We get up early so that you don't have to.

The Daily Grind 755

By Mike Gunderloy
Wednesday, November 16, 2005

We got our first serious cold snap of the season, and all of the leaves are off the black locust trees have lost their leaves now.

Software

Windows Desktop Search – enabled for the enterprise - Microsoft is trying to get their own solution embedded well enough to fight off anything Google or Yahoo might do. I'm a bit amused at the notion of "Easily add new file types by writing IFilters," but this still looks like a step forward. If they really want to be smart, they'll set up a public IFilter repository and pay a bounty for contributing useful ones.
Groove Message Export - Tool to export Groove IM conversations to Word, Outlook, Excel, or XML. Free for non-commercial use.
Network Instruments Observer 11 - This commercial network protocol analyzer adds extensive VOIP analysis, 64-bit support, stream reconstruction, and other features in this new version. Trial download, pricing from $995.
Stylus Studio 2006 XML Enterprise Edition - Includes updated support for XQuery 1.0 and XSLT 2.0, as well as a new set of XML Deployment Adapters for treating databases and other data sources as XML for both reading and writing.

Microsoft Pushes Users Down the 64-Bit Plank - Reported in various outlets, software like Longhorn Server R2 and Exchange 12 is going to be 64-bit only. You'll probably see some folks grumbling about this, but c'mon, we're talking about software that's going to ship in 2009 and beyond. By then you probably won't even be able to buy a 32-bit server-class machine any longer.
Visual Basic Language Specification 8.0 - Everything you always wanted to know about VB but were afraid to ask. I miss the days when you could write the BASIC spec inside a matchbook cover with room to spare for the barmaid's phone number.

Software Training Sucks: Why We Need to Roll it Back 1,000 Years - Rob Walling argues in favor of apprenticeship programs for developers.

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Mike Gunderloy is the lead developer for Larkware and author of numerous books and articles on programming topics.