Bring It On

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Now this is crazy. I hate seeing one dominant player on the market (Microsoft or anyone else) as much as the next guy, but ordering Microsoft to remove Media Player from Windows (in Europe only)?!? What are we thinking?

 

Case in point: I don't know of anyone using Windows Media Player for general multimedia content playback. Personally, I use free version of Zoom Player for video and inevitable Winamp for audio.

 

I do use Windows Media Player sometimes - when I transfer MP3 music from the desktop to my Smartphone (Orange SPV E200, runs Windows Mobile 2003) I can do the transcoding to WMA and transfer to the phone in one step (the phone does not play MP3).

 

This move will not help any users, and will only theoretically help companies like Apple and Real to compete more fairly. If EU wants to punish Microsoft for monopolistic behavior, fine - but this is not the way. European Commission is just wasting our tax money...

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Reading all the gospel about the life in Managed Land ® I can't but think of what life would look like if wives were managed as well ;) Let's see:

I've probably forgotten a few more aspects, but my wife isn't yet managed and she reads this blog, so...

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What a great quote. It's from the book “Positioning”, but not from the authors - they mention a certain colonel that kept this on his office wall.

 

If I had a penny for every situation where this was appropriate, I'd be a rich man. There is an enormous difference between working on something from scratch and working on an established base/framework.

 

After many, many iterations the picture starts to become quite clear. More often than not if you just look at the solution it might seem deceptively simple. But the road to it might have (and usually is) been extremely tough.

 

Don't try to estimate the problem based on someone's solution. Don't underestimate someone's effort based on the (simplicity of) solution alone.

 

If you want to really get a good estimate on how complex a problem is, try solving it yourself (even roughly) without looking at existing solutions.

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Few days ago I saw a trailer for the next Batman movie. It looks promising - moody, dark, serious. Christian Bale fits the role perfectly in my opinion.

 

However I want to draw your attention to the trailer itself. Have you noticed the great music, slowly building the tension up? That's Wim Mertens.

 

I am sure you have never heard of him. If you look him up on iTunes, Napster and similar music stores, you're not gonna find anything.

 

Yet his music is fantastic. It's mostly instrumental, and very weird. There are some more “mainstream” pieces though, like his piano&voice series of songs.

 

Highly recommended.

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Even if you don't have access to or don't want to bother with installing beta version of Visual Studio, there is a way to get a taste of next generation build system now - it's called NAnt. It's very similar to MSBuild and should not be a big deal to switch from in the future (or stick to it if you prefer that).

 

Just yesterday I learned from this post that NAnt can generate AssemblyInfo.cs for you on the fly, which is great for purists like me. There is a problem though - in order to do this, you have to use built in task called asminfo.

 

My favorite XML tool (XMLSpy, free edition) complained when I tried entering the content of this element, and for a good reason - in the current (and several previous ones) build the schema (XSD) for NAnt is broken for this particular element (actually for its sub-elements imports and attributes). If you ignore schema violations and save manually, everything works just fine.

 

I would really appreaciate if the devs were updating the schema as well as the code...

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This post from Mike Harsh is just another in the ongoing debate - whether developers should invest in Windows Forms or wait for Avalon? Mike makes several good points here. One day later Dan Appleman adds more to the story.

 

Here's my take... First of all, I think WinForms are here to stay for several years at least. My reasons are somewhat complementary to the reasons of above mentioned bloggers.

 

I think that one of the biggest problems developers will face with Avalon is that it's going to be very hard for users to adapt. Avalon changes so many things on so many levels and moves into 3D. It doesn't matter if it's easy for me to build an app if users are going to be confused as to where to click and what to do. New UI will bring it's own standards and rules and these will get adopted slowly and over time, both by programmers and users.

 

We have to have someting familiar like WinForms during this time.

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I think I can help Rory with this one. In his recent post, he wonders how is it possible that unlimited Internet access starts at $29.99.

 

Enter the math. I am sure you paid very well attention in high school, so this is just a refresher. There are several kinds of numbers. Some are called natural (to programmers out there - it's like integers), some are called real (again, for programmers - it's like floats, or doubles) and there are others but not interesting for this discussion.

 

There is infinite number of natural numbers, but they are countable (weird concept, I know). There also is infinite number of real numbers, and they are not countable (there is proof, but it's too boring).

 

So in a way, real numbers are more unlimited (more infinite?) than natural numbers :-)

 

I am almost sure that this somehow explains that advertisement.

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Some time ago when I served in the army, one of the first combat exercises we had was one group ambushing the other in the deep woods.

I ended up in the attacking group. We moved very slowly, in a good formation, kept our ears and eyes open - and we were completely destroyed in just a few seconds.

The mistake? We didn't look up. Turns out this is the most frequent mistake many humans do, and it is not really a dangerous thing unless you're in a combat scenario (or if you are a construction worker, I guess).

Years later, I still remember this rule well. While playing Doom 3, I have used this effectively several times to escape the worst ;)

You never know when seemingly useless fact from the past might come handy :)

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Few months ago I bought top-of-the-line Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop. I got 1.7GHz Pentium-M (Dothan), 1GB RAM, 60GB 7200rpm HD, ATI Radeon 9600Pro 128MB video, a/b/g Wireless, DVD+RW and most importantly 15.4” 1920x1200 LCD.

Note very high resolution screen. Dots are a bit small for my taste, but not too much. The whole machine with 3yr of Complete Care service (that's at home next business day repair + you're covered for accidental damage like dropping the laptop, spilling Coke/coffee etc) cost a bit more than a single desktop LCD with that kind of resolution.

Why are desktop screens so damn expensive? I don't see them being better except in speed (20 agains 35ms for the laptop screen) but that's important for games only, so what gives? Besides, much to my surprise, 35ms is not bad at all - I am playing Doom3 on my laptop and I didn't notice ghosting at all?

I don't think I will buy another desktop ever again. Soon, my only complaint with laptops - non-upgradeable video card - will be thing of the past. Being able to take your computer with you everywhere and use it for several hours (I get around 8 hours when I swap out DVD and swap in extra battery) plus being on the Internet all the time (wireless) cannot be beaten. My Pentium-M 1.7GHz is as fast as 2.4GHz Xeon at work, and the most critical speed component (not counting enough RAM) - hard drive - is as fast as desktop counterpart.

Did I mention already that I love my laptop? ;)

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