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28 November 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
- Digital Black Belt site.
- Jason Turgeon's site with links to free textbooks.
- (SQL) MSDN's SQL Server 2005 Management Studio portal. Related: SQL Server 2005 Management Studio Virtual Lab registration and SQL Server 2005 Server Management Objects (SMO) Virtual Lab Registration
- Tim Shakarian's architecture blog.
- SOOP Portal, a free-for-all ASP Portal featuring Forums, Polls, News, Page Creator, Guestbook, Skins/Themes, Personal Calendar, Events Calendar, Country Info, Private Messenger, Stats, Banner Management, Buddy List, etc. etc.
- Amazon's top-selling VB books (Rod's new book was #2 when I checked 11/26!)
Jargon Alert
- VBL. Virtual Build Labs. Used by Microsoft's development teams as part of software development process.
- COSD. Core Operating System Division.
- DITA. IBM's Darwin Information Typing Architecture.
- Headless system. One that doesn't require a keyboard, mouse, or video graphics adapter (VGA) card during operation.
- OOo. OpenOffice.org. Here and
here.
- Strong inference plus. New paradigm for hypothesis testing, based on J.R. Platt's seminal 1964 Science paper, where he said that "Certain systematic methods of scientific thinking may produce much more rapid progress than others". See Platt's paper and an updated discussion.
Heads Up
Question to Ponder
- Charles Lindbergh once posed the rhetorical question: "Isn't it strange that we talk least about the things we think about most." Do you agree?
Misc
21 November 2005
Readable/Watchable
Downloadable
Browsable
Heads Up
Questions to Ponder
- Think about the term mercenary. Are armed contract workers in Iraq mercenaries? Are coalition troops who are under the command of US or British commanders in Iraq or Afghanistan mercenaries? To some extent, are some US troops who re-enlist only because of tax-free reenlistment bonuses - say $15,000 - also "mercenaries?"
- Ted Koppel, who joined ABC at 23, will anchor his last "Nightline" on 11/22. Which TV news anchor was your parents' favorite? Who is yours?
- "Man is by nature a political animal" said Aristotle. "Man is an animal that makes bargains," said Adam Smith. Which trait is dominant in you - politics or deal-making?
- Epictetus said that "the pleasure which we most rarely experience gives us the greatest delight." Do you agree?
Misc
- Cartoons I've enjoyed recently: 1) Manager standing under banner about Wal*Mart's health care cost-cutting plan to employee who has just sneezed and is blowing her nose, "You're fired." 2) Woman to florist in garden shop: "Do you have any that thrive on cigarette smoke and near-total darkness?" 3) Mouse at desk to coffee-drinking mouse colleague in an office," Finally, the cat's away, and I get stuck with the Davidson account." 4) Prescription air fresheners (complete with descriptions such as "Light, yet effective. Perfect for everyday use." Valium Bouquet, Prozac Mist, and Throazine Meadow. 5) Banner above the door at "All Nude, All Nite": Random Mutation or Intelligent Design? You decide."
- Worried about avian flu?
- Article excerpted from How to Hack RSS and Atom.
- Excerpt from Chapter 26 (Googling Your Genes) in David Vise and Mark Malseed's new book, The Google Story (336 pages, $26).
Another excerpt: Chapter 1.
- Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose new book, Team of Rivals, about the Lincoln presidency, was the featured author in a recent C-SPAN2 BookTV show. Listen to the replay.
- Google's free analytics tool is now free.
- NASA: World Wind - another mapping program.
- A refreshing article on what *not* to buy for the holidays.
- No, it's not from O'Reilly's (DIY) MAKE, but ExtremeTech offers advice on how to build your own Intel Mac.
- Noam Chomsky On The Spontaneous Invention Of Language.
- Interesting interview with theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist, author, and Templeton Prize winner Paul Davies about astrobiology.
Related: Prof. Davies' home page.
- Interesting article about harnessing your own employees in "internal markets".
- Southern Wetland Flora.
- Remember all the hullaballoo about managanese nodules back in the 60s and 70s?
- 65 online poems by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914-1953).
- Nice news: baroque Dresden church destroyed in WWII reopened. Related: monumental Swaminarayan Akshardham temple featuring ancient Indian "vastu shastra" inaugurated.
- Blog entry with my interview of MVP Wei-Meng Lee.
13 November 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles - good selection of How Tos
Selected SQL KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Heads Up
Questions to Ponder
- Aldous Huxley once noted that "The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude." Do you agree?
- In the 10/27/05 issue of the WSJ, Murray Hiebert wrote about how China is splitting the US Replican party - some taking a hawkish line that China represents a military threat, others saying that we need to take advantage of trade with China. Muddying the issue, of course, are concerns about human rights and Taiwan. If *you* were involved in policy or legislation, which side would you be on?
Misc
6 November 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Selected SQL KB articles
Selected SQLCE/SQL Mobile KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
JARGON ALERT
- SIPs - software isolated processes, a feature of Microsoft Research's Singularity OS.
- Erdos number. A measure of the collaborative distance (in terms of published mathematical papers) between an author an the late Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos. Erdos has an Erdos number of zero. The Erdos number of author M is one plus the minimum among the Erdos numbers of all the authors with whom M coauthored a mathematical paper. Related.
- OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language).
Heads Up
Questions to Ponder
- Ernest Hemingway once said that "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know." Do you agree with him?
- A lot's been said about the correlation between music and math/programming. Do you "visualize" music as it's playing? How do you "visualize" your programs? As flowcharts? Or do you "see" code?
Misc
30 October 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
- My.Blogs - a collection of VS 2005 sample code that shows you how you can provide programmatic access to blogs in your apps. Full source code is provided along with Windows Forms, ASP.NET 2.0 and a Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Outlook Add-In. Related: Getting started with My.Blogs.
- Google Maps API.
- MapWindow, open source mapping software with samples using VB, VB.NET, and C#.
- Visual Haskell (a functional language) available for .NET.
Misc
23 October 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Travelable
Jargon Alert
Question of the Week
- Do you remember the last time you wept? Was it a physical or emotional cry?
Misc
- Third time's a charm? DOD's efforts to forge an Enterprise Architecture.
- Sounds cool, esp. for technology-challenged relatives - AMD's Web device Communicator (runs Windows Mobile 5.0).
- Thought-provoking article (from IBM, promoting it Rational tools) on compliance-driven development.
- Cool innovations: giant grass (think energy source), Miscanthus. Would you believe 60 tons/hectare yield?
- Light bulb joke (with thanks to Jon Price): How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the light bulb really has to want to change.
- Cartoon I've enjoyed: The scene: Orthodox Jew talking on cell phone (apparently at an airport, walking towards the waiting area for his flight). "And remember, if you need anything, I'm available 24/6."
- Joshua Landis' SyriaComment.com.
- I've read several curious articles recently about South Koreans' taste for Spam (the food) and how it's packaged as an upscale gift.
- Discovered while trying to read the 6000-word letter from Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant on the dni.gov site: a bibliography on US intelligence.
- Discovered while trying to figure out what "postmodern sociology" was all about.
- Radio France Internationale.
- Popcap games.
- Shopping site for handmade stuff.
- Oct 17 Newsweek feature on the Mormons.
- Great site on advertising.
- Pete Townshend's online novella, The Boy Who Heard Music.
- Might be useful: David Meerman Scott's new book, Cashing In With Content: How [20] Innovative Marketers Use Digital Information to Turn Browsers Into Buyers.
- 2005 World Food Prize Laureate, Dr. Modadugu Vijay Gupta, for freshwater farming technology.
16 October 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Jargon Alert
- Xlinq - in-memory XML API (part of LINQ - Microsoft's new Language Integration Query).
- EAP-TLS - Extensible Authentication Protocol-Translation Layer Security. Used to create a secured connection for 802.1X by pre-installing a digital certificate on the client computer.
- CMAK - Connection Manager Administration Kit.
- PUR - Product Use Rights. This is the 7/05 "plain language" version that replaces the previous 100+ pager.
Heads Up
Questions of the Week
- The late Susan Sontag once said that "The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions." Do you agree?
- In 1806, William Wordsworth wrote a sonnet beginning with these lines:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours.
Is the world (still) too much with us? Or, perchance (think of the environment), not enough with us?
Misc
- Microsoft's effort to patent the FAT file format are stymied.
- Okay, it was herps a few weeks ago. Ready for ants?
- UK public libraries page.
- Directory of open access journals.
- Move over, Rube Goldberg. Try this and this.
- Move over, Christo. Here and
here.
- Quills Book awards (Half-Blood Prince, Freakonomics, and 1776, among others). Related: Pinter wins the Nobel for literature here, here, and here. Also related: 375K new books published in English in 2004.
- Howard Schmidt's thoughts on international cybersecurity. (Schmidt was chief security officer both for Microsoft and eBay and also served as special advisor to the White House on cyber-space security)
- Rocky Flats cleanup completed. Price tag - about $7 billion (not counting litigation). Moved to a Carlsbad, NM site (near the Mexican border, but presumably secure) - 21 tons of weapons grade plutonium.
- Students Taking Action Now: Darfur.
- Information about landmines. Related: Afghanistan's landmines and the US position.
- Anti-rape diaphragm-like condom.
- Botany and plants: 1) Autumn Foliage Changes, 2) Hydroponics (soil-less gardening - science fair project potential!), 3) AP Biology: Plant Biology, 4) UBC: Botany Photo of the Day.
- ScienceBlog. Related: online premiere issue of Nature Physics (free registration required to view contents).
- According to Jane Eisner's 10/13/05 Philadelphia Inquirer column covering the Pennsylvania court case on intelligent design, only 12 percent of Americans think that "human beings evolved without an assist from God." She also commented on the statistics about the relationship between income and attitudes toward evolution.
- Recommended book about dams: Jacques Leslie's Deep Water.
- Find a flu shot by zip code.
9 October 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Travelable
Jargon Alert
- MSS - Microsoft Solution Selling. (The Redmond Channel Partner September issue also has interesting articles on the $199 InfoPath, Groove, and Microsoft's services strategy.)
- ULSD - ultra low sulfur diesel fuel with <= 50 ppm sulfur. (Current on-road diesel has about 350 ppm.).
- SWORD - Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System.
- NaN - Not a Number, IEEE representation for error values. QNaN = quiet NaN. SNaN = signaling NaN.
Heads Up
Question of the Week
- It has been said that by the time we turn 40, we get the face we deserve. Do you agree?
Misc
- What does the Google/Sun alliance mean to .NET developers, if anything?
Speculation abounds, etc. Related: would GoogleOffice be a Microsoft killer?
- Info on Daylight Saving Time, aka "summertime period."
- Nationmaster.com. All kinds of stats (most taxed, most miliaristic, etc.) presented in graphical format.
- There are Nobel prizes...and IgNobels.
- Retro (single gear) bicycling.
- Sample Astronomy Hacks. Autumn is often a great time of the year for
viewing!
- American Chemistry Council's site.
- IBM Alamden Research Center's Hippocratic Database, a contract database based on ten principles, including "above all, do no harm".
Related: IBM Almaden Research Center, Intelligent Information Systems.
- Interesting article about Credit Suisse First Boston's Disruptive Technology Portfolio (DTP) - and the stocks it's based on.
- Imagine carving *that* - 1,469 pounds.
- Interesting article on the US "Do Not Call" registry (43 percent of the US's 240 million phone numbers are in its Oracle database).
- The September issue of Vanity Fair had an interesting article on Swede Niklas Zennstrom and Dane Janus Friis (Kazaa and Skype). (The same issue had another interesting article on the historic 1938 boxing match between Max Schmeling and Joe Louis)
- Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. (Pugwash's co-founder, Sir Joseph Rotblat, died last month. The organization's name comes from the Nova Scotia town that was the site of its first meeting.)
- JetBlue's Mormon CEO relies on stay-at-home moms to "man" his virtual call center. And here
- US National Biodiesel organization site.
- Who knew? 1) GE is the world's largest landlord. 2) Queen Mary 2's ship whistle can be heard for 10 miles. 3) 275,000 (give or take) companies make up the ranks of Microsoft's Partner Program.
- Find out how some major corporations are using Linux.
- Cartoon I've enjoyed recently: One dog, feeding papers into a shredder to another dog: "I know it's unconventional, but there's only so much homework one dog can eat."
2 October 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Microsoft blogs
Travelable
Jargon Alert
- TKIP: temporal key integrity protocol.
- Cassini: the Visual Web Developer Web server. Also of interest: JPL's Cassini-Huygens site.
- Xoml: the version of XAML that's in the current beta of WWF (the 'o' being an artifact from Orchestration). Related: very cool WWF site. Check out the Workflow Designer Control!
- Bubble talk: voice SMS, based on technology developed by Bangalore-based Sunil Coushik and a partner. The WSJ's Cris Prystay wrote a good article on the technology in the 9/29/05 issue. Related: this.
- Centro: forthcoming Windows Server the combines the Longhorn version of Windows along with forthcoming versions of SQL Server and Exchange. (See the 9/12/05 issue of Information Week, "Rethinking the Midmarket.")
Heads Up
Questions of the Week
- The Australian Consumers Association lists a variety of "useless" objects, such as hot dog makers, facial saunas, and so on. How many do you own, and are there others you'd like to add to the list?
- I read that the USDA impounded food donations to Katrina victims that came from abroad in order to test them. Assuming that's true, do you think that was an appropriate action?
- According to an English proverb, "A quiet conscience sleeps in thunder." Do you agree?
- According to Claremont McKenna College professor Jack Pitney, "Public opinion has a short list of bad guys, and the drug companies are on it." (He was quoted in a recent LA Times article about California's forthcoming Prop. 78). Who's on *your* current short list of bad guys today?
- If you were a billionaire, would you spend $20 million as a space tourist?
- If you had to perform, say two years of government service, would you opt for the military (complete with a bonus and, probably combat pay as well), a gig with the Peace Corps (or your country's equivalent), or a low-paying teaching job in one of your country's "inner cities"?
Misc
- Nice list of stylistic devices such as antistrophe, anaphora, prosopoeia, syllepsis, and so on, used in English, along with an example of each.
- Article excerpted from Chapter 2 (Security the Database) of David Knox's 2004 book on "Effective Oracle Database 10g Security by Design."
- Sample chapters 1, "Workflow Tomorrow's Application Logic," and 3, "March Through the Activities" from Presenting Windows Workflow Foundation. Here and here.
- Snakes and other herps.
- Short report from Elliott Masie from the Chief Learning Officer conference.
- Good interview with Chris Mooney, author of "The Republican War on Science" by environmentalist Grist Magazine's David Roberts. Related: Chris' blog.
- "Maths and science education gets animated and collaborative online" about UK effort aimed at 10-14 year olds. Uses ToonTalk. Also this.
- UK-based Sir. Nicholas Shackleton and USA-based Dr. Hisashi Sato shared this year's Blue Planet prize awarded by the Asahi Glass Foundation.
- "One-pot" recipe for nylon.
- Sounds good: Katherine Eban's book, Dangerous Doses: How Counterfeiters are Contaminating America's Drug Supply. Related: her 12/9/02 article, "Waiting for Bioterror."
- Diamond nanorods unseat osmium as the hardest material in the world.
- Where religion and the environment meet. Here, here, and here (about tikkun olam).
25 September 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
- Four
slide decks about VB 2005 from PDC.
- MSN
Virtual Earth SDK. Related: Chandu Thota's MapPoint-centric blog.
- HTML-Kit>.
- Wordpress> (blogging software).
- Microsoft's free
SyncToy for Windows XP. Helps you copy, move, rename, and delete files
between folders, devices, and computers. Related: documentation>.
- (SQL) Excel add-in for
detecting anomalies using SQL Server 2005's data mining.
- x-tensive.com's DataObjects.NET
3.6.1 for .NET (1.1/2.0) and Mono. It's an intriguing ORM tool.
Supported DBMSs: SQL Server 2000/2005, MDSE 2000, Microsoft Access, Oracle,
Firebird (formerly Interbase), and MaxDB (formerly SAP DB).
- Sonogram
2.4.
- TWiki> - Enterprise Collaboration
Platform.
- CBL Data
Shredder.
Browsable
Travelable
Jargon Alert
- Force majeure. Force majeure allows parties to not honor obligations to
deliver certain products and suffer no liability or penalty. (Preceding
Rita's landfall, the New York Mercantile Exchange declared force majeure
Friday (9/23/05) morning on remaining September natural gas futures contract
deliveries Friday following the shutdown of the Henry Hub in Louisiana, its
key physical delivery point, in this case natural gas due at the end of
September). Related: Yale Library
reference.
- DSE - dynamic string execution. A risky technique that makes you
vulnerable to SQL injection attacks (see Rod's 8/05 VB-Helper column in VBD
about "Avoiding a Lethal Injection.")
- BRBs>
- buckling-restrained braced frames. Steel frames that are being used in
seismic retrofit projects, for example.
Heads Up
Questions of the Week
- Microsoft is on a mission to provide us with role-based software -
whether we want it or not. Do you like having what amounts to filtered views
of help, functions, and so on?
- Who or what do you think will be the superpower that ultimately replaces
the US? China? The EU? A global military-industrial complex?
- Part of Microsoft's modus operandi seems to be always having a #1 target
enemy in its sights. Java has been there, as have Netscape, open source,
Linux, and so on. Google seems to be there now. Do you think it's possible
Microsoft might lose? If not, who or what will be next?
- Steve Jobs reportedly scorns focus groups; Microsoft seems to rely on
them. Have you ever participated in one? What do you think of them as part
of a business strategy?
- President Bush stresses an "Ownership Society" for Americans. Do you
think that's a noble vision or an overly materialistic one that risks
marginalizing "invisible" ones who become part of an Entitlement Society?
- In his 9/24/05 presentation to a standing room only crowd at the US
National Book Fair, "The World is Flat" author Tom Friedman stressed the
importance of kids knowing how to learn. (Most programmers are good at
that.) When asked by a student how to learn how to learn, Friedman
recommended they ask their friends who the best teachers/professors were and
take courses from them - no matter what the subject was. The enthusiasm of
such teachers is bound to be catching; kids will want to learn - and will
figure out how to do it. Do you agree? Related: Excerpts
from Jonathan Kozol's book, "Amazing Grace" at and the Summer 2005 issue
of The American Scholar (issue title: Science Matters). Unfortunately, the
quarterly journal of the Phi Beta Kappa society is only online to
subscribers.
- US
House OKs faith as Head Start hiring issue. Should this become law?.
(BTW, several readers have suggested that I provide an email where you can
reply. You're free to email me, and I'll pass them on to Rod to post as he
sees fit. karen_watterson@msn.com>.)
Misc
- Info about Microsoft's
"raw" image thumbnailer and viewer. (The unfortunately non-standard
"raw" image format is popular with many serious digital photographers.). More RAW info,
this mainly about Minolta's RAW file format. Also of interest: this>
and this>.
- According to a Table 1.2 in the sample
chapter from "The World's Largest Wetlands: Ecology and Conservation,"
the Mississippi River basin (which include the Louisiana coastline
devastated by Katrina and 193,000 barrels of oil - Exxon Valdez dumped
240,000 barrels) watershed is the world's 7th largest wetland. (The West
Siberia Lowland is the largest, followed by the Amazon River basin and
Hudson Bay Lowland.). Related: the Ramsar database of 1462
wetlands and Ken Wells' 9/23/05 WSJ article, "Oil, Saltwater Mar
Louisiana Coast, Threaten Future."
- Interesting 27-page white paper/case study from the Microsoft
Architecture team about managing
connected systems. Describes Everett, Washington-based Northern
Electronics efforts to architect an SOA-enabled supply chain.
- Portal to
the Sept 17-22 Oracle OpenWorld - on demand keynote replay, etc.
- Draft
chapter of Edward Tufte's "Corrupt Techniques in Evidence Presentations:
Beautiful Evidence."
- Download
calculator (how long will a download take?)
- Don't know your skateboard
from a snowboard?
- Who knew? Starbucks CEO Harold Schultz says he spends more on employee
healthcare insurance than on coffee beans. Related: a
case study about Starbucks using Microsoft's MapPoint.
- Books
for Katrina victims (FirstBook is a charity I've contributed to in the
past - even before Katrina.)
- MacArthur Foundation's 25 "genius" awards for 2005. here>
and here>.
- Profile of
Micahel Wermuth, Director of Homeland Security for the RAND
Corporation.. Related: info on RAND
experts.
- Apply for a 90-day
MapPoint web service developer account.
- New free electronic magazine for
InterBase/Firebird developers.
- Cartoon I've enjoyed recently: 1) Backpacker, out enjoying "nature,"
walks past a tree upon which is nailed a "Suggestions" box.
- Who knew? Intumescent paints expand when exposed to very high
temperatures and they form an insulating layer that can protect the
substrate from fire.
- Who knew? 34 percent of US births in 2004 were to unwed mothers.
- Loebner
Prize (most convincing computer conversationalist) winner Rollo
Carpenter.
- Google
Code Jam winner Marek Cygan announced.
- Good article about Google's 30-year old Marissa
Mayer, "a geek whose clothes match." Excerpt: "What Mayer does is help
figure out how to make sure good ideas bubble to the surface and get the
attention they need. The task is becoming more complex as Google grows, with
a workforce of 4,200 now and revenues on track to hit $3.7 billion this
year."
- Heartening stories about IBM
funding employees for future careers as math/science teachers. (lots of
additional news coverage).
- Heartening
article about treehouse project for kids with special needs. Kudos to U
of Michigan Professor Peter von Buelow and his students and to the others
who donated time and services that kept project costs to $88K.
- Books I've enjoyed recently: 1) Harm de Blij's Why Geography Matters.
Interesting insight: There are three ways to view events: spatially,
historically (linearly), and systemically (focusing on how and why).
Americans favor the historical view.. 2) Andrew Carroll's War Letters.).
3) Author/prof/philosopher/jazz musician David Rothenberg's Why Birds Sing.
- MathTrek on 1) knots and
random walks and 2) Fermat's
natural spirals here.
18 September 2005
Readable/Watchable
- As always, start
here. Then check out gotdotnet.com's user
samples.
- Juval Lowy's What's New in .NET 2.0 for Assemblies and Versioning?
- Dan Ragle's article on Nested Data Structures: A Perl Primer.
- On his Windows CE site, MVP Chris De Herrera has posted an excellent Overview of ActiveSync 4.0 Features and Installation. Designed to replace the current ActiveSync, version 4.0 only works with Windows Mobile 2002 devices and above.
- PDC 2005 material: 1) Transcript of Bill Gates' 9/13/05 keynote. (Webcast also viewable). 2) Transcript of Jim Allchin's 9/15/05 keynote, The Next Step for the Windows Platform. 3) Official Press Releases.
- 15-minute interview with Craig Newmark, founder and customer service rep for Craigslist. Craigslist, which, BTW, is celebrating its first decade, has 18 employees, about 11 million unique visitors/month, and sites for ~ 190 cities in 34 countries.
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Jargon Alert
- XRI - Extensible Resource Identifier. Here and here. Microsoft doesn't appear to be a member of this OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) group.
- XML switching. Technology and appliances associated with XML acceleration. Here and here.
- eDIB - the Social Security Administration's forthcoming electronic disability information system. Let's hope the $800 million system, based primarily on IBM software and Sun hardware, works better than the $170 million VCF (Virtual Case File) project abandoned by the FBI earlier this year. (SAIC was the primary contractor for that venture.)
Heads Up
- Microsoft's forthcoming Microsoft Certified Architect program.
Here, Here, and Here.
- Xbox 360 launch November 22. Here and here.
Questions of the Week
- Do you think it's ethical for firms to ship software when they *know* it contains bugs? Does it make a difference if the firm lets clients know what the bugs are? If they promise to provide free updates as the bugs are fixed? What if clients want the software so badly they'll take it as is?
- It's been said that dogs have the intelligence of about a two-year old. What do you think? Think about how dogs react differently to different people and compare that to how children do.
Misc
- Who knew? Between 2000 and 2003, the percentage of the nation's 590,750 bridges rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete decreased slightly from 28.5% to 27.1%.
- In 1866, at age six, Gustav Mahler composed his first piece of music. The title? Polka with Introductory Funeral March.
- Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center. All sorts of info ranging from new materials (high performance concrete, bridge coatings, etc.), ITS (intelligent transportation systems - see also this DOT page), pavement design and performance modeling, etc. Pretty interesting.
- Three-part Washington Post article on how jihadists use technology.
- Book: Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth.
- David Rothenberg's Why Birds Sing site. David's a philosophy prof, an author, founder of the Terra Nova book series, a composer, and a jazz clarinetist.
- British pubs go upscale.
- Boston's MFA's Ansel Adams exhibition.
- EcoWorld: Global Environmental Community - Nature and Technology in Harmony.
- Who knew? Yes, Virginia, there really is a US President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).
11 September 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Jargon Alert
Questions of the Week
- Cyril Connelly once said that, "We fear something before we hate it. A child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise." Do you agree? How does the media affect people's fears?
- In his 9/1/05 editorial, SD Times' Andrew Binstock reiterated the fact that, as far as developer IDEs go, it's basically a choice between Visual Studio vs. Eclipse. He also faulted both for (my term) becoming more baroque. Do you think the developer IDE is due for a paradigm shift?
Misc
4 September 2005
Readable/Watchable
- As always, start
here. Then check out gotdotnet.com's user
samples.
- If critical finalizers, memory gates, and safe handlers sound intriguing, read Stephen Toub's Oct 2005 MSDN Magazine article, Keep Your Code Running with the Reliability Features of the .NET Framework. (Focuses on new features in .NET 2.0, SQL 2005.)
- Good article (with code) by Griffin Caprio on dependency injection. Coincidentally, Ron Jacobs talked about how the Microsoft Enterprise Library's new Composite UI Application Block (CAB) and its dependency injection class in Part 2 of a Webcast on it 9/1/05. Here and
here. Related: CAB lab.
- Dave Gristwood's 14-page article, Understanding and Extending the Site Navigation System in ASP.NET 2.0, includes a provider that exposes the file system as a data source for site navigation, as an alternative to the standard Web.sitemap XML file.
- Morgan Skinner's 12-page article on creating custom site map providers in ASP.NET 2.0. More of Morgan's articles.
- Stephen Walther's 78-page (!) article on building ASP.NET 2.0 sites that are based on Web standards.
- Peter Bernhardt's Coding4Fun article on creating a simple RSS feed.
- MVP Ron Talmage's short article on SQL Server importing do's (six of them) and don'ts (two). You can also read the current SQL Server Professional feature by Cecil Lew. It's a fun article about finding the optimal car using fuzzy (T-SQL) logic. (Disclaimer - I'm the editor of SSPro and its blog. Some of you might find my 9/1 post on licensing issues of use.)
- A transcript of Bill Gates' 5/19/05 keynote ("New World of Work") at the Ninth Annual CEO Summit. Also of interest: his dialogue with Maria Klawe, Dean of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University, at the July 18 Microsoft Research Faculty Summit 2005.
- Chris Sells interviews the developers behind Paint.NET.
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Jargon Alert
- QVGA = quarter VGA (160x120 pixels)
- Continuous partial attention. A phrase coined by Linda Stone, former Microsoft VP, to describe the seeming reality of mental multitasking. (Mentioned in Wade Rousch's Technology Review article on Social Machines that I mentioned a few weeks ago.
- Net promoter score (a way of measuring customer satisfaction. According to Bain's consultant Fred Reichheld, author of "The Ultimate Question," the average for American corporations is "extremely low" - only about 10 percent.)
- OBL - Osama Bin Laden. How Duke University Islamic Studies professor Bruce Lawrence, author of "Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden," thinks of him.
- Pacifica and Vanderpool. AMD's and Intel's competing virtualization technologies.
- Paternal discrepancy. Term used by British scientists from Liverpool John Moores University to describe their findings that probably 4 percent of men worldwide aren't really the biological fathers of a child they believe is theirs.
- Phase-contrast Xray imaging. Offers improved imaging of soft tissue.
- MON 863 - a strain of genetically modified corn/maize produced by Monsanto and recently approved for feed use by the EU.
Here and here.
Question of the Week
- I read somewhere that it's considered bad luck in the garment industry to use green thread on the eve of a fashion show. (Who knew, right?) Do you consider yourself superstitious? If not, do you have any "rituals" you perform on important occasions? Any "lucky" shirts or dresses? Any superstitions related to programs or builds?
Misc
- September 20 is Arctic Refuge Action Day.
- Finding profits in podcasting.
- News about changes at Technology Review magazine.
- Sometimes I turn to the last page of the new issue of Maximum PC to see its "Rig of the Month." (Think of it as a special form of DIY). The 10/05 issue features a waffle iron PC.
- Very cool article on 10 things venture capitalists would like to fund. Example: senior-friendly PC. The same issue of Business 2.0 has a fascinating article on QVC.
- Online version of Robert Brookings' (1850-1932, founder of Washington, DC-based Brookings Institution) 1928 classic book, Agricultural corporations: the conversion of agriculture into a prosperous industry. Socializing the soulless corporation : a sequel to agricultural corporations. Related: the Brookings Institution site.
- The 10/05 issue of The Atlantic Monthly has a fascinating 'World in Numbers' section prepared by Richard Florida and colleagues at George Mason University with help from geograph Tim Gulden of the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland. Four global maps showing concentrations of population, light emission, patents, and scientific citations illustrate the team's point that the world is spiky (a reaction to Romas Friedman's popular "World is Flat" book. (But not viewable online.)
- Stefan Fatsis' 8/25/05 story on the 2005 National Scrabble Championship, A Beautiful Endgame, is a delightful read, not only about the tournament's last match Thai student and an American mortgage underwriter, but also some of the more interesting matches.
- How Chrysler HEMI engines work.
- Memory test - see how many of the top 100 hits from your high school years you remember. (where xxxx is the year).
- Free learning style test (visual, aural, verbal, physical, logical, social, solitary.) Then, if you want, compare your style to others in your age group, job group, country, gender, etc.
- In an 8/29/05 excerpt of Edison Schools CEO Chris Whittle's "Crash Course," Whittle suggests five "new truths:" 1) learning that's accomplished through individual effort or in small teams is "stickier" than learning that's "served up" by the teacher, 2) class size isn't everything, 3) children are capable of tremendous focus and responsibility on their own, 4) variety in education matters, and 5) children can teach as well as learn. Among his proposals: a West Point for principals, letting kids help run schools, and bankrolling R&D for schools. (Question - isn't that what the Dept. of Education is supposed to be doing?) Related: California seems poised to enforce an exit exam for seniors. In the spirit of No Child Left Behind, I assume, seniors will be forced to demonstrate 8th grade math skills.
- Cartoons I've enjoyed recently: 1) Caption: If Roberts is Confirmed. Cartoon shows Roberts extending his coffee cup towards Justice Ginsberg and saying, "Decaf, black." 2) Couple at train station, viewing approaching train: "Right on time, the Tuesday Patch Express." 3) Antlered funeral director inside a deer mortuary explaining to grieving couple: "You have your choice of a casket, a mounted head, or the inexpensive canned version. 4) Furniture salesman to couple: "If you're on a budget, I have something
uglier."
- Who knew? 1) Some grocery stores illuminate their meat cases with red-toned light (standard fluorescent can give it a greenish sheen) 2) Whites are now the minority in four states: CA, TX, NM, and Hawaii. 3) Over 30 percent of US trash is now recycled. The average American produces 4.5 pounds of trash daily. 4) The housing market affects 1 in 6 jobs in the US economy. 5) Inhaling airborne salt can raise your blood pressure.
- Sloan Digital Sky Survey extended as SDSS-II. (Microsoft Research's Jim Gray is involved in the SDSS SkyServer project.)
- Essay contest opportunity: "What's on the minds of America's youth today?" Up to 1500 words, due 9/30/05.
- Bitty beasts of burden: Algae can carry cargo. Interesting research. What next? Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Algae?
- And don't forget to read Rod's great column on Sort Support!
28 August 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Travelable
- PDC 2005, Sep 13-16 in LA. Though sold out, will presumably have some live Webcast/podcast feeds.
- DEMOfall 2005, Sep 19-21 in Huntington Beach, Calif.
- VMworld 2005, Oct 18-20 in Las Vegas.
JARGON ALERT
Jargon Alert
- FOGs (Fiber Optic Gyros).
- Mustang. Forthcoming Java SE 6 release.
- UDO - ultra density optical. 5.25" form factor write-once media cartridges (30 GB)
- MVNO - Mobile Virtual Network Operator.
here and
here.
- N-tier hairball. Priceline CIO Ron Rose's term for the architecture in today's data centers.
Question of the Week
- An 8/26/05 LA Times article on the sale of the 19-story Century Plaza Hotel (built in 1966) to a San Clemente-based REIT had an accompanying photo showing President Reagan launching a paper airplane from the penthouse balcony of the Century Plaza. The question: when was the last time you flew a paper airplane? Or blew soap bubbles, for that matter?
Misc
- Andrew Brust's blog Tech Industry Pontifications, NYC Musings, and the Occasional Political Outburst.
- Neat "This I Believe" essay by Gloria Steinem, A Balance Between Nature and Nurture.
- Newsweek's cover story on Spirituality in America. Related: an interesting article on green religion and Episcopal Power and Light.
- Botanique.Com: Portal to Gardens, Arboreta and Nature Sites (US and Canada)
- Link to December 26 earthquake MP3. Related.
- Cartoons I've enjoyed recently: 1) Medieval soldier on castle parapet, pouring boiling oil on attackers below, to another solider: "They'd be screaming a lot louder if they knew it was trans fat." 2) Businessmen surrounded by cheering colleagues: Because it contains thousands of individual characters, burping the alphabet in Japanese is truly a glorious achievement (my sister, a 5th grade teacher, sponsors burping contests), 3) Saint Peter to new arrival: "Not so fast! I'm more than just a greeter." 4) Scene: Combat zone with elderly soldier, erect and waving "Hi, welcome to Wal-mart." Younger soldier to comrade, both hunkered down behind the Wal-Mart solder, "The military keeps raising the enlistment age." 5) One gas station customer to another, "Now I wish the war *had* been about the oil." 6) Commander to medieval troops: "and, lastly, you are reminded to loot, pillage, and burn responsibly." 7) One violinist to another, exiting rehearsal: "Nobody ever illegally downloaded my recordings of the Beethoven Sonatas, either." 8) Maitre d' responding to a phone call, "And dress is affluent-casual." 9) One businessman to another, exiting restaurant, "You're right - they did charge you for the Heimlich maneuver." 10) Dog reclining in chair to another dog who's taking notes a la psychiatrist, "I finally caught my tail, and got absolutely no satisfaction out of it." and 11) Bedtime scene with Michael Jackson in bed next to a fowl. "No more sleepovers with kids. I'm going cold turkey." Thought bubble above the fowl: "Uh-oh"
- One more reason to make sure your library card is up-to-date.
- Interesting news about cell phones: 1) Credit cards built in (see 8/16/05 WSJ article on DoCoMo), 2) NYC subway may get service. 3) Sindre Lia's review of the ~$800 Nokia 8800. (David Pringle also wrote an excellent article on Frank Nuovo's brainchild that "oozes quality and style" in the 8/4/05 WSJ). 4) Dubya ringtones. 5) The value of free municipal wireless service. And 6) 8/15/05 WSJ article "In Mobile Phones, Older Users Say, More is Less" about Vodaphone Simply.
- Mark Hurst's campaign to alert businesses to the user experience.
- By invitation only. FBI's Sentinel RFPs. (Sentinel will replace the failed $104M Virtual Case System, VCF).
Here and
here.
- DHS's IT security and purchasing under CIO Scott Charbo.
Here and
here.
- Information about Gap's "Watchmechange" viral ad campaign.
(running watchmechange.com requires a current version of Shockwave)
- David Pogue's take on Google's new Desktop Search and Google Talk.
Related: eWeek article.
- Info on agritourism. here,
here, and (for Calif.) here.
- James Kunstler's Eyesores of the month. Example - cemetery with view of shopping mall. Here, a school playground sadly reminiscent of a cage.
- Rising textbook costs (~ $900/year).
- Ruth-Aaron pairs (as in Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron). What's curious about 714, 715?
- Risks from 1991 Gulf War depleted uranium exposure apparently insignificant.
- Toxic chemical DEHP risk to neonatal ICU patients.
- Ron Cowen's excellent feature on Cosmic Computing about the current state of models that simulate the universe. Related: Millennium Simulation site and paper cited by Cowen here and
here.
- Not dead yet. HP has fired the visionary Alan Kay, lauded in earlier press releases (here and here, and here. Related: Technology Review's 2005 R&D Scorecard. Links to more on Kay here and
here.
- Good article by John Greenwald on biomimicry.
- Book I can recommend - John Barrow's "The Inifinite Book." Prof. Barrow's home page with links to many of his articles.
21 August 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Misc
13 August 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Jargon Alert
- HALE - High-Altitude Long-Endurance. Special type of UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) used for surveillance. The BBC article says there are thought to be some 800 operating in Iraq and Afghanistan.
- Vlogging - video logging.
Misc
7 August 2005
Readable/Watchable
- As always, start
here. Then check out gotdotnet.com's user
samples.
- > 100 Webcasts and simulcasts from TechEd 2005 (and TechEd timeframe).
- Excellent 20-page white paper by Michael Bundschuh, Common ASP.NET 2.0
Conversions Issues and Solutions.
- 31-page article on metadata-driven UIs by John deVadoss. John describes how to dynamically create WinForms from metadata and how to execute the forms while allowing for the customization of client-side logic.
- 80 Super Security Tips from Larry Seltzer and his PCMag.com predecessor Jay Munro.. Related: Larry's blog.
- Introduction to Development Tools for Windows Mobile-based Devices.
Related: What Are the New APIs in Windows Mobile 5.0? and Windows Mobile 5.0 app sec.
Related reviews of 5.0: here and here.
- T.K. Anand's Enabling Drillthrough in Analysis Services 2005.
Related: MSDN TV episode starring Jamie MacLennan on powering intelligent apps with SQL Server 2005's data mining.
- Bill Sempf's Visual Basic .NET 2003: A .NET Framework Tour targets VB programmers who haven't made the move to .NET.
- Microsoft's description of what Vista offers developers.
- The 100-Year Archive Dilemma.
Related: David Kesmodel's 7/27/05 WSJ article, Lawyers' Delight: Old Web Material Doesn't Disappear. Wayback Machine and Google Archive Billions of Pages, Including Deleted Ones.
- July 2005 issue of Redmond Channel Partner has several useful articles, including one Next Level of Instant Messaging.
- July 25, 2005, issue of the New Yorker (not online) has several riveting articles, including one on the NYPD's anti-terrorist activities and one on the new Pope Reading Ratzinger. Links to interview with William Finnegan about NYPD feature.
- The July 2005 issue of Internet Telephony (not online yet) has a good article by Peggy Gritt, Building Upon the Value of Microsoft's Integrated Approach.
- Wade Rousch's *very* cool feature on Social Machines.
- 16 session (ten hours) video tutorial series on Visual Studio Express 2005. Lessons in VB or C# start with Hello World, end with creating an RSS reader app. Targets beginners, but might be interesting to VBers who want to learn C#.
- August 2005 issue of VBD (disclosure: I'm the editor) features Gavin Sullivan's article on custom attributes. Even non-subscribers can read it free until the September issue is posted.
- Jake Ludington's article on receiving Podcasts on a PC (Jack recommends Doppler). Related: 8/15/05 article on podcasting and Wharton article reprinted. Read also about roadcasting.
- Andrew Coates' Extending the Screen Saver Starter Kit with Microsoft Visual C# Express.
- Sean Campbell's short "In the Box" column on the new Ping class in .NET 2.0.
- What privacy? (sighted by John Mueller - thanks!)
- Siew Moi Khor's excellent Understanding Security for Add-in and VBA Macros in Excel 2003.
- 7-pager on Customizing Office 2003 Research Services.
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
- Many of the presentation files from O'Reilly's recent Where 2.0 conference.
- Tony Northrup and Eric Faulkner's HomeHacking site where you can download projects from their Home Hacking Projects for Geeks book.
- Info about Yosemite, which combines with Microsoft DPM (Data Protection Manager) backup software. Both run on Win 2003, but Yosemite will also support Exchange and SQL backups.
- News about Black Hat Briefings and Defcon events.
Related: Phil Zimmerman's proposed PGP for VOIP. Related: links to Michael Lynn's Black Hat Cisco presentation and related docs. Related: Johnny Long's ethical hacker site. Johnny on Google.
- Nancy Blachman's "Advanced" Cheat Sheet for Goggle.
- JavaScript implementation of Eliza.
- July 2005 (5th issue) of Microsoft Architect Journal. Topics include topic maps, SOA and governance, Web services transports, and value-driven architecture.
- July 2005 issue of Rational Edge (reflecting IBM's view of architecture and SOA).
- Info about Windows Automotive 5.0.
- World Heritage Sites (628 cultural, 160 natural, and 24 mixed properties).
- Mathematical Association of America.
- Complexity Digest.
- ACM SIGKDD newsletter.
- Technorati SDK for developers. Related: Technorati founder Dave Sifry's blog.
- Yahoo! developer site.
- Portal to library weblogs.
Related: The college of tomorrow.
- Law librarian blogs.
- FirstGov's RSS feeds.
- Info about industry solutions for BlackBerry (legal, financial, healthcare, pharma, public safety, real estate, and wholesale/retail.
- My blog entry about Chris Date's new book, Database in Depth.
- Office Developer Center Headline Archive.
- Skepticality podcast site.
Travelable
Heads Up
Jargon Alert
- HSIN-Secret. Homeland Security Information Network-Secret .
- EGL. Enterprise Generation Language, the successor to Informix 4GL.
- ADS. Active Denial System. 95 GHz system that delivers non-lethal heat as a deterrent.
- Scrum. Agile process for developing software that breaks a project down into small chunks. Here and here.
- IMS. IP Multimedia Subsystem.
- HTTP Request Smuggling. A technique for defeating web proxies and caches first described by Watchfire. Related: Data smuggling.
- ICE. In Case of Emergency ("code" to add to important cell phone contacts). Also Interactivity Connectivity Establishment.
- Tailwind. Name of Microsoft's sales force reorganization emphasizing vertical markets.
- ITIL. Information Technology Infrastructure Library.
- Cell phone abuse. The subject of a great essay by Alison Manheim ("Stuck? Don't call me") in the 8/4/05 LA Times about getting unwanted phone calls from people stuck in traffic who "kill time" by making cell phone calls.
- Snuppy. Short for Seoul National University Puppy, the world's first cloned dog, now three-months old.
- Baidu. China's popular Google-like search engine.
- MBA - Mandatory Binding Arbitration.
Thought Questions of the Week
- Common wisdom is that adults (at least Westerners) get more conservative as we age. Do you see that trend in yourself? At a professional level, are you less inclined to install beta software and explore "bleeding edge" technology?
- Were you often bored as a kid (waiting for parents, in school, etc.)? Are you ever bored now?
- Do you worry that kids don't play outside enough? Richard Louv (Last Child in the Woods) does. (I meant to combine this with my recent link to Richard Stilgoe's "Outside Lies Magic."
Misc
- 20 years ago (8/18/85), Microsoft QuickBasic 1.0 was released on 5.25 inch floppies.
- Bluetooth functions.
- Bush's high-tech report card. Excerpt: "One of the most frequent complaints is that the Bush administration is dominated by people with 'old economy' ties and mindsets." Related: Companies See 'Crisis' in R&D.
- US National Science Foundation (NSF) special report on Language and Linguistics. Also of interest: NSF's stats page.
- David Pogue's July 28 NY Times "Circuits" column, in which he (among other things), lauds O'Reilly's Make magazine and lists some of the contents of issues #2 and #3.
- And you thought ebonics (AAVE - African American Vernacular English) was dead? A Southern Calif. school district is considering using it.
Here and here. Related:
See this and this.
- MMPC! (Monstrously Magical Pocket Cards), a card game about making collectible card games.
- Four years' worth (228) of Webcasts from the US National Book Festival.
- Organized shoplifting? Retail Gangs: A New Breed of Thieves.
- World's largest subway systems by ridership. (LA, with 4 lines totaling 73 miles, doesn't rate).
- Rob Pegoraro's article on laptop lingo and choices.
- UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering's coverage of SIGGRAPH 2005. Related: here.
- Fingernails for biometrics. (But what if someone pulls them out?)
- State of "open courseware."
- Carol Williams' fascinating 7/29/05 LA Times article on Humvees (HMMWV, for High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle) in Iraq, stated that the ~ 6,000 (subsequently corrected to 24,000) Humvees deployed in Iraq average 4000 miles/month and get about 10 miles/gallon. Factory-armored M1114's, which have about a ton of extra armor plating, cost close to $150K (without "equipment").
- What do they *really* mean?
- Ethical culture movement and here.
- Ivars Peterson's MathTrek column on highway interchanges as knots. Related: CD ($54.95) of Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games columns.
- Moon Base Clavius, an organization of amateurs and professionals devoted to the Apollo program. www.clavius.org.
- As of 7/18/05, 500M songs had been downloaded (since 2003) from iTunes.
- Royal Mail, which processes 82M items/day, has achieved BS7799 certification. British Standard 7799, like ISO/iEC 17799:2005 refers to information security management systems specifications.
- New and improved Furby (speaks more than Furbish) will join its 40 million forebears. Somewhat related: Neopets and Goonies.
- Thought-provoking essay by Judge Richard Posner on the news media.
- Recently sighted cartoons: ) For Sale sign in front of doghouse: One Bedroom. $800.00 or best offer. 2) Side-by-side panels showing steps down into a subway station. One shows a Bomb Shelter sign, arrow pointing down. Caption: The Last War. Other panel shows Bomb Shelter sign with arrow pointing up. Caption: This War. 3) One cat in strange pose to another, sitting normally: "My yoga instructor calls this position 'downward dog.' Aside from that, she's a wonderful person." 4) Man at front door, gazing at material received from two proselytizers: "You call this literature?"
- Business Week/Interbrand 2005 Global Brands.
- Distant maser (microwave equivalent of laser) sighted.
Related: August 2005 Scientific American feature, Is the Universe out of Tune? (online available to digital subscribers only). Also related: dark energy.
- Smithsonian exhibit of Lakota art.
- Web Libs "how to." Requires Firefox, Greasemonkey, and Doubletake. Code and instructions here.
- Plant Evolution: Adaptation or Historical Accident?
- Roadtrip America.
- Chicago Architects Oral History Project.
- Stacy Cowley's article about forthcoming DST extension, Time change poses no Y2K replay.
- Burger King's controversial ads. here and here. Only in America, eh? Speaking of which: Snap-on Teeth.
- Various topics related to the Feds: 1) Congressional Research Reports for the People, 2) Contract for FBI's new Sentinel program imminent, also here, and here. 3) 6/30/05 Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support DOD report, which provides "a rare view " into the Pentagon's approach to civil defense (and raises concerns with some about Posse Comitatus Act, PCA, constraints.) Related: 1997 Washington University Law Quarterly article about PCA. 4) Info about the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate.
- Inspired by his grandmother - When Computers Were Human by David Alan Grier, Associate Professor of International Science and Technology Policy and International Affairs at Georgetown and Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. Sample chapter
22 July 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Travelable
Heads Up
Jargon Alert
- GRIN (genetics, robotics, information, nano), technologies that are
impacting us biologically. See Washington Post reporter Joel Garreau's
7/17/05 LA Times article, You're
not good enough.
- Microformats>.
Extensions to HTML/XHTML tags.
- PHEV>.
Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle.
- Bash script. A file containing a list of commands to be executed by the
bash shell. See L.M .
MacEwan's class notes and Mendel Cooper's Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide
for more. Download the Bash shell here>.
- Vista>.
New name for Longhorn. Vista ("bringing clarity to your world") presumably
sends an, ahem, clearer message than Longhorn (methane-emitting cattle).
- WAKA> - World Adult Kickball
Association.
- PEAS> - America's Places of
Ecological and Aesthetic Significance according to the Charture Institute.
- WFO>
- workforce optimization.
- MoonROx>
- Moon Regolith Oxygen. New NASA-sponsored Centennial Challenge ends 6/1/08.
- PLA> - private label
manufacturers.
Thought Question of the Week
- Should individual pharmacists and/or pharmacies be allowed to refuse to
fill valid prescriptions for medications they don't approve of such as the
"morning after" pill - or, presumably, lifestyle drugs like Viagra?
Misc
- John Balzar's article, A<
HREF="http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-constitution30jul24,1,3465716.story?coll=la-headlines-magazine">Words
on Paper about different nations' constitutions.
- Washington Post evaluation
of Microsoft Student 2006. (Installation requires Office XP or 2003).
Related: Microsoft
Student 2006 home page.
- Crime
mapping in the UK.
- Big Brother is watching many of us. Use of surveillance cameras is on
the rise, and satellites can probably report how many roses are blooming in
your yard. But I'd forgotten all about the "black boxes" that ship with new
vehicles these days. Read Salley Shannon's LA
Times Magazine article on them and find out which
vehicles include them.
- Journalism.org's annual State of the News
Media for 2005 makes excellent reading.
- Virtual Field Herbarium.
- Craig Larman, Philippe Kruchten, and Kurt Bittner's 14-page paper on common
pitfalls to avoid in the RUP (Rational Unified Process).
- Sudoku puzzles now stand
shoulder to shoulder with crossword puzzles in the LA Times. Even "adult
only" sudoku puzzle books are reportedly in the pipeline. Hard to imagine
they'll provide much competition to the X-rated (okay, I exaggerate, adults
only 18+) Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
- Compliance &
Learning. 12-minute audio stream or PodCast by Elliott Masie.
- Reactions
to Wade Rousch's excellent August 2005 feature in Technology Review on
Social Machines. The
original. Related: Brain Alvey and Jason Calacanis' (commercial venture)
Weblogs Inc. blog on
social software.
- Good books: John Stilgoe's Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday
Places.
- Statistics I've noted with interest recently. 1) According to revised
statistical methodology promoted by NCES>
(and presumably promoters of No Child Left Behind), California's
high school graduation rate is an impressive 89 percent. 2) Germany
and Spain are the top two wind-power nations, 3) The
number of pornographic websites (about two million) has increased
30-fold in the last seven years with about 400 million pages online.
- Japan's
Juki Net raises privacy concerns.
- Economist article on the
future of US weapons labs.
- Higgs
field and Higgs physics.
17 July 2005
Readable/Watchable
- As always, start here. Then check out gotdotnet.com's user samples.
- MVP Harish Ranganathan's articles are excellent. Recent ones include a discussion of caching in Whidbey and data concurrency in ADO.NET 2.0. Thanks, Harish!
- Dave Fetterman's 15-page white paper, New Recommendations for Using
Strings in Microsoft .NET 2.0.
- Matthew MacDonald's article on .NET 2.0's new DataGrid, originally published in the 1/05 issue of Pinnacle's Visual Studio .NET Developer and was "picked up" by MSDN. (You can also read Pete Rodriguez's excellent feature in the July issue of VSD on creating your own WebMaskedEdit custom control in ASP.NET. You can download Pete's code, and you may also want to check out some of the references in his sidebars. pinpub.com).
- Interesting development from IBM which will add corporate blogging tools to the next version of its Workplace collaboration platform and Workplace Designer development tools. Where do you think Microsoft will add them? IBM's Weblog preview is available for download.
- Excellent 16-page white paper on the status of GIS. Also of interest: urbanforests and the new Fun with GPS book.
- OfficeZealot.com's Charles Maxson's article on Creating a Capital Expenditure Model with Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office and Excel 2003 Using Visual Basic and C#. Related: Microsofts' HOLs for VSTO2005 here and here.
- Durgaprasad Gorti's Proxy Detection: Take the Burden Off Users with Automatic Configuration in .NET.
- Dmitri Khanine and Phil Carrillo's white paper, Life without Refresh, on creating more dynamic user interfaces using JavaScript RPC (Remote Procedure Call) to communicate with the server and update without requiring a browser refresh.
- Thought-provoking op-ed (op-ed derives from "opposite editorial") on next-gen extranets.
- According to the VS2005 developer site, VS 2005 Beta 2 has 15034 total bugs, but only 1552 total active bugs.
- Sample Chapter 2 (Tips on Walking Through Code) from Adam Barr's 2/04 book, "Find the Bug: A Book of Incorrect Programs."
- Short VBScript tip from Greg Shultz on manually creating an XP Restore Point.
- Windows XP services that can be disabled.
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Heads Up
- ESRI World Conference 2005, July 25-29 in San Diego.
Jargon Alert
- SLRRP - Simple Lightweight RFID Reader Protocol at sourceforge and networkworld.
- metrosexual - fashion conscious urban male with a strong aesthetic sense.
here,
here and
here. (Are many geeks and nerds metrosexuals?)
Thought Questions of the Week
- I suspect the pro-Harry Potter fans vastly outnumber the critics (some conservative Christians) and curmudgeons. Among the latter is LA Times columnist Joel Stein who, in last week's editorial opined that "A culture that simplifies its entertainment down to fairy tales is doomed to simplify the world down to good and evil." Do you agree?
- Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice." Do you agree?
Misc
- eText versions of almost all of Beatrix Potter's 23 books, including "The Tale of Peter Rabbit."
- Spell with flickr.
- Good BBC article, Time to switch off and slow down, on TEDGlobal2005. (TED = Technology, Entertainment, and Design). Related: An article on Richard Dawkins' (think Selfish Gene) keynote, Meme Power.
- Good article on chart selection.
- Sandra Day O'Connor's Majesty of the Law, is an excellent read that illuminates both the history and workings of the US Supreme Court. Related: oyez.org.
- Lost Newton manuscript rediscovered at Royal Society.
- Math and art here and
here, starters. (Take time to visit the hosting plus.maths.org site, too).
- Scholarly electronic publishing bibliography.
- Acronym search engine.
- Info about process thought/theology/philosophy.
- Cartoons I've enjoyed recently: 1) One judge whispers to another, "I'm wearing my Ten Commandments boxers." 2) One well-fed executive to another, having passed a beggar, "Is it my fault he guessed the wrong hand?"
- Great series of articles in the current issue of Inc. on disrupters.
- Matthew Scully's article on Fear Factories: The Case for Compassionate Conservatism - for Animals. Related: George F. Will's commentary on the article in Newsweek.
- Taxonomy primer.
- Spotted by SQL Server MVP Tom Moreau: Trunk Monkey. Click on the monkey and play the ads.
- Finally, make sure you accessed Windows Update to get all of this week's patches! Note also the recent patch for Word: Vulnerability in Microsoft Word Could Allow Remote Code Execution.
11 July 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Heads Up
Jargon Alert
- Gemini - code name for the next major release of MIIS, Microsoft Identity Integraion Server. Info about Microsoft's forthcoming InfoCard. Related: the MIIS site.
Misc
- Science Magazine's anniversary feature on the top 125 Big Questions.
- As the site name advertises... www.freetranslation.com.
- Cartoons I've enjoyed: 1) Scenario: man looking intently at computer screen. Sign on side of his monitor: "The PC has been porn free for 23 days." 2) Full-page cartoon by Roz in 6/27/05 New Yorker on "The Muttering Classes" with pictures of 16 people muttering things like "Jerk," "Thinks he knows everything," "One of these days..." "Can kiss my ass...," etc. 3) City street scene with woman enjoying a sprinkling from a hose. Vendor's sign: "Hose you off. $2" 4) One executive to another looking at vast, empty room: "Well, that does it, Charlie - we've outsourced everything." 5) Executive handing Plan Z business plan to his partner: "Of course, if this one flops, we're done." 6) Backyard scene with man flipping burgers on a barbecue to boy: "Don't think of me as your stepdad - think of me as the guy having sex with your mom."
- Heartwarming article about voice technology empowering the disabled.
- Tree sites: What Tree Is That? and Dendrological Plant Image Gallery.
- Google in "foreign" languages: Swedish Chef,
Elmer Fudd,
Klingon,
Pig Latin,
Hacker.
- SEED (Standard Exchange of Earthquake Data, an international standard format for the exchange of digital seismological data.)
- Interview with Rational execs.
- Request a free copy of the Qur'an.
- Five young profs each receive $200,000 Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowships
and here.
4 July 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Travelable
Heads Up
- Watch an architecture webcast, get a free book.
- Sunset alert! In the July issue of "Maximum PC," Watch Dog reports that Quicken only supports the current and past two versions online. Microsoft Money offers two years online support. The remedy? Upgrade, of cour$e.
Jargon Alert
- manwha - Korean version of manga.
- rapture theology - popularized by the popular "Left Behind" series of novels by Tim La Haye.
- ROC - Return on Customer, according to Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, in their latest book.
- ABI - Automated Broker Interface, Advanced Bus Interface, Application Binary Interface, Adaptive Brain Interface.
- SPOMF - Symmetric Phase Only Matched Filter (method for detecting a known object in an image.)
- EPIC - Embedded Platform for Industrial Computing.
- poilu (hairy one) - French equivalent of grunt.
Misc
- Interesting article on the rise of the creative class. Dan Pink ("A Whole New Mind" argues that the future will belong to creators and empathizers, driven by abundance, Asia, and automation.
- The July issue of Fast Company had several other fascinating articles, including an interview with GE CEO Jeff Immelt and a surprisingly interesting article on Cirque du Soleil (good sidebar by Blue Ocean Strategy co-author Renee Mauborgne, on innovation). One of Immelt's observations: management literature has focused on how to. "I think we're now in the what-and-where generation." The July feature, "Is your Boss a Psychopath," is interesting, too.
- Americans reportedly consume an average of 66 pounds of beef/year.
- The most popular cosmetic surgery for men is liposuction. Average cost: $4117. Eyelid surgery, nose jobs, male breast reduction, and hair transplantation round out the top five.
- Review of Dean Hamer's "God Gene." Recommended background music (select autoplay).
- Pinnacle's July newsletters are all online now, which means that even non-subscribers can read the feature article of each newsletter free until next month's contents are posted. So...that means you can read 1) Carl Ganz's feature on using Office Web Components in VBD (Disclaimer - I'm the editor) 2) Pete Rodriguez' "Roll Your Own Masked Edit Custom Control with ASP.NET" in Visual Studio .NET Developer, 3) MVP Hilary Cotter's feature on what to expect in SQL Server 2005's Full Text Search in SQL Server Professional (I'm also the editor of SSPro), and 4) Paul Millennas' excellent Smart Access article on adding color to otherwise "battleship grey" buttons in Access.
- NY Times science articles.
- Crop, grass, vegetable, and weed seeds.
- Photographic archive of Gary, Indiana, steel plant.
28 May 2005
Readable/Watchable
Heads Up
- Awesome TechNet Webcast series on SQL Server 2005's BI features. On tap for Tuesday - Real-time BI with SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services.
- Articles about Office 12's features and timetable
here and
here.
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
- The June 2005 issue of Intelligent Enterprise with two excellent articles on XML. My prediction: winners of the inevitable turf wars over content ownership will wish they had lost.
- The 5/23/05 issue of Network World offers 10 troubleshooting tools for network managers - ones that are useful for home networks, too.
Jargon Alert
Misc
21 May 2005
Readable/Watchable
- As always, start here. Then check out gotdotnet.com's user samples.
- The June issue of MSDN Magazine is online.
- Demo from WinHEC 2005: SQL Server 2005 Running on Windows Server 2003, x64 Edition.
- Read two sample chapters (intro and developing secure apps) from a recent book on aspect-oriented software development.
Introduction to Aspect-Oriented Software Development and
Developing Secure Applications Through Aspect-Oriented Programming.
- Part 1 of a 3-part series on Enterprise Templates.
- I personally think RFID is a growth industry with great opportunities for IT. Here are some recent articles I've found interesting: 1) one from a materials handling perspective on the importance of physical placement of the tags,
2) a 4/25/04 WSJ article, "It's 10 a.m. at the Waters Park: Do you know where your children are?" and a 5/13/05 WSJ article on how the casino industry may start implementing RDID gambling chips, and 3) Javed Sikander's excellent 28-page white paper on implementation with .NET.
Related: Intermec will be licensing bundles of some of its stable of > 145 RFID-related patents.
- Good article on data mining supply chain info.
- Mind boggling: SourceForge.net surpasses 100,000 open source projects.
- Shanghai Jiao Tong University wins the 2005 International Collegiate Programming Contest. Related:
ICPC page.
- Interesting feature article on call mining. - The June issue of MSDN Magazine is online.
- Summary of Frost & Sullivan report on offshoring trends 2002-2004.
- Special issue on "State of the States" about state and local IT spending.
Nine states are spending over $1B this year, with CA, NY, TX, and FL each
spending over $2B. Related: site devoted to tracking legislation at
www.govtrack.us and www.govinfo.org.
Heads Up
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Jargon Alert
- LSI - latent semantic indexing, a technique used by many search engines that try to associate certain terms with concepts when indexing web pages. For details,
see Telcordia,
Microsoft,
University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
- LTL - less than truckload, as in FedEx's LTL subsidiary.
- Fuzz testing - a simple technique for feeding random input to applications.
- 10-30-30. Shorthand for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's speed goal for the
Pentagon. The goal: be able to halt an enemy incursion within 10 days, win
within 30, and be ready to fight another enemy 30 days after that. See the
5/16/05 WSJ article ("Rumsfeld's Push for Speed Fuels Pentagon Dissent") and
rantburg.com.
- Evil twins and pharming. Techniques used by hackers to hijack online identities. Evil twins offer a "fake" wireless login that mimics a legitimate one, and pharming redirects surfers to a hacker site by DNS cache poisoning. See a 5/17/05 WSJ article.
- Financial terms that may be new to you (they were to me): 1) Viatical - of or relating to a contractual arrangement in which a business buys life insurance policies from terminally ill patients for a percentage of the face value: a viatical settlement. A growing industry. 2) CDO - collateralized debt obligation. Type of credit derivative.
- Eiger - codename for special bare bones Windows XP SP2 client.
bink.nu and
news.com.com.
- Maestro - codename for forthcoming BPM scorecarding application based on Office, but which reportedly will also require SQL and SPPS CALs.
What Do *You* Think?
- Do you consider yourself "middle class"? Do distinctions between, say upper middle and lower middle class matter to you? Fascinating in-depth series. Related, a 5/20/05 interview with one of the series authors, Janny Scott.
- Is there such a think as a "noble lie"? Plato thought so. What's the difference between a noble lie and a white lie?
- Massimo d'Azeglio, a 19th century Italian novelist and statesman, said that "The gift of liberty is like that of a horse, handsome, strong, and high-spirited. In some, it arouses a wish to ride; in many others, on the contrary, it increases the desire to walk." See Fouad Ajami's essay with the citation.
Misc
- Delightful BBC article on "Pro-Ams" (no, not pro-Americans), but hobbyists
who pursue something to a professional level. Open source developers can be
considered Pro-Ams, but gardening Pro-Ams seem to represent the largest
community of Pro-Am'ers in the UK - followed by DIY'ers.
- Garden with insight (cool garden simulator).
- Online Language Dictionaries and Translators.
- UNESCO World Heritage Center.
- Beyond "do no harm". Prof. Arun Kumar Tripathi (Dresden University
Philosophy of Technology dept.) pleads for a new ethics to deal with new technology.
- Library Anecdotes, Facetiae, Satire, Etc. Related: lii.org and Wade Roush's May 2005 article on The Infinite Library.
- Hotels are getting facelifts and gizmos. See also Avery Johnson's 5/11/05 WSJ article, "Hotel Rooms Get a Major Overhaul."
- Hudson River Water Trail - paddle the Hudson.
- Excerpt from Richard Florida's thought-provoking book, Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent.
- Good feature on the evangelical movement in the US, Earthly Empires in the 5/23/05 issue of Business Week.
Hacker hunters are on the 5/30 cover.
- How cell phone viruses spread.
- Good 3/14/05 article, The Rise of Smart Buildings.
- Su Doku (solitary number) puzzle/game. Related:
Puzzled Brits Clamor for Su Doku.
14 May 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Doanloadable
Browsable
Jargon Alert
- Fabric wars (about interconnects, not cotton vs. rayon) -
What do *YOU* Think?
Misc
7 May 2005
Readable/Watchable
- As always, start here. Then check out gotdotnet.com's user samples.
- Scott Nonnenberg's article, Creating a Debugger Visualizer Using Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 and his blog.
- Sergei Gundorov and Clark Hamilton's three-part March 2005 articles,
Automating the XML Data Mapping Process in Excel 2003,
Mapping XML from SQL Server to a Single Cell in Excel 2003, and Replicating Excel 2003 Formulas to SQL Server.
- COM Callable Wrapper.
- Convert VBA Code to Visual Basic .NET When Migrating to Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office.
- Tony Loton's articles on VS 2005.
- Eric Hanson's article on indexed views in SQL Server 2005.
- Karl Seguin's great 32-page article on custom entities and collections as an alternative to DataSets.
- Dino Esposito's MSDN column on collections and data binding.
- Jani Jarvinen's Diagnosing and Debugging with the System.Diagnostics Namespace.
- Bill Evjen's articles on the Personal Web Site Starter Kit that's supported by VS 2005 and part of Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition.
here and here.
- SQL Server MVP Ron Talmage's article on SQLCMD in SQL Server 2005.
- Thiru Thangarathinam's article on ClickOnce Deployment in .NET 2.0. Related: Brian Noyes' article on configuring ClickOnce trusted publishers.
here and here.
- VBD columnist Carl Ganz's article about getting assembly information.
You can also read Carl's current VBD column on reporting with Excel.
- Last week, I steered you to the Refactor! download. Well, now there's a great article by Richard Morris that will help you get your head around it.
Also of potential interest, eval copy of NetEdge's Refactor Express Service (for converting Access forms .NET forms).
- Tired of having VS 2005 forced down your throat? Read Min Kwan Park's article about debugging ASP.NET apps with VS 2003's debugger.
Of course, if you *are* into VS 2005, you might want to watch/listen to a replay of David Waddleton's excellent 5/3/05 Webcast on Debugging Visualizers. Hang around for the Q&A, too.
- Stephen Toub's article on writing background add-ins for XP Media Center 2005.
- Good column by Jon Udell on GET and POST issues.
- Good commentatary on Microsoft's virtualization road map. The original press release.
- Tom Moreau's review of Bob Beauchemin's book, "A First Look at SQL Server
2005 for Developers."
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Travelable
- ACM SIGKDD (Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Augus 21-24 in Chicago.
Jargon Alert
- The "I" word - referring to isolationists and isolationism
- LUA - Least-Privileged User Account.
Misc
30 April 2005
Readable/Watchable
- As always, start here. Then check out gotdotnet.com's user samples.
- Pablo Castro's article on managed data access inside SQL Server 2005 with ADO.NET and SQLCLR.
- Tony Loton's article on the VS 2005 System Designer, one of four new
Distributed System Designers in the Team Architect Edition.
- Stephen Toub's article on Fun with DVR-MS.
- Excellent article by Kanbay Inc.'s Vaibhav Shringarpure on Compliance to
Regulations: A Data Warehousing Approach.
- Handy chart with advice, e.g. avoid using static methods if you expect COM clients, based on type of caller when building serviced components.
- Demos (WMV files) of calling Amazon.com Web services from VSTO 2005 Beta 2.
- Transcript of Bill Gates' April 26 keynote at WinHEC 2005. (PPTs and streaming video also available.)
- Good article by Thiru Thangarathinam on new files and folders in ASP.NET 2.0.
- Paul Kimmel's article on encrypting connections strings in VS 2005 .config files.
- Bogdan Crivat's article on SQL Server Data Mining Programmability.
Related: SQL Server Data Mining.
- Visual Studio 2005 Team System will include two methodology templates, which you can use "as-is", customize to fit your needs, or use as a foundation for creating your own process template: MSF for Agile Software Development and MSF for CMMI Process Improvement. You can download a beta of the former and read more about it at customizing it.
- 4/15/05 MSDN Webcast on VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office).
- Excellent 4/29/05 TechNet Webcast by Elden Chirstensen with a "sneak peak" on the future of server clustering, including 30 minutes of post-presentation Q&A. Related: Microsoft's roadmap for virtualization.
- Brent Rector on .NET's Finalize method and a response.
- Malcolm Chisholm's article on Understanding Hidden Subtypes. Excerpt: "In my personal experience, subtypes are not seen all that often in data models. This is somewhat surprising because many sets of business rules operate on only a specific subset of records in a table."
- Good article on virtualization.
- Good article on disaster recovery planning.
- Two interesting articles, one that might give you ideas about measuring productivity (or documenting your own) and an interview with Microsoft CIO.
- Tom Kyte's Oracle column including a list of his top 10 features in Oracle 10g, e.g. case insensitive search, flashback database and flashback transaction query, and online segment shrinking.
- Excellent article by Dave Lloyd in the 5/05 issue of aspnetPRO (The Need for Speed) on accelerating large DataSet retrievals from Web services.
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Jargon Alert
- ESTs - Expressed sequence tags represent tiny portions of an entire gene that can be used to help identify unknown genes and to map their positions within a genome. Go here for more
on ESTs and access to another half dozen mini tutorials about biotech topics.
- CHEM - Cold Hybernated Elastic Memory. A new kind of foam that can be used in packaging.
- E3 - term coined by the META Group combining ETL, EAI, and EII
- Metro - the code name for a new XML-based document technology framework, to appear in Longhorn. Susan Kuchinskas wonders if it's meant to be a "PDF killer? Related: article on printing PDF from .NET.
- Mendocino - code name for SAP/Microsoft joint project.
- DU - depleted uranium.
Misc
- Interesting article about Oak Ridge National Laboratory's SensorNet.
- According to an article in the 4/26/05 issue of BZ Media's Test & QA report, there are two main types of JIT testing triage - test idea triage and bug triage. The recommendation for JIT testing leads: perform each at least daily.
- And all in just 125 steps. This year's Rube Goldberg Machine contest designed a mechanism that removes the batteries from a flashlight, replaces them, and switches it on ... in 125 steps.
- History resources. UMDL Texts.
- Yahoo Finance search.
- Search Systems Public Records
- Pacific Research Institute's 2005 Environmental Index report prepared by
Steven Hayward. Here or 105 page PDF.
- Incoming links directory of directories.
- Microsoft's SRC (search result clustering) beta.
- Really cool new BI tool to help users investigate data visually (I was briefed yesterday and will be getting an eval copy, but I've got to admit I was very impressed).
- Article about BENEDICT, which has built a dictionary suite with a Semantic Context Sensitive Dictionary Look-up.
- C-SPAN2's weekend About Books schedule. Audio streaming interviews/readings, etc. Example: one Sunday with "World is Flat" (less hierarchical due to globalization, outsourcing, Interent) author Thomas Friedman.
- My blogs: VB Blog and SQL Blog.
Coming soon: the online May 2005 VBD feature by Carl Ganz on reporting with Excel.
- Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac (archives, too!)
- StarDate will inspire you to get out and look at the stars (weather permitting, of course).
- Interesting article on CIO/compliance officer collaboration. Halfway through is a good starter list of regulatory issues.
23 April 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Travelable
Downloadable
Browsable
Jargon Alert
- TOE - TCP Offload Engine. A networking technology that's reportedly part of Microsoft's "Chimney," which was originally slated for the late 2004 release of the Scalable Networking Pack for Windows Server 2003.
- PXE - pre-boot execution environment.
- CXT - Commercial Extreme (think up to 6 tons of hauling power) Truck.
- Two-factor authentication. Here and here.
- PSD - point spread functions. Here and here.
Misc
- Splendid 15-page profile of Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas (think Seattle Public Library) by New Yorker features editor Daniel Zalewski in the 3/14/05 issue.
- Too funny: A collection of computer-generated gibberish in the form of an academic paper has been accepted at a scientific conference, to the delight of hoaxers. (Thanks to SQL MVP Tom Moreau for the link).
- Cartoons I've enjoyed recently: 1) Two armed gunmen near their "Fashion
Security" police van with flashing lights to businessman on sidewalk: "Sir!
Sir! Kindly remove the bolo tie and set it on the ground - nice and slow."
2) One bassett hound to another, regarding an approaching "little" dog: "Oh,
God! Here comes Miss Perky." 3) Woman to beggar with sign that announces a)
Job outsourced, b) No health care, and c) Up to my ears in credit card debt:
"Look on the bright side...no one will want to steal your identity." 4) Dog
in front of curvy, Gehry-inspired doghouse re nearby laughing cat, "I guess
cats just can't appreciate Frank Gehry." 5) Husband to wife as they're
entering a Wal-Mart store whose greeter is shouting "Solidarity Forever!" -
"I miss the old Wal-Mart greeting." 6) Woman about to get clothes out of
dryer reads the dryer's note: "We have your sock."
- Books I've enjoyed recently: 1) Deborah Gordon's Ants at Work: How an
Insect Society is Organized. This 2000 book is based on her observations of
and experiments with harvester ant colonies in Arizona.
2) Verlyn Klinkenborg's The Rural Life. The author, who lives on a small farm in upstate NY, assembles observations month by month. and here.
- Good overview of salt marsh ecology.
- The World Conservation Union's red list of threatened species. Related: its list of the worst 100 invasive alien species.
- Matthew Ellison's review of screen capture utilities.
- Allergy got you down? The Burkhard Spore Trap and the Rotorod sampler are used to get pollen counts. More here.
- Paper airplane archive.
- WSJ science columnist Sharon Begley's article on How Science Can Improve Your Golf Game makes for good reading even if you aren't a golfer.
- Center for Public Integrity's information about US lobbyists.
- Millennium Ecosystem Report.
- VEX Robotics Design System (500-part starter kit ~ $300).
- New online resource from the US Dept. of Health and Human Resources that lets you compare hospitals.
- Recent LA Times story about a Japanese bestseller compiled from chat room postings.
- Tamara Kummer's report on the Carnegie Corporation's virtual library project.
- Patenting peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
- Time Magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In the "scientists and thinkers" category, there were a lot more pundits than scientists. Related: Time's 25 most influential evangelicals.
- C-SPAN bares all.
Related.
16 April 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Travelable
Downloadable
Browsable
Jargon Alert
Thought Questions
- In his 3/15 SD Times column (registration required), Allen Holub asks "Is
Software Engineering an Oxymoron?" and concludes with an observation that
programming has changed from the study and implementation of algorithms to
the study and creation of complex documents - essentially that "it's moved
from math to English." Do you agree?
- In a 3/01 Communications of the ACM article, "Developing the Future,"
Grady Booch suggested that there are two developer communities - Athenians
and Spartans. The Athenians are the "shoot-from-the-hip Internet-time"
entrepreneurs, while the disciplined software engineers are the Spartans.
Does this distinction still make sense? Did it ever?
- Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" ends describing a world that "Hath really
neither joy, nor love, nor light,/Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for
pain;/And we are here as on a darkling plain/Swept with confused alarms of
struggle and flight,/Where ignorant armies clash by night." Do the words
speak to you?
Misc
- Gecko GrassWorlds (grassland simulator).
- 12-page PDF on XML indexing in relational databases by SQL Server team members.
- Excellent 3/29/05 report, Comprehensive Database Security Requires Native DBMS Features, by Forrester analyst Noel Yuhanna.
- Info on VMware Workstation 5 and what it offers developers.
- Info on hyperthreading.
- Cartoons I've enjoyed recently: 1) Bar scene where one man with a beer
says to another who's working on his laptop, "Download it again, Sam." 2)
Restaurant patron holding his cell phone to waiter, "My nutritionist would
like a work with you." 3) Woman holding phone hears message: "Get a cup of
coffee, pull up a chair, put your feet up, and listen to our menu options."
4) Man seated in armchair reading book, "Moral Values for Dummies." 5) One
snowman to another who's holding a hair dryer to his head: "carl! No!"
- My back yard is full of ladybugs, quail, the "seeds" from my neighbor's
cottonwood trees, and other magical critters and sights. I hope you find
time to get outside and enjoy spring, too.
9 April 2005
Readable/Watchable
- As always, start here. Then check out gotdotnet.com's user samples.
- Part 3 of Michael Weinhardt's Custom Data Binding: Adding Search Support.
- Jamie MacLennan's article on the new data mining features in Analysis
Services 2005. In the article, Jamie describes the five new algorithms: 1)
association rules, which finds rules in your data in the form A and B -"> C
and is especially useful for large catalogs, 2) native Bayes, a
probabilistic model that's particularly useful for classification and
advanced data exploration, 3) sequence clustering, which combines
expectation maximization clustering with sequence technology, 4) time
series, which uses regression trees technology to detect patterns that exist
across series, and 5) neural nets, which excels in finding complex
relationships (think non-linearities) that would be missed by other
algorithms.
- Excellent 3/29/05 report, Comprehensive Database Security Requires Native DBMS Features, by Forrester analyst Noel Yuhanna.
Related: HIPAA's barking.
- Code snippet showing you how to ping Weblogs.com Using XMLRPC and VB.NET.
- Juval Lowy's new security article, Unify Windows Forms and ASP.NET
Providers for Credentials Management.
- Neat Wired articles on Jimmy Wales and his Wikipedia.
Wiki Becomes a Way of Life and The Book Stops Here.
Selected KB articles
Heads Up
Travelable
Downloadable
Browsable
Jargon Alert
- Gen Y - 10-24 years olds (about 60 million in the US)
- BCL - base class libraries. Related: the BCLTeam blog at
- pomo - postmodern
- pen tests - penetration tests
- SNAC - SQL Native Access Client
- AMO Analysis Management Object: a new object model for managing and administering Analysis Services 2005.
Misc
2 April 2005
Don't forget Daylight Savings Time!
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Heads Up
- Remember to sign up for MSDN's SQL Server 2005 Webcast miniseries that starts next week.
Here's the lineup:
- April 4, 11AM PT, MSDN Webcast: Introducing SQL Server 2005 Express: Your
Smart Client Data Store (Level 200)
- April 4, 1PM PT, MSDN Webcast: New Data Features in Visual Studio 2005
Windows Forms
- April 5, 11AM PT, MSDN Webcast: Putting the "Smart" in Smart Client:
Embedding Key Performance Indicators into Smart Client Applications
- April 5, 3PM PT, MSDN Webcast: Managing XML Data on the Database with SQL
Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005
- April 7, 10AM PT, MSDN Webcast: Data-Disconnected: Working with Disconnected
Data Using ADO.NET 2.0
- April 7, 1PM PT, MSDN Webcast: Using Web Services To Connect to SQL Server
2005 from Your Smart Client Applications
- April 8, 11AM PT, MSDN Webcast: Native Data Access Technologies for SQL
Server 2005 (Level 300)
- April 8, 1PM PT, MSDN Webcast: Improving Smart Client Performance Using MARS
(Multiple Active Result Sets) in SQL Server 2005 (Level 300)
You'll probably notice one big theme: "smart client" apps, which makes FTP's
new SmartClient Live! (see below) all the more timely.
- Update on O'Reilly's new quarterly magazine, Make, for the geekish DIY market. Amazon seems to have exclusive rights to sell the first issue, and you can listen to a 5 minute audio clip on the story behind it from the Amazon/Magazines website, where you can also download a 14 page PDF preview, and subscribe for a year starting with issue 2. MakeZine.com has another PDF preview with the aerial photography for your kite.
- The Windows XP SP2 automatic update blocker will be lifted on April 12th.
Travelable
Downloadable
Browsable
Jargon Alert
Thought Question
Misc
- US Naval Research Labs' Clementine Lunar Image browser.
- Online birdsongs of 550 NA birds. Related: birdsong mnemonics. Related: Links to other Birdsong and Birding Sites.
- An alternative to grounding: take away the cell phone. See Time's article, How kids set the (ring) tone.
- A Caltech team led by Prof. Rouke has modified its attogram scale for zeptogram (10^-21) precision. (Yocto is next).
- Speaking of Caltech, find out what science fiction Caltech students (aka Techers) read.
- A 3/31/05 NewScientist article describes research by Ruprecht Jaenicke, of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Mainz, Germany, indicating that up to 25% of the aerosols in the atmosphere are biological in origin (think dead skin cells).
- Edi Rama, Mayor of Tirana, Albania, won the title of World Mayor 2004. Related: citymayors.com.
- Can you list the six outposts of tyranny (a new version of the three-member axis of evil) named by the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in January? They're Belarus, Burma, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Zimbabwe.
- Entrepreneur Magazine's list of best colleges for learning entrepreneurship.
- Gasoline price check by ZIP code. (The lowest price where I live is 2.19/gallon, so don't complain)
- Article on the history of the USAF Office of Scientific Research. Related:
Air Force Research Laboratory: Who we are and what we do and Air Force Research Laboratory: Headquarters.
- Peter Merholz's thoughts about Cathy Marshall's research on Personal Digital Libraries. Related: Reading in a Digital Age.
- Microsoft Xbox sales. Related: Microsoft Reveals First Details of Next-Generation Xbox.
- UK Grand Challenges for Computing Research endeavor. Related: The Grand Challenges of IT.
- Abigail Cutler's article listing ten security fences (other than the often maligned Israeli one on the West Bank.
26 March 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Heads Up
Downloadable
- Sneak peek of O'Reilly's new quarterly Make magazine (think hefty hobbyist's mag, i.e. 200 pages/issue with articles on building a camera-equipped kite, a Gauss rifle, or your very own mag stripe reader).
- Trial version of $229 VBdocman .NET 2.0, which works as an add-in in VS.NET 2002/2003.
- IronPython 0.7.
- LibCheck. Utility that lets you compare two versions of an assembly.
- ILMerge. Utility that lets you merge multiple assemblies.
- March 2005 Avalon and Indigo CTP. (Nota bene: 454MB)
- MBSA 1.2.1.
- vbUnit3 for writing and running automated unit tests against VB and COM objects.
- utPLSQL - O'Reilly's utPLSQL Project.
Browsable
- March 2005 issue of Wired with features on radio, Yahoo at 10 (the UnGoogle), and Jimmy Wales, the guy behind Wikipedia.
- Tigris.org. Open source software engineering.
Jargon Alert
- Oulipo (Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle, i.e. Workshop of Potential Literature), Oulipo for short, was the name of a small group of primarily French writers, mathematicians, and academics devoted to the exploration of mathematical and combinatorial techniques in literature. Founded in 1960 (and still somewhat active), the group searched for new literary structures via the imposition of unusual constraints. More info: Who's Counting: Google Made Surreal and
Index of Oulipo Books.
- 3FB - 3-fluorobenzene. Part of an "unnatural" DNA base pair (3FB-3FB - the "natural" ones are C-G and A-T) being investigated by Floyd Romesberg's lab at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA. Economist.com and Romesberg Group .
- EGRET (Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope) sources. Objects that emit gamma rays continutously (not just in bursts). About 170 known. See also
NASA image of earth seen through gamma ray eyes.
Misc
- The Mathematical Cartoons of Larry Gonick.
- MSRI's Scientific Graphics Project page (links to great articles).
- Cartoons I've enjoyed recently: 1) Bear in Hawaiian shirt, penguin with umbrella. The title: Telltale Signs of Global Warming, 2) Bear standing next to sign "Do Not Feed the Bears" holding sign to passing tourists: "A hug, then?", 3) Woman to others who are wailing, "Please! No harmonizing during ululations!", and 4) Little girl in bedtime scene to her mother: "You'd tell me if I was genetically modified?"
- Harmonic Analysis links.
- Sara Robinson's article, Coding Theory Meets Theoretical Computer Science.
- Paul Boutin's 3/3/05 Slate article on Google's AutoLink feature.
- Brooklyn Bridge Links.
- From Jack Ganssle's 1/26/05 Embedded Muse (#109): An ASCII character walks into a bar. "How are you today?" asks the barman. "Not too good, I have a parity error" says the AC. "I thought you looked a bit off" the barman replies.
- Interesting sample chapter from a book on patents, copyrights, trademarks, and IP. Related: Issued and Published US Patents.
- XM Satellite receiver "Easter eggs" (read, hidden functions). Related: XM Satellite tutorial
- Phyllotaxis (interactive site for mathematical study of plant patterns).
- 48-page draft of 2004 Undergraduate Computing Curricula 2004.
- Extrasolar planets viewed in infrared.
- Proposed US federal 2006 science and technology R&D budget.
- Thom Mayne won the prestigious Pritzker award for architecture.
pritzkerprize.com and About.com. Related: an exhibit on architects' tools.
- March 22nd was World Water Day 2005. Related: Stockholm Water Prize at siwi.org and
sahra.arizona.edu.
- Backup copies of DNA in plants?
- One of the newsletters I edit for Pinnacle, SQL Server Professional, was launched ten years ago! Ten years ago, VBD had articles on "Configuring Forms and Controls at Runtime" by Dan Appleman, "Palette-handling in VB" by Hugh Ranalli, and "Tapping the Power of Object Variables" by David Burch.
19 March 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Heads Up
Downloadable
Browsable
Travelable
Jargon Alert
- WAL (Write Ahead Logging), a database protocol, which requires that "all transaction log records associated with a particular data page be flushed to stable media before the data page can be flushed to stable media."
Misc
12 March 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Travelable
Jargon Alert
Misc
5 March 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
- .NET MVP Matthew Reynolds' .NET 247 and WinFX47 both have an incredible amount to offer, from useful searchable namespaces to good discussions. Matt provides great info about versions (first seen, last seen, last changed) and links to related info on MSDN. The same namespace link to MSDN from Matt's WinFX247 site led me to the Longhorn SDK info on the Type I was researching.
- Extremely easy-to-use and handy reference for database connection strings, including SQL Server, Access, Oracle, MySQL, Interbase, DB2, Sybase, Informix, Ingres, Mimer SQL, Lightbase, PostgreSQL, Paradox, DSN, Firebird, Excel, text, DBF/FoxPro, AS/400, Exchange, Visual FoxPro , Pervasive, and UDL. Created by a Swedish developer.
- SourgeForge's list of POTMs (projects of the month).
- 20 of the most popular tech session presentations from Oracle Open World 2004 for both DBAs and Java developers/architects.
- Handy PDF comparing features in Crystal Reports Versions 6,7,8,9,10, and XI (along with the various Editions, e.g. Standard, Professional, Developer, Advanced Developer, Server.
See my blog entry for more on Crystal Reports XI.
- Developer preview of the Longhorn SDK.
- Find out about the National Constitution Center's new Signers' Hall (think lifesize bronze statues).
- Amazon Light 4.0 alternative interface to Amazon. Related: Amazon's Yellow Pages beta.
Heads Up
Travelable
Jargon Alert
Misc
- Slate's 9th Annual list of top American donors. And, again, Bill and Melinda Gates top the list.
- U.S. Dept of State Annual Human Rights Report. Related:
State Department's Dobriansky briefs on release of 2004 human rights reports and
Annual Human Rights Report Supports Freedom Worldwide. Also of interest: Freedom House's annual Freedom in the World report.
- Transcript of what I thought was a fascinating recent PBS Frontline show on the House of Saud.
- Transcript from Bill Gates' keynote at the recent RSA conference.
- Slate's photo essay on How Oscar fashion got so boring. (Perhaps most interesting to those of us who didn't watch the Oscars.)
- You can request Actuate's Financial Performance Management Toolkit (white paper and streaming presentations).
- WeatherChannel.com company overview and timeline.
- National Library of Medicine's Profiles in (20th cent.) Science site.
- Find out how Oracle 10g's FORALL works. Oracle Database 10g introduces support for the FORALL syntax with non-consecutive indexes in collections. The INDICES OF clause allows the FORALL syntax to be used with sparse collections, while the VALUE OF clause is used for collections of indexes pointing to other collections.
- Intriguing interactive TimeHunt game.
- Simon Singh's site and articles. Related: NPR audio interview.
- Very cool multimedia site, Frog Calls.
- Enter a US ZIP code to find out who owns local media.
- Great article on Iowa's loess hills, a remnant of the US Midwest's prairie.
- Interesting banking initiative related to the guidelines for assessing and managing environmental and social risks in project financing.
- Splinter fleet - wooden sub-chasers in WWII.
- Cartoons I've enjoyed recently. 1) Woman to man: "I've done the numbers, and I will marry you." 2) Pilot to co-pilot: "This is so cool! I'm flying this thing completely on my Palm Pilot." 3) Middle-aged couple watching TV screen where caricature of Pres. Bush is saying "...Stockpiles of WMDs are in the Social Security System." 4) Tracking station worker to colleague: We're getting a message from the space station." In the next panel, the screen says, "Will work for food." (Happily, the unmanned Russian Progress cargo vehicle docked successfully with the ISS last week) 5) Waiter on floor to nearby couple seated at restaurant table: "Sorry, I think your server is down." 6) Father with megaphone to son: "Everyone talks to God in their own way, Billy, and this is how we do it in this family."
- Bird songs here and here.
26 February 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Heads Up
Travelable
Jargon Alert
- VOCs - volatile organic compounds, including those emitted by paint. Related: Recycling info.
- MS13 - no, it's not related to adult content from Microsoft, but to a gang.
Misc
19 February 2005
Readable/Watchable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Jargon Alert
- M Generation - Missionary Generation of kids who attend the 700+ US religious colleges. Related: Naomi Riley's "God on the Quad" and a review.
- RSI - requirement stability index/indicators. Requirements stability indicators are in the form of trend charts that show the total number of requirements, cumulative changes to the requirements, and the number of TBDs (to be dones) over time. A TBD refers to an undefined requirement. Based on requirements stability trends, corrective action may be necessary.
Misc
12 February 2005
Readable
Downloadable
Heads Up
Travelable
- Semantic Technology Conference, March 7-10 in SF. "By Semantic Technologies we are including technologies and methodologies that have been used within leading enterprises over the last decade that leverage Semantics, such as Semantic Brokers, Semantic Modeling, Model Based Warehousing, Business Rules and many more. We are also including the Semantic Web and the technologies that make it possible, such as OWL, RDF/RDFS, DAML+OIL and XML."
Browsable
- Enterprise Geographic Information System (EGIS). Formerly, a separate system called HUD Environmental Maps, this upgraded system provides mapping tools for displaying housing, environmental, emergency management and census data.
Jargon Alert
Misc
- Presidential pets at the Whitehouse Web site and the Presidential Pet Meseum.
- Great feature, The Kinsley Report, in the current (Feb 2005) issue of LA Magazine. You may remember Michael Kinsley as the journalist who launched Microsoft's Slate. Well, now he's in charge of the
LA Times editorial pages.
- UDDI 3.0.2 is official.
- Cartoons I've enjoyed recently: 1) The scene: two groundhogs in their den. One recounts, "I saw my shadow. It made me look fat." 2) The scene: two fish, one with a hook protruding from its mouth. The hookless one observes, "Nice lip piercing." 3) The scene. A pleasant-looking middle-aged woman in her doorframe, making a happy, beckoning gesture to her dog. The dog's thought balloon shows a can of dog food perched on top of the woman's legs. 4) Doctor to patient: "You'll be awake during the entire procedure. The anesthesiologist is on vacation." 5) The scene: two aliens and a human in a spaceship. One alien says to the other, "*You* abducted him. *You* feed him."
- Very cool book: Home Hacking Projects for Geeks. Related: Wiley's forthcoming Geek House: 10 Hardware Hacking Projects for Around Home.
5 February 2005
Readable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
- ActiveSync 3.8.
- SourceForge.Net's January 2005 Project of the Month: RSSOwl newsreader.
- Eric Smith's freeware CodeSmith.
- Windows Script 5.6, which includes VBScript 5.6. Related: MSDN's scripting site.
- Unleash It, formerly known as WebDeploy.
- DSWatch, a VS.NET add-in that provides a "quick watch" of the content of any dataset during debugging.
- Jonathan Payne's VSFileFinder and VSTabs add-ins.
- George Politis's MSDN article on building a better ComboBox.
- Rick Dobson's feature article in the Feb issue of Visual Studio .NET Developer on "Exploring Microsoft's Express Suite 2005."
- A treasure trove of completely free audio software: Express Scribe (transcription dictation player), WavePad (voice and audio editing program), Express Burn (CD recorder software), Switch (sound file format converter), AMS (Audio Masking System), NCH Tone Generator (Pocket PC Version Only), Vemail (voice messages by e-mail), TypeCharge (word count and typist billing tool), ToneDet (tone detector and Express Rip (CD Audio File Extractor). They even have an SDK for Express Scribe.
Heads Up
Browsable
Jargon Alert
Misc
29 January 2005
Readable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Heads Up
Browsable
Jargon Alert
- Slurpware - According to Gartner analyst Jay Heiser, it's when all the effective Internet attack elements come together to potentially steal a lot of money.
- SSR - sustained silent reading.
Travelable
Thought Questions
- Sun's president and COO Jonathan Schwartz recently said that "Developers
don't buy things; they join things." It seems to me that communities *are*
becoming more important. Do you agree? Which communities do *you* feel part
of? Is the "community thing" eroding the "cowboy" culture of the lone wolf
programmer? If so, is that for the best? Jonathan's Blong and
Linux World article.
- Most of us first grappled with life's "big questions" as teenagers, and I
suspect that most of us remember some of our long youthful conversations
with a bit of nostalgia. Which topic intriuged you most? The problem of
evil? The existence of God? The problems of inequity - your lot vs. that of
a third-world peasant? Sex vs. love? What you wanted to do with your life?
Some political question?
- Some companies perform ritual annual reorgs. Does your firm? What do you
think of reorgs in general?
Misc
22 January 2005
Readable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Jargon Alert
- CCF - Microsoft's Customer Care Framework, a modular XML Web Services architecture for rapid development and deployment of contact center solutions and runs on Windows XP Professional for providing a single desktop to call center agents, plus a prescriptive middle tier architecture using Windows Server, BizTalk Server, SQL Server, and Host Integration Server to connect all line of business applications to the CCF client using XML Web Services.
- IPTV - Internet TV.
- MJO - Madden-Julian Oscillation. Move over, El Nino. Webcast about by Dr. Madden.
- VLOG - video blog.
- twixter - young adults who delay "settling down." Related: twixters in other countries.
- PIA - Primary Interop Assemblies.
Travelable
Misc
- Used, vintage board games.
- Bayes' An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances. Related: Branden Fitelson's 2001 dissertation on Bayesian confirmation theory, and Bayesian Analysis society site.
- A new set of the Great Books of the Western World will set you back $1,195 today. When originally published in 1951, the set cost $249.50.
- Did you know the US had a science advisor?
- People's Archive, "dedicated to collecting for posterity the stories of the great thinkers and creators of our time." Free online registration req'd.
- Conservative think tank Heritage Foundation's newly released Mandate for Leadership in PDF format. Related: searchable database of policy experts, e.g. IT.
- Remember what Scott McNealy said about privacy back in 1999? ("You have zero privacy anyway... Get over it.")? Interesting article on video mining in retails.
- Info about upper ontologies. IEEE's SUO, Standard Upper Ontology Working Group (SUO WG), is developing a Standard to specify an upper ontology to support computer applications such as data interoperability, information search, and retrieval, automated inferencing, and natural language processing. And The Multi-Source Ontology (MSO) of WebKB-2 / AnyKB. Related:
- Wordnet, an online lexical reference system, which organizes English nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs into synonym sets.
- Cyc Upper Level here, here, here, and
here.
- GOL - General Ontological Language.
- Sears catalog history.
- Google Cheat Sheet. Related: seven sample hacks from Tara Calishain's Google Hacks (2nd Ed.). And access to all of O'Reilly's online hacks.
- Chip History Museum.
- Lots of free crossword puzzles.
- OED's newest dictionary entries. Related: one university's list of banished words.
- Minnesota Ornithologists' Union Hawk Ridge site.
15 January 2005
Errata
Readable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
- Good through Jan 16th only from Graphics Server President David Johnson: get a free copy of Graphics Server .NET: Widgets Edition.
- Yahoo's desktop search. Related: their FAQ.
- Dave's Quick Search Deskbar 3.1.9.1.
- ActiveSync 3.8.
- Beta version of Microsoft's anti-spyware, malicious software removal tool. 256K download. Related: Mike Gunderloy's review of it.
- John Wood's Source Code Metrics utilities for counting lines of code and calculating its complexity (the latter based on weighted methods/class). And
Part 2.
- Source code from Roy Osherove's regular expressions testing and learning package, the Regulator. Related: release announcement. Also related: - How To Use Regular Expressions in Microsoft VB6.
- AssemblyReflector 1.0.0.0, an event-based assembly parser that allows you to search assemblies for Attributes, Events, Fields, Interfaces, Methods, Nested Types, Properties and Types.
- Free PocketMusic MP3 player for the Pocket PC.
- Mondrian, an open source OLAP server that's written in Java, is described as "stable and mature," but that doesn't seem to have been updated for over a year. It implements the MDX language, XML for Analysis, and JOLAP. It reads from SQL and other data sources, supports connection pooling, and aggregates data in a memory cache.
- FCKEditor is another (admittedly far more popular) open source project, an HTML/DHTML editor for ASP, ASP.NET, ColdFusion, PHP, and JavaScript that works with Mozilla, Netscape, and IE.
- The R programming language, sometimes referred to as "GNU S", is a mathematical language and environment that's used for statistical analysis and display. R is based on "S" with semantics derived from Scheme. (S, though originally developed at Bell Laboratories, is now a commercial product. And Scheme is a functional programming language and dialect of Lisp.) More on R.
- C# version of Sokoban Pro (game).
Browsable
Jargon Alert
- LAMP - Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl/Python/PHP.
Travelable
Thought Question
- What public person do you think currently has the hardest job on earth? Would you want to be in their shoes? Or at least part of their team?
Misc
8 January 2005
Readable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Travelable
Misc
1 January 2005
Readable
Selected KB articles
SQL Server-related from here on
Browsable
Heads Up
Downloadable
Travelable
Jargon/Acronym Alert
Thought Questions
- Does the notion of an elegant universe composed of ten (or more) spacetime dimensions seem oxymoronic to you? Related: Patricia Schwarz's string theory site at and summary of recent astronomical observations.
- A few hundred years ago, most humans would have lived and died without even being aware of a disaster like last week's tragedy. Does our awareness matter? Has the tragedy changed anything for you? Did you "celebrate" New Year's Eve in your normal manner? Suggested related ideas: McLuhan, chaos, Gaia, fate, suffering.
Misc
18 December 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Browsable
Downloadable
Travelable
Jargon/Acronym Alert
Thought Questions
- Do you believe in "free will"? Is your position based on faith or intellectual convictions?
- On a far lighter note, when was the last time you didn't make your bed?
Misc
- Pop the bubble wrap.
- Good quick reference on crypto algorithms, protocols, and terms.
- Compliance Exchange (about worldwide regulations).
- Potentially useful sites, both of which require registration: FreshPatents.com and CiteULike.
- Search in one language, get results in another.
- Cartoons I've enjoyed: 1) living room scene with husband, wife, and dog floating. "Did you pay the gravity bill?" 2) Mother and son walking side by side wearing t-shirts. Hers says: I'm proud of my gay son. His says: I'm proud of my cross-dressing dad.
- Podcasting sites: iPodder.org and audio.weblogs.com.
- pi in your eye: Brian Taylor's site and JoyOfPi.com.
- RFID tags aren't enough for tracking diving marine dwellers. Related: Nova's shark resources.
- Grady Booch's blog.
- Inaugural Anita Borg Awards (women in technology).
- Source code for JACL.NET, a Tcl interpreter. Related: Tcl FAQs.
- Interesting Science Friday audio show (Octavia Butler, David Brin, Lawrence Krauss, and Paul Allen) from the inauguration of Paul Allen's Science Fiction Museum.
- Highly recommended book, "A First Look at Microsoft SQL Server 2005 for Developers" (sample Chapter 7 and code fragments). Related and highly recommended: Bob Beauchemin's blog on SQL Server 2005 and
13-page 11/04 article (with code) on tracing data access in ADO.NET 2.0.
- Dr. Ecco's January 2005 Scientific American column challenges us to a game of "four 4s." According to Dennis Shasha, "the idea is that you want to set up an arithmetic expression to give you as many consecutive integers as possible using the digit 4 alone, at most four times. For example, you can get 1 by dividing 4 by itself and 2 by taking the square root of 4." You can use the standard arithmetic operators, parentheses, exponentiation, square root, concatenation, decimal, decimal repeat, and factorial.
- Another challenge is to derive "textonyms," sets of words generated by a sequence of key presses on a cell phone. For example, 2-2-4-3 can signify ache, acid, or cage. According to Meg Kingston, the largest set she knows is 2-6-9 (Amy, any, bow, box, boy, cow, cox, coy, coz.)
11 December 2004
Rod pointed out that I had 142 links in last week's D&Ds [I admit, I teased her a bit--Rod ;-], so I'm trying to return to my original vision of supplying about a dozen links per week. Doesn't look like I quite made it, but hope you enjoy the less-overwhelming list.
Readable
Selected KB articles
Browsable
Downloadable
Heads Up
Jargon/Acronym Alert
- NCE - new chemical entity (used in pharaceutical industry)
- Baldwin Effect - the possible result of the interaction of evolution with learning by individual animals over their lifetimes, named after J. Mark Baldwin, an American naturalist who described it in 1896. Related: Baldwin Effect revived for discussion and Social Learning and the Baldwin Effect.
- WEP - Wired Equivalent Privacy (an encryption protocol for WLANs) and Weak Equivalency Principle (related to gravitation and relativity).
Thought Question
- If you could instantly be endowed with knowledge of another language (programming or spoken) or development platform, what would it be?
Misc
4 December 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Browsable
- Craig Skibo's VS2005 blog. Samples: how to import and install templates in Whidbey at and what the Properties object and collection are.
- Microsoft .NET Development for Microsoft Office.
- Darrell Norton's blog about test-driven development in .NET, with links to NUnit project member Jim Newkirk's recent book and code. Related: Peter Provost's article on test-driven development in .NET.
- VBDogs - VB Developers Online Group.
- VBdotNETHeaven.
- GeekswithBlogs.
- Free Online Assessments: Microsoft Visual Studio .NET.
- MapPoint Developer Center.
- Create Karaoke, Windows Media Player Style.
- Learn how to write a Windows Media Player Audio DSP plug-in that can remove primary vocals from audio files.
- Rijndael/AES home page.
- Ken Getz's 10/29 MSDN Webcast (event code 1032258775) on "Working with Data using the Enhanced GridView and DetailsView Controls in ASP.NET 2.0" described and launchable. Also Ken's code and his PPTs. Related: Dino Esposito's article on a DetailsView control for ASP.NET 1.x.
- An Economist "survey" series of articles on IT complexity.
- Good article, The Lean, Green Service Machine on how service organziations can adapt productivity enhancements created for the manufacturing sector. Example: Dell's tech support/call center system that uses AI.
- Presentations (some, not all) from VMware's recent VMworld 2004 conference, including 12 taped breakout sessions. Requires free registration.
- Microsoft Product Lifecycle Information site.
- Tutorial on getting started building apps with MS Speech Server.
- Sample chapters from Ed Yourdon's new Outsource: Competing in the Global Productivity Race.
Introduction to Outsourcing and Outsourcing: Likely Trends for the Next Decade and Likely Trends for the Next Decade.
- AAAS's (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 308 Fellows for 2004.
- Transcript of interesting 11/23/04 interview with paleoanthropologist (PhD)/author (The Sparrow, Children of God) Mary Doria Russell.
- Top 100 books of all time as voted by 100 "noted writers" from 54 countries.
- 30 VB.NET tips from FMS. Sample: "When working with Windows Form apps, you may want to ensure that only one copy of your .exe runs at a time. In VB6, you could use the Forms property to get a list of all open forms, or use App.PrevInstance to see if your app was already running. In .NET, however, similar functionality isn't available. Instead, use the System.Threading.Mutex class."
- Nanotechnology journalist Howard Lovy's blog.
- EContent's 4th Annual EC100.
- Is yours listed? The Wireless Geographics Logging Engine's database has almost 2M WLANs. Related:
WEPCrack, Airsnort at SourceForge or Schmoo, and
WEPWedgie.
- Business Week's Oct 11 article on The World's rising Innovation Hot Spots.
Downloadable
Heads Up
- DLP - as in digital light processing (think DSP on steroids).
- WLAN mesh networks.
Travelable
Jargon/Acronym Alert
- CEP: cascade error projection, a learning algorithm for artificial neural networks. NasaTech and worldscinet.
- FPGA: Field Programmable Gate Array. Devices that can support thousands of gates and are often used in prototyping ICs. Related: about HP's Teramac.
here and
here.
- GTIN - Global Trade Identification Number, a family of EAN.UCC global data structures that employ 14 digits and can be encoded into various types of data carriers. Currently, only used within bar codes, but likely to be part of many RFID implementations.
- VRS: Virtual Reference Stations that can make RT corrections to GPS readings. Info: here and
here.
- TEM: Telecom Expense Manager
- Content monkey for AOL - how blogger Ana Marie Cox refers to her life before Wonkette.
Thought Questions
- Albert Einstein once said that "Science is what you know; philosophy is what you don't know." To what extent do you think we *really* know anything, scientific or otherwise? Aren't scientific hypotheses, even laws, always subject to refutation by new discoveries? Even mathematics, which is supposed to be the solidest of the sciences, can be attacked as basically being an intricate, yes, sometimes "elegant" house of cards, can't it?
- Have you read any of the new genre of "graphic" (cartoon-style) novels? They beg the question of what novels are. How do *you* define "novels," and what was the last one you read (in your copious spare time)? A librarian's portal to info about graphic novels.
- If you were an executive and had the opportunity of reducing expenses by either using prison labor or offshoring, which would you do? (Microsoft is among many firms that reportedly use or have used prison labor.)
Misc
- Inifinifield, a *new* strategy board game that's designed for two to four players, ages 6 to adult. It "breaks away from traditional games with a fixed board layout and takes the playing field to the third dimension," and it happens to also have been invented by my friends, the Zanevsky family. *Very* cool and highly recommended.
- Q&A with Microsoft's Yuval Neeman, corporate VP of the Storage and Platforms Solutions Group about Microsoft's forthcoming (second half of 2005) Data Protection Server (DPS).
- Why the I-Hate-Oracle Club?
- 45-page PDF on what used to be DEC's VMS-based Rdb. Related: Rdb's current home page as an Oracle product. Also interesting - a short article on how Rdb is still being used. FWIW, Microsoft's Dave Cutter started his career at DEC in the VAX era, and many of the features of that OS are said to have influenced architectural decisions about Windows.
- Volunteerism opportunities: geekcorps, giscorps.org
- Possibility of carbon sequestration in briny water in depleted oil fields.
- Online Etymology Dictionary. (Inspired by my research after hearing Alan Alda refer to a character as being "ruthless, no ruth at all." In fact, back in the Middle Ages, they did use "reuthe" to mean compassion and pity.)
- Geostat - U of Virginia's geospatial and statistical data center.
- Archive of Punch/Daily Mail cartoons by Welsh cartoonist, Leslie Illingworth (1902-1979).
- Cyberlaw/IP prof Susan Crawford's blog focusing on technology policy. Also worth noting - her vetted list of other interesting blogs, ranging from the Yale Law School's LawMeme to John Perry Barlow's blog.
- MIT research scientist Dan Weitzner's excellent editorial on buildings as information systems.
- I recently read that there were about 200 types of neurons (not just the sensory, motor, and interneurons you may have learned about in school). Well, according to the Mind Project site, there may be thousands.
- Info from the USAF Research Labs.
24 November 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Turkey not your thing? How about BUGs?
Browsable
- Free GIS Resources [software, data & Ideas] user forum.
- Adobe Acrobat 7.0 released, Reader 7.0 coming soon. Related: PDFforLawyers site with tips.
- Free session Webcasts from VNU's Training Fall Conference, "Incorporating Online Learning," 1) Michael Allen's "How Executive Leadership in Rapid Prototyping can Improve ROI," 2) Susan Boyd's "Ten Ways to Make E-learning Stick," 3) Jay Cross and Gloria Gery's "History in the Making: The Debut of Workflow Learning," 4) Chris Florio: "Working with Streaming Multimedia," 5) Dave Meier's "Learning Styles: Creating the Accelerated Learning Smorgasbord," 6) Sivasailam Thiagarajan's "Requiring and Rewarding Higher-Order Thinking in Online Games and Simulations," and/or 7) Dave Weinberger's "The Information Revolution That Wasn't and the One That Will Be."
- Excerpt on business supermodels from Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan's "Confronting Reality."
- Very cool site on Plato's dialogues. Related: online version of most of the Great Books.
- "CLR god" Chris Brumme's blog.
- The US NIST and DOD-sponserd TREC site is for folks who're interested in text retrieval.
- Microsoft's Common Engineering Roadmap site for Windows Servers.
- Allen Holub's resource page on patterns.
- Business Week's 11/29 article on the US's top philanthropists. Bill and Melinda Gates continue to hold the top position, followed by Gordon and Betty Moore at #2. The Dells weigh in at #7, and Paul Allen at #9. Oracle's Larry Ellison continues to be MIA.
- Free poetry e-books.
Downloadable
Heads Up
Travelable
Jargon/Acroym Alert
- CUV - crossover utility vehicle (apologies is this is old hat to most of you - it was new to me)
- machinima - film genre and techniques used to create it.
At Wiki, machinima.com, and machinima.org.
- SEM - security event management.
- DPM - disruptive pattern material (think camouflage).
Thought Questions
- Imagine that you could do it over again and that money wasn't an issue. Which university would you want to attend, and what would you major in? How about a PhD? If you could go back to school today (again, assume money's not a problem), which PhD would you want to pursue?
- Mega-mergers such as the recently-announced one between Sears and Kmart, invariably inspire me the wonder how the IT functions will be combined and conformed. Imagine that you had been brought in as an outside consultant to oversee the IT part of the merger. Where would you start? Is this the kind of challenge you'd enjoy? Do you think the people and political issues would be worse than the actual technical problems?
- Do you ever "feel sorry" for turkeys and other animals that are raised in factory farm conditions? Do you think they have "feelings"? Do you think open-range animals are "happier" than those raised on factory farms?
Misc
- Are you a Tinkertoy programmer? "C# and VB.NET are so similar that you can't pull a decisive technical argument why one is better than the other. It's all about the Framework-all the .NET languages compile to the same thing," said Dan Appleman, president of San Jose-based component vendor Desaware Inc. and author of the forthcoming e-book, "VB.NET or C#: Which to Choose," which compares the 2005 versions of the languages. While VB developers opt for VB.NET, and C++ and Java developers gravitate toward C#, the decision is driven more by psychology than technology, said Appleman. "C++ programmers have had to know a lot more than VB programmers. The bar is much higher. They choose C# because they are too embarrassed to use VB," he said. Patrick Hynds, chief technology officer at CriticalSites Inc., agreed. "If a product is written in VB, they will think it is a Tinkertoy," he said, referring to the ISV customers that the Burlington, Mass.-based consulting company serves. "But C# and VB.NET are virtually equal" Related: Dan Appleman's updated $9.95 e-book (for VS 2005) on VB vs. C# and tinkertoys and another Hasbro favorite, Mr. Potato Head. On a lighter note: Top 10 reasons VB.NET is better than C#.
- Great online resource of articles on ancient history.
- Great links about journalism.
- Tolkien fans would probably like the special 50th Anniversary edition of "Lord of the Rings" ($100).
- Got kids? They might enjoy Jon Scieszka's funny 40-page Science Verse and/or Neil Downie's Ink Sandwiches, Electric Worms, and 37 Other Experiments for Saturday Science.
- The 11/23 PBS Frontline program on the secret history of the credit card will be available for online viewing 11/26. Explains how banks, in conjunction with the major US credit reporting agencies, three national credit reporting agencies (CRAs), Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, target profitable "revolvers" who don't (or can't) pay off their charges monthly. Related: an excellent 11/22 WSJ article on how casinos like Harrahs' use data mining to lure customers.
- Business 2.0's December issue has a feature on the 5 Lessons of 2004: 1) if you want to make money, make money for the likes of eBay and Amazon, 2) luxury sells, 3) smart service keeps customers, but smarter service prunes bad ones, 4) the handheld is the new platform, and 5) you *can* do more with less (think outsourcing).
- Analysis of Vivisimo's search engine.
- Cartoon I've liked: man in bookstore to bookseller, "I'm looking for something that will keep people away from me on the subway."
- Prof. Alan Hirshfield's prize-winning essay on Michael Faraday.
- Good two-part article on trade secret law. Part 1 and Part 2.
20 November 2004
Readable
- As always, start here. Then check out gotdotnet.com's user samples.
- Stan Schultes' Language Enhancements in VB 2005.
- Using DataSets in InfoPath 2003.
- Employ Strong Encryption in Your Apps with Our CryptoUtility Component.
- 28-page excerpt from Teodor Lachev's book on SQL Server Reporting Services where he shows you how to extend RS's functionality with custom code. See also the code related to article.
- Three articles by Microsoft's Jack Greenfield on software factories.
- The December issue of Scientific American, with a feature by Luis Villarreal on viruses and a list of the SA 50. Related: Virology Journal.
- The December issue of Fast Company on innovation and creativity, including a feature on W.L. Gore (think Gore-Tex), and a shorter one on innovation at Microsoft, "What Money Can't Buy." Also cool: the November issue's feature on 101 people, ideas, and technologies that will change the way we work in 2005.
- Robert Northrup's article on function points, Why it's Time for FP++.
- 11/15/04 WSJ's Technology Innovators. The software winner: Witten Technologies for its imaging of underground conditions using CART, computer-assisted radar tomography .
- Good article by Raman Iyer and Mesper Lind on SQL Server 2005 Data Mining. Related: CRoss Industry Standard Process
for Data Mining.
- 10/25/04 Time Magazine feature, Is God in our Genes?
- Enrico Sabbadin's article on testing an assembly against a defined set of permissions. Related: his blog with tips on exploring Whidbey without installing it using the .NET Browser, for example.
Selected KB articles
Browsable
- Bangalore-base Raman Research Institute. Related: links to other scientific and technical URLs from India's Ministry of Science and Technology.
- Cornell's full-text search of its distributed digital Library of mathematical monographs.
- PBS series, They Made America on invention.
- Interesting variety of mainly short essays on software architecture. Related: SEI presentations.
- Visio's Lead Program Manager's blog with categories both for devs and users.
- Recent DigitalLife expo winners.
- Darrell Norton's blog on test-driven and agile development with .NET.
- ASP.NET 2.0 directory naming and compilation model changes.
- Embedded community with newsletter.
- Scholar.google.com!
- Wikipedia's disambiguation page.
- VARBusiness' Profitabilty Scorecard. #1: IBMGS with 2Q04 net income of 2.8B on 10.6B revenues. Not a bad margin, eh? Coming in at #2-5 were EDS, Bermuda-based Accenture, CSC, and H-P Services.
- Business Week's feature on the Online Ad Surge.
- Harris Interactive's annual 2004 Reputation Quotient. J&J is #1, followed by 3M, Coca-Cola, P&G, and UPS, with Microsoft at #6.
- ASP.NET 2.0 and VS 2005 beta forum.
- Former Microsoftie Adam Bosworth's site
- PARC's research.
Downloadable
Heads Up
Travelable
Jargon/Acronym Alert
- MODS (blue sky stuff) - Multiplexed Optical Data Storage
- DPS - Microsoft's new Data Protection Server, a low-cost, disk-based continuous backup and recovery solution
- ONIX is a powerful new publishing tool. ONIX (Online Information Exchange) is a communications format for sending all the information about a book that would be required for promotion. Developed by the book industry, ONIX is the standard format for publishers to send book data to retailers, distributors, and data companies. Your books can now appear online with all the reviews, categories, author biographies, and rich product information needed to effectively sell books on the Web. For more information on ONIX, visit www.bisg.org.
- Zero-day exploit - any vulnerability that's exploited immediately after its discovery
- IPMI, SMASH, WMX - competing server management protocols. Network Magazine.com and Information Week. Related: SMASH CLP.
- UDO - ultra-density optical storage.
- RCW - runtime callable wrapper
- BSM - and you thought BPM was bad enough? Try Business Services Management.
- EV-DO - Evolution Data Optimized (wireless data service competing with Wi-Max).
- Infranet.
Thought Question
- Are viruses alive? How about prions? Does it matter? (Is the human ability to categorize learned or inherited, and are we "slaves" to it?) Remember the old model of animal, plant, and bacterial kingdoms? Well, today, most scholars list five: monera/bacteria, protists, fungi, plants, and animals. Jury's still out on viruses. (See the SA article mentioned above)
Misc
- Lukasz Golab and M. Tamer Ozsu's paper, Processing Sliding Window Multi-Joins in Continuous Queries. "We study sliding window multi-join processing in continuous queries over data streams. Several algorithms are reported for performing continuous, incremental joins, under assumption that all the sliding windows fit in main memory. The algorithms include multi way incremental nested loop joins (NLJs) and multi-way incremental hash joins. We also propose join ordering heuristics to minimize the processing cost per unit time." From the same authors: an August 2003 paper, Evaluation of DBMSs Using XBench Benchmark.
- David DeHaan's paper on extending bottom-up compensation-based algorithms for calculating the usability of a view to answer a database query, where both query and view definition are multi-block SQL queries containing aggregation.
- Most of us don't have to deal with petabytes of data. But if you're involved with or interested in bioinformatics, you might want to skim this.
- Best places to see hawks.
- Participate in any of several online psychological experiments, such as the Experiment on Human-Robot-Communication.
- Neuroscientist Rick Grush's home page with some online papers.
- Subscriber access to reprints of Science articles, with some access to supporting materials for non-subscribers, too.
- Add computer use to high blood pressure, smoking, and genetics in contributing to development of glaucoma.
- Excellent cartography/map history portal maintained by retired British Library map librarian Tony Campbell.
- Interesting-sounding books. 1) Steel Bolt Hacking (I'm not kidding), 2) Convict Cookbook, 3) Wee Book of Calvin. On a more serious note - forthcoming book which sounds interesting: Hedieh Nasheri's Economic Espionage and Industrial Spying.
- Inflation data.
- Lobbying Juggernaut. Depressing feature on the influence of NAB on media. Related: the recent PBS Frontline special, The Persuaders. According to the show, Little Rock-based Acxiom, categorizes US households into about 70 categories ("demographic tribes"), an expertise that was leveraged for "narrowcasting" in the recent US Presidential election.
- Speaking of Little Rock, here's a description I've enjoyed: the Clinton libary as a 1) trailer on stilts or a 2) recumbent phone booth.
- Cartoons I've enjoyed: 1) several children are fingerpainting. One says "I don't fingerpaint. But I do collect quality fingerpaintings." 2) Man in trenchcoat in back alley: "I'm here for the offshore outsourcing discussion." 3) Security guard to museum patron viewing David-type sculpture with Jockey shorts and Rodin-type Thinker with boxers: "Thank God John Ashcroft is leaving."
- Ad I've enjoyed: Shows the cover of a book by Eliot Spitzer, "Great e-mails I have read." The advertiser? Iron Mountain, advertising its e-mail archiving.
- Interesting article on smart (think RFID) tires.
- France tries harder.
- FEMA mapping and analysis site.
13 November 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Browsable
Downloadable
Heads Up
- The November issue of ACM Queue features an interesting conversation with IBM Fellow Bruce Lindsay. (And remember, US and Canadians can apply for a free sub.) Kode Vicious's ongoing columns are also interesting. Example: 5 pet peeves - crappy comments, dangling else clauses, magic numbers, code dingleberries, and global variables. AOL's Vijay Gill's article, "Lack of Priority Queuing Considered Harmful" is also good.
Travelable
- Islamic Art exhibit from London's Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, through 2/6/05.
Jargon/Acronym Alert
- ZEPP - Zero Emission Power Plant.
- DEP - Data Execution Prevention.
- Wittgenstein's beetle. Everyone knows about Schrodinger's cat. "Imagine, he says, that everyone has a small box in which they keep a beetle. However, no one is allowed to look in anyone else's box, only in their own. Over time, people talk about what is in their boxes and the word "beetle" comes to stand for what is in everyone's box. Through this curious analogy, Wittgenstein is trying to point out that the beetle is very much like an individual's mind."
Related: Wittgenstein's Beetle And Other Classic Thought Experiments.
- PEAP - Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol (vs LEAP).
- PON - Passive Optical Network. Related: EPON (Ethernet PON), BPON (Broadband PON), GPON (Gigabit PON), APON (ATM-based PON).
- NAT - Network Address Translation.
Thought Question
- Robert Musil (1880-1942, Austrian utopian novelist and essayist with a PhD in philosophy from the University of Berlin) once said that, "One can't be angry with one's time without doing damage to oneself." Do you agree? More info on Musil: here and
here.
Misc
- American Heritage's Overrated/Underrated feature. One of the underrated: Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899). His greatest lectures. Related: other historical writings.
- FBI's 10 Most Wanted Fugutives currently includes three non-US citizens, including Osama Bin Laden (the other two are wanted for drug-related crimes).
- Carl Session Stepp's excellent essay on Journalism without Profit Margins.
- Prof. Wesley Wildman's intriguing online course in modern Western theology.
- One person *can* make a difference (safeguarding turtles, in this case).
- Why molten salt is used in manufacturing aluminum arrows.
- Eric Davis' August 2004 88-page Teleportation Physics Study report prepared for the USAF.
- US Army's PackBot tactical robot system. Related:
slashdot.org/science.
- Alexander Brandon's picks for five best classic game soundtracks (11/04 GDMag.com): Legend of the Kage, The Dig, Metroid, Wing Commander, and Shadow of the Beast.
- Worried about your job being outsourced to India? Start worrying about China and its 2004 crop of 2.8 million college graduates.
- Computer forensics expanding to include printers.
- Did you know that UPS was the railways' biggest customer?
- The seemingly lethargic pace of the US DHS isn't the only problem causing confusion and delays in the transportation sector.
- WSJ's list of 50 women to watch, conveniently categorized.
- Excellent essay by Stratford Caldecott on comic-book heroes.
- The 11/9 WSJ had an interesting article about German Wal-Marts offering wine tasting singles nights. Not at my Wal-Mart!
- INC's December issue (not online yet) lists the Top 10 celebrity entrepreneurs. The top five: Magic Johnson, Sean Combs, Paul Newman, Francis Coppola, and Kathy Ireland.
- Interesting 10-page PDF on a methodology for summarizing from multiple documents.
6 November 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Browsable
Downloadable
Heads Up
Travelable
- ASP.NET Connections & Visual Studio Connections, Nov 7-10 in Las Vegas,
- IntegrationWorld, Nov 8-10 in San Diego.
- Application Integration and Web Services Summit, Nov 15-17 in Orlando.
- XML Conference and Expo, Nov 15-19 in Washington, D.C.
- Star West, Nov 15-19 in Anaheim, Calif.
- Portals, Collaborations, and Content Management, Dec 7-9 in Orlando.
Jargon/Acronym Alert
Thought Question
- I'm a big fan of the Teaching Company's "classes" and have just finished Shalom Goldman's excellent course on Ancient Near Eastern Myths and Elizabeth Vandiver's equally great class on classical mythology (Listening to them full-blast during my daily ablutions beats singing in the shower). My question: Most would agree that the characters in Harry Potter's universe and those populating the Star Wars sagas represent some of today's mythological figures. Can you think of others? Have you invented any for yourself or your kids? For more on myths, try here.
Misc
- List of papers sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation. Related: Links to some of Andrew Carnegie's still existing libraries.
- Find out about Minix, a small, UNIX-like OS for IBM PCs and compatibles, that reportedly influenced Linus Torvalds. Also Virtually Minix: A Tutorial & Intro to Minix on XP via Bochs.
- An article in the 11/04 issue of HBR (for subscribers), "CRM Done Right," recommends that organizations ask themselves four questions as they embark on CRM: 1) Is the problem strategic? 2) Does the CRM solution focus on the pain point? 3) Do they need perfect data? and 4) What's the right way the expand an initial implementation?
- Apply for a free sub to Game Developer. Also get code from back issues. One article I liked in the 11/04 issue was Sunbir Gill's "Visual Finite State Machine AI Systems." Should be online soon.
- Microsoft's Security MVPs.
- Cartoons I've enjoyed: One businessman to another, "Surely they realize that ethics laws just put us on the slippery slope of legislating morality.", 2) Businessman into phone receiver (staffer with earphones, in front on computer monitor in the background): "Of course I trust you. I'm just waiting for the trace to come through.", 3) Micromanager leaning over cubicle, to another employee who's seated in front of computer, "Comma!"
- Check interactions of drugs.
- Tired of the same old corporate grind? Under 35 with no skeletons in your closet?
- Tired of the same old airline accommodations? According to the current Forbes FYI, Emirates Airline offers you a private suite ($10K RT) for your NYC to Dubai flights. Related: EMIRATES REINVENTS LONGHAUL TRAVEL WITH THE ULTIMATE IN LUXURY, SERVICE AND ENTERTAINMENT.
- New Oracle BI Spreadsheet Add-In lets users navigate Oracle10g OLAP data from within Microsoft Excel.
- For years, Bennington was the most expensive private college. But Putney, VT-based Landmark College has earned that distinction the last two years. Ready for $36,750/year? (board and room not included).
Related: The Chronicle of Higher Education, Tuition and Fees.
- Worrying about holiday gift-giving yet? "Resource Revival is the leading source for unique recycled gifts and home furnishings."
- How the Red Sox IT department used caching to deal with the team's recent World Series-related surge in network traffic.
- Interesting article on the remilitarization of Japan.
- Mark Stefik's article on invention and innovation. Related: CRN's 10/18/04 feature on 15 Innovators includes the head of Oracle's server unit and IBM's head of autonomic computing, but no one from Microsoft. And Transcript of Michael Schrage's speech on the need for disruptive technologies that he gave at Microsoft's recent CEO summit:
- A blurb in the 10/25/04 Infoworld cites an IDC survey that predicts the worldwide market for offshore IT services to grow from nearly $7B in 2003 to $17B in 2008. Related: Ed Yourdon's written a new book on outsourcing.
Editorial by Yourdon and his Web site.
- The current issue of Dr. Dobbs features databases. The current issue of MSDN Mag focuses on security.
30 October 2004
Readable
- As always, start here. Then check out gotdotnet.com's user samples.
- Two interesting articles about MS Research: Microsoft Research Hones Search and interview with Rick Rashid, one of Bill Gates' few direct reports.
- Good meat and potatoes chapter on relational algebra where Rebeca Riordan explains topics like three-valued logic and theta joins.
- Step-by-step instructions on restoring a SQL Server database.
- Microsoft Access 2003's documentation tool for object dependencies. (These last three items gleaned from Garry Robinson's current - 50th - Access Unlimited newsletter.)
- Read an interesting PDF, A Comparison of Hyperstructures: Zzstructures, mSpaces, and Polyarchies on the intersection of graph theory, zzstructures, and hypertext.
- Good ENT News editorial, Ballmer in Gartner's Hot Seat. Transcript of Ballmer's comments.
- Arif Kureshy's article on Architecting Disconnected Mobile Apps using an SOA.
- Matthew MacDonald's Visual Studio .NET Developer feature on VB2005's new language features.
- Jason Price's excellent article on using Oracle (8i or higher) database transactions within .NET (1.0 or higher).
- Multicore pricing at 1) Microsoft. 2) Oracle
- SQL Server comparisons and test links suggested by Amin Sobati:
- Interesting articles on IBM's Rational and GCS units eliciting responses from Microsoft and others.
- Transcript of Michael Schrage's speech on the need for disruptive technologies that he gave at Microsoft's recent CEO summit.
- Andrew Odlyzko's 24-page paper on the parallels between the evolution of price discrimination in transportation and what may happen to the Internet.
- Fascinating multi-part feature on Wal-Mart's IT operations. Wal-Mart, which refuses to outsource IT operations (though some would say it effectively outsources to its suppliers), spends less than 1% of revenues on IT.
- Lots of information to be had in Information Week's Industry 500 issue which covers analyzes firms in 21 categories. Banking and financial services lead in % revenues spent on IT (9%), with construction, distribution, metals/natural resources, and retail spending only 1%.
Selected KB articles
Browsable
Downloadable
Heads Up
Travelable
Jargon/Acronym Alert
- VVPT (Voter Verified Paper Trail) Synonym: VVPB - Voter Verified Paper Ballot.. Related: 51-page March 2004 PDF on electronic miscounts and malfunctions and Bruce Schneier's 12/15/03 http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0312.html#9 newsletter item about e-voting.
- Grid storage.
- rRNA (ribosomal), RNAi (interference), shRNA (short hairpin), siRNA (small interfering), snRNA (small nuclear), miRNA (micro). I don't know about you, but when I went to university, mRNA (messenger) and tRNA (transfer) were the only ones we knew about.
- PLM - product lifecycle management , a technology that allows manufacturers such as GM and Boeing to "re-use" and standardize on designs.
Thought Questions
- Imagine that you or a loved one is terminally ill and that you read about research that may provide promise. Although the research is far from clinical trials you (or your loved one) are willing to serve as a "human guinea pig." Should you be allowed to?
- The current US election, with all the talk of "faith" and "values" has led me to ponder what I see as the extremely uneasy relationship between church and state. Do you think it's appropriate for priests, rabbis, and ministers to take public political stands from the pulpit? What do you think of the French ban on Muslim girls wearing scarves to school? Related: open letter from 200+ theologians on the "theology of war".
- Do you think that some implementations of bioengineering and genetic engineering technology are a form of eugenics?
- Given women's role in combat (37 female military fatalities in the current Iraq war, for example) and their use as hostages, do you think women's "special" status as people to be protected (along with children) is eroding - a quaint anachronism? In a society that prohibits sex discrimination, is this appropriate?
- Is it ethical to establish bounties for suspected criminals and terrorists? Do you realize that US taxpayer dollars are being used for this purpose?
Misc
- How To Write Unmaintainable Code (suggested by Rod).
- Free (for 1 year) .INFO domains from Dotster.
- First Measured Century, Ben Wattenburg's (he's the host of PBS's Think Tank with Ben Wattenburg) website with transcripts and/or video replay of the three-hour special. Related: www.pbs.org/thinktank with ten years of transcripts!
- Audubon's first report on State of the Birds isn't encouraging.
- Spiderman and princess costumes reportedly top the list of favorite costumes for Halloween 2004. Related: George Bush masks are apparently outselling John Kerry masks, which vendors claim has always been an accurate predictor of election results. But then, Nickelodeon TV reports that kids picked Kerry over Bush.
- Innovations: 1) power rear doors (described in 10/21 WSJ), 2) Smart fabrics.
- Quarterly listing of US Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Station's recent pubs.
- Hurricane names.
- You can register to obtain a free copy of the educational white paper Implementing Data Quality as a Corporate Service.
- "Consilience" at Caltech?
- Article on new Whois policies effective 11/12.
- Description on Brigham's Ice Cream "Reverse the Curse" ice cream (vanilla loaded with chocolate covered peanuts or "baseballs," chocolate covered caramel "bases," and swirls of famous fudge sauce.)
- Article on keeping SKU data accurate.
- Sounds like a good read: Evan Schwartz's new book, Juice, The Creative Fuel That Drives World-Class Inventors.
- Excellent article on GE's nuclear power business.
- Sounds handy for the road warrior: D-Link's $US99 802.11g pocket router.
- Sounds cool for the gadget geek: solar-powered vest on sale for about $US535.
- Adam Machanic's article in SQL Server Professional (I'm the editor) on using server-side traces to detect unused objects.
- Southwest Airlines' Teradata data warehouse weighs in at 2TB! SWA seems to use Oracle 9i as its operational database, with other apps running on Sybase and SQL Server.
- Cartoons I've enjoyed: 1) Pinnochio character with long nose to man: "Sometimes it works in my favor. I got off jury duty." 2) Wife to husband in response to TV announcer's statement that "Last night Bush called his opponent the 'L' word." "John Kerry is a lesbian?" and 3) Sign held by senior standing on street corner: "Will trade a gallon of gas for a flu shot."
- US State Department picks finalists in technology for future US passports.
- Heartening story about Emmett Till's 1955 murder case being re-opened. Too bad the primary perpetrators are already dead.
- Great illustration of a Rube Goldberg-type device for tying ties "Bot under the collar" in the November Wired (not online yet).
- An article in the 10/27 WSJ reports that rents on NYC's Fifth Avenue are the highest in the world at $US950/ft2 - pointing out that most retailers on Fifth Avenue actually lose money, relying on other stores or catalog sales to make money. Related: the most recent NYC taxi medallion sold for a record $360K. Also related: 10/27 was the 100th anniversary of the NY subway system, which transports about 4.5M riders/day.
- Recent interview with Jane Goodall.
23 October 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
VB .NET
VB 6
Browsable
Downloadable
Heads Up
Travelable
Jargon/Acronym (Jargonym?) Alert
Thought Question
Do you think humans have a "moral obligation" to learn? That learning is a form of worship?
Misc
- NPR (and radio) jargon. 12-page PDF:
- Salad packaging.
- Leave the driving to LimoLiner, which has launched an alternative to air travel between Boston and NYC for $69 each way. Take advantage of Wi-Fi that works via the DirecTV satellite on top of the bus from the luxury of your leather seat.
- Innovations (the continuing saga): 1) Smart underwear and 2) TP Saver (as in preventing pets and kids from making a mess pulling it off the roll). This site also features shoe clues and belly bras. Got you curious?
- Bought a car or SUV recently? It's interesting to me how much of the automaker companies' profits are from their credit divisions. According to the 10/20 WSJ, Ford reported Q3 profits of $266M - $117M from Ford Credit.
- Oracle security alert.
- Ed Yourdon's written a new book on outsourcing.
- Sounds useful: Linksys's 802.11g a new wireless line.
- Interesting editorial in the 10/21 WSJ by 2004 Economics Nobelist Edward Prescott, "Why do Americans Work so Much More than Europeans?" about tax policy. Related: FRB Minneapolis Research Archive article.
16 October 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Browsable
- Read about the recent Web 2.0 conference at web2con.com and
BBC News. Related: Web 2.0 Program Chair John Battelle's Searchblog site.
- Search a database of almost 7,000 medical images and videos.
- NoodleQuest - a wizard that helps to develop the optimum Web-based search strategy.
- Info about PreEmptive Solutions' Dotfuscator.
- Tom Shinder's WinXPnews is one of favorite e-mail newsletters - tips & tweaks and how-to's esp. Recommended!
- Kent Sharkey's blog.
- VS2005news blog.
- SeatGuru provides info such as location of power outlets on 175+ types of aircraft.
- Kinja, weblog portal.. Related:
eContent article.
- Audio and video playbacks of a panel discussion (including Jim Gray, Jim Melton, Rick Cattell, and others) about XML/XQuery, SQL, and grid computing.
Related: Interview with Michael Rys.
- US and Canadian residents can apply for a free subscription to ACM Queue. The September issue focused on VOIP, but has other interesting articles.
- The current (October 2004, Vol. 43, No. 3) issue of the IBM Systems Journal features unstructured information management.
Downloadable
- Microsoft ASP.NET ValidatePath Module to protect (sigh) "ASP.NET applications against all potential canonicalization problems known to Microsoft."
- Updated Windows XP SP2 support tools (bitsadmin.exe, extract.exe, httpcfg.exe, iadstools.dll, ipseccmd.exe, netdom.exe, replmon.exe).
- Windows XP Embedded with SP2 Technology Preview.
- Google on the desktop!
- Craig Andera's RichTextEditor.
- Encrypted e-mail client for the Treo (this also gleaned from Crypto-Gram).
- Free LiveMessage Blogger Edition for pushing non-commerical blog content as MSN alerts, e-mail, etc.
- Several interesting-sounding freeware downloads from Morrison Schwartz.
- SQL Server 2005 hands-on labs.
- Brad Fitzpatrick's open source memcached, a "high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic Web applications by alleviating database load."
- Open source Windows Packet Capture Library.
- RealAlernative 1.25, which lets you play RealMedia files without having to install RealPlayer/RealOne Player.
- Oracle9i and 10g data providers for .NET (ODP.NET).
- Freeware version of GFI LANguard Portable Storage Control. (Free freeware key required after 60-day evaluation period)
Heads Up
- Free wireless is beginning to be deployed at rest stops in the US, according to a brief news item in the 9/24 WSJ.
- The November issue (not online yet) of MSDN Magazine focuses on security.
Travelable
- 4th Annual E-Learning Conf, Oct 20 in Tysons Corner, VA.
- CTIA, Oct 25-27 in SF.
- TDWI World Conf, Oct 31-Nov 5 in Orlando.
- WiMax World, Nov 2-4 in Boston.
- VOIP 2004 World Congress, Nov 15-18 in Nice.
- Microsoft IT Forum 2004, Nov 16-19 in Copenhagen.
- 5th E-Gov Institute Homeland Security Conf, Nov 30-Dec 1 in Washington, DC.
- 5th E-Gov Institute Information Assurance Conf, Dec 1-2 in Washington, DC.
Jargon/Acronym Alert
- COA - compliance-oriented architecture (sigh)
- POC - point of care, as in hospitals using wireless technology
- WiMAX - Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access
- Mesh networking - alternative to centralized wireless networks that allows nodes or access points to communicate directly with other nodes, eliminating centralized failure and permitting self-healing and self-organization.
- SIM - 1) simple instant messenger, 2) security information management, and (among many others) 3) Subscriber Identity Module, as in SIM cards.
- tla - Tom Lord's (Gnu) Arch revision control software. Tom Lord's Software and Linux Journal. (The Nov Linux Journal issue also features the 2004 Reader's Awards).
- LLDP - link layer discovery protocol.
Thought Question
If you were uber rich (let's say a billionaire at least), how would you use the bulk of your money? Keep it in the family, investing to make it grow? Fund good works, such as health-care, anti-poverty, or literacy initiatives? Spend as much as you could on a luxurious lifestyle? Build visible monuments to yourself by building named skyscrapers or stadiums, for example? Invest in R&D? Buy an election (or a politician)? Related: 2003 Slate 60 of top charitable contributions.
[A friend of mine who is a financial advisor quoted someone (I don't remember who) as saying, "Give your children enough money to do anything but not enough to do nothing." Rod]
Misc
- Calculate your "Franingham index" of heart risk by answering 137 questions.
- Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook.
- Harold Pinter (British playwright) site.
- Neat "History of FoxPro" site.
- As a student, remember learning about Bishop Usher's 1650 pronouncement that earth was created on Oct 22, 4004 BC/BCE? Well, according to Bishop Usher, the Earth is coming up on its 6,000th birthday on Oct 22.
- Innovations: 1) Smart watches, 2) New help for crossword puzzle aficionados, 3) Brain chip "reads mind".
- Mark Liberman's Language log.
- Common Criteria update.
- Cyberinfrastructure for next-gen oceanography labs.
- Robert Crease discusses the "greatest equations ever."
- Interesting trivia: the NY Times reports that there are about 36,000 Chinese restaurants in the US - more than the combination of McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's. The Dallas Morning News says there are 417 drive-in movie theatres left in the US.
- Positive review of Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan's new book, Confronting Reality. (Their three areas: external realities, internal realities, and financial targets).
- According to the CIA Factbook site, the US has a literacy rate (age 15 and older who can read and write) of 97%, while the worldwide literacy rate is supposedly 77%.
- Given a US population of about 293M, the $10B http://agpolicy.org/tobquota.html buyout of US tobacco farmers will cost each man, woman, and child about $35 - better than buying a carton of cigarettes, I suppose. "Buyout" seems to be a misnomer, since farmers keep their land just collect $3-$7/lb (based on past production) over ten years.
9 October 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Browsable
Downloadable
Heads Up
Travelable
Jargon/Acronym Alert
- CISO - chief information security officer
- GoogleWhackBlatt - single words that produce precisely one word in Google. Related: The Ultimate Googlewhackblatt Page.
- ADR - adiabatic demagnetization refrigerator.
Thought Questions
- Would you consider dating or marrying someone who was a strong advocate of a different political party than you are? Variation: assuming you're a non-smoker, would you date and/or marry a smoker? (If you're a smoker, would you date/marry someone you knew would "be on your case" to quit?
- If asked to do something unethical and/or illegal (offer a potential customer a bribe, for example), would you blow the whistle? To whom, e.g. the person's supervisor or to "authorities"? Related:
Fed biologists ordered to rewrite salmon study. Also related - smart cities and dumb laws or what? Read the 10/7 WSJ article on "How Bit Tax Shelter with Cities Shortchanges Federal Treasury."
- Do you believe in the notion/law of conservation of information?
Misc
- 2004 Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest winners.
- Interview with NASA's Michael Flynn who heads up the Medusa Project to test for abiotic life.
- The American Bar Association has an exhibit of the 25 US lawyer-presidents.
- Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large, "a Web-based print zine providing annotated citations (cites) and commmentary (insights) on a range of topics related to the intersections and interactions of libraries, messages, people, media, and technology."
- Oracle technical articles (free OTN reg req'd)
- 30-page white paper on troubleshooting the Oracle Forms Listener servlet.
- Working with Oracle's SQL*Loader direct path loads.
- Formatting report output in Oracle HTML DB with report templates.
- HP has been in the news recently for woes related to its more than two-year attempt to consolidate its 30 ERP systems to four and reduce its supply chains from "60 to 70" to five. (Hey, no one ever said SAP was easy to implement). Related: Wharton article on the results of the HP/Compaq merger.
- DHS faces problems consolidating data and systems, too. GAO: DHS infrastructure still lacking and Readying a new model. Do you blame the DHS cyber-security chief for quitting?
- Adriana de Souza e Silva appears to be a spiritual heir of Marshal McLuhan, with a focus on design and media arts.
- Search engine InfoMine lets you search by category, "Maps and GIS," for example. Related: a new search engine beta.
- Backpacking Light.
- Did you know that a Nusselt number is a sort of "a dimensionless temperature gradient at the surface"?
Wikipedia and
scienceworld.wolfram.com.
- Wikis proliferate: JotSpot Wiki-builder beta and socialtext.com.
- NASA's Robonaut.
- Innovation at work:
- Headlined boobs of steel.
- 9/30/04 WSJ article on competing solutions to the vexing "sticky shower curtain" phenom,
- Teambuilding for boys who need their toys.
- Ethical hacking?
- "Affordable" Crays (starting at under $100K).
- 1000+ album covers from the Blue Note label.
- PEA Soup - dedicated to "philosophy, ethics, and academia.
- The 10/7/04 issue of WSJ describes new high tech gadgets for cars. (Search for "add-ons and cars") The same issue has a good article on how Google is encroaching on Amazon, while Paul Strassmann thinks Microsoft and Google are the pair to watch.
- On a lighter note: Gregg and Evan Spirindelli's "This Land is Your Land" and "Good to be in DC" video clips.
- Coda: remember my recent plug for C.P. Snow's "Two Cultures?" Well, I probably should have mentioned E.O. Wilson's "Consilience." Read a good interview with a new book that seems to covers the same ground.
- Coda 2: remember my recent plug for the New Yorker's $60 Complete Cartoons book with CDs? The latter include all 68,647 cartoons published in the mag.
2 October 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Browsable
- SQL Server's 1433 and 1434 still on the top ten list in current port attacks.
- Nice portal for DNS tools, WHOIS, tracert, ping, etc.
- US airport security wait-time estimates.
- Travel blogs such as TravelPod and MyTripJournal, as described in a 9/28 WSJ article (search for "travel blogs").
- WWI document archive.
- Audio and video playbacks of a panel discussion (including Jim Gray, Jim Melton, Rick Cattell, and others) discuss XML/XQuery, SQL, and grid computing.
Related: www.sqlsummit.com/People/MRys.htm.
- Storytelling sites: Center for Digital Story Telling and
National Story Telling Center.
- Issues in Science and Technology site (policy-oriented).
Downloadable
Travelable
Thought Questions
- Would you accept an IT job in Iraq today? How much would they have to pay you? Would your answer be different it the firm were one you considered "tainted" based on its reputation, e.g. under investigation for fraud? What if you'd have to work in a smoking environment? How big a life insurance policy would you require? Who would you name as beneficiary?
- The 10/1 WSJ describes jazz musician Cecil McBee's legal efforts to stop a company from using his name on its chain of stores. The company claims the name was selected randomly, but, according to a mathematician McBee hired to calculate the odds of randomly coming up with that name, the result was "less than 1 in 90,000." If you'd been the mathematician, how would you have tackled the problem?
Misc
- Google's GLAT.
- BooksFree.com (think Netflix for books).
- Online photos from Subhankar Banerjee's current exhibition on the Arctic National Refuge at Gerald Peters Gallery and World Without Borders.
- BBC's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (both the new and original series, plus tons of additional info suitable for DA fans).
- Nine scientists picked to receive 2004 NIH Pioneer grants for biomedical research.
- Hurry up and wait: US FDA postpones (again) plans that might protect animal feed from being tainted with BSE.
Ag Observatory and BP's Weblog . Related: FDA documents at Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and new problem in UK.
- Remember the days of "shock and awe?" Hurry up and don't wait?
- Did you know that the IBM 7090 series of mainframes introduced in 1959, made history by being transistorized?
- Did you know that left and right ears hear differently from infancy?
- Entrepreneurs and innovations: 1) Carnivorous robot.
, 2) Webcam-equipped playpens, 3) tuition insurance as reported in 9/28 WSJ, 4) "safe rooms" (plus hardened windows and roofs) in residential houses as reported in 9/30 WSJ (will bomb shelters have a renaissance?)
- View maps of crisis sites from UN's Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
- Recently enjoyed cartoons: 1) Boy to father: "Here's my report card. I beat the street expectations." 2) Businessman with cell phone and briefcase, looking down at sidewalk: "This better be important, Gordon. You just made me step on a crack." 3) Dinner guest to waiter at presumably swank restaurant, "Would you say the tuna salad kicks ass?"
- Interesting-sounding books: The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker with two CDs, Stacy Perman's Spies, Inc., Business Innovation from Israel's Masters of Espionage, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy. (See also an interview with Kennedy).
- IBM is launching its new BPTS (Business Performance Transformation Services) center and initiative. Related:
BPM Standards Group Releases Framework.
- ERP pioneer Jan Baan is "baack" with a new application development suite.
- Coda: remember my rant about grade inflation? Another symptom that something's amok is the number of college and university students who are required to take remedial classes - over 60% of Cal State San Bernardino's first-time students in 2003, for example.
25 September 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Browsable
Downloadable
Travelable
Jargon Alert
- Witches' knickers. One of several euphemisms (another is the "National Flower of South Africa") for plastic bag pollution as described in the 9/11/04 NewScientist article, Battle of the Bag.
- mongo. Any discarded item that is "rescued" from the trash. Related:
MONGO: ADVENTURES IN TRASH.
- DNA "barcoding." DNA barcoding, using cytochrome c oxidase 1 (CO1), has the potential to be used to identify the estimated 10 million species of eukaryotic life on earth. Census of Marine Life, DNA Barcoding Protocol.
- Zorbing. Adventure experience started in New Zealand where you strap yourself into a transparent ball and roll down hillsides.
Thought Questions
- How many layers of management exist in your organization? Do you think it's too many or not enough? How high are you aiming? Related: the US Interior and Commerce departments reportedly each have 27 layers of executive management, leading to a surge of "innovative" job titles.
- What was your high school GPA? High school GPAs are inching up (A- now seems to be average, with US News and World Report claiming that 47% American high school students earned A averages), and colleges aren't far behind.
Felten analysis refutes grade inflation claims and
Grade Inflation ... Why It's a Nightmare. Is grade inflation a problem? Would you try to get your child transferred to an "easy grader" teacher if he/she was assigned to a notorious "hard" grader, even if the latter was reputedly a "better" teacher?
Misc
- Navajo code talkers' dictionary.
- Parody of "preparedness" pamphlet mailed earlier this year to all UK citizens. Related: the original.
- Thoughtful article, Back to the Drawing Board: Is the Traditional Theory of the Firm Obsolete?
- Health-related: 1) See the 9/24 WSJ article about two simple $45 tests that can help identify stroke risk factors. (Search for "stroke" or "two simple tests" at WSJ.com. Related:
LifeLineScreening). 2) Read the interesting article on using dogs to detect bladder cancer. 3) California is poised to outlaw hand weeding (stoop labor) as a health risk. 4) American Printing House for the Blind. 5) Body Mass Index calculator.
- Good essay by Ken Gordon on an apparent exception to the notion of "two cultures." Related: CP Snow's updated book.
- Find out what's in store for the City of London skyline.
- Information about "green" building. Related: Nov 10-12 conf in Portland, OR.
- Much bruited article on globalization and outsourcing by Paul Samuelson, "Where Ricardo and Mill Rebut and Confirm Arguments of Mainstream Economists Supporting Globalization" (sub required). Good commentary here.
- Excellent article by Colin White on the 25-year evolution of RDBMSs. Related: David English on data quality (see esp. the sidebar on performing values, frequency and overlap analysis and generating scatter plots and histograms in addition to routine "data scrubbing.). A third article on the increasing demands on ETL (extract/transform/load) is also worth reading.
- It's that time of year again. Here's a book on football physics.
Also from Rodale Books: "Indian Summer: The Tragic Story of Louis Francis Sockalexis, the First Native American in Major League Baseball" and "Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children Really Learn-- And Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less"
- US taxpayers' dollars at work. Contrary to what many think, Reagan's "star wars" initiative isn't dead. Related: cost of the Iraq war.
- Review and analysis of a thought-provoking essay by scholar Stephen Greenblat, "Learning to Curse" (think of Caliban in Shakespeare's Tempest).
- Good links to cartoon sites.
- Pretty impressive operations.
- Ed Fredkin's digital philosophy site.
- Web-based arts radio.
- Cooper Hewitt design games.
- An *incredible* archive of audio documentaries (text transcripts also available gratis). Examples: Coney Island, Woody Guthrie, Yiddish Radio Project.
- Ian Truelove attempts to find patterns in "junk" DNA.
- Recently enjoyed cartoons: 1) Preacher from pulpit: "And don't forget to check our Frequently Answered Prayers section." 2) Cat with cellphone in tree: "I've done it again." 3) Man walking by pharmacy storefront notes sign in window: "Happy Hour 7-9 PM" 4) Bedtime scene. Daughter to father: "Mommy usually reads me a story, then slips me a twenty." 5) One woman to another on escalators: "I have no idea where we parked the car, or why we exist."
- Award-winning university, college, and community college libraries. The University of Washington, Hope College, and Richland College took the honors in 2004.
18 September 2004
Readable
- Interesting editorial by Kevin Tolly on Microsoft's challenges with IE and WinFS.
- According to a 9/14/04 article in the WSJ, the US IT sector lost 403,300 jobs between 3/01 and 4/04 - and the market remains bleak. Researchers Snigdha Srivastava and Nik Theodore compiled the numbers using the Current Employment Statistics survey and the Current Population Survey. The report, funded by the Ford Foundation, was conducted for the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, a Seattle organization that wants to unionize workers at Microsoft Corp. and other technology companies. Adding Value...Growing Careers: The Employment Outlook in Today's Increasingly Competitive IT Job Market. Related: EDS may slash 20K more by 2006.
- SQL Server dominates Readers' Choice awards. Related: Sept 2004 issue of Database Trends and Applications focuses on SQL Server with articles on code team development, BI, backup and recovery, and mobile development. Bear in mind, however, that many articles are vendor-written.
- Open source project to extend refactoring to .NET.
- Interesting article in the Oct 2004 issue of Fast Company about the Pro-Am (professional amateur) phenomenon. Related: Charles Leadbeater's longer PDF article.
- Business Week feature on the new Nike.
- Good article in the Oct 2004 issue of Software Development Magazine by Greg Kiczales on Microsoft's plans for AOP.
- Understanding (Oracle's) System Statistics. Related: Steve Feuerstein's article on PL/SQL code "myths" and his article in the current Oracle Professional on error handling in PL/SQL.
- Richard Grimes' article on .NET synchronization domains in the August issue of Dr. Dobbs (download the issue PDF downloadable here)
- Good article on XML security issues.
- Bruce Sterling's speculations on the unfathomable superhuman future after the singularity.
Selected KB articles
Browsable
Downloadable
Travelable
- I'm in a stay-at-home mood. Sorry. [Must be all the hurricanes -- Rod ;-]
Jargon Alert
- TPM - Trusted Platform Module, a PKI chip that signs digital certificates and vouches for a machine's identity.
- Yahoo - Do you remember how Jonathan Swift used the term in Gulliver's Travels?
A Question To Ponder
- If you could have a "free" housekeeper, chauffeur, cook, or babysitter, which one would you opt for?
Misc
11 September 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Browsable
Downloadable
Travelable
- Basta! Sept 20-23 in Frankfurt.
- SD Expo, Sept 20-23 in Boston.
- Women in Science: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century with Laura Woodmansee, Sep 26 (2PM), Baxter Lecture Hall, CalTech, Pasadena.
- World Cyber Games, Oct 6-10 in SF.
Jargon Alert
Misc
- Thought-provoking column by Bruce Schneier on the weakness of the MD4, MD5, and SHA families of hash functions. He calls on NIST to orchestrate a new worldwide competition for a new hash function as it did for the new DES encryption algorithm a few years ago.
- New book out by Jim Highsmith on agile project management.
- Legacy Army payroll system causing problems. (Gee, just think if some of the funds used to pay Halliburton's overcharges had been used for this.)
- Wide world of wireless - Seattle-area Washington State ferries are wireless enabling not only the ferries themselves, but also the loading area, where cars (and foot passengers) sometimes have a long wait. And Philadelphia is considering making the entire city a giant Hot Spot.
- The US NSF has established three new research centers (at the UW, UCSB, and MassGen) to study chemical bonding.
- Good 11-page PDF interview with ProClarity's CEO, Bob Lokken.
- The Man Behind REXX: z/Journal Visits IBM Fellow Mike Cowlishaw.
- Read about Hyades and IBM's increasing commitment to open source.
- Funny medical aptronyms.
- Microsoft tests forthcoming Windows Marketplace.
- NASA's VAB, one of the world's largest buildings, sustains wind damage from Frances. Related: Online information (and photos) of "> 800 great buildings and their architects.
- Interesting article (with JPGs) that illustrates how spiders adhere to surfaces.
- If you're the kind of person who thinks pharmaceuticals are garnering obscene profits, treat yourself to a blood-pressure raising article in the Sep 9 WSJ about Premarin, the hormone replacement drug used by millions of post-menopausal women to the tune of 2+B/year. Search for Premarin here. (Free reg req'd)
- Michael Shermer's Scientific American column on the error of dualism and the soul as a transient pattern of information.
- To think about: Hawking's about face on black holes and conservation of information. Related: remember the perhaps naive concept that information wanted to be free? Have you noticed a trend towards pay for info?
- Interesting Forbes feature on digital radio, Broadcast Bullies.
- Brief article on how diffusion modeling can be applied to maps to generate better cartograms.
- How many strokes does it take to golf across Mongolia?
Related: Access guru Garry Robinson, an Aussie, evidently finds Australia (6.6 people/mi2) too crowded and returns to the Gobi (4.5 people/mi2).
- Database of all 1504 (of William Buckley's) Firing Lines.
- Dave Weinberger's column, Reading Aristotle, on the latter's taxonomy of info.
Related: - Bill Inmon's 16-page PDF, an illustrated taxonomy of metadata.
- Sept 9 WSJ article on Army blogger's tales attracting censors' eyes.
- Interesting interview with Greg Graffin about evolutionary biology and the relationship between music and science.
- Eye-opening feature on Microsoft, the Entertainer?
- McAlester munitions manufacturer ceases production of "bunker buster" bombs.
- Good feature on the certifications that pay.
- Interesting article by Tony Kontzer about Hilton's enormous investment in CRM.
4 September 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Browsable
Downloadable
Jargon Alert
- SATA - Serial ATA, where ATA stands for Advanced Technology Attachment (the AT harks back to the original IBM AT computer). SATA can transfer data up to 150 MB/s, is backward compatible with existing parallel ATA software and drivers, has connectors designed for blind mate and hot plug, and supports RAID. SATA's main competition is from the faster (to 320 MB/s), but more expensive and generally harder to configure, SCSI interface. Another competitor is FC-AL, fibre channel arbitrated loop, which uses optical fiber in a loop configuration to produce transfer speeds of 100 MB/second and is designed to connect up to over 120 devices as far as 10 kilometers apart.
Travelable
Misc
- UK-based Tony Kline's site with many e-books of poetical works. Quite impressive.
- Short, illustrated online book about two WWI nurses, based on their letters and journals.
- Naturaltheology.net. Goal: to restore theology to the mainstream of science.
- 87-page PDF on the history of JPL.
- Funny chart, "What Government Best Suits You?" in the 8/30 issue of The New Yorker. Examples: You hate America because... Democracy: Sales tax, Totalitarian regime: Propaganda doesn't lie, Theocracy: The Great Satan exports misery and irresistible dance music, Third World Resort Island: "Wild On" crew stiffed you for tip, etc. (5 more categories). In the same issue: John Updike's review of Turkish author Orhan Pamuk's novel, Snow.
and an interesting profile of WFAN sports radio personalities Mike (Francesca) and Chris, Mad Dog, Russo.
- NHGRI's list of next organism's to be sequenced.
- Fascinating wide-ranging dialogue between philosopher/novelist/MacArthur fellow Rebecca Goldstein and psychologist Steven Pinker. Related: more of Pinker's articles.
- Several interesting articles in the 9/1 issue of the WSJ's Personal Journal section. Examples: convertibles for aging boomers, John Dobson (think Dobsonian telescopes), watching TV on your cellphone, and Columbus, IN as architectural mecca. (free reg req'd)
- Good article on SQL Server Reporting Services.
- Info about the Gmail file system.
- Grady Booch's site about software architecture. Includes info about patterns, SOA, and his blog. Free reg req'd.
- New poet laureate (Nebraskan Ted Kooser) for the US.
- Cloudscape FAQs (IBM's newly open-sourced small-footprint, multi-user, RDBMS written in Java). Related: CA's approach to open source.
- Alphaville x2: Jean Luc Godard's classic 1965 film as well as one of the cities in Sims Online.
- $US 59 buys you a CD with presentations from the Arlington Institute's "Breakthrough Technologies for the World's Biggest Problems" spring conf.
- Mike Sax's thoughtful VS Mag editorial on career strategies.
- $US 11K to burn? Consider water skiing solo with a personal ski machine. Cheaper toys.
- Remember Larry Ellison's "unbreakable" Oracle. Unfixable, too, it would appear: eWeek, ComputerWorld, PeteFinnigan.com, and US-CERT.
- RAND's database of US federal R&D projects. Fee may apply.
- US Government Printing Office site. Subject bibliographies.
- Interesting essay by Tyler Volk on patterns. Related: his 2002 essay on "Inescapable Creativity."
- UK science site for tracking seasonal events.
- Kurzweil's Law.
28 August 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Browsable
Downloadable
Jargon Alert
Travelable
Misc
- Fun site on "made-up" (ultimately, aren't they all?), model languages such as Tolkein's languages, Klingon, etc.
- Jane Goodall's site.
- Chaos theory site.
- Audio interview with Larry Niven on "Ringworld's Children," his career, and SF.
- Sybase releases DataWindow .NET 1.0 ($695, eval copy avail).
- Top queries and query terms, according to various sources:
WordTracker, Lycos 50, and Google Zeitgeist.
- Apply for the beta of Amazon's fourth version of its Web Services interface.
- Another win for open source: Duke Energy to make its IT Framework open source.
- Microsoft ships Host Integration Server 2004 (for integration with IBM mainframes). 120-day trial edition available.
and in ComputerWorld.
- Joel Spolsky's latest book, a collection of essays, "Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity User Interface Design for Programmers," including "The Law of Leaky Abstractions," "Don't Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You," "Getting Things Done When You're Only a Grunt," and "Top Five (Wrong) Reasons You Don't Have Testers." Related: Joel on Software and WINDOWS & .NET WATCH: 'Til the Fat Client Sings.
- Another book (okay, so baseball season is almost over): Ken Ross' A Mathematician at the Ballpark.
- This is a test of the Emergency Broadcasting System. The venerable US system may finally be updated.
- Other federal news: the US Senate now has its own CIO and healthcare gets an "IT czar".
- Think twice about ordering that pizza.
- Basic info about the GNU Compiler Collection's GNU Compiler for Java.
- Good educational site on cartography and projections.
21 August 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Browsable
Heads Up
Downloadable
Sites of the Week
Travelable
- VMWorld (VMWare's first conf), San Diego, Oct 27-29.
Jargon Alert
- glycomics - you've heard about genomics and proteiomics. Now, sugars get their own "omics."
And here.
- spif - special performance incentive fund (in the HP world, anyway)
- kriging - a statistical interpolation method used in fields such as health sciences, geochem, and environmental studies. Kriging assumes that the distance or direction between sample points reflects a spatial correlation that can be used to explain variation in the surface. Related:
The Geostatistical Analyst and Kriging and Geographic Information Systems.
- fade - a haircut style. According to a short on New Jersey haircuts by Ben McGrath in the 8/23 issue of the New Yorker, it's one of a range of short haircuts (think buzzcuts) that includes Guido fades, white boy fades, Rican fades, etc. Related: CropShop.
Misc
- Short interview with Danny Sullivan, founder of Search Engine Watch.
- Resources page from a relatively new publication for astronomy beginners: NightSkyMag.com.
- Interesting article in the 9/04 issue of Scientific American on an algorithm for reconstructing 3-D "jigsaw puzzles" such as pieces from archeological ruins. Related articles here and here.
- Free, open source media player from RealNetworks devs.
- US Nuclear Regulatory Commission portal to documents related to the proposed Yucca Mountain radioactive waste repository.
- Meaning and origins of "odd" terms, e.g. wing and a prayer, square meal.
- Good article about IT security for the Athens Olympics. Related: San Diego-based SAIC's work apparently cost the Games a cool $312M. I wonder how much of that was profit.
- Database of almost 3000 video movie title pages.
- Harry Potter "automatic news aggregator."
- Portal to public UK datasets.
- Neurodatabase, a neuroinformatics resource funded by the Human Brain Project.
- Phyllotaxis, a very cool interactive site for the "mathematical study of plant pattern formation."
- Ron Knott's multimedia web site on the Fibonacci numbers. Related: Keith Devlin's June feature in Discover magazine.
- Having a bad hair day? Thinking of a more creative outlet? - Need a hobby? Painting.
- For gals only.
- Just out of curiosity, what IT print ads get on *your* nerves? IBM's omnipresent "middleware" ads currently top my list. (I didn't think much of their astronaut ads, either).
- Want to spy on your neighbors? For 15K, you might want to check out Raytheon's disposal UAV, SilentEyes.
- James Champy (remember Re-engieering?) is now touting BSPs (business service platforms) as the Next Big Thing.
14 August 2004
Readable
- Always start here.
- Jason Coombs' article on Runtime Call Stack Analysis with .NET.
- Network World article on Microsoft's forthcoming synchronization feature for ADAM (Active Directory Application Mode) and current Identity Information Feature Pack. Also Microsoft prepping directory upgrade.
- Okay, you've probably had your fill of SOA articles, but here's a good one.
- Interesting article on Microsoft's forthcoming search engine. In it, Ballmer also predicts that, within four years, fully 40% of MS profits will be from enterprise applications, software for mobile devices, MSN, and home and entertainment software.
- Another good article from the same issue, this one by Tony Kontzer about Hilton's enormous investment in CRM.
- Good article by Seth Grimes on data visualization. Another article in the same issue by Gordon Linoff on survival data mining is also worth a read.
- Good feature on the two biggies in GIS tools: ArcGIS and MapInfo. BTW, this week's ESRI user conference was fantastic, and ESRI posts tons of stuff for devs. Examples: ArcGIS Developer Online and ArcObjects Online.
- Fascinating article by Brad Grimes on the DOD's increasing use of sensors and net-centricity.
- Good one-page overview/review of Mono, an open-source implementation of .NET.
- Good, comprehensive article on Web analytics software (which isn't cheap).
- Three great articles in the August issue of Fast Company: on Jeff Bezos, search marketing, Lighting the GE Way.
- Two good features in the August issue of Game Developer: one on interactive profiling, another on fast radiosity using pixel shaders. Not online yet.
- References for great articles (available online only to subscribers) on butterfly migration (June 26) and game theory (July 24) in Science News.
- John Mueller's new book on the programming the Google API - dedicated to yours truly, no less! And John's page about his books in progress.
Selected KB articles
Browsable
Downloadable
Travelable
Misc
- CA to open source Ingres according to The Inquirer, Computerworld, and InfoWorld.
- Fishing scientifically.
- William Dembski's recent 18-page article on information as a measure of variation talks about how information and entropy are related and how info can be considered as a modified variance.
- XBRL and related Bloor Research (analyst) report.
- Turn an Xbox into a Linux PC.
- Teddy Roosevelt Encyclopedia site.
- Historical exchange rates
-
US LOC baseball historical baseball card collection. EU portal site.
- Map info (a land management and land records community about US public lands) and links to maps.
- SAP is going to liberate developers from its proprietary ABAP. Related: the US isn't the only country suffering from IT outsourcing. SAP, which already employs 1100 at SAP Labs India, will be increasing that to 1500 by the end of the year and 3000 by 2006.
- Cool math toys. Related: good discussion of tensegrity (tensional integrity).
- Fascinating article by Alan Cullison in the current issue of Atlantic Monthly (available online to subscribers only) about the computers he bought in Kabul shortly after the fall of the Taliban.
- Sobering article ("The End of Youthful Indiscretions") by Jeffrey Zaslow in the 8/12 issue of WSJ on how kids' Web sites might be damaging to their future college or job plans. (subscription required)
- Classic 1983 article on eponyms by Dr. Eugene Garfield, president and founding editor or The Scientist. (See his other essays, too!)
- Know fingermath?
- In the 8/16 issue of Business Week, Jay Breene reports that Steve Ballmer has singled out Sony, Nokia, Google, Apple, IBM, Oracle, Sun, and SAP as being in Microsoft's "sights."
- Remember my mentioning Iron Python a few weeks ago? Well, Jim Hugunin, the "father" of Jython and creator of Iron Python, must have gotten an offer he couldn't refuse from Microsoft.
- According to an August ACM article on CSci in Japan, the Information Processing Society of Japan lists these as the milestones of software engineering: Dijkstra's structured programming, Sussenguth's use of tree strucutres for file processing, 3) Dijkstra's ideas on concurrent programming control, 4) Dennis and van Horn's programming semantics for multiprogrammed computations, 5) Hoare's axiomatic basis for programming, 6) Codd's relational model for DBMSs, 7) Wirth's notion of stepwise refinement, 8) Parnas' technique for module specification, and 9) Hoare's communicating sequential processes. What do you think?
- Proud of your 256MB CF card? Check out Pretec's 12GB card. Related: an . .SD combo card with WiFi and 256M from SanDisk.
7 August 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Browsable
Downloadable
Jargon Alert
- V2G - vehicle to grid power.
- TABOR - Taxpayer Bill of Rights. (Recent article by right-wing CATO Institute)
Travelable
- KDD '04 (Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining), Seattle, Aug 22-25.
- Adaptive Hypermedia (AH 2004), Eindhoven, Netherlands, Aug 23-26.
- SIGCOMM 2004, Portland, Oregon, Aug 30-Sep 3.
- DCI's Business Intelligence & Data Warehousing Conference: Best Practices for Enhanced Business Performance, Boston, Sep 28-30.
- Southwest Fox (FoxPro), Tempe (Phoenix), AZ, Oct 22-24.
Misc
31 July 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Browsable
Downloadable
Travelable
Jargon Alert
Misc
- Wired's Geek 100 Power Grid (axes for Nerd to Cool and Geek to Wonk).
- Baseline Magazine's CIO pay survey. (AT&T, Humana, PNC, Kellogg, Coventry Health Care, Welss Fargo, BellSouth, Continental Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Kroger, US Bancorp, ConAgra, Owen Corning, Beverly Enterprises, Kindred Healthcare, and Dynegy CIOs all netted "> 1M.).
- Microsoft's bloggers.
- Seven verticals look hot: medical/dental, finance/banking, manufacturing, retail, legal, telecommunications and entertainment/ media/publishing.
- Apply for early access to Intuit's QuickBooks 2005 and SDK 3.0.
- Sudden oak death pathogens mapped. Joint Genome Institute (JGI), in collaboration with the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, announced that Phytophtora ramorum has 16,000 genes and 60 million base pairs. (Humans have 25,000 to 30,000 genes and 2.9 billion base pairs.)
- FAQs on the new Japanese schoolgirl rage, Super Dollfies.
- NZTopoOnline.
- $15 buys you an MS Reader eBook reader for you Smartphone.
- Memory Lane stuff.
- Using Python's DParser.
- FedEx's 2-10 rule (on speed of technolgy implementations).
- Free online home valuation.
24 July 2004
Readable
- XP Pro - upgrade or wipe and load?
- Good practical advice on establishing an organizational structure for security.
- Brian Walker's excellent, free 30-page e-book on SQL Server architecture.
- Another good "Information Week" article on privacy law - and how what you don't know can hurt you.
Related: a good article (with an experiment you can try) by John Udell on privacy.
- According to a summary of a recent IDC report, Worldwide Business Intelligence Tools Forecast and Analysis, 2003 - 2008, the 2003 BI market grew to $3.9 billion worldwide with Business Objects commanding the top overall market share with 16.5% (20% in the reporting arena which included revenues from Crystal Reports)
- Analysis and comments on the recent Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference. Related:
more information, Microsoft partners get new support options, and Delays plague Microsoft patching, management tools.
- "Breaking up with IE?"
- Dino Esposito's Implement Custom Cache Dependencies in ASP.NET 1.x.
- Frank Rice's article, Add XML Functionality in Microsoft Office Excel 2003 from Microsoft Visual Basic .NET.
- Pablo Castro's Asynchronous Command Execution in ADO.NET 2.0.
- Simon Horrell's Web Service Messaging with Web Services Enhancements 2.0.
- Page numbering in Word.
- Geoff Hill's Accessing Web Services in Excel Using Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System.
- Jeff Prosise's An Overview of the New Services, Controls, and Features in ASP.NET 2.0.
- Connecting an InfoPath form to an Access database.
- Office 2003 Accessibility features.
- How to customize OneNote 2003 SP1 with 6 new command-line switches.
- Jeff Juday's Execture a DTS package from a SQL Server stored proc.
- Computerworld interview with Tom DeMarco who describes risk management as "adult project management."
- Art Kleiner's article on Baruch Lev's concerns about the US decline in technological innovation and how that relates to the flawed legal structure of accounting rules. Related: Forbes July 26 issue article on how Emerson Electronics is offshoring design and engineering jobs. Also related: US doesn't have the biggest and best supercomputers anymore.
- Free sample chapter on set operations from O'Reilly's 2nd edition of Mastering Oracle SQL.
- Free PDF book: The Developer's Roadmap to Mobilized Software Solutions, Chapter 3, Electronic Forms Application Architecture for Mobile Solutions, by Yogen Patel.
- Microsoft Analysis Services aka OLAP: Analysis Services Performance Guide.
And Analysis Services Operations Guide.
And Creating Large-Scale, Highly Available OLAP Sites.
And
Advantages of 64-bit to SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition BI Customers.
And SQL Server 2000 (64-bit) Analysis Services: Why Migrate and What to Expect.
- Current issue of Roger Sessions' quarterly newsletter focuses on SOA. The ObjectWatch Newsletter #47 is now ready!
- Russ Dyer's MySQL Sub-Queries.
- Microsoft's Data Mining FAQs.
- Bob Beauchemin's blog on Yukon and Whidbey.
- Nice selection of sample chapters from SQL Server-related books, assembled by author and SQL-Server-Performance.com Webmaster Brad McGehee.
- Bronek Kozicki's excellent summary of SQL Server security issues and scenarios.
- July SC Magazine interview with Whitfield Diffie. Good articles and reviews on IDS systems, too.
- Time to hunker down and learn about Great Plains, Navision, and the like?
- Phil Pursglove's article on building a tristate checkbox control (free until the August issue is posted).
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Browsable
Jargon Alert
- DSL2+ and ADSL2+ seem poised to be the next generation of DSL. SuperComm 2004.
Travelable
- O'Reilly Open Source Convention, July 26-30, Portland.
- SIGGRAPH, Aug 8-12, LA.
- HP World 2004, Aug 16-20, Chicago.
- Intel DevCon, Sep 7-9, SF.
- VS Live!, Sep 11-15, Orlando.
- SpeechTEK, September 13-16, NYC.
- 2004 PASS Community Summit, Orlando, Sep 28 - Oct 1.
- The Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT, Sep 29-30, Cambridge, MA.
- OOPSLA 2004, Oct 24-28, Vancouver, BC.
Misc
- On-demand Webcast about speech-enabling your ASP.NET app.
- Patch management transcript or audio.
- Request to participate in MiniSQLBackup (compression backup) beta.
- Info about the Visio Professional 2003 Resource Kit.
- Fun "generative illustration" based on your scribble.
- UV mapping (no, not ultraviolet). Graphics technique for determining where to place, on an object, all the pixels of an image that we want to use as a texture. bobois and toonafish.
- Pillsbury's Bake-Off Contest over the years.
- Harry Potter author JK Rowling's official site.
- VSIP 2005 BETA 1.
- Really cool feature in the Aug issue of "Popular Science" (not online yet) on science fiction ("Is Science Fiction about to go Blind?") which discusses a recent meeting of the Plokta (press lots of keys to abort) group and the recent Singularity theme. The issue also contains a great interview with Sri Lanka-based Arthur C. Clarke.
Related: an essay on SF by Judith Berman (who was cited in PopSci article).
- Drop off broad range of information technology and digital entertainment products from any manufacturer for free recycling at any Office Depot July 18 through September 6, 2004.
- The Modern Language Association's new Language Map displays the locations and numbers of speakers of the 30 languages most commonly.
- NOAA has put up historical hurricane tracks and allows them to be extracted as shapefiles.
- Virtual tour of the university city of Oxford.
- Transhumanism (ethical use of technology to extend human capacities)
- Philosophy of chemistry (plus links to philosophy of science).
- John Rylands University Library of Manchester.
- Lakes supported by activists.
- Old Macdonald had a GPS: New tractors from the likes of John Deere and Caterpillar feature GPS. Related: Virtual farming game.
- Nagpur, India, scientist develops technology to convert plastic waste into fuel.
- Free research report on Dam Removal Research: Status and Prospects.
- According to the WSJ, listening to the unabridged audiotape version of Bill Clinton's (first) memoir will take you 51 hours.
- Bluestream releases XStreamDB 3.1 native XML database.
- Got GPS? Got time?
- Beyond geocaching.
- According to the August issue of "Money," 1 in 128 Americans is a millionaire.
- Matthew Power writes a powerful (no pun intended) article, "Letter from Kerala: The Poison Stream," on the deleterious effects of endosulfan, used in cashew farming, in the August issue of Harper's Magazine.
- How Rational is evolving under IBM.
IBM readies 'Atlantic' tools plus open source effort and Rational exec envisions software prominence.
- IBM out to stop SQL Server and Oracle in the academic database market.
- Worried about your health risk factors?
- PEA Soup, a blog dedicated to philosophy, ethics, and academia.
- Is Japanese style taking over the world?
17 July 2004
(No D & Ds this week.)
10 July 2004
Readable
- Hey, it's the weekend - you've got time to digest at least one meaty MSDN article.
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Travelable
- KDD-2004. The Tenth ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Seattle, Aug 22-25.
Misc
- Hypertext e-book version of Owen Wister's The Virginian, classic Western written at the end of the 19th century. Related: INTRODUCTION: Owen Wister - Poet of the West.
- PEW Internet and American Life Project.
- Last month, Bob Bemer, the "father of ASCII," died, but his Website is still alive, with, among other things, all kinds of useful links to computer history.
- Sony "virtual wire" via shared memory cards called TranSticks (think Sony Memory Sticks).
- The math behind riptides.
- Netlib, a collection of mathematical software, papers, and databases (thanks again to Steve Abbott).
- GAMS: Guide to Available Mathematical Software.
- Learn Byzantine chants (requires Flash)
- Free Cisco text and lab manual (thanks to SQL MVP Tom Moreau for the pointer):
- Generic model organism database construction set.
3 July 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Browsable
Acronym and Jargon Alert
- DOD 5015.2. The US DOD's standard for electronic records management.
- Interactomics - study of genome level protein-protein interaction maps. (free registration required).
- LDML 1.1 (Locale Data Markup Language).
- EDB: new embedded database to join CEDB and SQL CE in Windows CE 5.0.
Travelable
Downloadable
Misc
- New TechEd online Event and Error help and new Microsoft Search option. Some products, such as SQL Server Reporting Services, have their own site where you type the Event or Error ID code (for example, rsAccessDenied, from Application Log in Event Viewer) into the ID field.
- Interesting Nova on fireworks, PBS transcript, and Zambelli fireworks.
- Microsoft/PASS chat on SQL Server 2005 Beta 2. July 28, 10a.m. Pacific.
- If getting it right on a simple database with 170 incidents is so hard, how confident should US citizens be about the success of integrating agencies' databases under the Homeland Security umbrella? According to John Brennan, director of the Terrorism Threat Integration Center, "There was insufficient review and quality control throughout the entire data compilation, drafting, and publication process, including inaccurate and incomplete database numbers..."
- Largest networks in the world: the Internet with about 750 million nodes, IBM with about 319K, and the problematic NMCI (Navy/Marine network being built by EDS) about 189K now en route to 360K, and the government of the UK with about 100K nodes.
- IPv6 tutorial.
- Free SciFi e-books by Duncan Long.
- Interesting re-discovery of the work of the Buffalo Soldiers in National Parks such as Yosemite. And here.
- Thought-provoking 17-page PDF paper by two UCSD profs on the role of information in the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) project.
- Great article on Canada's tar sands. Related: the US military ramps up its use of solar energy.
- So why do we need to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?
- According to an article in the 6/12/04 "Washington Technology," the US DOD, which has issued about 4 million "common access cards" which use the department's PKI infrastructure, "verifying a certificate can take as long as 14 minutes."
- Interesting one-page interview with 1976 "Selfish Gene" author Richard Dawkins. (free reg req'd). Related: Richard Dawkins' unofficial web site.
- UPC turns 30, just as the 13-digit EAN bar codes come to the fore. The UCC estimates that its bar codes are scanned more than 10 billion times a day worldwide. At the 25th anniversary of the first scan, that original checkout counter and pack of Juicy Fruit were put on display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. The scanner used was from PSC Inc., and at the time cost $4,000 (the entire check-out counter cost $10,000). According to PSC, it's latest model scanner costs about 1% of that. www.uc-council.org.
- Want a butterfly net? A cool microscope? Bioquip.com is a way cool commercial site.
- 6/04 issue of Ecology and Society online journal.
- World beard championship site.
- Free lecture on the Declaration of Independence.
- Free lecture on D-Day (through July 3 only).
- Interactive word games. Related:
Jim Kalb's Palindrome Connection.
- Informational site about basket making (as opposed to links to easy university courses).
- Can't remember the word?
- You really need a new yo-yo.
26 June 2004
Readable
- Event Naming Guidelines (.NET Framework).
- Dennis Adams' comparative review of four .NET charting engines. In the same issue, the best overview of TechEd 2004 that I've read.
- Fascinating (I thought) and thought-provoking article on the future of work.
- BI on lots of radars: The Future of BI, Business Intelligence Software: Look Who's Calling, and Slicing and Dicing Microsoft's Freebie BI Tools.
- Sleepycat Software's new Berkeley DB Java Edition, a Java version of its flagship open-source database. "Berkeley DB Java Edition incorporates an open-source dual-license business model and has been built to allow the non-relational database to take advantage of Java's portability, deeply integrated threading, and ease of application development benefits, said officials of the Lincoln, Mass., company."
- Did you think company singing was limited to Asian firms? Find out about the IBM "fellowship songbook."
- With all the talk about RFID, you'd assume that standards issues were all ironed out. Not so.
- Good interview with Jakob Nielsen on website design issues. (Did you know he started his career as an engineer at Sun Microsystems?) In the same issue: the best explanation of utility computing I've read.
- Harnessing Google and eBay APIs goes mainstream.
Selected KB articles
Browsable
Acronym Alert
- IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface).
- CBEFF (Common Biometric Exchange Formats Framework).
- Some Boomers may morph into Woofies (well-off older folks)
Downloadable
Misc
19 June 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Travelable
- DirectX Meltdown, Seattle, July 27-28.
- JavaOne, June 28-July 1, at Moscone in San Francisco.
- Storage World, June 28-July 1 in Long Beach, CA.
- Windows Embedded DevCon, June 29-July 1 in San Diego. Related: Windows Embedded Introductory Kit.
- VSLive!, July 26-29, NYC.
- LinuxWorld, Aug 2-5 in SF (Moscone).
- VOIP DevCon, Aug 7-8 in San Jose. Related: VoIP talk tops NetWorld+Interop.
- TDWI 04, Aug 8-13 in San Diego (data warehousing, mining, BI).
- ARM Developers' Conference, Oct 19-21 in Santa Clara.
Miscellaneous
12 June 2004
Readble
Selected KB articles
Noteworthy
Browsable
Downloadable
Misc
- Macromedia training resources.
- 9rays.net is shipping Spices.NET 3.5, a set of five components - Obfuscator, Decompiler, Modeler, Investigator and Informer. Planned: Spices.Documenter, Spices. Analyzer (FXCop-like analogue) are the ones that will appear in the coming months.
- Worst country song titles.
- Neat articles on duct tape, Head skis, and the electric guitar.
- What MSFT gets for its $7B R&D budget. Related: Inside Microsoft's Next Big Thing.
- IBM's Home Page Reader (HPR, $149), for vision impaired, was positively reviewed in a recent Network World article. Too bad IBM doesn't give it away.
- Do you know who the current Big Four (bean counters) are? PricewaterhouseCooper ($US13B 2003 revenues), Deloitte & Touche ($12.5B), KPMG ($10.7B), and Ernst & Young ($10.1B).
- Envirnomental Working Group's database of chemicals in cosmetics/personal care items.
- Wayback (to 1851) machine a la NYTime$:
- Wayback (1650-1910) machine #2 from the Library of Scotland.
- NARA's databases of 9+ million WWII soldiers and 300K reservists.
- Table showing which Visual Database Tools ship with various editions of Visual Studio.
- Faultline, California's Environmental Magazine.
- Highly recommended daily environmental news.
5 June 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Noteworthy
Travelable
Browsable
Radar-able?
Downloadable
Misc
29 May 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Downloadable
Travelable
Browsable
MISC
- CMU grad student builds Origami-building robot.
- Evolution trains robot teams.
- Antiwargame, a free online game.
- Darwin Mounds, cold water coral reefs off NW Scotland, now protected.
- The Skyscraper Museum.
- Printers go pico. According to a review of the Epson Stylus Photo R800, its drops are a mere 1.5 picoliters.
- James Pratt's A Practical Guide to the Smartphone Application Security and Code Signing Model for Developers.
Related: more technical articles for developers.
- The Mono 1.0 Roadmap shows dates leading to a June 30 release for the open-source CLR implementation.
- International Center of Photography's Art of Science exhibition runs through May 30 in NYC.
- PendMoves 1.0 is another utility from Sysinternals. This one lets you see which files are pending renames and deletes the next time you reboot.
- Free online harmonica lessons.
- Remoting Probe is software to see what's going on inside of a .NET remoting conversation.
- June 15 Webcast (9AM Pacific) by Mike Otey on the CLR in SQL Server 2005. Pre-registration required.
- Request a free "PowerPack" for .NET developers from IBM.
- "Nearly 70% of IT execs polled by InformationWeek Research say their companies use Linux, up from 56% a year ago."
- Hotels with broadband.
- E-mail directory portal (to find someone's e-mail address).
- Butterfly info for teachers, students, and scouts.
- Free design patterns poster from Borland.
- Takes all kinds.
- Nostaligia time. Remember BBN? (think Arpanet). Well, it's celebrating a year of independence since being sold by Verizon. The same issue of "Network World" has a neat article on how pneumatic tubes are still being used.
- www.patheticgeekstories.com. The URL says it all.
- Volunteer effort to report US gas station prices. (Did you know that Rod and his wife bought a Honda Civic Hybrid back in Feb 2003? It gets 50mpg city and 60 mpg highway with something like 80% fewer emissions than a "normal" car.)
- Locate pay phones worldwide.
- Recommended by the "WSJ"'s Walter Mossberg (5/24/04): Essaya's TruSwitch ($20) for help with the hassle associated with switching ISPs.
- Seattle's cool new architecture: Rem Koolhaas-designed (Seattle Public Library) and a Gehry extension to Paul Allen's Experience the Music museum: Experience Science Fiction (opening June 18).
- Add to your radar: "Data Services" (think SOA for data integration) and "Big M" (Microsoft embraces methodologies - default is MSF - in the forthcoming VS2K5TS).
- Scanner listeners can contribute to National Incident Notification Network. Free registration req'd.
- Did you know that the inventor of Tetris, Alexey Pajitnov (now 49) has been working for Microsoft since 1996?
encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com and GameSpy.
Related: According to Lee Gomes' 5/17/04 "WSJ" column where he reported on the recent E3, games now have "middleware," too.
- Watch Microsoft's how to programming movies, rate them, and get a free NFR copy of VB.NET (while supplies last or until 9/30, but only available for US, Canadian, and military addresses).
20 May 2004
Readable
- Read Bill Boswell's Q&A column (from "MCP Magazine") on enforcing "stronger" passwords - and about how Windows stores passwords using the crackable MD4 hash algorithm. Comments worth reading, too. Also worth reading: Roberta Bragg's scary column on the risks of "process control" (think 9/11 when so many "automated" systems went offline). Finally, another useful article on how to install multiple OSes help systems on a single computer.
- PDF security can be beefed up beyond the simple password many of us use. Adobe's new Policy Server "gives document authors and IT administrators the power to dynamically control who can view a PDF document, and determine whether the recipient can modify, copy, print or forward the document. Moreover, these permissions can be changed after the document has been distributed. Adobe Policy Server provides assurances that only intended recipients can open a protected document inside and outside the firewall. Documents can be made to expire on a specific date..."
- It's official: Forrester Research Survey Shows Majority of Development on .NET. Also from Forrester: Free (until June 31) 22-page report on making dashboards actionable (reg required).
- Are you 133t? (and other topics leet-speak). Other good "Network World" articles in the 5/17 issue: potential privacy problem with UCSD student/alum/employee data, and a great article on application security.
- "Business Week" profiles several women of tech such as Francine Berman, director of the San Diego Supercomputing Center. In contrast, Washington Technology's recent profile of the top 20 (and top 100) federal primes contractors showed all male CEOs.
(Oh, Lockheed Martin continues #1, raking in about $5.5B US tax dollars. Embattled Halliburton was only 32nd, netting a measly $242M. Of course, those dollars are dated, based on fiscal Q4 2002 through the Q3 2003.)
- MSDN Windows XP SP2 info for developers.
- Good article on how SQL Server's optimizer uses stats.
- Migrate Code and Concepts from ADO Classic to ADO.NET.
- Protect Your Web Applications from SQL Injection Attacks.
- Populate an Excel Spreadsheet from Data in Active Directory.
- Get the Best of Both Worlds: Combine XPath with XmlReader.
- Navigate the .NET Framework and Your Projects with "My".
- Serve Dynamic Content with HTTP Handlers.
- Leverage the ASP.NET Cache API in a Tiered Web App Design.
- Info about Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 aka Londstar.
Selected KB articles
Browsable
Tip
- Did you know that you can run Microsoft's MBSA (download latest version 1.2) from the command line, using any of two dozen parameters? Locate the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer folder (defaults to the Program Files directory), and then run mbsacli.exe /? to see the switches.
Downloadable
Travel Opps
Misc
- Moog at 40.
- InfoWorld at 20.
- LaserJet at 20.
- Only in California - what can I say? Awful Plastic Surgery.
- Intel & Microsoft are selling devs a Speech Start Kit for $995. You get a
180-day trial version of Microsoft Speech Server 2004, an Intel Dialogic
D/41JCT-LS combined media board, Intel's NetMerge Call Manager telephony
interface manager, and drivers. Get info here.
- Sir Michael Atiyah and Isadore Singer jointly win the 2004 Abel prize for their discovery and proof of the "index theorem." They're also credited with helping repair the rift between the worlds of pure mathematics and theoretical particle physics.
- The Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography.
- Request a free Oracle JDeveloper 10g CD (will come in the mail). Related: Free online Oracle 9i training for anyone of the J2EE persuasion.
- Ian Horrocks' Website reflects his interest in knowledge representation, ontologies, and their application to the Semantic Web.
- Peter Singer, Australian ethicist home page with awesome links.
- Link tester.
- Michael Quinion's website on international English from a British viewpoint.
- Online Dictionary of Playground Slang.
- Fred Moore has written a good article on enterprise information lifecycle management.
- Titanic central.
- Ampioxus (song about biology, with links to more). Sample lyrics: It's a long way from Amphioxus. It's a long way to us...(think "It's a long way to Tipperary"). Related: what amphioxuses are.
- UC Berkeley Internet search tutorial.
- Free is good.
- "California Agriculture's" current issue is all about biotech and genetically modified plants.
- Portal to locations of sex offenders.
- With Google Print you can search inside both books and mags for pages that include your particular keywords. Related: Googleblog.
- High school science teacher Steve Silverman's useless information site.
- Watch a replay of Toni Morrison and Cornel West In Conversation. Abridged version, "Blues, Love and Politics" in the May 24 issue of The Nation). Selections: are Americans being called upon as consumers rather than citizens? Are "the mendacious elites" mighty, but not almighty?
- How the Data Ecosystem Affects Process Development and the Bottom Line from BioProcess International.
- The US Navy's eBusiness Ops unit has issued a call for pilot project proposals for fiscal 2005.
- Info on what states are doing in IT.
- Info on what EU members are doing in IT.
15 May 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Browsable
Travelable
Downloadable
Misc and JFF (just for fun)
8 May 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Worth Noting
Downloadable
Potentially Interesting
- Ergito. Online scientific publisher with an impressive selection of free content including papers on classic discoveries and even textbooks and/or chapters. Example: Chapter on plant cells.
- Photos of Martian "Endurance" crater from Opportunity. Related: NASA en Espanol.
- Give stuff away free (posts by state).
- Good tutorials on Linux file commands and AWK: Guide to Linux File Command Mastery and AWK: The Linux Administrators' Wisdom Kit.
- Oracle OTN's search page for code, HowTo's, tutorials. Related:
Technical resources for developers and system architects, New to Oracle, and Oracle Links.
- Periodic Table of Poetry (haiku).
- Find out how to locate this month's comets.
- Find out about bird banding.
- Interesting article on Francis Bacon's theory of communication and media. Cited from FB's Novum Organon: "For the mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced."
- Scads of info about the Cold War from the perspective of space research. Related: an excerpt from Thomas Reed's new book on tech sabotage during the Cold War.
- Interesting article in the 5/7/04 issue of the WSJ on the rising price of concert tickets ("Parsley, Sage, and $350 Tickets"). Free reg. required.
- Stockholm Water Institute's archive of articles about water. Related: Prize winners.
- Current (May 2004) issue of Game Developer (not online) features an interesting article on what the next ten years might bring. Related: an assortment of "classic" archived articles. And a veritable mother lode of conference slides (and /2003, /2002, etc.). Also related: developing games for the XP Media Center Edition.
- The British Museum site.
- Canyons, Cultures, and Environmental Change (land use history of the Colorado plateua).
- Not sure how to read a financial statement?
- Bose-Einstein condensate spin state induced in Han purple, BaCuSi2O6.
- Good article on normalizing reference data.
- Trees limited to 130 meters?
- Gallery of images of from Virginia Tech's fluid mechanics department.
- (US) Science and Engineering Indicators 2004.
- Really cool scientific toys and kits.
- Edge - monthly collection of good essays. Example: interview with Gary Marcus on language, biology, and the mind.
- July 20-24 NHII 2004 conference (Washington, DC) on electronic healthcare and the required infrastructure.
- Business author Steve Denning focuses on the role of storytelling.
- Is human appreciation of art hard wired?
- Is Xen the next big thing? Unifying Tables Objects And Documents.
Microsoft Research Looks to Extend C#.
- Traveling to Prince Edward Island?
- Audio book interviews.
- Perfect Mother's Day gift for the Mom who has everything - a build-your-own Enigma machine. And only 120 pounds.
1 May 2004
Readable
Selected KB articles
Potentially Interesting
- OCUP certif. - OMG-Certified UML Professional.
- Find out about IBM's forthcoming version of DB2 that's supposed to offer better integration with VS.NET.
- Distributed Relational Database Architecture (DRDA 3) spec.
- The many faces of WS-Security.
- Exceptional essay by Sven Bikerts on literary criticism.
- Gardiner, Maine, library's Who Reads What? celebrity reading list. Examples for 2004: Ken Follett's reading a Beatrix Potter book, British Prime Minister John Major's reading Trollope's Palliser novels, while First Lady Laura Bush submitted a list of about a dozen of her favorites.
- Hispanic Heritage information.
- Dozens of interviews with authors. Examples: Samuel Delaney, Carlos Fuentes, William Gaddis, Milan Kundera, adn Richard Powers.
- Three papers related to refactoring.
- Mobile phones tips (Recommended by Bill Shadish in his FO PDA newsletter. Also recommended in the current issue: MicroDevNet and
PocketHTML.
- New online journal on space weather. Free quarterly summary digest available on request.
- Origami math sites:
Oragami & Math,
Origami Mathematics,
mathworld.wolfram.com, and
Alex Bateman's Origami Page.
- Primate brain info site with lots of info on brain anatomy.
- History of astronomy site.
- US federal self-assessment guidelines for IT architecture. Related: BPM. Also in the April 19th issue, a feature on accessibility.
- Good article for beginners on using SQL Server Profiler in the new "SQL Server Standard" ($19.99/year in US).
- Ted Pattison's articles on delegates:
Implementing Callback Notifications Using Delegates,
Implementing Callbacks with a Multicast Delegate, and Asynchronous Method Execution Using Delegates.
- Classic article in interfaces in .NET.
- Neat article on the HP network used to track runners in the recent Boston Marathon.
- Data and Object Patterns' patterns with code.
Worth Noting
Downloadable
24 April 2004
Readable
- What Sin City Can Teach Tom Ridge, **Extremely** well-written, fact-filled feature article that makes you wonder why US agencies can't cooperate to combat terrorism the way the casinos and FBI do to combat "cheats and thugs." Great quote: "This is where the bad guys come to play." (The same issue has another article, Half-Speed, about EDS's, uh, problems delivering on its $8+ billion contract to build NMCI, the secure Navy/Marine Intranet, that was supposed to be delivered in 2001. Mitigating factor: unexpected difficulty of reducing the 100,000 network applications to < 30,000).
- Fascinating pair of contrasting articles in the April issue (not online yet) of Card Technology on why Target is dropping smart cards while the US federal government is embracing them. Another article on the DOD smart card.
- D. Coppersmith's good five-page article on cryptography (DES vs. Diffie-Hellman) in the IBM Journal of Research and Development. Related: a vertible goldmine of an index of all IBM Systems Journal and IBM Journal of Research and Development articles since 1957. Example: A philsophic and technical comparison of Legion and Globus (approaches to grid computing) and A new load-balancing strategy for the solution of dynamical large-tree-search problems using a hierarchical approach.
- Excellent article by Kevin Wittmer in the April/May 2004 issue of Mobile Business (subscription required) on Windows on Wireless.
- Andrew Novick's article on Creating a SQL Server User Interface with InfoPath. Related: code from his newly-published book on T-SQL UDFs and a list of his articles (cum links).
- Classic paper: The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information by George A. Miller.
- Two preview chapters of John Hansen and Carsten Thomsen's forthcoming book on Enterprise Development with Visual Studio .NET, UML, and MSF.
- Read about IBM Research's WIT that helped IBM optimize its supply chain and remove major bucks from its supply chain-related expenses.
Selected KB articles
Worth Noting
Downloadable
Highly Recommended
Potentially Interesting
17 April 2004
Readable
KB Articles (mainly related to programming Exchange with .NET)
Downloadable
Misc
10 April 2004
Readable
- Larry Seltzer's April 8th article, A Hands-On Look at Windows Security Update CD.
- Read the excellent 23-page technical article (with code) on using forms authentication with Reporting Services.
- Yukon article by Microsoft's Brad Sarsfield and Srik Raghavan Overview of Native XML Web Services for Microsoft SQL Server 2005.
- Keith Brown's Beware of Fully Trusted Code.
- Oracle-Dell Deal Strikes Blow at Microsoft.
- According to "eWeek," Microsoft hosted 1,500 of its 2,600 global MVPs during the first week of April. The MVP program is 11 years old, and attendees got to select from more than 200 technical sessions.
- Rick Dobson's "Smart Access" article about signing Access 2003 projects free online.
- Don Kiely's article Consuming ADO.NET DataSets in the Microsoft Office System.
- Rocky Lhotka's aritcle on coordinating async service calls.
- Several strong articles in the April issue of "DM Review." Examples: Tom Haughey's article, Is Data Modeling one of the Great Con Jobs in Data Management History? And Mal Chisholm's piece on Normalizing Reference Data. See also What Is Reference Data? and free articles from InfoModel, Inc.
- 28th quarterly issue of Robert Seiner's TDAN (free online journal for data admins). Sample articles: -- Dave Marco on "Managed Meta Data Environment," David Hay on "Modeling Business Rules: What Data Models Cannot Do", and Malcolm Chisholm on "Understanding Hidden Subtypes" along with regular feature columns by Craig Mullins and Fabian Pascal.
- "99% marketing free" 25-page PPT on BPEL, one of the features of Microsoft's new BizTalk 2004. Related:
BizTalk Server: Using Microsoft Tools for Business Process Management and BPEL: Make Your Services Flow.
Selected KB articles
- 311284 HOW TO: Handle Document Events in a Visual Basic .NET Application
- 313805 How to use the Find method and the Restrict method to retrieve appointments
- 319058 BUG: DTS Package Execution Is Canceled Unexpectedly in a Visual Basic Application
- 317661 HOW TO: Load and Save XML by Using DOM in .NET Framework with Visual Basic NET
- 316887 HOW TO: Read and Write a File to and from a BLOB Column by Using ADO.NET and Visual Basic .NET
- 837226 BUG: A "The memory could not be 'read'" error or a "Freedom Engine COM Server has encountered a problem" error may occur when you upgrade a Visual Basic 6.0 project to Visual Basic .NET
Browsable
- The "official" Windows Forms site.
- Math/humanities.
- Journal of Integer Sequences.
- Chemistry in art (a virtual exhibition).
- WizSoft offers a variety of data and text mining tools.
- Delightful feature on butterflies from Oct/Nov 2003 issue of National Wildlife.
- Baseball: The April 2002 issue (PDF) of Dave Wilton's Way With Words is all about baseball terminology - and is a great read. For a rather different perspective, see the April 2004 CFO magazine's feature about the finances of baseball franchises (Squeeze Play).
- Bob Newhart (no, he's not dead yet).
- Succinct history of programming languages.
- PDC bloggers site.
Downloadable
- VS6 SP6.
- Free components from Aspose:
- Free components and apps from WeOnlyDo:
- Download a 45-day free trial of Microsoft's Virtual PC 2004.
Tech overview. Open source Bochs project offers similar functionality.
- Get help developing apps with embedded VC++ and/or VS.NET for Windows Mobile 2003. Download the second version of the Windows Mobile 2003 Developer Resources kit.
- MDAC 2.8 SDK.
- Among other things, IBM's AlphaWorks has released a licensable IBM Tivoli Access Manager for Microsoft .NET and an XML-based Advanced Pattern Search Toolkit for Sequential Data.
- Download Tamas Miklos's freeware system audit tool, Aida32.
3 April 2004
Might Be Worth The Read
- Rocky Lhotka's Coordinating Asynchronous Service Calls.
- Cool eWeek interview with Bill Gates about his most recent "think week." Asked about "the next big thing for programmers," Gates said, "I think the big thing happening right now is the revolution that XML and Web services have generated, where even if software is running on a different machine somewhere else on the globe and even running in a completely different environment, we now have this structured way of describing information and exchanging information. So, we can think of almost any piece of software out there running on another machine as almost like a subroutine, or we can go out and call it and get its capabilities. And that's a real mindset change... That is the biggest single thing."
- Stanford prof Lawrence Lessig's thought-provoking new book, "Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity " is available free online at free-culture.org/freecontent and even Amazon (amazing, but only for a limited time since they also sell the dead tree version). Related: Lessig's website.
- Dan Appleman's well-written and informative new book, Always Use Protection. And, contrary to its subtitle, it's not just for teenagers!
- David Hill's "Creating a Simplified Asynchronous Call Pattern for Windows Forms Applications" started life as a blog entry, but the MSDN version is a bit more polished.
Selected KB articles
- 837378 BUG: You receive a Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.LateBinding.InternalLateCall error message when you make a late-bound call in VB.NET
- 306158 INFO: Implementing Impersonation in an ASP.NET Application
- 314182 How to create an Outlook Calendar folder by using the HttpWebRequest class in VB.NET
Might Be Worth The Browse
- Jaap Schekkerman's extensive and well-done site on EA (enterprise architecture).
- Darrell Norton's Website/portal for working with BizTalk.
Might Be Worth The Download
- Free utilities from Amyuni.
- Two free components from Dundas: DundasMailer and DundasUpload.
- Freeware from AxTools.
- Free performance monitor for SQL Server.
- Microsoft's free new utility, Port Reporter. According to John Mueller, who downloaded it and used it with an older DCOM application, "It's neat because it shows patterns of port usage by the application and also let me monitor port activity. I'm not exactly sure what Microsoft intends most people to use this for, but I'm happy they introduced it because I can see application diagnostic uses."
- ImageJ - NIH's free image processing (in Java) software.
Might Be Fun To Attend
- Hydrogen Conference (April 26-30 in LA, $800).
- Idea 04 (April 27-29 in Miami on industrial textiles, engineered fabrics, and non-wovens, $995)
Misc
- The original 1983 OMB Circular A-76 established the ground rules for competing for US federal contracts. You can read the new one (May 2003) not only to get an idea of what it takes, but also to try to get a handle on federal outsourcing.
- Read about the EPA's proposal to let low-level radioactive waste be dumped in normal landfills.
- Learn about Voronoi graphs and how they're used in spatial analysis here and here.
- Jerry Ball's Double R Theory site Double R Theory is a cognitive linguistic theory of the grammatical encoding of referential and relational meaning, and Jerry is implementing it as a computational cognitive model using the ACT-R Cognitive Architecture and Modeling Environment.
- 29-page article on the taxonomy of the Solaris file system.
- Katherine Mansfield's (1888-1923) short stories online.
- Decent overview of elementary particles.
- Never heard of the Hinman collator? (I hadn't). Find out what it is.
- Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis.
- New science museum opening/opened April 23, 2004, in DC. (Admission costs about 1/10th as much as an Eisner paycheck-fattening ticket to Disneyland).
- Great wrap-up of GDC.
- Learn more about raptors.
- Fascinating feature on the increasing potential for privacy abuse thanks, in part, to huge data warehouses. In the same issue, a minor news item mentions how casino vendors are both using Ascential's CRM software to "gain insight into its guests' spending habits".
- History behind Norway's annual party called "The Gathering". Virtual attendance a possibility.
- Industrial Geographer, a new, free, online journal. First 60-page issue has an article on industrial geography in the US over the last 50 years.
27 March 2004
Might Be Worth The Read
- Microsoft unveils a critical vulnerability in Outlook 2002. Outlook 2002 Security Patch: KB828040.
- Will RFID translate into a data avalanche?
- Free report on the current state of learning standards.
- Good overview of speech technologies.
- Several fascinating business-oriented articles (notably "Japan's Coming Competitive Renaissance" and "Smart Customization") in the current issue of Strategy and Business. Free reg req'd.
- Several fascinating more technical reads (notably "Simulating Small-World Networks" and "SQL, Data Mining, and Genetic Programming" - plus homage to P.J. Plauger) in Dr. Dobb's Algorithms issue.
- ACM, SIGMOD. Marianne Winslett's interview with IBM Fellow Pat Selinger, VP of Data Management Architecture and Technology. Pat joined IBM when System R was just being developed and wrote one of the foundational articles on RDBMS query optimizers in 1979. (December 2003 issue). March 2004 issue includes a good interview with Peter Chen, inventor of the ER data model, and an excellent article on SQL:2003.
- Wired's Rave Awards issue has a fascinating article on savants like Matt Savage (not yet online).
- Good article comparing five popular data mining suites including SPSS's Clementine and Statistica's Data Miner.
- Grady Booch on software at SD West.
- Good article on becoming a certified security pro by Roberta Bragg (who writes a column for MCP Mag and is the author of the forthcoming "Hardening Windows Systems" and co-author of recently-published "Network Security: The Complete Reference").
- Xtreme VBTalk post demonstrating a technique for creating the equivalent of a StringBuilder in VB6.
KB Articles
- 834059 BUG: You receive a "System.InvalidCastException" error message when you upgrade a VB6 application that holds a user control to VB.NET
- 316202 PRB: Cannot Assign Images to a ColumnHeader Control in a Windows Forms ListView Control Using VB.NET
- 319312 HOW TO: Change the Color and the Font of the StatusBarPanel Object by Using VB.NET
- 317546 BUG: ListView.ColumnHeaderCollection.Add Method Does Not Work with Autosize Width in VB
- 315934 PRB: Windows Forms TreeView Control Does Not Handle State Image Lists in VB.NET
Might Be Worth The Download
- Various toolkits for developers for implementing Salesforce.com applications.
- UNIX-based, open source email-server spam filter.
- ASPReport freeware.
- ACCM - automatic cell counting method. Requires IDL, Interactive Data Language.
- ELVES - generates images of crystals from raw X-ray crystallographic data. Requires Unix.
- Free PDF version of the first issue of Brian Knight's SQL Server Standard.
Might Be Worth Browsing
- O'Reilly's dev centers. WindowsDevCenter.com and ONDotnet.com.
- Journal of Integer Sequences.
- Developer zone for Crystal Reports and Crystal Enterprise.
- International Council for Science's CODATA (Committee on Data for Science and Technology) Data Science Journal. Free online access to current and archived journal articles. E-mail newsletter subscription also available.
- Several free online books.
- Free VB code analysis service. Aivosto offers to analyze your code with Project Analyzer and send you five reports: - Summary report, counting the total lines, files, procedures, vars etc., Design quality report, listing amount of dead code, commentation, etc., 3) File list with details, such as file requires/required by information, 4) File metrics report listing LOC, fan-in and fan-out, and 5) VB.NET compatibility report, evaluating the migration work from VB6.
Might Be Worth Attending
- Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), May 4-7 in Seattle.
(And while you're in Seattle, Museum of Flight.)
- TechEd 2004, May 23-28 in San Diego.
Miscellaneous
- NameTraq with news items about 25,000 of the most common last names in the United States.
- Virtual Mousepad Museum.
- Cool applet that illustrates scale.
- Vote in the Forbes poll of most influential businessmen (yes, all men) of all time.
- An article about Paul Kay's research on linguistic relativity aka Whorf's hypothesis.
- Clarissa Lee's interesting site with link pages such as Conscienciousness.
- NASA develops system to computerize silent, "subvocal" speech.
- Need an alibi? Buy Simeda's SoundCover to add appropriate background noise to your cell phone calls.
- The Jargon File 4.4.7.
- Julia Wallace's excellent Brief History of Quantum Computation Web page.
- Not sure what "Greenbergian formalism" refers to? Read Terry Fenton's article about art critic Clement Greenberg.
- Steve Simmons' microprocessor history.
20 March 2004
13 March 2004
- Might Be Worth Reading
- Read about SQL Server 2000's user mode scheduler (excerpted from Ken Henderson's book on SQL Server internals).
- Neat feature on the Sutherland brothers. Most of us recognize Ivan, but his brother's no slouch, either. (free reg req'd).
- Good article on the five stages of analytical CRM - not Teradata specific, either.
- Glassy Metals (for Discover magazine subscribers only).
- Beginner's guide to BSD filenames.
- Quick look at Longhorn build 4053.
- Apple/Mac OS history.
- Perl gets an extreme makeover.
- Fascinating interview with Tim O'Reilly.
- Highly commented six-part (so far) series on the future of the OS by Nicolas Blachford.
- Paul Sheriff's article, Single Sign-On Enterprise Security for Web Applications (ASP.NET).
- Bill Evjen's article, Uploading Files Using the File Field Control.
- The February issue of The Rational Edge with articles on model-driven architecture, aspect-oriented programming, UML sequence diagrams, and more. Great archival content, too.
- Greg Stemp's article on using ADAM (Active Directory Application Mode), which lets you develop ADSI scripts without having to install Active Directory.
- Microsoft article, How to Enable Remote Debugging on Windows XP SP2.
- Alex Feldstein's article on harnessing the Windows Crypto API to send and receive encrypted messages in Visual FoxPro.
- Rob Howard's article, Provider Model Design Pattern and Specification, Part 1 (Whidbey).
- Word templates for creating personal or business newsletters.
- Selected KB articles
- Might Be Worth Browsing
- Might Be Worth The Download
- Miscellaneous
- The February 2004 issue of MIT Technology Review listed the Ten Emerging Technologies that will Change Your World as: 1)Universal Translation, 2) Synthetic Biology, 3) Nanowires, 4) Bayesian Machine Learning, 5) T-Rays, 6) Distributed Storage, 7) RNA Interference (RNAi), 8) Power Grid Control, 9) Microfluidic Optical Fibers, and 10) Personal Genomics. Equally interesting was its list of technologies that refuse to die: analog watches, dot-matrix printers, typewriters, broadcast radio, pagers, reel-to-reel tape players, fax machines, mainframes, and Fortran!
- Remember that you can type "Defrag.exe" at a command prompt to see the various parameters available.
- Oakland Museum library of natural sounds (lots of grunts).
- Paul McFedries' Word Spy - devoted to "lexpionage" (new words).
- Are you playing the coolest games?
- Butterflies of North America.
6 March 2004
- Consider Reading
- Consider Downloading
- Consider Visiting
- Selected KB articles
- Misc
28 February 2004
- Might Be Worth The Download
- Sites To Browse
- Selected KB articles
- Might Be Worth The Watch (or replay)
- Might Be Worth The Read
- Misc
21 February 2004
- Consider Downloading:
- Consider Reading or Skimming:
- The "party line" from Microsoft about the new WSE 2.0 spec.
- Advice about innovation from Tom Davenport in the March 2004 issue of "Fast Company," The gist: 1) Remember that great ideas offer improved efficiency, greater effectiveness, or increased productivity, 2) Sell no idea before its time, remembering that ideas have life cycles (and champions!) and that the story sells the idea, 3) Remember that companies compete with their brains as well as their brawn and that, although innovations come from the front lines, the top sets the tone.
- John Cox's 2/9/04 "Network World" article on Gartner's Magic Quadrants - and a parody on Magick Quadrantes (Finders, Keppers, Losers, Weepers). (For a grin, see Banner Ads we'd Like to See, too).
- Good article on building a custom registration and login control.
- Good article on what might be called supply chain shrink, "The Military's War on Invisibility: Material that goes missing in action along the last mile of the battle field supply chain has been a major cost to our armed forces. Today the military's strategies to restore asset visibility deserve your attention."
- Rushing Toward Chaos with observations by Nerve founder/futurist Christopher Meyer who foresees more IT outsourcing and thinks the next killer apps could stem from areas such as pattern recognition, autonomous agents, and globally distributed decision systems.
- The 2002 Turing Award Lectures by the winners (Drs. Ronald L. Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard M. Adleman, the developers of the RSA encryption code.
- Remember the splash Stephen Wolfram's "New Kind of Science" made when it was published? Well, you might want to read Ray Kurzweil's commentary on it if you haven't already and/or are interested. BTW, a provocative collection of essays at KurzweilAI.net.
- Free business novel, Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox's "The Goal" in exchange for marketing follow-up from Best Software.
- Selected KB Articles:
- Miscellaneous Info:
- In the 2/23/04 issue of "Business Week," economist/columnist Laura D'Andrea Tyson reports that "rough estimates suggest that the US has lost 400,000 to 500,000 IT-processing jobs to outsourcing over the last few years," (out of a US jobforce of about 130 million). I suspect it's more. What about you? Have any of you lost jobs to outsourcing? Are you worried?
- Specialist (acct, banking, econ, etc.) business jargon encyclopedias from "The Economist."
- In his letter to editor Bruce Schneier, Mike Stay: "Eric Thompson of AccessData wrote a program more than ten years ago to reverse that particular hash on MS Word files; Microsoft never changed that protection. There's almost identical functionality in Excel, with the same weakness. I wrote almost all the rest of the password crackers found at
http://www.accessdata.com/Product00_Overview.htm. Of the 50 listed there, more than half work exactly the same way as the attack described on SecurityFocus; if you overwrite a few bytes with a hex editor, the password protection is gone, and can be restored just as easily." Related: ZDNet article Word password tool not for security.
- Take an MIT OpenCourseWare course for free!
- JFF (Just for Fun):
14 February 2004
- Cool URLs:
- Selected KB Articles:
- Might Be Worth The Download:
- Might Be Worth The Read/Watch:
7 February 2004
Readable
Downloadable
Watchable
Joinable
Surfable
31 January 2004
- Selected KB articles
- Might Be Worth The Read
- Might Be Worth The Download
- Might Be Worth The Look
- Might Be Worth The Trip
24 January 2004
- Selected KB articles
- Worth The Read:
- Might Be Worth The Download
- Might Be Worth Joining
- MS Partners: Members can download Hands-On Labs from Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2003 (44 online, requires Passport and registration (free) with Microsoft Partners). Also: MS CRM 1.2 product guide (for partners).
- MS VSIP: "Become a Visual Studio Industry partner and get FREE access to the
VSIP SDK. As a VSIP you will have access to the technology, private newsgroups and secured technical content to assist you in seamlessly integrating your tools, components, and languages into the Visual Studio .NET IDE."
- Mind Expanding Stuff
17 January 2004
- Forthcoming Webcasts:
- Forthcoming Events:
- Good To Great Reads:
- A Programmer's Introduction to Visual Studio .NET "Whidbey" listing and commenting the "top ten" features/issues: 1) Refactoring, 2) Edit and Continue, 3) ClickOnce, 4) Smart Tags, 5) Code Snippets, 6) Exporting IDE Settings, 7) Line Revision Marks, 8) Temporary Projects, 9) Data Inspection Improvements, and 10) Docking Window Changes.
- Extremely cool issue 7th Anniversary issue of John Brockman's online journal, Edge, (What's your Law? with 164 contributors including Rudy Rucker, Ray Kurzweil, Stuart Kauffman, Eric Drexler, Eric Raymond, etc., etc.).
- Free white paper on basic telephony concepts from Intel.
- Andrew Odlyzko's recent paper on pricing and architecture of the Internet.
See the abstract or download it.
- Link to Martin Wattenburg's IBM research project on collaborative writing. (Prior to IBM, he created SmartMoney.com's "map of the market".)
- Consuming the RSS Feed of Amazon using C# and ASP.NET and RSS Feed Project in .NET. Related: A nice, simple intro to RSS, Making An RSS Feed.
- Converting Code from VBA to VB.NET.
- A Developer's Introduction to Web Parts. Related: Sample code for VB.NET.
- Good article about new AppForge product for PDA developers. AppForge also has a new MobileVB Solo product.
- Hotscripts - 21K+ downloadable, searchable scripts.
- Selected KB articles
- Downloads:
- Miscellaneous:
10 January 2004
- From Microsoft/MSDN:
- Selected KB articles
- Might Be Worth The Download:
- Misc:
- Didja Know...
- ...that these setup switches are used by many Microsoft patches:
/?: Show the list of installation switches.
/u: Use Unattended mode.
/f: Force other programs to quit when the computer shuts down.
/n: Do not back up files for removal.
/o: Overwrite OEM files without prompting.
/z: Do not restart when the installation is complete.
/q: Use Quiet mode (no user interaction).
/l: List the installed hotfixes.
/x: Extract the files without running Setup.
- ...that, in the Open Source world, LAMP refers to Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/PERL/Python?
- The Diversion Part (finally):
3 January 2004
- Selected KB articles
- Good to Great Reads
- Current issue of IBM's Journal of Research and Development on the Physics of Information. See also the IBM Systems Journal current issue on usability.
- 18-page PDF on Monte Carlo Simulation Using Various Industry Library Solutions. Also from Intel: its open source probabilistic networks library (and back links to other R&D) at and a description of its OpenML (machine learning) work.
- Many articles in the December issue of Wired. Examples: "The Great Library of Amazonia," "The Second Coming of Philip K. Dick," and "The Key to Genius" (about autistic savants). Great "Infoporn" graphic on the growing number of surveillance cameras in major cities, too. Click here for a reaction.
- Dave Stoddard's annual Database Dozen (currently morphed into The Intelligent Enterprise Dozen for 2004) is one of the few annual lists I actually look forward to reading and thinking about. Once the entire January issue is posted, you should be able to read other features, including a good "Year in Perspective" forecast for 2004. (Microsoft weighed in at #7 this year, behind, Cognos, BEA, Informatica, Business Objects, Hyperion, and IBM).
- The Research Service in Microsoft Office 2003 applications turns the Research task pane into a powerful search experience that can directly connect search-result data with documents. While the Microsoft Office System comes with some Research providers already registered and ready for use, you can create your own custom research services. This article explains how reference libraries work and how to create your own custom service. (14 printed pages by John Durant.)
- Free XQuery tutorial. Related: The Simple Way to Generate XML from SQL Queries.
- Downloads of Potential Interest
- Misc
20 December 2003
- Did you know that some of Microsoft's Subscriber Download content was retired on December 23rd? "Due to a settlement agreement reached in January 2001, Microsoft is phasing out the Microsoft Virtual Machine from its products. As of December 23rd, 2003, we will phase out several product families, and remove the Microsoft VM from others. The major product families that will no longer be available are: BackOffice Server 2000, MapPoint 2002, Office 2000 Suite and Products, Office XP Developer, SQL Server 7.0, and Windows 98."
- Selected KB articles
- Office 2003 security enhancements.
- If you're not sure what Web components are, you might want to read the 42-page Microsoft Office 2000 Web Components Basics. Related: Introducing the Office Web Components, Customizing the Menus and Toolbars in the Microsoft Office Web Components, and Five Tips for the Microsoft Office XP Web Components.
- Windows Automotive info and Microsoft in Automotive.
- Backing Up and Restoring Web Sites Created with Windows SharePoint Services.
- Download the sample chapter on backing up and recovering your database from Garry Robinson's comprehensive book on Real World Microsoft Access Database Protection and Security.
- Fantastic retrospective in the December 14, 2003, issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology on a century of flight, esp. (IMHO) the history of rockets at. Related: Moonport: A History of Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations.
- Beta of Netscape (now owned by AOL, remember) ISP signup available until 12/31/03 for new members 18 or older with charge card. Offers $1/month rates for Jan and Feb., then 9.95/month.
- New book by Kathy Schroeder and 8-year veteran Suzanne Taylor tells the inside story of Intuit. Did you know that Intuit founder Scott Cook describes himself as a "former fat salesman", reflecting the fact that he was a brand manager for Crisco for Procter & Gamble after he left Harvard Business School? (Ballmer is a P&G expat, too).
- Check out TechRepublic's Tools and Executables downloads. Examples: sample Active Directory database for experimentation, a VBS utility that finds empty folders, and a command line HTML route utility that uses Windows Script Host and VBScript.
- Uncle Sam Wants You... to play.
- You might bookmark Google's "advanced search" page and check it out periodically to keep abreast of new options.
- Old-time radio shows. Related: Stations when you're on the road.
20 December 2003
- Get full streaming media of all the PDC sessions for free.
- Read Rocky Lhotka's Fun with Operators (in VB.NET).
- Great article, Security Briefs: Strong Names and Security in the .NET Framework by Keith Brown.
- If you're interested in SMS, you can download Microsoft's free (6GB) SMS 2003 Operations Guide.
- Don't forget to take advantage of Microsoft's free Webcasts. Several worthwhile-sounding ones.
- Oracle has an OTN site that's its equivalent of MSDN (free registration required). Of potential interest: JDBC How-To articles, Oracle's How-To on Installing Oracle 9.2, PHP 1.3.28, and Apache 4.3.2 on Linux (Red Had Linux AS or others), New SQL Capabilities in Oracle Database 10g (31-page technical white paper about regular expressions, native floating point data types, multiset operations, and LOB data type enhancements) at. Related: You can download a free 300+ page eBook by Chris Foot, OCP Instructors Guide for Oracle DBA Certification.
- If SQL Server's more your cup of tea, you can download Bill Graziano's Advanced Profiler slides. Related: Download the
120-page sample chapter on SQLXML from Ken Henderson's The Guru's Guide to SQL Server Architecture and Internals and Ready or Not, Here Comes the CLR (for folks interested in Yukon).
- If you're interested in Java, you may want to read a draft of Ted Neward's chapter on Java security from a forthcoming book on Effective Enterprise Java.
- Read Ramnivas Laddad's two-part series on aspect-oriented refactoring.
- Dan Appleman has come out with a Best of VB6 eBook that you can download for only $7.95. Related: Dan's NT Security Programming in VB6 eBook (at the same URL). Dan says the articles target intermediate level developers. The six included articles are:
- A DLL is a DLL is a DLL - Learn about the different types of DLLs.
- The Ten Commandments for Safe API Programming
- When a bug is not a bug
- Taking the Long View (versioning for ActiveX components)
- CheapTrace and
- The Query that came in from the Cold (about the ByVal keyword)
- Apache Ant 1.6
- Selected KB articles
- SNORT seems to be becoming quite popular http://www.snort.org. (No, not Rod's dog Snort).
- On a Lighter Note:
13 December 2003
6 December 2003
29 November 2003
- From the December MSDN - Aaron Skonnard's article on publicly available Web Services from Microsoft, Lyn Robison's Design Patterns column on the asynchronous wait state pattern in ASP.NET, and Johnny Papa's article on SQL Server triggers.
- Information Week's Nov. 16th cover story on The Future of the American Programmer in the Nov. 16 issue. Sobering stuff.
- Good VAR Business feature where Steve Ballmer answers pointed questions about Linux, security, Microsoft as potential competitor, and the SMB market from a handful of ISVs and partners.
- Good eWeek article on using RSS in business, not just for blasting weblogs and news.
- Enterprise Reporting Makes a Comeback.
- Seth Godin's editorial on scarcity in the Dec. issue of FastCompany. His conclusion - that respect, honesty, good judgment, and long-term relationships that lead to trust are scarcer than cool technology.
- Upcoming Webcasts
- 12/1 (11AM PST) Architecting Enterprise POS Solutions
- 12/2 (11AM PST) Reporting Services in SQL Server 2000
- 12/3 (11AM PST) Data Access Patterns in ADO.NET
- 12/5 (1PM PST) Understanding Win32 Support for Pocket PC and Smartphone Apps
- Selected KB articles
- .NET Compact Framework QuickStart Tutorials
- SQL Server 2000 Best Practices Analyzer Beta 1.0.
- Check out Winter Corporation's lists of largest databases for decision support and OLTP. France Telecom's Oracle-based data warehouse wins overall, weighing in at 29.2 terabytes. SQL Server didn't make the top 10 in either category. Nor did Access. :-) (little joke). Related: the current list of the top 500 supercomputers in the world. NEC's Yokohama-based Earth Simulator remains #1.
- Multilingual? If you know Java, you might take a look at IBM's Eclipse-enabled Design Pattern Toolkit. Related: Eclipse Poised for Growth.
- Windows Mobile 2003-based Smartphone Developer Kit.
- Are you a Vet? New www.myhealth.va.gov may provide useful info about health benefits.
- Where Food Crops Originated.
- NCDC Freeze/Frost Maps.
- www.todayinliterature.com.
- IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
- Do you like those "How it Works" books (and the related site?). Then check out how it's made.
- Nostalgic for old-fashioned cowboy films?
22 November 2003
15 November 2003
- Downloads
- Order a free UML poster and CD from IBM's Rational.
- Microsoft recently announced plans to divide its MSN division into two
sections. Yusuf Mehdi will head the new Information unit (the MSN portal
including its search services, e-commerce sites, and entertainment and other
services.) and Blake Irving will guide the Comm division (MSN service,
Hotmail, MSN Messenger, and Passport.) Paul Ryan, former CTO of Overture,
has been hired by MSN to head their search efforts. Analysts expect
Microsoft to pursue subscription growth opportunities in the music
gaming arenas and to try to dethrone Google as the search engine of choice.
- Interesting reads:
- Selected KB articles
- New site from the founders of DotNetJunkies.com - Doug Seven and Donny Mack - SqlJunkies.com.
- Fun: The Hello World Project provides links to 204 Hello World programs.
- Microsoft Research downloads. By my count, 50 sample apps!
8 November 2003
- Handy directory of free Web services you can use or incorporate into your apps.
- Advanced article by Matt Pietrek and Russ Osterlund (Break Free of Code Deadlocks in Critical Sections Under Windows) for C++ types on
threading.
- Where to find out about Whidbey (You can even download sample chapters on generics and My Namespace from Sean Campbell, Scott Swigart, Kris Horrocks, Derek Hatchard, and Peter Bernhardt's book, Microsoft Visual Basic Programmer's Introduction to Whidbey).
- Read Bill Hatfield's article in MSIL.
- Download MSXML 4.0 Service Pack 2 (Microsoft XML Core Services).
This from Microsoft: "MSXML 4.0 SP2 is a complete replacement of MSXML 4.0 and MSXML 4.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1). MSXML 4.0 SP2 provides a number of security and bug fixes... MSXML 4.0 SP2 does not replace MSXML 3.0 because some obsolete and non-conformant features are no longer supported. You may run MSXML 4.0 and MSXML 3.0 and earlier versions concurrently." See also the Release Notes.
- Selected KB articles
- Newsletters to which I subscribe for succinct daily doses of environmental news: www.enn.com and www.tidepool.org.
- Subscription forms to newlsetters to which I subscribe for a daily dose of English: www.wordsmith.org and www.wordspy.com.
- Cool NASA site.
- How To Make a Van Leeuwenhoek Microscope Replica (science fair idea for the kids?).
- The official time in Redmond (and other Pacific time zone locales).
1 November 2003
25 October 2003
- Upcoming Webcasts
- 10/28 (9-10 AM PST) OneNote 2003
- 10/28 (11:30-12:30 PST) Office System 2003
- 10/29 (8-9:30 AM PST) Identity Integration Server 2003
- 10/29 (10-11:30 AM PST) Windows System Resource Manager (Win2003)
- 10/29 (11-12:30 PST) Application Blocks
- 10/31 (11-12:30 PST) Adv. Web Services with ASP.NET
- 10/31 (1-2:30 PM PST) Secure Code Principles
- Selected KB articles
- Oldies, but goodies
- Check out Microsoft's new and improved Office Developer Center.
- Find out what's included in the InfoPath 2003 SDK or just download it (3.8MB). Related: Find out how InfoPath forms compare with other Microsoft solutions.
- Read John Durant's 28-page article, The Definitive 'Hello World' Managed Smart Document Tutorial.
- Read Mark Bukovec's 24-page article on using the Visio 2003 ActiveX Control (i.e. the Visio drawing control) in your apps.
- Read a short article about how US federal procurement rules have changed recently to include, among other things, a new emphasis on "performance-based" (surprise!) contracts.
- Read Bill Joy's essay, Design for the Digital Revolution, that first appeared in the March 6, 2000, issue of Fortune. Still timely and thought-provoking. Example: "Another strong trend affecting design is that the network is becoming dumb and the end nodes smart." Also talks about Gerlerntner's "Mirror Worlds" where he says "Gerlerntner envisioned the city as live, running a simulation of itself."
- If you need to remove VS 2003, be sure to read KB 82642 first.
- Read Dan Geer's controversial white paper, CyberInsecurity: The Cost of Monopoly, which warns of the risks of OS monoculture.
- In a Feb 1999 column for DM Review, Ken Rudin lists common database metrics: extract times, data scrubbing and transforming times, load times, query response times, backup times, recovery times, plus anticipated growth rates for data, users, and number of queries. How many do *you* track?
- According to the 10/6/03 issue of CRN, MS has an estimated 65-76K ISVs, 100 of whom are Global ISVs.
- Find out which MSDN RSS feeds are available.
- Did you know you could download the VB.NET (version 7.1 from April 2003) language spec.
- Ancient World Web portal.
- Blog portal.
- Geoscience Australia's database of worldwide nuclear explosions (other cool stuff, too).
- Links to 1300+ free online medical journals.
18 October 2003
11 October 2003
4 October 2003
20 September 2003
- Web Graphics On The Fly in ASP.NET by Nick Parker.
- These sound interesting:
- Eval version of O2 Solutions' PDFNET.
- Go RAD, go mobile - with Pocket PowerBuilder! (remember PowerBuilder?) and PowerBuilder and Pocket PowerBuilder Differences.
- PocketDraw's new
VisualScript XML.
- SharpUI for .NET (beta).
- FMS's Total .NET Sourcebook.
- Just published: Optimizing Oracle Performance by Cary Millsap with Jeff
Holt (ISBN 0-596-00527-X). Read Ch 1, A Better Way to Optimize, for free. Also worthy of mention: Nick Symmonds' Data Entry and Validation. Read Ch 8, Advanced
Validation and Custom Data Validation Controls, for free online.
- Andrew Novick's SQL Server UDF of the week. SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 3 includes a new system UDF, fn_get_sql. See
Find out what they're doing with fn_get_SQL.
- Another cool site, this one about MSAccess: UtterAccess.
- Great articles in the October issue of MSDN:
- Selected KB articles
- Think about participating in Google's forthcoming programming contest. Registration for the Google Code Jam starts on October 1.
- Download any of six ASP.NET Community Starter Kits. See www.asp.net and
community whitepaper.doc.
- Check out the virtual collection of 2,000+ volumes of mainly historical
mathematical material at mathbooks.library.cornell.edu.
- Word jumbler.
- Online Picasso.
- Coming 9/23: a new book Quicksilver from Neal Stephenson.
- Blame it (why Office keeps getting bigger and bigger) on Jack Welch. So
says Jeff Raikes: "...if you think your market share's too high, you've
defined the market too small."
A Red Herring article.
- Learn how to useCrystal Reports' report parts.
- Read Steven Smith's article on the CacheConfig class.
- Read a good article on the changing role of DBAs.
- Subscribe to Bruce Schneier's free monthly CRYPTO-GRAM. Back issues are
available.
To subscribe, go here or send a blank message to crypto-gram-subscribe@chaparraltree.com.
13 September 2003
- Download and apply this week's critical updates. And do yourself a favor and download and run MBSA, too. (Bet you'll be surprised how vulnerable your system is.)
- Selected KB articles
- Upcoming Webcasts
(You can get the slides, read the transcripts, and/or watch the replay if you have to miss them)
- New Office Online Site Launched. Related: Office Developer and Office downloads.
- See how the other half (think Big Iron) lives when you read Erich
Strohmaier's feature on "Who's Who" in High Performance Computing (HPC). Now in its 10th year, the TOP500 list of supercomputers.
- Read Andrew Novick's article on Creating a SQL Server User Interface with InfoPath.
- Did you know that the (mainly European) GSM digital mobile telephone
system encryption code has been cracked? Related: GSM Security FAQ.
- Great quote from Doc Searls, which appeared in the now defunct July/August 2001 Embedded Linux Journal): "Both Linux and BSD are forms of UNIX that
grow wild in nature, rather than in the private habitats where captive OS species have been bred by their owners in relative isolation for private purposes."
- No, MS isn't running IIS on Linux (or at least it wasn't last month).
- Running neck-and-neck. comScore Media Metrix announced the top 50 U.S.
Internet properties for August 2003. The top three:
- AOL (111,117,000 unique visitors)
- MSN (110,673,000 unique visitors)
- Yahoo! (108,240,000 unique visitors)
[Strangely, VB Helper isn't on the list ;-) It gets about 140,000 visitors and about 4.4 million hits per month. #50 on their list gets about 10 million visitors. We just need to increase VB Helper visits by a factor of 100 and we'll be there! (Of course, the server will crash.)]
- Looking for an excuse to dabble with DB2 and/or Borland's new C#Builder (30MB personal edition download)? Read Jeremy McGee's Migrating From Microsoft SQL Server to IBM DB2 UDB Using C#Builder. Related: while you're at the Borland site, you might want to check out the free promotional version (until 11/30/03) of Together for .NET (think UML).
- Other stuff to explore:
- Crystal Enterprise Professional (free 5-user version for North American customers who are licensed owners of Crystal Reports).
- Try a 15-day eval version of Popkin's new System Architect V9.1 with full support for BPMN (business process modeling notation).
- VB-Helper fan Eric Brusen, MCSE Windows NT4 & 2000, MCSD, MCDBA, CTT+, NT-CIP, MCT-Retired Senior Software Engineer, wrote to recommend Mike Gunderloy's Log Parser FAQ. (This is response to
last week's recommendation of Log Parser. Thanks, Eric!)
- Check out Business 2.0's eclectic list (about 60) of classic "business" books. How many have *you* read?
- Beats Theory X. Read about "sheepdog management" - "nip their heels and keep 'em moving" in a classic August 6, 2001, editorial by Chuck Yoke in Network World.
- Enjoy Alexander Bogomolny's Interactive Mathematics Miscellany and Puzzles.
- Enjoy the August issue of Discover Magazine's feature on slide rules.
6 September 2003
23 August 2003
- Blaster removal tool.
- SoBig removal tool.
- Microsoft's new Mobility and Embedded Developer site.
- Selected KB articles:
- Alex Lowe's C# to VB converter.
- Tom Yager's thought-provoking March 7, 2003, column on mentors and managing complexity.
- Tara Calishan's Research Buzz e-newsletter and site. Sample: "The CIA
has announced ...the 2003 World Factbook, now available at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html...Information includes a capsule information for over 250 countries and regions in nine
primary and 134 sub categories."
- Pithy analysis of Microsoft's emerging PlaceWare/Net Meeting strategy by one of my favorite IT news sources, TheRegister.
- Jason Levine's browser security test (read modem hijacking, etc.).
- Read about Real Software's new REALbasic developer program. Though most popular in the Mac world, a Linux version is reportedly under development.
- Read the latest Rational Edge ezine (mainly about the Rational/IBM Unified Process, RUP). Archive issues loaded with info about use cases, UML, etc.
- Weekly new free titles for MS Reader (summer only, activated MS Reader 2 only).
- Comedy songs and parodies.
- Weird: Bardcode display the entire works of Shakespeare in barcode form.
- Exploring Plato's dialogues.
16 August 2003
9 August 2003
- Selected KB articles:
- Upcoming Webcasts
- 8/11 (1-2:30 PST) Building Community Web Sites with the ASP.NET Community Starter Kit
- 8/13 (11-12:30 PST) Best Practices for Web Services
- 8/13 (1-2:30 PST) Business Value of Business Intelligence through Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services
- 8/14 (10-11:30 PST) Publishing from Word with Content Management Server 2002
- 8/14 (11-12:30 PST) Creating Distributed .NET Applications using Enterprise Templates
- 8/18 (1-2:30 PST) Mobile Application Development with Visual Studio .NET 2003
- Read Fritz Onion's 27-pager on
hierarchical data binding in ASP.NET.
- Read Ken North's article on the difference between XQuery and SQL.
- Read all about F#.
- Find out about the new .NET Speech SDK beta that works with .NET 2003
in the microsoft.public.netspeechsdk newsgroup and/or in 816448 HOW TO:
Configure Microsoft .NET Speech SDK Beta 2 for Improved Compatibility with
Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 . Related: order the new Beta 3 Speech
Application SDK.
- Spectralshift bills itself as the first website dedicated to Amateur
"radial velocity" studies (read red shift and blue shift).
- Neuroscience for kids.
- Virginia teacher Richard Bechtold has a math test generator (addition, subtraction,
multiplication, division).
- World population portal.
- Search Systems bills itself as the "largest free public records database collection."
2 August 2003
- The cost of the SQL Server Developer Edition, part of the MSDN Universal
Subscription but also heretofore available standalone for $US 499, has been
reduced to $49 beginning August 1! ("You can obtain development licenses for
installations of SQL Server that are part of your development environment.
SQL Server Developer Edition is licensed per developer and must be used for
designing, developing, and testing purposes only. SQL Server Developer
Edition has all of the functionality of SQL Server Enterprise Edition. You
may not use it as a passive failover server or for disaster recovery.")
- Microsoft's real-time plans are being unveiled as the erstwhile Office
Real-Time Communications Server 2003, formerly "Greenwich," morphs into the
Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003. The recently acquired
PlaceWare Conference Center will take on the name Microsoft Office Live
Meeting 2003. SharePoint Portal Server, SharePoint Services, and Live
Communications Server promise to provide site-based collaboration that's
integrated with Office 2003, IM, and alerting.
- Get the new ActiveSync 3.7.
- Get a list of Microsoft products that include MSDE 2000 (and therefore may need updating for protection against the Slammer worm).
- Get the MDAC 2.7 SP1 Refresh (same version as what's included in SQL Server 2000 3a, post-Slammer release). [Could Microsoft make these URLs any longer?]
- Get a list of Microsoft-recognized "communities". Note the separate categories for .NET and Visual Studio .NET. No special category for "vintage" VB.
- Read Microsoft's newly posted roadmap for developers.
- Read a thought-provoking editorial by John Parkinson, Chief Technologist for the Americas at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, on The Limits to Architecture. After reading Parkinson's piece, I'd recommend you think about enterprise architecture in your own organization, and then about the popular Zachman Framework, the relatively new U.S. Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF), and Christopher Alexander's classic A Pattern Language.
- Then read Scott Ambler's essay on agile enterprise architecture. Is it an
oxymoron? Related: the $100/year membership site agilealliance.org and its free list of user groups.
- If you're an Office 2003 beta user, don't overlook Outlook 2003 with
Business Contact Manager (BCM), which is designed for small businesses with fewer than 25 employees.
Related: the transcript from the June 23 chat on BCM
and Don Kiely's VBits article on Office 2003.
- Join any of three levels of Microsoft's new Visual Studio Integration Program
starting at the "price" of free registration. Even if you only register
for the free level, you still have access to the free downloads of the
integration and help integration SDKs.
- Several excellent new articles on MSDN. Examples: debugging VB.NET programs based on a life insurance calculator program
and Rockford Lhotka's article on storing user configurations.
- Update on Project Mono (open source version of .NET runtime), now at
version 0.24 with implementations of ADO.NET, ASP.NET, the C# compiler, and the CLR.
- Selected Knowledge Base Articles
- Promising new free science site for kids:
Science News for Kids. Both Rod and I are subscribers to the
weekly print version of Science News and can recommend both.
- Promising new VB.NET site: VB .NET Heaven.
- Mathematics genealogy project. Has about 70K records. Goal is to document
worldwide mathematicians.
- Ken Roberts' Great Books online.
26 July 2003
19 July 2003
12 July 2003
5 July 2003
- Not sure what application blocks are or how to implement them? Here are some articles on:
Related: the Microsoft newsgroup microsoft.public.dotnet.distributed_apps.
- Have you used MSDN's Knowledge Base How-To index at ? (I know, who needs it with all of VB-Helper's cool how-to's?)
- Selected KB articles
- Recommended: Sten Sunblad and Per Sundblad's Design Patterns:
Architecture of an Autonomous Application in the July MSDN.
Related: two downloadable sample chapters from their book
and .NET Architecture Center.
- Are you a VB.NET coder who misses control arrays and/or the forms collection? If so, Billy Hollis shows you how to
replicate the functionality
in VB.NET.
- Remember Small Business Server (SBS)? No, it's not dead, and the new
version, which is expected to be released to manufacturing in August or
September, will continue to target companies with up to 50 PCs. SBS 2003
will come in two editions: 1) a premium package, comparable to the current
SBS 2000 which ships with Win2K Server, Exchange Server 2003, SharePoint
Services collaboration software, SQL Server 2000, Internet Security and
Acceleration server, FrontPage development tools, and five client-access
licenses and 2) a new "standard" edition lacking the SQL and ISA servers.
Small Business Server Home
and CRN article
Test Center Review: Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 Aims To Please SMBs.
Also online hands-on labs expected July 8.
- Interesting issue on business innovation from the Center for Business Innovation (The Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation).
- PhysicsWeb is the Web site for the Bristol, UK-based Institute of Physics and its Physics World magazine. The "Best of" section works like a portal. Portal "doors" I like: history of physics and physics and biology.
- Just for fun - Nerds for a Better America (and others at hacks.mit.edu).
28 June 2003
- Free sample chapter on the SQL-like MDX language in Microsoft's Analysis Services (OLAP).
- KNOWLEDGE BASE articles:
- Read a free (until the August issue is posted) online article about
implementing cross-platform instant messaging as a Web service.
- Download the new Pocket PC 2003 SDK. (Develop apps with VS.NET 2003 or eMbedded VB6 or eMbedded VC++)
- Check out the current issue of the ACM SIGMOD for several interesting articles, including an interview with the man behind Ingres, Dr. Michael Stonebraker.
- New e-book, The Definitive Guide to Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services, by Greyson Mitchem, will be available incrementally from (only 1 chapter now).
Related: more free online books (mainly from the 90s) from InformIT.
- Analytics and data mining today, agent-based modeling tomorrow. Read CIO Insight's interview with Eric Bonabeau.
- Another fascinating interview, this one with Brian Kotelly, a speech-recognition software expert who, according to ACM, explains the difference between good design and ambiguity, how good designs go bad, and why everyone is a designer.
- Want to know more about the Reiser file system and its inventor?
- Very cool streaming ad profiled by Business 2.0.
- Okay, science fair season is behind us, but, heck, science isn't just for kids. With topics like nerd/misfit resources, well, need I say more?
21 June 2003
14 June 2003
7 June 2003
- New newsgroup: microsoft.public.access.security. Related: new MSDN security developer center.
- Interested in crypto? Sign up for Crypto-Gram, a free monthly e-mail newsletter on computer security and cryptography from Bruce Schneier (author of "Secrets and Lies" and "Applied Cryptography," inventor of Blowfish and Twofish, CTO and founder of Counterpane Internet Security, Inc.).
- Competitive intelligence (CI - keeping track of what your competition is doing) is hot. Good CI combines search technology and data mining. One
company offers a trial that might be worth trying: Watch 360. Related: The CI Resource Index and Loyola Economic and Competitive Intelligence.
- Does IT Matter? Microsoft Executive VP Paul Flessner launched his TechEd keynote by posing the same rhetorical question that editor-at-large Nicholas Carr does in a recent, much discussed "Harvard Business Review" article (not available free online). Flessner keynote transcript.
Related:
- Read Aaron Skonnard's new article on designing XML library schemas.
- Try Kamal Patel's C# to VB.NET translator.
- Recommended Webcast replays:
- Read a fascinating case study on Land O'Lakes' implementation of collaborative logistics and smart supply chain management at
Case Study: Land O'Lakes Shares the Load and
Land O'Lakes Exec Talks Warehousing. Bonus for humans:
not only does it save LoL money, it's environmentally sane.
- The July issue of Wired, due out next week, will include an article by Paul Boutin, "Slammed! An inside view of the worm that crashed the Internet in 15 minutes," that not only explains how Slammer's computer code infiltrates a software programs and replicates itself, but will also include the code.
- Download presentations from Oracle AppsWorld that was held in San Diego in
January 2003.
- Way, way cool wooden periodic table. Find out what Uncle Tungsten, NPR, and Mathematica have in common.
- Extremely useful portal to glossaries.
31 May 2003
24 May 2003
- Read Danny Lesandrini's article on using Access as a .NET Report Writer.(You can read the cover stories of each of Pinnacle's newsletters for free during their publication month.)
- Check out Joel Spolsky's site about Website design (includes nine chapters
from his book on UI Design for Programmers).
- See Mike Hillyer's site with sample code for accessing MySQL databases from VB.
- Read a good article on when to use which .NET collections class by Dino Esposito in the January 2003 issue of Windows Developer. The relevant namespaces docs are documented
here and
here.
BTW, Oracle 9i only supports three types of collection data
types: so-called "index-by" tables which are basically unbounded
single-dimensional arrays, VARRAYS (variable arrays), and nested tables.
- MDA, EDA, SOA? Model-driven, event-driven, and service-oriented
architecture are battling it out for your mind and budget. See
this and
this.
- Download the GAO's April 2003 (Version 1.1) report on Information Technology: A Framework for Assessing the Improving Enterprise Architecture Management. (My message: architecture is becoming more important.)
- ActiveState's products for .NET: Visual Python, Visual Perl, and Visual XSLT. Related: May 28 10AM PDT Webcast on Visual Python.
- Download Microsoft's baseline white paper on patterns (with a great
bibliography).
- Corporate intranets are morphing into dashboards, according to an article in the April issue of Darwin Magazine.
- Data modeling and BPM are converging.
- Wintellect co-founder Jeff Prosise shows you how to set things up so
data hashed or encrypted on one server can be validated or unencrypted on another.
- Great tutorial on wavelets analysis.
- Check out the National Association of Engineering's Greatest Engineering Achievements of the 20th Century Site. Great resource for students.
- See the world through the eye of a bee.
17 May 2003
- Starts Monday at a virtual lab near you: three free .NET-related hands-on
labs from Microsoft. Sign up.
- Read Ken North's feature on data management for the 21st century (hint:
XML + SQL + Web services + grid services) and don't miss
the views from IBM, MS, and Oracle at /609feat1_4.shtml, 609feat1_6.shtml, and 609feat1_5.shtml
- According to John Parkinson (Cap Gemini consultant), recounting work with
complex projects back in the 70s and 80s, "almost 75 percent of the final
code came from just 5 percent of the programmers." Do you see that kind of
discrepancy in your teams? If so, are you a "power programmer?"
- File system futures clarified: Windows Future Storage (WinFS) is a
service that runs on top of NTFS, not an entirely new file system, after all.
- From the June 2003 issue of gdmag.com:
Related: Writing Mobile Games for .NET Compact Framework.
- Thought-provoking interview of Vinod Khosla, "dean of VC" in Silicon
Valley in the May 26 issue of Forbes. Interesting points:
- 70% of IT budget goes "to internal staff...to inefficiency
- The typical company that spends $10M on SAP will spend $100M over the next 5 years on
"SAP-related stuff."
Bottom line: we don't spend enough time on ROI.
- Read Dino Esposito's great article on merging changed data using ADO.NET in the June issue of Windows Developer and/or download the code. Dino explains how ADO.NET's Merge function works and provides his own smarter Merger class.
- Curious about how mainframe security works under MVS? Read Brian Curran's feature (PDF format) in ZD's new Z/Journal (for IBM mainframes).
- Want to set up a developer version of clustering using VMware? Watch a
replay of Brian Knight's excellentMay 14 TechNet Webcast: 0 to Cluster in
60 Minutes - Clustering Windows and SQL Server.
10 May 2003
- Patterns.
Server Clustering.
Failover Cluster.
Related: Serge Demeyer's OO reengineering links and patterns and
read two sample PDF chapters and his online bibliography.
- Really cool poster (downloadable and viewable online) of family tree of
computer languages which first appeared in the July 2002 issue of Wired. It describes Visual Basic as "The Rodney Dangerfield of programming languages."
- Time to learn Cobol/Cobol.NET? According to Michael Vizard's editorial in
the 4/28/03 CRN, 60-80% of IT budgets are spent maintaining mainframes and
their applications, and about 30 billion Cobol transactions are processed
each day. You might want to read Chris Richardson's Cobol and VB on .NET.
Related: Fujitsu Softare NetCOBOL for .NET version 2.0. [Aside: When I worked at GTE, they had several multi-million line long COBOL programs written in the 60s and 70s. I'm sure they are still in use. Rod]
- New Web Services Newsgroups on msnews.microsoft.com.
- Thought-provoking essay on the ethics of safety critical systems. (Would you ever blow the whistle?)
Related: formal methods for satefy critical systems and this.
Quote: "For mathematicians, proofs are a social process, taking years, decades, or even centuries to be generally accepted."
- Thought-provoking article on the importance of information when
contemplating organizational size.
- Download presentations from O'Reilly's Emerging Technology conf.
- AxTtools' freeware utility VssRecursivePurge to clean up VSS databases.
- Interesting paper, Email as Spectroscopy: Automated Discovery of
Community Structure within Organizations by HP Labs gurus Josh Tyler, Dennis Wilkinson, and Bernardo A. Huberman.
- Upcoming Webcasts:
3 May 2003
19 April 2003
12 April 2003
5 April 2003
22 March 2003
22 March 2003
- If you have to work with bean counters (or are one), you may want to sign
up for Microsoft's free Financial Services Developers Conf on the Microsoft
campus April 24-25.
- Good tutorials on creating 508 (accessible) forms here and
here. Related: Jakob Nielsen on reset and
cancel buttons. Finally, look
for John Mueller's forthcoming book on accessibility due out mid April.
- Scot Becker is a fan of ORM and maintains a site where you can get a lot
of great info about how it compares with ER and UML. For example, see this article
Arguments against the Use of ORM (and their Rebuttals).
- Get Amazon's Web Services SDK 2.0.
- Microsoft Agent lives! Seriously, despite almost universal developer
disdain, some users like the technology. Microsoft Agent Ring includes tons of characters including Reaper, E-woman, Sharky, and others.
- Dino Esposito has a useful article in the April 2003 issue of Windows
Developer on tricking synchronized controls to
work independently.
Links to other of Dino's mainly database- and
ADO/ADO.NET-related articles. Related: good
article in Visual Studio Magazine,
Bind XML Data in ASP.NET by Stan Schultes.
- Download HP's new Mobile Printing for Pocket PC SDK.
- Have fun experimenting with Smartphone technology using the emulator that's part of the SDK. Related: Microsoft's Smartphone page and
Steve Clayton's *excellent* March 19 Webcast available for replay.
- Read a transcript of BG's March 19 keynote at Microsoft's MobilityDevCon.
- New NIST Special Publication 800-47, "Security Guide for Interconnecting Information Technology Systems" and LOTS of other free docs related to security here.
- Good article by Brian Kempster on change management in a SQL Server environment (free reg req'd).
- Download the technology preview of the .NET version of National
Instruments' Measurement Studio. You may also want to
consider NI's free online 30-minute Data Acquisition with Visual Basic Interactive Tutorial.
- Peter Novig's site (AI, Lisp, etc).
- Think vacation. US National Wildlife Refuges.
- Vitural Fossil Museum.
- Think writing systems at Simon Ager's interesting site.
15 March 2003
- Very cool site business anyplace run by two Swedish MVP
friends, Christian Forsberg and Andreas Sjöström, with tons of code and
articles and links related to .NET CF, eVB, and Pocket PC development. I
discovered it after listening to their excellent March 13 Webcast. You should be able to
download the PPTs next week, and Chris and Andreas promised to post the source code for their example on their site. Related:
Microsoft .NET Compact Framework.
- Read about the proposed US mandate to put bar codes on all hospital drugs
at and
then read Rod's articles on creating bar codes in VB6 in the December 2002
and Jan 2003 issues of Hardcore Visual Basic (of which I'm editor and Rod's
a columnist - sub req'd).
- Worth begging your bosses to buy for you: Sanctum's AppScan DE for Visual
Studio.NET (ships Monday with a special intro price of $995 until 8/1). Why?
It will catch unsafe coding before you ship or deploy your apps.
- German RAD tool vendor (for VS.NET) DeKlarit is a finalist in the eWeek excellence
awards and is another product you might want to check out. 30-day eval available, plus decent docs, samples.
Also some good white papers.
- Joseph Rubin's ExcelTip.com site. He's a CPA and knows his Excel.
- NessusWX v1.4.2. Open-source freeware vulnerability analysis scanner.
Rated #2 in comparative review by www.inforsecuritymag.com in its March 2003
issue.
- ACM has launched a new (subscription) journal, Queue, and the first issue,
which is devoted to Web Services, is available free online for now.
Thoughtful, in-depth articles from an architectural perspective from smart
folks at IBM, Microsoft, and Sun, plus an interview with BEA's Sr. VP Adam
Bosworth (ex-Microsoftie Director)
- Good reads:
- BBC maps of you know where. If you're interested in maps, check out ESRI and its 61 free online classes. Example: one on
ArcPad, ESRI's Pocket PC application you can use with GPS.
- Botany: The History of a Science.
8 March 2003
- Read what Oliver Rist has to say about X# (!) and XDocs in his February 15 SD Times column.
- You might want to try to listen to a live audiocast of Miguel de Icaza
from WebServices Edge (Boston, Tuesday, March 18 2-2:50 PM) about
the Mono Project.
- Speaking of Webcasts, there are several good ones from Microsoft scheduled
for this week. Sign up here. While you're at
it, look at the replay list. Woody Pewitt's March 7 presentation on
developing Pocket PC apps with SDE was primo as was Anthony Mann's session
on Caching Web Services with SQL Server.
- Check out the article in the current Oracle Magazine about
accessing
Oracle with ODP.NET. The same issue talks
a lot about Oracle's built-in OLAP (think of it as Oracle's reply to SQL
Server's Analysis Services)
here and
here.
- Find out how Oracle and IBM are investing big bucks to get Linux certified
as Common Criteria compliant.
- Don't you love hearing people talk about their organization's
re-engineering headaches? (DOD trying to consolidate 81 "legacy" HR apps,
for example). It almost always makes you realize the grass can be a lot less
green on the other side of the fence. Well, what most of the successful
projects have in common is BPM (business process modeling - not management
or metrics which are sometimes also referred to as BPM). If you're into "big
picture" architecture, you might want to find out more about BPM and related
standards here and
here.
- Read an interesting article on visualization of prime numbers by Patrick
Amato.
- Educate yourself about semiotics at David Chandler's site. And if you're
interested in finding out more about rhetoric, check out Dr. Gideon Burton's
site.
- History of US Army rations with photos and other interesting links.
- Dream about making music with cool "hyperinstruments"
here and here.
28 February 2003
- Read Martin Muller's 17-page Getting WYSIWYG Print Results from a .NET RichTextBox.
- Freeware WinCE screencap program written by Paul Beavers.
- Free XML editors here and here.
- Thought-provoking essay by architectural theorist Jacob Voorthuis on
Walter Benjamin (Ambling through the City of a Mind). Likely to lead you to
do more reading on Calvino's "Invisible Cities" and Christopher Alexander's
classic "A Pattern Language." (Discovered after reading a review of a new biography on Gershom Scholem in
3/3/03 New Republic, in case you wondered.)
- Read EContent Magazine's 12/02 list of the EContent 100. Useful summaries
about each company.
- Read Æleen Frisch's January 2003 article in SysAdmin about searching with
grep, ngrep, grepmail, smnptranslate, and more. Related: Randal Schwartz's piece on summarizing a logfile.
- Drawing inspiration from Hal Barwood's "Four of the 400" lecture, Game Developer columnist Noah Falstein hosts the "400 Project" with an emerging
list of rules for good game design.
- I recently read an article about using UML that said there were three types of development: object-oriented, data-centric, and legacy. Nice, succinct observation. Do you agree?
- Game: Prairie doggin' at the cube farm.
- Free text-to-speech (TTS) program, ReadPlease 2003. 11+MB download
available in several languages.
22 February 2003
- Good read on ASP.NET Performance Monitoring, and When to Alert Administrators
- VB MVP Central is worth checking out periodically. And don't forget its easy-to-use Win API lookup.
- You've probably heard about Wayback Machine and probably have your own personal Internet-enabled flashbacks now and then. My most recent: After reading the March 2003 Business 2.0 article about
there.com's avatars, virtual works, and simulation a reference to Will Harvey's Music Construction Set inspired me to Google. One of the fortuitous finds: Steve Weyhrich's Apple II Software Hits, 1983. Yes, I had one, and a Commodore 64, and some Sinclairs and Vic 20s. Wayback indeed.
- Good January 2003 article on Security Features in Windows CE.NET. Related: Nat Frampton's article on writing
eVC++.
- Rather sobering assessment of Microsoft code (and pre-Slammer at that) by Infosecurity Magazine editor Lawrence Walsh in the February issue's cover story. ("Trustworthy Yet?") Related: PDF of top 10 Web app coding risks.
- Get educated about UML and Rational XDE by requesting the free Rational Developer PowerPack.
- Download a free standalone memory diagnostic. Plugged in the March issue of Max PC.
- ArXiv, an e-print service in the fields of physics, mathematics, non-linear science and computer science. Related: Los Alamos' Center for Nonlinear Science.
- Personality test (5-10 minutes).
- Robert Pinsky's favorite poem project. Sic your kids (or siblings) on this. Don't you wish you'd (been forced to) memorized more poems as a kid?
- Winning philosophy essay by Jason Turner in the style of a Socratic dialogue (wise or happy).
- A fascinating Technology Research News Magazine article:
Butterflies offer lessons for robots.
15 February 2003
8 February 2003
- Listen to Webcast archives: I can vouch for last week's
RSA Webcast on SmartCards and Stan Sorensen's special
Webcast on the Slammer worm.
E-mail a request for Stan's slides, mentioning Sorensen, Slammer, and Feb 6.
- Among the many useful items I learned from the Slammer Webcast were:
- that Microsoft will (at some unspecified future date) re-release SQL Server 2000 including SP3
- that SQL Server 7 does not seem vulnerable to Slammer
- that you can already download a new version of MSDE that is Slammer resistant (with network access, multi-instancing, autodiscovery, and UDP listening disabled by default)
- that Microsoft has posted copies of SQL Scan (will only run on Win2K or XP systems), SQL Check, and SQL Critical Update utilities
here.
- that SQL Critical Update will patch the Eval version of SQL Server 2000
- that you can see a list of all the Microsoft products that include MSDE.
- there's a new version of the Baseline Security Analyzer.
- that Microsoft is working with the Office and Windows and SMS teams to ensure better communications for issues relating to MSDE
- Even if you couldn't attend O'Reilly's Bioinformatics Technology 2003 last
week in San Diego, check out the conference site for presentations, blogs,
interviews, etc. Want to know more about BioPerl, bioclusters, BLAST, and
tons more? O'Reilly graciously lets us all benefit from their conference -
and almost in real-time, too, unlike many other conference hosts.
- Download the *free* FxCop 1.074. According to FxCop team member Nate
Walker, "The 'Fx' in FxCop is short for 'Frameworks', as in the .NET
Frameworks, as .NET Framework was called for a while. FxCop's original name,
though, was UrtCop (for the 'Universal Run Time', the old name for the
CLR)." Oh, yes, why get it? It's a way cool tool for checking your .NET
assemblies for compliance to Microsoft-recommended conventions.
- Dan Mezick's New Technology Solutions has a free VS.NET Addin. And Dan said they'll be updating their Attila/VB which also checks for coding
standards to a .NET version on or before July 4th.
- EventID.net. Mentioned by Roberta Blagg in her Security Watch email
newsletter (distributed by mcpmag.com/security). The Event ID database
contains 1,729 event IDs and 290 event sources provided by 995 contributors,
4,660 submitted events pending validation. EventID.Net has been initiated by
Altair Technologies Ltd in April 2001 and since then, there were 4,998,084
queries performed against the database.
- Move over orienteering. The latest thing is geo-caching.
- CLUI Land Use Database: An online database of "unusual and exemplary" US
sites altered by man. Usefully indexed by category (e.g., mining, nuclear, waste, cultural, and so on) and by state.
1 February 2003
- If you haven't downloaded the SQL Server patch to protect your SQL Servers and MSDE databases against the now-notorious Slammer worm, please do so NOW.
- Remember, the .NET Framework SDK 1.1 beta optionally installs an instance of MSDE 2000 in conjunction with the "QuickStarts" feature. Unfortunately, if
you installed MSDE 2000 from the .NET Framework SDK 1.1 beta, SQL Server SP3 (the recommended Slammer fixer) won't work. The workaround is to install a special patch available online.
- Timing might not be right for this, but if, by chance, you know some Oracle DBAs who are thinking of switching to SQL Server, I'd highly recommend they invest in Chris Kempster's excellent, just published e-book, SQL Server 2000 for the Oracle DBA. A 361-page gem for only $20.
- Brian Bischoff has posted his book on Crystal Reports for .NET at www.CrystalReportsBook.com where you can download the chapters for free. (Registration required for most chapters).
- Free WSDL editor and
Free NetTool debugging utility that allows you to transmit and monitor SOAP messages.
(See also their free online tutorial on writing a Hello World Web Service)
- Cool article by Chung Webster on
Consuming a Web Service with Smartphone 2002.
- Another good MSDN article on
Playing with Music Files gives you an excuse to play with the Microsoft Windows Media SDK and .NET Framework.
- Q325118 PRB: Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Debugger Does Not Step Into the Load Event.
- Read Pepys' Diary a day at a time - online with daily additions. According to one fan,
"Phil Gyford of Haddock brilliance has turned Samuel's voluminous work into a daily blog. Wonderful idea, interesting comments."
- See Marcos Weskamp's cool Flash-enabled global weather snapshot. Marcos writes a good blog, too.
- Think Mars.
- Think ocean acoustics.
25 January 2003
- How to code 10 things in VBA, VB.NET, and C#
- Top 10 SQL Server security blunders. See also Microsoft's advice at Securing SQL Server 2000 and one of many recommendations from vendor Application Security:
SQL Agent password publicly viewable.
- Thought-provoking Microsoft Webcast 1/22/03 by Michael Howard (on demand
replay should be available soon) on how MS uses "threat models" in its
testing procedure. He also briefly described the internally developed
(MSResearch) PreFix ("a monster") and PreFast, a desktop version, which use
symbol table data, info about dependencies, etc. (and presumably a giant
rule base of common coding errors we humans make). PreFast may be integrated
into Visual Studio.
- Microsoft Business Framework: The 10-year plan: single code base, new
platform. Good perspective on MSF and MSCRM.
- Feeling like a plebe for not having plowed through Stephen Wolfram's new book
A New Kind of Science?
Well, as the saying goes, "Don't worry, be happy." Why not take a quantum
leap and just read Konrad Walus' tutorial about quantum dot cellular
automata.
- Beginner's Guide to Aeronautics. A very cool site with sections on aerodynamics, rocketry, kites, and propulsion (found while trying to figure out what high tail load meant)
- Coming soon to a chessboard near you: Of Pawns, Knights, Bits, Bytes. (Garry Kasparov begins a match against the world champion chess computer on Sunday, January 26).
- Scott Seligman has several good programs for PocketPC enthusiasts (including a cool Pipes game).
- wmplugins.com, a new site from Windows Media 9 player groupies.
- Bill Shadish sends out a monthly e-mail newsletter with tips for Palm and Pocket PC developers. Click here for the current issue.
- Dogfood remembered.
- IBM Systems Journal (Vol 41, No. 1, 2002) focuses on software testing and
verification . Related: EARL - evaluation and repair language.
- Remember reengineering (the book that enriched Michael Hammer and a host
of consultants)? Well, Hammer's written several books since then on the
"new" reengineering (what Tom Davenport, currently the director of the
Accenture Institute for Strategic Change, calls reengineering "in drag").
- Read a short article on phenotropics, what Jaron Lanier (Mr. Virtual Reality) thinks will characterize future software. "Discover" articles like this on
future technology at the Hot Neuron-sponsored site on future technologies MagPortal.com.
18 January 2003
SQL Server stuff
11 January 2003
- Download FxCop, a code analysis tool that checks your .NET assemblies for
conformance to Microsoft's .NET Framework Design Guidelines, e.g. naming conventions, library design, localization, security, etc.
More links on naming conventions
Other cool links
4 January 2003
28 December 2002
21 December 2002
14 December 2002
Really good Webcasts
7 December 2002
- Go ahead, sell your soul. Seriously, though, I'd highly recommend you
register for Oracle's developer site if you haven't already. It's O's
equivalent to MSDN (except O charge$ for their KB articles). Get the latest
version of ODP for .NET, read presentations from OracleWorld, download
Oracle9i, etc. otn.oracle.com
- When you feel you deserve a bit of whimsy, check out the Toy Robots
Intiative at and/or the
Obsolete Computer Museum.
- Read the free sample issue of PC AI on Microsoft Research's machine
translation.
- David Trowbridge give a fantastic presentation on December 3 on
patterns (188 participants!). It was so good, I'd even recommend you listen
to the on-demand webcast. You can also get
the PPTs from David's and other architecture webcasts. Takeaway: look for Microsoft
to publish some 20 patterns [C# only planned for now, so let the PAGers
(Prescriptive Archictectur Group - am I the only one who thinks that sounds
Orwellian?) know if you'd like VB.NET] in the Jan/Feb timeframe at
msdn.microsoft/com/practices
- Wow, as if you can do anything useful in three hours. Sign up to try .NET
by taking advantage of Microsoft's three-hour "hosted" .NET access?
- If you're even considering speech apps, sign up for Monday's 9AM Redmond
time MSDN Webcast (Using Microsoft .NET Speech SDK V1.0 Beta 2).
30 November 2002
Didja know...
...that you can download (as a Postscript file) David Goldberg's classic ACM article
What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic?
It's appendix E to Sun Microsystems'
Numerical Computation Guide.
There's also an addendum from Dr. Goldberg
here.
... that you can download Allen Holub's
UML Reference Card?
... that you can download a printable 3-fold
Reference Card for CVS (Concurrent Versions System, a version control system)?
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