This Old Code

I am finding Google Finance very useful looking at Sirius I notice an MSN money story "Sirius Adds CNN to Online Lineup"  I find it pathetic that I find this out second hand rather then directly on Sirius,  I don't think they get how to communicate with their listeners.  Some times an email should be used for more then just new letters and you cannot count on your listeners always having their radio on to here your news.  I admit I haven't been listening to Sirius this week rather NPR and KQED.  I would listen if they offered NPR or PRI via their online Player.

Check out Finance a new beta offering from Google.  Its really to bad Google keeps their betas so hush hush, I Like this much better then Yahoo Finance but never would have known about it if it wasn't for Robert Scoble's blog entry.

BuisinessWeek Reported on January 12th about share prices of XM satellite Radio Holdings Inc. and Sirius Satellite Radio Inc rising based on speculation of a merger,  BuisinessWeek presume the larger Subscriber base of XM( 7.6 million ) will acquire Sirius with 6 million subscribers.  I think they are wrong.  When SmartMoney.com reports Sirius announced positive free cash flow in the fourth quarter.  I look forward to Sirius acquiring XM. 

Remote controls, pelet guns and computers.

Since I couldn't comment on Mike's Blog I thought I would respond here regarding his post pertaining to Choosing a Loan Message Exchange Standard for Banking.

In defence of MISMO the new standards are in xsd not dtd.  Also MISMO is very good for a few specific Mortgage transactions.  Currently MISMO closing looks the best for use outside of a given transaction.  Also in regards to vendor adoption its quite poor compared to the FNMA format.(compared to IFX however, that's another story)

There is a lot I don't personally care for in MISMO but one on the most important things it provides our area is a common agreed upon vernacular.

Perhaps I am a bit bias because I work at a software company and we sale, software.  But I really don't believe in the "Open Source" movement(software should be open source and free).  I believe in owning the source if I buy a product I should own that revisions source, I should not be dependent upon a specific company for bug fixes. There are Intellectual property right issues with this, but i digress.  I see today that the European Commission in its ill informed and infinite wisdom has announced Open Source (meaning free software.) solutions could provide savings in the long term.(Open source gets European boost)  Being a USA hard core capitalist, I don't get it.  How will open source compete and improve over time what will propel them to the next level?  How will they decide the direction of their "Product"?  From my observation these projects add features based on the whim of their developers.   In the world were software costs money we have customers, typically you want to keep these customers so you listen to them, help make their lives better so you can sale more to them and hopefully others.  It's why we push the cutting edge when we see fit and wait in the back ground while the industry settles on standards.  Its why software companies invest Millions in design and usability research.  Were are the "Open Source" customers?  Even if a "Open Source" project is successful what keeps it together(like after the lead developer, develops a life)?  How would any Company or Government agency keep up with all the forks and what works together on which platform(My only answer, consultants.  And they typically are not cheap).

After long last Microsoft has finally released SQL 2005 Compact Edition (formerly known as SQL Mobile)download link.  The question to be answered is how it took so long to allow support outside of the mobile platform and why it took Microsoft so long to wake up and think this might be a good idea?  When I was looking for a light weight desktop Database I only saw one good prospect SQLite (which also had an update January 9).  At any rate its nice Microsoft has something better then Access DB  to offer Client side programmers.  If you want to compare SQLITE and SQL 2005 Compact Edition.  Also I have found a nice ADO.NET 2.0 data adapter for SQLITE at System.Data.SQLite.  Overall SQLite has been a nice little database that we haven't had any real issues with, unlike our Access db.

Rick Strahl was complaining about component vendors poor selling techniques and I agree. His rant was inspired by Kevin Dente's post How NOT to sell software (Kevin got free license out of his post, oh the power of public forums.) 

I am also getting sick and tired of the licenses hoops we have jump through in order to install third party components on our DEV systems and the crap it entail to get them working on a build system.  I can't count the number of bugs filed from some novel approach to license control screwing up an end build.

As it turns out, If you define and implement your whole class/structure in a .h file a consumer needs to mark it #pragma unmanaged.  If you don't delete will get confused and issue the errors i received from my earlier post.

Would you like to just get some work done in VC++ 2005 or 2007?  Then rename or delete the following file:
<VS root path>\VC\vcpackages\feacp.dll

Beware class view(I don't use it my project is to large) will no longer work.  And c++ winforms will not work.  I have Visual Assist X and CodeRush/Refactor! so i still have all that Intellisense offers only better!