If you do choose FileNet, opt for the Unix/Oracle implementation. They offer the environment on Windows/MS-SQL but in the implementation I supported (inherited), it was very (I mean very) unstable and tended to crash at the slightest hiccup, and left a very poor impression. There was always a fear that a particular MS patch would kill it which was a security and stability issue that would (likely) be avoided on a mature UNIX platform running only the necessary services. (Disclaimer: Most of my work is in the Windows world). They have a decent API, but it is slow (very slow) for mass imports. There are tools that access the undocumented (unsupported) libraries that are very fast, but run the issue of support. At the time I worked with it, the viewers were unsupported on Vista. FileNet also has the issue of lack of community. If anything goes wrong, you're on the phone with IBM, which is not the style I like when it comes to managing a system. On the other systems I've supported, (LAMP servers, IIS, MSSQL, etc.) there is a lot of online vendor support, community and vibrant forums as a first step. With FN, I was able to come across one forum that was "OK" (filesite.org), and other than that it was a call to IBM or pouring though a stack of dead-tree training manuals. Definitely consider the cost of on site-support and consulting from the vendor as a necessity.

I know it's 1 April and everything but did anyone notice anything strange in the spelling of `Large Hardon Collider`?

This is not necessarily true. I've lived in 4 different US states in the past 6 years. Status updates for a period can be enough to keep that relationship going to the point that if I called them tomorrow it would not be a 2 hour conversation around catching up so much as "Hey, I have a 4 hour layover passing through Las Vegas on my way to Chicago next week, want to try to grab lunch?" or "Saw you were going to a convention in LA, I live about 90 minutes from there, think you'll have time to grab a beer?"

There are many friends who I simply do not have the time to keep up with because they are not good about using their e-mail or social media resources. I simply cannot coordinate calls when I am three time zones away and work two jobs the same way I can send you an e-mail or facebook message (effectively an e-mail) or comment on a post you made while my code is compiling.

Without these tools, I'd loose track of friends I have had and miss opportunities to enjoy their company, pursue business ventures, get information, or other things in meatspace.

Disclaimer: I am a community college instructor in California. The difference is that community colleges already have the infrastructure to teach students who are below-college standard (e.g. have a high school diploma or GED but have serious deficiencies), tend to be more accessible, and are part of the larger K-14 state education system in the eyes of the state than the University system (K-16). I've taught several students who take regular or remedial community college classes in lieu of normal or advanced high school classes simply to get college credit for the exact same knowledge they would get at high school. These students do this in order to cut costs of their general education curriculum or because their high schools are "gang infested hellholes" (to quote a student). They aren't taking community college classes in hopes of making into Harvard or Yale. The problem with this system is that coordination has yet to provide a method where the student can meet 100% of their high school requirements at the community college level. I would propose granting a conditional diploma after passing the High School Exit Exam (which I passed in 8th grade) that would become legit after passing a General Ed curriculum (24 units) that can transfer to a state-school and take less than a year full time, or 2 full time academic years to earn an associates while their peers are still in high school. If you are smart enough to pass the benchmark exam, and disciplined enough to meet the GE requirements at the CC, and don't care about the "high school experience" (or downright dread it), this is a perfect way to utilize the resources efficiently and help these students rather than have them take high school classes to turn around and take the exact same class in college 2 years later.

While an anecdote, at 2 places I have worked, there is a perception (I can't say if it is true or not) that older (particularly mainframe) programmers are unable or unwilling to transfer their skills to the client/server or web platforms, and that they are unwilling or unable to learn newer languages/design patterns. Again, I can't say in a generalizable way if this is more-or-less "true" or not, but I think the perception is harmful to the older class of workers whose technology is being phased out in a lot of enterprises (and industry sectors.) For some programmers, there is also a tendency to "self-select" for specialization based on a particular tool chain or language preference. I know I could be a Java programmer, but I am so unfamiliar with the API that I'd be fairly ineffective until I got up to speed. I don't think many workplaces tend to frequently lower performance goals for this sort of learning curve making programmers avoid developing a broad skill set and focus narrowly. IT also tends to differentiate between web programmers, mainframe gurus, DBAs, server managers, etc. causing a further territoriality and specialization. I would also argue that the rapid pace of obsolescence makes programmers particularly vulnerable to this perception (or reality). In industries where the skill set is more static, or there are minor incremental changes or a large number of legacy installations (such as in HVAC repair or general construction) there is less of a degree of specialization and rapid skill set changes.

Microsoft's strength and weakness has always been that it has allowed any Windows application to run on almost any Windows device with little modification (if any). Windows CE was marketed as "lightweight Windows" but it did not run Windows applications, it ran poor replacements for Windows applications (Pocket Word, Pocket Excel) that were not good enough to replace their PC analogues, but because they were branded as such seemed far inferior. I think their issue was being "too" ahead of the curve, unable to provide a consumer product with the horsepower at a reasonable cost that didn't act like a really useless PC that ran none of their apps and had next to no storage versus a mildly more expensive laptop. (From someone who owned CE 2.1 and PocketPC devices). The devices failed to attract developers. Tablets were expensive, and as the article suggested, were Windows PC with crappy bolt-on pen support that raised the price $1000. Microsoft also has to deal with lackluster hardware releases from vendors looking to maximize short-run profits over market dominance. In every case you see Microsoft trying to make XBOX development like Windows development, Windows Mobile development like Windows development. Apple on the other hand seems content to have a mobile software ecosystem and a "computer" software ecosystem, even though the distinction is based on role/purpose and input method over any profound distinction. In the end, the bar is different. Any Microsoft Tablet will get asked the question "Will it run Office (well)" where Apple is asked "Will it play music, movies and run Facebook." The customers are demanding new ways to use their PC from Microsoft, and the customers are asking apple for media devices.

The fundamental problem is that users want their computer to do things. They want responsive rich media web applications so conventional wisdom to turn off everything but HTML rendering causes their computer to not do stuff it used to be capable of. The second problem is that in order for computers to do things, particularly in networked environments, is that processes could be working with trusted, semi-trusted or untrusted stuff (be-it content, code, whatever, it doesn't matter for the purpose used.) When security tools attempt to figure out what ought to be trusted or not trusted and gets it wrong, you either do something unsafe or you block the user from doing what they want to do (even if you or me would consider what they want to do as foolish or downright dangerous.) When users are expected to indicate what is trusted or not trusted they generally lack the insight to know what to pick, and vendors are at peril of designing annoying software that provides little true security if users always click "yes" causing the unsafe action to happen, or prevents their computer from working as expected, if they always click "no." Sandboxing can be effective to limit access to other application's data, but can greatly limit interoperability and requires the developer make some decisions on behalf of the user, or makes the developer ask the user how isolated the process is from other resources in a way that is meaningful and they they can understand what the consequences in either case will be if they approve (ideally at setup).

I live near this facility (map/image) and it looks more like a gated-resort community than anything. I haven't seen any razor wire, but there are high fences and access is controlled through a gate, and there are cameras on the road and on the fence. For the interested, there is a wiki page that strikes me as being pretty accurate and NPOV.

All of the above... good catch, those would both be better choices in terms. Though I don't know to what degree Microsoft has documented what Win32 (or other) APIs are being utilized by the various methods in the framework in all cases.

Microsoft knows that mobile development is booming right now and their best chance to get into the market is on very accessible powerful development tools rather than the Windows OS which is quickly losing market share. If Microsoft can have mobile developers coding in .NET, having them be familiar with Windows development is trival (since the Framework obstruficates most of the OS API.)

If the Framework gets ported to non-MS platforms, having those developers develop on Visual Studio, on Windows, in Windows eco-systems is additional trivial.

I am absolutely certain that iPhone development is causing iPhone developers to learn and be comfortable with XCode on Mac machines while at the same time creating more skilled Objective-C coders that will be more proficent in writing normal OS X applications.

I am an adjunct instructor teaching Microsoft Excel classes at the community college and found that textbook PowerPoint files were absolutely horible. Aside from that, it does not lend itself to actual demonstration of the skill or for discussion. For hands on classes, there is definately something to be said for actual demonstration, not half-assed screen captures or videos that don't adapt to actual student questions.
In the end, for me, based on the quality and flexibility it just wasn't worth it, even though my lecture prep does take longer than just punting with the vendor's resources.

The only pro is that students could print them, but instead I offer them copies of my lecture notes which are my "digestion" of the text and the examples I'm going to be using in lecture which have a far more conversational tone and step-by-step walkthrough than bullet points and animations.

I don't know about Australia, but after the South Park movie, American cinemas (particularly the corp-owned multiplexes) started checking IDs for R-rated movies. Recently some retailers began following the ESRB ratings for games, but I have never seen a clerk at any store bat an eye over an R-rated (or Unrated) DVD sale to anyone regardless of age.

I always assumed it was just a "gentleman's agreement" to avoid regulation on the film/game industry, but that there was no legal mandate to follow the ratings recommendations. Does anyone know in the US if there is a legal requirement (anywhere?) and likewise in Australia are there restrictions on buying physical DVDs based on their ratings?

The difference is that Apple's website has a "magazine" format that is very easy to duplicate across teams and is conceptually easy to work with and has for a long time, an implicit asumption of uniformality cover-to-cover. Microsoft's webpage is more "web page" like, with less rigourous conceptual designs. Their pages are full dynamic elements, videos, etc... that complement the particular "brand" of software they are selling (notice the website themes within the office suite, the Windows consumer OS, and the Windows Server System and beyond to TechNet and MSDN). Uniformality for navigation's sake is an obvious after-the-fact bolt-on. That being said, MSDN is not conceptually bound to a printed-manual style making it far more usable than Apple's which very much presents like a print-manual converted to HTML.

I would be happy if someone would write something to filter the @ and # characters twitter users have some fascination with that have no relevance on non-twitter interfaces. While they are at it, may I go ahead and recommend something to filter, Mafia Wars and Farmville why they are at it. Facebook already has a pretty low signal-to-noise ratio thats only getting worse without people encrypting what little text is still there. </rant> That being said, it sounds very interesting as a practical use of crypto-in-plain-sight, and might raise awareness about cryptography and privacy.

The issue is that if they allow this application, they'll have a harder time justifying denying other applications using interpreted languages. That seems like a non-story to me. Everyone has known from the beginning that that was the case, and that the reason was that if they allowed it, there would be no way of controlling it.

However what I do think is interesting is that they'd allow any emulator at all. Particularly one whose games all depend upon an interpreted language. I'm primarily surprised because of the possibility that someone might be able to get unauthorized apps to run under it, not to mention any liability (real or assumed) a plantiff might try to claim if the emulator ran their code illegally and that Apple rubber stamped it knowing the possibility. Emulators have always been in that sort of gray-area. Apple is more than just the device manufacturer, all apps through the app-store have them functioning as a distributor.