charles

Channel 9 on Mars: Inside the Mars Exploration Mission - Past, Present and Future

Charles — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:33:00 GMT

While in LA for PDC2008, we were lucky enough to get the chance to head down to Pasadena for a tour and interview at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Nic Fillingham and I grabbed a cab and met up with the great Marc Mercuri (of RoboChamps fame), DPE's VP Walid Abu-Hadba and others to get a look at the JPL Mars Rover facility and meet some of the folks behind the Mars Exploration Rover Mission. Our guide was the venerable Dave Lavery who is the Program Executive for Solar System Exploration at NASA.

This is a fascinating glimpse into the world of solar system exploration from the perspective of robotics and software design (Dave was a major contributor to the robotics design and development efforts behind (and in) the Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity).

Tune in and learn about some of the challenges of developing autonomous machines that you will never get to touch again (think about the reduncancy requirements for a robot rover that is deployed 100 million miles away from Earth...). It's really exciting that the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity will be joined on the red planet by a new mobile robot equipped with an advanced laboratory capable of unparalleled experimentation and analysis. The folks at JPL think 100 million miles outside of the box!

Newton Sanches: Live Mesh P2P

Charles — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:25:00 GMT

Meet Live Mesh Test Lead Newton Sanches. His job is to ensure that Live Mesh data synchronization happens successfully and efficiently. When does Live Mesh utilize Peer to Peer data transfer as opposed to Copy-to-Cloud-Then-to-Mesh Folders? How does Live Mesh P2P work, exactly? Tune in.

Inside Windows 7: Larry Osterman on new audio capabilities

Charles — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:26:00 GMT

The great Larry Osterman discusses what excites him most about Windows 7's new audio features. Of course, we talk about all things audio as Larry is a 24 year veteran of Microsoft and best known as the developer who makes Windows go ding. He's also an avid blogger.

Scott Isaacs: Introducing Web Sandbox

Charles — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:19:00 GMT

Web Sandbox is a project from Live Labs, a group focused on Internet technologies. Dragos Manolescu (who worked on Live Labs Volta and Political Streams) and Scott Isaacs (who worked on Windows Live Gadgets and is credited with the creation of DHTML) made the initial project pitch. Since then the Web Sandbox team leveraged the expertise of and talent from other groups interested in securing the web, such as Windows Live, MSN and DP Languages.

You have to check this out:
http://websandbox.livelabs.com/

Please try and break the isolation model by injecting clever scripts on the websandbox website. If you find gaping holes, share it right in the forums on the site (they are fundamentally transparent).

Enjoy!

Countdown@PDC: Day 4 Recap

Charles — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:06:00 GMT

Mike and Ritzy wax on the Day 4 at PDC 2008. It's a bittersweet day since it's the final day of PDC. Mike and Ritzy share interesting stats about the event, talk aboutPDC 2009 (they go back to work next week for MIX09 planning and PDC2009 planning - Mike, Ritzy, you work too hard!)

Congratulations to all involved with PDC2008. Amazing event. Thank you!!!

Ori Amiga: Mesh Mobile

Charles — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:16:00 GMT

Niners loved Ori’s last appearance talking about Live Mesh, so we brought him back to show off the combination of two of his passions: the Mesh and his car. Ori started hacking with the Live Framework and some nifty consumer electronics to build a Mesh-aware in-car automation system. Check it out...

Steven Sinofsky at the PDC2008 Open Space

Charles — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:22:00 GMT

Steven Sinofsky participates in an Open Space Discussion on Windows 7 at the PDC.

Countdown@PDC: Day 3 Recap

Charles — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:11:00 GMT

Mike and Ritzy wax on Day 3's events and talk about next year's PDC announcement. Rick Rashid gives the Day 3 keynote. Anders Hejlsberg and Daniel Moth are neck and neck for Day 3's most popular session attendee review score.

George Chrysanthakopoulos: Microsoft CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008

Charles — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:37:00 GMT

The great George Chrysanthakopoulos (CCR creator) chats with us briefly about the new CCR and DSS Visual Toolkit. You first learned about CCR right here on Channel 9. Since that time it's had a very interesting evolution. The CCR found itslef at the core of the Microsoft Robotics engine on the one hand and running in the cloud on 50,000 servers processing billions of transactions. George and team have always been impressed with how people have used the CCR (many folks have downloaded the Microsoft Robotics SDK for the express purpose of getting at the CCR). Well, now you gaet the stand-alone CCR plus DSS in a neat application development package including Visual Programming Language.

Get the bits and more info at the links below:

To learn more about Microsoft CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008, visit: http://www.microsoft.com/ccrdss

CCR DSS Tyco Case Study (video): http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=130996

CCR DSS Siemens Case Study (written): http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=130997

CCR DSS Siemens Case Study (video): http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=130998

CCR DSS Toolkit 2008 datasheet: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=130994

George's PDC Session:
http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/TL55/

Don Box, Paul Vick and Chris Anderson: Introducing M

Charles — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:58:00 GMT

Don Box, Chris Anderson and Paul Vick dig into their new programming language (well, it's a data modeling language that you use to create DSLs to express your data as opposed to a general purpose language...). What is M, exactly? What does it do? What can it do? To answer these questions, Don, Chris and Paul create a Channel 9 language to express Channel 9 video data. Now that's a great idea! :) Tune in, learn the thinking behind M and how to build data grammars with it. It's a very interesting way to program data.

See Don's PDC 2008 session here:
http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/TL27/

Countdown@PDC: Day 2 Recap

Charles — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 06:11:00 GMT

Mike and Ritzy wax energetically (which is surprising given how exhausted they must be!) on the goings on of PDC2008 Day 2. Windows 7 was one of the big announcements today (and all PDC attendees received a copy of Windows 7 and a 160 GB external hard drives!). Don Box and Chris Anderson wrote code in front of thousands. Ritzy has a tickets to the LA Lakers home game on Friday and will give hem out to attendees who have the courage to introduce themselves (first-come, first serve). Mike talks about the connection between today's announcements and yesterday's.

Enjoy!

Ray Ozzie: Reflections on Azure

Charles — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:35:00 GMT

Microsoft CSA Ray Ozzie joins us for a quick chat (you can imagine how busy he is...) about the complexities of designing and implementing the Azure Services Platform, his key take-aways from the past two days at PDC and his guiding architectural principles for Azure (for those who know Ray, he is a staunch advocate for simplicity and adherence to protocols that already exist and are widely used).

Niners, at the end of the interview there's a surprise for all of you (especially one of you, but know that Ray is a huge fan of Channel 9 and especially the Niners who make it so special: all of you). Big thanks to Ray for coming on Channel 9 with such short notice and given his crazy PDC schedule!

Enjoy!

David Treadwell: Inside Live Services

Charles — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:53:00 GMT

Vice President of Windows Live David Treadwell explains Azure's Live Services. He whiteboards the architecture of Live Services (love getting VPs to the whiteboard!), discusses what's available in the Azure CTP, what's coming and, finally, why we are doing all of the cloud business in the first place. By the way, can you figure out what the hex means on his shirt?

Countdown@PDC 2008: Day 1 Recap

Charles — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:26:00 GMT

Jennifer and Mike wax eloquently on day one at PDC 2008. A lot of news today. Jennifer gets a badge (by the great Adam Kinney himself). Attendees feedback on the "bag". This was shot on stage at the Channel 9 Lounge in the big (really big) room.

John Shewchuk and Dennis Pilarinos: Inside .NET Services

Charles — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:58:00 GMT

Technical Fellow John Shewchuk and Principal Group Manager Dennis Pilarinos explain the past, present and future of the Azure's .NET Services. John and Dennis are the orginal thinkers behind .NET Services.They started this project a few years ago. The services layer on top of Windows Azure is rife with functionality and wide open for innovation. It's a brave new world, my friends. Get ready to get your hands dirty. This is great stuff!

Steve Marx: Windows Azure for Developers

Charles — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:23:00 GMT

Program Manager Steve Marx sits down with us to discuss what Windows Azure means for developers. The basic idea is to make it really simple for developers to deploy web applications and services without having to worry about scaling, management. So, Windows Azure is an operating system in the sense that it abstracts away the infrastructure details of the cloud "machine". It's always great to chat with Steve. You'll enjoy this classic style C9 interview ;)

Check out the Windows Azure website.

Manuvir Das: Introducing Windows Azure

Charles — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:15:00 GMT

Manuvir Das, Director in the Windows Azure team introduces us to Microsoft's new cloud operating system, Windows Azure. Is Windows Azure a new OS from Microsoft? Well, sort of, but not in a strict sense (e.g., Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008). That said, one could say that Windows Azure extends Windows to the cloud. That is, Windows Azure provides a highly scalable virtualization fabric for server-side application execution, deployment, automatic management, and simple storage. Windows Azure provides the base infrastructure for services in the cloud.

Tune in!

Check out the Windows Azure website. and Manuvir's A Lap Around Windows Azure breakout session from PDC 2008.

Lynne Hill: Parallel Computing Platform - The Vision and Future

Charles — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:38:00 GMT

Over the past few months you've seen several interviews with members of Microsoft's Parallel Computing Platform team and we've learned about tooling advances, managed support for parallelism (Parallel Extensions for .NET), and native support for parallelism (the Concurrency Runtime).

Here, we meet the leader of the Parallel Computing Platform team, General Manager Lynne Hill. Lynne is a veteran Microsoft leader, starting the Parallel Computing Team and builiding it into what it is today, a relatively large organization with many virtual members spread across the entire company. The Parallel Computing Team (and the industry at large, of course) have a tremendously daunting task: bringing parallel computing to the general purpose masses. The Parallel Computing Platform is in fact making significant strides in this area, as I hope we've made clear on Channel 9. Lynne tells us about the vision of her team, the history of the problem and the future of parallelism. She makes it clear that with the advent of much more computing power the industry is poised to invent some incredibly interesting technologies that will enable new classes of computation experience for computer users. Now, the problem of getting a grip on how to harness the impending power of many-core in reasonable ways is of paramount importance. Go Lynne! Go!

Enjoy.

Expert to Expert: Natural Language and Computational Linguistics

Charles — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 18:34:00 GMT

Ever wonder what it takes to compute language (language in this case refers to what we humans speak and or/write)? From Wikipedia: Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the statistical and/or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective. This modeling is not limited to any particular field of linguistics. Traditionally, computational linguistics was usually performed by computer scientists who had specialized in the application of computers to the processing of a natural language. Computational linguists often work as members of interdisciplinary teams, including linguists (specifically trained in linguistics), language experts (persons with some level of ability in the languages relevant to a given project), and computer scientists. In general computational linguistics draws upon the involvement of linguists, computer scientists, experts in artificial intelligence, cognitive psychologists, mathematicians, and logicians, amongst others.

Here, we meet some of the scientists in Microsoft Research who work on computational linguistics. The great Erik Meijer conducts the interview. Special guests are: Researchers Chris Quirk, Michael Gamon and Lucy Vanderwende. This is a great Expert to Expert since the Experts in this case are from different domains of expertise (Erik is a programming language specialist. The scientists Erik converses with are specialists in natural language computation, linguisitics and mathematics). This is a fascinating conversation that spans topics from natural language processing to computing understanding (Yes. AI comes up...).

Enjoy!

Countdown to PDC2008: Rick Rashid, a Researcher’s Researcher

Charles — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 21:18:00 GMT

17 years in the same job? Yep, Senior Vice President of Microsoft Research, Rick Rashid has been doing the same thing since the first day he joined the firm, and he’s still loving it. Listen to Rick talk about all of the cool innovation coming out of MSR, and he foreshadows his PDC keynote warning audience members to be thoughtful about where they sit during his speech. Hmmm. Whatever in the world could that possibly mean? Who cares! Mike’s got apple pie in this, his final PDC Hard Hat Challenge. Bonne chance!

Parallel Computing Platform: Asynchronous Agents for Native Code

Charles — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:27:00 GMT

Here, we continue our focus on concurrency and parallelism with native (C++) Parallel Computing Platform team members Rick Malloy, Niklas Gustafsson, Mike Chu and Stephen Toub. This conversation covers native (C++) asynchronous agents (and agent programming, generally) and pipeline architectures for concurrency. A lot of time spent at the whiteboard...

For the native developers out there I think you will be really pleased with the direction the Parallel Computing People are heading with these new C++ libraries for concurrency. Do check this out! By the way, these guys will be at the PDC so if you're going please do bring your questions!

Enjoy.

Rahul Patil: Complexities of Testing Concurrency

Charles — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:49:00 GMT

You've been hearing a lot lately about parallelism and concurrency here on Channel 9 and the fact that before you know, you'll be writing highly concurrent code due to the advent of multi-core and the soon-to-be many-core (greater than eight cores) processors. It's hard if not impossible to express parallelism using mainstream general purpose programming tools (most developers compose their applications in a sequential and imperative manner). Microsoft, along with the rest of the software tools industry, is making great strides to simply the expression of concurrency using the tools that you've grown comfortable using and rely on day to day.

Of course, the current state of tools/technology (Parallel Extensions for .NET, the Concurrency Runtime, etc) make it much easier to compose parallel tasks and move you away from programming threads explicitly. This is a huge step in the right direction, but it is only a step and much more "walking" has to be done to get us to where we need to go...

Rahul Patil is a concurrency testing expert. His is the complex lifestyle of chasing down bugs that are caused by concurrently executing code (threads). In this discussion, Rahul explains to us what the common patterns are that lead to concurreny bugs (race conditions, deadlocks, etc) and offers advice on how to catch bugs before you create them...

Enjoy.

Parallel Computing Platform: Overview and Future Directions

Charles — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:00:00 GMT

The Parallel Computing Platform team's David Callahan (Distinguished Engineer) and Keith Yedlin (Product Unit Manager) sit down with me to discuss Microsoft's vision for general purpose Parallel Computing. Keith demos the power of the Microsoft Parallel Computing Platform on a 26 processor machine. Even cooler than the substantial performance improvements is the small change to a for loop (adding .NET Extensions' new Parallel.For) that results in incredible performance gains. See for yourself.

Of course, this is Channel 9 (and I am without Marketing bones...) so we talk about a lot of things related to concurrency and parallel computing. Do we have all the answers? Of course not. Are we making significant strides in our quest to bring more super computing capability to the general purpose software developer. David is a seasoned veteran in the parallel computing space (he was an engineer at Cray...) and he owns the Microsoft "Quest" for parallel computing, generally. Keith has to make sure that we come up with is truly useful to customers and not just simplified rocket science.

Tune in!

Countdown to PDC2008: Badges!? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges…

Charles — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 14:37:00 GMT

Yes you do if they’re PDC Badges! Collecting PDC Badges is the way for anyone attending PDC to capture their experience at the PDC conference. Just for showing up at registration you’ll receive the “I was there at Microsoft PDC2008 Badge”. If you go to a PreCon, you’ll get the “Captured Brain Power Early” Badge. Not every Badge is that easy to get though. Only a few will obtain the exclusive “Keynote Front Rower” Badge or the “Coded4Fun” Badge.

The best part is that everyone is joining in! You will find Badges available from the Conference, Product Groups, Sponsors and Attendees. Find more details on collecting or creating your own Badges from Adam Kinney, the Badge Evangelist.

Josh Holmes and Glenn Vanderburg: Dynamic Languages and Unit Testing

Charles — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:16:00 GMT

JAOO 2008 coverage continues with Ruby expert and Relevance consultant Glenn Vanderurg sits down with UX Architect Josh Holmes to discuss dynamic languages and the importance of unit testing. With dynamic typing you can imagine that creating solid unit tests is of prime importance (of course, this is the case for statically-typed language composition as well...). Why are unit tests so important in the context of writing applications with dynamic languages? Tune in.

By the way, Josh actually records this interview for his podcast show while I film it for Channel 9. So, you get to watch an audio podcast in the making. Of course, being that I am me I do get a few questions in! Thanks Josh and Glenn for letting me crash (well, film) your party!

Enjoy.