Is public domain software open-source?. [via CNET News.com]

Absolutely not, public domain has no license. Open source is encumbered by a restrictive license. Period, end, move on.

Did you know... You can use Solution Folders to hide projects? - #157.  .... [via MSDN Blogs]

Wonderful :-)

Go read:

a google horror story: what happens when you are disappeared.  

Earlier this week, an acquaintance of mine found himself trapped in a Kafka-esque nightmare, a nightmare that should make all of us stop and think. ... [via apophenia]

It seems being connected still counts for so much but I wonder how many 'real' people are being bombed by this. How many people really are handing over their filofaxes for someone else to keep, or more importantly, filofaxes they care about.

It has become apparent that if you only watch BBC content via the iPlayer then you do not need a TV license because said license is only required if you are watching programmes as they are broadcast. So, if you subscribe to Sky+ and watch BBC content from recordings (or just press pause for a few seconds <g>), then you don't need a license. Similarly, I suppose Freeview and Virgin Media et al systems that include the ability to record.

What I am not sure about is whether this watch as broadcast applies for other content providers - but, doesn't matter, there is the pause button.

Hmmmm, might be heading for ooops land this one.

Judge rules computer programs can be patented.  The High Court ruling has cast doubt on the UK's application of the European Patent Convention [via ZDNet UK News]

Oh boy, here we go.

Hate the mouse!.  

I hate mice. I really do. If it weren't for web browsers, I'd likely never use a mouse. So what does it really mean to live a mouse-free lifestyle?

<snip loads of stuff about memorising keyboard shortcuts and macros for outlook>

 [via John Lam on Software]

Much much much (really) more effective is to use a something like a wacom tablet and pen. I can't draw, totally useless at graphics but using a pen has completely solved some RSI problems I was getting using a mouse.

the absurdities of Davos.  

... Another thing about Davos was that it became painfully clear that most business people are unaware of their role in the system. .... What I found was that many powerful people desperately want to help solve these problems but they seem unaware of their role in perpetuating some of the ills. It was weird... I couldn't tell if such folks were clueless or delusional.

 [via apophenia]

As you rise up the chain, you forget. Same as most of us oldies (but very especially politicians) seem to forget what it is like to be a kid - that working all hours and being driven to success and attainment and all that stuff just isn't a driver for the majority. 

Bill Gates: "Recognition enhances a company's reputation, appeals to customers and attracts good people to an organization," he said. "In a market where profits aren't possible, recognition becomes a proxy for profit."

 [via InfoWorld RSS Feed]

I like the phrase proxy profit, it has appeal to the baser instincts while dragging them out of the mud.

...

In each incident, Facebook pushed the boundaries of privacy a bit further and, when public outcry took place, retreated just a wee bit to make people feel more comfortable. In other words, this is "slippery slope" software development. Given what I've learned from interviewing teens and college students over the years, they have *no* idea that these changes are taking place (until an incident occurs). Most don't even realize that adding the geographic network makes them visible to thousands if not millions. They don't know how to navigate the privacy settings and they don't understand the implications. In other words, defaults are EVERYTHING.

[via apophenia]

Excellent article, recommended. Teens and students don't seem to realise these changes are taking place, more interestingly, they don't seem to care much either? Will there be a catastophy point where they collectively realise "omg, what have we done" (s*#t, I didn't realise mum and dad could read my blog).

Microsoft etc were/are plain arrogant sometimes seemingly worse but Google and Facebook etc seem something much more invideous - they not only want your money, they want you too.

"I saw them a couple of times in the 70s, and I think they were actually better," said John, a balding man in his 50s. "The quality of the sound was so crap back then."

[via Led Zeppelin rocks London | Top News | Reuters.co.uk]

LOL. The only time I saw them was sitting in a field at Nebworth, gosh, late '70s. The errm, local fog, helped overcome limitations of sound systems but i've never been a huge fan.

Microsoft Floods us with updates supporting VS08 RTM.  

I am going to try to sort out what these updates are and how they are grouped together so you know what to choose, these are not in order of when they where released, but rather in the grouping they are most commonly used.  In addition, NONE of these have "Go Live" licenses yet, so don't try using them in production.

ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions

This is the one I just posted about, it is a glimpse of new, powerful functionality being added to ASP.NET 3.5 and ADO.NET next year (2008).  It includes:

• ASP.NET model-view-controller (A.K.A. MVC)
  It does NOT include the ASP.NET MVC Toolkit which provides HTML rendering helpers and dynamic data support.
  You should be aware that this will break just about every Third Party ASP.Net Control you may be using.
• ASP.NET Dynamic Data
• ASP.NET AJAX
• ADO.NET Entity Framework
  This is confusing, since you still need the ADO.Net Entity Framework Tools Dec 07 CTP AND the Designer and they should be installed FIRST.  The EF Designer requires this Patch to VS08 (VS90-KB945282.exe) So if you plan to use EF, then you should download and install these first.
• ADO.NET Data Services (A.K.A. Astoria)
  This requires EF...
• Silverlight Controls for ASP.NET
  if you plan to use Silverlight, you also need (want) these updates for Silverlight
• More info about this can be read here
• All the Quickstart samples are here, an example of how to get started with ADO.Net Data Services is here.

Silverlight 1.1 (soon to be 2.0, but not quite yet.)

• Make sure you have the Sept 07 Alpha Release and the VS08 RTM release of the Silverlight Tools Alpha
• You should also get this update for Expression Blend so you can work with a better Designer.
  Expression Blend 2 December Preview

Web Deployment

• The Web Deployment Projects - December 2007 CTP is an add-in to Visual Studio 2008 which provides developers with advanced compilation and deployment options, while not strictly required, it does make deployment much easier.  There is nothing in the License that says this cannot be used now, but then again, it does not specifically say you can use this in production either.

Parallel Extensions

• Parallel Extensions to .NET Framework 3.5, December 2007 CTP gives you a managed programming model for data parallelism, task parallelism, and coordination on parallel hardware. 
• If you are contemplating Parallel Development, you need to read this: The Manycore Shift White Paper it is Microsoft's plan for how they plan to support better development with the Many Core processors we are just starting to see, most likely a 16 Core Processor will be mainstream as early as next year!

Volta

• The Volta technology preview is a developer toolset that enables you to build multi-tier web applications by applying familiar techniques and patterns.  Warning, this does create a HUGE volume of JS code which will most likely be streamlined and cached in a future release.
• This goes on top of Entity Framework and does all the Tier separation for you, it creates most things dynamically, not requiring recompiling ala Code Gen.  This is a very interesting technology and is still very early in its development, while it still has some small limitations for VB development, it is certainly worth looking at now.

VS08 SDK

• Visual Studio 2008 SDK Version 1.0 will let you build Add-ins for Visual Studio.

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Training Kit

• Still looking for examples for VS08 on General?  Here is a pretty good set of materials.

All these tools are going to be very helpful for developing the next wave of great applications.  While it is fairly confusing as to which method to choose right now if you are architecting for future development, here is what we know:

ASP.Net 3.5 Extensions are a definite, EF and Data Services will most likely overshadow Linq to SQL and provide a much richer (i.e. easier to use) development experience.

Silverlight is going through major changes, until we get to 2.0 sometime early in 2008 we will not really know how Silverlight will settle, we just know it is here to stay and we should start gearing up for it's use in our applications.

Volta is something to look at in the long term, it is relatively early in its release and is not something else that has been renamed, it is new and will continue to grow.  It is still so early in development that it is possible it may be canceled if there is not enough interest, but I doubt that will be the case (as happened with Acropolis).  It is built on top of EF and Data Services so if you are looking at incorporating those two technologies (which IMO you should) then you will be able to leverage what you learn in EF and Data Services to use Volta.

Alex Daley says: "The vision of Volta is ultimately pretty big. It's to change the way people build Web apps. Volta takes the same level of abstraction required to deliver distributed applications as VB did for client applications."

This is a pretty bold statement and hopefully they can manage to see it go hand in hand with VB development in the future.  This will require lots of changes and streamlining to be effective, but it does provide a great deal of the Magic that VB 3 to 6 once had exclusively for making Data Applications easy to create.

 [via SteelePrice.Net]

My personal highlight in this?:

EF and Data Services will most likely overshadow Linq to SQL and provide a much richer (i.e. easier to use) development experience.

So something that isn't even on retail CDs yet (is it) is already being overshadowed? This has just got to stop.

CA: Facebook's Beacon more intrusive than previously thought.  

A CA security researcher is sounding the alarm that Facebook's controversial Beacon online ad system goes much further than anyone has imagined in tracking people's Web activities outside the popular social networking site.

Beacon will report back to Facebook on members' activities on third-party sites that participate in Beacon even if the users are logged off from Facebook and have declined having their activities broadcast to their Facebook friends.

... In an interview with The New York Times, Chamath Palihapitiya, vice president of product marketing and operations at Facebook, was asked whether Facebook would receive information about a user's purchase if the user declined to broadcast the purchase to his Facebook friends. His answer: "Absolutely not. One of the things we are still trying to do is dispel a lot of misinformation that is being propagated unnecessarily."

 [via InfoWorld RSS Feed]

Nothing to add really.

Why Your Development is Crazy.  

Kathleen makes some great points about how Development is really, really hard.

Why Your Development is Crazy - Leaning Into Windows

I STILL see that many clients think a single hacker in a weekend can crank out the software equivalent of "War & Peace".  I find this incredibly frustrating when talking about my hourly rate and that it is going to take about 10x more hours to do the work than they seem to think it will.  Granted this is not always the case, but it still pervades the small business world.

Tools are getting better, but at the same time, the demands for what the code should do keeps getting more complex.

... the sheer number of alternatives we have to do things today is staggering. Can a Lone Developer survive in today's world?  Yes, but its certainly not easy.

 [via SteelePrice.Net]

I think its the learning curve - back in the day a flip through K&R and a DOS Programmers Manual and off you went. Not only are there too many choices now, the API surfaces are so obscenely huge that no-one can possibly know them all. You don't make an informed decision anymore - you look along a path until you see a solution that will do and you have to be satisfied with that. There is not the time to pursue all paths, or worse, even a meaningful range of possible paths and the consequence is, you remain a little scared that there may be a much better solution round the next bend.

Its the hope you can't stand. That what you have just spent an age getting to grips with won't be made obsolete and dumb by the next pre-pre-pre announcement prior to CTP availability that comes before the beta of the anticipated release of something that will actually turn out quite different in three years time.

WS-* is to REST as Theory is to Practice.  

I was composing a response when I stumbled on James Snell’s notes on the recent QCon conference that captures the spirit of my “conversion” if you want to call it that. He wrote

... over the last two years I haven’t written a single line of code that has anything to do with WS-*. The reason for this change is simple: when I was working on WS-*, I never once worked on an application that solved a real business need. Everything I wrote back then were demos. Now that I’m working for IBM’s WebAhead group, building and supporting applications that are being used by tens of thousands of my fellow IBMers, I haven’t come across a single use case where WS-* would be a suitable fit. In contrast, during that same period of time, I’ve implemented no fewer than 10 Atom Publishing Protocol implementations, ..... The applications I build today are fundamentally based on HTTP, XML, Atom, JSON and XHTML.

... Since then we’ve reached a world where thousands of applications being utilized by millions of end users are built on RESTful Web services on the public internet. My favorite example of the moment is the Facebook developer platform and before that it was Flickr and Amazon S3. Compare that with the number of SOAP and WS-* interfaces that are being used to build real developer platforms that benefit end users on the Web today.

...

At this point I realize I’m flogging a dead horse. The folks I know from across the industry who have to build large scale Web services on the Web today at Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, Windows Live, Amazon, etc are using RESTful Web services. The only times I encounter someone with good things to say about WS-* is if it is their job to pimp these technologies or they have already “invested” in WS-* and want to defend that investment. 

 [via Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life]

So much time has been and is consumed on geeky theoretical wonderfulness and not the practicalities of what is actually useful and more importantly useable.

There are going to be, in every system, some errors made [via BBC NEWS | Politics | Brown 'had no idea' about donors]

Ummmm, good, so they finally recognise that "we will ensure it will never happen again" is empty rhetoric.