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- Danny Thorpe
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Blog Roll
- Falafel Software
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Archives
- 02/22/2004 - 02/28/2004
- 02/29/2004 - 03/06/2004
- 03/07/2004 - 03/13/2004
- 03/14/2004 - 03/20/2004
- 03/21/2004 - 03/27/2004
- 03/28/2004 - 04/03/2004
- 04/04/2004 - 04/10/2004
- 04/11/2004 - 04/17/2004
- 04/18/2004 - 04/24/2004
- 04/25/2004 - 05/01/2004
- 05/02/2004 - 05/08/2004
- 05/09/2004 - 05/15/2004
- 05/16/2004 - 05/22/2004
- 05/23/2004 - 05/29/2004
- 05/30/2004 - 06/05/2004
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I'll be blogging about Borland related stuff. Mostly. And whatever else comes to mind. ;-)
Friday, March 05, 2004
Email postage to stop spam?
According to this article Bill Gates, among others, is suggesting that we start buying email stamps.
Sure, a penny per message would probably stop some spammers. But who's the postage money going to? To my ISP? To the recipients ISP? To the government? Maybe to me?
Hmm... If the money goes to me, then maybe all those virus writes will become rich because they would infect people's machines to send email to them (and thereby money)...
What about international spammers? Is there a particular reason why spammers wouldn't send spam from abroad? How in the world do you get the entire world to agree on email stamps? You would have to, otherwise there would always be some email stamp free paradise where the spammers can do their business from. Isn't that's what's called "offshoring"? :-p
Buying postage by solving a math puzzle? Sure, I love math puzzles, but what about people who aren't any good at math? Last time I checked, they could still buy stamps at the post office. Or would it be my computer that would be used as a client to compute something? Why should I trust something like that to be done on my machine?
Would all email go through email clearing centers? That would be one way of enforcing, right? In that case, why wouldn't the email clearing center just filter spam at no cost to me?
The article brings up another interesting point... If such email clearing centers did exist, what if they get hacked? Now I can't send or receive any email and my business grinds to a halt.
Also, if email becomes costly enough, then we'll get other solutions for getting our messages across pretty soon. Oh, wait... They already exist... Like MSN Messenger and the like.
Well, anyway, enough digressing about non-Borland related stuff. I hate spam just as much as the next guy, but I don't think buying stamps is the solution. It smells like paying for bandwidth to me...
Nick's Newsgroup Manifesto
I forgot to post this... Sorry Nick! But since it's now updated, maybe I didn't miss my chance... ;)
Nick Hodges (TeamB) has taken feedback from the field and updated his Newsgroup Manifesto.
If everybody plays nice, everybody will enjoy the game, and everybody wins!
Torry's Delphi Pages: Welcome Back!
Torry's Delphi Pages are back online.
Simon Kissel just posted about this in the newsgroups, and I don't believe it's old news, so here it is: Welcome Back!
What's in a name?
Danny posted the following tidbit of info about some naming decisions:
From: "Danny Thorpe"
Newsgroups: borland.public.delphi.non-technical
Subject: Re: Why VCL for .NET?
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 23:57:02 -0800
"USCode" wrote
> Instead they choose "Kylix" .... which makes me think maybe Borland was
> unsure internally on the success of the Kylix product and didn't want to
> tarnish the Delphi name ...
Actually, you've got it backwards. The name change was an effort to shed the weight of industry bias against the Delphi name. One of the biggest challenges with having a long-running successful product like Delphi is that people won't look at it for what it is today, they cling to their first impressions - or just hearsay - of the product 10 years ago.
We went through a similar process when transforming Turbo Pascal into what became the Delphi product. The industry didn't want to hear about anything Pascal, especially the trade press. If your audience tunes out as soon as they see the name (because they associate the name with homework 20 years earlier), the demo is over.
Kylix was a new development tool for a new and growing Linux market. The concern was that using the name of a well-known Windows development tool for a Linux product would hinder acceptance of the tool in Linux circles. The Linux world is hypersensitive to all things Windows, so a Windows tool popping up on sacred Linux ground would not be welcome. Kylix needed to stand on its own, so it got its own name.
While I understood the reasoning, I wasn't thrilled with the decision. For proof, count how many times the word "Kylix" appears in the dcc command line compiler executable. :>
-Danny
Thursday, March 04, 2004
E.T. Phone Home!
No, this isn't another Mars mission...
Allen Bauer discusses automated IDE incident reporting and what it could look like for Borland's IDEs in the future.
Personally, I think it would be awesome to get this stuff into QualityCentral more or less automagically. I heard somewhere that Microsoft has collected an aweful lot of crash data, and a rather large amount of it is due to misbehaving video drivers - who would have thunk? (I've said so for a long time - too much in support I suppose).
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Now featuring comments by commentthis.com
Yet another beta feature... Comments by commentthis.com. Feel free to add comments, but be aware that they'll all disappear once I start using the threaded comment server on BDN.
Oh, and you can't edit comments. Nor can you delete them. Nor can I, unfortunately. So be sure you really mean them.
I reserve the right to only read nice and encouraging comments. :-p
JBuilder X marketing at JavaPro
I just went to JavaPro's web site and got a nice flashy JBuilder X ad banner in my face.
I linked directly to the image and landing page on doubleclick.net, so if the above is broken, you know you're filtering ad content.
You're cleared for take off!
This blog now has an RSS feed
Blogger.com only supports Atom feeds as far as I know. Malcolm Groves at Borland in Australia sent me a link for dynamic RSS generation using 2rss.com.
I guess I'm just supposed to link directly to that feed, so that's what the RSS logo in my link section does for now. If someone has a better idea of how to do it, feel free to drop me an email.
The QualityCentral SysOp Guide is now available
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Danny Thorpe's Blog is now public!
WooHoo!!!
Random notes on Borland's Delphi language and tools, hosted by Danny Thorpe, Delphi Compiler Architect.
I love that top BDN bar. That gives me something to waste time on - stealing Danny's blog template code. Yeah!
Only one problem, it doesn't fit in with my "split pea" template... Oh well, this green is horrible anyway, right? Oh, that's right. I don't have comments yet... :-p
Delphi Compiler Core
Borland sponsors Delphi Developer Days 2004
Delphi Developer Days 2004 seminars are intense, two-day long seminars presented by Cary Jensen.
This tour is sponsored by Borland, Jensen Data Systems, and many others.
Delphi begins its 10-year journey to the origins of the solar system
Kristofer Skaug wrote in a post in delphi.non-technical:
"I would like to thank the Borland Delphi team for giving me the ideal tool to create ground test equipment software in support of the Rosetta comet-chaser mission, which launched successfully today. I can only guess that without Delphi, the years of work I put into that project would've been considerably less fun!"
European Space Agency News
Launch footage
Borland sponsors Delphi 8 tour by InfoCan and DSW
InfoCan Management and The DSW Group are doing a seminar tour (two days per stop) across Canada and the United States showcasing the new features of Delphi 8.
This tour is sponsored by Borland, Microsoft, and the Informant.
Danny Thorpe and Allen Bauer join Falafel's Advisory Board
"We are ecstatic to have industry icons like Danny and Allen serving on the Technical Advisory Board," said Alain Tadros, Falafel Software's President and CEO. "Their industry expertise and almost limitless technical depth will help us navigate Falafel Software to the next level."
Falafel's Press Release
Monday, March 01, 2004
BDN news feeds now available
John Kaster just announced the immediate availability of BDN RSS feeds.
scripting.com said "Very impressive RSS 2.0 support from Borland. Thanks!".
Dear Santa!
I can't wait until Q4 to play with one of these babies.
Dear Santa, please send me a prototype ASAP, and I promise I'll be good and pay my bill on time from now on!
Thanks!
This blog is hereby made public
We're investigating doing blogging on the BDN. As part of that I figured I'll mess around with it. So I created a blogger.com account, and downloaded w.bloggar. In combination these things allow me to blog from a Windows app and just push content directly from my desktop, without having to worry about messing around with a browser every time. I happen to like it that way...
So, anyway, here it is, my blog! Your mileage will vary. Enjoy!
I also added the Atom feed.
Delphi 8 in Washington, DC and Seattle, WA
John Kaster is presenting Delphi 8 in Washington, DC on March 3rd and in Seattle, WA on March 4th.
Like I said in a previous post, you could potentially save $3,750 by going to see this presentation, if you decide to buy 5 new user licenses of Delphi 8 Architect at the 25% rebate offer.
Personally, I think your boss should give you a raise if you go see John and save your company that much money!
More on the tour.
Sunday, February 29, 2004
Borland to present at Fulcrum Global Partners 2004 Forum
Getting the most from C++BuilderX
"Looking for the sharpest IDE on the block? C++BuilderX shreds development time by putting smart wizards and templates at your fingertips. Add class browsing and stylish source code history, and you’ve got a tool to transform any novice code cutter into Edward Scissorhands."
Check out David Williams' C++BuilderX tutorial
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