The crazy people are far more interactive in SF than they are in NYC. Most of the crazy folks in NYC just kind of talk to themselves and generally mind their own business. Their San Francisco counterparts actually step in front of you and attempt to engage you in conversation about the end of the world, or, I actually saw a parade of people that belong to the 'society of the ancients', people who believe that aliens built the pyramids. This is a crapload more entertaining than the guy outside Penn Station who just swears at you!

OK. Bottom line here is I'm dissapointed. I've considered Mary Jo's articles to be unbiased and relatively objective in the past. What I'm looking at in her article is basically a piece of imflammatory nonsense. If she had taken the time to do some more digging, she would have found the depth that would have made many of her arguments appear as weak as they truly are. She took the lack of response of the audience to mean that they were unimpressed. I, however, went and talked to a couple people at random and asked them, and they all confirmed my suspicions - they'd seen it all before. It was still just as impressive as last time, but people didn't feel the need to hoot and holler about it. They were waiting for the iPhone announcement (which was arguably dissapointing for many developers... though I'll bet good money that less than a year from the iPhone's release we'll see a real SDK for it). She also compared a couple of features at a really cursory level without doing the homework to figure out how the features work.

My goodness, they're starting to fall like nine pins. Linux distributor Linspire has followed Novell and Xandros into a patent protection deal with Microsoft despite the fire-breathing, contract-scorching wrath of the Free Software Foundation and its GPL 3 spoiler. Microsoft might have enjoyed signing this one a bit more than the other two because Linspire, when it was Lindows, cost Microsoft $20 million to settle a trademark infringement suit that Microsoft brought. Funny how things can work out.

Parasoft Corporation announced the upcoming release of Parasoft .TEST 4.0, an integrated solution for automating a broad range of best practices proven to increase software development team productivity and software quality. Parasoft .TEST ensures developers that their .NET code works as expected by enabling coding policy enforcement, static analysis, and unit testing. The new release features innovative technology that saves development teams time by providing a streamlined manual code review process.

Intel is working with Taiwan-based Asustek Computer on a counter to One Laptop Per Child's AMD-based currently $175 XO notebooks. The full-fledged Intel-Asustek PC will start at $199 and go to $299. Other than a low-end Intel chip, the widgets will have a seven- or 10-inch screen, Wi-Fi, a solid-state hard disk and run either XP or Linux.

At this point, it feels as though Acropolis is a layer of abstraction on top of WPF itself. Basically when you build an Acropolis (I'm going to call it AFX , since that's a crapload easier to type, and all the controls are prefixed as 'AFX') you get an Application and a main window. Interestingly enough, AFX seems to have support for Document-style (MDI for you 'old schoolers' like me...) applications, which WPF alone is sorely lacking. Inside this main window, you can put Parts. Each Part is essentially a re-usable bit of functionality. A Part View is associated with the Part (but is not a partial class of the part... the coupling is far looser than traditional WPF) and is responsible for defining the XAML to render the contents of the part, and can also contain code to dynamically respond to events and manipulate the view.

Microsoft has bought a little privately held Cincinnati firm called Engyro. A Microsoft partner, Engyro extends the interoperability of System Center Operations Manager 2007. Its Product Connector Suite lets Operations Manager share alert/event information with different enterprise management systems.

Mono version 1.2.4 has just been released. Typically source code for a release is branched off for final clean up and bug fixing, with the release coming a few days to a week later; for this version, there were almost 25 days between branch and release. This may have been due in part to distractions such as the 24 new Google Summer of Code (SOC) programmers and the new Silverlight beta, but mostly I think it was because the team sees this release as more than just a point release, so they spent extra time testing it to make sure it was good. Another factor is the size of this release. As I mentioned last month, it contains over 20 megabytes of diff files, and the release notes point that out with the help of Moma, it also contains over 1,000 newly implemented APIs (680 new APIs, 290 not implemented, and 43 TODOs done).

'We consistently hear from customers that they spend too much time and budget maintaining the systems they have, which leaves limited resources to focus on innovative solutions,' Muglia said. 'With Dynamic IT, we are bringing together the capabilities of the core infrastructure and the application and development platforms to help customers build integrated systems that will make IT a stronger partner to the business.'

A quick thought for a Friday afternoon. Mary Jo Foley reports at ZDNet that Microsoft is starting work on the Kitchen Client version of windows. Among the features Microsoft is planning to make part of its forthcoming kitchen computing environment are a family calendar, recipe center, entertainment features and a shared bulletin board, she says. Is that burning toast I smell?

Microsoft has signed still another of those patent cross-license that will set the open source community off because it claims to indemnify the licensees' use of Linux. This one is with LG Electronics (LGE) and Microsoft's announcement says 'through this agreement, LGE will be able to use Microsoft-patented innovations in its products, including Linux-based embedded devices.' Microsoft has similar-sounding deals with Samsung Electronics and Fuji Xerox but since those agreements were reached Microsoft has claimed that Linux and associated open source software infringe 235 Microsoft patents. It said it didn't want to litigate; it just wants to get paid.

I found the entire event to be surreal, like an out of body experience. I'd never been in a make-up chair before, and I'm really an 'in the trenches' kind of developer - I've never much aspired to be on TV, but I also won't turn down the chance to discuss things that I am passionate about with other like-minded and extremely intelligent people. However, it was a bit humbling when they had to use a little bit extra make-up on my head to make sure the shine from my baldness didn't interfere with the camera :)

Most of the applications we software developers build need to interact somehow with data from a database. The .NET Framework defined by Microsoft provides a rich set of objects to manage database interaction; these classes are collectively referred to as ADO.NET and the latest versions of DataWindow .NET (which is now version 2.01).

Now that its long but ultimately uneventful backdating investigation is finally over and it's filed all its missing statements, Novell has returned to making conventional SEC submissions and posting its results. On Wednesday it posted its April quarter. OK, so let's cut right to what everybody wants to know. In the two quarters since its hackles-raising deal with Microsoft was signed in November, some 49,000 SUSE certificates have been activated. They are worth $91 million. That's 38% of the five-year $240 million agreement, which has no cap. Microsoft could buy more.

If you just add the name 'Kevin Hoffman' to the list of people who will be on that panel, the article will read correctly. I am going to be discussing Silverlight during the panel. Keep in mind that I don't think any of us are there to shoot down or laud any one particular technology, my thinking is that we will have a really productive, educational and informative discussion about RIAs, the technologies currently available for building them, and what the future of RIAs might look like given the current technologies for implementation.

So I have decided to retire my Sprint PPC 6700, a device that runs Windows Mobile 5.0 and has simultaneous access to voice networks, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Sprint's broadband (EVDO). I frequently used this phone as a wireless modem and connected my laptop to the internet on the train. This phone is quite possibly one of the coolest devices I've ever owned.

Hanselminutes is a weekly audio talk show with noted Web developer and technologist Scott Hanselman and hosted by Carl Franklin. Scott discusses utilities and tools, gives practical how-to advice, and discusses ASP.NET or Windows issues and workarounds (www.hanselminutes.com/).

The prize for the gargantuan deal of the holiday-shortened week goes to private equity house Madison Dearborn Partners LLC, which is buying CDW, which sells computer gear to companies and the government over the web, for $7.3 billion, less the half-a-billion CDW has in the bank. The price, reportedly set against competition, represents a $16% premium over Friday's close (and 31.4% over the average of the last 90 trading days) but for the next 30 days CDW still has the right to go get a better offer. It's got Morgan Stanley out scouting.

Anyway, I think this is a pretty slick idea. A company new to the whole 'Web 2.0' thing can simply go to Intel, get their shiny 'Web 2.0' box, and get off the ground. At least that's the partyline. The key to Web 2.0 isn't the technology enabling it, its the people using it. If your organization isn't full of people comitted to using blogs, wikis, RSS, and social networking - the appliance isn't going to help. On the other hand, if your organization is full of people clamouring for new Web 2.0/social networking stuff and they want a private, enterprise-class Web2.0 style social network without all the crap and detritis you find with MySpace - then this little appliance might be the way to go.

As both a .NET programmer and ColdFusion developer, I always wondered how I could leverage the world of .NET in ColdFusion. Both platforms come with powerful features and using them together might be a wonderful friendship, if one could only make them cooperate. There are two worlds out there and none of them is an island.

Many requirements tools focus on accessibility and convenience features but fail to address fully the main issue that made use case analysis so successful: managing functional requirements and tracing them through the project development lifecycle. Functional requirements are often ignored or treated as a byproduct during broader requirements gathering. This is a serious misconception because functional requirements define the skeleton of the software system architecture.

Having forsaken the software business for media and ad sales a few weeks ago, VA Software thought it best to change its name. It's calling itself SourceForge Inc after its good neighborly SourceForge.net open source development hosting property, which last we looked doesn't bring in any revenue and is merely a cost.

As soon as ASP.NET systems grow to the point that more than a single Web server needs to be deployed, decisions need to be mode about where the session state will be held. By default, ASP.NET session state lives in the memory of the server hosting the application. The problem with this is that a user who connects to one of our Web servers will not have the same session if their next request is sent to another one of our Web servers, yet this is exactly what we want to achieve to improve the robustness of our systems.

With the release of a major new version of SQL Server, it's incumbent on developers to take time to refresh and enhance their knowledge of this new version of T-SQL (Transact SQL) and stored procedure programming. The challenge is to find a good book that will cover the highlights but not give you a hernia in the process. Dejan Sunderic's book fits this bill.

Armed with an Intel government presentation critical of the One Laptop Per Child box, OLTC dream spinner Nicholas Negroponte accused Intel on '60 Minutes' of dumping ~$200 Classmate PC laptops on the third-world markets where he's trying to sell his $176 AMD-based widgets - currently in minimum quantities of 250,000.

This month, I want to talk about Windows Workflow and what it means for the state of .NET development (in my experience and, of course, in my opinion). Before the release of Window Workflow (WF for short because WWF means something else entirely already), there were several avenues open to developers to make things work with a workflow feature.

Consumer complaints have spurred New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to sue Dell, charging Dell and its finance arm of fraud, false advertising and using deceptive terms and interest rates to boost sales. Cuomo wants such practices enjoined and unspecified damages to recompense the aggrieved and the state. He says customers were offered zero percent financing and folks with stellar credit ratings wound up paying an exorbitant 30%.

Portable.NET has released PNET 0.8, its first packaged release in more than a year. There were many improvements over the course of the year, but the biggest were associated with the upgrade to the new Libjit JIT engine. The source code is at http://downloa d.savannah.gnu.org/releas es/dotgnu-pnet, and Boris Manojlovic has created windows installer that can be downloaded at www. steki.net/dotGNU/JIT/dotG NU_0_8_0.exe.

Novell is taking a new tack with respect to rehabilitating its image with the Penguinistas. See, it's been between a rock and hard place ever since that deal with Microsoft so loathed by the open source community was announced in November. It has been forced to repeatedly disavow the patent implications that its partner - and source of a nice swat of money - has drawn from the thing.

It's 8:15 in the morning, and as you walk by the main conference room you overhear an animated exchange between the leaders of your IT organization including the directors of application development, production support, testing, and QA. Besides your applications team, you also see your company operations manager, the network manager, the lead analyst for the database team, and other assorted technical leads. One of your mission-critical composite applications is down and the finger-pointing is slowly escalating.

Oracle is reportedly leading the charge aiming to exploit the Japanese government's latest procurement guidelines set by the country's Communications Ministry in March favoring Linux on bids starting this July. Hence the June deadline on forming the consortium. Like any number of other governments, Japan's has burr under its saddle about Microsoft not being open and their being overly reliant on the company. The Nikki story said 78% of Japan's servers run Microsoft, 14% on Linux.

I'm sure that there are times when you visit your favorite bookstore to look at new books on your favorite .NET topics and you cringe at the weighty tomes sitting on the shelves. You open these books and page upon page of continuous print swims before your eyes, but you figure it's important so you plop down your hard-earned money, take the book home, begin to read it in you rocker recliner and fall asleep.

Microsoft - in a head-snapping game of good cop-bad cop played this week with open source devotees - voted in favor of adding the enemy OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.0 to the American National Standards list. Then went out and bragged about having 'listened to our customers, and they have told us they want choice, they want interoperability, they want innovation.'

Rebutting the Linux huggers who contend that Vista sucks and Microsoft is on the ropes, Bill Gates said from the WinHEC Tuesday that Vista sold 40 million copies its first 100 days, twice as fast as XP, making it Microsoft's fast-selling operating system ever. He said it was beyond the company's expectations, but the number didn't impress everybody. Premium editions reported made up 78% of the sales. Consumers' increasingly digital lifestyle has something to do with it. However, people did notice that Microsoft had nothing to say about where Windows goes from here, or even about a first service pack, probably, one would think, to discourage postponements.

The Free Software Foundation is currently expecting to circulate a 'Last Call Draft' of the GPLv3, with its anti-Microsoft codicil, on May 31, ahead of its final adoption on June 30. At that point, according to Eben Moglen, the lawyer who wrote it, 'Novell will be protected and Microsoft will be endangered, which is as it should be.' Every Microsoft coupon turned in to Novell for SUSE software after June 30, he said, will convey to all the patent protection that Microsoft meant to reserve to SUSE users.

In this excerpt, we'll create the ultimate flashlight. With find-in-the-dark flashing behavior and a power-audit mode, this single-button-controlled device will become the ultimate in personal illumination for the twenty-first century.

We're living in an information age. Our daily life involves absorbing useful information and filtering out garbage. Information (data) plays an important role in our daily life. People, especially businesses, need to organize large amounts of disparate information. The information needs to be organized in such a way that you can easily access desired data quickly. The first step is to design a database, which balances normalization with data integrity and performance requirements. But that's just the first step. It's just as important to be able to programmatically access the data from the database in an intuitive and consistent way. That's where ODBC comes into play.

And according to what Gutierrez told Fortune senior editor Roger Parloff 'This is not a case of some accidental, unknowing infringement. There is an overwhelming number of patents being infringed,' making it sound treble-damages expensive. Well, not filing suit is a pretty notion but given the level of Penguinista intransigence it's hard to see how Microsoft can stay out of court and not be called a girlie man, accused of being all bluster and bluff signifying nothing. The copyleftists are already calling it out and daring it to sue.

With the Microsoft MIX conference just ending last week and product announcements happening with greater and greater regularity, it's sometimes discouraging when you think of how much work it will be to just keep up with it all.

As both a .NET programmer and ColdFusion developer, I always wondered how I could leverage the world of .NET in ColdFusion. Both platforms come with powerful features and using them together might be a wonderful friendship, if one could only make them cooperate. There are two worlds out there and none of them is an island.