sure the providers are starting to offer content on the xbox but only a few channels they pick. With a cable card we can get all the ones we want.

a cable card will cost about $3.00 to $5.00 US a month from the local cable company. an HD DVR box they rent you is about $16 to $20 US a month and they may also charge for the remote at $3 to $7 a month.

so the cable card costs you less and you get the same content, the xbox can be setup to do what the hd dvr does and it's yours. 

posted by figuerres

posted by figuerres

plus timing, and lack of decent advance notice

and we will need to spend how much?  air fair plus hotels plus tickets ....

not happening unless you are giving away a lot more than a tablet!!!

a few years back there used to be local microsoft events and they are gone.

at least i could afford to drive to a near by town and take 2 days from work to go to them.

given thew way things are today i can not spend 3 to 5 grand on a cross country trip and take a week off work.  not happening for me and i am sure for many others.

posted by figuerres

seems like i recall when MSDN + VS was like $1,000 a year now it's nuts...  

the cost of Ultimate is way too high.

Pro or Permium is the max I would ever pay for of the VS versions.

the jump in price does not add that many killer / must have features to justify it.

posted by figuerres

2 days ago, Charles wrote

@figuerres: What are you asking, exactly?

well honestly several things are on my mind and seem related to this post:

1) microsoft seems to be trying to change how they share information with developers, i see some valid reasons but i also see problems with this shift. it's a double edged sword.

2)  related to #1  is the issue of how the tech changes and how in recent history developers have been left with a feeling that Microsoft has tried to "jump" on a new trend at the cost of dropping another tech. or at least making the annoncments come across to many developers as a kind of "Slap in the face" as it were.

3) also realated to #1 but also to the larger picture is the list of things that microsoft has done amazing work on but yet this work has failed in many ways to get the public acceptance we would like to see. Also the way other companies have been able to benefit from Microsofts hard work.

just look around the many "Tablet Devices"  from multiple companies that are hitting the market and have sold many many units....  a large part of the work to make them was done by Microsoft but not one of the popular devices today is making money for microsoft or running a Microsoft OS - as far as i know of.

Granted just around the corner we have WIndows 8 and Windows on Arm but my concern is that like the Windows Phone that this will be coming to the market too late to get the market share needed to attract companies to invest in developing for it.

I have as yet to see any real demand for windows phone apps in the real world. i do see demand for android and iOS apps.

and this is interesting as I also see MonoDroid and MonoTouch beeing used to make apps for these devices,   again a case where Microsoft has done a HUGE amount of work but gets no fame, no money and no real advantage.

there is for sure a paradox of if you try to be "Open and Share"  you might be giving stuff away.

but if you do not share then you can be accused of all kinds of Evil things ....

I do not have any simple answers ....  but I do see a lot of things that concern me.

posted by figuerres

i wonder if this can follow thru with what it says....

what is the strategy?   how to get on the proactive / advanced side.

how to not let others reap the benefit of your work...

posted by figuerres

posted by figuerres

for example the prior beta and VS2010 debugging is broken this is part vs2010 and part IE9 ..

also many sites badly mis render in the prior beta is there any news on how we will cope untill they fix the sites ?  I never did find a way to get the sites to work right in IE9 Beta

also the problem with images not loading / showing - has that been fixed ?

sorry if this is in the video i am working and can't watch it right now.

posted by figuerres

posted by figuerres

My take: make a next gen x box that has the following:

1 Blue Ray drive
2 Cable card slots
3  SIlverlight runtime
4 the rest of the stuff the 360 has but updated with new hardware specs.
5 support 3d - i am not really looking for 3d but i see that more as "keeping up" with whats beeing marketed now.

BOOM! there ya go!  the consumer does not need to buy a blue ray player and does not have to get a cable box  for tv just plug in a cable card and hookup the hdmi ports and you are good to go.

posted by figuerres

there is a link in this post with the name / model of the device, as it did not say where it went i thought it was to the Mfg but it's not.

if you link to another site show that in the link perhaps with the name of the site like this:

Read more at www.domain.com

posted by figuerres

RIA / WPF  - we need the RIA for SIlverlight work on WPF, yes you can tlak to RIA from WPF but the way you have to do that SUCKS and you lose a lot of what makes it worth using.

SL V.Next and LightSwitch - we need the SQL report viewer control *MAJOR*  the lack of that is huge for making good LOB apps. not all clients have office installed, and  SQLRS in HTML has rendering flaws with some layouts.

Hoping that PDC next week will start to reveal a CTP / Beta of SIlverlight 5  ...  and that MS gets to port SL to the i* devices .....

hate to say it but we have a number of business openings for apps on the i* stuff and no one asking for WIndows Mobile stuff.

posted by figuerres

posted by figuerres

I hope this new version gives  us all the C9 we have been Looking for

posted by figuerres

things that i think need to be lokked at are:

1)  option to generate a std VS project with C# and xaml code ( many cases around why can be given)

2)  option to create a "downlevel" client for non silverlight users (HTML) while the focus on silverlight is great there are users who will not be able to load silverlight but should be reached

3) as the LightSwitch level is all meta data and models generation of WPF clients should be very doable once silverlight is out

4)  SQL SERVER Reporting Services:  to complete a good SIlverlight LOB app we NEED a report view / print control!!

if that list was covered then this would really really really ROCK!!!

Waiting for the Beta and for a Go-Live i have a system i can re-do with this to remove a ton of old code!

I also have a possible new app this would be perfect for.

posted by figuerres

I will have to use the beta to get a feel for how this works .....

I would like to have the option to generate C# and Xaml  - if i find some problem with the canned code and need to tweak it.

but i can see a *LOT* of cases where yeah this may well be the right thing w/o any custom coding.

also what about having an option to do this for WPF / desktop applications??

seems like a switch in the code gen could build a desktop form packgae to target the non-browser world also....

posted by figuerres

another is that i have seen a few differences in how sites work with the URL the dev server uses a different root path and that can mess up some things as in

1234:/name/default.aspx

or

1234:/default.aspx

small things like that can create some fun when you deploy and your stuff breaks.

posted by figuerres

it spent time and money on something that split the resources at MS into two groups at a time when they needed to get focus and get back into the market.

MS is way behind in the phone market and had both the need to have good tech *AND* good pr / image.

if i were a consumer or a phone company or a hardware oem i would look at this and at the history and be very doubtfull that MS has a clue or that ms will ever get this right.

that is *NOT* the kind of thing they need right now but i think this is exacly what they have done.

for most consumers it may seem that the next phone is a last minute effort to get back in the game, if they saw kin that is...

just so many ways this has bad spin on how ms does things.....

I can just imagine the ad campains that Apple and others can run if they want to based on this ....

if i worked for MS i would want to duck and hide when it comes up in any conversations....

posted by figuerres

no one had the guts to just stop it and cut the losses early.

sad.

posted by figuerres

not to mention the way the records do show that folks hid in caves ... I think it must have been fairly nasty there before any european came there.

so when the whites came there were how many ? 2 or 3 thousand ?

so what about the estimates of 10 to 15 thousand as the prior numbers....  *SOMETHING* was going on that had zero to do with whites.

posted by figuerres

Zen and MM - no sorry have not.

As a Teen I did read Ram Dass if you know who he is/was.

He really gave me a lot of ideas.

also I read a *LOT* of Sci Fi .... Robert A. Heinlein is a huge favorite of mine

I have the Unabriged hardbound that his wife got published after his death of "Stranger In A Strange Land"

he had an interesting code for how humans should live, can't recall the name but there is a guy who lived thru WWII who talks about our Ultimate responcibility to take ownership of our actions and our in-actions and not try to pass them off with bull like "I was tempted" or "Peer pressure" You did it. END. that's it.  stand up and take your punishment or reward as needed.

Be Here Now!

posted by figuerres

I wonder if at some point some local looked around and said something like "Man we are really up a creek!"

with all our tech have we really learned much ?  we are still doing a lot of crazy stuff...

sometimes I think of the work of J.R.R. Tolkien

there is a passage in Lord Of The Rings where Gandalf talks about wisdom and that if you break a thing to try and learn about it then you have already failed.

"Smashing Atoms" is I think what he was really talking about indirectly.

but you can apply that idea to anything .... you do not learn very much from destorying a thing, other than how to destory it.

this by the way is not a stand against studying accidents etc.... just a  look at the deeper meaning of what it is to learn and understand things.

and the need to gain not just "Knowlege" but also "Wisdom" and they are not the same.

posted by figuerres

also i see the current state of reactors as beeing glorified "Steam Engines" a lot of stuff just wrong with the whole picture.

lets work on this before we build more of them.

posted by figuerres

wow bill i will for sure watch this later as i have liked the old interviews and i live in tampa FL and part of my teen age years i lived just outside of Santa Barbara CA and had to deal with tar on the beach and oil in the waves back then ....

we really need to get off Oil as fast as we can, but what to replace it as we use it in so many ways...

posted by figuerres

posted by figuerres