muglia on longhorn

This also interesting from last week: a CNET interview with Bob Muglia, Senior VP at Microsoft, on Longhorn Client, Server, and almost everything in between. A little more information on WinFS (to add to my comments last week): apparently WinFS will be on Longhorn server, but it's unclear that it will show up on the client. The more I see the progression of the backtracking of announcements, the more it seems to me that the problem is that the initial announcement was too vague. Maybe MS would do well to not talk so much about features that haven't coalesced yet.

china rising

Something I read last week that has stayed with me: an article in the Washington Post, Booming China Devouring Raw Materials. Quote:

The China Syndrome, as it known, explains why as many as one-fifth of the bulk freighters in the world are effectively unavailable on any given day and why the cost of moving bulk freight has more than doubled in just over a year. The same ships that sit stranded outside Newcastle, or at iron ore ports in Brazil, India and western Australia, must line up again for as long as three weeks to unload at congested Chinese ports such as Qingdao and Ningbo.

The construction frenzy that is crowning China's cities with skyscrapers and laying the works for modern industry has transformed it from a minor consumer of raw materials into a country that -- according to its official statistics -- absorbed roughly half the world's cement production last year, one-third of its steel, one-fifth of its aluminum and nearly one-fourth of its copper. Last year China eclipsed Japan to become the world's second-largest importer of oil after the United States.

Wow. A couple of weeks ago The Economist had an article on this from another point of view: The greal fall of China, which started with "If China's soaring economy has a hard landing, the rest of the world will feel the bump". One way or another, we're in for an interesting few years...

Oh, and related (and a little alarming): China warns over Taiwan moves.

movies

A couple of movies I've seen recently that went uncommented-upon in the midst of my no-blog-status.

21 Grams: Very good. Very good. Heavy. But good. Did I mention it was good?
The Last Samurai: Not bad (surprisingly). Pretty accurate, at least broadly, in historical terms, and Tom Cruise manages a good performance. Plus I have a thing for Bushido, so...
Thirteen: Good as well. Also (relatively) heavy, but it felt ever-so-slightly contrived since nothing irreversible happens (some would argue with that I imagine, but given the situations in the film there are lots of possibilities for Really Bad Things, a sort of tension that never gets resolved. Now that I said "irreversible"... now that's a movie that is truly harsh. Saw it a while ago.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of The World: Not so good. Science Fiction movie set in the past pretending to be a historical movie (not unlike Troy, from what I've read, I mean, come on, no Gods?). Russell Crowe is always good but the premise of the movie is hard to believe (unless the French captain in it has GPS and Radar technology available that is). It tries for epic but ends up falling somewhere between the trailer for Finding Nemo and a chase scene of Miami Vice. Okay, maybe I'm being a bit too harsh, but the setup of the movie is so expansive but it's difficult not to be disappointed (particularly in retrospect) when you realize it's just two ships running around in the middle of the Pacific. It was entertaining though. :)

no news?

Hey.

No, it's not that there aren't any news. First, I still haven't recovered my blogflow. I have tried to locate it using various techniques, including breadth-first search (for the CS people out there) and tiny keychain flashlights (don't ask).

We are working ALot/7 to get the new, fully public release of share out the door. We are making quite a lot of changes based on the feedback of the invitation-only beta. We've run over some deadlines(TM) but since it's not by too many days and it's in the name of peace, prosperity, and stability, it's all a-ok.

So, there will be news Soon(TM), and after that maybe I'll sleep or something.

PS: "Soon" and "run over some deadlines" are Registered Trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.