Here. By request, O'Reilly and Assoc. has posted the Format Specifiers appendix from C# in a Nutshell by Drayton et al. It's a wonderful reference to the String.Format/ToString format specifiers that I'm constantly searching for on MSDN. Thanks, ORA!
Here. I hesitate to blog this because you might not believe the "my friend" part, but my friend was just downloading some stuff with Kazaa and found a bunch of it tagged with DRM. Apparently AltNet is tagging porn content with Digital Rights Management and dropping it into peer-to-peer networks. When someone finds the AltNcontent in their search, downloads it and is asked to pay some small amount of money before consuming the content. What a great way to get your content out to folks and get paid for it! Why didn't the RIAA think of this instead of suing their customers into oblivion? Those porn guys are always way ahead of their time...
Here. You haven't lived 'til you've had Don Box call you at home to sing you the fresh lyrics from a new parody to be performed by the Band on the Runtime at the next major MS event. PDC is going to rock.
Here. Grant lays out his successful business model in a crappy IT economy, starting right away by laying it on the line for those of us having trouble getting over the old days:
"I find again and again that the main barrier to re-entry in the work force for many people--not just technically-oriented folks--is a reluctance to admit that things will never be quite what they were. It's pride, mostly: they have difficulty reducing their expectations."
Well-reasoned and well-written.
Here. Here's an open source implementation of Apple's Rendezvous(tm). I don't know what this protocol enables, but folks seemed to like it at the Applied XML Dev.Conf.
Here. Another RSS gateway, this time for job sites.
With all of the RSS "agents" I've been finding, I'm come to the conclusion that my RSS aggregator is more important than my browser. My browser displays the information but my RSS aggregator tells me there is some information of interest to me, a much harder and more important job.
Here. This article was made the rounds recently because it's interesting. What makes it interesting is the conclusion (backed but tons of study):
"In sum, we present this article as an exploration into why people tend to hold overly optimistic and miscalibrated views about themselves. We propose that those with limited knowledge in a domain suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach mistaken conclusions and make regrettable errors, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it."
In other words, the folks that are most incompetent don't even know it so that they can look for ways to improve themselves. Why don't they know? My take is that we're too damn polite to tell them, preferring instead to complain about them behind their backs. Is that nicer? Sure. Is it better for the incompetents of the world? No.
On a lighter note, I love how the researchers go "meta" at the end of their article:
"Although we feel we have done a competent job in making a strong case for this analysis, studying it empirically, and drawing out relevant implications, our thesis leaves us with one haunting worry that we cannot vanquish. That worry is that this article may contain faulty logic, methodological errors, or poor communication. Let us assure our readers that to the extent this article is imperfect, it is not a sin we have committed knowingly."
: )
