August 2004 Entries
Mental note: the Shuttle XPC SB81P looks like it's the best quiet and fast SFF PC now on the market according to Tom's Hardware. Socket 775 CPU's and 16x PCI Express.
Good move. WinFS is out of the Longhorn box and Avalon and Indigo will both be supported on Windows XP and Windows Server2003. This provides a nice broad and consistent base for the next programming model coming out of Redmond. This is critical if they're going to get rich client to catch on again. Anyway, new filesystems are downright painful. Doesn't it smell like Cairo all over again?
To me it's s a forgone conclusion that Asia and other developing countries will eventually see wide-spread adoption of Open Source software based on Linux. Their governments and local corporations don't want to fork out huge amounts of money to foreign companies for software licenses. The software is "good enough" for a huge range of applications and if you're strapped for cash, it's the obvious way to go.
What Microsoft needs is lots of Open Source software that runs on Windows Server 2003. It might cost some applcation and server software sales but it keeps them in the game in the...
Yep, it seems to be a pretty bad idea to release nano-sized particles into the environment with no idea about what effect it might have. Check out the report or fill out the EU survey. Just like GM, I wouldn't trust a corporation with it.
Very interesting interview with Charles Simonyi about Intentional Programming. I would place Intentional Programming on an alter and proclaim it as the holy grail of Software Engineering. It's where we need to get to rather than "programmers as unwitting cryptographers" which is a great way to sum up the current state of affairs.
While the seperation of notation and represention is clearly a good move, I'm still trying to find out more about how the underlying representation and code generation side works. If the idea is to have a multiplicity of schema's, doesn't that entail co-ordinating multiple code generators or do...
Interesting CNET article about the drop of students taking computer science and the knock on effect of fewer going into computer science research. The article concludes that computer science doesn't tout sexy grand challenges like the other sciences and is too pragmatic. True enough. However the comments are more revealing as a big factor that comes out is that the job market for computer science grads is just too gloomy and underpaid.
Looks like Voice Over IP is building momentum and I'm starting to mull over whether it's time to try it out. In the US, Vonage looks great while here in the UK, Pipecall looks like a leading contender. However, there are other contenders and resources that should be researched (CallUK, Jeff Pulver, SipPhone, VOIPtalk, Gradwell, Gossiptel). A good website with a UK forum is voip.org.uk (hosted by Gradwell).
To me the biggest attraction is cheap international calls. To call Malaysia, BT charges 42p per minute so we currently use OneTel which charges 8p. But with Pipecall, it drops to less than...
Here's a great website that allows you to bypass compulsory web registration. Give it a URL and it will give you an id and password that anyone can use to access that site. Very handy!