Comparing Roses and Chestnuts
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A bitter campaign marked by predictions of vote fraud culminates in an election that all Western observers call seriously flawed.
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I'm back, with a very interesting topic too!  Joel Spolsky, ex-Microsoft Manager and software engineering guru has a new essay, How Microsoft Lost the API War that is creating quite a big storm in the blogging communitiy.  Joel posits that the priests in the holy Temple of Microsoft have lost their way, because it has split into two factions, and the wrong faction is winning. One faction worships on the alter of backward compatibility, while the other is led by fervent priests who are proselytizing to raise up the new gods of .NET and Longhorn. Joel suggests that the new gods will cause the destruction of the holy Temple because Microsoft's great victories were built on the altar of keeping customers happy with backward compatibility. Furthermore the old gods of the Windows API continue to grow more grotesque and cruel with the passing of time, driving former worshipers into the arms of the friendlier gods of World Wide Web.  This story sounds extremely plausible. I must admit that i fit the profile of the developer who used to develop on the Window's API, is familiar with COM and Win32 who now develops mostly using PHP and Python. However I continue to develop and maintain Windows apps that keep our customers happy, and we still plan to develop new Windows apps. Some points:  Temple of the Blind? Firstly, Microsoft is still a compelling place to work for to people who feel that they can make a difference. The Temple continues to attract talented people with a Unix background. For example we have the recent hiring of Ward Cunningham, author of the Wiki.  Microsoft is still able to keep talented people like Raymond Chen, and others like him who continue to look after the Windows API, and Longhorn apparently will still give high priority to backward compatibility. Open sourcerers like Miguel Icaza are sufficiently attracted to the .NET vision to stake their careers on Mono. Longhorn and .NET are compelling technologies, so even if Win32 is not so cute anymore, M'soft is providing something that remains very attractive.  What i do see M'soft doing wrong is that they aren't disseminating the .NET runtime fast enough. It remains an optional install in XP Service Pack 2 for example. Also their IE dev team appears to be hog-tied due to political reasons; nevertheless IE remains good enough, particularly when I can embed IE as an activeX control, something I cannot do with Mozilla (AFAIK) - Update: I'm wrong.  Temple of the Spider?  Secondly, people don't merely use a web browser. They run the web browser in the OS.  So let me ask you, if you are using DreamWeaver or HomeSite or Photoshop or vi or emacs or Gimp, how many of you are willing to give it up for a java applet (or whatever your favorite technology is) running in your web-browser? Precisely.  Temple of the Abandoned?  Third, Joel makes the claim that developers are not developing to the Windows API. Well he could be right. But I bet a lot of them are still calling Win32.  If you are using a framework or IDE like Delphi or wxWindows (or .NET or VB) then you certainly are insulated from the Windows API, but that doesn't mean that you're not calling the Windows API all the time. I don't see Borland dropping their Windows version of Delphi at any point in time.   In fact, the fact that many developers are using some form of framework is a compelling argument for Microsoft to enhance the .NET framework to attract developers who are using other frameworks.  Today, not that many students learn x86 assembler, but that doesn't mean that Intel lost the CPU wars. Just because fewer people are learning Win32 doesn't mean Microsoft has lost the API wars, if the frameworks run predominantly on Win32.  Temple of the Lost  Joel even warns you in the beginning that "because I'm talking about big trends, I need to exaggerate and generalize". But you still get sucked in because Joel Spolsky is a first-class writer, in the same order as Philip Greenspun or Eric Raymond. That makes him so persuasive and plausible. But this is not Indiana Jones and doomed temples, but Steve Jobs and reality distortion fields.  Other opinions:  Harry Fuecks (PHP is ASP's upgrade path),  Dennis Hamilton (M'soft is just covering all bases), Robert McLaws (Joel is wrong in 7 points), Oliver Travers (the web is not good enough), One Run-time to Rule them all....
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People who love their greens have different tastes and social habits to fans of fruit, say nutritional experts. Vegetable lovers favour spicy foods, drink wine with their meals and will cook elaborate dishes for friends.
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By Edited by Katie Stirling  THANKS to Claire Collins, of Ayr, who wins my weekly tenner with this daft picture.  If you have a funny internet image, why not share it with us? Please include your full postal address.  (c) 2006 Sunday Mail; Glasgow (UK).
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At times the two giants appear to be linking arms; at times they are in active competition. But it is not exactly a relationship of equals.
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Life & style: Rose Elliot: Traditional Christmas vegetable is latest victim of wet summer.
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The unconventional Oslavje Bianco from Radikon. (Courtesy of pedrelli.com) Iâm about to go on vacation, so this will be my last post until after Labor Day. As Iâm about to leave Iâm thinking about some wines that Iâve enjoyed in the last week or so and how inadequate our usual descriptive language is to characterize their [...].
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Exploring the family tree in search of roots (or royal family connections).
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TOLCSVA, Hungary  - Louis XIV called it the "Wine  of Kings, King of Wines." Peter the Great was a fan. Rousseau  and Goethe both sang its praises.
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To suggest the rival captains at this year&#39;s Ryder Cup have slightly contrasting styles and characters is to say black is a bit darker than white.
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A healthy American chestnut tree discovered on a New Hampshire farm may serve as the "mother tree" to bring back a species nearly wiped out by Asian blight.
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NEWPORT NEWS, Va. _ I was happy to see the label "poisonous" on the plant Brugmansia when I visited a garden center in the other day. I applaud them for letting the public know _ especially shoppers who have curious small children or pets.
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Perhaps George Washington wouldnât have chopped down his fatherâs cherry tree if he knew what chemists now know. They have identified a group of naturally occurring chemicals abundant in cherries that
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By Christine Arpe Gang  A kousa dogwood is undoubtedly beautiful when it is in its full flowering glory in the spring.  But I couldn't believe how stunning it is now in its full fruit stage.
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Un componente le ha innescato un choc anafilattico
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In a quick post to his blog, Lukas Smith notes his support of the recent announcement of the PEAR elections.   I am confident that both of the proposals will help in improving collaboration in PEAR, mainly because they basically provide the same organization we used to have for all of PEAR (which worked great in the beginning), now for categories of related packages.   He reasons that, since PEAR is such a huge project, it needs this kind of approach - a method to the madness - to help keep the project on the right path.
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The greener side to affairs of the heart.