August 2003 - Posts
Via Lutz Roeder's weblog (http://aisto.com/roeder/frontier/rss.xml) I read about Netron(http://netron.sourceforge.net) which is now an open source project but is based on some development he did in the early stages of .Net.
It looks very interesting as I was looking for a .Net library that would allow me do graphing and layout out the objects correctly which would leave me to do write the actual programming logic for my application.
It seems to do what I want but it did bring up an interesting problem. I compiled the provided solution and tried to run it. The program compiled but failed to run as it was looking for a file that it could not find. I think that the location of files can be a big problem if you build in dependencies on a given installation location. As I am often working on the same code in different locations i.e. at work and at home I have started using a Gotdotnet workspace for source control.
I find that the easiest way of dealing with some xml configuration files that I normally use for the applications is to create a directory "dependencies" within the project directory and then I can refer to it within the program simply by using the following statements:
string configFile =@"/dependencies/setup.xml";
string setupFile =System.AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory +configFile;
This makes it much easier as I am now no longer dependent upon the location where the project has been installed. Here I am talking about configuration information that I do not place in the App.Config file.
I was looking at Slashdot and I saw this story:
Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday August 13, @12:29PMfrom the two-scoops-of-paranoia dept.landley writes
"The Free Software Foundation's FTP site at ftp.gnu.org has been "compromised", and they don't seem to have full backups. They've yanked a bunch of recent packages (and their whole alpha.gnu.org ftp site), and when I asked about it they responded 'Our FTP server was compromised, yes. We are beginning to find good MD5sums for files which have not yet been restored, and they will be available again Real Soon Now. If you can provide MD5sums for any of the files listed in MISSING-FILES, it would be very much appreciated.' " Update the FSF has
a statement on the FTP site explaining the matter.
Clearly security is something that everyone needs to take seriously. Also no backups...oops.
In this blog I wanted to share some my recent .Net development experiences. Unfortunately, my .Net development today has been regularly interupted today by friends who have rung me up after being infected by MSBlast virus. I sure everyone who writes blogs here keeps there machines up to date and installs patches as soon as they become available. Sadly that seems to atypical. A lot people in Basel have broadband internet connections and don't install patches, have no idea what a firewall and don't realise that if they don't patch their systems that will have problems. The cable internet provider does not tell people that without a firewall that they are leaving themselves open for attack.
I helped a friend remove the virus from their machine, by walking them throw editing the registry, deleting the executable from the drive and using the task manager to kill the process. Easy stuff if you are technical person but most people aren't. Within 3 minutes of reconnecting to the internet his machine was infected again. I was trying to support over the phone...I did not realise that he had not even configured the internet firewall that comes with XP. At least with XP he had that possibility. What about the system administrator I know who installed the patch a week ago on an NT 4 machine only to find that Groupshield, the program they were using for virus protection with their Exchange Server, stopped working.
I think that Microsoft needs to start selling locked down client operating systems where the absolutely minimum number of ports are open and all services that are not required are not run. Also critical patches on home systems should be install by default. I don't want to wait until Longhorn until I see that, I want it now. Everytime one these jokers distributes on these virus it progressively reduces the confidence that people have in computers. If it breaks some backward compatibility I sure it is worth it.
Just back from the UK where I took a 10 day break. It is amazing to see how badly my home country deals with a hot summer. As Steven Livingstone said the rail companies seem unable to run trains once the temperature rises.
Just noticed this interesting article on Zdnet : Microsoft Web services plan targets Java
(http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5061198.html).
The problem about these articles is that the journalists are not developers so you get pieces like this :
"Indigo could accelerate the development of Windows-based Web services, according to people familiar with Microsoft's plans. It would do this by allowing the operating system to handle much of the heavy lifting related to ensuring the security and management of applications in use, they said. Indigo is expected to incorporate the latest advances in Web services standards in security, reliability and transactions. "
Which seems to say a lot but really tells you very little.
I am using "Desktop Sidebar" which used to be available from http://sidebar.tech-critic.com . Anyone know what happened to it ? I have the XP taskbar in autohide mode at the top of the screen a la Chris Sells and then Sidebar is on the righthand side also in transparent mode. I find it great way to keep up to date with rss feeds as well as the weather.....oh dear I must be buying into some of the Longhorn concepts.
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