Recently I had to write some simple custom validators so I thought I would share them with the world

CustomValidators.cs (3.52 kb)

Radiohead did something very cool with their new album. They allowed their fans to pay what ever they want for it! Yes, in fact if you don't want to pay anything for it you can also do that.

I paid what's equivalent of $10 for the new album, and I think that's a fair amount. It is maybe a bit to much, since a lot more of it will go directly to the artist since there is no music company to take a big chunk of the money for themselves.

I see a lot of articles on the web discussing what does this all mean. Is this a new way for artists to tell music companies to buzz off, are huge music companies still needed since music seems to be moving towards purely digital format any ways.

If everyone stops buying CD's there is no need for mass distribution. There is however still the question of making the music known, advertisement, placement etc...

It will be interesting to see what will happen in the future, DRM is a complete failure so there must be a better way to sell music online. Amazon MP3 store is a good start (When can I buy music in Canada, without faking my address?), and hopefully more major record labels will allow DRM free music. I think at this time, if they don't they are doomed.

Over the last few years there have been a lot of changes in how I watch TV. A while ago I basically stopped watching about 90% of the shows I used to watch.  For one reason or another, for some I lost interest for others I simply did not have the time to watch them anymore.

When Natasha was born there was even less time to watch TV. The few moments that I found, I watched what ever was on at that time, without having any shows I was truly following. Lately I basically stopped watching TV all together.

TV is simply to restricting. The shows I want to watch are never when I have the time to watch them. I also don't want to be tracking the schedule of all the shows I want to watch to tape them. The Internet has taken place of my primary entertainment and news source. If I want to watch a TV show I can easily find it on the net. I can almost say that TV is dead to me.

I think this is how it is for a lot of people.  If TV networks don't come up with a different business model I can foresee TV growing increasingly irrelevant and eventually die.  What we need is an on demand model of TV.  Any show at any time delivered to my living room.  I don't know how realistic this model is but something must be done.  

For the moment a big problem of course is that if people like me continue to only watch TV on line, the shows we love to watch will stop being made because nobody is watching them on TV. 

Just in case you did not read the announcement on my other blog Vox Clara, we are pregnant again!

Microsoft has announced that they will allow developers to download the source code for their .NET Framework.

This is quite an interesting move from Microsoft. It is a good move, even though you can not change the source code, I think it will help many developers.

The source will be available with the new .NET 3.5 Framework and Visual Studio 2008. Perhaps the coolest thing about this is that you will now be able to dig into the actual source of the framework when debugging your code, something that I wanted to do for a long time.

Having source code access and debugger integration of the .NET Framework libraries is going to be really valuable for .NET developers. Being able to step through and review the source should provide much better insight into how the .NET Framework libraries are implemented, and in turn enable developers to build better applications and make even better use of them.