This Week C9: Scott Hanselman, Silverlight, Expression Studio 3, C#/CLI | This Week On Channel 9

JoshRoss
A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent.

After looking at the census data link, it reminded me that all the new geometry tools in SQL are totally verbose. Not that writing my own distance function is a much better solution...

CREATE function ut_dist(@lon1 float,@lon2 float,@lat1 float,@lat2 float) returns float as

begin

declare @d2r float; set @d2r=atan(1)/45

declare @cosine float; set @cosine = sin(@lat2*@d2r) * sin(@lat1*@d2r)

+ cos(@lat2*@d2r) * cos(@lat1*@d2r) * cos((@lon2*@d2r)-(@lon1*@d2r))

return (select [miles]= case when @cosine between -1 and 1 then 4000 * acos(@cosine) else null end)

end

Bas
It finds lightbulbs.

Still no express editions for Expression? Ugh.

freefly

Scott, I think you have the coolest laptop in all... a lenovo w500 Cool

Peppeddu

Silverlight is such a great product and I would like to get my sites done with it as much as I can.

Unfortunately, it has one huge design flaw that makes it unworty (for now) of any investment of time.

It is made by Microsoft.

What I mean is that:

1) Microsoft makes Windows

2) Microsoft makes Silverlight

3) Microsoft promised to support other OSes for Silvelight.

That is a conflict of interest, how do we know that a few years down the road, after we invest time/effort/money into SIlverlight, Microsoft does not pull the plug out of OSes that are not Windows?

Right now Silverlight for Linux is not supported, and as web developer I need my sites to be seen by the biggest audience available, and right now, Flash (as frustrating as it is) is the best choice for my audience reach.

Glucose
Scott Hanselman

In reply to Peppeddu

#Jul 12th @ 10:07 AM

Sure it is, you haven't seen Moonlight? We even changed the Silverlight detection code on http://www.silverlight.net to forward people to install Moonlight for Linux. http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/

staceyw
Before C# there was darkness...

In reply to Peppeddu

#Jul 12th @ 10:07 AM

"Right now Silverlight for Linux is not supported, and as web developer I need my sites to be seen by the biggest audience available, and right now, Flash (as frustrating as it is) is the best choice for my audience reach."

I always wonder how much of a real issue this is. I am thinking:
1) How many people are actually using linux as desktop? Most base is server. Does windows and mac get you 99.999% there?. Is that enouph?
2) Would a linux geek actually install silverlight anyway? I guessing most would not want to install it anyway as some kind of a stick in the eye to ms.
3) Out of the .001%, are these people actually going to visit your site or would you care? You have to know your audience and target to them. Not to the handful you are never going to reach or please anyway. However, if these are your target, then the story is different.

Bass
www.spreadfirefox.com/5years/

In reply to Glucose

#Jul 12th @ 10:36 AM

http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/

As you can see the latest stable version of Moonlight is 1.0.1, which is roughly equivalent to the Silverlight 1 release. AFAIK the latest version of Sliverlight is version 3. I have seen very little content that actually works with Moonlight, it seems most everyone is using at least Silverlight 2 (including Channel 9).

Although in my opinion the Mono team consist of some of the best .NET programmers around, it's very difficult to keep up with the huge developer teams at Microsoft. Mono's full time development team (which Moonlight is a subset of) is actually smaller then the entire .NET Compact Framework team.

Of course this doesn't address the issue that Microsoft has a vested interest in ensuring that Silverlight only works on Windows, should Silverlight ever actually take off as a disruptive technology on the Internet. Adobe, who is not primarly a platform/OS vendor has no such conflict of interest.

ChrisStepaniuk

@Peppeddu:

Seriously? If that is keeping you from installing something because of the vendor, I know lots of programs which are not around because company's went under. That doesn't mean we stop using them, it just means we can't get any updates. Do you not watch a movie because Paramount is the studio releasing it? I think Silverlight is great, I've yet to see it crash a browser, can't say the same for Flash.

@Bass:

If you think Adobe doesn't have an agenda, then you're sorely mistaken. All these technologies are for you to choose from. If you don't want to use Silverlight, then don't, no one is forcing you.

Bass
www.spreadfirefox.com/5years/

In reply to ChrisStepaniuk

#Jul 12th @ 5:27 PM

I rather have an Internet were people aren't forced to use specific operating systems in order to participate. I think that completely defeats the purpose of the Internet as an open medium accessible to all: once of the reasons the Internet was successful and widely adopted in the first place (built on open standards like TCP/IP all the way to HTTP and HTML). I do feel that Silverlight takes away something from that.

I would be really happy if Microsoft decided to release an offical spec for Silverlight as well as a promise not to sue people who use or implement Silverlight, kind what they did with some parts of .NET.