The Red Cross has setup a relief fund that they taking donations for. Amazon has put together a donation button that allows you do donate directly to Red Cross. Brian Sullivan's has adopted that code so that it can be easily posted to a blog. I am now passing the opportunity to you so that you may make a difference by donating now.
As software developers I believe we are all dedicated to our projects. Personally I consider any code I write as a personal artistic expression that contains a bit of me when I am done. I don't know that I have been as dedicated to a project as Ron Avitzur as described in his "The Graphing Calculator Story"
This is the story of how one programmer, originally working as a contractor, took a project that was canceled, and saw it through to a shipping project. It is a riot to read, and will really make you think about what it means to be dedicated to a project.
Diebold, a company who should want its name to be synonymous with security and maintained technology, was pointed out to still be running the eight year old Windows NT 4 Server as Microsoft prepares to end support for the operating system effective December 31st, 2004. If you are not familiar with Diebold, they make ATM equipment for banks, and recently ventured into electronic voting equipment. With all the negative reaction from their voting equipment it really makes me think twice about using one of their ATM's again.
Update: As Jake pointed out, it is Diebold, not Diabold. I guess I had bought into the diabolical image projected on them by all the folks out on Slashdot. I can't update the post title or Blogger will move the page since that is what makes the post page name.
Charlie Calvert published his favorite software of 2004. I love lists so I thought I would pass his list on to you.
Read his opinion piece for the details and his reasons. He also lists some favorite hardware.
Personally I would rate Firefox 1.0 way up there as well. It is a great browser. I haven't really used many of the other items on the list, with the notable exception of Delphi 2005 and Open Office.
Delphi which is a truly amazing development tool, and this version really shines. Open Office is a great productivity package. It is a leap ahead of any other development tool I have seen. Use it for a little while and you will have a hard time using other tools.
Even when I have MS Office installed I find myself still using Open Office instead. It is too bad they made it so much like MS Office. That was the downfall of Word Perfect as well. They almost need a version for MS Office drones and a version for people who want to be productive.
Others I would add to the list:
As if a 25% Discount wasn't enough, Borland just released Update 1 for Delphi 2005 [Readme]. I guess it mainly addresses memory consumption issues. There is another update in the future as well. Not sure if that one will include C++ support or if that will be separate.
I still have a few 25% off coupons for Delphi 2005. They expire at the end of December in like 9 days! Email me if you are interested and I can give you the code and all the information you need! This an incredible product and a great opportunity to get a deal on it!
Update: I added a contact link on the side so you can send me an email. I suggest including your email address!
Here are the prices if you are interested:
| Product | List | Discounted |
|---|---|---|
| Architect New User | $3,000.00 | $2,250.00 |
| Architect Upgrade | $1,999.00 | $1,499.00 |
| Enterprise New User | $2,500.00 | $1,875.00 |
| Enterprise Upgrade | $1,500.00 | $1,250.00 |
| Professional New User | $999.00 | $749.25 |
| Professional New User | $399.00 | $299.25 |
I found this site "IT Conversations". It is a collection of listener-supported audio programs, interviews and important events related to the large world of IT. If it related to a computer profession, they have an interview on it. This is great stuff you may not find elsewhere, plus it is in audio format, so you can download it to your MP3 player or burn it to a CD and listen to it in your car.
Beyond exclusive interviews they have recordings of conferences like JavaOne 2004, OSCON 2004 or Bloggercon III. Actually hearing a live interview with a famous person is so much more powerful then reading the dry text of one that was probably conducted via email. You can actually catch their personality.
Ed Foster's Gripelog covers what he says could be a Fatal Blow to Shrinkwrap Licensing.
The Settlement Agreement provides to the General Public of California, amongst other things, the right of consumers to return applicable Symantec, Adobe and Microsoft software for full monetary refunds even if the shrink-wrap has been opened ... In addition, Symantec, Adobe, and Microsoft agreed to provide EULAs for the applicable software products on their web site and notices on their respective software packaging of the web addresses to such EULAs so consumers can review such EULAs prior to purchase of the software.' CompUSA, Best Buy and Staples 'agreed to provide such EULAS to consumers upon request prior to sale of the above software at their retail stores in California and to provide notices to consumers in such stores to effectuate the above.
I don't think this is a fatal blow. Software vendors simply need to make sure that users can read the license before they open the package.
It is ridiculous to expect people to read multi-page EULAs and consult a lawyer for every piece of software they install. What I would like to see is a condensed version of the EULA, maybe with symbols like you find on the care tags in your laundry. Something like Creative Commons offers. They should form some sort of software developers organization, who would then decide on all the various clauses you can have in your EULA. Then publishers would simply select from that predefined set, and put the associated symbols and explanation text, in their EULA. Then we as consumers could look at see exactly what we are getting into.
Seems like I remember reading something about this somewhere a while ago. If you remember the link please let me know!
Have you seen Google Suggest yet? It is just like normal Google, but it offers suggestions to complete your search query. It is really cool, especially for a web interface. They offer a similar feature from the address book in Gmail. Just in case you were wondering how they did that, Chris "Server Side Guy" Justus has dissected it for us!
I agree with Joel that this is the kind of thing that raises the bar for web applications!
Update: Another Preliminary Analysis of Google Suggest.
Tamir Khason has some interesting research on why C# will fail! This news may also be detrimental to the razor industry, at least among software developers (not that they were a big market to begin with.
Based on this information we can expect great things from David I. I think he may have been born with a beard. Not only has he had one the entire 19 years he has been with Borland, he had a good one already in 1976. Allen Bauer is another of the bearded greats who proves the rule. Some of the other Borland R & D's, past and present, have had beards. Thanks to Dr. Bob (beardless, but great non-the less) for the pictures.
Some of you may like to point out that Anders Hejlsberg was also one of the chief architects behind Delphi. This is true, but he has left it, and it is now in great hands!
