Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Emails from the Edge; A Hodgepodge of Hodgepodges

Hey Morrie:

It's me, your Peninsula Pal again. We're cooking an egg on both sides. This isn't sunny side up with liquid yoke. This is hard frying with hot grease. we think MSFT has the option but their choice demonstrates they have no options available and are at the mercy of Niro. Burn baby burn. Fiddle Niro fiddle.

It's a beautiful sight to me...

What was hard for me to realize is the level of intelligence at work in the higher levels of deal crafting. I do know MSFT's side is intellectually skunked. They only have power to wield and no new or good ideas. That places them at the mercy of the heads of VCSY, IBM Niro and Feeney.

They're cooked and ready to serve. What Microsoft is doing is positioning so they can compete with an IBM+Red Hat corporate mashup... the technology allows that, remember, and Microsoft is walking into a situation where they will have to interface with not one but two different cultures with a horde of barbarians out there intent on picking all three asses apart.

Where do we think we are? Are we barbarians? We work with IBM which will theorectically be open-source, but, the have learned to make the use of open IP work in their favor.

Microsoft could not have done so. Not in all the years they've tried so certainly not by June 30. No, no, Nanette. Microsoft is being shepherded into a position where they can move forward in a hobbled fashion and have no valid complaint of non-competitiveness toward IBM or Red Hat.

Remember we are not our own. We belong to a larger plan. Feeney acquired arsDigita to apply to the thirdworld and IBM is facilitating that buildout. Where do we stand? A cog in the machine. But... a very very valuable cog. I believe if we had not been diligent GA would have taken the ailed and collapsing VCSY the same way they handled arsD. We were fortunate to have a benefactor or knowledge and insight to empower the shareholders to hold on to what was rightfully there's.

Our motive is to advance... not to feed on a dead carcass.


Indications we are looking for are radical moves or bizarre changes in Microsoft behaviour. Here's one for a start:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2141587,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594

Microsoft Eschews Patch, Gives Exploit Code for IIS 5.0 Bug

By Lisa Vaas


Rather than supply a patch or workaround, Microsoft published six steps to reproduce the exploit—a response that is "a bit atypical," according to Frantzen. "Microsoft is telling the world how to exploit their products being used by their customers. Not that the worst of those interested in it did not already know, but the one thing we need from Microsoft is not the exploit, but the patch or at least a decent work-around," Frantzen wrote.

Bingo.

Another indication Microsoft has turned on the GO button:

http://dotnet.sys-con.com/read/384433.htm

My First "Acropolis" Application

At this point, it feels as though Acropolis is a layer of abstraction on top of WPF itself.

By: Kevin Hoffman

Jun. 4, 2007 11:00 PM

A couple of things that I found interesting about Acropolis is that it is "skinned". In other words, an Acropolis application looks nothing like a default Vista application. It appears as though the skins are easily configured and you can probably dynamically change the look and feel of your application quite easily.

What I think it boils down to is that using the "part" metaphor, the goal is probably to make it so that client applications are easier to build, easier to unit test (with everything being loosely coupled parts and part views, test controllers should be quite easy to inject), easier to maintain, and more scalable. Only time will tell if Acropolis actually lives up to these goals, but from what I have seen of the CTP so far, those are the exact things that Acropolis is attempting to tackle. Parts have "connection points" and there are these things called command executions which create even more separation. There are also services (think WF services, not WCF or Web Services) that allow individual parts to get data, information, and business logic in a clear, concise way that actually respects separation of concerns.

See for reference:

http://weblogs.asp.net/clientfxnews/

ClientFX news

· Smart Client Development Newsletter – June 2006

excerpt of interest:

Acropolis – Revolutionizing Smart Client Development

Smart client solutions can offer a wealth of benefits in flexibility and usability over thin client solutions while at the same time retaining some of their manageability capabilities. These benefits can be substantial and can include an increase in user efficiency, a reduction in development and training costs, and corresponding improvements in the overall TCO and ROI of the solution. Smart client solutions can also open up a host of new scenarios for mobile workers and provide productive solutions that operate in offline and intermittent connectivity situations. Unfortunately, developing smart client solutions can be challenging. The lack of an application model, supporting infrastructure, and out-of-the-box implementations for commonly used client-side services forces each developer to address these sometimes complex issues themselves.

Acropolis aims to remedy this situation by providing an application framework and tools to support the development of smart client line-of-business solutions. Acropolis is based on the composite smart client approach where solutions are constructed from a number of loosely coupled ‘parts’. Each part provides a unit of self-contained functionality that can be independently tested and developed and re-used in many different solutions. Parts allow solutions to be assembled in a very flexible way so that they can be more easily updated to include new functionality or more easily changed to suit new business requirements.

Acropolis provides tools that support the visual assembly of solutions from parts and for the definition of business logic via workflow. Acropolis leverages the power of the Windows Presentation Framework (formerly Avalon), allowing Acropolis applications to provide next generation user experiences with support for advanced data visualization, theming and customization. Acropolis also integrates with ASP.NET supporting services for managing authentication, authorization and user personalization, allowing a common administrative experience across both thin and smart client solutions.

We would very much welcome your feedback on our vision for Acropolis. Please watch this space for more information on how to get involved in the Acropolis smart client revolution!

Flotsam, jetsom or chum? I know this may be a bit esoteric but it's an indication of a behaviour shift in Microsoft. Take it as Microsoft feels bold enough to go the way of the client agent. Now. The question is Why? We can tell that by who screams loudest.

http://ajax.sys-con.com/read/384205.htm

How To Create a Silverlight App That Consumes a POX Service

First off, it might be worth it to note that there is a Silverlight 'Quick Start' for performing this task

By: Kevin Hoffman

Jun. 4, 2007 07:30 PM

I think the next thing I'm going to do as an experiment is to have the code in the Silverlight app modify an HTML element so that it changes to indicate that a data connection is being made in the background. Once the data is retrieved, the HTML element will be set back to normal and the data from the service will be used to populate some controls on the page.


Because if Microsoft doesn't get its act together and field these kinds of capabilities quickly, they are buttered toast with coffee. The rat race is ON come Tuesday.

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9725819-7.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=NewsBlog

June 4, 2007 10:48 PM PDT

Google, Salesforce.com to partner on Web site

Posted by Dawn Kawamoto

Salesforce.com and Google are expected to launch a combined Web site on Tuesday that is designed to allow the online customer relationship management software maker to act as a reseller for Google's AdWords.

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