Microsoft buys Winternals for the talent

I am glad for Mark Russinovich and for Bryce Cogswell, but I am even more happy for the future of Windows. These guys really create amazing software.

First improvment I hope to see in Windows is a "Suspend" option in the process view of Task Manager... It is an obvious one, isn't it?

Microsoft renames WinFX as .NET 3.0

Somasegar announce the change in his blog.

Those are welcome news to me. I don't want to say I told you, but I remember I suggested John Montgomery to stick to the .NET branding in a comment to his blog, back in November 2003. That was just after the PDC in which all these new technologies were announced.

The general consensus by then was that the.NET branding had been completely eroded by the various marketing mistakes Microsoft made (like adding the .NET moniker to products that did not carry the CLR).

But I told him that we developers were not that much confused and that we always got the story right.

It is nice to see that once more Microsoft does what I want ;)

Letter to David LaVallee

Ok, you don't know me, and I don't remember hearing from you before. But now that I found a few things about you, including your blog, I felt the need to write you this note, just to express my deepest envy for you:

• First, you are in a Guitar Craft right now! How can you?... Darn!
• The Guitar Craft is in Lunlunta, Mendoza, in that same house that gives me so many good memories of my teen years (even if I do not enjoy the company of the saints anymore). Thanks for the pics!
• You are so close to Mendoza city, where I was born and were most of my family and half of my friends live!
• You are part of the Windows Live Team! Darn, this one causes me the greatest pain!
• You helped invent Java! Ouch!
• Where you the one that convinced Steve Jobs of buying GarageBand? Wow!
• You obviously play the guitar better than me ;)
• And you are probably are a better programmer too ;)

Ok, ok. I do not really envy you. I just got amazed at all this, and wanted to wish you good luck and great success.

Do you like wine? Being in Mendoza, I hope you do! Enjoy the hospitality of the locals, and the delicious Malbecs. Anything you need, ok? I can recommend you a few good places to visit (You will find good people there too).

If you are bored, take the route, drive a few kilometers, and get a picture of you posing with a "Departamento de Lavalle" sign :)

An Apple in my future?

UPDATE: I have been reading the FAQs at BootCamp's Beta site, and I have changed my mind somewhat. They say they do not provide support for Windows running on a Mac. Not a brilliant way to get customers. Reading about the drivers they provide, I don’t get if they really want to get it right. Apparently they don't want to get their feet wet. They have still a long way to go in deciding whether they really want a good stake of the PC Business or not. They are so close, but I guess they are too arrogant or just used to the minority elite aura. I will wait and see if things improve. Anyway, I want my next computer to be a 64 bits dual core.

Sean Alexander reports that Windows Media Center Edition runs on his MacBook Pro.

I spent an hour last night talking with a friend that is a Mac fan. He almost convinced me. As I see it now, my next notebook computer could be an HP, a Sony or an Apple. There is a premium price for the Mac experience, but I think it is completely justified.

Now they have positioned themselves to get a significant stake of the PC business, the future of Apple looks brilliant.

The only thing I have against it is that as far as I know we won't get 64 bits mobile Intel Core Duos soon. Dual core AMD Turions seem to be closer. But Apple seems to be, like Dell, married to Intel.

We are Level 2 in CMMI

The company I work passed a CMMI Level 2 appraisal a couple of fridays ago, and we satisfied all the criteria for certification.

I seldom give names in this blog and have never mentioned the name of my employer, but this is such a good thing that I needed to do the show off and of course, also congratulate all my colleagues ;)

So congratulations to all, especially those that had the vision for it, those that worked so hard for it and those that supported it all: José, Melvin, Wendy, our Project Leaders, and many more.

Visual Studio and SQL Server 2005 Training

Today I began taking an intensive 40 hours training course on Visual Studio and SQL Server 2005. I hope by the end of the week the coarsest holes in my knowledge will be filled with substance ;)

I had the pleasure of meeting Adolfo Wiernik, a Solid Quality Learning consultant that came from Costa Rica to impart the course.

I wouldn't have heard of Adolfo before if I hadn't listened to his webcast last Wednesday. He is, although, famous in the community and a Microsoft Regional Director.

I am indebted to my company for sending me (along with two mates) to take this course.

Tomorrow is ASP.NET 2.0 day, clearly the technology I have been using the most for the last 9 months. I think Adolfo will be sick of me by tomorrow 6 p.m. ;)

Atomik Circus

This is just to show that this blog is not dead.

I have just seen Atomik Circus on TV, and it was hilarious. I simply did not know that you could do a movie like this. I mean, it seems impossible to try something like this and not to spoil it completely.

Everybody was sleeping at home, so I was not able to enjoy the music, but I think it must be good (I turned volume up a little and put my ear close to the speakers, just to get an idea).

So, I have to see the movie from the beginning again. Atomik Circus Part II anyone? :)

The New Live.com

I have been following this people work for some time (they make my browser's home page). I think the new version is looking more brilliant than ever.

Nothing very deep to say. It has been working here since 10 minutes ago.

The new style looks great on grey, but of course I would like to have more choice of styles (including "clasic") or even better to ability to skin it.

Multiple pages are very wellcome. The new speed is wonderful... I like it a lot!

Congratulations, and I hope you will have a nice party! And Sanaz, remember to avoid the car until you get a spare!

Please Microsoft, buy Delphi

So, now Borland plans to sell its languages and IDE business. Since I first read about the news yesterday, I have talked quite a lot about it at my office.

I feel Microsoft is one of the few chances for Delphi to stay relevant. Even more, perhaps Delphi could flourish under Visual Studio, together with C#, VB, C++ and other languages Microsoft has in the works (Python and F#?). So I hope Microsoft will buy Borland's IDE business (everything but JBuilder I guess). Of course, I only want this to happen if this is what the employees want.

If Microsoft does not buy Delphi, my office mates are crossing their fingers. They don't want IBM to buy it (the company I work for used to be an Informix shop, and there is still a big number of Rational fans among us).

Visual Studio 2005 Award for Customer Excellence (aka The ACE Cube)

I received my cube at home on Friday. I plan to post pictures in the next days. Overall, a nice gift. My thanks go to Somasegar and whoever else decided I should have had the award.

IBM 100% Pure Open AJAX?

I heard about Open AJAX today for the first time while reading the Dr. Dobbs Journal. So, I don't know a lot about it. Only that I am interested in any tool that provides decent JavaScript debugging.

However, reading what they say about it, makes me think it is probably just a piece of "religion-ware":

Eclipse itself is open-source code, so IBM's donated software for running Ajax code is likely to be held as the standard environment in which the output from an Ajax tool must be able to run. If Open Ajax reaches that status, the industry will have a way of measuring departures from standard Ajax and guarding against the possibility of Ajax being implemented in a proprietary or Windows-specific way.

Microsoft has a set of interactive Web technologies, including Ajax, bundled together into what it calls Atlas. "They build it [Atlas] using their own extensions" rather than sticking to strictly Ajax conventions, says David Boloker, IBM's CTO of emerging technology.

By giving Ajax "a common tooling," or Eclipse test platform where different Ajax code can be tested in one runtime environment, IBM is offering a workbench where proprietary extensions will stick out as not working with other people's Ajax.

So, now I am pondering what gives IBM & co. the special gleam to arbitrate on a technology that is in constant flux, with a myriad of ideas and toolkits seeing the light each month, and also a technology that was created by Microsoft seven or eight years ago?

Of course the objective meassure will be how many will find Open AJAX useful and will use it. But I am still interested in knowing how many will buy into this idea that theirs is propper AJAX while Microsoft's is evil AJAX.

We will see... But, right now I don't even feel in the mood to link to them from here.