DevBlog

I attended Microsoft's Professional Developer's Conference (PDC) in 05 in Los Angeles and had been hoping to go again this October. But, yesterday Microsoft cancelled the event. If you're not familiar with the event, the PDC is the Microsoft developer event that focuses on what's coming a couple of years down the road as opposed to TechEd that focuses on tools and products that you have in your hands today or are close to release.

In talking about the PDC being cancelled, both Scoble and Mary Jo Foley say one reason is because the Windows team has nothing to show. And, in fact, has become very quiet about future Windows plans.

Steve Sinofsky, who runs the Windows team, used to run Office, a group known to keep quiet about future plans. Why should we be surprised that he runs Windows the same way?

In this day and age of identity fraud, it's shameful for a company to not protect personal information. Dell is one that does not.

Last week I decided to purchase a new Dell laptop. I opted for Dell to finance the purchase. One field of the finance form asked for my social security number. No surprise there, all loan applications ask for this. The explanation is that it is required to run the credit check. However, a social security number is NOT required for a credit check. It simply makes the process easier. I used to work for an auto loan company so I know this to be a fact. But, I did provide this information. (Note that under US Law, the only time you are legally required to provide an SSN is if something is tax related. Companies can deny service if you refuse to provide it.)

The primary issue is that after I placed the order, I found that there was one software component that was wrong and contacted customer non-support to make the change. The agent told me that she needed my social security number to make the change. There is NO reason any part of my social security number is needed to do that. In fact, that agent should not even see the number. I was told it was needed to verify my identity before the change could be made. I still declined to provide the information. When I was told she could not change the order, I told her I wanted to cancel it. No problem, the order could be cancelled. So, why do I need to verify my identity to change an order but not cancel an order? This doesn't make sense.

In either case, my social security number is now floating through Dell's systems, being seen by who knows. And, Dell's systems are accessible to the Internet. When I called this morning and registered my complaint, I was told, "Dell's systems are secure." I have no doubt that the dozens of companies that have been hacked over the past couple of years said the same thing. It's only a matter of time before Dell is hacked.

Bottom line...Dell has lost my business until they change their corporate policies. I won't even trust them with a credit card number. You should think carefully before making a purchase from Dell. Your personal information, like mine is now, could be at stake.

For sometime I've been saying that Longhorn will be the last 32 bit OS that Microsoft produces. Now, Microsoft is saying the same thing. See http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/server/microsoft_looks_to_64bit_future.html for the details.

Much debate has been going on about the MasFoxPro petition. I even blogged here about not posting again (I did so on the UT) my reasons for not signing.

But, it was this post by Doug that actually got me to change my mind. This paragraph is what got me thinking about it, "However, Mike Asherman's comment made me think about this some more. He said, "Adding your name means that you support the cause, not that you believe it is likely to succeed." Good point. I've voted for people I've believed in before knowing they didn't have a chance in winning because it was the right thing to do."

I've been in the same situation as Doug. I've been in it often. I live in what is considered the most conservative state in the country. Democrats generally don't have a chance. Those that do get in office are from one of two very small geographic areas of the state that is less conservative. I've often voted for Democrats knowing they don't stand a chance.

I don't think the MasFoxPro petition has a chance. But, using the same reasoning, as why I sometimes for Democrats, I signed the petition. Because I generally believe in what it's trying to do.

Today I managed to get all the previous code using untyped datasets pulled out of the app and replaced by calls to my data tier and using typed data sets. Next step is to develop ability to add new subscriptions. Unfortunately, I'm in internal training classes the rest of the week, so it will have to wait.

This video demos Dynamic languages with Silverlight. VB is included. Notice the "Command Window". Oh...and it's running on a Mac!

Part of the day yesterday was taken up by creating a Console application that would access my database using typed-data sets. I managed to get that working, then migrated the code into the RSS application. I even pulled all the data access code out into its own DLL and created a facade layer in front of it so the UI doesn't call directly into the database code. However, I only got the code working that loads the TreeView and the DeleteSubscription function.

Here's the code from the facade class:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using Feedme.Data.FeedMeTableAdapters;

namespace Feedme.Data
{
    public class DataFacade
    {
        FoldersTableAdapter taFolders = new FoldersTableAdapter();
        FeedMe.FoldersDataTable dtFolders;

        FeedsTableAdapter taFeeds = new FeedsTableAdapter();
        FeedMe.FeedsDataTable dtFeeds;

        public FeedMe.FoldersDataTable GetFolders()
        {
            dtFolders = taFolders.GetData();
            return dtFolders;
        }

        public FeedMe.FeedsDataTable GetDataByFoldersPK(int folderPK)
        {
            dtFeeds = taFeeds.GetDataByFoldersPK(folderPK);
            return dtFeeds;
        }

        public void DeleteFolder(int folderPK)
        {
            taFolders.Delete(folderPK);
        }
    }
}

And the code to load the TreeView:

private void LoadtvSubscriptions()
{
  FeedMe.FoldersDataTable dtFolders;
  dtFolders = dataFacade.GetFolders();

  TreeNode root = new TreeNode();
  root.Text = "Subscriptions";
  root.ImageIndex = 0;
  tvSubscriptions.Nodes.Add(root);

  FeedMe.FeedsDataTable dtFeeds;
            
  TreeNode nodeFolder;
  TreeNode nodeFeeds;

  foreach (FeedMe.FoldersRow folderRow in dtFolders)
  {
    nodeFolder = new TreeNode();
    nodeFolder.Text = folderRow.Description;
    nodeFolder.Tag = folderRow.PK;
    nodeFolder.ImageIndex = 0;

    dtFeeds = dataFacade.GetDataByFoldersPK(folderRow.PK);
    foreach (FeedMe.FeedsRow feedRow in dtFeeds)
    {
      nodeFeeds = new TreeNode();
      nodeFeeds.Text = feedRow.Title;
      nodeFeeds.Tag = feedRow.PK;
      nodeFeeds.ImageIndex = 1;
      nodeFolder.Nodes.Add(nodeFeeds);
    }

    root.Nodes.Add(nodeFolder);
  }
}

Today's project is to get all the remaining functionality working.

Much discussion has been made about how LINQ will make .Net more Fox like. I think a bigger and more important announcement was made this week. It's called the DLR or Dynamic Language Runtime. DLR will sit on top of the CLR and will initially support four languages, Python, Ruby, JavaScript and VB. Yep, VB will become more of a dynamic language in VBx (the x stands for 10).

In case you're wondering, Fox has been a dynamic language since... well...since forever. Before dynamic languages were called dynamic languages. Now, imagine if you could take the dynamic features of Fox and put them into VB. I'm not not talking about EVAL or macros or loosely typed variables. I'm talking about a command window. Yep. You heard me. A full blown, Fox-like Command Window. Only better.

Don't believe me? Check out this post by Paul Vick. (For you Fox-types, Paul is the VB team's equivalent of Calvin Hsia.) The part of interest is the fourth bullet where Paul says, "Visual Basic should fully support a REPL (Read-Eval-Print Loop). This means taking the support we already have for a REPL in the immediate window in VS and both extending it to the full language and adding the ability to host the REPL outside of Visual Studio.:

So, what is a REPL? Paul links to the Wikipedia topic, which states, "A read-eval-print loop (REPL), also known as an interactive toplevel, is a simple, interactive computer programming environment. The term is most usually used to refer to a Lisp interactive environment, but can be applied to the similar environments for Python, BASIC, Scheme, and other languages as well. In a REPL, the user may enter expressions, which are then evaluated, and the results displayed."

That sure sounds like a Command Window to me. Only better. Yeah, I said that before. Why would it be better? You can't do control structures such as IF/ELSE, FOR, DO WHILE, etc. in the Command Window. Go back and see what Paul wrote, "extending it to the full language". That says loops and control structures will be supported, so it's better than the Fox Command Window.

If you're a Fox dev and have been wanting something like Fox, now is the time to take the plunge into .Net. Learn what there is now. LINQ will be out in the next version (late this year or early next), then VBx, probably sometime in 2009 (my own guess) will complete the picture.

So go on, start looking at .Net. Come on in. The water's fine...and getting better all the time.

I've wondered for sometime how conference presenters are chosen, but even more so now that the speaker and session list is posted for Southwest Fox. The reason I'm wondering is that I was not asked to speak. That's fine, I understand that there are more people wanting to speak than there is space for them all. However, when you propose the exact or nearly exact session as someone else, what criteria is used to pick one person over another? Rick, Doug, Tamar...anyone want to weigh in on this?

I finally got back to my RSS Reader project yesterday and was met with lots of frustration. I decided to replace all the data code with typed data sets, but didn't get anywhere. I tried to use my experiments with Pubs as a guide, but I never even got the project to compile. But I won't give up. Today I'll continue forward.