For several decades after the invention of the computer, the dominant constraint was processor cost. While mainframes had, in relative terms, impressive storage and local I/O capacity, they were primarily designed to do useful work on every clock cycle...

Scott Holden mentioned that I didn't reference the Microsoft® XNA Framework® in my previous posts crawl this one too , thus missing out on the search engine action. Actually it was a secret test to gauge the degree to which search algorithms can infer...

I have a theory that everyone gets into software to write video games or build robots. Many discover that it's hard, they don't "got it", most of the paying jobs are for accounts payable systems and that rent costs money. I have another theory that photographers...

In the late 90s, I worked on the IrDA infrared connectivity technology. My team built the protocol stacks that shipped with Windows CE and Windows 2000 and descendents, and I was an advocate of the technology within Microsoft. IrDA is a success. It...

I recently watched, for about the 10th time, the movie True Stories . And, for about the 10th time, I started telling anyone around me who would listen about this great movie. I find it fascinating that different folks see different themes in the same...

My job: blogging. These folks: real work (ie setup, versioning, JIT, GC, loader, reflection, debugging, type system, interop, BCL, globalization, Windows Forms, DirectX, networking, crypto, ADO.NET, XML, etc). Mike. This posting is provided...

The .NET Compact Framework Quality Assurance Team signed off on V2 yesterday. We've been working on this for a long time and I'm excited to get this thing shipped. Soon. I'd like to share some insight into what we've been doing for the last 3 years...

I'd like to share some thoughts on integrating WPF/e, announced at the PDC, and the .NET Compact Framework. WPF/e is a C++, cross platform implementation of a subset of WPF (Avalon). It will be able to execute XAML, in addition to exposing dual mode...

I'm pretty excited to try out my new toy, the Zintel-O-Tron 6 Channel Combination Model Rocket and Fireworks Ignition System . I built this thing on the weekend from parts I bought at the local Radio Shack. At least I was excited, until Mark Prentice...

I've been on vacation. If you're very lucky, you know a place that feels like it's the calm in the center of the universe. For me, Little River Lake , in White Rock , Nova Scotia is just such a place. We've spent time there every summer for about 20...

I recently had the unenviable task of giving a presentation to the toughest of all audiences, Microsoft developers. These are folks who, during the agenda slide, generally ask questions about why the framework is so slow, big, ugly, etc etc. I typically...

www.finalizer.net Mike. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

I'm a bit slower on my MEDC blog than my peers. I'm still using my trusty Nikon F3 while my peers have moved on to some newfangled thing called the "digital camera". I had to wait for a week for the film to come back before I could spend 3 evenings scanning...

Daniel Moth sent me a note telling me that he would be at MEDC (great news), and that he was looking forward to my "talk". I want to set expectations here. I'm on a panel. I'm taking my cue from Jonny Moseley on Warren Miller's Fifty , when he introduces...

"How fast is the .NET Compact Framework?" I have only recently organized enough thoughts and words to be able to answer this question with something more useful than "it depends". The .NET Compact Framework, in the vast majority of cases, is fast...

Thanks for the feedback to my request for V3 guidance. A few thoughts: Hosting The idea that you could add managed extensibility to a native application always seemed cool to me. We were actually building hosting into V2. The plan was that the COM...

After the holiday break things got really busy around here, and again I feel like a human interrupt service routine. I don't have time to read everything I need to, let alone write. I apologize for dropping off, and thanks for the feedback on my previous...

Growing up in Canada made me aware of the importance of bilingualism. Indeed, I can speak both 'C' and C#, although my native tongue is ‘C’, and C++/COM still seem to me like slightly odd dialects. When I started on the .NET Compact Framework project...

Piccolo. http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/piccolo Mike. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

A long time ago, my frustrated artist friends fellow camera store employees would run a "bad camera day". We would each take one of the cheapest cameras in the store and then have a contest to see who could take the best photos. I recently got a new...

This is a work in progress on a paper that I am writing to help folks understand the internals of Windows CE and the .Net Compact Framework Memory Management. The final paper will be published on MSDN. Introduction One of the things that developers struggle...

One of my tasks these days is to browse the web conduct research to understand how people are using the .Net Compact Framework so we can evolve the product in useful ways. I was especially happy to stumble on a talk I gave at TechEd 02 that is now part...

My friend and Microsoft colleague Bruce Johnson has been telling me that I should start a blog. I explained to him that that the hierarchical threaded organization of newsgroups is more structured than searching freeform text, and that blogs were going...