This Week C9: Scott Hanselman, Silverlight, Expression Studio 3, C#/CLI

The Discussion

• 

  After looking at the census data link, it reminded me that all the new geometry tools in SQL are totally verbose.  Not that writing my own distance function is a much better solution...

   

  CREATE function ut_dist(@lon1 float,@lon2 float,@lat1 float,@lat2 float) returns float as      

  begin      

  declare @d2r float; set @d2r=atan(1)/45    

  declare @cosine float; set @cosine = sin(@lat2*@d2r) * sin(@lat1*@d2r) 

   + cos(@lat2*@d2r) * cos(@lat1*@d2r) * cos((@lon2*@d2r)-(@lon1*@d2r))  

  return (select [miles]= case when @cosine between -1 and 1 then 4000 * acos(@cosine) else null end) 

  end

• 

  Still no express editions for Expression? Ugh.

• 

  Scott, I think you have the coolest laptop in all... a lenovo w500

• 

  Silverlight is such a great product and I would like to get my sites done with it as much as I can.

  Unfortunately, it has one huge design flaw that makes it unworty (for now) of any investment of time.

  It is made by Microsoft.

  What I mean is that:

  1) Microsoft makes Windows

  2) Microsoft makes Silverlight

  3) Microsoft promised to support other OSes for Silvelight.

  That is a conflict of interest, how do we know that a few years down the road, after we invest time/effort/money into SIlverlight, Microsoft does not pull the plug out of OSes that are not Windows?

  Right now Silverlight for Linux is not supported, and as web developer I need my sites to be seen by the biggest audience available, and right now, Flash (as frustrating as it is) is the best choice for my audience reach.

• 

  Sure it is, you haven't seen Moonlight? We even changed the Silverlight detection code on http://www.silverlight.net to forward people to install Moonlight for Linux. http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/

• 

  "Right now Silverlight for Linux is not supported, and as web developer I need my sites to be seen by the biggest audience available, and right now, Flash (as frustrating as it is) is the best choice for my audience reach."

  I always wonder how much of a real issue this is.  I am thinking:
  1) How many people are actually using linux as desktop?  Most base is server.  Does windows and mac get you 99.999% there?.  Is that enouph?
  2) Would a linux geek actually install silverlight anyway?  I guessing most would not want to install it anyway as some kind of a stick in the eye to ms.
  3) Out of the .001%, are these people actually going to visit your site or would you care?  You have to know your audience and target to them.  Not to the handful you are never going to reach or please anyway.  However, if these are your target, then the story is different.

• 

  http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/
  
  As you can see the latest stable version of Moonlight is 1.0.1, which is roughly equivalent to the Silverlight 1 release. AFAIK the latest version of Sliverlight is version 3. I have seen very little content that actually works with Moonlight, it seems most everyone is using at least Silverlight 2 (including Channel 9).

  Although in my opinion the Mono team consist of some of the best .NET programmers around, it's very difficult to keep up with the huge developer teams at Microsoft. Mono's full time development team (which Moonlight is a subset of) is actually smaller then the entire .NET Compact Framework team.

  Of course this doesn't address the issue that Microsoft has a vested interest in ensuring that Silverlight only works on Windows, should Silverlight ever actually take off as a disruptive technology on the Internet. Adobe, who is not primarly a platform/OS vendor has no such conflict of interest.

• 

  @Peppeddu:

  Seriously?  If that is keeping you from installing something because of the vendor, I know lots of programs which are not around because company's went under.  That doesn't mean we stop using them, it just means we can't get any updates.  Do you not watch a movie because Paramount is the studio releasing it?  I think Silverlight is great, I've yet to see it crash a browser, can't say the same for Flash.

  @Bass:

  If you think Adobe doesn't have an agenda, then you're sorely mistaken.  All these technologies are for you to choose from.  If you don't want to use Silverlight, then don't, no one is forcing you.

• 

  I rather have an Internet were people aren't forced to use specific operating systems in order to participate. I think that completely defeats the purpose of the Internet as an open medium accessible to all: once of the reasons the Internet was successful and widely adopted in the first place (built on open standards like TCP/IP all the way to HTTP and HTML). I do feel that Silverlight takes away something from that.

  I would be really happy if Microsoft decided to release an offical spec for Silverlight as well as a promise not to sue people who use or implement Silverlight, kind what they did with some parts of .NET.

• 

  hey, i played Descent (and im 25)

  @ scotts tracking idea
  scott you already talked to johnny lee about this. you know in your interview with him at mix where he alluded to some natal stuff, he described using a cell phone that tracks the environment as you move it around there by allowing whats showed on the screen to remain "stationary" relative to the environment

  headtracking is super awsome, all though i think one of the coolest uses is also one of the subtlest.. if you track the users head and their hand, you could basically do a multi touch interface without touching. if you held your finger in mid air between your head an the screen you could nudge windows around just as if you where holding your fingers on a multi touch surface.. its kind of abstract and hard to explain but i think it would be super awsome and usefull. i think the best analogy would be a "crush your head" game, you know where you look through your fingers and "crush" objects on screen. with head/hand tracking that would be totaly possible.

  however since you need depth information to do it we probobly have to wait for natal to pull of a really accurate implementation :/ ive been thinking about using touchless (on codeplex) to get a prototype going and ive got 4 weeks vacation now so we'll see

• 

  Al, why would you need a head in the picture, depth of field?  3DV Systems uses the Time-Of-Flight (TOF) principle, to detect depth.

• 

  yes, you need  the head to accuratly caluclate the field of view of the user. its a subltle difference but if you also factor in the head position of the user, you could manipulate objects prespective wise as if the user was touching the surface of the screen, even if they are holding their hand in mid air.

  TOF is great and thats the ultimate hardware for this kind of system because of the accurate depth info. using depth and position you can calculate the angle between the users head and finger and extrapolate what point on the screen that represents, but you need the distance to the head, the distance to the finger (really the distance between head and finger) and the distance to the screen. (as well as x/y positions of finger and head)

  its neat because it "looks" like you're using something like surface from your own prespective, but you wouldnt be restricred by a glass surface. you'd be able to reach in to the picture and it would still be like manipulating a surface

• 

  @ Bass "I do feel that Silverlight takes away something from that."  How so?  How come anything useful ms puts out has to now be open?  Adobe and Apple don't do that and afaict, MS opens more then any other company.  The internet is doing just fine.  Which, by the way, was created using tax dollars.  The market decides what grows.  If you take all motive out for companies, you don't get products like flash and silverlight in the first place - and nobody wants to live in a world without light.

• 

  If your sites need to be seen by the biggest audience available, why wouldn't you just build your site using ASP.NET (spitting out HTML) and use H.264 for video? If that is a real requirement, I have to imagine that the number of iPhone users will be the same, if not more, than the number of users for Linux. Further, the number of mobile phones supporting Flash or Silverlight is comparably tiny compared to the number of sites supporting HTML.

  Or put another way, if your #1 goal is reach, then don't use any plug-ins, or use Silverlight and have a good "default" to using no plug-ins.

  I'm curious, what Web site is this for?

   

• 

  Descent ruled nights long ,)

• 

  face is the index of mind.so keep on smilling to be happy and healthy always.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  dear viewer