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April 2006 - Posts

$250,000 VW Bug with Jet Engine

Posted Sunday, April 30, 2006 9:15 AM by johnmont
Not street legal, unfortunately. Read More...
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Do Kids Still Program?

Posted Saturday, April 29, 2006 10:33 AM by johnmont
A long thread on /. . Read More...
0 Comments

"I see spastic animated gifs as the standard medium for illustrating stories in the future"

Posted Friday, April 28, 2006 2:02 PM by johnmont
Quote of the day : I see spastic animated gifs as the standard medium for illustrating stories in the future. I believe that one day everything from children's stories to the Bible will be made whole by a seizure inducing barrage of poorly animated gifs. Read More...
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Anthony Hopkins Strange Coincidence

Posted Friday, April 28, 2006 8:48 AM by johnmont
Freaky, from 2Spare : "The British actor Anthony Hopkins [who shot to fame as Hannibal Lecter] was delighted to hear that he had landed a leading role in a film based on the book The Girl From Petrovka by George Feifer. A few days after signing the contract, Read More...
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The Truth About 1080p

Posted Thursday, April 27, 2006 9:45 AM by johnmont
With all the hullabaloo about HD-DVD standards, we've missed a conversation about one of those " improvements " that people are trying to sell us. Read More...
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Is Enormous Larger than Huge?

Posted Thursday, April 27, 2006 8:07 AM by johnmont
Go into Outlook 2003 and sort by size. Look at the sizes: Tiny, Small, Medium, Large, Very Large, Huge, and Enormous. At what point did enormous become larger than huge? Why not Gigantic? Ginormous? Probably either decided by one bored dev with a deadline Read More...
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"VB Developers Don't Make Me Buy $800 Aeron Chairs"

Posted Thursday, April 27, 2006 5:46 AM by johnmont
A quote I remember from about 6 years ago -- the CEO of CafePress, if I remember right, on one of the reasons he was at the time switching from Java to VB on .NET. I don't know why I remembered it just now. Read More...
2 Comments
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TryRuby for BASIC: I Want One

Posted Wednesday, April 26, 2006 10:01 AM by johnmont
Have you seen Try Ruby ? I want one for BASIC. And maybe for JScript. Except I want the interpreter to be in the browser, not on a server. Read More...
4 Comments

One Billion Words

Posted Wednesday, April 26, 2006 9:22 AM by johnmont
Cool . And that's only the documented ones. Read More...
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Software Enthusiast Scenario Fake Demo Script

Posted Wednesday, April 26, 2006 8:20 AM by johnmont
As a way to get my head around the whole scenario, I wrote up the entire scenario as a kind of very high-level demo script and tied each action back to an experience in a value proposition. How much of this gets into the product is a matter of costing, Read More...
3 Comments
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Neither Mort Nor Elvis

Posted Tuesday, April 25, 2006 5:20 PM by johnmont
In a post about the role of the personas that for several years have defined developer division's thinking about the VB user (Mort), the C# user (Elvis), and the C++ user (Einstein), Scott Bellware says: Microsoft will probably remain bogged down in embarrassing Read More...
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bbSpot's Top 11 Ways to Celebrate Reaching Level 60

Posted Tuesday, April 25, 2006 9:58 AM by johnmont
One of my favorite satire sites is bbSpot . It's cool that the site creator managed to quite his day job to run this site and evidently makes enough off advertising to feed his family. In any event, I'm hooked, and his Top Eleven lists (" This One Goes Read More...
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The Orcas Software Enthusiast Scenario Personas

Posted Tuesday, April 25, 2006 8:37 AM by johnmont
The scenario I’m working on is for the “software enthusiast” – think of this person as the person who isn’t a professional programmer but really enjoys coding for recreation. To make this scenario hold together, I needed to invent a couple of placeholder Read More...
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Will Apple Accept Ads in iTunes?

Posted Monday, April 24, 2006 9:03 PM by johnmont
Hmm . Maybe advertising in desktop software isn't so far fetched. Read More...
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Awkward Game Quotes

Posted Monday, April 24, 2006 9:52 AM by johnmont
A long time ago, I worked at Imagine Publishing in Brisbane California. It's gone through several transformations, but some of the good things it did included launching the Imagine Games Network, or IGN. The fondest memories I have of working there all Read More...
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Scenario-Based Planning

Posted Monday, April 24, 2006 8:35 AM by johnmont
As you may or may not know, for Visual Studio "Orcas" planning we’re using a new process based on the concepts of scenarios, value propositions, experiences, and tasks. This system relies on the idea of a scenario – think of them as a very long, end-to-end Read More...
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A Traditional Way to Learn to Program

Posted Monday, April 24, 2006 7:13 AM by johnmont
Allen Downey has created a good traditional book for how to learn to program. What are the good non-traditional ways? Read More...
3 Comments

How MySpace Is Destroying Language

Posted Sunday, April 23, 2006 10:56 AM by johnmont
After my previous posts on language where several commenters pointed out that language is an evolving thing and that I don't get it and I retorted that it's my blog and I'll be a curmudgeon if I want to (Ed Note: not exactly an intellectual conversation), Read More...
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7:04PM PST Friday: Hit ZEB

Posted Friday, April 21, 2006 7:04 PM by johnmont
The definition . Read More...
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A History of Computers in Print Advertising

Posted Friday, April 21, 2006 7:32 AM by johnmont
Points for every one of these computers you've worked on. Bonus points if you can name every foodstuff in this one . Read More...
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Can Advertising in Windows Client Software Work?

Posted Thursday, April 20, 2006 8:19 AM by johnmont
MSN Messenger does it. Quicken does it. There’s a fair amount of Windows client software that has advertising – the same kind of banner ads present on most Web sites. But there are challenges to ad-powered client software, ranging from technical (how Read More...
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Visual Studio Express is Free

Posted Wednesday, April 19, 2006 10:14 AM by johnmont
Up until today, all of the Express products (VB Express, VC# Express, VC++ Express, VJ# Express, and VWD) were not free -- I believe they had a value of $49 associated with them. We were doing a promotional discount to "free" but the jury was out on how Read More...
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Thinkweek Paper Done and Submitted

Posted Wednesday, April 19, 2006 9:56 AM by johnmont
Thanks to Kunal Mukerjee (my coauthor and the guy who wrote the entire first draft), our Thinkweek paper is done and submitted to the internal site. What's interesting about this year is that it's not just a couple of BillG's technical assistants making Read More...
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Entrancing: Der Lauf Der Dinge (Run of Things)

Posted Wednesday, April 19, 2006 9:40 AM by johnmont
This video on Google makes the " Cog " commercial from Honda seem like a minor hat trick. Read More...
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Hosted Software Development Tools

Posted Wednesday, April 19, 2006 8:44 AM by johnmont
When I first thought about Tuscany, this was the first thing that sprang to mind: Hosted Team Foundation Server (TFS). I sensed that developers in small organizations want to have private access to TFS features such as check-in/check-out, defect tracking, Read More...
8 Comments
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Top 11 Self-Help Books in Middle Earth

Posted Tuesday, April 18, 2006 9:16 AM by johnmont
You know one of them fits you. Read More...
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Think Week for a Developer Marketplace

Posted Tuesday, April 18, 2006 8:36 AM by johnmont
I was lured. Each year, Bill Gates retires with a stack of “ think week ” papers to get a sense of what some new ideas might be. This year, I was lured into working on one by one of my coworkers who’d heard about the Tuscany ideas and thought there was Read More...
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The "Doh!" Moment

Posted Monday, April 17, 2006 9:30 AM by johnmont
Have you ever worked on a problem and kept working on it and working on it until you knew you'd created a solution to the problem that was completely defensible and utterly wrong? Don't worry, it happens to a lot of smart people. You think and think and Read More...
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Sometimes Life is Embarrassing

Posted Monday, April 17, 2006 8:26 AM by johnmont
It's especially embarrassing when your frustration overflows and you let others know what you really think. Just check out this MSN Search for StupidIEMarginHack . I mean 1,500 answers? (Amusingly, it's 27,000 records found on Google.) Read More...
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Fascinating: Map of Religion in the US

Posted Sunday, April 16, 2006 9:14 AM by johnmont
This is just interesting . Read More...
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Titanic 2

Posted Saturday, April 15, 2006 9:11 AM by johnmont
If you haven't already seen it , you should. Not the funniest trailer-recut I've seen, but there's something there for everyone. Read More...
26 Comments
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Coming Out of the Woodwork

Posted Friday, April 14, 2006 1:34 PM by johnmont
What is it about Microsoft employees – particularly employees in developer division – and woodworking? Tony Romano, Jason Zander , Chris Anderson , Erick Ellis, Eric Gunnerson , and me. Read More...
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What Law Enforcement Has Been Doing Wrong...

Posted Friday, April 14, 2006 8:29 AM by johnmont
From the AP : "Satellite tracking, helicopter surveillance and dart guns failed. In the end, it was a ham dinner and a remote-controlled net that brought a golden retriever named Sam in from the cold after two years on the run." I'm quite convinced this Read More...
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Dynamic Languages for Tots

Posted Thursday, April 13, 2006 10:02 AM by johnmont
Dynamic languages (see Wikipedia if you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade or so) such as Python offer some substantial advantages over static languages such as C. I’m not going to belabor the pros and cons – folks like Jon Udell have done Read More...
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Amuse Yourself...

Posted Thursday, April 13, 2006 8:35 AM by johnmont
...during a meeting today by practicing on your coworkers . Read More...
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Got Questions?

Posted Thursday, April 13, 2006 8:26 AM by johnmont
If you haven't spent the time already, go visit " Ask a Ninja ." I think "What is the ideal gift for a ninja" may be my favorite. Read More...
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More Words

Posted Wednesday, April 12, 2006 9:23 AM by johnmont
Why don't comb, tomb, and bomb rhyme? Why do they, say, and weigh rhyme? Why is rhyme not spelled "rime" as it was in the past? Become a member of the Simplified Spelling Society and fight these injustices (even if their site is running on PHP instead Read More...
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The Evolving Cult of Personality

Posted Wednesday, April 12, 2006 8:31 AM by johnmont
When I first started covering Microsoft for the trade press (Corporate Computing, then PC/Computing, then BYTE), they didn’t have a lot of standout personalities other than Bill and Steve. Borland had David I. Sun had Bill and James. Oracle had Larry, Read More...
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VB Developers Aren’t As Dumb As You Think

Posted Tuesday, April 11, 2006 9:28 AM by johnmont
The other day I got into an argument with someone about programming languages and their users. I don’t know why – it’s one of those conversation topics like religion or politics or the Yankees that will only end badly for all involved. I guess I was in Read More...
29 Comments
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"Heighth" Is Not a Word

Posted Monday, April 10, 2006 1:16 PM by johnmont
Another word I’ve grown to dislike: heighth. More accurately, it’s a non-standard pronunciation of “height” designed to make it vaguely rhyme with width and breadth. After all, shouldn’t the vertical equivalent to these also end with the “th” sound? As Read More...
7 Comments
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Asphalt and the Long Tail

Posted Monday, April 10, 2006 7:22 AM by johnmont
The other day I got a letter from a frustrated customer – an actual, physical letter written on paper with stamps and everything. The customer was upset about a host of things – all of them very legitimate and things I’d heard before. I didn’t have good Read More...
1 Comments

What Really Matters for Express

Posted Friday, April 07, 2006 1:20 PM by johnmont
One of the things I own is the “Software Enthusiast” scenario for Orcas as well as a bit of work around the Express products (VB Express, C# Express, etc.). Each language team and the Visual Web Developer is still responsible for their Express product Read More...
27 Comments
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Explain Inheritance to an Eight-Year-Old

Posted Friday, April 07, 2006 12:45 PM by johnmont
One of the charters of my team is to try to make the process of learning to program more fun. There are a lot of things we can, should, and will do here. One thing that has stood out for me is how many people have told me they don't understand object Read More...
22 Comments

So About This Ed Bott Character...

Posted Thursday, April 06, 2006 2:49 PM by johnmont
So Ed Bott was wondering why so many Microsoft people start their sentences with the word "so." "So" is a weird word. It tries to mean "apparently" and "greatly" and "thus" all at once. I actually had someone tell me that starting sentences with that Read More...
5 Comments
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The Non-Professional Team

Posted Thursday, April 06, 2006 8:02 AM by johnmont
I work on the non-professional team. No, this doesn’t mean that we come to work late, drink heavily on the job, and dress in fuzzy slippers and bathrobes (though there have been times…). This means that, unlike the bulk of the rest of the Visual Studio Read More...
6 Comments

Words

Posted Wednesday, April 05, 2006 9:44 PM by johnmont
Dare Obasanjo earlier posted on some of the words Microsoft has killed. These include: Passion, innovation, synergy, and agility. From what I’ve seen, these are words the industry, not just Microsoft, has collectively placed onto a pyre and watched burn Read More...
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And These Are the People We're to Trust

Posted Wednesday, April 05, 2006 5:33 PM by johnmont
Homeland Security aide suspended after sex sting . Read More...
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Teeth

Posted Wednesday, April 05, 2006 4:15 PM by johnmont
I have bad gums. I’ve had bad gums since I was a teenager. While everyone else was getting cavities, I was having periodontal surgery. I’d prefer to have cavities. If you’ve ever had gum surgery, I’m sure you’d agree. In my case, my DDS will remove a Read More...
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