Developing a ASP .NET Control with client capabilities

Cool, but still missing the local database that will support the connected/disconnected model.

Yet Another TDD session

Here's another great TDD sample session from Brian Button.

Note to self: though I finally write my tests upfront, my first test are always positive ones, not failures, and they never test the trivial. Must try starting on a less positive and complex way...

Knowledge ownership

Some years ago I've lost track of a great paper about knowledge management. It stated something like:

On the 19th century, Marx and Engels formalized a concept where workers would hold the ownership of the means of production. This concept was communism, and as we all know didn't succeed - at least as Marx and Engels would expect.

On most of the world workers don't have the ownership of the means of production. But there is an exception on most of functional workers on the services sector: they do hold most of the means of production, on the form of knowledge.

When workers from, lets say a consulting company, return home, the company is left dangerously decapitalized until they (hopefully) arive on the next morning. Most of
these companies don't have any asset but manpower. Most of them don't even own the building they work in.

So on this area Marx and Engels idealism is somehow being kept alive. The question is: how should companies ensure that most of the knowledge is kept in the company?

Almost 10 years have past since I've read that paper and the problem (for the companies, not the workers) is the same.

Their are of course companies where the knowledge is kept. But the fact is that in the majority of the companies, the processes and data are controlled by the workers, giving workers a power that companies would like to hold themselves.

Knowledge management is not my main focus today, I no longer work on that area. Now I'm a client. And as a client, I'm feeling the some problems I already felt as supplier: people just don't let go of their source of power. People just don't write what they know about. People just don't describe the processes only they know about it. And here's another citation I heard on a Architects conference a few weeks ago:

80% of the data business needs is kept over workers control. May it be on paper, on their workstations, on their external drives or event on their USB pens.

Makes you think, right? And in a non-political way...

Their is an honorable exception to this problem: the blogosphere. Here people do write down information. Here people don't hold up (most of) their processes, they just share them with the community. This is not Marx and Engels concept, is a broader one. They still have the ownership of their information and opinions, they just share it with others. Maybe companies should look at this model to strengthen their businesses...

[update]
If someone knows the whereabout of this paper please post me a link. Thanks in advance.

Do you need a rest?

Tired? Stressed? Needing a break? Here's the solution: Not Working Bar. You are given a few simple options: pick a number of minutes, enter a description, and choose an animation. Click OK and it displays a "Working Bar" that will last for the time you set. Sit back and safely take a break; your computer will look like it is busy "Analysing Web Log Trends" or "Computing optimal solution" or whatever you like. The possibilities are endless.

Just look stressed and enjoy your deserved rest.

Reverting to a prior version of Oracle client

A friend of mine reverted the Oracle client he had installed on his workstation to a prior version. His web applications stop working, failing to find the old version.

After a day cleaning up registry data with no success, cleaning up the GAC and all kind of caching mechanisms, and suspecting of per-user caching, he did the following:

• logged in as another admin account
• renamed is home directory account
• logged back in as his account

And his web apps are now running just fine now. Thanks for your story, Ricardo.

The Great Double Standard

Let's face it: Microsoft is not the best example of how an enterprise must act, but the Apple good will is just too much. Here's a great article exposing it, where eWeek states:

Apple it seems can do no wrong, while Microsoft can do no right. If someone passes as in the room, someone blames Microsoft. Yet Apple can "brick" iPhones for which customers paid $400 to $600 and sales just soar.

Microsoft reports solid earnings quarter after quarter—and yesterday beat earnings estimates by more than $1 billion. Yet Microsoft's stock price is stuck at 2001 levels. Apple earnings results are good, but nowhere near what Microsoft delivers. Yet Apple's stock just climbs and climbs—this morning to more than $185 a share, up from about 77 bucks 52 weeks earlier.

...

Apple's success is one of perception, spurred on by some very smart marketing and branding decisions made over the past six years. Apple is a cool brand that people want to be associated with. When people really like something, they also tend to be more forgiving of faults.

...

Microsoft's past behavior has created some perception that its products aren't good enough, that the company doesn't care for customers. Windows Vista is a poster product for Microsoft's perception problems: It's got an undeserved bad reputation.

...

This week, a number of tech journalists gave glowing reviews of Leopard. They received the software on Mac Book Pro laptops provided by Apple. Nowhere have I seen anyone gripe about conflicts of interest. But when
Microsoft's PR agency sent bloggers preloaded Vista notebooks ahead of the operating system's launch, there were ridiculous accusations of attempted bribery. The accusations made it difficult for those receiving the Vista units to say anything positive about the operating system.

Enough is enough. Apple and Microsoft have great and shitty products. We should evaluate them for the value they return in an objective way, not to jump into the hype wagon, trying to reject this very human tendency of techno-religiosity.

[update]
For those that don't know me, the next computer I'll bye will probably be a Mac. And why? Because Apple doesn't allow me to run Mac OS X on hardware other than theirs, and Windows and Linux are not as restricted. So I'm buying Apple to be able to run as many OSs as I can. So the bad guys will won. Again.

Tip/Trick: Hard Drive Speed and Visual Studio Performance

Here's ScottGu's advice:

Some of my recommendations on this topic are fairly standard and obvious: Ideally you want to get a dual core or better CPU. I also always recommend getting at least 2GB or more of RAM.

The recommendation I make that often seems to take people a little by surprise is to make sure you always get the fastest possible hard-drive when buying a new machine - and where necessary trade off purchasing additional CPU processor speed in favor of investing in a faster disk instead.

Leopard vs Vista feature showdown

Here it is from engadget.com.

Final score
Leopard: 46
Vista: 41

Quote of the day

My good friend Pedro Pita as introduced me to this great quotation from Marston Bates:

Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.

I'm afraid I don't know who this Marston Bates is, but he seems to know something about the R&D business. Eh, eh, eh, don't really know what I'm laughing about, since I've just got assigned to do a R&D project... :S

[update]
Now that I think of it, it seems like Pedro Pita has too much to say for someone that doesn't have a blog. Please start blogging fast, I have better things to do other than posting your articles :P

Strange ASP.NET application problems...

Every now and then I'm call up to solve a problem with an old framework I've designed over .NET 1.1. Most of these are configuration problems, and among them the most usual problem is to have a ASP.NET 1.1 application configured on as 2.0.

This problem is easily solved with a simple configuration over inetmgr but watch out, this can lead to another problem if their is another .NET2.0 application on the same server and they share an application pool. Here's a link to the problem - be sure to check the links for some extra info on other problems.

Bottom line is:

• isolate your app pools (at least by .NET version)
• be sure to check if your app is using the right version
  

F# links

Here's a list of F# must-have links.

[update]
Here are some more links to examples:

• http://www.ffconsultancy.com/dotnet/fsharp/index.html
• http://www.codeplex.com/fsharpsamples

Oslo: Microsoft Messaging and Workflow roadmap

Here it is. Oslo is all about backing the SOA, promoting the composite applications.