DevBlog

December 15!!!!! That appears to be the official release date for Visual FoxPro 9.0, barring any unforseen showstoppers. Andew Coates, a former VFP developer and now Microsoft employee, blogs that Ken Levy announced the date at OzFox. MSDN subscribers should be able to download the bits a few days after release (RTM in Microsoft speak). If you absolutely must have it in the CD case, it generally takes 6-8 weeks after RTM.

In a CNet article on a new Internet Explorer flaw, computer security expert Richard Starnes states,

"I wonder how solid Microsoft's coding would become if strategic governments around the world removed the liability shield that software manufactures now currently enjoy," Starnes said. "They would then have some real financial incentive to get it right the first time, instead of this Computer Science 101 coding they are continually churning out."

What's wrong with this is that removing the liability shield would not force software companies to release better software, but it would force companies to release no software and eventually go out of business. The costs involved for design, development, and testing would be so high that no money would be made.

In a win for openness and sanity, the Induce Act won't make it to a vote in Congress before the Thanksgiving recess. This still gives you time to contact your Senators and lobby them to vote against this rediculous infringement on our rights. [CNet]

Earlier this week, I talked about the "Induce Act" being pushed through the Senate by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch. Engadget.com asked Wendy Seltzer of the Electronic Frontier Foundation to explain the act. She makes some clear and concise expanations of the act. It also turns out the bill is being railroaded through Congress even as I blog. This means you need to CALL YOUR CONGRESSMEN TODAY. Writing will be too late!. [Alex Feldstein]

DevX is one of the leading develop websites, particularly for .NET. Today's feature story is "Visual FoxPro 9.0: Still Here, Still Relevant". It was written by David Anderson, who has been working on the Fox team as a contract tester. It's great to see a major developer source take enough interest in the product to publish the article. Thanks David for putting in the effort to write this.

Microsoft has publically stated that Visual FoxPro 9.0 will be released in the fourth quarter. That gives them about six more weeks. However, there have been several posts on the Universal Thread where people want to know when it will be released. I think they want a specific date. Microsoft rarely gives specific dates. Instead, you'll hear an announcement that VFP 9.0 has been released. In Microsoft speak, this means Released to Manufacturing (RTM). RTM says, "We're done programming, testing, etc. and have shipped stuff off to have the CDs made." You'll see VFP 9.0 for download on the MSDN Subcriber web site a few days after RTM and available on CD about six to eight weeks after that.

Novell is fighting back against Microsoft's marketing claims that Windows is as secure and less expensive than Linux. In the article, Unbending the Truth, Novell claims it is presenting the facts that Microsoft bent to support their own view of the world. Novell sites various sources, research, etc, including Microsoft's own Get the Facts campaign to support their point. So, who is right? In the end, both are right and wrong. Both platforms have great performance and cost/benefit tradeoffs depending on your needs. [

I've voted for Utah Senator Orrin Hatch in the past. Should he run for reelection in two years, I will actively campaign for his opponent. I made this decision several years ago, but it has been enforced recently with his anti-consumer legislation that strongly favors the recording and movie industries. Don't miss understand what I'm saying. I'm all for copyright protection. I own a few copyrights myself. However, Hatch's latest bill could directly affect you as a software developer.

Warren Keuffel explains why in his latest column in Software Development Magazine (free registration required):

As do most other designers, I keep my eyes open for websites with interesting or particularly functional designs. To find out how they’re constructed, I often use Web Developer, a Mozilla Firefox extension written by Chris Pederick, to reverse-engineer the site. When installed, it becomes part of the Firefox browser and allows me to not only view and edit a site’s HTML and CSS code, but also provides tools to allow me to experiment with the code by converting GETs to POSTs (and vice versa) and making disabled form fields writeable.

It’s a handy tool, and it’s most unfortunate that, if Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) has his way, my use of Web Developer may put Chris Pederick in the Big House. Why? Because if I use Web Developer to reverse-engineer a copyrighted “MegaCorp” website, MegaCorp could complain to the local U.S. Attorney that Chris Pederick “induced” me to reverse-engineer its website’s functionality, and in doing so, violate MegaCorp’s copyright. The vehicle with which Sen. Hatch could make Pederick a potential felon is the “Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004,” a controversial bill that, as of this writing, is in its fifth rewrite. Along with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), about which I wrote last month, the so-called “Induce Act” circumvents the fair use argument for copyrighted material by making it a federal offense to “intentionally induce” someone to infringe upon the rights of a copyright holder—regardless of whether the end user of the technology is legally entitled to use it.

You should read the entire article. Yesterday, I wrote to Senator Hatch to get more information on the bill. If you don't live in Utah (Mr. Keuffel does), he won't respond to any inquiries that you might make, but you can certainly contact your local Senator and express your opinion on what looks like another infringement on you fair use rights...and something that could have the potential of landing you in jail.

Update: Alex Feldstein has additional information on the Induce Act.

The Spec# programming system is a new attempt at a more cost effective way to develop and maintain high-quality software. The Spec# programming language, which is a superset of C#... This is a new language coming out of Microsoft Research, so it may or may not make the light of day. [Dan Fernandez]

This past October, at the Advisor DevCon in Las Vegas, Calvin Hsia showed how he used the new BindEvents features of Visual FoxPro 9.0 to bind to Windows events. He could detect when his digital camera was plugged into his computer and then download the pictures into a VFP table. There's alot of other cool things you can do too. He's now posted the code over on his blog. Note that this feature was added after the public beta, so you'll need to wait a few weeks for release before you can try it for yourself.

Last week, Novell filed another lawsuit against Microsoft, claiming that Microsoft was at fault for the failure of WordImperfect, a product Novell owned at one time. This suit is total crap. Microsoft had nothing to do with the demise of WordImperfect, but had everything to do with former Novell head honcho Ray Noorda. I've blogged about his tactics before, but a refresher with a WordImperfect slant may be helpful.

While Noorda ran Novell, he insisted on fighting Microsoft on everything he could. He purchased DR-DOS to compete against MS-DOS and then tried to sue when DR-DOS wouldn't do Windows. After Noorda left Novell, he formed Caldera (now SCO) and bought DR-DOS from Novell. He then sued Microsoft again over DR-DOS, claiming that Microsoft was stopping DR-DOS from making inroads into embedded systems. We're probably familiar with SCO's current lawsuits regarding Linux. There are other suits that Noorda's companies have filed against Microsoft.

So, it seems that Noorda's standard way of doing business is to sue. Now, I'm not claiming that Microsoft has kept it's nose clean. We know about the DOJ settlement and the ongoing case in the EU.

But, let's get back to the Novell case. Under Noorda's watch, Novell bought WordImperfect for something like $3 billion. Years later, it was sold to Corel for something like $300 million. Noorda is no longer there, but apparently his legacy and management style live on. Early last week, it was announced that Novell and Microsoft had settled another case regarding networking. That may have given Novell some incentive to file this new case. Again, a case without merit.

Those of you that have known me a long time know that I have never liked WordImperfect. Having to reveal codes to do the simplest editing drove me nuts. And who would ever think of pressing F3 twice to bring up help. The Windows version was a disaster. Anyone that tried to use it (and I worked at a company where it was the corporate standad) knows that WordImperfect 6 was almost impossible to use. This was at the time people were really starting to move from DOS to Windows 3.11. When their word processor of choice didn't work, they looked for one that did. That was Microsoft Word. I personally preferred Ami Pro.

So, what kinds of arguements can we expect from Novell? I suspect one thing will be a statement said to me by an old friend who was on the WordImperfect development team. He said (and I have no reason to doubt it was the corporate opinion) that Microsoft had been pushing OS/2 development, but secretly developing Windows NT. When Microsoft dropped OS/2 in favor of NT, it left WordImperfect holding the bag and a long way behind the development curve compared to Microsoft Word. I've read the history of OS/2 and NT and personally don't buy into this arguement.

The generaly concensus that I've seen on the blogs is that Novell doesn't have a chance in this case. It will certainly be interesting to see what happens.

Today, Adobe announced Acrobat version 7.0...and they are definately taking the gloves off. Version 7.0 includes the ability to do collaborative markups, 3D PDF files, and a whole lot more. Speculation from industry pundits is that Adobe will be pushing into new areas and increase the usage of Acrobat. I've started using it to publish articles to my web site. Eventually, all the articles there will be in PDF format.

Do you know the answer? I knew this. In case you don't know the answer, Raymond Chen provides it for you.

Right on the heals of DevCon, will be DevTeach in Montreal, June 18-21. I've never attended DevTeach...never been to Montreal...but I've heard really great things about this conference. I'll be submitting sessions abstracts and hope to see you there.

I just found out the dates for Advisor DevCon, 2005. Plan now for June 12-16. The bad news...it's again scheduled for Las Vegas (at least it isn't July or August)...and it looks like it will again be at the JW Marriott Resort. This is the same location as this year's DevCon, a location that was one of the worst they've ever had. The Jam Session was non-existant...only Advisor head honcho John Hawkins showed up. The vendor area was upstairs from the conference rooms...a location that did not bring much traffic between sessions. I hope I'm wrong about this, but right now, it looks like Advisor is repeating the mistakes of this year.

I've posted two new articles on my web site: Introduction to Object Oriented Programming and Using the Windows Event Log from Visual FoxPro. These are the two sessions I did at Southwest Fox last month in Tempe. Enjoy!

Sit back, relax, and eat some popcorn. It's time to watch my home movies of my trip through the Yukon territory. Now that you've run from the room, screaming that you don't want to see home movies, I'll fess up. I have no home movies and I've never been to the Yukon Territory of Canada. The Yukon I'm speaking of is the next version of SQL Server, code-named Yukon. Microsoft has chosen SQL Server 2005 as the official name for the product.

I've been spending some time working with Yukon over the past month. I must say that I'm somewhat overwhelmed. There is LOTS in there. Yukon will change the way you write applications for SQL Server. There are changes how you install, manage, write T-SQL, handle security, and much, much more. One member of the Yukon team said this update is bigger than SQL Server 7.0 was.

If you haven't seen it yet, it's time you should. Microsoft is showing off its home movies of Yukon beginning December 6 in a series of SQL Server 2005 Webcasts. This will be a great opportunity for you to see what's changed in the database, slated for released next summer.

So, sit back, relax, and eat some popcorn.

One of the great features of VFP 9.0 is the enhanced report designer. It's easy to create more complex reports than before, but changing things at runtime is a real pain. You need to use report listeners to do things...and these all have to be coded.

Ed Leafe has setup a new web site, Report Listener HQ, that is a Report Listener repository. The hope is that as people create report listeners, they will make them available on this site.

Ed runs a number of other sites, including Task Pane Central and Open Tech. He also runs the ProFox mailing list.