Comment Feed for rasx

Re: TechTalk - NUI - What’s in a Name?

rasx — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 00:43:22 GMT

Great talk! A perfect example of real history and terchnology!

posted by rasx

Re: Julie Larson-Green: Leading by Example, Managing the Windows Experience

rasx — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 22:48:46 GMT

No critiques here! Well done. One of the best of this video series!

posted by rasx

Re: Open XML SDK CTP Released - What is it?

rasx — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 02:15:55 GMT

Here's an actual question:

Is there the equivalent of the XpsDocumentWriter.Write method in the Open XML SDK?

posted by rasx

Re: Open XML SDK CTP Released - What is it?

rasx — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 01:06:24 GMT

I'm still reading the SDK reference and am failing to see the most primal, straight-forward "server scenario" emitting a portion of a Word document as XHTML.

I look forward to an honest reponse to this request instead of (as in the past via Brian Jones) doing stuff like:

Concluding that you do not understand what I'm talking about.
Assuming that XHTML features must provide some bizarre petfect fidelity and round-trip-ability instead of emitting a subset of the Word document.
Pretending that you did not read this post and suppressing some strange historical "low-priority" relationship with HTML in particular and the Web in general.

posted by rasx

Re: Scott Guthrie: Silverlight and the Cross-Platform CLR

rasx — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 22:59:15 GMT

Don’t you know that Scott Guthrie will cut you? Don’t you ever tell Scott Guthrie to “draw out something” on the whiteboard! Scott will put you in a headlock and make your world turn black! Scott will insert patent cubes up you! You sit there and let Scott talk!

[A]

posted by rasx

Re: Sumit Chauhan: Developing Microsoft Access, Running a Dev Team

rasx — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 21:32:56 GMT

Oops! Spoke to soon... it is her office and she was not finished unpacking!

posted by rasx

Re: Sumit Chauhan: Developing Microsoft Access, Running a Dev Team

rasx — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 21:25:22 GMT

I knew it was irresistable for my fellow niners to make a remark about the physical apperance of Sumit Chauhan. I had the same "challenge" but for me it is an indication of my poverty. It reminds me that so many people are "ugly" in so many ways that when we see what resembles "beauty" we pack on like wolves to pollute and defile.

Now trivia: Sumit Chauhan is an engineer. I assume that this interview took place in her office so you can see that her space is not "decorated" with "girl stuff" in particular and consumer gluttony in general. She takes a very utilitarian view of her work space...

posted by rasx

Re: Jon Udell: Brian Jones on Office XML

rasx — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 18:09:22 GMT

Since you, Jon, are actually a writer that does understand the power of XML, your valuable commentary on these two items would be greatly appreciated:

“CleanXHTML for Microsoft Office Word 2003″
http://songhaysystem.com/document.php?doc=40

“DocBook XSL: a Complete Guide, Open XML XSL: an Incomplete Guide”
http://www.kintespace.com/rasxlog/?p=542

posted by rasx

Re: Anders Hejlsberg, Herb Sutter, Erik Meijer, Brian Beckman: Software Composability and the Future of

rasx — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 22:28:44 GMT

Excellent premise! A historical video and I'm one of the few that is actually interested in history and genius personality.

posted by rasx

Re: Tara Roth: Not your father’s world of Software Test

rasx — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 02:33:38 GMT

The declarative comments by the male speaker about any topic other than machine-related objects were quite annoying. But Rory is more annoying than this guy so that's the state of affairs in Redmond.

We need to see several testimonials telling us that this series designed to educate us about women in technology is useful. Bring on the 12 year old girls with touching stories of Microsoft humanity.

What may be more useful is to interview an expert that has interviewed hundreds of women in technology so that we can get sweeping, broad strokes with more informative power based on statistics and hard research. Surely someone who works for Slate or maybe even MS NBC can relate.

Another option is to interview a woman at Microsoft who is as old as Jim Allchin (and with similar seniority)---but that may be hard to do because of (gasp!) sexism in old Microsoft. An older woman should have some experience seeing women come and go on the campus.

posted by rasx

Re: Iain McDonald and Andrew Mason show off the new Windows Server OS

rasx — Fri, 26 May 2006 05:22:31 GMT

Did I hear corectly? No .NET Framework? Can we at least run SQL Server on Core?:O

posted by rasx

Re: Michael Wallent: Advent and Evolution of WPF

rasx — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 00:30:34 GMT

I know that it is very difficult not to sound cynical in this age of the smirk but I am freaking serious when I say that this is the guy I wanted to hear from for years. Years! Anyone who has written HTML by hand at least three times for the last decade needs to see this video!

Nothing replaces an excellent discussion of technology in a historical context like this Channel9 post. Everything else is existential doggy bags and sophomoric kiddie plates served in a vacuum.

posted by rasx

Re: Mike Arcuri - More business intelligence in Office 2007

rasx — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 06:43:26 GMT

Excel 2007 has new, rich, semantic formatting features---adding both visuals and meaning. Very impressive! All those gradients will export to XAML with high fidelity one day...

posted by rasx

Re: Don McGowan - Technology law at Microsoft (and the software industry)

rasx — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 00:36:54 GMT

Two silly remarks to be read by future civilizations using advanced data mining technology:

First: the "invention" of writing is not related to any problems lawyers can recognize. I would say that writing was "acquired" (not invented) by the imperial cultures that would eventually devolve lawyers.

Second: law is reality for imperial cultures. "Reality" is related to the Latin words re (law) and rex (king) and the puts the real in real estate. It is a "philisophical" waste of time to distinguish "natural" reality from legal reality in an imperial culture.

Oh, dude, wait: we don't live in an imperial culture. What in hades am I talking about!

posted by rasx

Re: WPF Imaging

rasx — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 20:50:17 GMT

This Blog entry will talk about Channel9 Videos. This completes my disingenuous exposition.

Apart from Robert Scoble’s famous tension-filled laugh (which by the way is “socially acceptable”—it just sounds tense to me—but then, again, I like “free jazz” and Sponge Bob does not), there is the continual request to not look in the camera. This advice seems strange to the philistine children of the Reagan era—especially the “technical” folks at Microsoft. But my lack of formal education in media history suggests to me that during the 1980s, the rise of the “infomercial” introduced this innovation. This is a professional camera technique that manipulates the psychological powers of the viewer.

When the subjects in camera do not look at the camera, they suggest to the viewer that they are, at best, part of the conversation—at worst (which more often) the viewer is encouraged to indulge in voyeuristic conquests just short of the pornographic experience. When the talking heads do not look in the camera, the viewer can feel like they are uncovering documentation instead of being subject to a presentation. This technique seduces the viewer into thinking they are in charge of the situation (or at least genuinely respected) when (more often) they are not. The reason why I say they are not is because there are more infomercials in “popular” media than documentaries. The arithmetic does not lie. The camera often does.

posted by rasx

Re: Looking at the Word Object Model

rasx — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 05:09:39 GMT

Yes, there are real, live .NET developers outside of Microsoft demo mavens working with Microsoft Word. This tool called CleanXHTML converts selections or entire documents into XHTML for Blogging and other data entry needs.

One little tip: Set the Document.Saved property to true to prevent saving Toolbars programmatically added to Word.

posted by rasx

Re: Lauren Antonoff

rasx — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 23:35:38 GMT

Lauren Antonoff is one the best Microsoft personalities ever presented on Channel9. She is right up there with the mighty Don Box. Her greatest strength seen by me is her confident lack of concern for "technical skills" and her authentic sense of superiority when viewing computers in a problem-solving context instead of worshipping them in a Platonic cave.

All of the gender-specific questions were as lame and impotent as so-called "multi-cultural" questions. I do not wish them away any more than I wish Laurence Welk can pop lock.

posted by rasx

Re: IE 7: What's new in Beta 2 Preview

rasx — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 20:05:12 GMT

So IE uses RSS 2.0 internally. Dave Winer rocks! Sorry, Atom dudes! I wanna see Dave Winer and Don Box in the same Channel 9 Episode!

posted by rasx

Re: Jennifer Ritzinger - Reflecting on Microsoft internships

rasx — Tue, 27 Dec 2005 20:53:40 GMT

I made this far in the world of IT because of being anti-social through college and high school. Where I come from, being "social" can literally get you killed---frequently by the police. I still refuse to pretend that these facts of my life did not exist in order to "fit in"---you have to be a pretty impressive clique in order to get me to fake it. So far no clique fits the bill.

I have found very few females who were anti-social such that they can develop technical skills. I have found very few people in general(that I have been actively looking for) who were anti-social such that they can develop technical skills.

Why do I connect anti-social behavior with technical skills? Its because the United States is not known for a pop culture based on technical discipline. "We" Americans still believe more in magic than in technique. This is no accident. It is easier to sell products to magical people than technical people.[C]

posted by rasx

Re: Cleartype Team - Typography in Windows Vista

rasx — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 08:02:58 GMT

What did the Romans ever do for Queen Boudica? Why would Tolkein "waste" years of his life creating a fantastic pre-Roman past? The word fascism comes from Rome---not because they discovered something foreign and had to find a name for it---no fascism is something Romans knew for themselves.

posted by rasx

Re: Mark Boulter and Brian Pepin - Sneak peak at Cider (visual designer for Orcas, future version of Vis

rasx — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 21:28:37 GMT

Here's some Bauhaus lyrics for programmers late at night:

All we ever wanted
was everything

All we ever got
was cold

Get up
Eat Jelly

Sandwich bars and barbed wire

Squash every week
into a day

...oh to be the cream!

posted by rasx

Re: Eric Richards and Team - First look at InfoPath 12

rasx — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 22:54:34 GMT

Yeah! But I am wary of any SharePoint dependencies for showing forms in Web browsers…

posted by rasx

Re: Windows Sideshow Team - Auxiliary Displays (new laptop feature coming next year)

rasx — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 21:51:56 GMT

Ah! I can just hear those cruel IPod lovers erroneously claming that this feature is Microsoft's answer to Apple's latest craze.

posted by rasx

Re: Mike Murray - What the guy who wrote shrimp and weenies memo is doing now

rasx — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 21:33:51 GMT

I think Mike is talking about better bandaids---even better than what the International Monetary Fund does "for" people in need. I am curious about what Vandana Shiva or Wangari Maathai thinks about these loans.

And of course this conversation is devoid of the possibility that these "poor people" were deliberately underdeveloped by powers greater than the worldly W2 employee confident about what the "third world" really is.

Poverty is not natural. Poverty happens when people are taken out of the world of nature. And it is so, so sad to assume that living in the world of nature has nothing to do with "advanced" technology. This assumption is what is actually stupid.

posted by rasx

Re: Eddie Churchill - First look at Solution Designer

rasx — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 22:57:31 GMT

Surely, all or some of BizTalk functionality is in some enterprise edition of SQL Server 2005, right?

posted by rasx