Slashdot Mirror

nanodude writes "According to DimensionXC, Microsoft is offering a free beta version of Visual C++ Express 2005 among other programs in the Visual Studio 2005 Express Suite. Seems like a good deal to me!"

nanodude writes "According to DimensionXC, Microsoft is offering a free beta version of Visual C++ Express 2005 among other programs in the Visual Studio 2005 Express Suite. Seems like a good deal to me!"

underpar writes "This Techworld.com article reports that a UK group called the Open Source Consortium is being officially launched today. The article further states that the goal of the group is to respond to claims that switching to open source is more expensive than using Microsoft products and to help smaller companies compete with Sun and IBM for open source contracts. They say they will not compete with other open source groups and they intend to eventually come to the US. The hype-filled about us section of their site says their Quality Standard Certification provides a "simple framework for self-assessment and performance improvement." The question of whether this is useful or even wanted in the US still remains to be answered."

bongo69 writes "The TIOBE Programming Community Index is reporting that Delphi is experiencing a revival, this coincides with Borland recently releasing Delphi 2005 allowing users to target both win32 and .net platforms, which to some, is a welcome alternative for .net developers reluctant to use Microsoft Visual Studio or the opensource alternative SharpDevelop."

Ant writes "According to Broadband Reports' news post, both eWeek and TechSpot report Microsoft is scrapping Windows 2000 Service Pack (SP) 5. It will be replaced with an Update Rollup in mid-2005. 'The Update Rollup will contain all security-related updates produced for Windows 2000 between SP4 and the time when Microsoft finalizes the contents of the Update Rollup, and a small number of important non-security updates. Because Microsoft believes the Update Rollup will better meet the needs of customers than a new service pack, there will not be a Service Pack 5 (SP5) for Windows 2000.'"

Soulfader writes "It seems that the Air Force has not learned from the Navy's folly in single-source mammoth contracts and their attendant problems, and is now working on something similar with Dell and Microsoft. Particularly interesting is the article's assertion that the Air Force is 'fed up' with Microsoft OS problems--but not enough to switch to something else. Instead, they're going to be getting a custom 'solution' of Windows products specially configured for their use. Is this the ever-hoped-for 'good' version of Windows, or more along the line of the sucks-in-new-and-interesting-ways version of Highlander II?"

sp3298622 writes "The CertMag Salary Survey is now available, seems like the Cisco CCIE's get the top salaries and the Apple Helpdesk portable technicians are left with peanuts. According to the survey, it's financially more lucrative to study Linux fundamentals and be LPIC Certified rather than MCSE."

r3lody (Raymond Lodato) writes "Like most people, I've only scratched the surface (well, maybe I gouged it a bit) of the capabilities of the Microsoft Office products. There are more features buried in them than most users ever discover. I use Microsoft Excel frequently in my job to analyze all sorts of data. When they came out with Pivot Tables, I dabbled in them and found several uses for them. However, documentation being what it is, I never really got to understand and utilize Pivot Tables' full capabilities. Now, Apress has published A Complete Guide to Pivot Tables: A Visual Approach, by Paul Cornell." Read on for the rest of Lodato's review. A Complete Guide to Pivot Tables: A Visual Approach author Paul Cornell pages 368 publisher Apress rating 10/10 reviewer Raymond Lodato (rlodato AT yahoo DOT com) ISBN 1590594320 summary A well-researched step-by-step tutorial on the use and programming of Microsoft Excel PivotTables for data analysis.

If you have any need to analyze data in Excel, you must read this book. I learned so much more about PivotTables after I read it that they are now actually useful, rather than just being something I would occasionally try out. Every chapter is packed with excellent information in an easy-to-follow format. A beginning to intermediate user can understand most of the book; only the chapter on programming PivotTables requires intermediate to advanced knowledge to fully comprehend.

Cornell takes a tutorial approach to explaining what PivotTables are, what they are capable of doing, and how you can apply them to your needs. Each chapter in the Complete Guide gives you an overview of a single topic, a series of step-by-step examples, a Try-It section for more practice, and a summary of next steps. The book was written for Excel 2003, but most of the techniques can be applied to Excel 2002 and even Excel 2000.

When you read this book, I would recommend that you sit at your computer to try these techniques as you read them. I tried to just read the book at first, but you really get itchy to try each feature out. Take it in sequence, as there is a definite building from one chapter to the next.

Chapter 1 gives you an overview of the PivotTable feature, what it's meant to do, and why you would use it. Chapter 2 starts the in-depth training of building basic PivotTables from Excel Lists, external data sources, other PivotTables, etc. It also includes tips on formatting the information and tweaking the fields and table to your liking. Chapter 3 goes even deeper, with information on advanced settings, filters, calculated fields, and other little gems that make analysis easier. These three chapters complete your basic training and lead to chapter 4, "Using PivotTables in the Real World." Paul proceeds to give not just one, but three examples of how PivotTables could be used to provide insight into company operations.

While everything I'd known about PivotTables before picking up this book was covered in the first three chapters, the last three chapters explain additional capabilities that really make Excel valuable for data analysis. Chapter 5 explains PivotCharts, which are simply a graphical representation of the information shown in a PivotTable. Paul goes into detail on the different chart types and how they interact with the underlying PivotTable.

If you need to distill and analyze multidimensional, relational data, PivotTables are up to the task, as chapter 6 will demonstrate. The book describes how you use cube files, OLAP databases, and Microsoft Query to get the data and manipulate it. If you're a really capable programmer, comfortable with VBA, chapter 7 shows you how to work with PivotTable programmatically. There is program after program showing you exactly how to get at the data, massage it, and create the resulting PivotTable.

Finally, there is one appendix that describes the differences between Excel 2000, Excel 2002, and Excel 2003. I was originally reviewing this book while using a computer with Excel 2000. I was delighted to find out that most of the information in the book works exactly as Paul described (although the screen shots didn't match). I did recheck some of the examples on my other machine running Excel 2002, and had no problems at all.

Granted, this book is specifically written for Microsoft Excel. However, OpenOffice, the free competitor from Sun MicroSystems, mimics most of the Microsoft Office suite. How does it compare, you ask? Well, OpenOffice has a similar facility to PivotTables, called DataPilot; however, DataPilot is primitive in comparison. For example, you must select the data to summarize, choose (from the menu bar) Data --> DataPilot --> Start, then drag the fields to the appropriate place in the diagram and click OK. Like Excel, you can freely move the fields between row, column, and data areas, and change the data operation from Sum to Min, Max, or a number of others. Unlike Excel, there isn't much more you can do. You don't have Page fields; you can't sort fields on their data; PivotCharts aren't represented; and there's no programming. If you only want to do simple data analysis in OpenOffice, you can get the basics from chapters 1 and 2 of this book.

You can purchase A Complete Guide to PivotTables: A Visual Approach from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

rdurell writes "Microsoft is once again trying to get into the television market. This time they are teaming up with SBC Communications in a $400M deal to deliver television via IPTV through SBC's network. According to the article, Microsoft has spent $20B in its attempts to break into the market."

belmolis writes "As they promised, Novell has filed suit against Microsoft over WordPerfect. Here's the complaint, and here is Microsoft's press release in response. From what I know of the history, it seems very likely that Novell will be able to prove that Microsoft engaged in illegal anticompetitive behavior. Indeed, the complaint cites some of the same acts that figured in the US government case against MS. What isn't so clear to me is how much of the loss of market share they will be able to show was Microsoft's fault, since there seems to be a diversity of opinion regarding the relative quality of WordPerfect and MS Word." Reader tekiegreg points out Reuters' story on the new suit, as carried by Yahoo!.

bigtallmofo writes "Microsoft announced today that it will indemnify nearly all its customers against claims that their use of Microsoft software infringed on any intellectual property rights. The only exception will be for embedded versions of Windows, since vendors are able to modify the source code. Is Microsoft opening itself to defending thousands of lawsuits against their customers?"

CatsCradle writes "The Seattle Times has an article about Microsoft's Foundation and their new partnership with Comcast to provide a TiVo-like service."

CatsCradle writes "The Seattle Times has an article about Microsoft's Foundation and their new partnership with Comcast to provide a TiVo-like service."

NW writes "According to an eWeek story Microsoft is beginning to assert IP rights over 130 protocols including many basic Internet protocols including TCP/IP, DNS, etc. The story originates with a mailing list post to the IETF's IPR list."

SafeTinspector writes "ComputerWorld has a story regarding the sudden departure of Chris Stone, a respected open source advocate and the man often sited as the architect behind Novell's acquisistion of Ximian and SUSE as well as the recent open source orientation of Novell.
At the same time, Novell has a web site dedicated to dispelling the mistruths propogated in Microsoft's 'Get the Facts' campaign. What does all this mean to the future of Novell's Linux and Open Source strategy? Does any of this relate to the imminent release of Open Enterprise Server? Anybody?"

SafeTinspector writes "ComputerWorld has a story regarding the sudden departure of Chris Stone, a respected open source advocate and the man often sited as the architect behind Novell's acquisistion of Ximian and SUSE as well as the recent open source orientation of Novell.
At the same time, Novell has a web site dedicated to dispelling the mistruths propogated in Microsoft's 'Get the Facts' campaign. What does all this mean to the future of Novell's Linux and Open Source strategy? Does any of this relate to the imminent release of Open Enterprise Server? Anybody?"

base_chakra writes "In response to Steve Ballmer's recent, vague criticisms of Linux and UNIX vendors' product support structures and pricing schemes, I've compiled a reference chart which might help others to compare licensing and support options available from several big-name vendors. Kudos to Red Hat for having the simplest, most accessible licensing and service plan of the pack--as well as one of the most affordable!"

waynegoode writes "Do you want to let Microsoft check if your copy of Windows is legit? How about if they promise it's anonymous? How about if they give you some free stuff? Recently Microsoft launched their Genuine Advantage Program to let you (and Microsoft) check if your OS is legal. They hoped for 20,000 responses but received 800,000 without offering anything but piece of mind. Now they are throwing in a bunch of free and discounted stuff including Photo Story 3 and the Holiday Fun Pack to try to get more volunteers. Read more at news.com and Microsoft Watch."

waynegoode writes "Do you want to let Microsoft check if your copy of Windows is legit? How about if they promise it's anonymous? How about if they give you some free stuff? Recently Microsoft launched their Genuine Advantage Program to let you (and Microsoft) check if your OS is legal. They hoped for 20,000 responses but received 800,000 without offering anything but piece of mind. Now they are throwing in a bunch of free and discounted stuff including Photo Story 3 and the Holiday Fun Pack to try to get more volunteers. Read more at news.com and Microsoft Watch."

Phoe6 writes "Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has used the software giant's latest executive email to stoke up Microsoft's fight against the rise of Linux. The 2,600 word missive was titled 'Customer focus: comparing Windows with Linux and UNIX'. In it, Ballmer repeated the key themes of Microsoft's controversial Get The Facts campaign. Zdnet has its report here." Linuxworld also has a story.

grazzy writes "Microsoft is set to release its Windows Media Center Extender for Xbox mid-November. The device will allow you to view recorded and downloaded media content stored on your PC via your Xbox.""

CowboyRobot writes "The inimitable Gordon Bell has a 5-page article at ACM Queue on the difficulties and necessities of standards adoption, in which he lays out 11 axioms on how to best establish and adopt standards. He quotes MIT's Dave Clark, 'Standards setting sits in a boring trough between two exciting peaks. The first is the peak of technical innovation, and the second is the billion-dollar investment or market.' It's often the rush for money that makes us move to fast to do the job right."

Slashback with updates and clarifications from several previous stories -- read on below for updates on connecting continents, mechanical pong, Microsoft's ASP fix, and more.

That was fast. jsin writes "Microsoft has provided a patch for the ASP.NET exploit mentioned [on October 7th] on Slashdot, among other outlets. From the article: "To aid customers in protecting their ASP.NET applications, an HTTP module has been developed that implements canonicalization best practices. By applying this module to your web server, all ASP.NET applications on the server are protected against canoncalization problems known to Microsoft as of the publication date.""

Warring academics , never pretty. DAldredge writes with news of another side to the economic debate in academia over the plans of this year's two leading presidential candidates, pointing to this "statement Wednesday by 368 economists, including six Nobel laureates: Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Milton Friedman, Robert Lucas, Robert Mundell, and -- the winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Economics -- Edward C. Prescott. The economists warned that Sen. Kerry's policies 'would, over time, inhibit capital formation, depress productivity growth, and make the United States less competitive internationally. The end result would be lower U.S. employment and real wage growth.'"

The steel cage match with the members of the Harvard Business School opposed to Bush's economic policies has yet to be announced.

Hey Pal, would you please Pay? Daemon writes "eBay made an official announcement stating that they are stabilizing their Paypal services after a few days of problems: 'Most members are now able to log in to the PayPal site to access account information, use shipping functions, use PayPal debit cards, and pay for items online with no difficulty.'

Again, it seems there are still problems on the horizon (or hidden under?) since they say: 'Should you encounter any errors when attempting to log in or use different PayPal functions, please try again.' The full announcement can be viewed on their System Status Announcement Board."

Do please try this at home. adelayde writes "Here we have an article on a wireless IP link between Europe and Africa. It documents the full details about the 802.11b link between the two continents, traversing the Gibraltar Strait, as part of the Transacciones / Fadaiat project and with it placed within the geo-political context of immigration and freedom of movement. The announcement was originally posted to Slashdot in June 2004."

What I want to see is a mechanical Ping-Pong! yathosho writes "German magazine Spiegel Online has posted an interview with art-student Niklas Roy, creator of Pongmechanik, an electromechanical conversion of the classical game Pong."

(We mentioned this amazing looking device last month.)

edwilli writes "There is an interesting piece on the Windows XP site entitled The Seven Games of Highly Effective People. It's a look at how games can improve your living and social skills, while still not allowing you to have a life. " While the piece itself is pretty fluffy, he links to Got Game?, a book about how gamers are shaping business. For more on this, check out Social Effects of Electronic Interactive Games, and this page of research papers compiled by The ESA.

captainJam writes "After many delays, the OQO is available for sale, or pre-order actually. However, they will begin shipping in the middle of next month. Read the scoop for how much it'll set you back. Check this link if you're still not sure what the OQO is." Update: 10/13 13:49 GMT by H : I've got a Model 01 that was sent over for review; I'll be checking it out with both XP & Linux; it's definitely one of the cooler handhelds out there.

wschalle writes "Microsoft has released 10 "new" security bulletins, including one pertaining to a vulnerability in the Windows Shell, apparently exploitable via the web. The shell vulnerability only allows code execution as the user viewing the malicious web site. Aren't you glad your shell is web-enabled? The recent GDI+ vulnerability is re-released here as well as a vulnerability in zip compression handling."

wschalle writes "Microsoft has released 10 "new" security bulletins, including one pertaining to a vulnerability in the Windows Shell, apparently exploitable via the web. The shell vulnerability only allows code execution as the user viewing the malicious web site. Aren't you glad your shell is web-enabled? The recent GDI+ vulnerability is re-released here as well as a vulnerability in zip compression handling."

wschalle writes "Microsoft has released 10 "new" security bulletins, including one pertaining to a vulnerability in the Windows Shell, apparently exploitable via the web. The shell vulnerability only allows code execution as the user viewing the malicious web site. Aren't you glad your shell is web-enabled? The recent GDI+ vulnerability is re-released here as well as a vulnerability in zip compression handling."

wschalle writes "Microsoft has released 10 "new" security bulletins, including one pertaining to a vulnerability in the Windows Shell, apparently exploitable via the web. The shell vulnerability only allows code execution as the user viewing the malicious web site. Aren't you glad your shell is web-enabled? The recent GDI+ vulnerability is re-released here as well as a vulnerability in zip compression handling."

grcumb writes "As part of the DoJ Anti-trust settlement, Microsoft was ordered to provide freely available documentation for its communications protocols. InfoWorld is reporting that not only are they late in delivering the required APIs, but it's because they want to convert everything to the read-only Web Archive (MHT) format, which can only be viewed in MSIE. InfoWorld reports that, "In July, Microsoft said it would complete revisions of the documentation required by the court in the autumn, a season generally reckoned to include the months of September, October and November in North America, but may now have to extend work on a beta or test version of the new documentation into December...." So we have to wait longer for a format that makes the content harder for developers (developers! developers!) to use. Maybe they didn't read the documentation ..."

grcumb writes "As part of the DoJ Anti-trust settlement, Microsoft was ordered to provide freely available documentation for its communications protocols. InfoWorld is reporting that not only are they late in delivering the required APIs, but it's because they want to convert everything to the read-only Web Archive (MHT) format, which can only be viewed in MSIE. InfoWorld reports that, "In July, Microsoft said it would complete revisions of the documentation required by the court in the autumn, a season generally reckoned to include the months of September, October and November in North America, but may now have to extend work on a beta or test version of the new documentation into December...." So we have to wait longer for a format that makes the content harder for developers (developers! developers!) to use. Maybe they didn't read the documentation ..."

Lumpish Scholar asks: "Backups are important, so we should tell our friends and family to buy a bunch of CD-Rs and...what? The operating system most of them are stuck with comes with backup software, but 'Windows Backup Does Not Back Up to CD-R, CD-RW, or DVD-R Devices (this behavior is by design). I've looked in the obvious places, but nothing comes across as better than adequate. There's got to be something that can do full or incremental backups (which in part means keeping track of what's already been backed up), that can back up files bigger than a single CD-R, and that's relatively fast and easy. What have you used to solve this problem, for yourself or others, for Windows or for better operating systems?"

Lumpish Scholar asks: "Backups are important, so we should tell our friends and family to buy a bunch of CD-Rs and...what? The operating system most of them are stuck with comes with backup software, but 'Windows Backup Does Not Back Up to CD-R, CD-RW, or DVD-R Devices (this behavior is by design). I've looked in the obvious places, but nothing comes across as better than adequate. There's got to be something that can do full or incremental backups (which in part means keeping track of what's already been backed up), that can back up files bigger than a single CD-R, and that's relatively fast and easy. What have you used to solve this problem, for yourself or others, for Windows or for better operating systems?"

henrysunset writes "...Extend your stay in the bathroom with this inexpensive Media Center Bathroom Extender for Windows Media Center Edition PC's. The guide shows you how to control a Media Center PC from another room with a cheap XBox controller w/ built in LCD and a little soldering."

Laoping writes "News.com has a story about a new Web services management specification designed to simplify network administration across a wide range of devices. A bunch of a big tech companies developed it together (Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Dell and Sun). Microsoft will build support for WS-Management into an update to Windows Server, which is due late next year, and in the version of its Microsoft Operations Manager management software due in 2006. The .PDF release, that makes it clear that it is meant to be a Simple Network Management Protocol killer. Now I am all for a replacement for SNMP, but is this the way go?"

An anonymous reader writes "A security flaw in Microsoft's ASP.NET apparently allows access to password-protected areas just by altering a URL. There's no patch yet, but in the meantime Microsoft is telling ASP.NET developers they can rewrite their applications to prevent exploits. About 2.9 million web sites run on ASP.NET according to Netcraft." Some more links: another Microsoft article, NTBugtraq, K-Otik and Heise.

An anonymous reader writes "A security flaw in Microsoft's ASP.NET apparently allows access to password-protected areas just by altering a URL. There's no patch yet, but in the meantime Microsoft is telling ASP.NET developers they can rewrite their applications to prevent exploits. About 2.9 million web sites run on ASP.NET according to Netcraft." Some more links: another Microsoft article, NTBugtraq, K-Otik and Heise.

Ant writes "CNET's News.com has an article that says Microsoft plans to offer its own anti-spyware software." prostoalex writes "Both OsNews and InfoWorld talk about Bill Gates' speech at the Computer History Museum in California. Gates is noting that Linux is taking over, and claims that 10 years forward Linux and Windows will be the only OSs left in the market."

vertigo writes "I am reasonably proficient in C and C++ as well as the more common scripting languages, but i always felt the lack of a sweet spot between the hard and fast low-level programming languages and the loosely typed scripting languages. Lately, my interest in the Mono project has been growing. The C# language appears to offer just that sweet spot between power and productivity I've been looking for, and its class libraries like Gtk# seem to provide the programmer with a very clean and intuitive API." Read on for vertigo's review of Mono: A Developer's Handbook from O'Reilly. Mono: A Developer's Handbook author Edd Dumbill and Niel M. Bornstein pages 278 publisher O'Reilly Media, Inc. rating 8 reviewer vertigo ISBN 0596007922 summary An introduction to programming with Mono

When learning a new language such as C#, or working with a new development environment such as Mono, it usually takes some time before you get up to speed in developing programs. Wading through the reference documentation and reading other people's source code often provides much-needed information on how to do certain things. Both, however, are very time consuming and tedious.

Enter Mono: A Developer's Notebook. This book provides a series of task-driven chapters which are thin on theory, but rich on practical content and example code. The featured code snippets are, in contrast to ones in books that teach theory and concepts, not solely designed to illustrate a specific theoretical aspect of programming. Each one is designed to perform a useful task that is essential in day-to-day application programming. What sets this book apart from the multitude of .NET books already available on the market? In order to answer this question it is neccesary to provide a short introduction on Mono.

Mono is essentially an open source cross-platform implementation of Microsoft's .NET development framework and implements the API's which are standardized by ECMA. It is, however, not an exact clone. Besides providing a (partially implemented) stack that provides compatibility with Microsoft's .NET API's, Mono adds a whole new API-stack of its own, consisting of open source technologies such as the Gtk+ toolkit and the Gecko HTML rendering engine. This makes it possible to develop cross-platform applications based on open source technology while (mostly) compiling from a single code-base. In contrast to most .NET books available on the market, which focus primarily on Microsoft's API's in the context of Visual Studio.NET, this book concentrates on the basic ECMA API's and Mono's own open source stack. A complete coverage of .NET and the Mono architecture is outside of this review's scope, so for more information you are advised to check the Mono Project's website.

Before we dive deeper into the content of the book, a short introduction on the Developer's Notebook series by O'Reilly may be useful. The books in this series are styled to resemble the kind of notebooks college students carry around during their classes in which to take notes or, more commonly, draw caricatures of their teachers. The 'notebook' theme persists throughout the look-and-feel of the book. The 278-page thick paperback has a glossy blue cover, complete with faux post-it note and coffee-stains. Inside, the pages are not clean white but lined like the pages found in math notebooks. In the margin, useful comments are scribbled in a font that resembles handwriting. At first I suspected that the 'busy' look would distract from the content, but in practice this was no problem, thanks to the thick black typewriter font in which the bulk of the text is printed.

The chapters in this book are referred to as labs. Each of them focuses on a specific set of tasks and/or features and is divided into several paragraphs. Most paragraphs consist of a number of standard sections following a rigid formula that help you understand a certain aspect of working with Mono. The most common sections are:

• How do I do that?: Often using a liberal amount of practical code, this section shows how to accomplish the task at hand, for example working with files.
• How it works: In this section, the code and concepts involved in the previous section are explained more in depth, step by step.
• What about...: Offers a short focus on more advanced topics or pitfalls.
• Where to learn more: If you are craving more information after reading the previous sections, you are often offered a helping hand on where to find more information, providing url's to relevant documentation such as MSDN and other websites.

The first chapter, Getting Mono Running, describes how to get Mono up and running on Linux, Windows or Mac OS X, and how to compile from source on other platforms. The installation instructions for Windows only describe how to install Mono and Gtk#. Integration of Gtk# only in an existing Visual Studio.Net installation falls outside of the scope of the book, but a recent blog entry offers some hints on how to accomplish this. Besides installation, the first chapter offers a short description of the individual tools that make up the mono development. After installation, you will want some kind of editor or IDE to work with. Both the MonoDevelop IDE and several other ways of integrating Mono into your existing environment as a Java or Windows developer are covered. Finally, the community is an important aspect of every open source project. Ways of interacting with the community as well as a guide on how to submit bugs and links to some working Mono/C# applications are part of this chapter.

The C# introduction in the second chapter, Getting Started with C#, is tailored towards people who have at least some proficiency in using an object-oriented language such as C++ or Java. Some differences between C#, Java and C++ are discussed, as well as the differences between value- and reference types, the basics of error handling, working with assemblies and more. Concepts such as classes, methods, inheritance and namespaces are assumed to be known territory. If you have no previous programming experience, Mono: A Developer's Notebook is only useful in combination with a book that teaches programming with C# such as The C# Programming Language by Anders Hejlsberg.

An important part of any modern language is its class libraries. The third chapter, Core .NET, provides an introduction to the standard Framework Library Classes, which describes essential everyday tasks that are part of every program, such as working with files, strings, searching for text patterns and handling collections of data. Besides those basic functions, the chapter also dives deeper into the internals of a compiled assembly, the handling of processes and easy multitasking using threads. Finally, the last paragraph explains how to use a .NET version of the JUnit Java Unit testing framework, Nunit, to test your code.

Developing Gtk-applications with Mono and C# is remarkably easy. Chapter 4, Gtk#, describes the basics of writing Gtk# applications. First, it's neccesary to remark that Gtk# might be a bit of a misnomer. Besides the raw Gtk+ toolkit functionality, Gtk# also includes most of the Gnome libraries like gconf, the gnome canvas, libglade and more. Chapter 4 describes functionality available in the Gtk namespace, the basic Gtk+ toolkit. Gtk+ is a constraints-based toolkit, which means that widgets are not positioned using absolute pixel coordinates but rather on basis of their logical relation to each other. This can be a bit confusing for novices, but this chapter provides a good introduction to the basic principles of writing layouts using Gtk#. The authors provide descriptions of essential operations that almost every application needs, such as creating menus and drawing pixmaps (or more advanced things like using the treeview widget and drag-and-drop), assisted by easy-to-read code snippets.

While chapter 4 introduces basic Gtk# functionality, chapter 5, Advanced Gtk#, delves deeper into more advanced features of the Gtk# library which also include functionality outside of the basic Gtk-namespace, such as the Gnome libraries. Working with Gnome button toolbars, the Glade user interface designer, storing your application settings in Gconf, setting up some preferences through the use of a wizard/druid, asynchronous operations and threading to increase responsiveness of your application while performing background tasks, rendering HTML in your application using the Gecko rendering engine and internationalisation and translation of applications are all described in this chapter.

The use of XML is tightly integrated throughout the Mono framework. It is, for example, the underlying format of the messages that web services use to communicate using the SOAP and XML-RPC protocols. The 6th chapter, Processing XML, describes the XML functionality available in Mono. It starts off by simple operations, reading and writing to an XML-file using relevant examples such as RSS and Dashboard clue-packets. It then proceeds to describe how to modify XML in memory, how to navigate and transform XML using Xpath and XSLT, how to constrain XML in several ways and how to serialize and deserialize objects into and from their XML representation. As in previous chapters, the information density is very high so it might take several reads to grok everything explained. The code examples and accompanying text however are very clear and concise.

The 7th chapter called Networking, Remoting, and Web Services describes the networking functionality available in Mono. The chapter starts off with ASP.NET. Mono's stand-alone XSP webserver and Apache integration with mod_mono are discussed, as well as the basics of writing a web application using ASP.NET's code-behind functionality which enables web applications to completely seperate presentation from the underlying code. Communication using plain tcp/ip, remoting using binary serialized objects and invoking remote procedures using XML-RPC as an alternative to SOAP are also described in this chapter. You might want to encrypt the data you send over the network, so a basic description of the Mono cryptographic API is provided. Finally, a short introduction to database handling using ADO.NET concludes chapter 7.

The 8th and last chapter titled Cutting Edge Mono starts off with an introduction on how to use the GNU Automake, Autoconf and the pkg-config tools to create an easy to build source package of your project. It then proceeds to describe various pitfalls and considerations in case you want to write cross-platform applications using Mono, such as filesystem layout, configuration storage and the calling of native code using p/invoke. A particularly cool project is IKVM, which translates Java bytecode into the Common Intermediate Language bytecode Mono uses. This enables Mono to run Java applications and allows Java and Mono code to inter-operate. A short introduction on the use of IKVM is provided, as well as some code examples on how to call Mono assemblies from Java and use the Java class libraries from within Mono applications. The chapter ends with some other cutting-edge functionality, like how to run a development version of Mono, a preview of the Generics (templates in c++) implementation available as featured in C# 2.0 and how to write Mono programs in Basic.

What is missing? The book doesn't contain a reference section on any of the described API's. If you need detailed information on the C# language specification or an API reference you will need to consult external resources such as the documentation provided with Mono, MSDN, or a separate book covering the topic to make optimal use of the information contained in this book. Fortunately, the book kindly provides pointers on where to find those. The information-density is much higher than you would expect from a book this size. This means the information contained in it is terse. Many topics are treated in a only a couple of pages and the book doesn't take time to explain a lot of programming concepts. The information gets you 'on the road' quickly however, which is exactly what this book is supposed to do.

The strength of this book is that it fills the gap between the earlier-mentioned reference documentation and the need to go out and try to read sourcecode to find out how a particular thing is done. The writing style is clear, concise and neutral. Some topics are clarified by the use of screenshots, which is especially useful in the chapters dealing with Gtk# widgets. All in all, if you are a developer with previous experience in object-oriented programming, Mono: A Developer's Notebook will provide you with an excellent introduction into many of the aspects of working with Mono, its associated libraries and programs.

More information and a sample chapter can be found at the book's homepage.

You can purchase Mono: A Developer's Handbook from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

vertigo writes "I am reasonably proficient in C and C++ as well as the more common scripting languages, but i always felt the lack of a sweet spot between the hard and fast low-level programming languages and the loosely typed scripting languages. Lately, my interest in the Mono project has been growing. The C# language appears to offer just that sweet spot between power and productivity I've been looking for, and its class libraries like Gtk# seem to provide the programmer with a very clean and intuitive API." Read on for vertigo's review of Mono: A Developer's Handbook from O'Reilly. Mono: A Developer's Handbook author Edd Dumbill and Niel M. Bornstein pages 278 publisher O'Reilly Media, Inc. rating 8 reviewer vertigo ISBN 0596007922 summary An introduction to programming with Mono

When learning a new language such as C#, or working with a new development environment such as Mono, it usually takes some time before you get up to speed in developing programs. Wading through the reference documentation and reading other people's source code often provides much-needed information on how to do certain things. Both, however, are very time consuming and tedious.

Enter Mono: A Developer's Notebook. This book provides a series of task-driven chapters which are thin on theory, but rich on practical content and example code. The featured code snippets are, in contrast to ones in books that teach theory and concepts, not solely designed to illustrate a specific theoretical aspect of programming. Each one is designed to perform a useful task that is essential in day-to-day application programming. What sets this book apart from the multitude of .NET books already available on the market? In order to answer this question it is neccesary to provide a short introduction on Mono.

Mono is essentially an open source cross-platform implementation of Microsoft's .NET development framework and implements the API's which are standardized by ECMA. It is, however, not an exact clone. Besides providing a (partially implemented) stack that provides compatibility with Microsoft's .NET API's, Mono adds a whole new API-stack of its own, consisting of open source technologies such as the Gtk+ toolkit and the Gecko HTML rendering engine. This makes it possible to develop cross-platform applications based on open source technology while (mostly) compiling from a single code-base. In contrast to most .NET books available on the market, which focus primarily on Microsoft's API's in the context of Visual Studio.NET, this book concentrates on the basic ECMA API's and Mono's own open source stack. A complete coverage of .NET and the Mono architecture is outside of this review's scope, so for more information you are advised to check the Mono Project's website.

Before we dive deeper into the content of the book, a short introduction on the Developer's Notebook series by O'Reilly may be useful. The books in this series are styled to resemble the kind of notebooks college students carry around during their classes in which to take notes or, more commonly, draw caricatures of their teachers. The 'notebook' theme persists throughout the look-and-feel of the book. The 278-page thick paperback has a glossy blue cover, complete with faux post-it note and coffee-stains. Inside, the pages are not clean white but lined like the pages found in math notebooks. In the margin, useful comments are scribbled in a font that resembles handwriting. At first I suspected that the 'busy' look would distract from the content, but in practice this was no problem, thanks to the thick black typewriter font in which the bulk of the text is printed.

The chapters in this book are referred to as labs. Each of them focuses on a specific set of tasks and/or features and is divided into several paragraphs. Most paragraphs consist of a number of standard sections following a rigid formula that help you understand a certain aspect of working with Mono. The most common sections are:

• How do I do that?: Often using a liberal amount of practical code, this section shows how to accomplish the task at hand, for example working with files.
• How it works: In this section, the code and concepts involved in the previous section are explained more in depth, step by step.
• What about...: Offers a short focus on more advanced topics or pitfalls.
• Where to learn more: If you are craving more information after reading the previous sections, you are often offered a helping hand on where to find more information, providing url's to relevant documentation such as MSDN and other websites.

The first chapter, Getting Mono Running, describes how to get Mono up and running on Linux, Windows or Mac OS X, and how to compile from source on other platforms. The installation instructions for Windows only describe how to install Mono and Gtk#. Integration of Gtk# only in an existing Visual Studio.Net installation falls outside of the scope of the book, but a recent blog entry offers some hints on how to accomplish this. Besides installation, the first chapter offers a short description of the individual tools that make up the mono development. After installation, you will want some kind of editor or IDE to work with. Both the MonoDevelop IDE and several other ways of integrating Mono into your existing environment as a Java or Windows developer are covered. Finally, the community is an important aspect of every open source project. Ways of interacting with the community as well as a guide on how to submit bugs and links to some working Mono/C# applications are part of this chapter.

The C# introduction in the second chapter, Getting Started with C#, is tailored towards people who have at least some proficiency in using an object-oriented language such as C++ or Java. Some differences between C#, Java and C++ are discussed, as well as the differences between value- and reference types, the basics of error handling, working with assemblies and more. Concepts such as classes, methods, inheritance and namespaces are assumed to be known territory. If you have no previous programming experience, Mono: A Developer's Notebook is only useful in combination with a book that teaches programming with C# such as The C# Programming Language by Anders Hejlsberg.

An important part of any modern language is its class libraries. The third chapter, Core .NET, provides an introduction to the standard Framework Library Classes, which describes essential everyday tasks that are part of every program, such as working with files, strings, searching for text patterns and handling collections of data. Besides those basic functions, the chapter also dives deeper into the internals of a compiled assembly, the handling of processes and easy multitasking using threads. Finally, the last paragraph explains how to use a .NET version of the JUnit Java Unit testing framework, Nunit, to test your code.

Developing Gtk-applications with Mono and C# is remarkably easy. Chapter 4, Gtk#, describes the basics of writing Gtk# applications. First, it's neccesary to remark that Gtk# might be a bit of a misnomer. Besides the raw Gtk+ toolkit functionality, Gtk# also includes most of the Gnome libraries like gconf, the gnome canvas, libglade and more. Chapter 4 describes functionality available in the Gtk namespace, the basic Gtk+ toolkit. Gtk+ is a constraints-based toolkit, which means that widgets are not positioned using absolute pixel coordinates but rather on basis of their logical relation to each other. This can be a bit confusing for novices, but this chapter provides a good introduction to the basic principles of writing layouts using Gtk#. The authors provide descriptions of essential operations that almost every application needs, such as creating menus and drawing pixmaps (or more advanced things like using the treeview widget and drag-and-drop), assisted by easy-to-read code snippets.

While chapter 4 introduces basic Gtk# functionality, chapter 5, Advanced Gtk#, delves deeper into more advanced features of the Gtk# library which also include functionality outside of the basic Gtk-namespace, such as the Gnome libraries. Working with Gnome button toolbars, the Glade user interface designer, storing your application settings in Gconf, setting up some preferences through the use of a wizard/druid, asynchronous operations and threading to increase responsiveness of your application while performing background tasks, rendering HTML in your application using the Gecko rendering engine and internationalisation and translation of applications are all described in this chapter.

The use of XML is tightly integrated throughout the Mono framework. It is, for example, the underlying format of the messages that web services use to communicate using the SOAP and XML-RPC protocols. The 6th chapter, Processing XML, describes the XML functionality available in Mono. It starts off by simple operations, reading and writing to an XML-file using relevant examples such as RSS and Dashboard clue-packets. It then proceeds to describe how to modify XML in memory, how to navigate and transform XML using Xpath and XSLT, how to constrain XML in several ways and how to serialize and deserialize objects into and from their XML representation. As in previous chapters, the information density is very high so it might take several reads to grok everything explained. The code examples and accompanying text however are very clear and concise.

The 7th chapter called Networking, Remoting, and Web Services describes the networking functionality available in Mono. The chapter starts off with ASP.NET. Mono's stand-alone XSP webserver and Apache integration with mod_mono are discussed, as well as the basics of writing a web application using ASP.NET's code-behind functionality which enables web applications to completely seperate presentation from the underlying code. Communication using plain tcp/ip, remoting using binary serialized objects and invoking remote procedures using XML-RPC as an alternative to SOAP are also described in this chapter. You might want to encrypt the data you send over the network, so a basic description of the Mono cryptographic API is provided. Finally, a short introduction to database handling using ADO.NET concludes chapter 7.

The 8th and last chapter titled Cutting Edge Mono starts off with an introduction on how to use the GNU Automake, Autoconf and the pkg-config tools to create an easy to build source package of your project. It then proceeds to describe various pitfalls and considerations in case you want to write cross-platform applications using Mono, such as filesystem layout, configuration storage and the calling of native code using p/invoke. A particularly cool project is IKVM, which translates Java bytecode into the Common Intermediate Language bytecode Mono uses. This enables Mono to run Java applications and allows Java and Mono code to inter-operate. A short introduction on the use of IKVM is provided, as well as some code examples on how to call Mono assemblies from Java and use the Java class libraries from within Mono applications. The chapter ends with some other cutting-edge functionality, like how to run a development version of Mono, a preview of the Generics (templates in c++) implementation available as featured in C# 2.0 and how to write Mono programs in Basic.

What is missing? The book doesn't contain a reference section on any of the described API's. If you need detailed information on the C# language specification or an API reference you will need to consult external resources such as the documentation provided with Mono, MSDN, or a separate book covering the topic to make optimal use of the information contained in this book. Fortunately, the book kindly provides pointers on where to find those. The information-density is much higher than you would expect from a book this size. This means the information contained in it is terse. Many topics are treated in a only a couple of pages and the book doesn't take time to explain a lot of programming concepts. The information gets you 'on the road' quickly however, which is exactly what this book is supposed to do.

The strength of this book is that it fills the gap between the earlier-mentioned reference documentation and the need to go out and try to read sourcecode to find out how a particular thing is done. The writing style is clear, concise and neutral. Some topics are clarified by the use of screenshots, which is especially useful in the chapters dealing with Gtk# widgets. All in all, if you are a developer with previous experience in object-oriented programming, Mono: A Developer's Notebook will provide you with an excellent introduction into many of the aspects of working with Mono, its associated libraries and programs.

More information and a sample chapter can be found at the book's homepage.

You can purchase Mono: A Developer's Handbook from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

BlueMoon writes "Spong.com posted an article about a new Microsoft job offering. The job details not only confirm the internal codename of the next generation Xbox console is Xenon, but it also reveals more information about Live features. It looks like many games will have a 'Xbox TV' feature allowing some sort of spectator mode with tickers at the bottom of the screen featuring recent high scores and game highlights, a tournament system, and tradable trophies."

Shawn writes "This could possibly be the worst viruses yet! Earlier this month Microsoft announced a problem in their GDI driver that processes the way JPEG images are displayed. Someone has finally posted an exploit to Usenet. Easynews, a premium Usenet provider, found the virus Sunday afternoon. Up-to-date information about how we found it and what it does is located at www.easynews.com/virus.txt. When this picture is viewed it installs remote management software (winvnc and radmin) and will connect to irc."

fname writes "The recent shutdown of LAX due to an FAA radio outage was apparently caused by a Windows 2000 integration flaw, possibility related to an old Windows 95 bug. An article at the LA Times claims that the outage was caused by human error, as the system will automatically shut down after 49.7 days (related to this Windows 95 flaw?), and a technician didn't reboot the system monthly as he should have. This happened after an upgrade from Unix to Windows. I don't think blame should be assigned to the technician who missed the task; rather, it seems a gross oversight for the FAA to guarantee that such a critical system will crash after only one missed maintenance task. Who's really at fault?"

Watercooler Warrior writes "Slashdot originally broke the news that a new Microsoft command shell was in the works when a reader noticed a suspicious job posting by Microsoft India. Today Microsoft released the first really usable version of the shell (codenamed Monad) to beta testers - and anyone who carefully reads the WinHEC slides about Monad will find how to join the beta and get a peek at it. The shell looks like a bunch of old-school Unix and Perl hackers were given free rein to do what they wanted with the .NET framework, and from what is known about the backgrounds of the Monad developers this is probably pretty close to the truth."

Alex Moskalyuk writes "'Open source is great, but where do we start?' This is probably one of the most frequently asked questions in the corporate world when CIOs are faced with the need to choose between open and proprietary solutions. How do you figure out when it's feasible to implement an open source solution? Are there any support or training options if the solution does get approved, or if the project chosen was an alpha version developed by some student, who's away for the summer? Bernard Golden from NavicaSoft has probably heard the same questions too often, and then decided to write the book." Read on for prostoalex's review. Succeeding with open source author Bernard Golden pages 272 publisher Addison-Wesley Professional rating 7 reviewer Alex Moskalyuk ISBN 0321268539 summary IT manager's guide into implementing an open-source solution

Implementing an open source solution requires a different approach from the buyer's point of view: There is no salesperson you'll get a call from, there are no license agreements to sign and no serial numbers to enter. Access to the software is simplified, but sometimes there are few pointers about what to do next.

Golden takes the reader through different aspects of dealing with open source technologies. As one can see from the table of contents, the information is presented from the business professional's point of view. This title is for an IT manager, not developers or IT personnel who might be using open source products already and feel strongly about them. The basic question that the book explores is this: When does it make sense for an organization to implement an open source product? How do you evaluate the product's maturity, functionality, ease of use, support infrastructure and documentation quality so that running open source within the organization starts making sense?

Golden's answer is the Open Source Maturity Model (OSMM), which the author developed himself. The model asks the IT manager to evaluate the software, support, training options, documentation, integration and professional services on 10-point scale. If the technology ranking reaches a certain score (which highly depends on the userbase), then it will make sense to implement it.

For example, on page 144, when the author discusses software support options, he suggests assigning 6 points for excellent community support, 3 points for available paid support and 1 point for availability of self-support (i.e., an employee who understands the product). So on the next page JBoss gets 6 points for community support (very helpful and respectful forums), 2 points for commercial support (since it was e-mail and phone only, and no on-site support) and 0 points for self-support (since no one within the organization stepped up to claim herself as JBoss expert).

JBoss is the prime example used by the author throughout the chapters, and turns out to be quite a convenient choice -- the company offers commercial support, training and documentation for an open-source product. Golden's model is supposed to help IT managers distinguish high-quality open source projects from 0.0.1 version, so widely available on SourceForge.

The book's primary market is business professionals and IT managers who would probably benefit from having a formal evaluation model instead of relying on pure gut feeling. Despite the book's ambiguous title, it's not a manual on how to create your own business with open-source products. Some chapters will be helpful for figuring that out (Chapter 2 talks about business models in the open source world), but it's mostly for people who are implementing rather than developing open source products. The language is somewhat dry, but if your weekly reading requires CIO Magazine, you're probably used to that.

Something I think the author would have done well to include is a collection of in-depth case studies on open source implementations. There's some data on Sabre and Charles Schwab running successful businesses on open-source infrastructure, but the details are not there. While certain companies publish hundreds of case studies to prove that their products will either save money or allow the customer to make more, the success stories are not that frequently publicized in the open source world. Having such material in the book would provide a confidence booster for an IT manager, I think.

The last chapter or the first appendix is where I would expect to find information on solid open-source products suitable for corporate deployment. I mean, if the evaluation model is introduced, why not list the most prominent projects out there for quick reference? The highest-ranked open-source operating system, office suite, corporate messaging system, accounting and tax package, etc.?

Overall the book is pretty good for a manager who has heard of open source, but has not read too much into it. Chapter 1 in PDF format is available from Addison Wesley site. Golden also wrote an article for OreillyNet that deals with bringing open source into the organization. There's also an interview with the author on TechTarget.

You can purchase Succeeding With Open Source from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

asciimonster writes "AnandTech has completed its second review of set-top box Personal Video Recorders. After checking out the Linux-based MythTV, previously covered here on slashdot, they compared it to Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004. 'Our analysis has proved that though Media Center Edition 2004 is a boxed package that is easy to set up and configure, it looks amazingly beautiful, has great features such as On-Demand content, and is fully supported by Microsoft. However, for the enthusiast, MythTV takes the gold for its greater support for a variety of hardware and software codecs.'"

securitas writes "The New York Times' Chris Buckley reports that China is the new hotbed of advanced technology research and development for hundreds of global technology companies. The list includes household names like Oracle (which 'opened a lab in Beijing to tailor its Linux operating software to suit its Asian customers'), Motorola, Siemens, IBM, Intel, General Electric, Nokia and others. Microsoft Research Asia hopes Google-surpassing technology comes from a group of '10 researchers ... working on new ways to drill deep into the Internet and select and organize the information found there.' Growth of the R&D sector in China is so rapid that 'within five years China could overtake Britain, Germany and Japan as a base for corporate research, leaving it second only to the United States.'"

Zocalo writes "The MARID working group at the IETF responsible for deciding on which extensions to SMTP will be used to try and prevent spoofing of the sender has made their decision. At issue was whether Microsoft's patent encumbered Sender-ID would be eligable for inclusion in an Internet standard. An initial analysis of the text of their decision, available here with a brief analysis, would suggest not. Unless Microsoft is going to make any dramatic concessions out of desperation, that pretty much clears the way for Meng Wong's Classic SPF to become the standard and hopefully make Joe-Jobs at thing of the past."

Scooby Snacks writes "It looks like Microsoft and the United States Patent and Trademark Office have done it again. It would appear that Microsoft, in their extensive R&D labs, have developed a way to control a web browser through the use of a keyboard. What's next, a method for displaying a plurality of running programs, each in its own defined rectangular viewing area?"

Scooby Snacks writes "It looks like Microsoft and the United States Patent and Trademark Office have done it again. It would appear that Microsoft, in their extensive R&D labs, have developed a way to control a web browser through the use of a keyboard. What's next, a method for displaying a plurality of running programs, each in its own defined rectangular viewing area?"