Using Java Could Lead to Death

What were the most surprising Microsoft moments in 2005? Here's our list. What juicy items did we miss?

This article is a excellent opinion post on Microsoft's current and future status as a monopoly.

Netflix better get off it's butt and over a download service soon.

I have read two things about the Google / AOL partnership that bothers me.

Chaos seems to be breaking out at Wikipedia. Hopefully this is only temporary.

I am a lifetime Linspire member, mostly because it was soo cheap when I bought it. I have only installed it on two machines in the last 2 years. Both times I never got everything on the machine to work (sound card and wireless). And both times it ran very slow. Granted I have never installed the current 5.0 version.

Recently my wife got a new Creative Zen Vision. No matter what she tried, it would not sync video. The computer we were using has had a lot of video software and codecs installed over time, plus we were already using it to sync a Creative Portable Media Center and a SmartPhone. She called Creative and they were no help. They actually told her to try someone else's software besides Creative.

It was time for a rebuild.

This page provides an overview of the Composite UI Application Block. This application block is a reusable, source code–based component based on the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. It provides proven practices to build complex smart client user interfaces based on well known design patterns such as the Composite pattern, in which simple user interface parts can be combined to create complex solutions, but at the same time allowing these parts to be independently developed, tested, and deployed.

We'll all seen them and laughed about them. Tech mistakes on TV are inevitable. I'm no cop or lawyer but I am sure there are a lot of mistakes in Law & Order too. But some movies are just stupid, The Net and Slackers come to mind, and this more recent product of tech stupidity...

Test-Driven Development in Microsoft .NET by James W. Newkirk and Alexei A. Vorontsov (ISBN 0735619484)

User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development by Mike Cohn (ISBN 0321205685)

Portable Firefox 1.5 has released along with a new website dedicated to portable applications.

Agile Software Development with SCRUM by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle (ISBN 0130676349).

Now that Visual Studio 2005 has been released for a month, more books are starting to hit the shelves, training classes are popping up, and a lot of articles are (still) being written. Below is a roadmap I have laid out to bring experienced Visual Basic .NET programmers up to date. Visual Basic 6er's will probably be okay too.

Turd Ferguson in Space

CWA has successfully helped blocked the .xxx domain.

Courtesy of Cinematical. That's just funny.

Chris Williams has posted a couple of rants about GeeksWithBlogs bloggers who post way too many items per day to the main page. See ok seriously ... and Shades of Chris J Breisch.

In an unprecidented move by CBS, they have cancelled my Daily Report posts after only 7 editions.