Monthly Archives: March 2006

“Outsourcing Arguments Pro & Con” Panel at Middlebury May 3rd

dotNET

D.K. Smith Forum presents:

“Outsourcing:  Opportunity or Threat?”

Wednesday, May 3, 2006, 4:30-6:00 P.M.

216 McCardell Bicentennial Hall, Middlebury College

A reception will follow in the Tormondsen Great Hall

Moderator

Pieter J. Schiller ’60, Partner(retired), Advanced Technology Ventures, Waltham, MA

Panelists

Nick Laird ’88, Chief Executive Officer, Global Realty Outsourcing.  GRO is one of the leading providers of business process outsourcing solutions to the real estate and financial services industries.
Michael E. Zeliger, Partner, Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, Nicholson, Graham, LLP.
  Mr. Zeliger focuses his practice on complex civil litigation, with particular emphasis on patent and other intellectual property litigation.
Scott Hardy, Founder and President, NEOS Overshoes.  New England Overshoes is a Vermont firm designing and selling “performance overshoes” for personal, recreational and professional use.

In The World is Flat, Tom Friedman contends that software, the global fiber-optic network and ubiquitous Internet access is fundamentally altering virtually every aspect of our lives. For one, it is empowering individuals, groups and countries to collaborate and compete globally:

   We are all becoming neighbors.

   People can now go global seamlessly.

   Outsourcing is a direct consequence of a flat world, and is here to stay.

   Distance no longer insulates us from competition or impedes seizing global opportunities.

   We can now run global businesses, collaborate with (outsource to) partners and feel competition from around the globe without ever leaving home.

   Globalization is fundamentally altering how:

        People

            Are educated and prepare themselves for careers;

            Communicate and establish, build and maintain relationships;

            Work and play; and

        Companies

            Conceive, launch and grow entrepreneurial enterprises;

            Develop and secure intellectual property;

            Operate within increasingly transparent, global supply chains; and

            Compete and collaborate for markets and customers.

Questions and Issues

Does outsourcing jobs really mean we are outsourcing America? Or does outsourcing create more jobs than it moves offshore?

Does outsourcing mean that America will not be able to compete in anything, and that eventually there will be no jobs here?

If so, how do we explain the fact that, because outsourcing is making it so much more efficient and competitive, U.S. manufacturing is increasingly healthy, growing, and vibrant?

What are the implications of a “flat world” for intellectual property?

   Can companies secure world-wide protection? What are the critical factors and costs?

   What are the distinctions between “hard” products like shoes and machinery, and “soft” products like business processes, software and services?

   How do we deal with the reality that some countries do not recognize IP?

   How are courts looking at IP in this new environment?

A special thanks to the late Edward Schaefer ’56, Laura Schaefer Buckley ’79 and Edward Schaefer III ’84 for their generosity in establishing the Professor David K. Smith Visiting Economic Lecture Series in honor of David K. Smith’s work as a teacher and mentor at Middlebury College.

This event is free and open to the public.

Questions?

E-mail mosborne@middlebury.edu

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

WSE3 with WCF February CTP

Indigo

Everything I thought I knew about how to interop messages between WCF and WSE3.0 went down the toilet with the newest bits of WCF.

Thanks to some serious counseling from William Tay this morning (who has been diving deep with WCF for a long time and has also kept up with the changes that affect all forms of interop, even WSE3.0) and then lots of hours of just trying, failing, thinking, adjusting (rinse and repeat) I finally got a WCF client app to talk to a WSE3.0 secured web service using a UsernameforCertificate binding/policy.

And yes, it’s all secured on the wire. I had every problem. Wrong X509 certificates installed, wrong encryption algorithms, hitting a few WCF bugs and more. Luckily, all of the work I have done with WSE3.0 has helped me prepare for troubleshooting this stuff. To me, that is one of the most important lessons!

Here are a few of the things I can share.

I was doing what Willie tells me is the hardest thing with interop – UsernameOverCertificate. But being bullheaded I had to go forward with it.

I tried writing my own, but didn’t understand well enough (though now I think I could tackle that) and instead used WSEHttpBinding that is a custom binding in one of the WCF samples.

That binding uses the Aes128 algorithm for it’s default security binding and secure conversation. I kept getting a message that the algorithm was insufficient to encrypt and key wrap. Changing them both to Aes256 fixed that. It took me a while to realize there were two spots to change, but I had the right idea! Uggh.

At one point, I was still getting an error, but looking at the web service’s trace, I could see that everything on that end had finally happened correctly. Therefore the problem was on the client side. Google gave me ONE response, and naturally it was from a blog post of Willie’s! He had seen a similar problem in the Sept. CTP, but it was enough to fix my problem (Feb CTP).

Since this stuff is still in flux, I think I will wait for WCF beta2 to be released before I attempt to update my article on preparing WSE3 web services for WCF. Truly the hard part (until the new bits are all sorted out) is writing the WCF client. I didn’t have to do anything to my web service to get this to work.

Willie’s got a pair of great articles on WCF on The Server Side (first, second) and I hear there’s a WSE3/WCF interop article coming soon from him as well. Lucky or the rest of us!

I will never have the deep knowledge of this stuff hat Willie and his compadres (Michele Butamante, Christian Weyer, Juval Lowy, etc.) have, but as long as I am willing to battle this stuff out so that I can share it with other programmers who are floating on the surface, I’ll keep at it.

I’ll be looking at more of this stuff in my WSE3 for WCF session at DevConnections next week. My focus is on making sure the WSE3 services are written correctly so that you can talk to them in the future from WCF. I won’t be teaching WCF. You can go across the hall to see Michele for that.



Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

April 10th VTdotNET meeting: Scary .NET, VS2005 Pro Raffle and Free Pizza

dotNET

The next Vermont.NET meeting is Monday April 10th.

I will be presenting a session called “5 Supposedly Scary Things in.NET“. It will be a high level introduction to

  1. Declarative programming with attributes
  2. Reflection
  3. Delegates
  4. Threading
  5. Code Access Security

I have a full license to VS2005 Professional and SQL Server 2005 Standard to license off.

Pizza & Soda will be sponsored by DottNetJobs.com, a job portal for .NET jobs as well as SQL Server and ASP jobs.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Back to the dentist

Purely Personal

Hopefully a word of warning to future crown-toothed friends.

I suffered through a 2 hour dentist appointment yesterday. It was #2 of what was supposed to be three appointments for getting crown. #1 was to build the tooth back up. #2 (yesterday) was to prep the tooth, take molds for the crown and get a temporary. #3 is going to be applying the crown.

However,this morning, when I was brushing my teeth, the temporary popped off and though I tried to spit it into my hand, was nowhere to be found. Obviously down the drain. I was a little tired to actually think to close the drain first. Duh.

So tomorrow morning, it’s back to the dentist (for which I have no insurance) for another temporary crown. Oy vey!

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Six INETA Speaker Events across the U.S. tonight

Ineta

I just happened to be looking at the INETA “Upcoming Speaking Engagements” page and was struck by the fact that there are SIX events tonight!

Bill EvjenSan Diego .NET User Group3/28/2006
Bill VaughnKC .NET User Group3/28/2006
Chris MenegayAggieland (Texas A&M Univeristy) .NET Developers3/28/2006
Jeff ProsiseEast TN .NET User group3/28/2006
Kathleen DollardLower Alabama .NET User Group3/28/2006
Mike AmundsenCincinnati .NET User Group3/28/2006

It’s also amazing to see events scheduled all the way through to the end of 2006. It’s definitely hard to plan that far ahead, though I do have some INETA talks already scheduled in September!

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Beginning robotics for grades one-three -huh?

Just Rambling

There was an article in the local paper about Computer Camps offered by the South Burlington School District this summer.

Maybe it’s because I don’t have kids, but I was definitely a surprise to see a robotics class for 6 year olds!

Here’s the whole list which sounds like a blast! (No pun intended wrt the rocket tech class 🙂 )

Robotics: Beginning robotics for grades one-three; mastering mazes for grades four-seven.

Rocket Tech: Grades three-six; learn how to build, test and launch solid propellant rockets.

Programming a Computer Game with HyperStudio: Grades four-eight.

3D Computer Animation: Grades six-12; introduction, advanced modeling, advanced animation and advanced team project.

Animating Your Web Site with Flash: Grades seven to adult.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org