… but the creator of Jython, Jim Hugunin, joined Microsoft, for an implementation of Python.NET, a project he already started, and which was fast or faster than "native" Python interpreters, written in C.
The announcement was made at the Open Source Convention. Via Sean McGrath, via Jon Udell.
Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) can be installed even on Windows XP machines. It is advertised to support LDAP v3 features.
The (free) alternative was offered by Eudora, but it used SleepyCat DB, which is free, too. But SleepyCat comes only in source code, hence you need to buy Visual C++.
If you have to run an old (pre-Unicode era) program, which relies on a restricted encoding set (such as a ‘95 Russian installer), the characters will be, unfortunately, chosen from the System font. This is usually MS Sans Serif and it is not prepared to show anything Cyrillic. All the messages would be strings of question marks.
You could buy a new Windows, a Russian edition. You could set the global character set for non-Unicode application to be an old cyrillic font - in Windows XP, select “Control Panel”, classical view, “Language and Regional settings” and go to the “Advanced” tab. Unfortunately, it requires a reboot and then it will mess all the English (or other language you use) pre-Unicode software.
Microsoft provided a tool for this job, available only for Windows XP and 2003, AppLocale. It allows you to start a legacy app, fooling it about the system-wide encoding, in the way Application Compatibility Toolkit fools it about the operating system you’re running, emulating windows 95 or NT.
The brightest idea (now, when we have hooks to build a home-made clone for AppLocale) is the fact that you can build a shortcut for such a fooled application, say “Russian Encoded Tetris”.
Combining the ease of Python, comparable with Visual Basic 6, and the power of the Java libraries that already sit on your computer, Jython is a powerful tool. Combined with the hypotetical tool that I’ve always wanted (a Java compiler, which outputs classic Win32 C and then compiles it into a fast EXE), it would have a chance.
IBM pointed me into Jython’s direction, with a nice introduction.
Microsoft is in the search business for 10 years by now.
It started with the poor search included in the first Windows versions, “improved” with Indexing Service (another lame marketing decision, since it was bought).
They also have an SQL server (with supposed magnificent search features), an implementation of an (optimized?) search algorithm included in .NET framework, the Jet (Access) engine, recommended for a reduced number of queries. They can search for a word even in the Internet Exploder documents.
You can’t become a Redmond code monkey without a CS degree and these guys are supposed to read Knuth’s bible each evening. All of them know how to search in the most elementary way, e.g. inside a sorted array.
The crown of their search technology is the lame MSN portal (it was bought, part of the technology was rented etc.) No logical human uses their search engine, because, if you insist for the rudest adds, you have to use Yahoo!.
The Longhorn WinFS is predicted to sort and search for mp3’s better and for many criteria (such as the gender of the singer and his eye color.)
After all, I saw the advanced search feature in Outlook 2003 and it builds SQL statements (a lovely feature, but not for Average User Joe). Lookout is supposed to be a faster search solution for Outlook, but Microsoft people, knowing their source code, were supposed to outperform anyone.
The IP (patents) and market share of MSN, Indexing Service and Lookout, at the moment of their acqusitions, are/were little over zero (if any). The acquisition of Lookout proves that the MS guys don’t know how to search or that they just don’t care.
Then, why would anyone count for their in-house developed WinFS search as a feature of Longhorn? Perhaps we should already think of it as a failure.
Gosh, it is just Eclipse with some fancy plugins!
IBM converted VisualAge/WebSphere into Eclipse for free and SAP is converting Eclipse into SAP DevStudio for bucks. That just ain’t right!
Maybe you already knew it from Slashdot.
A guy collected tens of Q’s from Microsoft’s Knowledge Base selected for their involuntary humour, such as
or for providing documentation for horrific bugs, e.g.
But what you might not know is Kraig Brockschmidt’s description (in his future book, “Mystic Microsoft” - link to draft) of the funny newsgroupping at Microsoft’s HQ’s:
A friend of mine who worked as a tester on Microsoft Excel once logged a bug against the cartons of milk he often got from the free drink coolers on his floor. He noticed that the chocolate milk failed to list the ingredient “cocoa” whereas the plain 2% milk did. An intense discussion in RAID over the relative merits of these “features” continued for three or four weeks and involved as many as a fifteen different engineers. I think it set some kind of record. Anyway, someone finally went so far as to call the dairy itself, and the bug was closed as “WON’T FIX - ASSIGNED TO VENDOR.”
If you copy/paste a directory and lots of the source and destination files have the same name, you may click click Yes or No on the overwrite question dialog while pressing SHIFT. This way, your answer becomes a default for the current operation (you won’t be asked again during that operation).
Thanks to John Elliot on win_tech_offtopic.
Belgium Doesn’t Exist!
ROTFL for 10 minutes by now…
Microsoft previews the SP1 for .NET Framework 1.1. Since yesterday, they offer for free all the six parts of the beta Visual Studio 2005 called VB 2005 Express, VC++ Express 2005 etc. The packages include a preview of the 2.0 Framework, a SQL Express version (testers said it is the Jet killer) and a Web development application.
This follows the trend started with Framework 1.0, when the C# compiler was included, and continued with Framework 1.1 and Visual Studio 2004, when Microsoft gave away for free the C++ compiler.
On the opposite side, Mono 1.0 was released.