The Wagner Blog

Wed, 26 May 2004 03:33:00 GMT

BEA details Liquid Computing plan. SAN FRANCISCO -- Declaring an end to the era of integration as it has been known, BEA Chairman, CEO, and Founder Alfred Chuang at the BEA eWorld 2004 conference here on Tuesday rolled out the company’s “Liquid Computing” vision for building SOAs (service-oriented architectures) that are responsive to rapid changes in IT needs. [InfoWorld: Top News]

Tue, 25 May 2004 04:13:39 GMT

The State of Healthcare (Part 2)

My wife had a patient last month. An 85 year old lady. She had to go to the hospital. While in the hospital, some nurses pried this lady's 3 diamond rings off her athritic finger. True story. No kidding.

Sun, 23 May 2004 03:34:40 GMT

ObjectSpaces Isn't Going To Ship - Jesse Ezell is among those covering the removal of ObjectSpaces from Visual Studio .NET, its merge with WinFS, and its slip to the Longhorn timeframe; his entry is worth reading because several object/relational mapper (ORM) vendors post their comments as well. ObjectSpaces was announced as a Microsoft technology back in 2001, so it can now be added to the long list of things (including WinFS itself) that were promised and then not delivered anywhere near on the time scale that Microsoft led people to believe. Whether this is just a continuation of the FUD policy that once served them so well, or continued inability to come up with realistic schedules (I incline towards the latter explanation but do not rule out the former), it underlines yet again an important principle: don't base your own ship dates on what Microsoft says will be available. [Via Mike Gunderloy]

Sat, 22 May 2004 20:02:21 GMT

Google names 31 underwriters [CNET News.com] - This is going to be so amazing when they cut loose the IPO. I have a feeling it will just absolutely go throught he roof. More than anyone would estimate right now. (Lets see if I'm correct)

Sat, 22 May 2004 20:00:16 GMT

Los Alamos Lab Loses More Data. The nation's most important nuclear weapons lab says it can't locate a hard disk drive that contains classified information. The lab has lost disks before, and critics are getting impatient with its carelessness. By Noah Shachtman. [Wired News]

But has anyone followed up on the chinese guy over there that was wrongfully arrested by the government and totally lost his reputation because of that?

Sat, 22 May 2004 19:50:11 GMT

HMO's taking it out on patients

My wife works for a very large HMO as Registered Nurse. You wouldn't believe some of the horror stories I hear about botched up patient care. Until she started with this company I could not relate to the complaint most people have in that HMO's have accountants interfere with proper care. Now I totally understand. How would you like your father to die because the paperwork system of an HMO is so screwed up. How would you like your mother to receive less care simply because a non-medical administrator decides it is more cost effective. And to make matters worse, in this particular HMO the members have to give up their right to sue the organization when they join up. So picture something that runs about as inefficient as most governmental organizations and you get the idea. People can play roulette with patients lifes and not be accountable. The interesting thing is that most medical personnel will side with the patients. Doctors are just as upset as nurses in this organization. Its really really awful. So a word to the wise. If you have loved ones who are members of an HMO and need serious medical care be forewarned that there are many many many screw ups in such organizations. 90% of which originate with non medical admins who dictate medical care, like setting the length of a hospital stay regardless of the patients health. Stay on top of the care given to your relative otherwise you may really regret it.

Fri, 21 May 2004 03:55:16 GMT

Dr. Peter has a nice app

Its a Web monitoring service. To me the best part was the idea of installing it via command line switches /install and /uninstall. No msi here.

Wed, 19 May 2004 01:14:07 GMT

Debug Javascript in VS 2003

Ever need to debug client side script? Here is an article that outlines how you can configure VS 2003 to do that for you.

Wed, 19 May 2004 01:12:53 GMT

Justin Rogers has a series of articles and downloads that deal with his Parser. Very interesting.

Wed, 19 May 2004 01:10:23 GMT

EIF versus Log4Net

This is a very handy comparison. Thanks Daniel!

Tue, 18 May 2004 01:56:26 GMT

The Nation: "Powell acknowledged that he and the Bush administration misled the nation about the WMD threat posed by Iraq before the war." [Scripting News]

I don't necessarily subscribe to the Nations viewpoint, but some of the items mentioned here are interesting, especially if ever corrolated by more centrist media.

Tue, 18 May 2004 01:51:08 GMT

"Idol" Voting Slammed (E! Online). E! Online - When it comes to American Idol fans, middle-aged housewives with limited patience are no match for so-called "power dialers" and cell-phone-equipped text messagers. [Yahoo! News - Technology]

That explains to some extend why the best singers in the current crop are being voted off. Seems that Diana DeGarmo or Yasmine have more appeal with the phreaking crowd

Mon, 17 May 2004 22:32:25 GMT

Gas Prices a'la Enron?

A commentator on the radio the other day likened the gas price increases to Enron's gaming of the energy markets. It made me wonder how we can know for certain that gas prices are not being driven by the profit motive of a bunch of traders.

Mon, 17 May 2004 02:57:01 GMT

Visual Studio 2005 here we change again

Well I suppose this is bound to happen quite frequently at the current point of the dev cycle. Dino points out how ADO.NET 2.0 is set to be relieved of some of the features shown in Whidbey. Bummer as far as batch updates and asynchronous connections goes. Right on as far as the odd implementation of paging in a reader was concerned. Here is more.

Dine also mentions what seemed to be the paging approach taken by ADO.NET 2.0 - yuck !

Mon, 17 May 2004 01:30:54 GMT

White House 'tried to ban film'. Michael Moore accuses the White House of trying to stop the making and release of his new film. [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]

Moore is one of the most self-serving , self-promoting horses assess I have ever seen in my life.

Mon, 17 May 2004 01:25:53 GMT

How's your health?

A 27 year old guy at my job is complaining of wrist pains. Another one, 33 years old, has neck problems and I myself had a nasty run-in with Sciatica. In my case it was caused by 2 years of 10 hour days in front of the computer with bad posture, plus not enough exercise and being overweight by a good 20 - 25 Ibs. Who would have thought that being so productive can be such hell on your health and body. Adding a sheet of 1/2 in plywood under my side of the mattress to firm it up has helped some.

Sun, 16 May 2004 16:05:30 GMT

The New Yorker

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

[Someone a few days ago said that Bush will make a high rnaking civilian - not Rumsfeld - the scape-goat of this entire mess. Wanna bet that it'll be Cambone??]