Knowing .NET

Oh yeah, another thing I bought and love is MusicMatch Radio. It does a great job of creating a streaming radio station that matches my taste. I can't figure out how to exclude a specific artist (I can understand why it thinks I'd like Sonic Youth, but I just don't), but other than that, it's great.
2:24:52 PM    comment []   trackback []

I just came across an advertisement for Diskeeper 8. I bought this $45 utility about a month ago and recommend it: it noticeably improved the performance of my laptop.
2:19:22 PM    comment []   trackback []

Stan Lippman...is now blogging!....His first blog, The Revised C++ Language Design Supporting .NET -- Part 1 is a must read.  via [Sam Gentile's Blog]

If you're a C++ programmer, you know who Stan Lippman is.

2:03:00 PM    comment []   trackback []

I just saw this article on The Server Side, talking about rules assessment from within Message-Driven Beans and so on....The problem here is that the solution simply won't scale...This is why God invented rules engines like ILog, JESS and drools. via [The Mountain of Worthless Information]

As far as I know, there's not a decent rules engine for .NET. Amazing, since .NET's separation of language and platform concerns makes it a more appealing platform for such efforts. Also, there's the not-insignificant fact that the world of business documents is Microsoft-based (Excel and Word). It's a real opportunity for a niche product.

Oh, wait. I just got hired to write an article about InfoAgents. Never mind...

1:49:41 PM    comment []   trackback []

The December Software Development is themed "Offshore Uproar" and has a lot of food for thought. There're some telling survey results (SD has gotten very sophisticated in terms of surveys -- I think they're pretty clearly the best in the software development trade press), including this tidbit:

"How would you rate the quality of work done by the offshore team?"

• 12% said "Of high strategic value" or "Better than in-house results."
• 56% said "Worse than in-house results" or "Unusable or a setback to progress."

But "Does your company plan to continue using your offshore outsourcing vendor?"

• 90% say yes.

There's a saying that "Everyone has a plan until they get hit." I have to admit I have a queasy feeling of recognition: everyone's a free market capitalist until their industry gets commoditized.

12:44:30 PM    comment []   trackback []