Ethical Debate

Sharon Stone steals charity limelight at poverty debate

I am wrestling with this issue. I can't say exactly what it is, but maybe writing this will help me better understand my feelings on it.

In the article linked here, Sharon Stone seems to offer $10k to the poorest country in the world. Sounds like a hero, right? Well that's what my initial thought WASN'T. Read on...

You see, I have an issue with a wealthy American going abroad and pledging support to another country when she has not helped stamp out poverty, homelessness or hunger here. Those are the reasons she used to urge others to give in excess of $1M USD. I am sure that Ms. Stone has give tens of thousands of dollars here to help with these needs. But we aren't done.

Does this sound selfish? Or am I just a true countrymen? I agree in concept for giving to those in need because of sudden and uncontrollable events, such as the Tsunami. But to raise $1M for a country just because they are poor seems to be mis-targeted.

Any thoughts?

NASA - NASA TV Landing Page

NASA - NASA TV Landing Page

NASA TV Feed!

New Project

I am working on a new side project. It's a pure pet project. No incentive other than pure grattification and some self education on my part.

The codename for the project is XFaV. I remember a couple of years ago that MS had put out a Favorites Service example. It was one of their first "Best Practice" examples on the .net framework. But their project died.

It's a shame too. I have needed it over the years. How many times do you find a great site, bookmark it at work, and then need at at home a few days later. You can't remember the site, but you do remember that you found it by searching for something on Google. But what was that magic phrase? After trying for half an hour, you finally give up.

So, I want to re-invent the Centralized Favorites. As a service, but not in the sense that MS did. Their example was a web service that developers could subscribe to, and wire into their own apps. That might be a consideration, but for now I just want some little client side app that I can download, get to my favs through and save new favs to.

I have already started working on the client app. I'll include a screenshot later.

In the client app, I will be using a treeview on the left side, and a property grid on the right. The treeview will support drag and drop, both locally and from IE. The property grid will display and allow updating of the objects that are contained on the tree.

Each tree node also contains a link object. Each link object contains information about itself such as the URL, description, type (there can also be folders on the tree) and so on.

The service part will provide a web service where the client can authenticate and sync it's local copy of the links with the server. This is done through XML Serialization and an object tree. The object tree is built from a collection of links. Each link also has a children property, which is also a collection of links.

I don't have the server part done yet. The client side is about 70% functional. I still need to add the hook into the service. Currently, it is saving the results locally.

Eventually, the client will be able to log into the service and download (or sync) the user's links. As links are added, the service will be updated. I also want to include a way to share links with other users. For example, I should be able to check off on my list links or directories and "send" them to another user on the system. In this mannor it also becomes a test in social networking.

I also need a place to host the service. I don't see each user needing more than 100k of space, as the storage of data will be minimal (username, password, name, email and links).

I will keep you posted here on my progress. Any suggestions, please post here.

RSS makes web more user friendly

Here's my thought today: By utilizing RSS Feeds and an RSS Reader, you can actually automate your web experience. If you are like me, there are literally hundreds of web sites you like to keep tabs on. More and more web sites are developing RSS Feeds of their own content making this a true paradigm shift in my web experience.

How many times do you go to a web site only to have to scan through the stuff you have read to determine if there is anything there of value to you, or any new items. An RSS Reader like SharpReader can actully automate that.

Its very easy to use. You simply have your reader open, and when you find a page that has an RSS Feed, you simply drag their icon or the URL to your reader. By clicking the subscribe button, the reader remembers the site and includes it on its content scans. Your reader will connect to the feed and populate your content list.

The cool thing about this is that SharpReader will keep track of articles that you have already read. It will runs in the background and updates its own list on a timed interval. It even notifies you when new articles have arrived.

And don't worry about the experience. In its current state RSS does not carry the payload of advertising with it (Although I heard that it will soon). You get a brief description of the article and a link to click if you want to view the entire page, in its own browser window of course.

Now I do not have to waste time parusing cnn.com, msdn.com, asp.net and other sites time after time to only realize that there are no new articles. My reader tells me when there are!

Denny's Menu

Really funny

a masked wrestler named "Strong Bad" responding to viewer email's.

What I didn't get for Christmas (but really wanted)

I'm a geek, he's a geek, wouldn't you like to be a geek too?

I've seen all these top 10 list and predictions from the smart .net peeps, so I decided to level my own:

• Href EXE needs to support cross domain web services. This is just plain stupid to me. In the brave new world of SOA why can't this happen. A remark I saw on the topic stated that it was a security risk. Get over it. Provide it. Why would I want to be peg holed into having the web service I need on the same server as where the exe exists?
• Easier Threading Implementation. Let's face it... Applications are getting smarter, faster and somewhat bigger. We need to be better at multithreading. But have you tried to implement it lately? It's a bear. It's not bad if you just want to spin off a process on to a new thread. But what if you want to notify your user of it's progress? Yuk.
• A unified and easy to implement Network Security Definition. Active Directory rocks, when you do it right. A single simplified authentication and authorization system is great. I just wish it were the same across the net. I wish there were some mainstream definition of implementation that were standard so apps could talk to each other with lower cost of implementation.
• A better hook into AD in the framework. Right now there is not a decent way to get info from Directory services. If you say there is, you're lying ;). The framework classes need to be abstracted even further so I don't waste my time trying to get it to work. I can get it to work, but it is ridiculously difficult.
• Someone to understand what feature driven development is :). Someone to explain this to my manager :).
• Web Services to truly, and easily, pass a binary version of an object in its natural state. I don't mean serialize it to XML before passing it. That's fine and dandy unless you want heavy loads hitting it.
• Easier implementation of farmed Services. Farms shouldn't just be for farmers any more :).
• Easier way to develop, test and deploy windows services. I am not saying that these are impossible to work with, and .net definitely made them much, much easier, but they are still a pain to develop. Make them easier. They are the back bone of the enterprise (or should be at least).

So, there you have it. Brian's list of gifts not given this year! Maybe next year, with the release of .net 2.0, will some of these actually happen.

Oh technology, where art thou?

I was recently shopping at my local food market, which to my previous joy has embraced technology to the fullest. They offer shopping online, local regional next day delivery and pseudo-self checkout (explained down below). But I question if it will ever work.

The shopping online has one major flaw... the lack of true integration with the actual store. I have at times, had my wife shopping online and unable to find a certain product. I then go to the same store where our delivery actually comes from and what do you know, it seems to be there! Uhh... can we say disconnect?

But that seems to be a predominate difference of online stores verses the brick and mortar stores. I don't know what causes this phenomenon, but I can always find a better selection in the brick and mortar. Why? I think it's just pure laziness. I think retailers really think that this online thing is just a fad, and will too fade.

The other issue is one of self service. Look back to the days when you didn't get out pumping your own gas. Maybe the same transition will happen to self service grocery stores too. I sure hope so.

So, last night I was in this store. I was buying enough lunch and breakfast stuff to get us through a couple of days since my wife is sick and hasn’t been able to. This store that I went to has four self service check out stands. But I found myself seething in the fact that this 40 something mother of 2.5 kids was having an issue working the thing. I think they are a marvel of modern technology and when no one else is in line in front of me they save me tons of time and effort. This lady couldn't seem to grasp that she has to first scan the item's bar code and second place it in a bag! She should not have been allowed to use it at 6pm on the busiest shopping night of the week.

So, my question: Is this a case of technology helping or just really slowing us down? I mean, what's better, waiting on some lady to figure something this simple out, or can the store just hire more knowledgeable and efficient cashiers?