Don Box is now a.NET evangelist, having left Developmentor to join Microsoft (Designing the web services architecture). In every conference he gives on.NET, he always begins by saying, "COM is dead."...
Idiot. Crypto isn't as difficult as you think, if you've taken courses in Number Theory and *understand* the material. Besides, there are a lot of other crypto choices out there than the Crypto API that MS provides. I'm saying, why rely on a closed source implementation for security? Who knows how many "security through obscurity" bugs are in the Crypto API?
Microsoft officials said it makes sense for the operating system to provide cryptographic services to any application that needs it, instead of each application having to include its own cryptographic technology.
This problem clearly illustrates *why* someone would implement it themselves, so problems can be fixed in 90 minutes, and not weeks...
Fortran is easy to learn if you already know how to program, and coming out of college it pays to know as many different languages as you can. I graduated a few years ago, and thankfully I took a class that required Fortran programming. I taught myself as I went along, and ended up learning a lot about Fortran. At the time, I thought that I'd never use it, but I was wrong. After some corporate downsizing, I found myself in the same market as people with five times my experience. I had trouble finding work using my favorite languages (Java, C++, C#) because of the poor job market (200+ applicants for an entry-level job). But, I recently landed a great job because I knew Fortran. None of the other candidates that applied had Fortran experience. Best of all, I get to code mainly in C#.
If you have the time to learn Fortran, by all means do it. It sucks trying to find a computer job right now coming out of college (depending on where you're at), and having Fortran on your resume might be your ticket in. Trust me, you never know when you might use it!
My service in Oregon is provided by AT&T@home. One would think that the transition from @home to AT&T broadband would be a piece of cake, but this is not true. I have (or used to have) a static IP address. I specifically requested this, and I told AT&T that I was running Linux when I ordered service. Doing this guaranteed that a technician would not lay a hand on my computer. It also proved to be a good thing when things did go haywire, since most times I could get a lot more info out of the tech support flunkies (like IP addresses, DNS servers, gateway IP, instruct them to push my modem on the dhcp server, etc). Everything was fine, until @home was transitioned to AT&T broadband.
Service stopped on Saturday, and I was told by an employee I know at AT&T@home that my area had been transitioned and service should be up and running. I called tech support, and after talking with this incompetent moron for about 10 minutes, I was able to ascertain that AT&T Broadband does not currently support static IP addresses, and it is unknown whether they will support them in the future. (This tech support girl could not even tell me the DNS server IP addresses, since she claimed that she didn't know them, and had no idea where to look to get the info!)
For grins, I decided to connect the modem to a Windows box set to use DHCP. Astonishingly, it got configured by DHCP! They apparently switched every static IP user over to DHCP without saying a word. (In the past, it was impossible to configure a system off of my modem with DHCP, the static configuration disallowed this).
So, I guess that I'm going to have to get DSL now that I've lost my static IP. I just hope that with DSL the tech support line doesn't constantly tell me to go to the new troubleshooting website on my computer for assistance...
As many people know, Intel unveiled it's own web tablet at CES last year. They're not going to release it, though. Check it out here. This one really sounded promising, offering a wireless experience, utilizing existing Internet connection, printing support, and audio.
I worked as a developer for this product, and am quite disappointed to see Intel decide not to ship. I've had one of these tablets at home for about a year now, and it is surprising how useful it is despite slower-than-pc performance. What I've seen (through usability studies, beta testing, etc.) is that people expect a wireless web tablet to have the same performance as a PC, at half the cost. Something that a device running on a 206Mhz StrongARM will never achieve.
Thin client tablet PC's have a shot at offering PC performance, but are people willing to pay over a thousand dollars for a laptop without a keyboard? A person can buy a laptop for under a thousand bucks, throw in a wireless network card, and accomplish everything (and more) that an internet appliance can at a lower cost.
The real benefit of a web tablet is sexy hardware. The cool factor makes up for slow performance and limited resolution displays. When people see the tablet, their reaction is always "I want one". The problem is, most people aren't willing to shell out the bucks to get one.
I think that I'd rather have Clippy and lose the registration server they will be using with Office XP...
Just when it seems that they're on the right track taking away an annoying "feature", they introduce the registration server. This way, if you ever have to install Office more than 10 times, you're SOL...
Look at the additional investment that you made in order to have roaming connectivity throughout your house. Should all Internet appliances require such infrastructure? I think not.
I just cannot see the justification in buying a tethered Internet appliance that will crash when loading large web pages, not support different media types, and cost more than a PC. For this market to take off, there needs to be incentive to buy. Form factor and ads will only take a product so far, freedom, robustness, and ease of use will take it the rest of the way.
For a successful Internet appliance, it needs to be wireless and able to share an existing ISP connection. I-Opener was doomed from the start. It relied on users subscribing to long-term ISP contracts, which many people would shy away from. Most people who would purchase a special-purpose Internet appliance already have an ISP. It does not make sense for someone to pay an additional $19.95/month for a service he already has.
One of the benefits of having an Internet appliance is to have convenient access to the Internet from anywhere in the house (or outside). A tethered appliance, such as the 3Com Audrey forces users to browse the Net within reach of a telephone jack. If users have DSL or Cable, they're out of luck. Devices like this are doomed to fail.
Truly wireless IA's have so far been nothing but vaporware. I think that it will take a large corporation like Intel with their Web Tablet to deliver a solution that meets these criteria, at a price affordable to people.
Until then, tethered, ISP contract bound Internet appliances will continue to fail.
Slashdot Mirror
All you need to do is use the System.Reflection classes. Here's a snippet of code that invokes a private method (InternalGetType) on System.Object:
...
l aredOnly|BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.SetField);
using System;
using System.Reflection;
Object myObject = new Object();
Type orig = myObject.GetType();
MethodInfo theMethod = orig.GetMethod("InternalGetType",BindingFlags.Dec
Type t = (System.Type) theMethod.Invoke(myObject, null );
See the documentation for System.Reflection.MethodInfo for more information on how to invoke methods with parameters, etc.
Don Box is now a .NET evangelist, having left Developmentor to join Microsoft (Designing the web services architecture). In every conference he gives on .NET, he always begins by saying, "COM is dead."...
Idiot. Crypto isn't as difficult as you think, if you've taken courses in Number Theory and *understand* the material. Besides, there are a lot of other crypto choices out there than the Crypto API that MS provides. I'm saying, why rely on a closed source implementation for security? Who knows how many "security through obscurity" bugs are in the Crypto API?
This problem clearly illustrates *why* someone would implement it themselves, so problems can be fixed in 90 minutes, and not weeks...
Someone shoot QA in the foot.
Fortran is easy to learn if you already know how to program, and coming out of college it pays to know as many different languages as you can. I graduated a few years ago, and thankfully I took a class that required Fortran programming. I taught myself as I went along, and ended up learning a lot about Fortran. At the time, I thought that I'd never use it, but I was wrong. After some corporate downsizing, I found myself in the same market as people with five times my experience. I had trouble finding work using my favorite languages (Java, C++, C#) because of the poor job market (200+ applicants for an entry-level job). But, I recently landed a great job because I knew Fortran. None of the other candidates that applied had Fortran experience. Best of all, I get to code mainly in C#.
If you have the time to learn Fortran, by all means do it. It sucks trying to find a computer job right now coming out of college (depending on where you're at), and having Fortran on your resume might be your ticket in. Trust me, you never know when you might use it!
My service in Oregon is provided by AT&T@home. One would think that the transition from @home to AT&T broadband would be a piece of cake, but this is not true. I have (or used to have) a static IP address. I specifically requested this, and I told AT&T that I was running Linux when I ordered service. Doing this guaranteed that a technician would not lay a hand on my computer. It also proved to be a good thing when things did go haywire, since most times I could get a lot more info out of the tech support flunkies (like IP addresses, DNS servers, gateway IP, instruct them to push my modem on the dhcp server, etc). Everything was fine, until @home was transitioned to AT&T broadband.
Service stopped on Saturday, and I was told by an employee I know at AT&T@home that my area had been transitioned and service should be up and running. I called tech support, and after talking with this incompetent moron for about 10 minutes, I was able to ascertain that AT&T Broadband does not currently support static IP addresses, and it is unknown whether they will support them in the future. (This tech support girl could not even tell me the DNS server IP addresses, since she claimed that she didn't know them, and had no idea where to look to get the info!)
For grins, I decided to connect the modem to a Windows box set to use DHCP. Astonishingly, it got configured by DHCP! They apparently switched every static IP user over to DHCP without saying a word. (In the past, it was impossible to configure a system off of my modem with DHCP, the static configuration disallowed this).
So, I guess that I'm going to have to get DSL now that I've lost my static IP. I just hope that with DSL the tech support line doesn't constantly tell me to go to the new troubleshooting website on my computer for assistance...
As many people know, Intel unveiled it's own web tablet at CES last year. They're not going to release it, though. Check it out here.
This one really sounded promising, offering a wireless experience, utilizing existing Internet connection, printing support, and audio.
I worked as a developer for this product, and am quite disappointed to see Intel decide not to ship. I've had one of these tablets at home for about a year now, and it is surprising how useful it is despite slower-than-pc performance. What I've seen (through usability studies, beta testing, etc.) is that people expect a wireless web tablet to have the same performance as a PC, at half the cost. Something that a device running on a 206Mhz StrongARM will never achieve.
Thin client tablet PC's have a shot at offering PC performance, but are people willing to pay over a thousand dollars for a laptop without a keyboard? A person can buy a laptop for under a thousand bucks, throw in a wireless network card, and accomplish everything (and more) that an internet appliance can at a lower cost.
The real benefit of a web tablet is sexy hardware. The cool factor makes up for slow performance and limited resolution displays. When people see the tablet, their reaction is always "I want one". The problem is, most people aren't willing to shell out the bucks to get one.
I think that I'd rather have Clippy and lose the registration server they will be using with Office XP...
Just when it seems that they're on the right track taking away an annoying "feature", they introduce the registration server. This way, if you ever have to install Office more than 10 times, you're SOL...
Look at the additional investment that you made in order to have roaming connectivity throughout your house. Should all Internet appliances require such infrastructure? I think not. I just cannot see the justification in buying a tethered Internet appliance that will crash when loading large web pages, not support different media types, and cost more than a PC. For this market to take off, there needs to be incentive to buy. Form factor and ads will only take a product so far, freedom, robustness, and ease of use will take it the rest of the way.
For a successful Internet appliance, it needs to be wireless and able to share an existing ISP connection. I-Opener was doomed from the start. It relied on users subscribing to long-term ISP contracts, which many people would shy away from. Most people who would purchase a special-purpose Internet appliance already have an ISP. It does not make sense for someone to pay an additional $19.95/month for a service he already has.
One of the benefits of having an Internet appliance is to have convenient access to the Internet from anywhere in the house (or outside). A tethered appliance, such as the 3Com Audrey forces users to browse the Net within reach of a telephone jack. If users have DSL or Cable, they're out of luck. Devices like this are doomed to fail.
Truly wireless IA's have so far been nothing but vaporware. I think that it will take a large corporation like Intel with their Web Tablet to deliver a solution that meets these criteria, at a price affordable to people.
Until then, tethered, ISP contract bound Internet appliances will continue to fail.