advice by Users

contextfree — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 15:12:34 GMT

I'm really afraid of what will happen when computers and the internet become more and more integrated into our social and personal identities, the physical world (what Butler Lampson called "embodiment" in another of your videos) and eventually even our physical bodies. The security infrastructure we have seems hopelessly inadequate to the task, and I fear it will take a disaster to make people serious about fixing it.

posted by contextfree

Re: Introducing Docs for Facebook: Making Your Documents Social

contextfree — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:11:45 GMT

I can't watch the video atm, but would it be possible for any third party (maybe with the appropriate Sharepoint licenses or something) to run the Office Web Apps on their server and integrate them into their public site like you've done with Facebook?

posted by contextfree

Re: First Look: Windows Phone 7 Series Hands on Demo

contextfree — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:28:25 GMT

I like the aesthetics of the UI, please don't muck it up with gradients and other junk like this guy is suggesting. But yeah, some of the transition animations seem a bit slow (to cover up load times?) and touch responsiveness seems dubious. I guess there's still time to improve performance, so we'll see.

posted by contextfree

Re: Juan Chen and Nikhil Swamy: FINE, Functional Programming for End-to-End Security Verification

contextfree — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:34:23 GMT

Sounds interesting -- will watch later ...

posted by contextfree

Re: First Look: Streetside in Bing Maps

contextfree — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:51:16 GMT

Why do you think an implementation based on SVG et al wouldn't use comparable resources if it were doing the same things?

posted by contextfree

Re: IE 9: First look at the new JS Engine

contextfree — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:24:49 GMT

Office 2010 = 2010

IE9 = 2011

posted by contextfree

Re: IE 9: First look at the new JS Engine

contextfree — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:32:15 GMT

It will actually be more like 2.5 releases behind by the time IE9 is released, since MSFT will be well into Windows 8 development by then. That would go further back than any previous release of IE has gone with OS support.

posted by contextfree

Re: IE 9: First look at the new JS Engine

contextfree — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:48:54 GMT

Remember IE9 is still probably 18+ months away. The market share figures should be different by then (or at least Microsoft hopes they will be). Besides, people who are OK with sticking with XP are probably OK with sticking with IE8 (or other browsers).

posted by contextfree

Re: E2E: Erik Meijer and Don Box - Perspectives on SOAP, Programming Data and M

contextfree — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:54:40 GMT

WCF is flexible, you can configure it to use different encodings including (since 3.5 SP1) JSON.

posted by contextfree

Re: Quick UI with WPK in Windows PowerShell

contextfree — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:33:49 GMT

This is not really a comment on this particular case (haven't watched the video yet) but I wish people would learn that "readability" is very subjective and situational.

posted by contextfree

Re: C9 Lectures: Dr. Erik Meijer - Functional Programming Fundamentals, Chapter 2 of 13

contextfree — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:57:18 GMT

IIRC (don't have a Haskell interpreter handy atm) "let double x = x + x" will work.

posted by contextfree

Re: C9 Lectures: Dr. Erik Meijer - Functional Programming Fundamentals, Chapter 1 of 13

contextfree — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:19:22 GMT

Sweet -- will watch when I get back from work. But it's "lambda"

posted by contextfree

Re: Folder naming errors- But Why?

contextfree — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:20:45 GMT

Cool series concept (love the title graphic). Now do an episode on MAX_PATH. Or two or three or four ...

posted by contextfree

Re: Expert to Expert: Erik Meijer and Butler Lampson - Abstraction, Security and Embodiment

contextfree — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 07:20:00 GMT

I saw him give that talk at last year's ICFP! It's not really a research paper, more of a stimulus to thought.

posted by contextfree

Re: What is Microsoft's Visual Basic 6 Support Strategy?

contextfree — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:16:50 GMT

I think you can do that sort of thing in C# unsafe code; you might be able to code just the portions that need it in C# or native C++ and the rest in VB.NET. You could be right though that in your particular situation you might be best off just sticking to classic VB; my impression though is that your situation is rare (i.e. most VB programs do not make extensive use of pointer trickery etc.)

and guys, please do not absorb the F# team.

posted by contextfree

Re: Ping 28: Free Win7, Zunes, Xbox, Interface of the future

contextfree — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 08:15:46 GMT

I prefer the "Combine when full" taskbar setting. You get the benefit of pinned applications, plus separate taskbar items for each window when there's room. The only disadvantage is that a shifting visual layout makes it harder to remember the Windows-[number] shortcut keys for the applications you've pinned.

posted by contextfree

Re: Margaret Burnett: Gender and Software

contextfree — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:10:16 GMT

Thanks. I'm intrigued by the work she alludes to around 15:50 about the connection between usability and software architecture which I managed to find here --> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bej/usa/ . think I'll try reading a few of the papers (hope they're not all behind the ACM paywall)

re the joke at the end, I certainly hope there are plenty more women at all levels at MSFT who would make interesting interview subjects. as far as higher-level/more prominent women goes, do you think you could get an interview with Maria Klawe who joined the MSFT board of directors a few months back? I'm curious about her work/thoughts on serious games.

posted by contextfree

Re: .NET Framework++: Moving Forward and Staying Compatible with the Past

contextfree — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:07:56 GMT

I actually used to work for a company that, after spending months trying and failing to solve compatibility and deployment issues, eventually gave up and started shipping their software only in the form of entire preconfigured desktop computers.

posted by contextfree