The one thing we can all count on with Facebook is change. Facebook performs major updates to its user interface about twice a year. Some changes are welcome, but sometimes the Facebook UI designers make things harder than they should be.
During a recent security audit, a company discovered that a
blonde employee was using the following password:
“MickeyMinniePlutoHueyLouieDeweyDonaldGoofySacramento”
When the company asked the blonde why she had such a long password, she said the login screen required the password to be at least 8 characters long and include at least one capital.
Silverlight is a powerful development platform for creating engaging, interactive user experiences for Web, desktop, and mobile applications when online or offline. Silverlight is a free plug-in, powered by the .NET framework and compatible with multiple browsers, devices and operating systems, bringing a new level of interactivity wherever the Web works. Silverlight is also one of the programming models for Windows Phone 7 devices.
Key new features in Silverlight 4 include:
- Set of forms controls with over 60 customizable, style-able components.
- Comprehensive printing support.
- The .NET Common Runtime (CLR) now enables the same compiled code to be run on the desktop and Silverlight without change.
- Enhanced data-binding support, data grouping/editing, and string formatting within bindings.
- Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) supports building large composite applications.
- Silverlight design support in Visual Studio 2010 with drag & drop data-binding, and full IntelliSense.
- Localization enhancements with Bi-Directional text, Right-to-Left support and complex scripts such as Arabic.
Silverlight Homepage
What’s New in Silverlight 4
Developing for Windows Phone 7 with Silverlight
Yet another hilarious strip from xkcd: A webcomic of romance,
sarcasm, math, and language:
This is part 15 in a series of articles on obscure programming languages.
What is Oxygene?
Oxygene is a commercial programming language developed by RemObjects Software for the Microsoft .NET Framework. In 2008, RemObjects licensed its Oxygene compiler and IDE technology to Embarcadero to be used in its Delphi Prism product. You may recall that in 2008 Embarcadero purchased CodeGear, the software development tools division of Borland.
Microsoft is releasing Visual Studio 2010, .NET Framework 4.0, and Silverlight 4 at the Visual Studio Developer Conference in Las Vegas. VS 2010 and .NET 4 are available today, and Silverlight 4 will be available to download later this week.
This comic shows how hell is just like life on Earth, only worse.
From xkcd: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language.
April Fool’s Day is tomorrow, April 1st. It’s an annual “holiday” when humor reigns, and pranks and practical jokes are expected and allowed.
Computers are a great medium for April Fool’s jokers because most users have no clue what goes on behind those blinking computer lights. So when a hapless user is hit with a computer prank, they immediately suspect a malfunction, virus or worse.
Here’s a fun article from last year. If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you!
When you clicked an icon to launch your web browser to read this article, you can thank Charles Thacker (among others).
In 1973, Thacker and a group of scientists at the famed Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) built the Alto, the world’s first desktop computer. The Alto featured many innovations that we take for granted today in our personal computers: a television-like screen, graphical user interface, windows, icons, and a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) text editor.
The Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) has awarded Charles Thacker with the Turing Award, which is considered to be the “Nobel Prize in Computing.” The award includes a $250,000 check, with financial support by Intel and Google. Since 1966 the Turing Award has honored computer scientists and engineers who “created the systems and underlying theoretical foundations that have propelled the information technology industry.”