After Adobe's Apollo and Microsoft's Silverlight, Sun has addes own version of scriptable, interactive platform named JavaFX. Unlike the previous three (Flash included), this is going to be Open Sourced - under the Microsoft's most hated license - GPL. Now the race to replace Flash really becomes really interesting ...

I am working on the BI modules for automotive data-analytics application these days. Which means that I am doing quite a bit coding and using T-SQL and in addition to Visual Studio 2005, I use quite often the Sql Server Management Studio for SQL Server 2005. In theory, both tools should be based on the Visual Studio IDE code base. Which is maybe true, but there are many quite annoying differences.

Since I got through "Rails immersion", I keep seeing the implementations of the same idea everywhere. Latest find is Subsonic, which implements Active Records in .NET space. Rather than writing more, see this screencast.

During last two weeks I have been reading and playing a lot with Rails. Now I am in the state where I think I started to "get it" and understand how things work under the surface. Which means I am ready actually start using the framework for real work and become proficient as I get my hands dirty. To get to this state, absolutely essential and by far the best book is the classic one - Agile Web development with Rails co-authored by the original Rails designer and one of the Pragmatic Programmers.

Imagine if somebody got copyright on a number 32. You could not say any more on a Web page that you use 32 bit OS because you were not allowed to use the number. You could not even write thirty two, or 0x20... Could not send a card for 32nd birthday. Sounds crazy, right ? But exactly this is happening. Somebody is trying to claim exclusive ownership of one number and sending take-down letters, law threats to those you have it posted on their web sites or blogs.