Microsoft has the semi-right idea with letting people use the XNA stuff to create games for the 360. Sure it is pretty locked down, but it is still is doable and well documented. The real hard part is that coming up with the idea for a 360 game is HARD, not to mention people expect "next-gen" graphics and sound for 360 games which is almost impossible without a large team. On the other hand, anyone who picks up a Wii controller immediately can come up with 10-50 ideas along the line of a Wii Sports or other mini games. And I think people are just fine with the quality of the graphics of the Wii. Throw in a standard "Mii" library for creating the characters and you are rolling right along.
Too bad I don't think Nintendo has their system set up for this. Oh well.
Salon.com actually refers to the AK-47 as the "the world's most popular open-source assault rifle" in an article from yesterday. When I saw this article in my RSS reader I thought it would be pointing to that article. It compares the AK-47 to the QWERTY keyboard and attributes its success to the fact that no one has a patent on the design.
The main problem is that the author assumes that to upgrade to Vista means you have to use Aero. Microsoft has made it very, very clear that Vista is supposed to scale up as new hardware is released, but it will still run fine on most PC purchased recently. I'm running it fine on a PC and a laptop that are both 2+ years old here in office. Plus, if a company is going to be running 3+ year old PCs, well, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that they aren't the type of company that upgrades operating systems on their desktops all that frequently either.
I was working at Target when Gran Turismo was originally released. I can't remember a single game moving consoles faster than that game. I know that three of my friends had me buy them PSX's along with that game to use my employee discount. When the PS2 came out, the only reason I bought it in addition to my Dreamcast was because of Gran Turismo.
So this news bothers me. I have a 360 and so far I'm pretty pleased with it. I'll probably pick up a Wii too. My PS3 purchase was pretty much solely based on Gran Turismo. I was looking at dropping something retarded like $600 for a console, and now you're telling me I'm going to be spending $100+ for Gran Turismo? And this is just to get a better graphics version of a game that I already own on the PS2?
I'm not impressed. I never played that Forza game before - I guess I need to hoping it's a good one.
On Amazon.com, when browsing for Essential.NET Amazon.com was nice enough to tell me that fellow purchasers also wore "Clean Underwear". I was a bit disturbed that Eddie Bauer felt it was needed to specify that the underwear I was buying was in fact clean.
I'm not sure if you've been on a plane in the past 10 years, but quite a few people actually use Word Processors and spreadsheet apps on planes on their way to business meetings and the such. You are looking at people in marketting, sales and management not being able to access their documents. That's going to go over famously.
But if you are using ANY validation control in ASP.NET, you sure as hell better be calling Page.IsValid on the server side instead of relying on the javascript functionality. well, I guess this assumes you knew that the validation controls can be ran from the server side...
I'll take that bet. Scott Guthrie (project load on the Web Platform and Tools Team at Microsoft) has stated that Atlas client script will work on all modern browsers, and will not be restricted to any web server.
If you follow blogs.msdn.com, you'll find that while many people are admins of their own machine, they rarely actually run as admin. I think all they are saying is that they don't take away the power of the user to be able to install their own hardware or software. But the vast majority of people working at MS seem to understand the risk involved as running as an admin at all time.
Actually, if you read the review you'll see that you aren't doing anything CAD related. It's a normal platform video game. The only difference is that instead of having complex models and the such, you are controlling a mini-fig.
So if your nephews can play Mario or whatever the platformer of choice is these days, they should have fun with this one.
I'm not totoally sold on Microsoft releasing this software as open source. It was written by David Ornstein, who works at Microsoft. While this tool is used internally at Microsoft, and I'm sure MS has the rights to the software too, I just don't think it's fair to David to classify this as a Microsoft Product.
As a technical instructor, I give presentations basically 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. And let me tell you, a rotating teapot isn't going to improve anyone's presentation. The best way to improve your presentation is to cut out as much as possible. Make yourself the focus of the presentation, not the clip art or whatever fancy crap you've got on the screen.
I'd highly recommend anyone out there who is looking to improve their presentations to check out "Presenting to Win", by Jerry Weissman. Excellent book on giving presentations.
The answer to this types of question will always be "it depends." I personally use all kinds of stored procedures. It is far more easy to secure a database based on sprocs and views than it is on the table or field level. So sprocs bring security to the table.
If I'm doing an operation that would be better suited "close" to the data, the answer is again stored procedure. It saves you round tripping that data back and forth potentially multiple times. You also get the added plus of the procedure cache, but honestly products like SQL Server 2000 already do an excellent job of caching ad-hoc statements.
Probably the best case against stored procedures is if you are using an O/R tool that generates code dynamically based on your tables and rules that you set up.
I'm not for putting all your business logic in a sproc. That's a bit silly. If you are concerned about having to update clients if it changes, you might want to look into developing some middleware components. It's pretty easy if you haven't done that in the past. I'm not for accessing everything via ad-hoc queries either. The risk of sql injection is too great (yeah, yeah I know your an expert, but what about that intern we hired to make some UI updates...), and security is just too difficult to maintain at that level.
I've been quite happy with the Vantec LapCool Laptop Cooler. My battery died on my old laptop, so I had been leaving it on in my living room on the coffee table. It is one of those beasts of a "desktop replacement" laptop, so thing gets HOT. I was a bit concerned with the heat on the table, and the noise from the fans was noticable while just sitting on the table, let alone when my girlfriend plays the sims on it. So I picked up one of these suckers and have been very happy with it. It is almost silent (much quieter than my laptop's fans at least), and I can sit that and my laptop in my lap with no problem.
Since the writer of the virus was going for a proof of concept instead of looking for it to actively spread, I don't think that the lack of IA64 machines really matters to him.
He writes a virus that targets 64 bit Linux, the simply doesn't have the sexiness of targetting windows.
While this is fun, if they did watch all the episodes multiple times they had to have noticed that something as common as the simpon's home address has had 6 different values, although they have mostly been on Evergreen Terrace.
even now, the sa account is disabled by default and books online states it is there for backwards compatability only.
While it was long over due, SQL Server 2000 already complains quite heavily if you try to set a blank password for sa. It allows it, but there are (unfortunately) applications that have been written with a hard coded connectionstring of sa with a blank password.
You bring up cell phones. Would it be my right to reverse engineer my cell phone, and create my own custom phone to get on their network and not pay a dime?
It's not the reverse engineering that's the problem, it's the piggy backing on anothers network that's the issue.
You can't forget that Virtual PC also comes with the MSDN Universal Subscription too. I know of quite a few converts, especially in the.NET development world, that have switched to virtual pc because of the MSDN Subscription.
I think you'd still need to buy fertilizer and weed killer, it's just that the grass would be immune to the weed killer.
So Scott's can keep selling their ferilizer, and push their weed killer even harder "which has been tested and approved for Scott's mutant grass (tm)" to the average person.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft has the semi-right idea with letting people use the XNA stuff to create games for the 360. Sure it is pretty locked down, but it is still is doable and well documented. The real hard part is that coming up with the idea for a 360 game is HARD, not to mention people expect "next-gen" graphics and sound for 360 games which is almost impossible without a large team. On the other hand, anyone who picks up a Wii controller immediately can come up with 10-50 ideas along the line of a Wii Sports or other mini games. And I think people are just fine with the quality of the graphics of the Wii. Throw in a standard "Mii" library for creating the characters and you are rolling right along.
Too bad I don't think Nintendo has their system set up for this. Oh well.
Salon.com actually refers to the AK-47 as the "the world's most popular open-source assault rifle" in an article from yesterday. When I saw this article in my RSS reader I thought it would be pointing to that article. It compares the AK-47 to the QWERTY keyboard and attributes its success to the fact that no one has a patent on the design.
The main problem is that the author assumes that to upgrade to Vista means you have to use Aero. Microsoft has made it very, very clear that Vista is supposed to scale up as new hardware is released, but it will still run fine on most PC purchased recently. I'm running it fine on a PC and a laptop that are both 2+ years old here in office. Plus, if a company is going to be running 3+ year old PCs, well, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that they aren't the type of company that upgrades operating systems on their desktops all that frequently either.
I was working at Target when Gran Turismo was originally released. I can't remember a single game moving consoles faster than that game. I know that three of my friends had me buy them PSX's along with that game to use my employee discount. When the PS2 came out, the only reason I bought it in addition to my Dreamcast was because of Gran Turismo.
So this news bothers me. I have a 360 and so far I'm pretty pleased with it. I'll probably pick up a Wii too. My PS3 purchase was pretty much solely based on Gran Turismo. I was looking at dropping something retarded like $600 for a console, and now you're telling me I'm going to be spending $100+ for Gran Turismo? And this is just to get a better graphics version of a game that I already own on the PS2?
I'm not impressed. I never played that Forza game before - I guess I need to hoping it's a good one.
Wasn't it Yogi Berra that said "nobody goes there anymore...it's too crowded"?
On Amazon.com, when browsing for Essential .NET Amazon.com was nice enough to tell me that fellow purchasers also wore "Clean Underwear". I was a bit disturbed that Eddie Bauer felt it was needed to specify that the underwear I was buying was in fact clean.
The book was developed online via a Wiki, available here for free. This is a great book that every windows and .NET developer should be aware of.
I'm not sure if you've been on a plane in the past 10 years, but quite a few people actually use Word Processors and spreadsheet apps on planes on their way to business meetings and the such. You are looking at people in marketting, sales and management not being able to access their documents. That's going to go over famously.
Hopefully they have a better plan than a ruber band sling shot. I also hope they don't try to get the penguin in a loop around the moon trying to maximize the distance before he gets back to the shuttle. http://www.bigideafun.com/penguins/arcade/spaced_p enguin/default.htm
Personally, I wouldn't use the built in validation controls because they don't output DOM compliant javascript. You can download a set of DOM compliant validation controls here: http://www.okane.com.au/matt/PermaLink,guid,c0797a e3-d041-49bb-bd15-0ae551151271.aspx
But if you are using ANY validation control in ASP.NET, you sure as hell better be calling Page.IsValid on the server side instead of relying on the javascript functionality. well, I guess this assumes you knew that the validation controls can be ran from the server side...
I'll take that bet. Scott Guthrie (project load on the Web Platform and Tools Team at Microsoft) has stated that Atlas client script will work on all modern browsers, and will not be restricted to any web server.
You can read more on his weblog.P
If you follow blogs.msdn.com, you'll find that while many people are admins of their own machine, they rarely actually run as admin. I think all they are saying is that they don't take away the power of the user to be able to install their own hardware or software. But the vast majority of people working at MS seem to understand the risk involved as running as an admin at all time.
Actually, if you read the review you'll see that you aren't doing anything CAD related. It's a normal platform video game. The only difference is that instead of having complex models and the such, you are controlling a mini-fig.
So if your nephews can play Mario or whatever the platformer of choice is these days, they should have fun with this one.
Well, the game is based in the early 90s. Seeing as Maron 5's first album was in 2002, I'm going to go out on a limb and say no.
I'm not totoally sold on Microsoft releasing this software as open source. It was written by David Ornstein, who works at Microsoft. While this tool is used internally at Microsoft, and I'm sure MS has the rights to the software too, I just don't think it's fair to David to classify this as a Microsoft Product.
BTW, David's weblog has a bunch of info on FlexWiki being posted to SourceForge.
As a technical instructor, I give presentations basically 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. And let me tell you, a rotating teapot isn't going to improve anyone's presentation. The best way to improve your presentation is to cut out as much as possible. Make yourself the focus of the presentation, not the clip art or whatever fancy crap you've got on the screen.
I'd highly recommend anyone out there who is looking to improve their presentations to check out "Presenting to Win", by Jerry Weissman. Excellent book on giving presentations.
The answer to this types of question will always be "it depends." I personally use all kinds of stored procedures. It is far more easy to secure a database based on sprocs and views than it is on the table or field level. So sprocs bring security to the table.
If I'm doing an operation that would be better suited "close" to the data, the answer is again stored procedure. It saves you round tripping that data back and forth potentially multiple times. You also get the added plus of the procedure cache, but honestly products like SQL Server 2000 already do an excellent job of caching ad-hoc statements.
Probably the best case against stored procedures is if you are using an O/R tool that generates code dynamically based on your tables and rules that you set up.
I'm not for putting all your business logic in a sproc. That's a bit silly. If you are concerned about having to update clients if it changes, you might want to look into developing some middleware components. It's pretty easy if you haven't done that in the past. I'm not for accessing everything via ad-hoc queries either. The risk of sql injection is too great (yeah, yeah I know your an expert, but what about that intern we hired to make some UI updates...), and security is just too difficult to maintain at that level.
I've been quite happy with the Vantec LapCool Laptop Cooler. My battery died on my old laptop, so I had been leaving it on in my living room on the coffee table. It is one of those beasts of a "desktop replacement" laptop, so thing gets HOT. I was a bit concerned with the heat on the table, and the noise from the fans was noticable while just sitting on the table, let alone when my girlfriend plays the sims on it. So I picked up one of these suckers and have been very happy with it. It is almost silent (much quieter than my laptop's fans at least), and I can sit that and my laptop in my lap with no problem.
Since the writer of the virus was going for a proof of concept instead of looking for it to actively spread, I don't think that the lack of IA64 machines really matters to him.
He writes a virus that targets 64 bit Linux, the simply doesn't have the sexiness of targetting windows.
While this is fun, if they did watch all the episodes multiple times they had to have noticed that something as common as the simpon's home address has had 6 different values, although they have mostly been on Evergreen Terrace.
Still a fun diversion on a rainy thursday
even now, the sa account is disabled by default and books online states it is there for backwards compatability only.
While it was long over due, SQL Server 2000 already complains quite heavily if you try to set a blank password for sa. It allows it, but there are (unfortunately) applications that have been written with a hard coded connectionstring of sa with a blank password.
Yeah, passwords and standards are fine as long as you keep snickers out of the office
You bring up cell phones. Would it be my right to reverse engineer my cell phone, and create my own custom phone to get on their network and not pay a dime?
It's not the reverse engineering that's the problem, it's the piggy backing on anothers network that's the issue.
You can't forget that Virtual PC also comes with the MSDN Universal Subscription too. I know of quite a few converts, especially in the .NET development world, that have switched to virtual pc because of the MSDN Subscription.
I think you'd still need to buy fertilizer and weed killer, it's just that the grass would be immune to the weed killer.
So Scott's can keep selling their ferilizer, and push their weed killer even harder "which has been tested and approved for Scott's mutant grass (tm)" to the average person.