Microsoft Scott Guthrie on Open Source

Herding Code 142 – Scott Guthrie on the ASP.NET MVC, Web API, and Razor Open Source Announcement:

A very nice talk with ScottGu, Microsoft VP in charge of Web tools, including Azure and ASP.NET.

An interesting point is that ASP.NET MVC and related tools are now hosted on on CodePlex by using Git, while Azure SDK is hosted on GitHub, that is also using Git. This means that all check-ins from Microsoft developers are immediately visible to the world. And when ScottGu explains it, it all very much makes sense!

By the way, (a third-party open source project) Json.NET is now also being included in Microsoft distribution (and I guess support), along with jQuery *, Modernizr, etc. James Newton-King, the person who created Json.NET is also interesting: the subtitle of his blog is "No pressure, no diamonds"

The cost of selling iPhone apps

iPhone App Downloads Fell 30 Percent in March | News & Opinion | PCMag.com:

"the cost of acquiring a loyal user, or one who opens an app three or more times in a month, fell slightly from $1.31 per user in February to $1.30 last month."

So, with Apple taking 30%, an app needs to cost at least $1.99 to cover marketing cost alone, or if it is free it needs to make at least that much from advertising per user! Does not appear to be sustainable, same as real-estate market or .com mania didn't during their bubbles.

Information Diet

Book: Information Diet | Home



Healthy information consumption habits are about more than productivity and efficiency. They're about your personal health, and the health of society. Just as junk food can lead to obesity, junk information can lead to new forms of ignorance. The Information Diet provides a framework for consuming information in a healthy way,

Podcast: Hanselminutes with Richard Campbell A premise of the book (by Richard's explanation) is that "follow the money" for news source indicates that since advertises are playing, focus is not on informing, but on keeping audience interested, to watch advertising... And the way to reduce cost is reduce expense on good journalism, just re-package information from common sources... Junk info...

The book starts with a quote from Steve Jobs:
"When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth."

0% Tax for Apple, and others

Apple’s Tax Strategy Aims at Low-Tax States and Nations - NYTimes.com:

"California’s corporate tax rate is 8.84 percent. Nevada’s? Zero.

Setting up an office in Reno is just one of many legal methods Apple uses to reduce its worldwide tax bill by billions of dollars each year."

In-Memory Databases

InfoQ: In-Memory Databases Reaching Tipping Point:

When Microsoft starts introducing elements of in-memory database technology to SQL Server 2012, even slow to adopt new tech enterprises may start using it...

In-Memory Databases are very near to becoming widely adopted, says David Campbell of Microsoft in his article “The coming in-memory database tipping point”. He also explains Microsoft’s strategy around this space.
...
Gartner has identified in-memory computing as one of the emerging trends in their research paper, “The Top 10 Technology Trends for 2012”. Other vendors too are already positioning themselves to cater to this market – SAP for instance with its’ HANA platform, and Oracle with it’s TimesTen product.

Enterprise Going Over New York City

25 Incredible Pictures Of The Space Shuttle Enterprise Going Over New York City

Microsoft Kinekt Free App for iPad

Kinect Star Wars for iPad for iPad on the iTunes App Store


Written in MonoTouch

3D Photo Tours on Google Maps

Jump into 3D Photo Tours on Google Maps - YouTube: ""
These tours are created by stitching together 3D experiences of user submitted photos from Panaramio and Picasa
http://maps.google.com/phototours

Raspberry Pi | An ARM GNU/Linux box for $25

Raspberry Pi | An ARM GNU/Linux box for $25. Take a byte!

The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video.

Overall real world performance is something like a 300MHz Pentium 2, only with much, much swankier graphics.

The Model A will cost $25 and the Model B $35, plus local taxes.

Podcast: Programming Your Home
@ Technometria, IT Conversations

Book: Programming Your Home Automate with Arduino, Android, and Your Computer @ PragProg

$399 unlocked Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ - Google Play

Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ - Google Play

Cloud sync storage face-off

Google Drive vs. Dropbox, SkyDrive, SugarSync, and others: a cloud sync storage face-off | The Verge



A detailed comparison of many (13) cloud storage tools...
If you use SkyDrive, make sure you log in NOW and keep your free 25 gigs! (Hanselman info)

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/AWorldOfPrettyCloudDriveIconsSkyDriveGoogleDriveDropboxBitBucketAndGitHub.aspx

Today Google Drive and Windows SkyDrive came out with clients for Windows and Mac. There's also SkyDrive apps for Windows Phone, iPhone, or iPad and OneNote apps that sync to SkyDrive for Windows Phone, Android,iPhone, or iPad.

"Automated, Not Autonomous" (self-driving vehicle)

Automated Volkswagen Passat with Continental Tech Clocks 6544 Miles Through Nevada - WOT on Motor Trend


Continental, the Hanover, Germany-based supplier of electrical technology and tires...

Volkswagen Passat test car has one long-range radar and it has four short-range radar sensors, two in front and two in the rear. Its stereo camera shoots details of the car’s immediate surroundings, telling the sensors to brake for traffic flow or to steer around a potential hazard, using the electronically controllable electric power steering and the brakes.

The company says its technology differs from the kind of technology used in autonomous car testing like Google’s, in that Continental built its car mostly with standard equipment.

($90 instead of $70 000)

Knowledge Management by Mind Mapping

Knowledge Management using NovaMind Mind Mapping Software - YouTube

novamind.com

Self-Transcendence @ TED.com

Jonathan Haidt: Religion, evolution, and the ecstasy of self-transcendence | Video on TED.com:

Quest to Mine Asteroids

James Cameron, Google Founder Back Space-Mining Venture - WSJ.com:

Google Cloud Print @ FedEx

From Your Computer to FedEx Via Google Cloud Print | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste: Scientific American

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste: Scientific American

"the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy."

Free Course ASP.NET MVC @ PluralSight

Great Free Course on Building ASP.NET MVC Apps With EF Code First, HTML5 and jQuery - ScottGu's Blog


"Pluralsight is offering a special promotion that allows you to get a free 1-month subscription to watch the above course as many time as you want at no cost.  There is no obligation to buy anything at the end of the offer and you don’t need to supply a credit card in order to take part in it."

Self-Driving Cadillac, BMW, Volvo, Volkswagen

GM Tests a Self-Driving Cadillac - Technology Review:


...The new technology is called “super cruise"...

Europe's Driverless Car (Driver Still Required)

Maps Data: Natural Earth

Natural Earth

"Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software."

HTML5 maps

Some Facts About the Space Shuttle

5 Horrifying Facts You Didn't Know About the Space Shuttle - Forbes (1/2)
(2/2)

out of five Shuttles–Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavor—two met a disastrous and fiery fate. That’s a 40% vehicular failure rate (updated) and a flight failure rate of 1.5%.
...
total program cost per flight of $1.3 billion (total 135 flights)
...
the Shuttle’s trip to the International Space Station (ISS) was only a 200-250 mile journey… approximately the distance between NYC and Boston. The Shuttle also flew to the Hubble Telescope, which is maintained at an altitude of 350 miles, a little less than the distance from NYC to Norfolk, VA.
...
the distance between the Earth to the Moon is 238,000 miles."
(about 1000 times more than Shuttle's flight)

Amazon: Jeff Bezos's Top 10 Leadership Lessons - Forbes

Jeff Bezos's Top 10 Leadership Lessons - Forbes

1. “Base your strategy on things that won’t change.”
   
2. “Obsess over customers.”
   
3. “We are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.”
   
4. “There are two kinds of companies: those that try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.”
   
5. “Determine what your customers need, and work backwards.”
   
6. “Our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove we’ll settle for intense.”
   
7. “If you want to be inventive, you have to be willing to fail.”
   
8. “In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to
9. “Everyone has to be able to work in a call center.”
   
10. “This is Day 1 for the Internet. We still have so much to learn.”
    

Space Shuttle @ YouTube

After three decades of space service, NASA's oldest and most traveled shuttle, Discovery, began its new life as a museum relic with one final takeoff. Discovery departed Florida's Kennedy Space Center at daybreak Tuesday aboard a modified jumbo jet bound for Washington, where it will become a Smithsonian exhibit

First flight	STS-41-D August 30, 1984 – September 5, 1984
Last flight	STS-133 February 24, 2011 – March 9, 2011
Number of missions	39
Crews	252[2]
Time spent in space	365 days, 22 hours, 39 minutes, 29 seconds
Distance travelled	148,221,675 mi (238,539,663 km)[3]
Satellites deployed	31 (including Hubble Space Telescope)
Mir dockings	1[3]
ISS dockings	13[3]

Dirty computing 'clouds'

Apple, Amazon clouds have been dirty, Greenpeace reports - The Washington Post:


Greenpeace says that “If the cloud were a country, it would have the fifth largest electricity demand in the world,” 
based on the fact that in 2007, the combined electricity demand of the cloud was approximately 623bn kWh. The cloud apparently beats out India, Germany, and Canada as far as energy demand goes.

PDF

More Online Education...

Coursera Plans to Announce University Partners for Online Classes - NYTimes.com:

$16M VC investment

Besides Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley, where the venture has already been offering courses, the university partners include the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton.

coursera.org

udacity.com

Oracle Cloud

Oracle Media Network:



Larry Ellison -- Oracle OpenWorld - 10-5-2011

Pebble Watch for iPhone and Android - Kickstarter

Pebble: E-Paper Watch for iPhone and Android by Pebble Technology — Kickstarter:
$115, battery life 7 days

Reuters: Internet smartwatch orders net $2 million for start-up

A Canadian entrepreneur's smartwatch, which works alongside a user's smartphone, has won $2 million worth of orders through an Internet-based funding venture that offers cash-starved companies a way to both test their ideas and raise funds.

Forbes.com: Pebble Watch for iPhone and Android, The Most Successful Kickstarter Project Ever

Competition: Sony SmartWatch for Android, $54 @ Amazon, battery life 1/2 day.

Google BBS

This Is What Google Would've Looked Like In The 1980s -- And It Actually WORKS - Business Insider

Google BBS Terminal


It even has sound of modem :)

Udacity @ WSJ.com

Start-Up Expands Free Course Offerings Online - WSJ.com


Udacity expects to offer its final exams
at 5,000 physical testing centers in 165 countries

Make it a GAME of learning!

Udacity-forums:
We are looking for feedback about next run of these courses - CS373:
Here is my answer:

Make it a GAME of learning!

The key for learning, and for everything else, is MOTIVATION (I think). Self-paced may work well for self-motivated.

There are 3 types of motivation:

1) FEAR is a good motivation for industrial work and old-style learning. Pay $8000 for a course, for many people that is enough to work enough to pass. Or fear to be worse that others. That is a "peer pressure" of the group, when everybody is on the same schedule.

2) GREED also works: to tell the world that you have a Stanford diploma, many people will do what it takes... AI-class had elements of that. It turned out to be a great class, but great reputation of teachers did help, in particular to get so many people to sign up. A group on same schedule could also motivate greed, to be better than others.

3) DRIVE or PASSION is an ultimate motivator, and hardest to get right. When you are good in something, you want to become even better. This is well described in book "Drive" by Daniel Pink (video)

(Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose)

Have to know the basics ("pass suck threshold"), and after this need to feel comfortable to quickly improve! That will very well understood and used by O'Reilly "Head First" books, and "Create Passionate Users" blog by Kathy Sierra. Highly recommended! Here is a summary on my blog

Programmers forums site StackOverflow.com is a hugely successful example of a self-motivated community, based on elements of GAME. I did closely follow their evolution (by podcast), and struggle. It is pure passion of Jeff Atwood (blog Coding Horror) that made the details make the diffidence. And imitation didn't work! They have attempted to make many more similar sites, didn't come not even close.

So, here are some of my suggestions:

• create BADGES, make effort count, make speed count, make results count.
• create LEVELS, make the learner/player "earn" the next level.
• make PUZZLES, program generated, and different for everybody (no cheating)
• make it a COMPETITION: you can compete with others on self-pace marathon.
• where applicable, make teamwork count in solving challenges

Obviously nothing of this is easy, and it is not completely new. There are education/forum sites that work well. edu20.org is a great example for K12 level, created by Graham Glass, another passionate programmer I had a privilege to meet. He made learning a game that works well for kids and schools.

Sebastian and his team are great, and udacity classes are so far really good. That could be an excellent base for another "quantum leap" in the game of learning.

Dragan Sretenovic

Nathan Whitehead @ YouTube

NathanWhitehead - YouTube:

PL101: Create your own programming language @ nathansuniversity

Learning Advanced JavaScript

Learning Advanced JavaScript

A tutorial that contains code and discussion from the upcoming book
Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja by John Resig, creator of jQuery.

Microsoft Promoting Azure "30 to Launch"

30 to Launch - Windows Azure Home


"Your App. Our Cloud. One Journey.Starting April 23rd, 30 to Launch is taking your app to the cloud. If your business builds apps, Windows Azure can supercharge it! Join 30 to Launch as we bring technical expertise, business insights, and one-on-one support to help take your app to the cloud. You also will get the chance to win some cool prizes – including the opportunity to win $4,000 (USD)*"

Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming

Another JavaScript book...
What makes it different is interactive examples...
No other language (except CoffeeScript) can offer such feature
without a back-end server running interpreter or compiler...

Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming


5+ years ago, after reading excellent book Ajax in Action
I have observed potential of JavaScript well beyond simple scripting...
Strange as it may be, that future is coming, along with HTML5...

2013 Nissan Altima

Most fuel efficient mid-size sedan, 27/38 mpg

2013 Nissan Altima Video, First Look: 2012 NY Auto Show | AutoGuide.com News:



For a long while, rumors had been circulating about a turbocharged inline four-cylinder engine for the Altima, and while that hasn't been 100 percent ruled out, Nissan spokespeople tell us there are absolutely no plans to introduce one at this time. Simply put, the 3.5-liter V6 accounts for a large enough amount of Altima sales that Nissan didn't want to stop offering it. That, and Nissan says their V6-equipped Altima is actually lighter than its turbo-four-powered competitors, namely the Hyundai Sonata and Kia Optima.

Object-Oriented JavaScript

Advanced Web Applications With Object-Oriented JavaScript @ MSDN

In JavaScript, objects are just collections of name/value pairs
—think of a JavaScript object as a dictionary with string keys

var userObject = new Object();
userObject.lastLoginTime = new Date();
alert(userObject.lastLoginTime);

does exactly the same thing as this:

var userObject = {}; // equivalent to new Object()
userObject["lastLoginTime"] = new Date();
alert(userObject["lastLoginTime"]);

We can also define the lastLoginTime property directly within userObject’s definition like this:

var userObject = { "lastLoginTime": new Date() };
alert(userObject.lastLoginTime);

SQL Server 2012 is Generally Available

SQL Server 2012 is Generally Available! - SQL Server Team Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs


Editions, Download

Express Edition (DB size limit 10 GB)

node.js + IIS on Windows

Here is a brief summary why Microsoft supports node.js (and PHP, and Hadoop, etc)

Installing and Running node.js applications within IIS on Windows - Are you mad? - Scott Hanselman

" The IIS folks, the Windows folks, the Azure folks, want to make sure everything runs well on Windows. Remember, we sell Windows, so it's good if it does many things well. ;)"

Makes sense. node.js currently resembles early days of Ruby-on-Rails,
and many of web frameworks used today are influenced by "opinionated" nature of Rails.

How about performance?

ScottH Hello World test:

node: 10,000 hello worlds a second and ended up with just under a million normal requests and responses in 90 seconds

ASP.NET: IHttpHandler doing the exact same thing on this same machine gets 22,500 requests a second, so node and iisnode has some room to improve...

For complete comparison memory and CPU usage would also need to be considered...

The Node Beginner Book » A comprehensive Node.js tutorial

The Node Beginner Book » A comprehensive Node.js tutorial


An excellent starter book for node.js,
available free on web, or together with another node.js e-book for $7.99.
Educational, not only about node.js but about functional and async programming.

Here is a "Hello, World" web server in node.js

var http = require("http");
http.createServer(function(request, response) {
  response.writeHead(200, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"});
  response.write("Hello World");
  response.end();
}).listen(8888);

That's all!
To run it:

node server.js

The whole experience for installing and running node.js on Windows is great.
One click installer, and then just run a single 4.5 MB file (from command line).
It is a long way from a year ago (previous post video),
when installing node.js required compiling the C/C++ source...

It is not surprising that node.js is super popular
JavaScript functions make code very compact and simple,
for those comfortable with code, not just drag/drop controls...
It is apparently very efficient, too.
So much so that it is also embedded into WebOS...

Node.js @ Windows Azure

Node.js - Develop


Microsoft is actively helping node.js project to support Windows
as "first class supported platform", and offering node.js as one of platforms on Azure.

Getting started...

This presentation @ InfoQ ("Operating Node.js in Production")
by VP of engineering at Joyent company that "owns" node.js,
the claim is that great support for node.js can only be on SmartOS, the OS that the same company owns, since good debugging tools for node.js are only available at SmartOS...

Introduction to Node.js with Ryan Dahl @ YouTube

InfoQ Wisdom: The Sequential "Prison"

A very interesting historical perceptive on design of programs and computers,
and some insightful suggestions how how to better design for parallelism,
both hardware and software.

Design of today's computers is still based on constraints of vacuum tubes.
And there are some better ways to utilize transistors as they are available now...

Also, "the language matters". We can think about things that we can describe.
Need right vocabulary / words to match the situation...

InfoQ: The Sequential Prison:

"Ivan Sutherland elaborates on the idea of a “prison” 
defined by sequential computers that work 
with sequential character strings making communication 
expensive and obstructing concurrency. "

Java Cloud PaaS Comparison @ InfoQ

InfoQ: Java in the Cloud - PaaS Platform in Comparison:

"Eberhard Wolff introduces Cloud Computing, IaaS/PaaS, comparing the Java support provided by Google GAE, Amazon Beanstalk, VMware Cloud Foundry, and Cloud Bees."


A systematic overview or IaaS, PaaS (no SaaS) options for Java...

Java @ Azure was not mentioned, since maybe it was not available at that time.
Java is now one of the options available @ Windows Azure...

Windows Project Glass: One day too... - YouTube

Windows Project Glass: One day too... - YouTube: ""

Apache Hadoop for Windows Azure

Apache Hadoop for Windows Azure - Welcome


Developer Preview by invitation

podcast @ DotNetRocks

http://hadoop.apache.org/

Angry Birds: success on 52nd attempt

The Dirty Little Secret Of Overnight Successes | Fast Company
"Angry Birds, the incredibly popular game, was software maker Rovio’s 52nd attempt. They spent eight years and nearly went bankrupt before finally creating their massive hit.
...
The ubiquitous WD-40 lubricant got its name because the first 39 experiments failed.
WD-40 literally stands for “Water Displacement--40th Attempt.”

In depth: How Rovio made Angry Birds a winner (and what's next) @ Wired

Google Project Glass

Google Begins Testing Its Augmented-Reality Glasses - NYTimes.com

IBM developerWorks: Cloud, IaaS, PaaS, Saas

IBM developerWorks : Technical library

Erlang reliable 99.9999999% (9 nines)

How reliable is nine "9"s of Erlang?
That is 3 seconds downtime in 100 years!

It is not surprising that

Facebook is using Erlang for messaging service (845 million active users)

GitHub back-end is running on Erlang

Amazon is using Erlang for various tools, inlcuding SimpleDB

CouchDB is written in Erlang

T-mobile is using it

Riak NoSQL is on Erlang

What's all this fuss about Erlang?
- The Pragmatic Bookshelf (by Erlang creator)

podcast about Erlang @ DotNetRocks

Introduction to programming in Erlang (1), (2)

Erlang is a "pure" functional language, where only way to share data is by sending messages,
objects are immutable, and processes are very cheap / small: 1 KB size!
By contrast, Windows thread (part of a process) takes 1 MB of memory,
and data sharing requires extensive locking...

Syntax of Erlang is based on Prolog language, very different from C-based languages.
And very compact. Since 'variables' can not be changed, every assignment is by value (copy)
and this comes with some performance cost. On the other side, system is asynchronous,
so overall performance of the system is apparently good.

To optimize performance, parts of CouchDB are now being re-written from Erlang in C/C++.
Apparently even Ericson attempted similar when a major Erlang project was released,
and they soon gave up, realizing that with C/C++ could not get required reliability...

Erlang can be used on Linux/Unix, Mac and Windows.
Windows install is simple, one click.
Interactive environment is "unix-style", so on Windows it requires some adjustment.
Here is a useful Erlang/Windows info @ StackOverflow.

cd("c:/Users/myname/Desktop").

(Yes, you have to use forward slashes. Backslashes are special in Erlang strings.)

---

Apparently Amazon AWS SimpleDB is build on Erlang.

Maybe Microsoft can consider Erlang for some critical Azure services?

Recent long Azure downtime (16 hours) caused by "leap year" security bug
maybe could not be avoided in any language, unless there was a test case for it...
On the other side, such extra security feature + cascading effects should not be part of core platform... To make thing more troubling, Amazon had similar issue about a year ago,
cascading downtime that lasted for a few days.
In both cases damage was done by auto-recovery features, that cascaded.
This starts to resemble HAL 9000 from Space Odyssey 2001
Programs blindly following instructions... Time for more "systems design".

Amazon: SOA by CEO

Antonio's technology blog:

Years ago, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos decided that Service Oriented Architecture
will be good for Amazon. In the retrospect, he was absolutely right.
The legend says that his pragmatic solution was to send this email to all employees:

1. “All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service interfaces
   
2. Teams must communicate with each other through these interfaces
   
3. There will be no other form of interprocess communication allowed: no direct linking, no direct reads of another team's data store, no shared-memory model, no back-doors whatsoever. The only communication allowed is via service interface calls over the network
   
4. It doesn't matter what [API protocol] technology you use.
   
5. Service interfaces, without exception, must be designed from the ground up to be externalizable.
   
6. That is to say, the team must plan and design to be able to expose the interface to developers in the outside world. No exceptions.
   
7. Anyone who doesn't do this will be fired.
   
8. Thank you; have a nice day!”
   

The story was also presented on SaaS class @ Coursera. There is also a related e-book. The story originated from Steve Yegge, a very opinionated and smart person who used to work in Amazon, and now it works in Google. Recently he criticized Google for not providing APIs for Google+...

PL101, JavaScript interactive tutorial: What's a Closure?

What's a Closure?


Excellent series of interactive lessons to learn some of JavaScript concepts.

The author, Nathan Whitehead, offers a complete online class "nathansuniversity"
"PL101: Create your own programming language"

I guess it may end up making CoffeeScript or similar...

The site looks professional and interesting,
but there is no much of background info about the author/instructor...
He says to have PhD in CS, and works for Nvidia...

So it is not Stanford or MIT, or a famous person...
just useful and free content...
A brave new world of online education!

JavaScript review

Tour of Languages

Music in JavaScript

SQL Server 2012 Express "Local" Database

SQL Server 2012 Express Edition introduces a new deployment option called Local Database Runtime. LocalDb is a small shared component (not a service) that installs in five minutes or less that is ideal for applications or tools that need an embedded database that is API compatible with SQL Server.

Presentation: Introducing SQL Server 2012 Express Local Database Runtime | Channel 9:

Elements of Modern C++ Style - Herb Sutter

Herb Sutter is one of main C++ people in Microsoft, and in C++ standardization.
He wrote a brief document describing new features of C++11 language
(that used to be called C++0x). The language is now available in VS11 Beta,
and can be used for developing Windows 8 (and other) apps...

Elements of Modern C++ Style « Sutter’s Mill

“C++11 feels like a new language.” – Bjarne Stroustrup"

The C++11 standard offers many useful new features. This page focuses specifically and only on those features that make C++11 really feel like a new language compared to C++98

Here’s one quick example: Find the first element in v that’s >x and <y. In C+11, the simplest and cleanest code is to use a standard algorithm.

// C++98: write a naked loop (using std::find_if is impractically difficult)
vector::iterator i = v.begin(); // because we need to use i later
for( ; i != v.end(); ++i ) {
    if( *i > x && *i < y ) break;
}
 
// C++11: use std::find_if
auto i = find_if( begin(v), end(v), [=](int i) { return i > x && i < y; } );

The key (and not new) observation in the interview, is that .NET is good for developers productivity,
and C++ is good for getting efficient programs.
What is new is that modernized C++ could also make developers productive,
like C# and similar languages...
It may be time to learn (another) new language: C++11.

C++ @ MSDN

Google self-driving cars for NASCAR

Official Google Blog


"...We think the most important thing computers can do in the next decade is to drive cars..."
- Sergey Brin, Co-founder
...
Google Racing will mark another step along this path,
...
Update Apr 1, 10:05 a.m.: As you probably guessed—no, Google Racing isn’t real.
We were really happy to work with NASCAR on this April Fools' joke.

Computer: a bicycle for our minds

A story by Steve Jobs:Thank You, Steve - CrumplePop Blog
“I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list. It was not too proud of a showing for the crown of creation. So that didn’t look so good, but then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And a man on a bicycle, or a human on a bicycle, blew the condor away – completely off the top of the charts. And that’s what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is – it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”
– Steve Jobs



Longer interview in Forbes
(answer to What drives Steve Jobs? Cringley: What’s your passion? What drove you?)

Scientific paper: Locomotion: Energy Cost of Swimming, Flying, and Running

Windows 8 runs on netbooks

Windows 8 Consumer Preview runs well on netbooks (mostly) - Liliputing


Compared to Windows 7, new Windows is visibly faster on slow computers.
There is one issue that is a "show-stopper": Metro style requires min 1024x768 screen resolution,
and many of netbooks have less than that (600 or 720 vertical resolution was typical).
Here is lengthy explanation for this limit by Microsoft Windows Boss Steven Sinofsky. He seems to be quite 'technical' and cares about the product...


Anyway, there is also a "hask" to solve this resolution issue:
Intel graphics driver has option to enable higher resolution than physical,
and after this Windows 8 is happy to show Metro style apps...
(Note: make sure to manually update the driver, since installer will declare OS 'not supported')

Still, compared to tablets, such as iPad, TouchPad and Androids,
Windows 8 is just not the same experience...
it takes time to start, apps are not as prompt...
So, Windows 8 is better than Windows 7 for desktop,
and have yet to see how "pure" Metro works on ARM devices...