Tuesday, May 8, 2007

MSD2D .NET Newsletter

I really liked this one… especially the “Today in History”!

I also tried the Orcas download (all 1.1 GB of it) - I got Windows Server 2003, but no Visual Studio!

April 27, 2007

Today in History

April 27, 4977 BC - Universe is created, according to Kepler

On this day in 4977 B.C., the universe is created, according to German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler, considered a founder of modern science. Kepler is best known for his theories explaining the motion of planets.

Kepler was born on December 27, 1571, in Weil der Stadt, Germany. As a university student, he studied the Polish astroner Nicolaus Copernicus' theories of planetary ordering. Copernicus (1473-1543) believed that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system, a theory that contradicted the prevailing view of the era that the sun revolved around the earth.

Read more...

Current Technology News

Extending Visual Studio
If you’re interested in building extensions for Microsoft Visual Studio (VS), then you should check out the Visual Studio SDK blog. A developer is posting a diary with deep technical information as he attempts to build VS extensions.

Enterprise SOA: Cool, Sexy and So-o-o Doomed!
In his "Enterprise SOA: cool, sexy and so-o-o doomed!" blog, Robin Harris gives his prognosis for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). You have to love his quote, “Just as Object Oriented Programming failed to make reusable code work, the idea that generic 'services' will be reusable is just as unproven. OOP code reuse failed because code contains implicit assumptions that other applications didn’t share. Are services really so different?”

No, in that way, they’re not different at all. Just like OOP produced lots of libraries that were useful to a single application, SOA will produce services that are useful to a single application. It’s impossible to think generic when you’re dealing with one specific problem. That said, OOP was, and is, used all over the place because it reduces complexity for individual developers. Services offer the same benefit.

How Software Is Built
One project that I’m involved in delves into how the production of closed-source software differs from the production of open-source software and how those differences manifest themselves in the final product. If you live in either camp, check out http://briefing.mydotnetpro.com/t?r=54&c=22802&l=5031&ctl=540DC:83501A53948693B0B5781E3B464CDAB72E6AE64CBF1B101C and weigh in with your own thoughts.

Does Everyone Really Hate Making Desktop Apps?
A series of posts on the NeoSmart Files Web site explore the question, "Does everyone really hate making desktop apps?" I don’t know—desktop development is still a big percentage of what I do. I think many people conflate the “death of the desktop” with the “death of Microsoft” and gleefully wish that desktop apps would just vanish. Still, I find myself running Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Outlook, Intuit QuickBooks, Microsoft Money, Adobe Acrobat, etc. At the end of the day, desktop apps are easier to write and harder to deploy. No matter how easy Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) makes Web apps to write and no matter how easy ClickOnce makes d esktop applications to deploy, that fact isn’t going to change.

Yet Another Repository for Broken, Undocumented, “Hello World” Web Services
Welcome to the Microsoft Connected Services Sandbox. It’s just like XMethods, but Microsoft has added a whopping 300 percent more buzzwords. Despite the fact that in 10 minutes tinkering, I couldn’t get any of the services to actually work, I’m certain that some whiz kid l33t technosexual would be able to build a Web 2.0 Ajax fronted and SOA powered restful and zestful mashup so RAD, agile, and TDD that your startup CEO would yell WTF and launch an immediate IPO.

Hey Microsoft, now that you’ve crossed this off your list, maybe you could “invent” an octagon shape that somewhat rolls and brand it The Wheel™.

.ANI-one Know What’s Wrong with My Computer?
In case you haven’t heard, there’s a vulnerability in just about every version of Windows that allows your computer to be compromised by a Web site’s animated cursor (.ani) files. The patch is available here.

Future Technology News

A View of the .NET Road Map
In an interview, Prashant Sridharan walks through plans for the upcoming Orcas Visual Studio release. It sounds like some of the big features are Language Integrated Query (LINQ) and new tools for testers. (It’s about time.)

Kick the Tires of the March Orcas CTP Without Trashing Your Machine
Microsoft has a new Community Technology Preview (CTP) of its next development environment, and you don’t have to trash your machine to try it out. Instead, you can download a free preconfigured Virtual PC image (4.5GB) and take it for a test drive. To run the image, you need to install Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, which is also free and weighs in at a mere 30MB.

Spring Update for Xbox 360 Brings Even More PC Features
According to Brando, during the week of May 7 the Xbox 360 will be getting expanded IM, a better Live Marketplace, and a controller with a full QWERTY keyboard.

Send news, tips, and names of other billionaires who should be exiled to space to Scott Swigart.

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