Project 31-A

I originally consider EIGO, Experience In Gospel Out, but felt that EIKO sound better.   On one of the Linked-In groups there was a lengthy discussion on architecture stack to use. What became very apparent was the trend to advocate a particular architecture primarily on the fact that you have experience with it. Opinions follow the same type of brand loyalty that you see with cars (Toyota, VW, Ford), computers (Linux, Mac, PC) and event TVs (Sony, VIZIO, Panasonic).   If MD followed the same brand loyalty –they would likely be deemed to be unprofessional and perhaps facing malpractices. One of the keys of being a responsible architect is to be profession which means become familiar with the different brands and to make rational decisions based on solid criteria. This means not slipping into plagiarizing marketing literature (which by definition, is not objective or rational), or opinions on the groups you frequent (most groups are inclined to a biased, self-affirming attitude.

Lifeware Solutions is using the Windows Phone 7 emulator in a web page to demonstrate their windows phone 7 app. This is too cool to pass up. The web page looks like: The associated HTML code is: < object data= "data:application/x-silverlight-2," type= "application/x-silverlight-2" width= "432" height= "768" > <param name= "source" value = "DMSL/DeluxeMoon.xap" /> <param name= "onError" value = "onSilverlightError" /> <param name= "background" value = "white" /> <param name= "minRuntimeVersion" value = "4.0.50826.0" /> <param name= "autoUpgrade" value = "true" /> <a href= "http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=149156&v=4.0.50826.0" style= "text-decoration:none" > <img src= "http://go.microsoft.com

Often with SQL Server you are faced with the situation of finding records (event) that overlap a search interval as illustrated below. Often I have seen this code up as something complex that follows the above diagram: WHERE (EndAt BETWEEN @StartDate and @EndDate AND StartAt =< @StartDate ) OR (StartAt BETWEEN @StartDate and @EndDate AND EndAt >= @EndDate ) OR (StartAt BETWEEN @StartDate and @EndDate AND EndAt BETWEEN @StartDate AND @EndDate ) OR (StartAt =< @StartDate AND EndAt >= @EndDate ) Needless to say,  8 expressions and 3 ORs is a bit of pain…  An alternative solution is to interchanges the search and event time intervals resulting in a simpler evaluation consisting of 6 expressions and 3 ORs, some improvement.. but still not ideal WHERE ( @StartDate BETWEEN StartAt and EndAt) OR ( @EndDate BETWEEN StartAt and EndAt) OR ( @StartDate =< Sta

Last Friday I attend a talk by Mark Anderson ,  Futurist and analyst with a 93+% success records for forecasts over the last decade (you can hear him on the BBC on Jan4,2011 ). The key item is that nation’s wealth comes from intellectual property, the knowledge (to produce goods) that other nations do not have. His concern is that the US is loosing it’s IP to other nations, China specifically – who does not protect foreign IP very much. When Boeing has to share it’s technology to get sales – it leads to a rather large hole in the foot.   A few years ago I was attending a security conference at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and heard that it was normal for most military firms to apply crazy glue to USB and firewire slots on every PC (forget about DVD or C D Burners). When I was teaching at NSB Bangor, one could not (legally) take a phone with a camera onto the base. With today’s technology, the amount of disabling is even more: No USB or Firewire to prevent

  I suddenly noticed that replace only works on ONE CHARACTER strings ….  at least that is what the tooltip claims…

This is a continuation of my startup series consisting of the prior posts of: Startups and Sql Server Databases Who should be in a startup team? So you want to do a startup – the “F” projects So you want to do a Startup – the “E” projects Startups: The napkin business plan Startup: Garage or Angel Funded or Solo So you want to do a Startup – the “A” projects So you want to do a Startup – the “D” Projects So you want to do a startup – the “C” projects So you want to do a startup–the “B” projects So you’re a developer and want to do a start-up … Some observations on Startups / Angels Funded Comp... If you want to do a startup there are three things to consider for Intellectual Property: Patents Trademarks Servicemarks NOTE THE FOLLOWING IS NOT LEGAL ADVISE – ALWAYS CONSULT AN ATTORNEY Patent means that some is new (novel) in how you are doing things. This may be something that seems minor like “One-Click” (Amazon). You can apply for patent on almost anything, and the track record for th

No, you don’t go offshore or elsewhere – you employee-hunt on the Microsoft Alumni Network site or the equivalent Linked In list or the official list .   Let me tell you a common tale…  Not too long ago, you could walk down corridors at Microsoft and count “1 little, 2 little, 3 little developers, 4 little, 5 little, 6 little options holders, 7 – another millionaire”. Yes, 14+% were millionaires. With Microsoft Stock often doubling every year, it was not uncommon for a good developer to have $2,000,000 of stock options by year 5 or 6. Life expectancy as an employee  was often 6-7 years.   Let us consider, a MSFTee retiring with 3 million in stock. In those days, a 10% return was not unusual… that’s $300,000 a year. They locate anywhere in the world they want – some folks that I worked with ended up with a big ranch in Montana, another moved to Colorado, etc. They are down to $2.4 million sitting is sweet stock after dropping bucks on a nice home and some time-off travel.

Recently on several LinkedIn groups there have been much discussion on the professionalism of the software industry.  The analogy that seems to work is that of regular building construction. The term “construction worker” and “software development engineer”  appears to be equivalent for the lack of meaningful information. First item is the “development” in the phrase. Many SDE’s have never done any development (build new houses), instead, their work life is maintenance(fixing bugs) or renovations (adding new features).   A construction worker could mean: A journeyman brick layer A journeyman stone mason A brick layer trainee that still needs to be supervised for mixing brick mortar A licensed electrician A draftsman creating building plans An architect designing the building. Titles in the software industry (and the associated job description generated by HR from the title) are equally unclear and contributes significantly to the high rate of software

The family chiropractor wanted to have a PPT embedded in her web site that’s running on LiveOffice. LiveOffice is a “sandbox” hosting services that denies code level access so it’s small business user friendly. While I could upload the PPT and link to it, I could not cause it to be embedded in a web page through the ordinary means.   The solution was to export it as image slides and then create a basic slide show.  No major rocket science, but beyond the typical business user comfort level.   You may see the result at:  Pro Health Chiropractic . Microsoft code has a minor defect with the slide show, if you have a slow connection then the first image may not be found on the first load of the page.   Sorry for not doing posts lately, but I’ve been working in an IP area and thus very restricted on what I may post about   How to do it in detail 1. You can upload a Powerpoint (to allow it to be downloaded), but the limited features prevent it being an embedded presentation