Watcher of the skies

Collaboration in Vista

Check out this interview on Channel 9 that covers the new Collaboration Technologies in Vista. Really cool stuff.

C

A Casual Conversation with Bill Gates

I recently interviewed Bill Gates on Channel 9. He talks openly about IE, the future of software, and even where he surfs on the web! It was an honor to meet him. He's a really down to earth person and very nice. You'd never guess he's worth 48 billion dollars. Enjoy!

Deep Vista Audio Stack and API video interview

I recently caught up with seasoned Niner (Channel 9 member), Larry Osterman, an SDE and 20 year Microsoft veteran, and Elliot H Omiya, a Software Architect and audio guru, to dig into the innerworkings of Vista's updated Audio Stack and new user mode API in the latest installment of the Going Deep series on Channel 9. Much of the guts of Windows audio have been moved up into the land of the user and this has consequences for both Windows audio developers at the API level and for Windows at the general programmability, reliability and stability levels.

Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR)

We just released a great video interview on Channel 9 that should be of tremendous interest to those of you who write managed threaded code: The Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR) is a lightweight port-based concurrency library for C# 2.0 developed by George Chrysanthakopoulos in the Advanced Strategies group at Microsoft. Here, we have a deep discussion about CCR with George, a Software Architect, and Satnam Singh, Architect. You can get more info about CCR on the CCR Wiki. This is super cool stuff and represents a really innovative approach to making managed threaded programming more readily understandable and predictable.

Please check out the OOPSLA/SCOOL paper on the CCR.

Enjoy!

C

Singularity Revisited

Recently, I had a discussion with four of the reseachers behind MSR's Singularity, a research kernel written predominately in safe managed code (where possible...) that represents a highly innovative approach to Reliability and Security in operating systems. For example, the notion of shared memory does not exist in Singularity, nor does the ability to inject code into a running process. The notion of Channels as means for messaging is also highly interesting. I will head over to MSR again in about 6 months to check in on the status of Singularity. It will be interesting to see if there's anything besides a DOS-like shell to look at (not that I'm expecting there to be a UI or anything, but what about an application or two, each running in a SIP and communicating via Channels?). Stay tuned. They are doing some amazing stuff over there...

It will be really fascinating to see how Singularity evolves over time and we hope to be able to document it in a user-friendly way on Channel 9.

Coming soon to C9 is a chat Scoble and I had with a few of the folks from the Windows Kernel Architecture team. We discuss the future of Windows and an interesting future she has... Great stuff.

C

Channel 9 Shows

We just released a new "feature" on Channel 9: Shows. The Show concept is a way to categorize tightly-bound video interviews, podcasts, etc by creating a "content encapsulation structure" that contains Episodes. You know, the same thing they do on commercial TV. So far, we have Videos and Podcasts as show mediums, with 3 Shows, one episode each:

Going Deep: Singularity Revisited

WM_IN: Angela Mills: From UDDI to Indigo

ArcTalk: DSL and Software Factories

The number of episodes for Going Deep and WM_IN will increase tomorrow. More Shows are on the horizon.

One of the cool things about Shows is the Showroom: You don't have to leave where you are to watch all the episodes of a Show. Oh yeah, another use of that cutting edge, five-year old technology they're calling AJAX... I won't start ranting here.

What kind of Show would you like to see?

C

Life: Beyond Carbon and Water

We generally make the assumption that carbon and water are fundamental ingredients required for the advent of living systems in the universe. Given that all the data we have to work with is based on the behavior of biologic systems operating on the surface of a single planet, this conclusion, from a purely scientific perspective, is based on insufficient understanding. If we define life as a pattern of physical behavior that is independent of its specific physical and chemical ingredients, then our current universal view of life’s required chemistry and supporting environment is truly suspect. One consequence of this change in perception will be seen in the Sagan-Drake “equation” for the estimation of intelligent life in a galaxy.

The estimation of the number of worlds harboring intelligent life would increase due to an increase in the number of planets capable of supporting biological systems (n_e; see below) if we remove the carbon and liquid water requirements (which implies specific temperature ranges) for the advent and evolution of life. There is no good reason why Carbon and water should be deemed universally necessary ingredients for the advent of living systems up to and including life forms that are capable of thinking in unusally abstract ways. After all, thinking is an electrochemical process (so we think, anyway). There is, however, one obvious reason to think Carbon and water are required components for life. It's what we have found to be the case here on Earth. So, better to rephrase what we are looking for out there: Life like ours. That focuses the question. It's always easier to look for things when you know what you're looking for. Still, if you want to look for something as broad as the notion of life in the universe you certainly can't base your search criteria on what works for a single planet. On to the Sagan-Drake equation (which is necessarily composed of some rather subjective variables).

The Sagan-Drake equation:

N = R^*f_pn_ef_lf_if_cL

Where

N is the number of intelligent communicating civilizations in the galaxy at present

R* is the average rate of star formation in our galaxy (stars/year)

f_p is the fraction of stars that have planetary companions

n_e is the number of planets per planet-bearing star that have suitable ecospheres (that is, environmental conditions necessary to support the chemical evolution of life)

f_l is the fraction of planets with suitable ecospheres on which life actually starts

f_i is the fraction of planetary life starts that eventually evolve to intelligent life-forms

f_c is the fraction of intelligent civilizations that attempt interstellar communication

L is the average lifetime (in years) of technically advanced civilizations

The notion that microbial life is abundant in the universe is certainly a compelling possibility ( requires a high value for  n_e ) if life is in fact an endemic planetary surface property with an evolutionary pattern that is tightly coupled to that of its planet. Perhaps the degree of bio-environmental coupling is a significant factor in determining if the development of intelligent complex life is possible. Certainly, if a planet harbors substantial life (present globally like here on Earth) then the evolution of the planet’s surface will be strongly coupled to that of its biology and the planet will maintain a surface environment capable of supporting life for periods of geologic time. Time, and lots of it, is a critical ingredient in advanced biological evolution. Or is it? I just ranted about the inherent problems with requiring Carbon and water for the advent and evolution of biological systems. Why this geologic time business? That's a good question. I don't have the answer. For now, let's just say that, regardless of specific chemistry and physics, it takes a long time for life starts to blossom into thinking creatures. I agree that this restriction may be too harsh.

Perhaps Mars is an example of a rocky planet that had sparse microbial life (relative to Earth) and therefore Martian biology had little net effect on the evolution of the Martian surface and atmosphere leading to a relatively short geobiologic lifespan and therefore no chance for the advent of complex life. Clearly, this is wild conjecture, but in the next 5 or so years we will probably know the answers to these Martian questions.

For detecting extraterrestrial life we should not only focus on whether or not carbon/water-based life forms can be supported on a rocky planet (geologically active and rocky surface (not a gas giant), like Earth, Mars, Venus and Saturn's wildly interesting moon, Titan), but whether or not a planet possesses surface properties that demonstrate a predictable pattern of behavior over time ( for example, a substantial and dynamic atmosphere (like the consistent addition and removal of Methane from Earth's or Titan's atmosphere) ) which is independent of the specific chemistry and physics operating on the geobiologic level. Now, if places like Jupiter's Europa support biological systems, then throw this paticular solution out of the nearest window since there is no way using this technique to remotely detect the presence of life that lives beneath the surface of a moon with no atmosphere in an ocean of salty water. It's certain that just looking at geologic patterns on the surface of a place like Europa will not provide enough evidence for the existence of life.

New place to talk to MicrosoftPeople and your peers: Channel 9

Tired of waiting around for your favorite Microsoft Bloggers to post topics to their blogs that may or may not interest you? Want to initiate conversation with your peers and Microsoft Developers (and Testers and Program Managers and Architects and even Vice Presidents...) about aspects of Microsoft technologies that are important to you? Then come on down to Channel 9 and let's talk.

 

Charles

A few things I'd like to see change in Windows

There really is no good reason to not allow users running under restricted privlege to view the system clock and calendar in Windows XP.

In general, I think we need to get away from the IT mindset when it comes to our consumer operating systems like XP Home and Pro, etc. The average user just doesn't get Admin, Power User, etc. In fact, most users run as Admin since that is the default context. This is a security risk. C'mon. 

Reboots after install/modification suck. End of story.

App hangs are still too frequent in XP. I have to have Task Manager running in my tray... Speaking of which:

The process viewer in Task Manager is not very useful to the average user. In some cases, even the most experienced users have a hard time determining what running processes named svchost.exe or mdm.exe, for example, actually are; they could be anything! And I don't like that from a privacy perspective. Hey, I'm paranoid. What can I say?

Windows and .NET: We're making it simpler

Let's create a new Window in Win32:

HWND hwndMain = CreateWindowEx( 
     0, "MainWClass", "Main Window",
     WS_OVERLAPPEDWINDOW | WS_HSCROLL | WS_VSCROLL,
     CW_USEDEFAULT, CW_USEDEFAULT,
     CW_USEDEFAULT, CW_USEDEFAULT, 
     (HWND)NULL, (HMENU)NULL, hInstance, NULL );

ShowWindow( hwndMain, SW_SHOWDEFAULT );

UpdateWindow( hwndMain );

Now let's do the same thing in “.NET“:

Window w = new Window();
w.Text = "Main Window";
w.Show();

Managed code and the .NET Framework is about elegance in simplicity. We are trying to make our future managed Windows APIs hold true to the notion of enabling you to solve complex problems simply. That's the future.

Charles

The value of Microsoft Research

As mentioned in one of Brumme's past entries, more visibility (and kudos) is needed for the Microsoft Research division. This large, university-like component of Microsoft consistently produces so many amazing technologies that eventually end up in our products and in our development tools. Check out the MS Research web site for some examples of the truly innovative technologies like new programming languages and tools. Many are even available for public use. Amazing stuff. MS Research can also act as a fantastic technical resource (though one should refrain from asking basic questions like how to do X or Y in C#...). Even the most crazy theoretical questions that I've sent to Research Land have been answered with enthusiasm from interested researchers. I love working at this company! Charles

Dying Extra-Solar Gas Giant Planet Leaks Carbon-Oxygen

Interesting article on a recent discovery of Carbon and Oxygen in the atmosphere of the dying gas giant Osiris.

Interplanetary Internet

Fascinating, captain.

What do you think of .NET's exception model?

How much you do you really know about the CLR exception model?
Do you know how Windows SEH works? Really?

Please read this article:

http://blogs.msdn.com/cbrumme/archive/2003/10/01/51524.aspx

Now, what do you think of our current managed exception model? What would you like to see in the next version of the CLR with respect to exception handling?

Do you ever write code like this? :

try
{
   Compute();
}
catch( Exception ex )
{
  //boo! (ex happens to be an Access Violation exception)
}

I didn't think so. ;-) But if you do, you should make a point of not ever doing so again as code like the above is very dangerous since it can expose stack-based buffer overrun exploits. You'd be surprised how many times I see the above pattern.

Wouldn't it be nice if C# just supported exception filtering (like VB.NET and MC++) so you could have more granular control over how your application deals with runtime exceptions? If you've found yourself wanting this feature (or any other feature for that matter), just let the C# design people know!

More later.

Life in our solar system?

As a Microsoft developer, most of my time is spent thinking about and writing code. However, because of my unique position as a developer on a team of Windows technical evangelists I often get to think about bigger picture things and play with prototype platforms that try to define our vision of the future programmatically. I provide feedback directly to the respective product teams and really enjoy the role I am able to play for Microsoft platform development strategy. Now, this all has nothing to do with the title of this post, but since this is my first post I thought I would preface it with a brief explanation of who I am and what I do. Much of what I come into contact with is confidential, however, and so I can't share many of the details about what exactly I do at Microsoft. But I can, and will, discuss the bigger picture of our vision of the future as it pertains to developers and the technologies we will create to make the lives of developers even more interesting and productive than they are today. Most importantly, I want to get feedback from you. What can we do better? Does C# expose enough of the CLR? What are we doing in terms of code analysis and verification tools? What advancements are we making in compiler technologies? You get the idea... Now, on to the topic at hand which is near and dear to me as I was a student of planetary science (and math) with an emphasis on the advent and evolution of the geobiological property of rocky planets.

We know of only one planet in our solar system with surface dwelling life forms or, more technically, an active and homeostatic geobiologic surface property. It's a rocky world that's quite active geologically. Its atmosphere is rather dynamic in great part due to the biological activities (respiration, metabolism, pollution, etc...) of the macrobes and microbes that it harbors. But there are some other very interesting worlds out there in our home system.

Much attention has been focused recently on one of Earth's sister planets, Mars (the other sibling rocky planet being Venus). There is no denying that getting remote-controlled mechanical rovers to Mars from Earth successfully is an amazing technological accomplishment. It's mind bending. Still, the really interesting planetary bodies in our solar system, from a geobiologic point of view, are a couple of the moons that orbit the giant gas planets Jupiter and Saturn. Jupiter's Europa, an icy world that may contain a salt water ocean beneath its wildly scarred surface. And Saturn's Titan, the only planetary body in our solar system besides Earth with an atmosphere composed primarily of nitrogen. Titan's atmosphere is so thick in fact that we really have no idea what's on the surface! NASA's Cassini mission will help to illuminate what's happening on Titan as it will deliver a probe to Titan sometime in 2005. I can't wait for the details. My hunch is that the probe will return much more exciting information to Earth than the Mars probes. After all, Mars is a dead planet that may have once possessed a geobiologically active surface when it was “alive” (I think it probably did based on the theoretical evolutionary path taken by geologically active terrestrial planets that orbit G-Class yellow stars at a distance that allows for liquid water on the surface. Proof will be in the pudding which will be really really really hard to find on Mars) Stay tuned.

Keep up to speed on the Cassini mission and the Titan visit here:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm

A very interesting discovery in November 2003 was that gravitational waves exist in Titan's atmosphere as they do in Earth's atmosphere leading to atmospheric perturbations (the Titan atmosphere does not appear to be static (like Venus and Mars, for example). This alone is incredibly interesting from a geobiological perspective.). What systems on Titan's surface are interacting with the Titan atmosphere to cause these observable fluctuations? Bring on the data!