Things that caught my attention, v 8.28

All right, so I'm back at RPI. With my junior year underway and a set schedule, hopefully we'll see more regular postings.

First, a succinct, yet very informative post on computer workstation ergonomics by Jeff Atwood. Got me thinking about investing in a decent chair... These school provided wooden chairs can't be very healthy, and they're not very comfortable either.

Then Scott Dorman gave a nice distinction of the different meanings of the 'using' keyword in C#.

Scott Hanselman continues his series on LINQ to SQL. I hadn't payed much attention to LINQ to SQL but I am taking a Database Systems course this semester, so this popped out at me.

And completely unrelated, we have the completion of how email really works, as told by gmail users.

Now for something not from the web. In one of my classes, the professor was giving us a quick list of what programming languages he saw as important for varied reasons. Among many others, two that came up were Java and C#. He made the comment, half-jokingly, that Java was Sun's attempt to get programs working on any platform and operating system, while .NET was Microsoft's attempt to get programs working on any Windows platform and operating system. I say 'half-jokingly' because even though he did not mean to really be taken seriously, you could still understand that he was somewhat dismissive of C# for being so similar to Java, and the closed approach of .NET solely for Windows. Is this the common view of .NET?

And so starts Wednesday...

Things that caught my attention, v 8.9

Continuing the talk of .NET 3.5, Scott Hanselman posted about changes in the Base Class Library from 2.0 to 3.5 He has a report of his findings filled with details on what has been added or removed from the public interface to the BCL.

Then, Channel9 has a video on new features in WPF 3.5. I haven't had time to watch it yet, but it seems like an interesting watch.

Oh and as if we hadn't had enough lego's this week. I wonder what lego set he came from... I want that set...

I love Google, who doesn't? But their new proposed feature that allows those, and only those, involved in a news story to comment alongside... not so sure about that. A Read/Write Web article makes the good point that this feels very "web 1.0" They are closing the opportunity for everyone to participate, and instead leaving us to watch what could potentially be a debate. I mean, if the story presents two sides with conflicting interests, the only ones who'll go through the hassle of proving their involvement in it are the ones who obviously won't have any unbiased information to add. Perhaps in other kinds of stories this might be okay, but I'm not too convinced about that either. And, will Google be able to keep up with the incoming requests for identity verification in a timely manner? This is an interesting move for Google...

And how do you prove your identity anyways? I mean, i always figured banks and other agencies that need to prove your identity have access to super-secure-triple-checked information of you (kidding about that last bit...), but is Google really planning on calling every number and asking for verification? Seems like a system that could be easily fooled.

That's all I have. Now go and enjoy the day, because it's Friday!