Slashdot Mirror

Andy Updegrove writes, "Microsoft has just posted the text of a new promise not to assert its patents with respect to 35 listed Web Services standards. The promise is similar to the covenant not to assert patents that it issued last year with respect to its Office 2003 XML Reference Schema, with two important improvements intended to make it more clearly compatible with open source licensing. Those changes are to add an explicit promise not to assert any relevant patents against anyone in the distribution chain of a product, from the original vendor through to the end user; and to clarify that the promise covers a partial as well as a full implementation of a standard. It's all part of a recent wave of such pledges made by companies such as IBM, Nokia, and Oracle, and a significant shift in how Microsoft is dealing with open standards."

uniquebydegrees writes, "InfoWorld reports that on Tuesday Microsoft quietly released the second update for MS06-042. This is the cumulative patch for IE that actually introduced a new security hole into systems that applied the update. Microsoft re-released the patch back in August, but it now turns out that the updated patch had yet another vulnerability similar to the first, once again discovered by folks at eEye Digital Security. As with the previous hole, it concerned the handling of long URLs from web sites using HTTP 1.1 with compression."

Uncle Mike writes "It looks like there is a problem with the recently released MS06-049 / KB920958 patch. If you have compression activated on any folder, then the compressed data is at risk from corruption. New files that are close to a multiple of 4K in size will have their last 4,000 bytes or so overwritten with 0xDF. Although this problem has been reported to Microsoft, as yet there appears to have been no official announcement. "

Kawahee writes "Microsoft, in conjunction with the announcement that they have finished Windows Vista RC1 have released Internet Explorer 7 RC1. Further commentary from the IE Blog post: 'The RC1 build includes improvements in performance, stability, security, and application compatibility. You may not notice many visible changes from the Beta 3 release; all we did was listen to your feedback, fix bugs that you reported, and make final adjustments to our CSS support.'"

d.3.l.t.r.3.3 writes "The long awaited XNA Game Studio Express public Beta is finally here. Despite some high claims by Microsoft, the Game Studio remains a code-only experience, with a more coherent and less fragmented feature set than the old DirectX 9 SDK. As I describe in this review, XNA has successfully streamlined many dull tasks of game development (helped a bit by the new game-supportive features of Windows Vista). It's also, unfortunately, kept too many frustrating pieces and bugs (especially when it comes to cross platform input handling and audio) to be successfully considered a real multi-platform game developing tool."

snafu109 writes "Pity the Vista user with a 32-bit CPU. Senior Program Manager Steve Riley announced today at Tech.Ed Australia that full HD content shall only be played at the full resolution where only signed drivers are used — only in the 64-bit version of Vista. From the article: '"Any next-generation high definition content will not play in x32 at all," said Riley. "This is a decision that the Media Player folks made because there are just too many ways right now for unsigned kernel mode code [to compromise content protection]. The media companies asked us to do this and said they don't want any of their high definition content to play in x32 at all, because of all of the unsigned malware that runs in kernel mode can get around content protection, so we had to do this."'"

pdscomp writes "VMware has just announced at today's Apple WWDC 2006 Conference that they are developing a port of VMware to Mac OS X. People interested in beta testing the product later this year can visit this link to sign up for the public test. It will be interesting to see how things play out between VMware and Parallels. Will Microsoft bother porting Virtual PC now that there will be two other Intel OS X virtualization solutions available? Now all we need is to get Mac OS X running under Xen."

I spend a lot of time with my head buried in code, and every time I pick my head up it feels like the future is closer than I thought. So I like coming to OSCON. A week of looking ahead leaves me more confident I won't get future shock anytime soon. OSCON, like all conferences, is aimed at corporations, the intangible entities that send humans as their proxies. But open source has its roots in individuals working outside the corporation for their community of programmers. Are the two cultures coming together, or colliding? And how will the "open source ideal" evolve, as the chief social act of programming changes from trading disks of source code to processing each others' data and mashing up web APIs?

I'm an open-source programmer who's lucky enough to be paid by a corporation. Between sessions this week I'm working on turning Slash's metamoderation into a plugin, making Slash more useful for other site admins. I'm a human first and employee second. And I'm concerned about how the community based around this software ideal of not welding shut the car's hood is going to hold together.

Markets aren't designed for goods with zero cost of reproduction, but because property is such a powerful tool for efficiency and prosperity, societies have been artificially constructing markets for creative works since even before the founders wrote up their support for "science and the useful arts." Often, markets in ideas work pretty well.

There have been three societal "bow shocks" in the collision between programming and capitalism. The first hit in 1976 when Bill Gates insisted that charging for software made sense. The second was in the late 90s when open source proved better than corporate hierarchy at certain types of development. And then there's the one that's about to hit now, when web services and interoperability concerns obviate open source licenses.

There's a growing understanding here that web services are big: that the laptops and desktops of the future will rely not on software goods that have been bought for those machines, but software services that run on a server a thousand miles away. Google calls its Ajax web services "the world's largest platform."

Yesterday, Tim O'Reilly hosted a stimulating all-day series of panels and talks on web services and "Web 2.0" generally. The most interesting part of the discussion was about tying web services together. Web mashups are hot. It's hard to look at a list of websites offering an API -- Google Maps, Yahoo Geocoding, eBay, craigslist, Flickr, YouTube -- and not start thinking about great ways to combine them. Interoperability plus programming creativity equals... well, something pretty neat, we're hoping.

But a web services API doesn't necessarily offer the freedom that might seem analogous to open source, which is why Tim is also putting out the call for an "open services" definition. Flickr offers its corporate API to some sites, and refuses to permit it to others. Zooomr was judged to be too much of a potential competitor, so Zooomr users don't get to copy the photos they've uploaded to Flickr. [Update: Sorta. Read that comment thread to see important context for Flickr's decision. To be clear, given that context, Tim thinks Flickr found a good answer, and I tend to agree.]

As Flickr says, and they have a very good point, "why should we burn bandwidth and CPU cycles sending stuff directly to [a potential competitor's] server?" That makes sense from a corporate point of view, but a user who's uploaded a thousand of their photos might be puzzled why it's no longer exactly "their" data. Is that a right that user should have, or not? I ran into Julian Cash, who vehemently argues that it is; he's started MoveMyData.org to try to build a client-side way for users to route around APIs, to suck down "their" data and maybe reupload it to other sites. No code yet, but he's looking for volunteers.

AttentionTrust goes even further, starting off its manifesto with "you own your attention and can store it wherever you wish." That's something I hadn't considered before but it has an interesting ring to it. They have a Firefox extension I haven't tried yet (does it work? post comments).

Interoperability is a concern even without the web. Yesterday morning, Danese Cooper got a half-hour to grill Bill Hilf, Microsoft's General Manager of Platform Strategy, on Microsoft's relationship with open-source. Some think that's the same relationship as the butcher to the hog, and Bill's job is to persuade them Microsoft has no such intentions.

Asked directly, in the context of embrace-extend-extinguish and web APIs that can be crushed at any time, "why should we trust Microsoft?", Bill's answer was to look at the company's actions: "consistent action, over time, in the right direction."

I sat down with him afterwords to probe into this a little more (with someone from Waggener Edstrom standing nearby). He has some examples of Microsoft working with open-source projects like JBoss and SugarCRM, but I asked for specifics of how we know Microsoft isn't going to try to kill more-directly competing projects like Mono or OpenOffice by eliminating interoperability, possibly with patents, at any random time in the future. The only real sign I got was the Covenant Not to Sue (over patents) that came with the OpenXML format earlier this year. That's a step in the right direction. I don't think it's a terribly big one.

I asked if we'd see more steps from Microsoft disavowing patents as weapons against open-source projects. Obviously that's a big risk for a company to take, but one that's probably necessary to convince skeptics Microsoft is friendlier than the butcher. While Bill couldn't make any promises, he affirmed the CNS was "not a one-off... and not just to placate people." I'll keep an eye out for more action in the right direction.

Exciting as the opportunities are for different projects' software working together, one thing's for sure: the remote sites that run their algorithms and store your data leapfrog open source licensing. The server a thousand miles away can run software with its hood welded shut, with no obligations to the open-source community that come along with the benefits. Today, while some companies are trying to build goodwill with that community, there is nothing like a GPL for web services. No one's discovered a legal foundation that would establish open services, openly shared web services, with the same kinds of rights that we insist on in open-source code. No one's even sure what "open services" might mean, indeed, there's no consensus that we even need such a thing.

Even the FSF is unable to decide how v3 of the GPL should read. And I'm not smart enough to know if the GPL is even the right tool for this. Maybe tacking clever licensing terms on top of copyright's restriction is a temporary hack whose time has passed (you know, like the RIAA). Maybe the next hack to build a community of software sharing and tinkering will have to be totally different.

I don't think I know the answers but maybe one of you does. If you have thoughts about the open-source community in the age of capitalism, please post them to this story. If you're at OSCON and want to chat about it, email me (or AIM 'jamiekzoo' if you catch me online). At the end of the week, I'll have more updates on what's happening here -- it's not all philosophy and futurism.

Dukhat asks: "I am really interested in firsthand experiences with these kinds of products and in unbiased reviews, since Google primarily gives me marketing information and vague overviews of how BPM is good for business. I have already looked at an earlier article on work-flow patterns, which gave me a few products to look at. I am trying to compile a short list of work-flow and BPM software to evaluate, but I am having a hard time determining which products are even worth evaluating. The situation is worsened by the fact that work-flow tools are often bundled with CRM or Business Intelligence packages. I am not dead set on using a big package, but I need to know more about their real world pros and cons before I can decide whether to build it myself instead. I am looking at both BPM and work-flow software, since some BPM software can also do work-flow, but it may be more worthwhile to just use a rules engine for automated processes and use a specialized work-flow tool." Dukhat has a fairly long list of software choices that he needs to whittle down. What packages would you recommend and why? "Here are some of the goals we have that we are trying to solve with work-flow/ BPM software:

• To be able to understand the path of a process without perusing in and out of a lot of functions.
• To be able to report on how long each step in each process takes.
• To be able to see exactly where in the process software errors occur and be able to skip over failed steps so that we can come back and fix them later.
• To be able to integrate with our issue tracking system, billing system, and CRM software. We definitely will have to write some webservices here.
• To be able to give process managers in different departments the ability to tweak certain processes without giving them full access to all processes.

We started off looking at rules engines, but it looks like a rules engine would only be useful for choosing actions at each step in the process, but we would have to glue together each step in the process ourselves. A lot of BPM software includes business rules software or is designed to integrate easily with specific packages.

Here is a list of packages that I have assembled so far:

• JBoss jBPM & Rules
• ILOG JViews & JRules
• webMethods & Blaze Advisor
• Oracle BPEL Process Manager
• COSA
• FLOWer
• Microsoft BizTalk
• Lotus Workflow
• Global360 BPM
• Bizflow
• WebSphere MQ Workflow
• Tibco BPM
• Fujitsu Interstage
• FileNet BPM
• Savvion
• Pegasystems
• BEA AquaLogic with Fuego

Please help me narrow these down. Thanks!"

An anonymous reader writes "It seems that Microsoft has released their device emulator for Windows CE under a shared source license making it available to experimentation and teaching. From the article: 'The Device Emulator can be built as a standalone Windows application, or as the default emulator within Visual Studio 2005 running under the Device Emulator Manager, according to Microsoft. A 473 KB compressed file containing the Device Emulator shared source code is available for download' on the Microsoft site."

suso writes "Microsoft has released a statement to the press, saying that they are to work with Xensource on making Windows Server work with Xen through Microsoft's own hypervisor technology." Coverage available from Reuters as well. From that article: " As a result of the collaboration, the next version of Windows Server, code-named 'Longhorn,' will provide customers with a virtualisation system that promises to help run both Windows and Linux on the same machine more cost-effectively. Microsoft said it expects to conduct a public trial of Windows Server virtualisation by the end of this year and to release a commercial version of the software within 180 days of the date when Windows Server 'Longhorn' is released. Microsoft aims to release 'Longhorn' by the end of 2007, it said."

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has posted a shared source version of its device emulator (which ships with Visual Studio 2005) for download. Primarily meant for academia to experiment with and build upon, it is licensed under the Microsoft Shared Source Academic License. Since it emulates the ARM processor, it can run all modern Windows Mobile and Windows CE operating systems. Barry Bond, the architect behind the emulator (and also Rotor, one of Microsoft's previous shared source offerings) has a blog post on the release."

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has posted a shared source version of its device emulator (which ships with Visual Studio 2005) for download. Primarily meant for academia to experiment with and build upon, it is licensed under the Microsoft Shared Source Academic License. Since it emulates the ARM processor, it can run all modern Windows Mobile and Windows CE operating systems. Barry Bond, the architect behind the emulator (and also Rotor, one of Microsoft's previous shared source offerings) has a blog post on the release."

Barbie Dollar writes "Researchers at Microsoft are working on an ambitious new project to hunt down and neutralize large-scale search engine spammers. The project, called Strider Search Defender, automates the discovery of search spammers through non-content analysis. The project integrates technology from two previous Microsoft Research prototypes (Strider HoneyMonkey and Strider URL Tracer) and promises a new approach to removing junk results from search engine queries."

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft kills off support for Windows 98 and Windows ME today, and ZDNet is reporting that the move will boost demand for Linux on the desktop. Unlike two years ago — when support for Win98 was extended because Linux was seen as a serious competitor — this time it seems there is no turning back."

Kawahee writes "Microsoft has released IE7 Beta 3 to the public. From TechNet Flash: 'As a result of customer feedback, IE7 Beta 3 contains some feature changes in addition to the planned reliability, compatibility, and security improvements. If you've previously installed a beta of IE7, you should uninstall it before installing this release.' For the first time, the Administrator's Kit for Internet Explorer 7 is also available, which is described as 'the most efficient way to deploy and manage Web-based solutions.'"

Kawahee writes "Microsoft has released IE7 Beta 3 to the public. From TechNet Flash: 'As a result of customer feedback, IE7 Beta 3 contains some feature changes in addition to the planned reliability, compatibility, and security improvements. If you've previously installed a beta of IE7, you should uninstall it before installing this release.' For the first time, the Administrator's Kit for Internet Explorer 7 is also available, which is described as 'the most efficient way to deploy and manage Web-based solutions.'"

Kawahee writes "Microsoft has released IE7 Beta 3 to the public. From TechNet Flash: 'As a result of customer feedback, IE7 Beta 3 contains some feature changes in addition to the planned reliability, compatibility, and security improvements. If you've previously installed a beta of IE7, you should uninstall it before installing this release.' For the first time, the Administrator's Kit for Internet Explorer 7 is also available, which is described as 'the most efficient way to deploy and manage Web-based solutions.'"

thesaint05 writes "We all know about Microsoft's WGA initiative that started last July. Most of us were troubled to learn that the WGA has been 'phoning home' to Microsoft at every boot. Well, get ready, because eventually Microsoft may be turning off copies of Windows without WGA installed. According to a Microsoft technician, 'in the fall, having the latest WGA will become mandatory and if its not installed, Windows will give a 30 day warning and when the 30 days is up and WGA isn't installed, Windows will stop working, so you might as well install WGA now.'" A new version of WGA was released on Tuesday and, at least for the time being, Windows users have the option of removing WGA from their systems.

Ant writes "Neatorama mentions Steven Hilton's Software War Map that depicts "the epic struggle of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) against the Empire of Microsoft. It was updated in 2006."

Ctrl+Alt+De1337 writes "Creative Commons has announced the release of an add-in to Microsoft Office that allows the easy addition of a CC license to files created with Word, PowerPoint, or Excel. It was co-developed by Microsoft and Creative Commons and only works in Office XP and Office 2003. It can be downloaded from Microsoft's download center after a validation check, and CNet has a screenshot available of the tool."

Geoffreyerffoeg writes "According to Microsoft PressPass, Bill Gates will be leaving his role at Microsoft in July 2008. He'll be staying with the company, but is also moving to a more fulltime position with the Gates Foundation. 'Microsoft Corp. today announced that effective July 2008 Bill Gates, chairman, will transition out of a day-to-day role in the company to spend more time on his global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The company announced a two-year transition process to ensure that there is a smooth and orderly transfer of Gates' daily responsibilities, and said that after July 2008 Gates would continue to serve as the company's chairman and an adviser on key development projects.' CTO Ray Ozzie will assume Gates' role of Chief Software Architect, and CTO Craig Mundie will also take on more leadership responsibility."

Legal Ethics writes "According to an article on Groklaw, Microsoft is misrepresenting what the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) tool is to pressure people into installing it. It comes with no uninstall, it fails to disclose many pieces of information it provides to Microsoft, and it misrepresents itself as a 'critical update' when it does not address any security vulnerability, although it remains to be seen if it can create one. ZDNet has a series of screenshots so that you can see exactly how badly it misrepresents itself. Oh, and it also checks for updates, so Microsoft can presumably execute arbitrary code on any machine with it installed, merely by making that code part of a WGA update."

grammar fascist writes "According to an Information Week article, on Friday Microsoft released Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003." From the article: "The software is Microsoft's first to run parallel HPC applications aimed at users working on complex computations... 'High-performance computing technology holds great potential for expanding opportunities... but until now it has been too expensive and too difficult for many people to use effectively,' said Bob Muglia, senior vice president of [Microsoft's] Server and Tools Business unit, in a statement."

HaloZero asks: "I work for a medium-sized company (350+ users), and am charged with new builds and deployments for a mix of aged and new desktops, and a smattering of similar laptops. The hardware is certainly not uniform across the entire infrastructure. Our current deployment 'system' (Ghost/Sysprep, Acronis/NewSID) is somewhat of a kludge -- as my mentor would say -- and I've been looking into alternative, cleaner methods. We're burgeoning on an Active Directory domain, so RIS has been the hot topic on my desk as of late. Does anyone have any experience with RIS? Is there anything that isn't very well documented that I should watch out for? We're considering other unattended install solutions, such as nLite, and a composite of Bart's PE Builder-type setups. Any other suggestions out there?"

Christopher_G_Lewis writes "Today Microsoft announced that it is 'not feasible to make the extensive changes necessary to Windows Explorer on Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition (SE), and Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (ME) to eliminate the vulnerability' to fix Security Bulletin MS06-15. Granted, the vulnerability is easily prevented by basic firewalling, but this basically is the first time Microsoft has admitted that Windows 98 is so broken that it's crazy to be running it on today's Internet."

prostoalex writes "Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 2 is now available for download from Microsoft's official site. If you remember seeing reviews of it already, Microsoft made downloads available to a limited set of customers last month. For PC users that are already running Windows Vista Beta 2, Microsoft put together a list of additional downloads like product guide and feature lists."

prostoalex writes "Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 2 is now available for download from Microsoft's official site. If you remember seeing reviews of it already, Microsoft made downloads available to a limited set of customers last month. For PC users that are already running Windows Vista Beta 2, Microsoft put together a list of additional downloads like product guide and feature lists."

RobbeR49 writes "Windows Server 2003 was recently compared against Linux and Unix variants in a survey by the Yankee Group, with Windows having a higher annual uptime than Linux. Unix was the big winner, however, beating both Windows and Linux in annual uptime. From the article: 'Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Linux distributions from "niche" open source vendors, are offline more and longer than either Windows or Unix competitors, the survey said. The reason: the scarcity of Linux and open source documentation.' Yankee Group is claiming no bias in the survey as they were not sponsored by any particular OS vendor."

lockDrive asks: "Every month, we read a news about personal information leak. Most of the time, either a laptop or a hard disk that contains sensitive information is stolen from a government or corporate office, and the data are not encrypted. Recently, Department of Veterans Affairs had lost a laptop which contained confidential information for 26.5 million veterans. The data were not encrypted. There are many products that provide a solution to such a problem. Microsoft Encrypting File System (EFS), which comes with Windows 2000 and later, encrypts data in a file system and seems to have a decent key recovery system in Windows 2003 Server CA. Products like SecureDoc and DriveCrypt encrypt an entire disk. I have tried some of them and they are not that difficult to use. What is holding people who handle sensitive information (government, health-care, insurance ...) back from encrypting their data? Are the products still too hard to use? Are they concerned about performance loss? Are they not convinced with the security gain? Are they just not adopting the technology quickly? Is there anything missing in the technology?"

automatix writes "Microsoft's new competitor to the omnipresent JPEG format has been shown at WinHEC and is discussed on CNET. The Windows Media Photo format has many promises associated with it. The program manager is claiming 'We can do it in half the size of a JPEG file.'. While 'the philosophy has been that licensing should not be a restriction', it is interesting that the specification requires a click-through agreement to even read it."

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has launched its first-ever shared source programming contest. With several XBox 360's and an HDTV on the line, hackers will download 120-day trial versions of Windows CE and associated tools, and create 'cool, real-world' apps using designated shared source components. Judging criteria include originality, real-world practicality, feature-extension of the Shared Source components, project documentation, and a short video that demonstrates the successful operation of the project. The Grand Prize is a complete Xbox 360 dream setup consisting of the Xbox 360 console, a 34-inch HDTV, games, and accessories. Three other winners will be awarded Xbox 360 game consoles."

An anonymous reader writes "Geekzone is reporting that Microsoft is introducing a new business model for 'pay-as-you-go computing.' From the article: 'The pay-as-you-go computing model enabled by Microsoft's FlexGo technology allows customers to have a fully featured PC at home by paying only for the time as they use it through the purchase of prepaid activation cards or tokens. Microsoft has been running trials of the program in Brazil for more than a year and will soon be expanding to select markets in India, Russia, China and Mexico.'" This makes me giggle, because it's basically the return of time-sharing; in the past it was for for mainframe systems, but I suppose the same concept behind the mainframe idea would be true in developing countries today with PC systems.

Digital Inspiration writes "CNet reports that Microsoft has kicked off a 'Get Ready' campaign aimed at helping customers prepare for Windows Vista. The site also includes an Upgrade Advisor tool to help people determine just how Vista-ready an existing PC is." From the article: "The marketing programs and upgrade tool are designed to ease some of the uncertainty around Vista well ahead of the back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons, the two biggest PC selling times of the year. Vista had long been expected to arrive by the 2006 holidays, but Microsoft said in March that it would not arrive on store shelves until January."

Vicegrip writes "Microsoft is enhancing its Genuine Advantage program in the US, Australia, UK, Malaysia and NZ to now include persistent nag screens to remind that your version of Windows is not licensed. These nag screens will keep appearing until you license your version of Windows or, presumably, convince Microsoft they've made a mistake."

rst+ack writes "Microsoft has released RC1 version of PowerShell the .NET-based shell with perl-like syntax previously known as Monad or MSH. PowerShell (PS) has been covered a few times on Slashdot. Contrary to cmd.exe and Unix/Linux shells it operates on objects, not text when passing data between scripts and executables. Easy access to .NET classes allows users to create quite advanced solutions in short time. PS won't be shipped with Vista or Windows Server 2007 but it will debut with Exchange 12."

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC is running a short piece detailing Microsoft's newest step in testing Internet Explorer 7, which just went into Beta 2 yesterday. They're now offering free phone support to U.S., German, and Japanese users who try out the trial software." From the article: "'We believe that IE 7, even at this beta stage, is a significant improvement and we want as many people as possible to try it and use it,' said the browser development team in a post on its blog. 'IE 7 is feature complete and has been through significant compatibility and reliability testing. People (especially technology enthusiasts) will have a good experience with it,' continued the post. Microsoft said the new version addresses some problems affecting banking and news sites. It is also designed to be more secure than the current version, with built-in protection against malicious software and online phishing scams."

John Seyton asks: "A recent posting regarding Internet Explorer 7 has me pondering what impact this next release will have on the web market. Firefox has fought hard to make a small dent in Internet Explorer's armor, to the point that we can browse most of the web with no loss of functionality, yet if Internet Explorer 7 recaptures a sizable chunk of that market share, web authors might once again create offensive 'please upgrade to Internet Explorer' web pages. Based upon the known features, what does the Slashdot community think the impact of Internet Explorer 7 will be on the web in general? Will we be forced to live a two-browser life once again?"

SpectreHiro writes "In a shocking move, Microsoft has open sourced... err, 'shared the source' of MechCommander 2. From the site, 'This is the Shared Source release for MechCommander 2. This release contains all of the source code an source assets required to build MechCommander 2. This release can be used with the Microsoft XNA Build March 2006 CTP.'

An anonymous reader wrote to mention an InfoWorld article about Microsoft's plan to publish some of the findings from last week's Blue Hat conference. From the article: "'Everything was fair game,' wrote SQL Server engineer Brad Sarsfield in a blog posting. 'Hearing senior executives say things like: 'I want the people responsible for those features in my office early next week; I want to get to the bottom of this' was at least one measure of success from my point of view for the event.' The Blue Hat name is a play on the Black Hat conferences, which have occasionally been criticized by IT vendors. The 'Blue' part comes from the color of badges that Microsoft staffers wear on campus." They have descriptions of some of the sessions up on the site for your perusal.

daria42 writes "According to this article, Microsoft has paused development work on some parts of the pro graphics application it first released in beta back in June 2005. The problem? It appears the software giant doesn't see the application as a stand-alone product, but more of a companion piece to its Expression product line. Plus Vista needs to be released first."

College Student writes "Microsoft has officially unveiled 'Origami', a paperback-book sized portable hybrid (laptop & PDA). From article: 'The new machines will connect wirelessly to the Internet and carry full-sized hard drives, but they are not intended to replace current PCs....The new PCs are expected to sell for between $599 to $999, but Microsoft said it is possible to sell one for $500 if the manufacturer selects components carefully.'" More details at the official Microsoft site, and via Channel 9 a look at the system with the UMPC general manager.

Graeme Williams writes "The tag line for Visual Basic Jumpstart is, 'Make Your Move Now from VB 6 to VB 2005', but the book also includes introductory and summary material rather than staying focused on VB 6 users. The book has a few good examples and some useful information about Visual Basic 2005, but the information, including links to the Internet, doesn't seem complete or up-to-date. This book isn't the help you need." Read the rest of Graeme's review. Visual Basic 2005 Jumpstart author Wei-Meng Lee pages xiv + 197 publisher O'Reilly Media rating 5 reviewer Graeme Williams ISBN 0-596-10071-X summary A useful but flawed snapshot of Visual Basic 2005 without a clear audience

My current (small) applications are in Access and Visual Basic for Applications rather than VB 6, but with that caveat I'm part of the audience for this book, since I'm actively considering moving them to Visual Basic 2005. I want to like this book more than I do. Part of my confusion is that all of the chapters are useful, but I don't think they're useful to the same people.

I have no idea who the audience is for Chapter 2, "Programming with Visual Basic". Some of the information is useful and relevant, with specifics on differences between VB6 and VB2005, but some of it just seems plain silly: "Just as in VB 6, in VB 2005, you make decisions using the If-Then-Else construct". The wording is sometimes odd, too. The fact that parentheses in function calls are now mandatory in VB 2005 is explained backwards: "VB 6 Tip: In VB 6, you can call the PrintMessage subroutine without using parentheses to enclose the parameter list." The chapter could have been collapsed into a very clear and not very large table giving the differences between VB 6 and VB 2005.

In VB 2005, Microsoft has introduced a new bag of functions under the My. namespace. It's not a very big bag – it feels like the product manager wrote down the first four or five functions he thought of. For example, My.Computer.Network contains just five elements: IsAvailable, DownloadFile, UploadFile, Ping, and the NetworkAvailabilityChanged event. Jumpstart describes it as " ... one of the most useful and unique additions to VB 2005 ... The aim of the My namespace is to provide direct access to commonly used libraries in the .NET framework that were previously difficult to access." I'm sorry, that just sounds too much like a press release.

If you're really interested in the status of a network interface, for example, you need to look in the 30+ classes in the System.Net.NetworkInformation namespace. But this is not included in the list of "some other useful namespaces in the .NET framework" (p61). Also, Example 4-3 (p117) uses the System.Net.HttpWebRequest and System.Net.HttpWebResponse classes to download an image, not any of the classes mentioned in Chapter 3.

On the face of it, Chapter 3, "Putting Object-Oriented Programming to Work", provides a very clear and thorough introduction to the object-oriented programming constructs in VB 2005. Unfortunately, it's not complete. Microsoft has a summary of "Object-Oriented Programming for Visual Basic 6.0 Users" which points out that the Binary Compatibility option from VB6 is no longer supported in VB 2005, but this is not mentioned in Jumpstart.

If you're moving from VB6 to VB2005, you're also moving to NET 2.0, but the book has only the most cursory introduction to NET 2.0. Part of the problem is that the book needs to be either more or less reliant on online information. If it was less reliant on online information, it would be more useful as a stand-alone resource. If it was more thoroughly linked to the estimable resources at Microsoft.com, it would be more complete and up-to-date.

Jumpstart mentions two MSDN Help Topics: "Programming Element Support Changes Summary" and "Help for Visual Basic 6.0 Users". The former is very useful, perhaps more useful than found in this book, although it's organized in MSDN's one fact per page style. The latter can only be found via Google, since it is now part of MSDN2, the "new MSDN" for Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. MSDN2 is not mentioned in the book, nor is VBRun, the Visual Basic 6.0 Resource Center, which has a boatload of information on moving to VB 2005.

The database application in Chapter 4, "Developing a Windows Application" is useful and clearly presented. It's a nice example of the new SplitContainer control. But it's no better than examples in other introductions to Visual Basic, and it's a little hard to see how it's suited to the stated purpose of this book – of introducing developers with an existing Visual Basic 6 code base to Visual Basic 2005.

The term "jumpstart" cuts both ways. The goal of the book is to give VB6 programmers a rapid introduction to Visual Basic 2005. But the book itself was published rapidly – before Visual Basic 2005 was released – and some of that speed shows. On page 126, Jumpstart instructs you how to configure Windows XP to run IIS, but on page 139 points out that this isn't possible in XP Home.

Chapter 5, "Building Web Applications", explains that Visual Studio includes its own web server, so you don't need to run IIS, but the fact that Visual Basic 2005 Express doesn't include this feature is mentioned only in the preface (page xi). To provide IIS, you need either Windows XP Professional, or Visual Studio Standard or above, or Visual Web Developer 2005 Express. Wouldn't it make sense to explain the various combinations of operating systems and Visual Studio editions in one place, at the beginning of the chapter where they're relevant?

I'm not an ASP programmer, but I feel as though the 35 pages devoted to ASP probably aren't enough to give the topic a decent introduction, which perhaps deserves a separate book. For example, authentication is covered in just three short paragraphs. The 35 pages could have been devoted to something more central to the topic, such as more details on .NET 2.0. Obviously, there are other books on .NET 2.0, but while you can use Visual Basic 2005 without ASP, you can't use it without .NET 2.0.

If we take the book's tagline seriously, Chapter 6, "Moving from VB 6 to to VB 2005", should be the core of book, but it seems like more of an afterthought. Much of the content is from Artinsoft. Rather than reading about about it third-hand in this book, or second-hand on MSDN, I recommend you go to the the Artinsoft web site, where they have plenty of information for download.

It's hard to put a numerical rating on a book like this, which doesn't seem focused or particularly thorough, but still contains a lot of useful information. The book could have been better if it had been linked more systematically to Microsoft's online resources. It might have seemed better if the audience had been clearer. A rating of 5 ("Neither terrible nor terribly good") seems about right. By all means buy the book if you think it will be worth the money to have the information and examples in book form. Just don't expect too much."

You can purchase Visual Basic 2005 Jumpstart from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page

Graeme Williams writes "The tag line for Visual Basic Jumpstart is, 'Make Your Move Now from VB 6 to VB 2005', but the book also includes introductory and summary material rather than staying focused on VB 6 users. The book has a few good examples and some useful information about Visual Basic 2005, but the information, including links to the Internet, doesn't seem complete or up-to-date. This book isn't the help you need." Read the rest of Graeme's review. Visual Basic 2005 Jumpstart author Wei-Meng Lee pages xiv + 197 publisher O'Reilly Media rating 5 reviewer Graeme Williams ISBN 0-596-10071-X summary A useful but flawed snapshot of Visual Basic 2005 without a clear audience

My current (small) applications are in Access and Visual Basic for Applications rather than VB 6, but with that caveat I'm part of the audience for this book, since I'm actively considering moving them to Visual Basic 2005. I want to like this book more than I do. Part of my confusion is that all of the chapters are useful, but I don't think they're useful to the same people.

I have no idea who the audience is for Chapter 2, "Programming with Visual Basic". Some of the information is useful and relevant, with specifics on differences between VB6 and VB2005, but some of it just seems plain silly: "Just as in VB 6, in VB 2005, you make decisions using the If-Then-Else construct". The wording is sometimes odd, too. The fact that parentheses in function calls are now mandatory in VB 2005 is explained backwards: "VB 6 Tip: In VB 6, you can call the PrintMessage subroutine without using parentheses to enclose the parameter list." The chapter could have been collapsed into a very clear and not very large table giving the differences between VB 6 and VB 2005.

In VB 2005, Microsoft has introduced a new bag of functions under the My. namespace. It's not a very big bag – it feels like the product manager wrote down the first four or five functions he thought of. For example, My.Computer.Network contains just five elements: IsAvailable, DownloadFile, UploadFile, Ping, and the NetworkAvailabilityChanged event. Jumpstart describes it as " ... one of the most useful and unique additions to VB 2005 ... The aim of the My namespace is to provide direct access to commonly used libraries in the .NET framework that were previously difficult to access." I'm sorry, that just sounds too much like a press release.

If you're really interested in the status of a network interface, for example, you need to look in the 30+ classes in the System.Net.NetworkInformation namespace. But this is not included in the list of "some other useful namespaces in the .NET framework" (p61). Also, Example 4-3 (p117) uses the System.Net.HttpWebRequest and System.Net.HttpWebResponse classes to download an image, not any of the classes mentioned in Chapter 3.

On the face of it, Chapter 3, "Putting Object-Oriented Programming to Work", provides a very clear and thorough introduction to the object-oriented programming constructs in VB 2005. Unfortunately, it's not complete. Microsoft has a summary of "Object-Oriented Programming for Visual Basic 6.0 Users" which points out that the Binary Compatibility option from VB6 is no longer supported in VB 2005, but this is not mentioned in Jumpstart.

If you're moving from VB6 to VB2005, you're also moving to NET 2.0, but the book has only the most cursory introduction to NET 2.0. Part of the problem is that the book needs to be either more or less reliant on online information. If it was less reliant on online information, it would be more useful as a stand-alone resource. If it was more thoroughly linked to the estimable resources at Microsoft.com, it would be more complete and up-to-date.

Jumpstart mentions two MSDN Help Topics: "Programming Element Support Changes Summary" and "Help for Visual Basic 6.0 Users". The former is very useful, perhaps more useful than found in this book, although it's organized in MSDN's one fact per page style. The latter can only be found via Google, since it is now part of MSDN2, the "new MSDN" for Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. MSDN2 is not mentioned in the book, nor is VBRun, the Visual Basic 6.0 Resource Center, which has a boatload of information on moving to VB 2005.

The database application in Chapter 4, "Developing a Windows Application" is useful and clearly presented. It's a nice example of the new SplitContainer control. But it's no better than examples in other introductions to Visual Basic, and it's a little hard to see how it's suited to the stated purpose of this book – of introducing developers with an existing Visual Basic 6 code base to Visual Basic 2005.

The term "jumpstart" cuts both ways. The goal of the book is to give VB6 programmers a rapid introduction to Visual Basic 2005. But the book itself was published rapidly – before Visual Basic 2005 was released – and some of that speed shows. On page 126, Jumpstart instructs you how to configure Windows XP to run IIS, but on page 139 points out that this isn't possible in XP Home.

Chapter 5, "Building Web Applications", explains that Visual Studio includes its own web server, so you don't need to run IIS, but the fact that Visual Basic 2005 Express doesn't include this feature is mentioned only in the preface (page xi). To provide IIS, you need either Windows XP Professional, or Visual Studio Standard or above, or Visual Web Developer 2005 Express. Wouldn't it make sense to explain the various combinations of operating systems and Visual Studio editions in one place, at the beginning of the chapter where they're relevant?

I'm not an ASP programmer, but I feel as though the 35 pages devoted to ASP probably aren't enough to give the topic a decent introduction, which perhaps deserves a separate book. For example, authentication is covered in just three short paragraphs. The 35 pages could have been devoted to something more central to the topic, such as more details on .NET 2.0. Obviously, there are other books on .NET 2.0, but while you can use Visual Basic 2005 without ASP, you can't use it without .NET 2.0.

If we take the book's tagline seriously, Chapter 6, "Moving from VB 6 to to VB 2005", should be the core of book, but it seems like more of an afterthought. Much of the content is from Artinsoft. Rather than reading about about it third-hand in this book, or second-hand on MSDN, I recommend you go to the the Artinsoft web site, where they have plenty of information for download.

It's hard to put a numerical rating on a book like this, which doesn't seem focused or particularly thorough, but still contains a lot of useful information. The book could have been better if it had been linked more systematically to Microsoft's online resources. It might have seemed better if the audience had been clearer. A rating of 5 ("Neither terrible nor terribly good") seems about right. By all means buy the book if you think it will be worth the money to have the information and examples in book form. Just don't expect too much."

You can purchase Visual Basic 2005 Jumpstart from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page

Graeme Williams writes "The tag line for Visual Basic Jumpstart is, 'Make Your Move Now from VB 6 to VB 2005', but the book also includes introductory and summary material rather than staying focused on VB 6 users. The book has a few good examples and some useful information about Visual Basic 2005, but the information, including links to the Internet, doesn't seem complete or up-to-date. This book isn't the help you need." Read the rest of Graeme's review. Visual Basic 2005 Jumpstart author Wei-Meng Lee pages xiv + 197 publisher O'Reilly Media rating 5 reviewer Graeme Williams ISBN 0-596-10071-X summary A useful but flawed snapshot of Visual Basic 2005 without a clear audience

My current (small) applications are in Access and Visual Basic for Applications rather than VB 6, but with that caveat I'm part of the audience for this book, since I'm actively considering moving them to Visual Basic 2005. I want to like this book more than I do. Part of my confusion is that all of the chapters are useful, but I don't think they're useful to the same people.

I have no idea who the audience is for Chapter 2, "Programming with Visual Basic". Some of the information is useful and relevant, with specifics on differences between VB6 and VB2005, but some of it just seems plain silly: "Just as in VB 6, in VB 2005, you make decisions using the If-Then-Else construct". The wording is sometimes odd, too. The fact that parentheses in function calls are now mandatory in VB 2005 is explained backwards: "VB 6 Tip: In VB 6, you can call the PrintMessage subroutine without using parentheses to enclose the parameter list." The chapter could have been collapsed into a very clear and not very large table giving the differences between VB 6 and VB 2005.

In VB 2005, Microsoft has introduced a new bag of functions under the My. namespace. It's not a very big bag – it feels like the product manager wrote down the first four or five functions he thought of. For example, My.Computer.Network contains just five elements: IsAvailable, DownloadFile, UploadFile, Ping, and the NetworkAvailabilityChanged event. Jumpstart describes it as " ... one of the most useful and unique additions to VB 2005 ... The aim of the My namespace is to provide direct access to commonly used libraries in the .NET framework that were previously difficult to access." I'm sorry, that just sounds too much like a press release.

If you're really interested in the status of a network interface, for example, you need to look in the 30+ classes in the System.Net.NetworkInformation namespace. But this is not included in the list of "some other useful namespaces in the .NET framework" (p61). Also, Example 4-3 (p117) uses the System.Net.HttpWebRequest and System.Net.HttpWebResponse classes to download an image, not any of the classes mentioned in Chapter 3.

On the face of it, Chapter 3, "Putting Object-Oriented Programming to Work", provides a very clear and thorough introduction to the object-oriented programming constructs in VB 2005. Unfortunately, it's not complete. Microsoft has a summary of "Object-Oriented Programming for Visual Basic 6.0 Users" which points out that the Binary Compatibility option from VB6 is no longer supported in VB 2005, but this is not mentioned in Jumpstart.

If you're moving from VB6 to VB2005, you're also moving to NET 2.0, but the book has only the most cursory introduction to NET 2.0. Part of the problem is that the book needs to be either more or less reliant on online information. If it was less reliant on online information, it would be more useful as a stand-alone resource. If it was more thoroughly linked to the estimable resources at Microsoft.com, it would be more complete and up-to-date.

Jumpstart mentions two MSDN Help Topics: "Programming Element Support Changes Summary" and "Help for Visual Basic 6.0 Users". The former is very useful, perhaps more useful than found in this book, although it's organized in MSDN's one fact per page style. The latter can only be found via Google, since it is now part of MSDN2, the "new MSDN" for Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. MSDN2 is not mentioned in the book, nor is VBRun, the Visual Basic 6.0 Resource Center, which has a boatload of information on moving to VB 2005.

The database application in Chapter 4, "Developing a Windows Application" is useful and clearly presented. It's a nice example of the new SplitContainer control. But it's no better than examples in other introductions to Visual Basic, and it's a little hard to see how it's suited to the stated purpose of this book – of introducing developers with an existing Visual Basic 6 code base to Visual Basic 2005.

The term "jumpstart" cuts both ways. The goal of the book is to give VB6 programmers a rapid introduction to Visual Basic 2005. But the book itself was published rapidly – before Visual Basic 2005 was released – and some of that speed shows. On page 126, Jumpstart instructs you how to configure Windows XP to run IIS, but on page 139 points out that this isn't possible in XP Home.

Chapter 5, "Building Web Applications", explains that Visual Studio includes its own web server, so you don't need to run IIS, but the fact that Visual Basic 2005 Express doesn't include this feature is mentioned only in the preface (page xi). To provide IIS, you need either Windows XP Professional, or Visual Studio Standard or above, or Visual Web Developer 2005 Express. Wouldn't it make sense to explain the various combinations of operating systems and Visual Studio editions in one place, at the beginning of the chapter where they're relevant?

I'm not an ASP programmer, but I feel as though the 35 pages devoted to ASP probably aren't enough to give the topic a decent introduction, which perhaps deserves a separate book. For example, authentication is covered in just three short paragraphs. The 35 pages could have been devoted to something more central to the topic, such as more details on .NET 2.0. Obviously, there are other books on .NET 2.0, but while you can use Visual Basic 2005 without ASP, you can't use it without .NET 2.0.

If we take the book's tagline seriously, Chapter 6, "Moving from VB 6 to to VB 2005", should be the core of book, but it seems like more of an afterthought. Much of the content is from Artinsoft. Rather than reading about about it third-hand in this book, or second-hand on MSDN, I recommend you go to the the Artinsoft web site, where they have plenty of information for download.

It's hard to put a numerical rating on a book like this, which doesn't seem focused or particularly thorough, but still contains a lot of useful information. The book could have been better if it had been linked more systematically to Microsoft's online resources. It might have seemed better if the audience had been clearer. A rating of 5 ("Neither terrible nor terribly good") seems about right. By all means buy the book if you think it will be worth the money to have the information and examples in book form. Just don't expect too much."

You can purchase Visual Basic 2005 Jumpstart from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page

Graeme Williams writes "The tag line for Visual Basic Jumpstart is, 'Make Your Move Now from VB 6 to VB 2005', but the book also includes introductory and summary material rather than staying focused on VB 6 users. The book has a few good examples and some useful information about Visual Basic 2005, but the information, including links to the Internet, doesn't seem complete or up-to-date. This book isn't the help you need." Read the rest of Graeme's review. Visual Basic 2005 Jumpstart author Wei-Meng Lee pages xiv + 197 publisher O'Reilly Media rating 5 reviewer Graeme Williams ISBN 0-596-10071-X summary A useful but flawed snapshot of Visual Basic 2005 without a clear audience

My current (small) applications are in Access and Visual Basic for Applications rather than VB 6, but with that caveat I'm part of the audience for this book, since I'm actively considering moving them to Visual Basic 2005. I want to like this book more than I do. Part of my confusion is that all of the chapters are useful, but I don't think they're useful to the same people.

I have no idea who the audience is for Chapter 2, "Programming with Visual Basic". Some of the information is useful and relevant, with specifics on differences between VB6 and VB2005, but some of it just seems plain silly: "Just as in VB 6, in VB 2005, you make decisions using the If-Then-Else construct". The wording is sometimes odd, too. The fact that parentheses in function calls are now mandatory in VB 2005 is explained backwards: "VB 6 Tip: In VB 6, you can call the PrintMessage subroutine without using parentheses to enclose the parameter list." The chapter could have been collapsed into a very clear and not very large table giving the differences between VB 6 and VB 2005.

In VB 2005, Microsoft has introduced a new bag of functions under the My. namespace. It's not a very big bag – it feels like the product manager wrote down the first four or five functions he thought of. For example, My.Computer.Network contains just five elements: IsAvailable, DownloadFile, UploadFile, Ping, and the NetworkAvailabilityChanged event. Jumpstart describes it as " ... one of the most useful and unique additions to VB 2005 ... The aim of the My namespace is to provide direct access to commonly used libraries in the .NET framework that were previously difficult to access." I'm sorry, that just sounds too much like a press release.

If you're really interested in the status of a network interface, for example, you need to look in the 30+ classes in the System.Net.NetworkInformation namespace. But this is not included in the list of "some other useful namespaces in the .NET framework" (p61). Also, Example 4-3 (p117) uses the System.Net.HttpWebRequest and System.Net.HttpWebResponse classes to download an image, not any of the classes mentioned in Chapter 3.

On the face of it, Chapter 3, "Putting Object-Oriented Programming to Work", provides a very clear and thorough introduction to the object-oriented programming constructs in VB 2005. Unfortunately, it's not complete. Microsoft has a summary of "Object-Oriented Programming for Visual Basic 6.0 Users" which points out that the Binary Compatibility option from VB6 is no longer supported in VB 2005, but this is not mentioned in Jumpstart.

If you're moving from VB6 to VB2005, you're also moving to NET 2.0, but the book has only the most cursory introduction to NET 2.0. Part of the problem is that the book needs to be either more or less reliant on online information. If it was less reliant on online information, it would be more useful as a stand-alone resource. If it was more thoroughly linked to the estimable resources at Microsoft.com, it would be more complete and up-to-date.

Jumpstart mentions two MSDN Help Topics: "Programming Element Support Changes Summary" and "Help for Visual Basic 6.0 Users". The former is very useful, perhaps more useful than found in this book, although it's organized in MSDN's one fact per page style. The latter can only be found via Google, since it is now part of MSDN2, the "new MSDN" for Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. MSDN2 is not mentioned in the book, nor is VBRun, the Visual Basic 6.0 Resource Center, which has a boatload of information on moving to VB 2005.

The database application in Chapter 4, "Developing a Windows Application" is useful and clearly presented. It's a nice example of the new SplitContainer control. But it's no better than examples in other introductions to Visual Basic, and it's a little hard to see how it's suited to the stated purpose of this book – of introducing developers with an existing Visual Basic 6 code base to Visual Basic 2005.

The term "jumpstart" cuts both ways. The goal of the book is to give VB6 programmers a rapid introduction to Visual Basic 2005. But the book itself was published rapidly – before Visual Basic 2005 was released – and some of that speed shows. On page 126, Jumpstart instructs you how to configure Windows XP to run IIS, but on page 139 points out that this isn't possible in XP Home.

Chapter 5, "Building Web Applications", explains that Visual Studio includes its own web server, so you don't need to run IIS, but the fact that Visual Basic 2005 Express doesn't include this feature is mentioned only in the preface (page xi). To provide IIS, you need either Windows XP Professional, or Visual Studio Standard or above, or Visual Web Developer 2005 Express. Wouldn't it make sense to explain the various combinations of operating systems and Visual Studio editions in one place, at the beginning of the chapter where they're relevant?

I'm not an ASP programmer, but I feel as though the 35 pages devoted to ASP probably aren't enough to give the topic a decent introduction, which perhaps deserves a separate book. For example, authentication is covered in just three short paragraphs. The 35 pages could have been devoted to something more central to the topic, such as more details on .NET 2.0. Obviously, there are other books on .NET 2.0, but while you can use Visual Basic 2005 without ASP, you can't use it without .NET 2.0.

If we take the book's tagline seriously, Chapter 6, "Moving from VB 6 to to VB 2005", should be the core of book, but it seems like more of an afterthought. Much of the content is from Artinsoft. Rather than reading about about it third-hand in this book, or second-hand on MSDN, I recommend you go to the the Artinsoft web site, where they have plenty of information for download.

It's hard to put a numerical rating on a book like this, which doesn't seem focused or particularly thorough, but still contains a lot of useful information. The book could have been better if it had been linked more systematically to Microsoft's online resources. It might have seemed better if the audience had been clearer. A rating of 5 ("Neither terrible nor terribly good") seems about right. By all means buy the book if you think it will be worth the money to have the information and examples in book form. Just don't expect too much."

You can purchase Visual Basic 2005 Jumpstart from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page

Graeme Williams writes "The tag line for Visual Basic Jumpstart is, 'Make Your Move Now from VB 6 to VB 2005', but the book also includes introductory and summary material rather than staying focused on VB 6 users. The book has a few good examples and some useful information about Visual Basic 2005, but the information, including links to the Internet, doesn't seem complete or up-to-date. This book isn't the help you need." Read the rest of Graeme's review. Visual Basic 2005 Jumpstart author Wei-Meng Lee pages xiv + 197 publisher O'Reilly Media rating 5 reviewer Graeme Williams ISBN 0-596-10071-X summary A useful but flawed snapshot of Visual Basic 2005 without a clear audience

My current (small) applications are in Access and Visual Basic for Applications rather than VB 6, but with that caveat I'm part of the audience for this book, since I'm actively considering moving them to Visual Basic 2005. I want to like this book more than I do. Part of my confusion is that all of the chapters are useful, but I don't think they're useful to the same people.

I have no idea who the audience is for Chapter 2, "Programming with Visual Basic". Some of the information is useful and relevant, with specifics on differences between VB6 and VB2005, but some of it just seems plain silly: "Just as in VB 6, in VB 2005, you make decisions using the If-Then-Else construct". The wording is sometimes odd, too. The fact that parentheses in function calls are now mandatory in VB 2005 is explained backwards: "VB 6 Tip: In VB 6, you can call the PrintMessage subroutine without using parentheses to enclose the parameter list." The chapter could have been collapsed into a very clear and not very large table giving the differences between VB 6 and VB 2005.

In VB 2005, Microsoft has introduced a new bag of functions under the My. namespace. It's not a very big bag – it feels like the product manager wrote down the first four or five functions he thought of. For example, My.Computer.Network contains just five elements: IsAvailable, DownloadFile, UploadFile, Ping, and the NetworkAvailabilityChanged event. Jumpstart describes it as " ... one of the most useful and unique additions to VB 2005 ... The aim of the My namespace is to provide direct access to commonly used libraries in the .NET framework that were previously difficult to access." I'm sorry, that just sounds too much like a press release.

If you're really interested in the status of a network interface, for example, you need to look in the 30+ classes in the System.Net.NetworkInformation namespace. But this is not included in the list of "some other useful namespaces in the .NET framework" (p61). Also, Example 4-3 (p117) uses the System.Net.HttpWebRequest and System.Net.HttpWebResponse classes to download an image, not any of the classes mentioned in Chapter 3.

On the face of it, Chapter 3, "Putting Object-Oriented Programming to Work", provides a very clear and thorough introduction to the object-oriented programming constructs in VB 2005. Unfortunately, it's not complete. Microsoft has a summary of "Object-Oriented Programming for Visual Basic 6.0 Users" which points out that the Binary Compatibility option from VB6 is no longer supported in VB 2005, but this is not mentioned in Jumpstart.

If you're moving from VB6 to VB2005, you're also moving to NET 2.0, but the book has only the most cursory introduction to NET 2.0. Part of the problem is that the book needs to be either more or less reliant on online information. If it was less reliant on online information, it would be more useful as a stand-alone resource. If it was more thoroughly linked to the estimable resources at Microsoft.com, it would be more complete and up-to-date.

Jumpstart mentions two MSDN Help Topics: "Programming Element Support Changes Summary" and "Help for Visual Basic 6.0 Users". The former is very useful, perhaps more useful than found in this book, although it's organized in MSDN's one fact per page style. The latter can only be found via Google, since it is now part of MSDN2, the "new MSDN" for Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. MSDN2 is not mentioned in the book, nor is VBRun, the Visual Basic 6.0 Resource Center, which has a boatload of information on moving to VB 2005.

The database application in Chapter 4, "Developing a Windows Application" is useful and clearly presented. It's a nice example of the new SplitContainer control. But it's no better than examples in other introductions to Visual Basic, and it's a little hard to see how it's suited to the stated purpose of this book – of introducing developers with an existing Visual Basic 6 code base to Visual Basic 2005.

The term "jumpstart" cuts both ways. The goal of the book is to give VB6 programmers a rapid introduction to Visual Basic 2005. But the book itself was published rapidly – before Visual Basic 2005 was released – and some of that speed shows. On page 126, Jumpstart instructs you how to configure Windows XP to run IIS, but on page 139 points out that this isn't possible in XP Home.

Chapter 5, "Building Web Applications", explains that Visual Studio includes its own web server, so you don't need to run IIS, but the fact that Visual Basic 2005 Express doesn't include this feature is mentioned only in the preface (page xi). To provide IIS, you need either Windows XP Professional, or Visual Studio Standard or above, or Visual Web Developer 2005 Express. Wouldn't it make sense to explain the various combinations of operating systems and Visual Studio editions in one place, at the beginning of the chapter where they're relevant?

I'm not an ASP programmer, but I feel as though the 35 pages devoted to ASP probably aren't enough to give the topic a decent introduction, which perhaps deserves a separate book. For example, authentication is covered in just three short paragraphs. The 35 pages could have been devoted to something more central to the topic, such as more details on .NET 2.0. Obviously, there are other books on .NET 2.0, but while you can use Visual Basic 2005 without ASP, you can't use it without .NET 2.0.

If we take the book's tagline seriously, Chapter 6, "Moving from VB 6 to to VB 2005", should be the core of book, but it seems like more of an afterthought. Much of the content is from Artinsoft. Rather than reading about about it third-hand in this book, or second-hand on MSDN, I recommend you go to the the Artinsoft web site, where they have plenty of information for download.

It's hard to put a numerical rating on a book like this, which doesn't seem focused or particularly thorough, but still contains a lot of useful information. The book could have been better if it had been linked more systematically to Microsoft's online resources. It might have seemed better if the audience had been clearer. A rating of 5 ("Neither terrible nor terribly good") seems about right. By all means buy the book if you think it will be worth the money to have the information and examples in book form. Just don't expect too much."

You can purchase Visual Basic 2005 Jumpstart from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page

Here are OSDL CEO Stuart Cohen's answers to your questions, many of which were spurred by the recent release of an OSDL co-sponsored Linux TCO study (that anti-open source commentator Rob Enderle has already/inevitably questioned). (1) A Movement with the Students
by eldavojohn

This may seem like an inane question but why don't I see more of a push to get Linux into the realm of academia?

I know that Ubuntu [ubuntufund.org] has made strides to incorporate themselves into learning environments but where is the effort to alert students (primarily other than computer science majors) to the benefits of Linux?

When I was a freshman at the University of Minnesota, a friend handed me a CD distribution of Debian that would change my life. I knew of the Linux labs in the University but only now did they interest me. I'm now getting my masters at George Mason University and I don't believe there's a single Linux machine on campus. In fact, the whole Computer Science department has only two Sun servers to offer me an account on! Everything else is Microsoft!

Now you may lay claim that every computer science major these days is running Linux anyway. But how about the other areas of study? I used to take music theory and people would rant and rave about their Macs or one of various composing suites in Windows. I tried explaining that Linux has (certainly more affordable) solutions to offer in this department too but no one would even listen to me. It's not like they were mixing platinum selling records, they were just looking for software to write sheet music with.

I think that both Apple and Microsoft realize that the toys people have in college become the toys they demand in real life. So there are all these [apple.com] efforts [e-academy.com] to garner the student's interest hoping that they will use them in their careers.

They make it free (which Linux already is), they make it easy and they make it available.

So how about it? Why isn't the Linux community minting install discs and distributing literature on campuses? Why isn't Linux tailoring cheap solutions to K-12 schools that don't have the money for Windows anyway? Why do we risk letting someone leave academia without ever experiencing the real fruits of it?

If you are doing this (and I just don't know about it), what steps have you taken?

Stuart:

I have found from conversations with CS professors that while Linux is still finding its way into college curricula, it is being used by students on their PCs and in their university labs. It's also being used by college IT staff for the same reasons it is appealing to corporate IT managers - cost of acquisition, lower cost of management and the ability to prolong the lifetime of legacy hardware. And, in Asia and across a range of developing countries, by contrast, Linux is forming the core of much curricula, especially in countries where governments see Linux as a means to local technology development. In many universities that I visit outside the U.S., I meet with the head of open source for the university. This title doesn't exist in U.S., which implies that the academic tie to local economic development and the advancement of information systems is weaker here than abroad.

I agree that what users become comfortable with in college they take with them into their professional careers. We think Linux has a very bright future in education. We launched a program to bring together leading universities around the world to share their experiences and lessons learned to help accelerate that trend. As a small non-profit, OSDL can't by itself take on the global job of delivering Linux to schools and universities, but we can encourage our members to support Linux in education and we can bring together universities to encourage them to embrace more use of Linux. And we do.

(2) Bias
by MaestroSartori

Since almost all of these studies are funded or organised by a party which appears to be inherently for or against one of the things being studied, will it be possible to find anyone willing to compare them impartially? After all, how many people would believe an Open Source company to be any less biased than MS when it comes to comparing their products?

Stuart:

Questioning the credibility of ALL analyst studies is important. Let me just elaborate on how this particular study originated. I hope the context will help you weigh the impartiality of the study and judge for yourself. Levanta (co-sponsor of the study and a member of OSDL) was the vendor that initiated this study by Enterprise Management Associates. In their own sales scenarios for their Linux product, they were running into organizations that were saying they were apprehensive about Linux because they had read that it was "tough to manage." Levanta believed from its own experiences that the concern did not meet up with the reality -- so they sponsored EMA to get some real-world feedback from end user Linux customers. They also wanted current information. Most of the analyst research published to date was already old, going back as much as four years or more. Linux itself, and the tools available to help customers manage Linux, have come a long ways since then. When we (OSDL) saw an early draft of the report, we were very interested in co-sponsoring the effort because the report echoed what we have been hearing from our Linux User Advisory Councils on three continents for a number of years. It was current information with interviews conducted in November and December of 2005. The customers interviewed were also using current versions of the kernel and current releases of enterprise distributions. It reflected today's market situation. And it was based on real Linux customer feedback.

(3) Security Question
by db32

How can we fix the problem of the way TCO studies handle security? In so many of them every OSS application under the sun gets tallied against Linux systems, regardless of how obscure, or unrequired that application may be. Yet all of the 3rd party things that have holes in them rarely seem to even get looked at when talking about Windows security. Firefox for example seems to get tagged frequently when talking about Linux security in these studies, but Firefox isn't integreated into Linux, and it runs on both platforms. IE on the other hand is integrated into the OS, sure you can not use it, but there is a ton of junk in Windows itself that requires the various bits and pieces of IE to operate correctly. What is it going to take for these studies to finally start comparing apples to apples in regards as to what really is part of the OS and what is required for it to run?

Stuart:

It's difficult to say if this will ever be able to be measured "apples to apples."

Just as with Windows, the Linux platform cannot be judged, security-wise, as a "naked" kernel but rather as an OS with a variety of components. In the case of Linux, the component set is determined by the 200-500 packages offered by typical distributions and variously installed by systems administrators and by end users. However, very much UNLIKE Windows, there are few, if any, applications that pervade typical Linux-based applications stacks and carry with them pervasive security issues the way that IE pervades and exposes most parts of a Windows stack. Indeed, Linux is very modular and compartmentalized, such that even if security/TCO studies illustrate holes and exploits in the Linux stack over time, any given breach will have much less impact and patches to repair exploits are far less likely to perturb the entire stack (especially compared to the havoc wreaked by frequent Windows patches and service packs).

(4) Setting up Linux from Win2K3
by digitaldc

Say I wanted to switch from Windows Server 2003 to Linux in a company of about 400 people with the same equipment I already have, generally speaking how long would it take and how much would I need to invest?

Do I need to hire several Linux experts just to get it up and running?

Would you expect this to be relatively easy or would it be very complicated and time consuming?

Stuart:

It's difficult to answer your questions without more information but I can tell you that comparing legacy and migrated systems costs is never an apples-to-apples exercise. Seldom do legacy applications, both COTS and in-house, port on a one-for-one basis and with comparable acquisition and maintenance costs. Certainly starting from the bottom of the stack and moving upwards, it is easy to show improved TCO for comparable "abstract" loads. Linux on Intel, AMD and power hardware will cost less than per-system licensing and the short deployed lifetimes typical of Windows-based stacks. The LAMP stack is demonstrably more stable and more scalable than comparable proprietary Microsoft equivalents - even moving from WAMP variants will yield benefit in terms of reliability. SAMBA, NFS, OpenLDAP and other user-base technologies will scale more cheaply and reliably than Windows-based legacy.

Cost and ease of migration, however, will always vary based on the depth and breadth of specific dependencies within legacy loads and availability of COTS components (or work-alike replacements) on the target Linux system.

(5) If OSDL believes that Linux has a superior TCO ...
by hweimer

... why don't they use it?

Almost every PDF document on the OSDL website has been created on a Windows PC or on a Mac. Even the Desktop Linux Survey Report - http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005.pdf - shows:

$ pdfinfo DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005.pdf
Title: Microsoft Word DTL_Survey_Report_v4.doc
Creator: Word
Producer: Mac OS X 10.4.3 Quartz PDFContext


Stuart:

OSDL runs on Linux. Many of the reports we publish, however, are formatted by outside vendors or members of OSDL. We don't dictate to others what format they send to us.

But fair enough, we could do better.

I must also say that, while the Linux Desktop is getting better and better with laptops integrated with PDAs and cell phones, it still lacks some features that are standard on other platforms. Take for example the "Linux Desktop Survey" you reference. OSDL's principal analyst Dave Rosenberg wrote the study with Open Office on Linux. Because he had to combine his file with an existing PDF (not available with Open Office today), he found it faster and easier to complete this task on the Mac using Acrobat.

(6) Why Should We Care?
by illuminatedwax

It's a Serious Question. Don't TCO costs end up coming down to how much you will pay employees, how many employees you need, and the price of software? Shouldn't any capable manager be able to estimate the costs themselves? After all, I'm certain TCO varies wildly from workplace to workplace, considering what kind of system is already in place, what software is readily available for an OS, and what skills your current employees have.

My question is: is there really a use for these reports other than for 'defense': positive propaganda versus negative propaganda?

As an aside, do these studies take into account the availability and flexibility of currently extant software? Is there even a way to turn that information into TCO?

Stuart:

Despite the "T" in TCO, meaningful studies must limit the parameters under consideration in order to observe scientific principles. In the recent EMA study, the scope was confined to an area that Microsoft traditionally cites as a strength - systems management. Assuming comparable applications loads, the study showed that IT staffs could manage more Linux-based servers than Windows-based systems. Implicit in this metric is that managing the same number of servers would thereby require fewer or less costly IT resources, with immediate impact on TCO.

Any capable manager should in theory be able to perform such a calculation, but organizations often undercount or ignore real costs of maintaining legacy software, actual headcount needs, and deployment of different types of equipment.

(7) Is it about Linux or better operating systems
by selil

What I would really like to know is why Linux or Windows? Why hasn't there been a really good study that included BSD, Solaris, OSX, or even licensed variants of Unix? Is it all about Linux or is it about better operating systems?

Stuart:

You're right, it should be about the best operating system for you, for your specific needs. Linux keeps winning in the market because it's stable and secure with the ability to handle mission critical workloads. Because our mission at OSDL is to accelerate the adoption of Linux, that's where we focus our resources.

(8) One of the main problems
by petrus4

In looking at Microsoft's TCO claims in particular, I've been unable to avoid noticing that a lot of the company's material on this subject consists of, to put it simply, straight lies. Aside from anything else, nothing is mentioned by them about their licensing fees. How they can state with a straight face that after their licensing fees, Windows can still be cheaper than Linux is beyond me.

Legitimate performance competition is one thing, but I'm curious to know how the ODSL is able to deal with Microsoft's lack of ethics in this regard? Given Microsoft's marketing power, how are Linux advocates able to communicate to people that many of Microsoft's claims in this area are deceptive?

Stuart:

Your comments are very familiar to me. These are the types of thing we kept hearing from our Linux User Advisory Councils - and why when we saw the EMA study, we decided to co-sponsor it. To more specifically answer your question, though - Linux advocates have a powerful weapon at their disposal: real users' experiences. These experiences are very positive and when shared with others, tell the real story. Again, that is why we chose to support this particular study - it's current, it clearly represents user experiences. It's consistent with fact. The other point that is important to make is that it's also supported by market facts -- and that's the growth rate of Linux adoption. It continues to grow twice as fast as Windows and 5x faster than the server market. That means more customers every day are making a business decision to move more of their work to Linux. If Linux has all these problems, then why do people keep making poor financial decisions in a market filled with choices? This logic is catching up to Microsoft. I think Microsoft is a well managed company and they listen closely to their customers. I expect you'll see them moving away from the comparisons they tried to promote in early 'studies' around TCO or security that had no affect on the growth of Linux.

(9) Are the OSS IP Indemnification offerings worthy?
by csoto

We recently had an issue in which Microsoft Office included unlicensed IP (according to a court settlement). Microsoft did not require us to patch existing installations, rather simply protecting our use via the settlement, agreeing to require future installations to include the patch. This seems like a case in which indemnifications worked (although they could have offered some compensation for the extra work - it's cheaper than litigation). For background, see http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts /topics/ipi.mspx.

How do the OSS indemnification plans stack up? Have there been any significant cases involving IP indemnification?

Stuart:

In fact, there has been relatively little litigation around Linux and open source software in absolute terms (a handful of cases) and when compared to the thousands of suits filed every year around proprietary software, practically none. While companies like HP, Novell, and several embedded players offer a range of IP indemnification, uptake and actual use of the policies have not been that significant. Also, while customers look closely at IP issues, it has not been key decision criteria for customers of any size or located in any particular country.

(10) What difference can OSDL make?
by Goeland86

There's certainly been a good few questions asked already, but the one I'd like to get an answer to is, how do companies see OSDL? Do they believe it's a trustworthy group that knows what they're talking about, or does it look like another one of those 'fad-like' groups that's going to fade away? I don't mean to say OSDL is fading out, I'm curious to know what the real-world perception of it is. I've noticed that while many of my friends use linux and are generally well-versed in what's going on, they're usually totally unaware of the existence of OSDL, or its purpose.

How will this change? How will OSDL become a trusted group for IT managers, especially in a world where most of them have only heard of Microsoft's "Get the facts", or have some shares in MS stocks?

I feel that part of the reason that one of the above posters was asking why isn't linux penetrating the educational market is because the trustees funding the schools have a say in what to use, because they're paying for it, and the trustees will usually have a significant amount of MS stocks.

What's the chance of all of this changing? Or rather, what are the means in place for all that to change?

Stuart:

There are a lot of questions in your question, and I can't speak for how other organizations or companies perceive OSDL since I represent OSDL. But, with more than 70 members, I can tell you that one of OSDL's key attributes is vendor neutrality. OSDL is in a unique position to bring vendors, users and developers together. In doing this, OSDL bridges gaps among companies that alone struggle to move technology forward but when combined can quickly accelerate technologies via common platforms or testing scenarios. As Linux and open source software move into the mainstream of IT environments, the voice of the user, as well as the vendors, will be more and more important. I think the programs we have today and the ones we will announce shortly will help to bridge the gaps with developers, vendors and users. And remember that our mission is advancing the use of Linux and open source software, and not building awareness of OSDL.

---

amartel asks: "Four years ago, Ask Slashdot asked if anyone was using a Model-Driven Architecture. The number of MDA tools are now almost overwhelming, and I strongly believe that comments to the same questions would be rather different nowadays. What are the drawbacks, difficulties and limitations of MDA? What percentage of code can actually be generated? I would like to add a few more: is it realistic to create a custom GUI rather than CRUD operations with these tools? Finally, what about Microsoft, the new competitor on the scene, and their DSL Tools?"

This morning OSDL and OSDL member Levanta jointly released a study done by Enterprise Management Associates called Get the Truth on Linux Management. For years, a proprietary software company in Washington State has run what they call a Get the Facts campaign about Linux, full of studies that invariably show Linux to be expensive, hard to maintain, and less than totally secure. Stu Cohen, as CEO of OSDL, a group "dedicated to accelerating the growth and adoption of Linux in the enterprise," will happily answer your questions about Linux vs. Windows studies and the myths and FUD that seem to hover over them. Expect Stu's answers to the 10 - 12 highest-moderated questions later this week.