Heres the original:

With December running, the I.T. world is always buzzing about the upcoming year rumored announcements and novelties. One of the most expected 2010 launch is actually already running the streets of San Francisco, California if we believe the app maker Pandav’s information in MacRumors. The next generation of iPhones, to be supposedly unveiled in June 2010, appears to be beta testing in the SF Bay Area. If you associate to this the Adobe Max 09 rumor that the 2010 release of the device could finally support Flash, iPhone and the Cupertino’s firm are keeping the buzz on-going.

Beta testing and beta version also running at fast pace for Firefox 3.6 (the fourth beta already), for Thunderbird 3.0 RC2, for Microsoft Silverlight 4 (only few month after the early release of Silverlight 3.) Microsoft is definitely focusing on its RIA tool as it seemed trailing Adobe on this business (cf Gartner’s “Marketscope” March 09.) The 4^th release is aimed to finally allow Silverlight to access users’ peripherics (printers, mic, cameras,…) which was a functionality long acquired in Flash/Flex.

During its traditional yearly Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft has also presented Internet Explorer 9 which catches up in graphical and JAVA rendering, yet still getting only a grade of 32 out of 100 in the Acid 3 test. The official release date of IE9 has not been set. On the other end, October 31^st, 2010, has been set for Office 2010. As this date will end the open-to-the-public testing period imagined by Microsoft to convince the customers. Office 2010 beta is already downloadable and all features accessible until then. The only unknown about the application: its price, which has not be released yet, Microsoft having nevertheless set to free the price of Office Web Apps available through Windows Live.

Meanwhile Google abundantly enriches most I.T. forums with its various strategic decisions between Chrome OS and the phasing out of Google Gears. The totally internet-oriented operating system of Google (Chrome OS) left many skeptical during its presentation few weeks back, but already Dell is announcing its Mini 10v line allows customers to prefer Chrome OS. This only proves the maturity of the “netbooks” market.

It is however without official announcement that the developers’ community is finding out that Google is phasing out Gears to the benefit of HTML 5. Through the beta version of Chrome for Mac, and revealed in InfoQ, the news is summarized by a Google spokesperson in the Los Angeles Times: “We are excited that much of the technology in Gears, including offline support and geolocation APIs, are being incorporated into the HTML5 spec as an open standard supported across browsers, and see that as the logical next step for developers looking to include these features in their websites.”

Finally, part of the Mountain View firm’s effort to make the web faster, Google has launched yesterday its own DNS resolver called Google Public DNS. The company’s blog touts its resolver as allowing a sped up browsing experience, an improved security level and the insurance to “get the results you expect with absolutely no redirection.”

A world of promises!

Announced both at PDC and yesterday’s Scott Guthrie presentation. Silverlight now has a 45% market penetration. This is steadily climbing and will only gain momentum as more applications are released in Silverlight.

This post on Slashdot completely mischaracterizes a PDC panel discussion.  The post seems to rely exclusively on this article from ComputerWorld which also has a questionable slant on the session.  I was even taken in by this misinformation.

The CW Headline was:

Microsoft’s top developers prefer old-school coding methods

The Slashdot Headline was more pointed: 

Microsoft’s Top Devs Don’t Seem To Like Own Tools

You can watch the session and decide for yourself here.

I watched the session and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Here’s my rebuttal.  Times for the quotes are in parenthesis.

I would agree with CW that the panel was “often humorous”.  With the intro question “What problem is the most important that we face today”.  Don Box said with a wide grin (3:20):

I spend every night wondering how I’m going to make developers fall in love with the database.  There’s man-millennia worth of value in there that we keep wanting to put a prophylactic over so that we don’t get tainted by it.

This great Jim Gray quote related by Butler Lampson (7:50):

Transactions are like fairy dust.  A Cobol programmer writes a piece of business logic.  Its a sequential program, it does some relatively simple state transformation, and then you sprinkle transaction fairy dust on it, and automatically it becomes parallel, it becomes fault tolerant, and it becomes load balanced.

Jeffrey Snover had the audience in stitches unintentionally when he said (10:50):

Software tends to work when it works and fail when it fails.

Butler Lampson (26:16): “The net contribution of RPC to human welfare has been negative.”

Jeffrey Snover’s quote on managed code was much in favor (40:00):

Managed code is like antilock brakes. You used to have to be a good driver on ice or you would die. Now you don’t have to pump your brakes anymore.

Though when you read the slash/world articles it seems like he’s against it.  Like most people he’d rather drive faster with less risk of dying.  Or code faster with less risk of crashing. He’s not some old coot saying kids today have it too easy.

There were lengthy conversations on transactions, memory management, pointers, parallel programming, state, reliability, expression trees, etc.

When the text topic was introduced Don Box declared “Text f***g rocks!” in exaggerated glee (51:38).

The quote that CW latched onto was from Jeffrey Snover (53:20):

Graphical programming environments are usable when they are useless, but unusable when they would be useful…  When there are five things on the screen, you can burp that out [in text]. But when there are 500 things, [graphical programming] is completely unusable. You zoom in and zoom out and you lose all context. I think it’s just smokin’ dope.

He’s not running down Microsoft tools here, he’s dishing on all Graphical Programming tools.  Funny enough, WPF in Visual Studio has the least usable graphical environment, but the best text environment for creating graphics since the UI is defined in XAML, a type of xml like html and the IDE gives a lot of help when editing the XAML and the graphical representation updates as you edit the text.  Working directly with the graphics is near impossible, but that’s ok since building graphics with text is quite workable.  I don’t know any tool that can really help you with 500 graphical elements.

While this was a joke from Snover as noted by CW:

programming is getting so abstract, developers will soon have to use Microsoft’s in-air motion sensor game controller for the Xbox, dubbed Project Natal, to “write programs through interpretative dance.”

It was not an offhand joke or part of the conversation.  It was in response to the question “What do you think we’ll be talking about in 5 – 10 years.” (57:20)  In context it’s still funny, but makes a lot more sense.

I think the entire session went over the head of the reporter for CW.

Le lendemain du vote favorable au CEVA, regardons de quoi le réseau résonne. D’abord, il y a les formations politiques. Le Parti Radical ne cache bien entendu pas sa satisfaction. Le Parti Libéral a l’air moins enthousiaste. Le Parti Socialiste enfin est soulagé du oui. Curieusement les Verts et le Parti Démocrate-Chrétien (PDC) ne jubilent pas ouvertement sur leurs sites. Ou bien, l’ont-ils bien caché? L’UDC locale est mauvaise perdante et se lance dans son discours sécuritaire. Le MCG enfin passe le résultat sous silence (ou je me trompe?) et se réfère à l’association pour une meilleure mobilité à Genève qui avait combattu le projet.

Dans l’ensemble, la satisfaction et le soulagement se ressentent dans les commentaires et analyses des médias imprimés et en ligne. Un exemple des derniers est le site Romandie.com.

Parmi les réseaujournaux ou blogs d’orientation politique deux peuvent être cités. Le premier est “Rue de la Terrassière” de Guy Mettan. Une fois de plus sa fine plume met la question dans ses contextes économiques, sociaux et géopolitiques plus larges. Un autre est Cause toujours hébergé par la Julie. Inutile d’expliciter l’orientation politique.

Enfin, il y a des réseaujournaux qui ont fait du CEVA leur raison d’être. Des exemples sont “Pro CEVA“, le journal du Conseiller régional Roger Vioud de la Région Rhône-Alpes ou bien une présence électronique de Marco Castroni intitulé “la ville nouvelle” dédiée à l’urbanisme . On pourrait encore mentionner une autre qui confronte les avantages du CEVA aux inconvénients de la voiture.

Finissons par un clin d’oeil qui met en évidence les nombreuses possibilités d’animer la gare de Cornavin aujourd’hui et celles du CEVA demain.

A la prochaine

Daniel Stanislaus Martel

I’m holding a talk on Silverlight 4 tomorrow at work and I’d lie if I said I wasn’t a bit nervous. However, I’ve prepared by been scaring people all day by mumbling to myself in the street.

I’m going to post the demos and slides here when I’ve held the presentation. The demos will show off Drag-Dropping, Rightclicking, Printing and Webcam support. All this and more, in just under 20 minutes.

Some of you might know that Microsoft recently held its yearly Professional Developer Conference (PDC) in LA. They had an awesome lineup of “stars” lined up to talk about the latest microsft technologies, as well as  shedding some light as to the direction in which the technology is progressing.

I wasn’t one of the lucky to be there, but I got to watch the live-stream of the keynotes and some of the Channel 9 live stuff. Also, another GREAT feature is that most (if not all) the talks are available for viewing on the PDC site.

Some of the big stuff that was released were:

• Office 2010 beta
• Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2
• Silverlight 4 Beta
• ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta
• Sharepoint 2010 Beta

So, lots of videos on exciting topics, including stuff on C# 4.0, Windows 7 and more… Check them out.

Etwas später als geplant, möchte ich dennoch auch zur zweiten Keynote (wie in diesem Blogpost angekündigt) eine kurze Zusammenfassung liefern.

Passend zu den Sprechern Steven Sinofsky (President, Windows and Windows Live Division), Scott Guthrie (Corporate Vice President, .NET Developer Platform) und Kurt DelBene (Senior Vice President, Office Business Productivity Group) teilte sich die zweite Keynote in drei Teile:

Teil 1: Windows 7, Windows 7, Windows 7 … und IE9
Obwohl dieser erste Teil einige interessante Informationen aus der Beta-Phase von Windows 7 enthielt, so waren echte Neuigkeiten eher Fehlanzeige. Immerhin wissen wir jetzt, dass Windows 7 mit 14.057 unterschiedlichen Druckern getestet und 883.612 unterschiedliche Applikationen darauf installiert wurden. Den größten Applaus gab es dann allerdings, als die Teilnehmer der Konferenz von Steven erfuhren, dass Sie einen speziellen PDC 2009 Acer Aspire 1420P Convertible Tablet PC mit nach Hause nehmen würden.

Ein paar Neuigkeiten gab es dann doch noch zu IE9. Gearbeitet wird an den Gebieten

• Unterstützung von HTML5 und weiterer Standards
• Performance Verbesserungen (z.B. der JavaScript-Engine)
• Bessere Nutzung lokaler Hardware (z.B. Nutzung von Direct2D und DirectWrite beim Rendering von Grafik und Text auf der Grafikkarte)

Alles Wissenswerte dazu gibt es im IEBlog zum Nachlesen.

Teil 2: Silverlight
Die wichtigste Mitteilung von Scott Guthrie, nämlich die Verfügbarkeit der Beta von Silverlight 4 habe ich hier schon kurz verkündet. Einige Neuerungen:

• Druckunterstützung
• Unterstützung von Webcam und Mikrophon
• Clipboard Zugriff
• Verbesserte Data Binding Möglichkeiten
• HTML Host Control
• WCF RIA Services (ehemals .NET RIA Services)

Einen Überblick über die Neuerungen in Silverlight 4 findet man auch auf der Silverlight Homepage. Genauso wie den Download der Tools.

Teil 3: Office und Sharepoint 2010
Auch über die meiner Ansicht nach interessanteste Ankündigung aus Teil drei der Keynote habe ich bereits kurz berichtet: Die öffentliche Verfügbarkeit der Betas von Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Project 2010 und Visio 2010.

Neue Möglichkeiten für Entwickler gibt es in diesem Zusammenhang in den folgenden Bereichen:

• Content und Daten Management
• User Experience
• Application Services
• Tools und Deployment Flexibility und
• Interoperabilität und LOB Integration

Wer übrigens keine Chance hatte bei der PDC live dabei zu sein – eine Session von dort gibt es am 08. Dezember in Bad Homburg bei der .NET User Group Frankfurt zu sehen. Alle Infos dazu gibt es in diesem Blogeintrag.

In diesem Sinne und bis bald
Kostja

Today I’m making a demo application. It’s a simple PDF reader in Silverlight and it uses two new features. The Silverlight Out Of Browser (SLOOB) with elevated permissions, and the WebBrowser Control. Those of you who’ve written some WPF might already be familiar with the WebBrowser control and what it can do. In Silverlight, it’s basically an html-renderer for when you’re out of browser.

Let’s start by making a new Silverlight application. Create it with a website attached to it. First some basic XAML code to create the WebBrowser control:

<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White" Margin="50">

<Border BorderBrush="Black" BorderThickness="10" >
   <WebBrowser Name="myBrowser"/>
</Border>

</StackPanel>

I’ve chosen to add a margin and a border for increased visibility and separation.

Try and run this application. You’ll see how the WebBrowser control does nothing while in browser.

Now go to your Silverlight project file and select Properties. You’re going to allow OOB deployment.

Next, restart your application and install it to your desktop.

This next part is important, set your Silverlight project file as your startup and go back into Properties. This time go to the Debug menu and select your OOB program as the default debug target. This way you won’t have to reinstall it every time you’ve made a change.

Lastly, simply set myWebbrowser’s source to a pdf file located in your Client Bin.

<WebBrowser Name="myBrowser" Source="example.pdf"/>

Now relaunch your application and you’ll find you have a fully functional PDF viewer with separate interaction areas. This means that the context menu for the PDF viewer is separate from the one in Silverlight.

Where you go from here is up to you. Good luck!

دي الــ Sessions اللي كانت بتتكلم على Windows PowerShell في مؤتمر PDC السنوي.

Building Your Administration GUI over Windows PowerShell

Windows PowerShell: An Automation Toolbox for Building Solutions That Span Small Businesses, Enterprises, and Cloud Services

By: Mary Jo Foley (All about Microsoft | ZDNet)

Microsoft shared some information about what’s coming in Internet Explorer 9 and Silverlight 4 during its November 18 Professional Developers Conference (PDC) keynotes. If you want to see a real example of the difference in disclosure policies between Microsoft’s Windows unit and its Developer Division, the level of information provided by execs with each division today made that quite clear.

As expected, Microsoft Windows President Steven Sinofsky shared a few tidbits about Internet Explorer (IE) 9. Sinofsky emphasized that Microsoft will continue to play up privacy, user choice and responsible development with the next IE release. But he offered no information on when the team is planning to release a test build or the final version of the browser.

Sinofsky said during the Wednesday morning keynote that the IE team is about three weeks into the IE 9 project. (I’ve been getting tips that there already is a build of the product out there that is being used inside Microsoft, but it’s not available to external testers yet.)

Sinofsky noted that Microsoft is fully aware that it needs to keep pushing on the standards front. He noted that IE 9 is currently passing 32 of 100 Acid3 tests (compared to Firefox at more than 70 and Opera at 100). He also made it clear that Microsoft is aware it needs to continue to do work to improve JavaScript performance with IE.

Sinofsky said IE 9 will support hardware-accelerated rendering and rounded borders, but didn’t say a whole lot more about it. Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for .Net, had lots more to say about Silverlight 4, the next version of Microsoft’s browser plug-in that competes with Adobe Flash.

Microsoft is making a public beta of silverlight 4 available for download today, November 18. A single, near-final Release Candidate will follow and then the final version of Silverlight 4 will be out in the first half of 2010, according to Guthrie. Guthrie said Silverlight 4 will be a major new release of the plug-in. He said the upcoming version will incorporate nine of the ten most requested features by developers.

Guthrie itemized and demonstrated some of the new features of Silverlight 4 — which include everything from its support for webcam and microphone access, to the ability to run Silverlight inside the Google Chrome browser. Silverlight 4 also will include full support for Visual Studio 2010, native multicast support and improved printing, networking and reporting capabilities, company officials said.

I’m interested in hearing from anyone who manages to download Silverlight 4 (servers are crawling, I hear) about what you think of the new beta of the product. Feel free to chime in in the talkbacks….

Last week at Microsoft PDC we launched our Systems Management as a Platform offering with a few of the services going into private beta.

Now you can actually see a quick demo of one of these services and read some of the media coverage.

You can see the product demo if you watch the recording of Kim Cameron’s identity keynote session (the Quest OnDemand demo starts approximately at the 35:00 mark). If you don’t have Silverlight, here are the recording files in downloadable format:

• MP4 Video
• Windows Media Video
• Windows Media Video (High)

In addition to watching the demo, you might want to read what media had to say about this service:

Network World – Microsoft adds identity to cloud

InformationWeek - Quest Launches Cloud Services Based On Microsoft Azure

Lawrence Wilson/SaaS, Cloud Computing and Virtualization Review: Quest Software Offers Software as a Service (SaaS) Windows Management Solutions

Kelly Higgins Jackson/DarkReading: Product Watch: Microsoft Unveils Windows Identity Foundation

Forefront Team Blog: Available now: Windows Identity Foundation for building more secure, simplified access to cloud applications

Read, watch, and sign-up for the beta.

Antes de entrarle al tema les menciono que hay un viejo refrán popular que dice:

“No hay que caer de lo sublime a lo ridículo”

!Ojo y no les vaya a pasar lo de Michael Jackson

¿Que ha pasado con ;Nacho Castillo y Romeo Lemus de Canal 33, con Ernesto López y Roberto Hugo Preza de Megavisión Canal 21, ahora más que nunca se esperaría un ataque frontal de parte de Telecorporación Salvadoreña TCS Noticias y su presentador estrella Jorge Hernández en Frente a Frente, con Edwin Góngora de Canal 12, con Raúl Beltrán Bonilla de la Radio Cadena YSKL, con El Faro.Net, con el Diario de Hoy, La Prensa Gráfica, El Mundo entre otros tantos?

No menciono al Diario CoLatino porque han empezado a actuar al estilo TCS de la izquierda.

Desafortunadamente …. (siempre hay peros) … vale la pena mencionar lo siguiente:

El senil presidente de la autónoma, Ing. Francisco Gómez, no tiene pelos en la lengua para presentarse ante las cámaras de televisión para dar a conocer sus versiones, bastante sui generis por cierto, de la realidad de ANDA, de la situación del agua potable, sobre la factibilidad del servicio, sobre las nuevas tarifas y no tiene el mas mínimo resquemor de atacar a diestra y siniestra a “todo aquello que huela a ARENA.”

El referido individuo trata a toda costa de despotricar las peores patanadas en contra de sus adversarios políticos de forma altanera, mal educada y prepotente; en ese afán trata de venderse como la panacea del conocimiento ingenieril en materia de agua potable y drenajes.

No obstante lo anterior, debo ser enfático al señalar que muchas de estas situaciones de acuerdo a lo difundido públicamente por Radio Cadena Mi Gente, no es más que el producto de la senilidad misma, y hago mención de ello porque me parece un punto importante que nace de una institución de “izquierda recalcitrante huezo duro” ¡Conste que lo dicen ellos!, yo únicamente lo traslado a mis lectores.

Se entiende que el Ing. Gómez trabajó para ANDA en 1986 (o al menos ahí devengaba un salario) y parecería según él que el universo se detuvo en esa fecha y que todo en ANDA esta igual que como estaba a su regreso 26 anos después.

Aparentemente el referido ingeniero no se ha enterado que en el ultimo cuarto de siglo se invento la Internet, que cayo el muro de Berlín, que ya existen los teléfonos celulares, que los niños dispone de juegos de video en lugar de yoyos y capiruchos, que el mundo se globalizó, que la tecnología ha impactado y cambiado adversamente y en forma bastante dramática el curso de la naturaleza, que estamos enfrentando una crisis mundial económica, política, dogmática, religiosa y hasta fanática.

Parece que tampoco se ha enterado que en estos últimos 25 años crecieron desmesuradamente los ingresos y ambiciones de los grupos oligárquicos mundiales que han explotado a todo el planeta manteniéndolo al borde de un colapso financiero, social y económico, que producto de las deportaciones masivas desde los EEUU de compatriotas ilegales aparecieron los grupos que se dedican a extorsionar, que aparecieron los Talibanes, que cayo el régimen de Sadam Hussein, que los EEUU vivieron la pesadilla del Septiembre 11 y en todo el planeta se experimenta un desmesurado calentamiento global como parte de la depredación de bosques y otras muchas riquezas naturales.

Habría que contarle que el “Pato Alfaro” de la KL ya esta en otro mundo que Albertico y Aniceto tampoco están más con nosotros, que Matthies Hill defraudó plata a lo loco, que condenaron a Pinochet, que todo el cono sur se volvió de izquierda y que los tangos de Agustín Lara, los boleros de la Billos y las cumbias de los Hermnos Flores ya son cosa del pasado y que ahora se baila Raeggeton y Perreo.

Habría que informarle que en el presente siglo las transmisiones de televisión son a colores y que los aparatos de tubos catódicos han sido reemplazados por otros del tipo LCD y plasma.

Todo esto parecería no lo sabe el Ing. Gómez y por ende parecería que tampoco es muy adicto a la lectura, a la investigación y talvez ni siquiera de los noticieros televisivos.

Ya en ANDA él ha sido feliz haciendo valer su minúsculo poder y se ha conformado con despedir y contratar a su santo antojo al mismismo estilo de las administraciones de ARENA, PCD y PDC.

Por supuesto que la peor aberración ha sido la adicción a despedir y contratar (parece que hasta muchas de sus concubinas) empleadas y empleados de la institución en detrimento del personal calificado clave de la institución a quienes él acusó de ser “Areneros faltos de confianza”.

El referido presidente, en su estilo de administración, no pasa de ser un diminuto e insignificante “Clon de Don Nadie” (quisiera él que se le comparara con el famoso presidente Venezolano al que mandó a callar el Rey de España), claro está que ni en lo más remoto pudiera llegar a soñar el ostentar y tener el grado de notoriedad de este último y mucho menos que pueda llegar a tener jamás la capacidad de conducir las riendas de la empresa que tiene a cargo con el suficiente y debido liderazgo.

Ahora nos anuncia que ANDA nos recetará a los salvadoreños “nuevas tarifas” y ni siquiera se da cuenta que el dimensionamiento de las mismas (según las ha planteado el mismo a nombre de ANDA) carecen del mas mínimo sentido común, de proporcionalidad, de cordura, y que el plan de focalizar el subsidio según los entendidos en la materia no es ni siquiera, ni remotamente cerca de lo que él ha planteado en nombre de la institución.

Pero Don Eugenio Calderón de Canal 4 ha hecho famosa una frase bastante singular y que aplica muy bien a conductas erróneas y anormales como la del Ing. Gómez

¡¡VAYA USTED A SABER!!

Por cierto que hay que ir cambiando las fotos viejitas de Agustín Lara, de Pedro Infante, las de Sarita Montiel, la Billos Caracas Boys y otras más y empezar a cambiarlas por las de la nueva generación musical.

Ahí les dejo las de los Jonas Brothers para que vayan empezando a conocer los nuevos ritmos

Jonas Brothers

Microsoft announced at PDC09 that they will support more platforms than just .NET on Windows Azure. Azure now has an interoperability page where they show some of the options.

SDKs’ for

• PHP
• Java
• Ruby

Tools for

• Eclipse
• Java
• Ruby
• PHP

This really broadens the potential customer base. Pair the Eclipse Tools for Windows Azure with the newly acquired TeamPrise offering and Java developers can start developing for Windows Azure today. Welcome into this cloud Javas!

Now I plant more Fava beans and use more mulch. Find out why

For those of you that enjoy my blogging voice, I apologize for its absence.  It has been a small while since I have posted.  And as you may already know, my good friend Katie has graciously taken the helm in my stead.  But, it is my “stead” that compels me to write to you now. The subject at hand is one of drastic importance for me and for all of us.  If you are not interested yet, keep reading anyway.

The reason for my sparse blog presence has mostly because I have been immersed in my recent permaculture class with Permaculture SF. It is not for the fact that the class kept me too busy to blog, but more that I was (and still am) completely inspired and changed by this class, its teachers, and my fellow students; so much so that I have since dedicated my time, thought and effort to the principles and practices I gathered there.  In fact, with no offense intended toward my favorite UVM professors, I feel downright comfortable saying that it may be the single most rewarding class I have ever taken to date.

A good class doesn’t just transmit information, it changes the way you think.  While I am tempted here (with all of this empty white blog space beneath me) to convey some of the specific lessons from my experience, I would rather say that this class and my cohort transformed the way I see my environment, my world, and my community.  And now I see that this new lense as the most valuable tool I walked away with.  I now look at Amyitis differently.  I see our mission, my mission, as transmogrified.  You see, permaculture is not simply about learning techniques and strategies but about, what my teachers David Cody and Kevin Bayuk like to say, “overstanding” the issue.  To translate, to overstand is to interpret the whole system, understand more deeply.

I learned that, Amyitis has been utilizing some permaculture strategy since its inception, but its scope has maybe been too narrow, its berth too wide.  What I write now is to urge anyone and everyone to take a permaculture design certification class in your neighborhood or city.  If you are an engineer, a foodie, a home gardener, or even business strategist, this class will change your life.  If you are luck enough to live in the San Francisco Bay Area you can be lucky enough to take a course with Kevin and David, HERE. They also have a blog you can follow if you like.  Don’t waste any time.  The Spring PDC starts January 13th 2009 in Potrero Hill.

Hey you may find yourself in a picture like this one, smiling your little face off.

2009 Fall Urban PDC Graduates.

-David

The basics are covered in a thousand books, so here are a few tips you don’t come across quite so often.

1. Design. A few extra hours spent thinking about your garden layout can save you many heart-aches, head-aches and back-aches down the track. Permaculture and Organic gardening books are a good place to start, a PDC (Permaculture Design Course) is a very helpful experience, or you could hire a Permaculture consultant for a couple of hours to look over your design attempt (paying someone with experience to tell you “That won’t work because…. Try this instead….” is money very well spent, keeping the ache-trio I mentioned before in mind.
2. Protection for the garden is really important. Those books that say your vegie garden needs full sun are either from the very South of Tassie or they’re written for cloudy English conditions. In the harsh Aussie sun, most vegies only need about 6 hours of full sun and those baking afternoon rays from the west can be more of a liability than an asset. A deciduous vine to the west will provide summer protection, whilst allowing in valuable winter sun. Some movable pots of bamboo can also be a good solution.It’s also important to block out hot-dry summer winds, which suck the life out of your plants. If you’re in Melbourne, those winds come from the N/W. In this case a 1m wide strip of fast growing acacia planted against the fence can be a good solution. Allow them to grow up as a windbreak for the summer-time and then chop them back in winter to allow in sunlight (the prunings make excellent mulch for fruit trees).
3. Catch and infiltrate runoff right where you need it. If you’re planting fruit trees it pays to dig basins or trenches just above them. These intercept any runoff, giving the water time to infiltrate, right where the tree needs it. If you’re setting up a vegie garden, make your pathways level and place a mini dam wall at each end. This means that your pathways will hold water and allow it to infiltrate into the vegie beds. If it’s been really wet and you risk leaching valuable nutrients from your garden, you can just dig out your little dam wall and the paths act as drains. So that you don’t need gumboots to walk in your garden, crusher dust can be used to fill the paths, which provides drainage, a nice surface to walk on and will add trace minerals into the bed over time.
4. Cycle all nutrients. What springs to mind for most is to return the parts of the vegies you don’t eat back to the garden (via the worms for example). That’s a good start but there are some other important ways:– If a weed pops up in the garden, as you’re pulling it out say ‘Thanks!’ for the carbon it’s captured and the nutrients it’s brought to the surface, and tuck it back under the mulch where it will break down and feed your vegies.
   – If you have a slope, gravity will do its best to leach nutrients from your garden. By planting ‘dynamic accumulators’ such as Comfrey, Yarrow, Tansy, Horseradish or Nasturtium at the base of the garden, they’ll capture these nutrients and bring them up into their foliage. You can cycle them back onto the garden by chopping them back from time to time, and then tucking them under the mulch. (Important: don’t plant comfrey ‘inside’ your vegie garden where you might disturb its roots or else it will take over)
   – Why do I keep mentioning tucking green plants in under mulch? Because if you leave green plants such as a green manure crop on the surface they quickly turn brown, and what’s happened is that a good chunk of nitrogen has evaporated off into the atmosphere; lost. By covering green stuff with a thin layer of brown mulch, you’ll notice when you come back a few weeks later that it’s still green underneath, and it’s holding onto the nitrogen until the soil critters get around to breaking it down and incorporating it into the soil.
   – Wee in a bucket of water and put it out on the garden once a day. If you have a nice layer of carbon rich mulch, the garden won’t smell at all. (By the way, urine actually contains far more nutrient than your #2 does.)
   – Commercial composting toilets can now be legally installed in any sewered area of Victoria, even in the heart of the city. Also check out Jo Jenkins The Humanure Handbook which you can download from this website, but I’d recommend supporting Jo’s ‘shit-hot’ work by buying a copyand keeping it in the dunny.
5. Mulch, mulch, mulch. Seems like a strange one to add in a list of ‘not-so-common tips’, but there are a couple of aspects which are often misunderstood. Here’s a couple of quick tips:– Think of your mulch as a flat, spread out compost pile, for which you should be aiming for a similar carbon:nitrogen ratio. If you just put down pea straw for example, this is really high in carbon. The soil critters that will want to get to work on breaking it down need nitrogen to build their bodies and if you don’t provide it for them they’ll go looking in the soil and will steal every last bit from around your plants; that’s what’s known as nitrogen drawback. By providing a bit of nitrogen in the form of blood and bone, manure, urine etc., you’ll get the wonderful benefits of mulching, along with the decent plant growth you’re after.
   – It’s a good idea to use mulch which has a similar herbaceous/woody consistency to the plant you are growing. The reason for this comes down to the soil biology, in particular the ratio of fungi:bacteria, which different plants prefer. For example, as a result of millions of years of evolution, vegies prefer a soil that is fairly bacterial dominated rather than fungal. If you mulch with woodchips, which are predominantly broken down by fungi, that’s what your soil will be dominated by. A more appropriate approach would be to use grass clippings or pea straw on the veg, whereas for a fruit tree you’re better off with the slightly woody tree prunings from leguminous trees or from a local tree lopper.

Cam Wilson

Healthy soil = healthy plants = healthy people

Feel free to check in anytime to read about some of the stuff I’m up to.

[permaculture.org.au]

Source

Esta semana ha tenido lugar la Professional Developers Conference (PDC) de Microsoft, se trata de un evento a escala mundial donde la multinacional presenta sus novedades y realiza lanzamientos al mercado, os resumo un poco lo que he podido leer en la blogosfera del tema después del salto.

Office 2010 Beta, otra vuelta de tuerca

La popular suite ofimática de Microsoft se hace mayor con una nueva versión, novedades? Por supuesto mayor estabilidad, compatibilidad con formatos abiertos (ODT), e Icono nuevo!

Personalmente, creo que es un gran paso, personalmente estoy muy contento, ya que han puesto los atajos de teclado en inglés, aunque esté la versión en Castellano, y personalmente resultaba un incordio presionar Ctrl+G para guardar cuando en el resto de programas es Ctrl+S, y cosas del estilo, espero que no sea un bug!.

Otra novedad que se ha mostrado es el lanzamiento de la versión online de la suite ofimática, de la cual os hablaré cuando tenga acceso a ella (actualmente va a ser que no), y una que merece un redoble de tambores…. Una versión gratuita de la suite!

No, no se han vuelto locos, la herramienta se llamará Office 2010 Starter, y viene a sustituir a Mocrosoft Works, que venía preinstalado en muchos equipos, así como las versiones de prueba de 60 Días que vienen cuando compramos un ordenador nuevo. Incluirá Word y Excel, en versiones “descafeinadas” pero que serán de utilidad a la gente que usa lo minimo de dichos programas, si quieres más, o pasas por caja, o te buscas una alternativa a la suite, que tienes varias. Un detalle importante es que contendrá publicidad no invasiva al estilo de google.

Internet Explorer 9, el rey ha muerto, viva el rey.

Sí señores, al parecer los desarolladores de Microsoft, contentos con las ventas de Windows 7, se enfrentan al problema de que su navegador va perdiendo cuota de mercado de manera cada vez más acelerada, y en este evento nos han dejado bien claro que estan trabajando para poder recuperar el poderío de tiempos pasados, y olvidarse de la lacra que ha supuesto el IE6, que recordemos, fue lanzado en 2001, ha pasado algo de tiempo.

Contrariamente a lo que deseabamos algunos, no usará webkit, ya que eso implicaría romper la compatibilidad con versiones anteriores (algo bastante lógico, teniendo en cuenta que hay sistemas que usan grandes empresas que han pagado millones, así como multitud de páginas web, y que casualmente, estan “optimizadas” para IE6, o con el “modo de compatibilidad de IE8″).

Dejando de lado el hecho de que las empresas deberían ir acorde a los tiempos, os diré en pocas palabras que se pretende con IE9:

• Soporte HTML5, recordemos que Microsoft forma parte del grupo de empresas que apoya esta iniciativa
• Mejoras en Javascript, en un mundo donde cada vez hay más ajax, un motor ràpido marca la diferencia.
• Aceleración de los gráficos por hardware mediante DirectX, algo que incorporan desde hace tiempo Firefox y Chrome, pero está bien que al menos se pongan a la altura
• Soporte a CSS3 (Creo que voy a llorar)
• (Se pretende…) superar la prueba del Acid3, por ahora van por 32/100, teniendo en cuenta que ie8 tenía 24/100, es un pequeño gran paso.

Desde aquí un apoyo a los desarrolladores, sabemos que lo teneis difícil, pero el afan de superación es lo que más beneficia al usuario, espero que salga un buen producto y exista un IE que pueda ponerse a la altura de los grandes y ocupar un lugar olvidado hace tiempo.

Silverlight 4

Aquí están que lo regalan, el pasado octubre asistí en el Simo a la presentación de Silverlight 3, y ahora resulta que van por el 4!, eso sí, BETA, en este apartado no voy muy al día con lo que os remito a mi colega Eugenio Estrada, gurú y experto de Silverlight y WPF, quien resume en su web las novedades presentadas en la materia.

Han habido muchas otras presentaciones, pensad que todo esto en una semana, pero pensé que estas serían las más interesantes desde un punto de vista general, si me entero de alguna cosa mejor, no tardaré en publicarla.

Enlaces:

Silverlight 4 Beta Publicado – El blog de Eugenio Estrada

Más detalles sobre Office 2010 Starter – Genbeta

Página Principal de Office 2010 – Descarga la versión beta y deja tus impresiones al equipo de desarrollo

via 10 things about Microsoft’s PDC 2009: The good, the bad and the ugly | Betanews.

Data-Intensive Computing on Windows HPC Server with the DryadLINQ Framework
John Vert in 408A on Tuesday at 3:00 PM

Come get an overview of the DryadLINQ features and runtime environment, and walk through some real-world examples of DryadLINQ programs based on the familiar declarative syntax of LINQ combined with the fault-tolerant distributed graph scheduling of the Dryad runtime. Hear how DryadLINQ provides a programming model and runtime for data-parallel programs running across large clusters and partitioned data sets.

E <http://agilecat.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/mapreduce-in-dryadlinq/>

I have one word for Microsoft on PDC 2009:

Awesomeness!

This years Product Developers Conference was much scaled back compared to last years but it had a great innovation in format that allowed people who didn’t attend the conference physically to still interact with it virtually.

And so the good folks at Channel 9 had built up a talkshow like studio at the PDC, with live streaming video through Silverlight, and the ability to viewers to ask questions live on air via Twitter.

This was immensely fun. I had the opportunity to ask questions to at least two technical fellows at Microsoft. Technical Fellow is the highest technical ranking at Microsoft besides of course Chief Technical Architect, a position which is currently held by Ray Ozzie.

I asked a question to Patrick Dussud, Technical Fellow and lead architect of the .Net Common Language Runtime (CLR), designer of the CLR GC and a member of the Windows Core Architechture team. The question was about how how parallel you could make the GC and what possible downsides this had.

I also asked a question to David Campbell, another Technical Fellow, from the Business Platform Division (BPD) where he manages Microsoft SQL Azure and .Net services in the cloud computing space. This question was about whether databases (e.g. SQL Server), programming runtimes (e.g. CLR) and … are merging. David mentiond that MSIL/CIL bytecode execution on SQL Server – “close to the data” – has improved performance of managed code accessing data greatly.

LINQ shows us where things are going: tighter and tighter integration. Erik Meijer, who is perhaps the lead architect of LINQ and whom I was also able to ask a question, also works for David Campbell on cloud programmability. The  new Reactive Extensions (Rx) for .Net is a pearl which we’ll see permeate .Net soon. It also builds smoothly on top of Parallel Extensions for .Net (Px), which is Microsoft’s near- to mid-term answer to the manycore challenge.

Parallel Extensions for .Net comes from the Parallel Computing Platform (PCP) team which is the team tasked with the strategic challenge posed by the massively parallel hardware of the future.

It gets better. I also asked a question to the director of NASA’s Mars programme as well as a NASA scientist.

I repeat: Awesomeness!

NASA had a marked pressence at this years PDC because they have offered up data on Microsoft’s new “Dallas” data marketplace. The attendees were apparently given 3D goggles and were viewing stereoscopic images of Mars. Pretty damned cool.

Supposedly recordings of the live Channel 9 stream will be available. I’d certainly like it.

This years PDC will be one tough PDC to outdo.

I love how when everyone’s complaining that MS Surface isn’t serious enough and how it can only be used for novelty this shows up:

(The clip is 6 min long but it’s enough to watch the first 60 sec)

I personally find this hilarious yet not really what needs to be shown right now. I think this video highlights what’s right and wrong with Surface at the same time. The negative aspect is of course that this is 100% novelty and that there is virtually no business application to this. The upside is that it illustrates very well the power and unique capabilities of Surface’s object recognition. This is in my opinion the most interesting aspect of Surface and what sets it apart from other multi-touch technologies. That said, I think what we all want to see is a concrete application of Surface for a real business.

Björn Eriksen recently showed off some of the possibilities Surface could have in healthcare. You can find his video here. This is interesting although it’s only conceptual. Even though the novelty factor is hard to escape I sincerely hope that we’ll see a solid functional Surface app before the end of 2010. If we don’t, I really don’t see where Surface could be heading.

As of yesterday, the Silverlight 4 beta is available to everyone (with VS2010). Since I’m currently working on this darned mobile app, I haven’t had a chance to test it but some of the changes seem very nice. I’ve been working quite a bit on a webshop created solely in Silverlight and know that some of the new features could be useful.

I think that I’ve personally most been wanting the Rich Text Editor for some time now. That’ll come plenty in handy when presenting and recording information. Data Grid is of course a huge item that many developers have been pining for which now will make “serious” apps more viable.

The fact that Silverlight is being enabled out of browser with elevated permissions is not only an interesting change of scope but also begs the question: now that Silverlight is OOB and WPF is enabled online, how big are the differences really and will we see a merger within a year or two of the two technologies? Of the two, Silverlight has by far the sexier name if nothing else.

I’ll be updating more as I try out the new beta sometime next week. Until then, all I can offer are a couple of nifty links.

Silverlight 4 SDK

Silverlight toolkit (updated)

Channel 9 course on SL4

Documentation

Today was the last day of PDC09. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see any of the sessions today since our team had some support issues to deal with. However I did get a chance to work on a Windows Azure hands on lab which helped me experience the excitement of Windows Azure. The lab contained multiple tasks which entailed me connecting to Windows Azure through a Visual Studio 2010 project. The lab was pretty straight forward since they provide the code for you so it was more of an exercise of typing accuracy. I don’t have a review today of Azure but check back in the coming weeks since I definitely will sign up for the free trial.

My rating of the conference is a B-. Since I didn’t attend the previous PDC events nor TechEd, my view is not based on Microsoft history. Instead it is based on my expectations of what a great conference would be. For me that included clear communication of the features of the event, low cost, great networking opportunities, and exceptional value.

The primary negative factor that affected the above rating was the poor manner of communication of what to expect from the conference by Microsoft. I think the PDC website was poorly designed for retrieving information in order to identify what topics I wanted to view.  The topics really weren’t grouped well and the information became available on the site last minute. If Microsoft expects people to pay the hefty price tag for the conference, they really need to let the attendees know exactly what the focus of the conference is and why they should be attending. Also if your hosting a conference on the latest technologies offered, why not use some of those technologies to build your site?? That to me is just mind-boggling.

The primary positive factor that affected the rating above was the swag. I thought they did a good job offering cool free stuff. The best thing of course was the free tablet PC. However if they had filled it with development tools instead of just office tools, I think they would have had a larger impact to the attendees.

Overall, it was a good conference and I look forward providing effective feedback so the next one will be even better.