Tag: development

Invention vs. Innovation

Post ImageToday Don Dodge posted about a Wall Street Journal article that asks whether Microsoft is driving innovation or playing catch-up with rivals. If I were to ask myself why I read Don’s blog, today’s post would be the answer. Don is careful not to fall into the “Microsoft copies everyone!” or “No they don’t they’re awesome!” traps, and instead gets right to the heart of the matter:

People tend to confuse invention with innovation, as the WSJ has here. They use the words interchangeably, but they are very different.

Invention is the creation of a technology that is totally new. Innovation takes a collection of prior inventions to the next level by combining them with existing products or technologies, and producing a commercially viable product that solves a customer problem.

Both invention and innovation are vitally important to our industry. Microsoft does both but rarely gets credit for it.

I have quoted quite liberally from his post, but I wanted to get all the main points. In the post he also explains how R&D are related to invention and innovation. Definitely go read the entire thing, it’s worth it.

Read: Don Dodge

Microsoft Robotics Studio

Post ImageIf you’ve been reading my blog for the last year or so, you probably know that I quite like robotics. Actually, it was almost exactly a year ago (June 24th) that the Podbot was launched. Basically the Podbot was a podcasting robot – we could control it wirelessly with a laptop, and it had an onboard microphone and webcam. Very cool stuff, but unfortuntely, now out of commission. Andrew, Ashish, Dickson and I all had a blast with the project, though it was quite a bit of work.

Looks like the next robot we build might be a little easier! Earlier today at the RoboBusiness Conference and Exposition 2006, Microsoft introduced a community technology preview of Robotics Studio:

“Microsoft sees great potential in robotics, and we are excited to deliver our first CTP of Robotics Studio, making it easier to create robotic applications across a wide variety of hardware, users and scenarios”, said Tandy Trower, general manager of the Microsoft Robotics Group at Microsoft. “We’ve reached out to a broad range of leading robotics companies and academics early on in the development process and are thrilled with the positive response from the community.”

Microsoft also featured a bunch of third party demos at the event. This is pretty exciting stuff for a hobbyist like myself! I’m going to install the CTP and check it out. You find out more on the project at MSDN, and at the official team blog.

Read: Microsoft PressPass

WinFX renamed .NET Framework 3.0

Post ImageIn a fairly quiet announcement, made on a blog (noteworthy all by itself!), Microsoft has decided to rename their next development platform from WinFX to the .NET Framework 3.0. While it won’t affect the average user, it has created quite a discussion for developers:

The .NET Framework has always been at the core of WinFX, but the WinFX brand didn’t convey this. The brand also created an unnatural discontinuity between previous versions of our framework and the current version.

With this in mind we have decided to rename WinFX to the .NET Framework 3.0. .NET Framework 3.0 aptly identifies the technology for exactly what it is – the next version of our developer framework.

We are confident that this change will go a long way towards reducing confusion people may have about our developer platform and the technologies in which they should invest.

.NET Framework 3.0 will include the existing .NET 2.0 components, WPF, WCF, WF, and WCS. Most people seem to think this is a bad idea (judging by the comments on these posts), and here’s why:

  1. The runtime is still at version 2.0, even in .NET 3.0 – sounds more confusing than helpful!
  2. Everything will be put into the %windir%Microsoft.NETFrameworkV3.0 directory. Again, confusing!
  3. As the release is built on .NET 2.0, it will include C# 2.0, and not C# 3.0, creating more confusion for down the road.
  4. The new stuff (W**) was never intended to be backported to Windows 2000, only Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 but .NET 2.0 fully supports all three. Presumably, this means support for Windows 2000 has been dropped.

Initially I agreed that the decision wasn’t a good one, but after thinking about it more, I think it was actually a good call on Microsoft’s part. This is about the development platform. When developing for WinFX, it’s better to think of it as a new platform, not just a superset of the old platform. Despite .NET 2.0 being at it’s core, developers are indeed using .NET 2.0 plus a bunch of other stuff when developing for WinFX. Naming the platform .NET 3.0 conveys this much more clearly.

Some of this is still confusing (such as, will .NET 2.0 be installed into both a V2 and a V3 directory, or just one of the two?) but I think in the long run this is good. It’s also the first time a lot of people will think of the .NET Framework as a product in and of itself, and when you do that, you realize it doesn’t matter what version the innards have. The other nice thing is that we’ll get a single installer now, instead of three or four.

I guess my main concern is that the size of the framework is going to start to balloon. Well, that and we have no idea what version of the framework the next release of Visual Studio, codenamed “Orcas”, will ship with. Presumably the change doesn’t affect the release date for Vista.

Flickr Gamma

Post ImageFlickr launched a new redesign yesterday, and upgraded the site from Beta to Gamma. I heard the redesign mentioned at Mesh by Chris Messina, who wasn’t exactly ecstatic about the changes. I for one love the new design, and think it is long overdue!

  • The menu at the top has been simplified and now contains dropdown menus to access various areas of the site. I found the old, two-tiered menu structure kind of confusing, so for me, this is a welcome change.
  • Search has been improved, and no longer just looks in tags.
  • There’s a new person menu on buddy icons.
  • Your Photos now shows to columns of photos instead of just one.
  • The Organizr is vastly different, and I haven’t really had a chance to play with it yet.

Great job Flickr, keep it up! I hope the site does eventually leave it’s greek editions to go final, but at least they are not stuck on beta forever. Perhaps a lesson (and new model) for others to follow?

Read: Flickr Blog

Hold developers liable for flaws?

Post ImageThat’s what one so-called “expert” thinks should happen. While most people will agree that security is a major issue, not everyone agrees on what should be done to combat security problems. This suggestion has got to be the most creative and ridiculous one I’ve come across:

Software developers should be held personally accountable for the security of the code they write, said Howard Schmidt, a former White House cybersecurity adviser.

Speaking Tuesday at the SecureLondon 2005 conference, Schmidt, who is now CEO of R&H Security Consulting, also called for better training for software developers. He said he believes that many developers don’t have the skills needed to write secure code.

If we’re going to hold software developers liable for their code, why don’t we hold users liable for their mistakes and errors too? Heck, why stop there! We might as well hold the farmer who grew the potatoes used in McDonald’s french fries liable for making people fat! Seriously, Schmidt is just way off base with regards to the liability issue. Training is one thing, liability is quite another.

You just can’t look at a piece of code and say with absolute certainty that it’s secure, even if you have proper security training. First of all, the developer cannot anticipate all of the ways in which the code might be used, nor can he/she predict what future technologies might impact the code. Secondly, there is quite often more than one developer who touches a piece of code, so it may not be written with the same caution or mind for security each time. There’s just too much uncertainty. Software development is often called “Computing Science” but a large portion of it is more “art” than “science”.

Read: CNET News.com