Chris Szurgot's Blog

I don't know if this has been implemented anywhere, but it occurred to me that one way to prevent phishing attacks would be to have a warning dialog in the email clients that either

1. When there is a url in an email, and the underlying href doesn't match the text IE (Text: http://signin.ebay.com/eBayISAPI.dll?SignIn&ssPageName=h:h:sin:US - HREF: http://66.246.90.60/~testing/ebay/secupdate.html) show a dialog box notifying the user.
2. Same thing if the link text doesn't contain an link in the actual text, but the link itself goes to a dotted ip. Most phishers probably aren't going to register domains....

Just a thought.

Earlier today, I commented about my issues with Web Project behavior in VS 2005. Based on comments to that, and feedback on the Visual Studio 2005 feedback site, a lot of people are feeling pain from this. Reading through the issues people have been having and the proposed work-arounds, it seems like throwing out the baby with the bath water as most of the issues could be resolved by simply adjusting the way web projects files work, as opposed to throwing out the file altogether.

I've created a suggestion that they re-instate web project files, perhaps as an optional component to resolve a lot of the issues with dependencies and source control. Please vote!

http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/ProductFeedback/viewFeedback.aspx?feedbackId=FDBK27963

Further comments: Based on the rationale I've seen for this decision (to reduce the number of "special" files that need to be deployed), a good solution would appear to be to include a project file as an optional component. It can have an option to track all files in the web project, or only exclusion. (Thus reducing contention for the file) It can also have an option to store DLLs in the project, or gather them at compile time. This would satisfy the small project, as well as the larger enterprise projects.

I've only just started working with Web Projects in VS 2005 Beta 2 (Maybe I should've tried this earlier), but I've come across several issues that seem absolutely bizarre for enterprise level solutions involving web sites.

1) All references for a web site are placed into the bin directory of the site as actual files, and placed under source control. For most DLLs, this means that there is no reference to the original link, so if you update the original DLL, you have to go into the project, and update the reference.

2) They are checked into Source Safe. This means that you are carrying around all that extra baggage in Source Safe, especially for inter solution project references that are still changing. It also means there are source control conflicts if two people are working on the same project because one person has the DLL checked out.

3) Inter-solution project DLLs are stored the same way. This means they get checked out everytime you build the secondary business layer DLLs. It also seems to seriously break automated builds using MSBuild because, guess what, the files are checked in, so they are marked read-only.

I've found several issues on this, and they are all marked as closed, mainly by design.

Here, Here, Here, and Here are a few.

The stated reason for this is

" Thank you for submitting this issue. In VS05, web applications (aka web projects) no longer have a project file. This was based on feedback that web developers wanted to minimize the "special" files required by VS03. A side effect of this is we do not have a way to store solution-to-solution assembly references (i.e. inter-solution) like you describe. We will reconsider this design in our next release. In the meantime, we suggest you use intra-solution assembly references (i.e. references within the same solution)."

I don't know about anybody else, but I'd rather deal with a few configuration files than have to deal with the hoops I'm having to jump through to get my project to work on VS 2005. You have to set source control to non-exclusive checkout, update DLL references by hand (if you update an external DLL), check in DLLs into a project, automated builds are a mess now.

It's stated that this will be fixed post VS2005, but it should be fixed now, or it's going to cause a *lot* of pain, especially when people really start upgrading to Visual Studio 2005 on release, and have no idea that major functionality just changed. If it is felt this behaviour must be retained, please allow an option to use old style Web Projects.

Oh, and web projects should have more of the options that regular projects do, like pre- and post-build event.

By this time tomorrow (Monday at the latest), I will have gotten my 4th new cellular phone in less than 3 months. First, I bought a Sony Ericsson from SunCom. The bluetooth on that doesn't work properly, so the swapped it out for another Sony Ericsson. So I get that all set up, then Cingular comes in, and SunCom won't support the phone, and Cingular won't support it either, so they require us to switch over and get new phone. Ugh... There was $200 down the drain.

So my wife and I picked new phones from Cingular. I picked a Motorola V551 because it's got Bluetooth, and custom ring tones. (We picked them out end of last month, but just got around to ordering them end of last week (this is important) ) and got them this week. The Motorola is a nice solid phone, good weight, good size, bluetooth earpiece works great, but... the custom ring tones don't work when you're connected to a bluetooth earpiece. (I griped about this earlier) What's the point of a wireless earpiece if you can't tell who's calling without picking up the phone.

Well, if I'm going to have a phone, and be locked into a two year agreement, I want it to have key features that work, so it's back to find another bluetooth phone. And lo and behold, Cingular now carries the Audiovox SMT 5600. (This is the device I've been looking for for quite some time now. PDA functionality, mp3 player (I just bought a nomad, too... I'll keep the nomad cause I can keep all my music on it, but the phone will be used for Audiobooks) and phone. And it's only $100 more than the motorola) The only reason I didn't get this phone in the first place was that it wasn't available when my wife and I first picked out our phones.So an hour on the phone trying to get to the right person to sell me the new phone (seems it had to be a particular department) and $400 held on my credit card, I've finally got an Audiovox SMT 5600 on the way.

Hopefully, this will finally be a phone I can like and stick with (every cell phone I've ever had has been irritating in some regard) All the signs point to Yes, and everybody else seems to like it, so wish me luck.

Update: Yes, I'm aware that I can't use the Bluetooth earpiece to listen to music/audiobooks, which is ok... I can handle the wired earpieces when I'm not working.

I just got a nice new Motorola V551 phone. I specifically bought this one because it had Bluetooth, a nice form factor, and custom ring tones. The custom ring tones work great. I can assign a song to every person in my book, even cut clips from my own CDs/MP3s so I don't have to buy any. And the bluetooth works pretty well. Slight breakup on the earpiece, but nothing that detracts from the conversation (not like my Sony Ericsson did.)

But having a Bluetooth earpiece connected turns of all ring tones, so all you get is a little chirp. So half the value of having the earpiece and the ring tones is lost because you have to find the damn phone to see whose calling, even if you've got the earpiece on. Arghh!!!

Does anybody know if the Audiovox SMT 5600 has the same problem, or if it can handle custom ring tones along with a bluetooth earpiece?

Been trying to get some performance enhancements, and I came across VirtualMode. With VirtualMode, you provide the data access layer, presenting up the ListViewItems when they are visible on screen. With about an hour of work, and a Generic List<ListViewItem> I was able to increase list access by an order of magnatide. And with a few more hours, I probably could've handled all the focus and selection problems I was having, but... VirtualMode disables two other new cool features of ListView - Mainly Groups, and Tiles.... Tiles I don't use, but Groups I do...Ugh...

All of this begs the question, can the ListView be made more effiecnt in it's handling of items? If a simple List<> can speed up things by that much, what can be done internally to make it more efficient. Oh well, time to submit some bugs to feedback to see if anything can be done <grin>

I'm reading The Empress File by John Sandford, circa 1991, and I came across the statement "As a password Hivaoa may seem pretentious, but it fills the two main requirements of any computer code word: It's easy to remember, and you don't have to worry that somebody will stumble across it by accident"

Now, we need to have pass phrases with mulitple casing and special symbols... Ah, those innocent fun days....