~mkw

PDC and Arranged Marriages

All this hype in the run up to PDC really confounds me. Do people really have the right expectations about this – it is a big teaser!

It would be as if you were a man whom has been appointed a bride in an arranged marriage, everyone who has seen her says she is beautiful and the greatest lover ever conceived.  In one month you will see this knockout who is sure to make everything better…BUT you will only get to see pictures and hear stories about her, you will have to wait at least until spring to meet her (read: beta) and possibly even another year before you can consummate your relationship!

You get the picture yet? This whole thing will serve only to produce one gargantuan case of “blue bits”

Version 2.0

BUG Fixes

• KBCriestoomuch - system was changed so that dissatisfaction and hunger are expressed through a complex, non-verbal notification system. It should however be noted that this changed is yet to be tested.
• KBPoopsalot - new garbage collection system was implemented that allows the system to clean dirty areas without user intervention. Once again, this feature has not been tested.

New Features

• Hibernation - Unlike similar systems, version 2 contains a hibernation feature which allows the application to remain dormant for extended periods of time. Market research proves that the average system can only achieve 4 hours in this comatose state, but Version 2 sets a new standard by tripling the average and crossing the 12 hour barrier. (We make no guarantees related to the status of System.Sun when System.Hibernation kicks in. Early user feedback has shown that the feature often does kick in when the status is System.Sun.Status.Down, but we have reports of the feature getting inverted. Please read KBUpallNight for a workaround if you encounter this.)
• IntelliMilk™ - this unique, trademarked, patent pending system allows the system to literally take control of the protein input process thus removing the need to user intervention. Just hand the input device to the system and it will run the process from there.
• Lower TCO - this utilization of previously licensed add-ons and various third party components will enable the system to operate at a much lower overall cost than version 1. This HandMeDown technology should only improve with future versions.

ASP.NET: Windows Authentication on SQL Server

Many of you know that Microsoft suggests using the security provided by inherent windows auth when logging into SQL Server from an ASP.NET application. With Windows 2000 this usually means adding the ASPNET user to SQL Server or the NETWORK SERVICE user for Windows 2003. This is all fine except when you are faced with authenticating against a SQL instance that is not local. It is at this point that most developers usually give up and use SQL authentication. Those who Google the problem however will be presented with a solution that advises a change to the machine.config processModel element. Here you will specify a username and password other than the default MACHINE/AutoGenerate pair.

Might I suggest looking at the element. By simply adding this element to your web.config you can specify to the runtime what user to impersonate and thus us a Domain user name and password that has been granted access to the SQL server.

 ex:
<identity impersonate="true" userName="DOMAIN\User" password="xxxxxx"/>

Looking at the doc on MSDN you will also find that it is possible to encrypt the user name and password, store them in the registry and reference the registry entries.

 ex: 
 <identity>
         userName="registry:HKLM\Software\AspNetIdentity,Name"
         password="registry:HKLM\Software\AspNetIdentity,Pwd"
 identity>