(Read my VMWare Server Review)
I’m not affliated with VMWare in any way. If you haven’t signed up for the VMWare e-mail newsletters, go do it now. It’s not spammy, and has plenty of meaty technical material.
The latest e-mail points to the VMWorld 2005 Conference Sessions. There are free audio downloads for you to listen [...]

If it wasn’t because of a favourable comments that readers have made of James McGovern Enterprise Architecture books, I was going to write off what he had said about Ruby as merely trolling around.
I’m trying my best to interpret his thoughts here. Readers, this is just my interpretation OK?
Issue: Should Ruby be on the [...]

Shekhar Jha writes that virtualization process on the x86 platform has really taken off:
Isn’t it time to start the virtualization process for the OS itself? … Is this time to really start thinking about completely moving away from the monolithic kernels like Microsoft Windows and Linux and start adopting the Micro-kernel architecture
Virtualization is not an [...]

James,
Are we still talking about enterprise architecture or enterprise archeology? 10 years ago, the same can be said of Java … i.e. Fortune companies aren’t using it on the server, yada yada. Are you concerned about the lack of maturity in the Ruby offering, or what are you really trying to get at?
Chui

Jim Waldo on language independent means of transporting data:
First of all, it means that you need to have a language-independent mechanism for passing data from one place to another. But there is no more a language-independent way of expressing data than there is a language-independent way of expressing objects. If I tell you that a [...]

Guido,

This is my empirical test for what is a library and what is a framework.

Visual Studio 2005.net introduced code-less databinding, entirely using drag and drop.
Here’s what happens in the GUI, and what occurs behind the scenes:
GUI - Add a new data source to the project
Code -
Database (mdf) added to project [optional]
Connection strings added to app.config.
TypedDataSet (xsd) created and added to project.
In [...]

James argues that enterprises are not ready to embrace Ruby because Ruby hasn’t done the Big Sell to enterprises.
This is not to say it will not happen, after all, IBM had dipped its toes pushing PHP, despite PHP being a less capable language compared to Ruby - no continuations, functions not first class.
I’d argue [...]

Some vendors are touting that the benefits of SOA will initially be seen internally through better component reuse. I don’t buy that. There are plenty of component reuse models already: COM, Corba, EJBs, and message queues. Internal software development are in a good shape to consume their own components.
The notion of SOA is meant to [...]

CNet reports RIM calls for patent reform in newspaper ad.
This is how the patent office thinks inventors work:

Somebody want to figure out something works.
They’ll trawl through the patent office’s patents looking for solutions
They copy the idea and sell the product denying the original inventor costs of research and development.

This is what happens in real life:

Inventors [...]

Question to the audience:
“are resellable e-books rights the new Ponzi schemes of the 21st century? It simply doesn’t matter what the contents are, people are buying the rights to on-sell the rights to other people?”
Here’s an example: there’s one site which sells master rights to 75 e-books for $30. The titles aren’t even given, [...]

Bill Gates has dissed the $100 laptop project, suggested that people ought to look towards more powerful mobile phones instead. FLOSSE POSSE seems to be saying the same thing too.
As the tool is primary marketed for school – basically for the Ministries of Education – I would like to know a little more about [...]

Whoaa!
“It’s like we are living inside a giant dark energy star,” Chapline says.
More over at New Scientist, with a radical proposal that says black holes (and hence singularity) don”t exist.
No more interstellar travel for mortals. How sad.

Stefan Tilkov and Steve Vinoski wonder why JavaScript hasn’t really taken off. The wikipedia entry on Prototype-based programming suggests that the
community of software developers is not familiar with them, despite the popularity and market permeation of JavaScript. Further, as prototype-based systems are relatively novel, and few and far between, best practices for software development using [...]

Imagine I used to run a business called Chui’s Discount Paint. To keep costs low, I’ve hired a new university graduate to run my computer systems. He advised me to use open-source software to make my costs lower.
We shifted to Linux, but he advised that I don’t buy commercial support from Red Hat or [...]

Netbeans has a code colloboration feature and integration into real-time public chat rooms. Let’s see, I signed up an account and browsed the list of public discussions.
A big list shows up and signing into a few of them turned out to be empty.
How’s a new guy supposed to find some help?
A list of [...]

Arrgh. Took a few hours to realize this:
When you add a jar library under the Tools/Library Manager, you can specify a Javadoc directory or zip file.
Nothing appears until:
a) you add the library to your project
b) you RESTART netbeans.
Roumen has a somewhat longer writeup on javadoc in netbeans.

Steve Loughran comes close to nailing the problem when he attributes interop grief to the “use of XSD as the language for describing messages”.
Interoperability is primarily a human endeavour. It is an exchange of information in formats both side could agree and understand on.
To truly appreciate how inadequate XSD is for interop, here’s [...]