A solid quality product is pretty much solid quality code. This is a thing that most 'managers' don't seem to be able to put it in their thick skulls. Another thing that the manager types don't understand is that programming is NOT a equally divisible job. When somebody becomes a manager should write down these 2 things and glue it to their forehead.

It's bad. Honestly, stay away from it. Clumsy plot, bad character development and sudden ending which leaves things unexplained. Avoid it.

There is a CTP for IronPython integration with ASP.NET (see here). I have been playing with it since last week and i think it's really really great. Although the CTP is not really for production use yet, i can finally ditch the inadequate C# language for web development and go with a interpreted language instead( here's hope that the new asp.net compilation model will enable other languages like Boo or L# to follow). Once this is out of CTP stages i'll switch. Good time ahead.

Mathias Blad is back :). In my opinion this is the best Falconer album so far. Great mix of power and folk metal, interesting riffs, inspired lyrics all topped by Mathias Blad 's great voice. Wholeheartedly recomendded. Also i would venture to say that "Long gone" is their best song. Yeah...even better than Clarion call :).

It's mediocre. It does have a interesting subject but the storytelling itself is lacking. Also the story feels a little "rushed" at the end and the end leaves a big opening for another book.

MS went ahead with their hmmm...unfortunate (see ? I can be polite.) naming marketing strategy and released the final version of the .NET 3.0 runtime (download here) It's interesting to mention that although the runtime is RTM, the WPF/WCF support for VS.NET 2005 is only available as CTPs. The VS.NET 2005 support for WWF can be downloaded from here
Another interesting this....it seems that C# 3.0 and VB9.0 will be released with Microsoft.NET 3.5 .

I have been working lately on a few ASP.NET projects and on one of them i'm stuck with the default Web Site model. When VS.NET 2005 was in beta i had high hopes for this model, the ability to compile only parts of the site seemed the missing link that will allow a ASP.NET programmer to work in more "agile" manner. (and yes....i still think strong typed compiled languages are bad for web development).
Unfortunately it doesn't really work because you forced to do things in a certain way now (put shared code in App_Code folder and so on). So the fact that you can compile individual pages separately in the "Web site" model is negated by the fact that compiling a page actually compiles half of the project (your page has references to App_Code files which have references to other parts of the code on so on). So ....honestly i can't recommend the "Web site" model.
The alternative is, of course, the "Web Application" project model (which will also be a part of VS.NET 2005 SP1) which is the "old" VS.NET 2003 project model. To work in a more "effective" way with this i have a small tip: try to move as much as possible from your code into libraries. Ideally you should have only aspx pages into the web project. That would both compile the project and allow you to make changes faster. The Web application project addin van be downloaded from here.

 

A worthy followup to the Moonshae trilogy . Although the first book (Prophet of Moonshae) is not that great the next 2 are indeed great (in fact i would say The Coral Kingdom is one of the best Forgotten Realms novels i have read). Highly recommended.

A "hacks" book. Speaking strictly from my point of view it has a few interesting "hacks" but, unfortunately not enough "hardcore content" to justify the purchase price. Also some chapters are pure fluff instead of "hacks". But, anyway, the best advice i can give you is to browse the TOC and read a sample chapter before deciding that the book is worth purchasing.
Also keeping with the latest "trends" in technical writing, the books is simply chocked with unnecessary source code samples. Instead of inserting small relevant pieces of code you get huuuuuge, irrelevant (do you really think it's ok to show the markup of a entire aspx page when you just want to demonstrate a binding expression ?!!!) lumps of code. And this really really sucks.