The company that I work for (Keane, Inc.) announced today that they will be sold to Caritor. It made the front page of the Caritor web site at http://www.caritor.com/ with a nice animated gif with fireworks and everything. Of course it will take a while to see what happens but right now all of the executives are saying that day to day operations will not change and that we will see no change in benefits, etc. I sure hope they are correct. In any case it looks like we will be in for a couple of interesting months while things settle down and get straightened out.

For those of you who want to read more the press release is at http://www.caritor.com/news-events/news-new.html.

By now many of you have seen or heard about the application that InterKnowlogy did for the Scripps Institute that helps cancer researchers collaborate. It is a smart cliant application that uses WPF with a back end in SharePoint 2007 for storing the data and collaboration information. Well, they have decided to make improvements to the application and are looking to hire a few developers. If you want to work on a project that will not just boost your resume but save lives you should look at this opportunity.

The official job announcement along with details on what you need to do to apply is on Stephen Forte's blog at http://www.stephenforte.net/owdasblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=81b20029-dd37-4d0c-a9f2-8e9220eae12d. Good luck to you. And to whoever gets the job I would like to say a big thank you because it may be my life one day that is affected by this research.

I had a previous post about certain CDs from Sony that contained a rootkit. Today I saw an article on RedmondMag.com at http://redmondmag.com/news/article.asp?editorialsid=8175 that says Sony has settled the charges against them. If you have purchased one of their CDs and had a problem with removing the software you can be compensated up to $150 for your trouble. Sony BMG will also tell you before they do something like this again. They are also making tools available to remove rootkits.

Since I never purchased one of the affected CDs I can't really say if the settlement is fair but from the outside looking in I would have to say that it is more than I expected to see from them. I figured that after the initial reaction people would forget about it and the practice would go on. Hopefully this means that we will see an end to sneaky DRM. Now if we can just figure out a way to protect copyright without making the honest users jump through hoops or treat them like criminals, then we will have something.

I have to admit I am a little confused at the New York Times and their apparent lack of research. What I am referring to is the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/27/technology/27vista.html that is a report that rivals of Microsoft have called on the European Commission to block XAML because:

The group said Microsoft’s XAML markup language — which it said was positioned to replace the current Web page language HTML — was designed “from the ground up to be dependent on Windows.”

It seems to me that a little searching on XAML on the web would lead them to the WPF/E page at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/asp.net/bb187358.aspx that states:

“WPF/E” is the Microsoft solution for delivering rich, cross-platform, interactive experiences including animation, graphics, audio, and video for the Web and beyond. Utilizing a subset of XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language)-based Windows Presentation Foundation technology, “WPF/E” will enable the creation of content and applications that run within multiple browsers and operating systems (Windows and Macintosh) using Web standards for programmability. Consistent with Web architecture, the XAML markup is programmable using JavaScript and works well with ASP.NET AJAX. Broadly available for customers in the first half of 2007, “WPF/E” experiences will require a lightweight browser plug-in made freely available by Microsoft.

I don't have a Mac so I can't test it but I would assume that if the statement that WPF/E runs on a Mac were not true the New York Times would also have pointed that out. In any case is should be easy for the EU to look at XAML and that it runs on more than one browser and more than one OS and decide that it is a new language/plug-in/applet/whatever they want to call it just like Flash, Java Applets, AJAX, or any other technology that runs in a browser and throw out the whole complaint or make the decision that anything that is not a W3C approved HTML standard is not allowed to run in the EU.

I know that Microsoft has done some things in the past that make it hard for others to compete in the marketplace but this does not seem to be one of them. I see WPF and WPF/E as a way for me to make better web pages. I hope that the politicians will stay out of the decision and let the market place decide whether or not WPF and WPF/E are useful technologies. 

According to news.com Microsoft is already planning for Vista service pack 1. I suppose that they have to with the long lead times for testing all the different hardware and applications but it seems a little strange to be asking businesses to nominate themselves for inclusion in the program before the commercial release of the product. It will be interesting to see what features are in the service pack and how soon it comes out.

<rant>
From a purely marketing perspective I think they should release service pack 1 about 10 days after the initial release. That way they could sell to all the people who say they won't buy or install Vista until the service pack comes out. And yes, there are those people out there.
The other day I heard someone say they weren't going to allow Vista on their network until the first service pack to fix the bugs. I wanted to ask them how come they thought that the same people who developed, tested, and shipped the original version would suddenly become so much better that they could trust the SP1 version any more than the original version but then I remembered the old adage about "If you can't say something nice...".
</rant>

If the speculation in the article is correct and the service pack comes out around 11 months after the release it should be available around October and hopefully in time to be pre-installed on new computers. That would be a blessing for all of the people who will be buying a new computer for Christmas so they don't have to spend the first few minutes on Christmas morning downloading the service pack.
I guess only time will tell.

Microsoft released version 1.0 of their AJAX framework named ASP.NET AJAX (fka Atlas) to the web. You can read the official announcement on Scott Guthrie's blog at http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/01/23/asp-net-ajax-1-0-released.aspx. 

As Scott explains in his blog the actual code along with samples, documents, and videos can be downloaded from http://ajax.asp.net.