January 2004 - Posts
So today is my "I want to find something to complain" day...
I like this community especially because of the aggregate feed. I want to know why "other" community blogs don't have the aggregate feed?
There are great communities here in Italy (like www.ugidotnet.org or www.devleap.com, but I can suggest a lot of other sites) that have blogs, they have a main page, they have RSS feeds, but they miss the aggregate feed of all their bloggers.
I miss it, because I cannot always go there to see if there is another interesting blogger...
Second thing... A lot of times I connect using my GPRS phone, and I cannot understand why I've to download RSS files longer than 1 Mb, with more than 300 items in them.
I prefer the .Text approach (at least for the aggregate feed), with only the list of the latest posts, that is much much much much, and what I can say more... MUCH FASTER to download... especially with the sucky GPRS bandwidth...
And also I don't know if it's a problem with SharpReader, but sometimes I found that all the items that I've deleted are in the Unread state... very boring...
Please don't flame on me, I want the best of all the communities and the sites that I use, and I like all the effort that all this people have put and will put everyday to make the .NET world better!!!
Sometimes I use the main page of this site (weblogs.asp.net), and today I've noticed that this post,"Got my Wrist.NET Watch", is the first displayed item since this morning...
Considering that its screen estate is bigger than my screen size, I tought that there weren't other new items under it.
Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not complaining about that particular post, or its size, but I think that how the main page is sorted is a little bit "useless".
I prefer that the items are showed in real LIFO order, taking care of the timezone, or perhaps considering only the time they were inserted in the server (using the server clock) and not the local time of the user that have posted it.
I know that I promised no more complains for today, but I want the best for this community (and also for this great BLOG engine)
:-) !!!
I'm tired of distributing small apps built with the .Net Fx to clients that have only 56k connection to the Internet...
If .Net Fx is included by default in new Service Packs, I can tell them to go to buy some computer magazine, install the latest Service Pack (they know that is a "GOOD" thing to do) and I'm ready.
But this is not possible (for antitrust reasons I think...) and so I'm forced to put everything on a CD and send hundreds of them across Italy...
This is my last complain today... so please forgive me...
It happens a lot of times that when evaluating new projects I suggest using some .NET related technologies (WinForms, WebForms, WebServices, etc...) and most of the times I find that System Administrators are very scared of security problems that could arise from the installation of .NET on their machines.
I really like the (few) customers that have already installed Win2K3 because I can use the .NET Framework without having to explaing everytime that the .NET Framework is more secure, that it doesn't do anything by default, that they've much more control over security, etc, etc...
Considering that I'm not the only one with the same problem (yesterday I've spoken with Raffaele Rialdi , a .NET MVP about this, but I've found a lot of complains like this one everywhere on the Web and on NewsGroups), why Microsoft doesn't try to explain to System Administrators, Security Administrators, Project Managers, and so on, that the .NET Framework is like any other component of the OS, perhaps better, and that they've not to be scared of this?
Today I found the time to follow part of the Microsoft Yukon EMEA Tour here in Milan.
I've started using Yukon beta 1 last summer, but I only had time to test our existing applications, and to explore only the top of the iceberg.
I liked very much the presentations, the speakers and the quality of the sessions, and I was very sad that I couldn't follow all the day, but only less than a half.
One of the thing that I liked more are the new conference rooms in the MS Italian HQ, very very nice, with high quality A/V equipments.
I hope that MS Italy will put all the presentations and the videos online, so I can enjoy the content that I've missed :-)
And of course, every event like this is a nice way to meet old and new friends...
On December 24th I've passed the MSF Practitioner exam, one of the longest exam that I've ever taken.
There are a lot of questions, but there is enough time to read all of them more than one time.
I agree with Peter Marshall that in a comment on my previous post told that the answers are in the questions, especially if you know the different team roles and the different milestones that are part of MSF.
I've not found tricky questions, but I don't think that you can pass this exam only by memorizing the MSF resources. You need also a lot of common sense, and perhaps some experience.
Here is the list of all the resources that I've used to clear the exam:
- MOC Course 1846A
- MSF chapters on 70-300 exam book from MS Press.
- MSF presentation from Barcelona's 2003 Tech Ed by Rafal Lukawiecki (I'm very lucky to have it recorded on DVD)
Resources on the Web:
- MSF Resouces on the MSF site
- MSF Study Guides (Robert McLaws), very short reference of all the phases of MSF, very useful to recap.
- MSF Exam Notes, another short reference, this covers also the team model and other parts of MSF that are missing from Robert's guides.
The MOC Course is very well done, and covers all the topics for the exam. I think that is mandatory only if you've very little experience on applying MSF, but it's a very useful resource.
I think that it's not necessary to study all these resources, because they are basically the same thing, so I think that if one don't want to spend any money and has enough experience, the Web resouces are enough.
Good Luck!!!
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