A big Chaos Manor orchid to the OpenOffice organization, which
has patiently worked to
create an office suite that runs on all platforms, using XML and open components.
So far they have what really is an adequate substitute for Microsoft Office and Excel, and most of us
could
live with it. It doesn't do elaborate templates—O'Reilly authors can't use it, for instance, since one
of
O'Reilly's requirements is that you send them your manuscripts done in their template, thus cutting way down
on
editorial costs while giving authors more control over the formatting of their contributions.
But while OpenOffice won't do for big and complex documents with a lot of structure, it is more than good
enough for most authors and writers. Joel Rosenberg uses Open Office under Linux, and finds that he has no
problems with collaborations with writers using Microsoft Office on either Windows or Apple systems. Files
transfer back and forth without degradation. My own experience hasn't been quite that good, but I could live
with Open Office if I didn't have Microsoft Word. Anything that competes with Microsoft is valuable;
Microsoft does much better work when there's something chasing them.
Microsoft WinHEC and MEC
A big Chaos Manor orchid goes to Microsoft's conferencing team. They consistently put on the best
technical
conferences I know of. There are a few schedule conflicts, but that's inevitable with a multi-track
conference. The important thing is that there's always something interesting going on, with high content and
good presentations, and good charts and other take-home materials. The lunches and exhibits are well
organized, and everything starts on time. The hands-on lab at MEC, the Microsoft Educational Conference in
Anaheim last fall, had hundreds of machines with hands-on demonstrations of new software and concepts.
Next Generation ALM: Automating the Entire Build and Release Process As more and more software development shops adopt Agile processes, fully automating the build and release management processes becomes a critical element of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) strategy. Join Forrester Senior Analyst Jeffrey Hammond and Anders Wallgren, CTO from Electric Cloud, as they discuss release management best practices and how to get started.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008. 11AM PT/2PM ET
Creating Common and Scalable SOA Solutions for the Enterprise Leveraging an Enterprise Service Router (ESR) Creating Common and Scalable SOA Solutions for the Enterprise Leveraging an Enterprise Service Router (ESR)
Despite the many emerging instances of SOA today, the ability to leverage common services and a common metadata layer in a secure and scalable manner is paramount, but rarely addressed. In this webinar, Intel discusses the core issues and opportunities behind the quest to provide a common services and information management layer, and explore a new architectural component called an Enterprise Service Router.
Thursday, November 13, 2008. 11AM PT/2PM ET
In this volume of Best of BYTE, we explore the emergence of some heuristic algorithms. Although we have only scratched the surface of this intriguing subject, we hope we've suggested the potential of the synthesis of heuristics and algorithms.
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