NZPundit had a post this morning linking to a Herald article on the ongoing necklace debate at Marlborough Girls College. Briefly...

“A Pakeha student whose necklace was forcibly removed by a teacher - even though Maori students are allowed to wear their taonga (treasures) - has quit school over the incident.”

While I'm no fan of the Human Rights Commisariat this looks like a fine time to have a good go at the establishment. On that note I've got a NZ$50 note to kick off a legal fighting fund for anyone who's interested in having a go at:

• The Ministry of Ed
• The school, the board of trustees or the principal especially
• The teacher who forcibly removed the necklace

Well, Well, Well...... Scoble has stirred up a hornets nest with his post on Gay Marriage. He posts some follow up here.

Die hard Libertarian that I am I can't let it go without comment.

In the ideal world I don't think that the government would have anything to do with marriage save for enforcing any properly made contract that might stem from a marriage. In the same way I don't think the government should have anything to do with what goes on in your bedroom. ...or what sort of crack you like to smoke.... etc...

Marriage and participation therein should be left up to the churches. Most of them are die hard bigots but there are increasingly tolerant people among both clergy and parish. The important thing though is that churches are private organizations and in a free world private organizations and individuals should be free to be as discriminatory or tolerant as they see fit. If non religious people like me want to get married then we can also start a private organization to record the commitments that we make.

But, we don't live in the ideal Libertarian Utopia (yet!) do we. So my current feelings are that while the government continues to bring the concept of marriage under a legal framework then the law should apply to, and the protection thereunder be available to, all people no matter who they share their life with. Ultimately I believe that private people should be free to discriminate as they see fit, the government should not.

I gave an MSDN Webcast on the 24th of Feb. Here is the link to the recorded session:

MSDN Webcast: Deploying Compact Framework Solutions in an Enterprise Environment – Level 200

Scoble just posted an entry on why he hasn't got a Smartphone yet and it kinda rings true for me. Here are my needs/likes/wants for a phone...

Needs
- Gotta have Bluetooth. I use my phone with all my other devices to access the internet over GPRS. Bluetooth is a must have
- Gotta be a phone and not some chunky PPC like thing. I am a divergence kinda guy more than a convergence kinda guy. I am happy to carry multiple 'Best of Breed' devices rather than a single 'Jack of All Trades  Master of None' device. I don't want qwerty keyboards or any of that bollocks... I'll be carrying a Tablet or Pocket PC most of the time anyway.
- Compact Framework and Smartphone 2003. Kinda goes without saying... If I'm buying a programmable device I want the latest service packs etc.
-MP3 Player. This is about the only area where I think convergence works for me.... I see no need in having an iPOD like device with multiple Gigs of storage. I am going to be syncing often enough to refresh my music regularly.
- Decent battery life. It's a phone after all, my current phone does 4-5 days..... I don't want to lose too much of that time with a new device.

Nice to Have
- Camera. I like the Mobile to Blog idea that Casey has been doing
- WiFi. I can make do with Bluetooth but my primary Home Area Network is WiFi so I can lose some radio interference by sticking to WiFi for Syncing

Chris Tacke has posted some info on a really cool little control that he has written for CF.....
An automotive dial gauge.

With all the hoopla starting to surround ReSharper I'm going to post some stuff on a REALLY cool competing tool that I'm using an early Beta of....... but I don't have time right now.... so I'm leaving blog notes to myself......

I posted a couple of days ago on some stuff to do with scheduling in SQL Server.

MSDN has just published a good article on the internals of the User Mode Scheduler inside SQl Server.

Michael Yuan is reporting the release of two new Windows Smartphone devices from Motorola.

These have all the usual fruit that you'd want and expect on a current generation mobile;

• 1.3MP Camera
• Bluetooth
• Tri Band GPRS

..... as well as a few things that set them apart....

• WiFi!.... Yes WiFi!
• Smartphone 2003 OS (first in the US with that I think)
• SP2 of the framework.... which is just as well becuase you can't update the CF into RAM on these devices.

I'm going to grab one while I'm in the US in April if I can find one. Does anybody have any pointers as to where to get one in and around the Seattle/Redmond area?

1) If you add a file (say an xml config) file to a CF project and set its BuildAction property to Content would you still need to include it in the CAB inf file?

If you are using the Pocket PC emulator to debug Compact Framework applications that rely on networking you may want to look at this article. it describes the process to follow to ensure that the emulator can comunicate over the network.

Couple of goodies have popped up on MSDN Subscriber downloads recently.

Win XP SP2 Beta
Windows Sharepoint Services

According to American Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson George W. is going to win in a landslide this year- god told him so. More likely Pat has been smoking the same crack that Ralph Nader has recently.
 

Something funny over at LitleGreenFootballs.

Some Palestinian students learning english.... visit the site to see what is on the blackboard.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=9924_Crude_Propaganda_on_Both_Sides_of_the_Lens

It's usually pretty easy to pick a PayPal spoof that's trying to nick ya money, right?

Not anymore..... take a look at this example of Visual Spoofing

via [Chris Tacke]

Robert Levy has posted some comments on the rise of theSpoke.net and the fall of GotDotNet.com/student.

http://robertlevy.net/archive/2004/02/22/152.aspx

Beverage Daily is reporting on a portable spectroscope for use in detecting counterfeit Whisky.... now that would have ben great in my student days!

Via [The Trademark Blog]

Tablet MVP Casey Chesnut has a run down of the Dallas MVP summit. We antipdeans were invited to attend via Live Meeting but I don't think many/any of us managed to get up that early in the morning.

http://www.mperfect.net/blog/browse.aspx?bid=632130464595625000

When you were a kid did you need to know how things worked? Like taking things apart? Interested in the guts of the .NET framework? Good.

Your first point of call should probably be Don Box and Chris Sells' great book $a(ISBN 0201734117,books). It's a great read, especially for those coming from other managed environments (Java especially) as it allows you to get your head into exactly what .NET is without having to wade through 'how to program in an OO environment' 101. It's the sort of book that any .NET programmer worth their salt should 'cover to cover' at least once in their career. Then you can slot it back on the shelf for ready reference in answering those particularly gnarly newsgroup questions.

But, I digress. The second place to head is the weblog of Chris Brumme, one of the architects on the CLR team. This blog has an extremely high signal to noise ratio with the posts usually stretching into  several pages of extremely detailed information on a given aspect of the CLR and/or Framework. His recent post on hosting covers allot of ground with the real value, I think, being that it gives some insight into the considerations involved in producing highly performant server software - viz SQL Server.

Chris describes in some detail:

• How CLR threading interacts with the underlying host.
• How SQL server manages multi-threading in a slightly surprising fashion
• Hooks that are being introduced in the Whidbey timescale to allow the CLR to better cooperate with 'extreme' hosts such as SQL Server.
• Schemes for managing memory and threads in post physical and virtual (hyperthreading) MP environments.

http://blogs.msdn.com/cbrumme/archive/2004/02/21/77595.aspx

NZPundit is reporting the chaos that has bestruck one of the most 'creative' areas of Wellington.

http://www.nzpundit.com/archives/005481.html

Have you tried Skype yet?

It's a Peer 2 Peer IP Telephony product that just works. A friend is in Hawaii for business (I know!!!!... tell me about it) and we've talked a few times over the last wee while on Skype and it really does just work straight out of the box.

Quality is good and if you both have a full duplex soundcard then it's very close to being as good as a phone call... without the cost- Skype is FREE as in FREE BEER.

It gets a double thumbs up from me. It makes me feel like I did when ICQ came to the fore back in 96-97... I had a genuine sub 100,000 UID back then

Now if they could just write a version for Pocket PC I could wander around the house while talking....

http://users.senet.com.au/~colton/Interesting_Stories.html

Take one Piper Saratoga, one Australian and a half dozen other aircraft....mix...

DP Review is posting details on the new all manual Panasonic DMC-LC1. It looks like a very sexy bit of kit!

• Fairly fast Leica lens
• Manual Zoom, Manual Focus, Manual Aperture, Manual Shutter speed.
• Auto bracketing

Looks like a great camera for hands on photographers....It even looks retro.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/Feb04/02-12windowssource.asp

Wasn't MS's Fault
Wasn't Shared Source's Fault
Not the Govt Security Program.....

So why not tell us who it was!

Also...

Kuro5hin has a guided tour of some of the comments... makes funny reading.

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/71552/7795

Now as anyone who knows me would tell you, I'm far from being a tree huggin, yogurt slurpin, sandal shod hippie. But, I'm pretty partial to a well made Hummus Mediterainian Chickpea Dip. I make a pretty mean one myself but also buy quite a lot in the tubs from the  supermarket. I think I'm going to have to do a bit of a review of some of the brands that I have tried. They range from the divine to the downright nasty.... what do you think? Are you a chickpea muncher too?