ASP.NET Ajax Roundtable Part 1 - Browser Compatibility

ASP.NET Ajax Roundtable Part 2 - Resurgence in JavaScript

ASP.NET Ajax Roundtable Part 3 - Open Source

The take-away: Requirements gathering is still hard; waterfall methods are still as prominent as Agile methods; and Use Cases are here to stay despite a push toward User Stories for requirements modeling.

Take a look at the SearchSoftwareQuality.com Agile Trends 2008 Survey and related articles and you will see what the overall team thinks about these compelling trends. Tell us what you think.  Happy Fourth of July!

Despite the UNIX-leanings, USENIX in recent years has featured some Microsoft experts, usually from the company’s research arm.  This year, at USENIX in Boston, Benjamin Livshits and Weidong Cui of Microsoft Research shared a view on the company’s work on JavaScript worms.

In the paper they proposed Spectator automatic detection and containment solution for JavaScript worms. . The Spectator software examines the traffic between a Web application and its users, looking for long propagation chains associated with worms.

Coordination Data Structures join Parallel LINQ and the Task Parallel Library and other elements intended to address the  new era of mulitcore processors.

Coordination Data Structures are said to contain lightweight and scalable thread-safe data structures and synchronization primitives. Apparently there is more than one way to skin a cat or facilitate communications between threads.

The Parallel Extensions to .NET Framework 3.5 libraries are downloadable  now.

This long-running project took on an open-source tenor with a Codeplex download. It is suddenly dark.

Apparently, the source code was not available, making it less than open source. Microsoft apologized, and pulled the rev from Codeplex. A free download, without open-source panache, can be found on Microsoft’s download site.

What would the computer and software businesses be like without Gates? Would pre-PC computer companies like IBM and DEC have held eternal sway? People can differ on the degree of responsibility Gates should share for a technology revolution that put more computing power within the reach of more programmers. But it is surely significant.

In the face of today’s open-source software movement it is hard to remember that, in his day, Bill Gates stormed the barricades in the name of egalitarian computing, sort of. What do you think? Let us know.

“Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting our offer. After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal,” Ballmer said in a statement.

This deal would have moved Microsoft far deeper into a Web Advertising market in which it has trailed both Google and Yahoo. Viewers suggest it well could have shifted the company’s emphasis away from its successful software businesses.

It is not completely certain that the merger machinations are wholly over - as Ballmer’s comments point primarily to pricing as the obstacle to completing the deal. Both Microsoft and Yahoo in the wake of this clumsy dance of courtship.

Some comment from the blogosphere:

According to Stephen Bainbridge. Big shareholders wanted a deal, “but not one that required Microsoft to overpay. In addition, press reports suggest that some of Microsoft’s largest shareholders were pressuring the firm not to overpay.”

Andrew Brust says it’s not over ‘til it’s over. “Microsoft’s withdrawal of its Yahoo acquisition proposal may just be a negotiating tactic.  Or it could in earnest.  Time will tell.”

And, the crack blogger MiniMicrosoft chimes in as well. “With this strategic inflection point, the era of post-BillG Microsoft 2.0 has begun.”