re: New Passport Launch? - Robert McLaws: FunWithCoding.NET

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You should feel free to challenge me, disagree with me, or tell me I'm completely nuts in the comments section of each blog entry, but I reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason whatsoever. That said, I will most likely only delete abusive, profane, rude, or annonymous comments, so keep it polite, please.

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HOWTO: Windows 2003 DTC

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Comments

Thom said:

You said it. I too sat there listening to Powell spell out what most of us already knew. I can't believe that countries like Germany and France have Saddam so far up their *&%^ that they can't see how snowed they really are. This guy is more of a menace I think than Hitler.

And as for other countries saying they are tired of the US stepping in and acting like we own the world, well, if you look at all of the loans and aid we give to more than half the nations in the world, we do!

See what happens to these small countries if the US were to pull back aid of all kinds. No money, protection, goods and services. They would all be falling flat on their faces. When will people learn that democracy is a good thing and not a dictatorship in a mini-skirt.

# February 6, 2003 1:01 AM

Pascal Leloup said:

Hey guys

A little bit of moderation please ! Where are the proofs ? Powel said that they are too confidential to reveal them. Come on ! And it's not because I am frnech (I am living and working in Ireland), and I am not a pacifist or a war campaigner.
Everybody know that US need the petrol from Irak, so admit that ! It's a fact that in October an american report said that US need to double importation of petrol in the next 5 years.
And for the weapons, whay US (and the others by the way) don't start to look at their own arsenal. Imagine tomorrow if americans vote for a new guy turniing dictator.
He will be happy with all the bombs !
And last thing, stop this idea about what Europe could be without America. that non sense.
Signed: Just an ordinary citizen of this planet so called Earth

# February 6, 2003 1:50 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Wow, people actually read my blog :).

I'm gonna have to disagree with you on this one Pascal, and here's why:

On American Dependance For Oil:
In Bush's State of the Union speech, Bush pledged something like $5B on fuel-cell research, to all but eliminate our dependance on foreign oil. We're going to take over their oil fields to finance the reconstruction of the country, not to become "imperialistic". Since when has the US EVER occupied a country to take their resources? Name me one instance.

On Fears of an American Dictator
Unfortunately, you fail to understand the concept of Democracy, and further the brilliance of the American Democratic System. The possibility of a disctator as president is impossible in our system of government. Why? Because of a little thing called legislative checks and balances. We have 3 branches of government, 2 legislative bodies, and a little thing called Impeachment. Contrary to popular belief, the people still have SOME power left in this country.

On Where Europe Would Be Without America
Sorry, but you can't deny the facts. We've bailed Europe out of every single major war. And France has TONS of experience understanding this. The French loathe us, until of course they are occupied again. Dennis Miller said: "[The French] have always been far to reluctant to surrender to the will of their friends and far to reticent to surrender to the will of their enemies." This is a true statement. You can't deny it, and any attempt to do so is ignorant. Just open up your history books.

Sorry if this ruffles a few feathers, but I'm a lot liek Donald Rumsfeld... I'm not hesitant to tell the truth, even if it hurts. True strength comes from learning from acknowleging and learning from those truths.

# February 16, 2003 3:50 PM

Pascal Leloup said:

Just that: Man, Peace and Love ;-)

# February 16, 2003 4:02 PM

Pascal Leloup said:

Just that: Man, Peace and Love ;-)

# February 16, 2003 4:09 PM

Fabrice said:

About this post and the previous ones :
Being outside the US, I can tell you that it is sad that the american people are blinded by the (private) medias running this country.
It's impressive to see all the propaganda these companies are doing over and over again. Free your mind...

# February 17, 2003 6:45 AM

Fleh said:

Any guess what percentage of the folks using these instructions will be doing so on legitimately acquired installs of Windows Server 2003 rather than pirated copies?

# February 25, 2003 11:22 AM

Robert McLaws said:

I'm running several systems on Windows Server 2003 RC2 as a legitimate RC2 tester. As for anyone else, I cannot estimate but I'm sure there are a bunch. I know the CPP (Customer Preview Program) for RC2 is huge, and there are tons of testers on the private MS newsgroups.

# February 25, 2003 11:46 AM

TrackBack said:

: ShowUsYour-Blog!

# February 28, 2003 10:40 AM

Don Box said:

# March 2, 2003 4:55 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Yes it is. From what I understand, you have to have a smart card reader to gain access. While I'm not an MVP yet (hint hint) [clears throat], I believe you can talk to your MVP lead about access.

LOL you're B0rg anyway, can't you walk down the hall and take a look at it? Speaking of the B0rg, what does it take to get assimilated?

# March 2, 2003 5:00 PM

Travis said:

"It will be nice working with proper villians again."

Oceans Eleven.

# March 2, 2003 5:50 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Congrats Travis. E-mail me at robert@interscapeusa.com with your e-mail address and I'll send you a license when we launch.

# March 2, 2003 5:52 PM

Mike Gunderloy said:

On Windows 2000, ipconfig /flushdns

# March 3, 2003 9:01 PM

Patrick Logan said:

WebSphere and WebLogic are being undermined by JBoss. I wouldn't be surprised if there are reasonable approximations of Lotus Notes as OSS. The days of big, expensive software systems is over. MSFT is just farther down the road. The steamroller's coming, just the same.

What could change that is a significant value added by an order of magnitude leap in functionality. e.g. simplifying the talent pool required to use the product.

# March 4, 2003 6:10 PM

Shawnmor said:

Assuming XP....

Did you try

C:\> ipconfig /flushdns?

# March 5, 2003 1:04 PM

Rogelio Morrell said:

Hey thanks for the information. Anyway, that article is misleading because people will think something else about InfoPath. I really see InfoPath as great tool. And also, I haven't tested the new Office yet, so that was my precaution, didn't want to go deep with something I wasn't sure about it.

Regards,
Rogelio Morrell

# March 6, 2003 1:45 PM

TrackBack said:

More on aggregators... : Loosely Coupled

# March 12, 2003 2:17 AM

TrackBack said:

I'm holding on... : Loosely Coupled

# March 12, 2003 11:17 AM

Fabrice said:

Err... "within two years"?

# March 12, 2003 1:46 PM

Greg said:

Oh No, Brady tatochip man himself is causing some smack to be thrown around..."what the &^%$ ...."tell him I said Hi, and "wazzzzz uppp"

# March 12, 2003 7:47 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I WANT A DATE!!!!! GET SPECIFIC HERE... I'm starting to raise funds already.

# March 12, 2003 8:39 PM

TrackBack said:

80s music... : Loosely Coupled

# March 12, 2003 9:33 PM

Greg said:

38 special baby, Lynyrd Skynrd relived...wow, scary, I know the band memeber's names and have the album..nice cover too!

# March 13, 2003 6:46 AM

Greg said:

Hey, we need to tell them about Molly Hatchet and Lover Boy!

# March 13, 2003 6:47 AM

Addys said:

OOps, sorry about that. Thanks for the correction!

I have updated my post :)

# March 14, 2003 3:17 PM

Royo said:

I Agree. this is not the best way to handle it. simply, i pointed out another way, which i hadn;t thought of - Another direction for implementing these things.

# March 16, 2003 2:01 AM

FnaD said:

What about Infragistics? Pricey, but I've heard nothing but good stuff about them. Unfortunately I haven't come accross a project that warrants (or can afford!) them...

If you are after free, theres the following very tasty looking DHTML offerings
young pup ypXMLTree - http://www.youngpup.net/?request=/components/ypXmlTree.xml
webfx have a couple of varieties of trees, including a load on demand tree - http://webfx.eae.net/

And, finally, something i stumbled accross the other day, http://www.xmlforasp.net/codeSection.aspx?csID=99 - Shaping Relational Data with XSLT and .NET. Not all that special to look at, but the concepts are really cool.

# March 16, 2003 11:04 PM

David Stone said:

I'm using Infragistics UltraWebGrid and their UltraWebTree in a project right now. They're a bit tricky to get used to at first (just like any new object model is), but once you get used to it, there are just sooo many options. It's very nice.

# March 16, 2003 11:11 PM

coacoacoa said:

You have anoter one at WebFX (http://webfx.eae.net/) with a full article that explains it. And there are a lot of stuffs here.

# March 17, 2003 3:19 AM

Jorge said:

There are *still* hookers on Van Buren? Heh. When I was in Phoenix in the 1980's, the city was trying to clean that strip up, around the same time that they were building that below-ground thoroughfare near McDowell road. I guess some institutions are too resistant to progress. Hmm, maybe the Mason Jar is still there, too...

# March 17, 2003 4:47 AM

FnaD said:

I gotta jump a little to Infragistics defense here - the 500 bucks gets you the entire suite of COM, .NET *and* ASP.NET stuff. There's some really nice looking stuff there. I've only had experience with their COM toolbars and Splitters, and I can tell you they were well worth the money we spent on them.

If you just want the tree itself, it can be purchased for a mere 400 bucks. Now *that* is a rip-off. I'm guessing designed to get people to upsize to the whole net advantage suite, it should be more like 50 bucks.

# March 17, 2003 6:59 AM

Robert McLaws said:

There aren't as many hookers there as there were before, but they are still there. The Mason Jar is still there too, and yes it's still a dive.

FnaD, unfortunately any gains they make by selling everything for $500 (which I did not know), they lose by selling one component for the same price. To quote Dustin Hoffman in <i>Hook</i>, "Bad form!"

# March 17, 2003 8:59 AM

Jorge said:

Robert, you missed one "anti". :-) She was marching in an anti-anti-war march.

# March 17, 2003 9:46 AM

Greg Reinacker said:

Looks to me like you get a lot of stuff for $495.

But more to the point, it's all about supply and demand. Obviously people are buying it for $495, or they would have to drop the price. And if I go to a client, and we need some fancy treeview thing, it's a no-brainer to spend $500 before committing a day of time to trying to build something (and it would likely take a lot longer than a day to build something robust).

And, if I find that the $500 one is more reliable, has less bugs, or has some cool feature I need, versus the $50 one, then again - it depends on who the client is. Most of my paying clients would much rather buy the thing, then have me waste time on a buggier one, or building one from scratch. On the other hand, if I need one for my personal use, then I'm not likely to use the $500 one. (disclaimer - I haven't used any of them, and don't really know anything about which one is better, more reliable, etc., just trying to make a point).

But in the end, I guess I don't understand what you're ranting about. If it's too much, then vote with your pocketbook and don't buy it. That's what capitalism is all about, right?

# March 17, 2003 5:05 PM

anonymous said:

Actually that's from satirewire:
http://www.satirewire.com/news/jan02/axis.shtml

# March 18, 2003 3:54 PM

TrackBack said:

Warning: Bad Dolphin Humor : Bloated Blog of .NET Blunders

# March 25, 2003 10:26 PM

TrackBack said:

Driving and SmartTags...grrrrr : Greg Robinson's Blog

# March 26, 2003 11:54 AM

Fabrice said:

This shows that you never had to drive in France! Otherwise you would understand that this cannot be a reason for us calling you arrogant :-) (that does not mean we don't have other reasons ;-) )
After a test drive in Paris you would love driving in Arizona...

# March 26, 2003 4:00 PM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

Another thing that rarely gets mentioned is just how minimal the civilian casualties have been, compared to past military conflicts / wars. While any civilian casualties are unfortunate, by comparison with Vietnam or the World Wars, this one is incredibly clean.

No comfort to those who lose loved ones, I know, but it's very clear that the coalition forces are going well out of their way to avoid civilian casualties, and are being very successful at it. They'd be even more successful if Hussein's forces weren't trying so hard to force civilians into the line of fire (or just killing them themselves and trying to blame the coalition forces).

# April 6, 2003 7:34 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Yeah, that is an amazing thing too. Take WWII for example. Berlin was bombed indescriminately, and the whole city was pretty much in ruins when it was all over. We have the cabability of surgically destroying only what we want to (with a relatively small margin of error, usually the Human Factor), while killing as few prople as possible.

And on another note, I wouldn't lend any creedence whatsoever to civillian death estimates by Iraq's DISInformation Minister. The guy said they killed 50 soldiers today, which we know is not accurate. They are exaggerating the numbers to make us look like monsters. I, however, trust our gov't WAY more that I do "Sodamn Insane".

# April 6, 2003 8:09 PM

HAHAHA said:

how much do they pay?

# April 6, 2003 10:29 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Not at liberty to discuss it.

# April 6, 2003 10:30 PM

Ben said:

Can't be done with HTML.

# April 7, 2003 12:10 AM

Dan F said:

yeah, what ben said. assuming by listitems you mean the listbox/combo box (select element in html parlance).

the guys over at webfx have some cool selectable list type stuff that you could probably bend into shape though.

# April 7, 2003 6:43 AM

JimS said:

push the envelope and give people that reason to change!

# April 7, 2003 6:01 PM

Phil Scott said:

Looks like fark.com but with a different table layout.

# April 8, 2003 12:43 PM

Tim Marman said:

Just so you know, and not that it really matters...

If you look at the output of that page, you won't see a <select> node. It's just a DHTML implementation that mimics the dropdown functionality.

So the people who told you it couldn't be done (not that I was one of them) weren't entirely wrong - you can't put an image into an <option>. You can, of course, make something that looks and behaves like a dropdown, which is what FunkeLab did.

# April 8, 2003 11:25 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I know. I never said that it had to be <b>the</b> DropDown server control. What FunkeLab did was provide a solution by thinking outside the box. Now that's my kind of developer.

# April 9, 2003 12:42 AM

TrackBack said:

RowSelectorColumn : ScottW's ASP.NET WebLog

# April 9, 2003 1:46 AM

TrackBack said:

Robert McLaws' reply to my "DataGrid Columns" post : Samer Ibrahim's Blog

# April 9, 2003 1:46 AM

Richard said:

Hi!

You might check out this DropDown control. http://www.funkelab.com/mydropdown

Costs $30, gives you the full source. Check out the online demo.

# April 9, 2003 8:01 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Ya I know. Tim Kilmer pointed to it earlier, and I posted about it to everyone last night. If you found it from here, it was from one of my posts ;). Thanks tho!

# April 9, 2003 9:19 AM

TrackBack said:

More on "DataGrid Columns" : Samer Ibrahim's Blog

# April 9, 2003 10:14 AM

Scott Stoecker said:

Nicely put.

# April 9, 2003 11:45 AM

M. Keith Warren said:

Ditto from me pal!

# April 9, 2003 1:08 PM

popol said:

Hey man, you really now burned a fuse !

Fascist ! And only 21 !

# April 9, 2003 2:26 PM

Adam Hill said:

There is a way to hose your system.

1) Install .Net 1.1 FMWrk.

2)Install .NET 1.1 SDK.

3) Make sure 1.0 bits are working make sure 1.0 bits *stll* working. Feel safe.

3) Remove 1.0 (We don't need no steenkin' legacy Framework.)

4. Everything quits working -- Old examples, current apps, VS 2002 (wait a sec... it *doesn't* have a 1.0 only manisfest why didi it break?)

5. Re-install 1.0 everything is back to working.

Anyone got any ideas?

adam hill...

# April 10, 2003 6:22 PM

TrackBack said:

MORE VS.NET 2003 Info : Bob.NET

# April 10, 2003 6:28 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Where you wenrt wrong is taking out 1.0 and still trying to use VS.NET 2002. VS.NET 2002 and 1.0 are like conjoined twins. Separate them, and one will die. Conversely, VS.NET 2003 and 1.1 are the same way.

In other words, LEAVE 2002 ALONE if you still want to compile to 1.0.

# April 10, 2003 6:32 PM

TrackBack said:

The ASPSmith's Blog

# April 10, 2003 7:30 PM

TrackBack said:

Robert McLaws

# April 10, 2003 7:30 PM

TrackBack said:

MORE VS.NET 2003 Info : ShowUsYour-Blog!

# April 10, 2003 7:30 PM

TrackBack said:

What's the fuss about VS .NET 2003? : Edgar S??nchez's .NET Blog

# April 10, 2003 7:30 PM

TrackBack said:

Robert McLaws

# April 10, 2003 7:40 PM

blink said:

Sort by "type" at the top left and you'll get a good page-full of T&A.

And, it is a bit like Fark. Fark was the inspiration--there's a very fark-like view, as well as a very text-only view, too.

Glad you were checking us out. Thanks!

# April 10, 2003 11:16 PM

blink said:

RSS feed, you say...

Send me a "howto" guide and I'll do it this weekend.

Fair enough?

# April 10, 2003 11:17 PM

Robert McLaws said:

http://backend.userland.com/rss

That would be awesome!

# April 11, 2003 12:00 AM

blink said:

Thanks--I'll see about working on it this weekend, for certain!

# April 11, 2003 12:31 PM

Tim Marman said:

Maybe they'll get it if you write it in a different language :)

# April 11, 2003 5:30 PM

Robert McLaws said:

# April 11, 2003 5:49 PM

Tim Marman said:

perfect :)

# April 11, 2003 5:54 PM

TrackBack said:

OK here it goes... : Bob.NET

# April 11, 2003 5:56 PM

TrackBack said:

Thoughts concerning "Stop It". : VB Defender

# April 11, 2003 5:56 PM

TrackBack said:

Thoughts concerning "Stop It". : VB Defender

# April 11, 2003 6:30 PM

David Stone said:

Brilliant! :D

# April 11, 2003 6:31 PM

Samer Ibrahim said:

you actually have a bug in that code...
[c#]
Thread stupidlanguagetopic = addressof(veryoldthread)

;)

# April 13, 2003 1:55 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Ugh, you're right. I'm not a C# guy ;) Can't you tell... I also forgot the semicolons. LOL.
It's fixed now.

# April 13, 2003 2:43 PM

M. Keith Warren said:

We support Israel because they are the only light in the darkness of the middle east. A democratic success amongst a dictator dominated region. We support Israel because they are out ally; and unlike certain European countries, we stand by our friends.

Sharon is hardly Hitler. He has been remarkably restrained considering the circumstances. If the West Bank situation where transplanted into this country, constant killing and terrorist attacks caused by a group of known terrorists living amongst us, I would expect our President to respond to the problem with such fierce force and relentless, un-merciless power that like minded people across the world would fear ever using the word jihad and U.S. in the same sentence...And if the president refused to respond; I would promise you that the patriots all across this land would rise up to deal with it.

I truly hope that our President will ignore the voices of the protestors, who are largely angry about the election, disestablishmentarianists who attend protests organized by groups like International Answer whose parent organization is a communist group; ignore those voices and deal with these problems head on. The path to peace in the middle east is bloody and difficult; it leads through Baghdad, into Syria, into Lebanon.

The path to peace in the middle east is on the road to victory in the war on terror. It is time to ignore the sovereignty of borders whose land is controlled by ruthless dictators like Saddam Hussein; WMD or not, these men must be removed. If a country like Iran or Syria, or Lebanon is harboring terrorists; we must; for the sake of our children and the safety of our homeland, cross the borders - eliminate the problem.

The path to peace in the middle east does not include the UN. It ignores the cries of appeasement countries who are trying to protect their under the table dealings with these terrorist regimes.

The path to peace in the middle

# April 13, 2003 7:31 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Going to disagree with you there. Israel is wrong in occupying the West Bank and Gaza. I don't care what the Palestinians do to them.... it is wrong. Sharon is a warmonger who only wants to finish what he started in the 80's when he was Israel's defense minister battling Arafat. The fact that he wants peace now is outstanding, but there is HARDLY justification to create settlements in Palestinian territory... whether it has anything to do with ancestral land or not. A true friend will point out when you're wrong. We can stand by them and still say that they're wrong for doing what they're doing. But you don't see that happening do ya?

Further, the path to peace has NOTHING to do with ANWR. That is specious reasoning. Removing dependance on foreign oil is great, but not that way. How about through Fuel Cell technology, which NASA has had for 20 years, yet it's never made decent inroads in the private sector. Why? Because Big Oil wants to keep their power. We we don't use oil any more, most major countries and companies lose their income. Oil is Iraq's only resource (besides WMD).

I do agree that we can't do what the Founding Fathers did with slavery and pass it on for another generation to deal with. We have to deal with it now, wherever it may be.

# April 13, 2003 8:17 PM

Robert McLaws said:

By the way, I never said Sharon was Hitler. I said he was the biggest warmonger SINCE Hitler.

# April 13, 2003 8:18 PM

Robert McLaws said:

And the West Bank situation IS here in the US. The American Indians were here first. They are a series of soverign nations within our borders. You don't see us rolling tanks thru their towns, and we wouldn't even if they did have suicide bombers. It's called Posse Comitatus.... look it up.

# April 13, 2003 8:21 PM

M. Keith Warren said:

It is not specious reasoning. There is at least enough oil in ANWR to remove 1/5 of our foreign dependency for 3 decades, certainly long enough to see fossil fuel technologies go the way of the fossils themselves. That 1/5 is an industry estimate which will only likely go up once there is a tap; all this because environmentalists are worried about a caribou who has less than a 1% chance of being affected by such drilling.

I agree that drilling in ANWR has nothing to do with pali-israeli peace; but it certainly could affect OUR peace.

...

Specious reasoning is comparing the pali-israeli conflict to Native Americans. They are not blowing themselves up, trying to kill every american innocent and calling on the gods to destroy us all so they can put in place their own dictatorship.

...if they were; I would hope that you would take up arms with me and destroy them first.

# April 13, 2003 8:55 PM

Robert McLaws said:

It would not affect our peace in the least. And it is specious reasoning because we'vr destroyed enough of our land... it's protected for a reason.

Duh, the Indians aren't blowing themselves up. You missed the point entirely. I don't see the majority of the Palestinian public calling on the gods to destroy us all so they can put their own dictatorship. Back away from the extremes man. A small minority of Palestinians and other Arabs are attacking their occupiers. Go back and read my statements in their entirety. I was hoping you would come back with a valid argument and all I got was hyperbole.

I think you're a little out of whack man. You cannot destroy everyone because a few people go crazy. The Arab world thought we were gonna do this in Iraq. Well we didn't and look what happened. Besides that, you don't destroy the people, you destroy their capability of doing anything. You humiliate them to the point that they go back home in tears with their personal view of their manhood in question.

Finally, I'm done discussing this because it's pointless. I don't like arguing with extremists, and your point of view is a little too extreme for my taste. Now, I hope that doesn't mean you're gonna stop reading my stuff, it's just that I'd rather discuss coding then argue over garbage that doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things anyways.

# April 13, 2003 9:12 PM

Dan Bright said:

If you do write anything like this, I would be extremely interested in reading it. I am thinking about colocating a box to offer my web clients hosting services, and while I can get a friend to host it in his office, I will need to do all of the configuration myself.

Please keep me in mind, and good luck.

# April 13, 2003 10:16 PM

James said:

I couldn't agree more - this is best chance at middle eastern peace in 50 years. On the Palestine/Israel issue: Bush is going to stick it to Israel, and he will stick it to the palestinians as well - he has already said there will be no negotiation on the peace plan Powell is working on. Sharon's statement is huge, because the administration is putting so much pressure on him, he has got to capitulate and he did/is starting to. This is good - both sides need to have major pressure applied for any settlement to come about. Bush get's the 'Brass Balls' award in my book - leadership is hard and sometimes unpopular, but he is doing the right thing, and the changes that he has set into motion are going to be incredible and positive over the next 20 years. When people start to realize what he has done (this will take a while), he will have a landslide election in 2004.

# April 13, 2003 10:25 PM

M. Keith Warren said:

Extreme...?
Lose a friend to a terrorist and then talk to me.

I am intelligent enough to realize that it is the fringe who has these attitudes; but the unfortunate problem is that in far too many of these cases, the fringe has the loudest microphone, the sit in the halls of leadership and rally their people to their radical and extreme beliefs.

...'Besides that, you don't destroy the people, you destroy their capability of doing anything...'

I agree totally; but you cannot take away the ability for Hamas to tell their followers to commit suicide. You cannot humiliate UBL to the point he would just go away. These extreme leaders must be taken out.

My problem is not with palis or arabs in general; my quam is with the radical islamic cleric who tries to manipulate the minds of the average muslim. It is with the pawns like Yasser Arafat who is a willing puppet of the terror groups.

..."it's protected for a reason":
What reason is that? The Caribou? It's pretty? Hey, I am all about saving the environment too pal but have you seen the plans? We are not exactly sticking a pole in the ground and letting crude pour into the pristince lakes. ANWR is almost 20 million acres and only about 2000 would be directly affected. That area is virtually uninhabitable, it is dark more than half of the year and reaches more than 50 below.

About 30 years ago there were similar cries regarding Prudhoe Bay. That area which according to environmentalists would only yield a few months of supply was the largest deposit in North America…and the threat to the Caribou – the population grew by almost 10 times over since that point.

Dont quit talking about this; I enjoy civil debate...it helps me to learn things.

# April 14, 2003 12:08 AM

Robert McLaws said:

E-mail me at robert@interscapeusa.com... we'll talk about my hosting plans that can help you out :).

# April 14, 2003 12:30 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Keith,

I apologize if I was a little harsh in our exchange. I value and respect your opinion, even if it differs from mine. You can at least explain your opinion without resorting to name calling.

The fringe will always have the loudest microphone. Why? Because they are so insignificant that they will do whatever it takes to be heard, no matter the cost. It is no coincidence that these people are usually the biggest fools.

# April 14, 2003 11:06 AM

Jesse Ezell said:

Do you have this code sample in C# also? ;-)

# April 14, 2003 12:18 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Meave it to Jesse to make me laugh. I needed that man thanks.

# April 14, 2003 12:21 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Meave it to Jesse to make me laugh. I needed that man thanks.

# April 14, 2003 12:21 PM

Robert McLaws said:

It posted 2x... hmmm. I meant to say "leave"

# April 14, 2003 12:26 PM

Phil Weber said:

Robert: A spammer could make the same argument: "If people don't like what I send them, why can't they just delete it?"

I subscribe to the DotNetWebLogs feed to keep up on the latest technical info. Because it's an aggregated feed, I can't simply unsubscribe from individual blogs; it's all-or-nothing. Off-topic posts waste my time, just like spam does.

# April 14, 2003 12:51 PM

Daniel Nolan said:

I've no objection to off-topic posts. As for people ignoring what they don't agree with, surely if you're entitled to post something, they have as much right to reply?

Also (ok, i should shuttup now) but surely "WonderWhyPeopleCantIgnoreWhatTheyDontAgreeWith" means america should ignore Iraq too? ;-)

# April 14, 2003 12:58 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I'm not gonna side with spammers here, but if it's a waste of time, then why do people waste EVEN MORE time responding? If you see it's not about .NET, have the self control to skip it and move on. You (read: everyone) read it because you want to know what other people have the guts to say. It's not my fault if you waste your time responding to it. if you truly believed that it wasn't worth reading, wouldn't you then have to agree by implication that it's not worth responding to?

# April 14, 2003 1:02 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Good point Daniel, but let me expound on your first statement to say that they gave the right to respond WITH RESPECT.

On #2, there is a difference between ignoring an opinion and ignoring what's right and wrong.

# April 14, 2003 1:04 PM

Daniel Nolan said:

Noted, and I apologise that how I replied may have been a little harsh, but I was trying to make a point. I think I'll call this one a day and we'll agree to disagree.

Never read your site before today but for some reason I've gone and subscribed to the rss feed :p

/me mutters about tiny comment boxes in mozilla (already prodded scott)

# April 14, 2003 2:12 PM

Phil Weber said:

"If you truly believed that it wasn't worth reading, wouldn't you then have to agree by implication that it's not worth responding to?"

Robert: I *do* agree that it's a waste of time to respond, which is why I haven't responded, other than to post these comments to try to help you understand why I (and others) object to political posts in a .NET feed.

# April 14, 2003 2:13 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Daniel you were not harsh at all. I was talking about everyone else.

Phil, that comment was more directed at everyone else than you. kind of tongue-in-cheek if you get my drift.

# April 14, 2003 2:18 PM

Tim Marman said:

On one hand, I say a blog should a place to truly express your opinions, censoring and filtering is a bad thing.

On the other, this is .NET weblogs, a community that Scott has been generous enough to provide us for free. Our primary focus should be .NET and technology in general, and we all need to keep in mind that this is a global community.

Let's not allow national, political, or religious interests to interfere with the real reason we're here, technology. It's easy to ignore an "off-topic" post; it's harder to ignore an "offensive" post.

Just remember - no matter how elegantly put, hatred is still hatred. The recent anti-French rhetoric isn't a far cry from racist or anti-Semitic commentary.

I would hate to lose someone from the community who has something to say about technology because of something stupid like this....

Can't we all get along? :)

# April 14, 2003 3:33 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Tim, as always, well said. I would disagree about your stance on the anti-French rhetoric. Also, I would gently remind you that anger and hatred are two different things. I don't post hatred. Period. I may post disgust, shame, sorrow, gratitude, or anger, but never hatred.

# April 14, 2003 3:39 PM

Phil Weber said:

"It's easy to ignore an 'off-topic' post; it's harder to ignore an 'offensive' post."

Thanks, Tim. I would add that it's easy to ignore a single off-topic post, but it's difficult to ignore several. I didn't say anything about Robert's first or second or third patriotic post, but it eventually reached a point at which I felt the need to object.

I think Robert himself said it best (http://dotnetweblogs.com/RMcLaws/posts/5452.aspx): "Do something other than waste everyone's time filtering through garbage posts." ;-)

# April 14, 2003 4:12 PM

Phil Weber said:

"I'm going to post things of a political nature in my 'Stories' section, and then link to them in blog entries."

Sounds good, Robert, thank you!

# April 14, 2003 4:14 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Maybe the fact that I was a LtCol. in the AFJROTC program (awarded a scholarhip to the AFROTC program as a CS major) might help explain my feelings towards the situation.

# April 14, 2003 4:20 PM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

I'll say the exact same thing to you as I'm saying to Paschal...could you PLEASE both take this discussion off-line? I don't care who started it, or who said what, but you're both wasting people's time with this.

# April 14, 2003 7:10 PM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

I'll say the exact same thing to you as I'm saying to Paschal...could you PLEASE both take this discussion off-line? I don't care who started it, or who said what, but you're both wasting people's time with this.

# April 14, 2003 7:10 PM

Robert McLaws said:

NP G-Dogg.

# April 14, 2003 7:22 PM

Jeff Julian said:

SqlCE is very very slow. I would suggest an Xml store myself. If you need any assistance, feel free to buzz me offline. I actually wanted to work on the exact same thing last night, but instead I went to sleep. You know how it is.

# April 14, 2003 8:29 PM

TrackBack said:

Yet Another PocketPC RSS Aggregator in plans : CLaueR's Blog

# April 14, 2003 8:35 PM

Nino Benvenuti said:

Firstly, I will disagree with Jeff about SQL CE performance, in a general sense. I'm curious as to what Jeff was doing with SQL CE. I have used SQL CE(2.0) in several solutions (.NET CF) and achieved _very_ good performance (< 1 or < 2 seconds depending on what is happening). I have also seen SQL CE perform very poorly inserting data from flat files.

Since you already have XML in hand, I would suggest keeping with that as the data store (although there is nothing wrong with using SQL CE, IMO), and avoiding the need to interface with ActiveSync, although I'm not sure what you are thinking along the lines of pulling the feed and aggregating it. Depending on how you handle it, the XML -> SQL CE conversion may be CPU intensive.

How many posts to keep prior to "recycling"? That's a good question, and one that I think is somewhat subjective as posts are different sizes. Being sensitive to memory restrictions on the device, you wish to either adjust this number based on device memory, set a fixed number, or let the user select the number(my choice).

I'd be more than happy to provide assistance on/offline.

-Nino

# April 14, 2003 9:22 PM

brady gaster said:

now THAT...

is SO money.

# April 15, 2003 1:42 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Ladies and gentlemen, the irreverent, the incomparable, BRADY GASTER!

# April 15, 2003 1:49 AM

Dan F said:

XML for sure, it seems like a whole lot of extra effort to put it into a database. XML also opens it up for other people to work with a little easier. Granted, not that much easier, but still easier.

Only having ever used a pocketpc to do a couple of months worth of development (in eVB, *shudder*) you may want to take the following suggestions with a grain of salt
* I'm assuming there'll be a desktop component where you can do the bulk of the "setup" work, subscribe to feeds, follow up on links, purge the feeds, etc. The little experience I had with the pocketpc made me hug my keyboard and monitor with glee
* the ability to mark a post as follow-up-when-theres-more-pixels would be good. I can see myself leaving the PocketPC docked during the day/night, uncradling it and reading the feeds on the train, then following up on links at work/at home. That way I could filter the "errata" out and be left with the "good stuff" to follow up on
* on a similair vein, a links basket would be cool. links to visit when back in desktopland
* being able to annotate posts would be cool. None of the aggregators I've used yet let you do it, I think it'd be cool.
* a few different ideas for deleting the posts:
- immediately. sometimes theres stuff that just doesn't warrant carrying around
- global ageing rules, where they "fall off" the bottom after X days, or X kb used
- per feed ageing rules.
- some kind of "weighting" for each post as to how usefull it'll be in the future. eg: this post, i could bump up to an 11 (out of 10), coz I know its going to be history making. but other posts may only be 2 or 3 and can be culled at will. This idea isn't fully baked, feel free to laugh at me!
- per post "never delete". some things you just want to keep for ever. I'm not sure if an aggregator is the best spot to keep them, but I'm a messy guy :)

Ah, I

# April 15, 2003 6:45 AM

Dan F said:

Ah, I...

wow, I ran out of room! Anyways, as I was saying...

Ah, I think thats about it.

# April 15, 2003 6:46 AM

Nino Benvenuti said:

I'll concur with Dan's first item. Do the heavy lifting on the desktop; Pocket PC wasn't designed to do CPU intensive tasks. This is one of the reasons Microsoft left out XSLT from .NET CF; too CPU intensive.

# April 15, 2003 9:39 AM

TrackBack said:

Scobelization : Jesse Ezell Blog

# April 15, 2003 5:38 PM

Boris Gupp said:

Being European it strikes me as odd that self criticism is something Americans find difficult to express. We are a lot more modest (even realistic, I would say) here in Europe.
We know that we are only a small part of the world and we have no right to force our ideas on others. Don't get me wrong I am not saying the US just does the opposite, but I have a feeling that Americans have difficulties with anyone who says that not everything in the USA is 100% perfect.
The world greatest democracy? The world biggest democracy for sure. The 2000 elections is still something that keeps us wondering how such a modern society can be stumbling with very old, defective (or not) voting machines.

To wrap up: I think that the war in Iraq is in a way the right thing, but maybe not at the right moment or for the right reason. It is still hard to defend with no WMD found.
I think the US (the coalition) now have a difficult job to get Iraq up from the floor. Even they can pull that trick off, with almost the same ease as they took over Iraq, that would be a real achievement and it might make the world a better place in the end.

# April 16, 2003 6:20 AM

Boris Gupp said:

Hear hear!

Blinded by the light they shine in their own eyes.

# April 16, 2003 6:28 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Well said Boris.

# April 16, 2003 11:39 AM

TrackBack said:

Object Mappers : Jesse Ezell Blog

# April 16, 2003 1:36 PM

TrackBack said:

Opinions about persistence, object-relational mapping, data-access layer generation tools : Fabrice'

# April 16, 2003 1:36 PM

TrackBack said:

Yet Another PocketPC RSS Aggregator in plans : CLaueR's Blog

# April 16, 2003 1:36 PM

TrackBack said:

OlyMars == Confusion : David Stone's Blog

# April 16, 2003 1:36 PM

TrackBack said:

OlyMars == Confusion : Eric J. Smith's Weblog

# April 16, 2003 1:36 PM

Chad Osgood said:

LLBLGen is really that simple: choose your database, select the tables/views you want, and click generate. It will create the TSQL for all the sprocs, and the DAL classes.

# April 16, 2003 2:12 PM

Christophe Lauer said:

> If the instructions for using a condom were as
> complicated as the ones for using OlyMars, AIDS would
> have killed us all by now.

OlyMars is not only an object/relational mapping layer, nor a DAL generator. OlyMars is a generic (multi-purposes) code generator, which can provide services for generating a DAL, database aware controls, or whatever you want if you write your own templates. Hence the complicated instructions for use.

My $0.02,
Christophe Lauer

Btw, isn't "French Letters" another word for Condoms ? ;-))

# April 16, 2003 4:47 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I'm not touching the French joke. That's gotten me in trouble too much this week.

I don't care how complicated the system is, if the instructions are difficult to understand, it's a waste of time.

# April 16, 2003 4:52 PM

Chad Osgood said:

I think completely disregarding something simply because the instructions are difficult to understand is a bit dismissive.

These tools aren't targeted towards end-users; they're not always going to be user-friendly. Sometimes (read: most of the time) we have to dig further to derive the most value.

# April 16, 2003 10:27 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I do not buy that at all. In fact, that is the one things that buge me more than anything. In this case, we ARE the end users.

A solution, by definition, solves a problem, it does not supplant the problem with a different one. If I have to waste time trying to figure out how to implement the solution, it ceases to be a solution and becomes ANOTHER problem.

# April 16, 2003 11:17 PM

TrackBack said:

True to my word : Bob.NET

# April 17, 2003 3:29 AM

Peter Marshall said:

Isn't the american soldier in the foreground holding his very own penis replacement also.............

# April 17, 2003 5:53 AM

plato said:

I'd go for XML rather than SQL CE, if nothing else there's some level of compatability with the other aggregators out there.

Other thoughts/comments:
* Don't really mind if there's an AS interface, but would want to be able to do most things from the PocketPC when I'm on the road (add & remove feeds, update etc)
* Really like Dan's suggestion of the "link basket" for looking at things later - much better than copying them to a PI note :-)
* Allow feeds to be stored on a memory card.
* Would like to "lock" items (ala SharpReader) so they never get aged out (Dan's "never delete").
* Implement IBlogThis interface - although given System.Xml.XPath isn't supported in .NET CF this could be a small problem. Some sort of blog posting support would be cool though.

Ideally it would also sync with my desktop aggregator so that I don't have to read both, make the tea, put the kids to bed and ...

# April 17, 2003 12:15 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I've been thinking a lot about it... and I don't know if it's very practical to have a PocketPC aggregator. Brady Gster made a very valid point.... you could always use AvantGo to grab the pages themselves.... with full HTML.

What I am curious about is....seeing if I can use .NET speech to let you dictate blog entries, and then submit them up to the blog using the webservice or the IBlogThis interface. I don't think it's possible tho since .NET speech is prompt-based.

# April 17, 2003 12:55 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I've been thinking a lot about it... and I don't know if it's very practical to have a PocketPC aggregator. Brady Gster made a very valid point.... you could always use AvantGo to grab the pages themselves.... with full HTML.

What I am curious about is....seeing if I can use .NET speech to let you dictate blog entries, and then submit them up to the blog using the webservice or the IBlogThis interface. I don't think it's possible tho since .NET speech is prompt-based.

# April 17, 2003 12:55 PM

TrackBack said:

XSLT as a Bigger Hammer? : Kirk Allen Evans' Blog

# April 17, 2003 4:39 PM

sirshannon said:

there is a VERY easy way for MS to stop people from complaining about "typical m$ bull----". Very, very easy.

# April 17, 2003 5:20 PM

blink said:

There's an RSS feed there now...just waiting for you to take advantage of it...

Enjoy!

# April 17, 2003 11:16 PM

Greg Robinson said:

Tato charged you $700! See he is still up to ripping his friends off ;-)

# April 18, 2003 6:56 AM

Scott Cate said:

This is a great find, thanks ....

# April 18, 2003 11:59 AM

Robert McLaws said:

NP Boss. ;)

# April 18, 2003 12:41 PM

Chad Osgood said:

I empathize completely. Being inquisitive and ambitious in the developer world is a time consuming (but fun) combo.

# April 20, 2003 7:11 PM

Nino Benvenuti said:

Yep! They announced that site at MDC (see:
http://dotnetweblogs.com/nino/Archive/032003.aspx ..scroll down). Finally a community for us PPC developers. =)

-Nino

# April 20, 2003 9:04 PM

David Stone said:

Hasn't that been around in OmniPage for a while? I've been using it for at least a year...

# April 21, 2003 1:45 PM

Jeff Julian said:

Happy Birthday bro. There are no more good ones. I turn 22 in two weeks and it is nothing to me. I don't want to party, drink, or really do anything. Live it up tonight!!!!

# April 21, 2003 8:02 PM

Dan F said:

Whoa, only 21? I feel so old! (26)

Happy birthday man. Heres to the golden hangover (that lasts the same amount of hours as your birthday)

# April 22, 2003 8:47 AM

kristen mclaws said:

I am his twin sister and trust me, he did not live it up as he should have! But don't worry, I drank enough for both of us :)

# April 22, 2003 12:55 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Unfortunately I have a product launch in 2 days and I could not afford to get hung over. That's ok tho, I still had a great birthday. It felt good to get that "Under 21" stuff off of my license.

Thanks to everyone that wished me a happy birthday!

# April 22, 2003 2:46 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Unfortunately I have a product launch in 2 days and I could not afford to get hung over. That's ok tho, I still had a great birthday. It felt good to get that "Under 21" stuff off of my license.

Thanks to everyone that wished me a happy birthday!

# April 22, 2003 2:46 PM

Dan F said:

Bah, product schmoduct. Its a well known fact that you code better when buzzed. Or, at least, you *think* you code better :D

Happy birthday to you too Kristen!

# April 22, 2003 6:35 PM

kristen mclaws said:

thanks dan!

# April 23, 2003 3:22 PM

Eli Robillard said:

"The Lazy Programmer": http://dotnetweblogs.com/ERobillard/Story/3801.aspx

Lazy Programming Category:
http://dotnetweblogs.com/ERobillard/Category/544.aspx?Name=Lazy%20Programming

# April 24, 2003 9:27 AM

Chad Osgood said:

Yes, I was indeed asked that just the other day. This person has gone through Guerilla.NET, works with a whole team of .NET developers, and works on a large-scale well-known production web application. The reason I was so flabbergasted by such a seemingly simple question is because it indicates a profound misunderstanding of (basic) .NET in general.

He's an intelligent individual, but he simply doesn't care about delving into details or learning more than he needs to. It's unfortunate, but I find this to be the resonating norm among developers I encounter. This is why I feel user groups are such a positive thing...

# April 24, 2003 10:21 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Yes, Eli, but Ambrose in your comments made a very distinct point. Laziness + Intelligence + Enthusiasm = Great Developer. Laziness + Enthusiasm = Most developers. #2 is a very dangerous combination., and illustrates Chad's point very well. We've got developers out there who don't understand the basic elements of .NET, and are writing software. I've inherited several projects that have spaghetti code in one place or another. As I said, laziness can help breed invention, but it can just as easily breed more problems.

# April 24, 2003 1:59 PM

Dan F said:

Copy and paste into notepad/word *before* clicking submit/post is your best friend. It'll save your hide everywhere, from message boards to sending emails. Software is evil :(

# April 29, 2003 7:07 AM

Tim Marman said:

Have you tried w.bloggar or newzcrawler? I personally haven't had any problems with the webform interface, but I know others were successfully using these tools.

Actually, I downloaded w.bloggar, but haven't gotten around to playing with it much yet... it looks like a nice piece of software though!

# April 29, 2003 7:34 AM

Justin Rudd said:

Ha! What a small valley! I'm actually working on a gig with the author of OnTime :-)

# May 1, 2003 10:21 PM

Scott Swigart said:

Thanks for the, uh, compliment?

Glad you like the articles.

# May 5, 2003 2:12 PM

Robert McLaws said:

LOL. I'm just a smartass like you guys, so it was DEFINITELY a compliment.

# May 5, 2003 2:18 PM

Datagrid Girl said:

Hi Robert,
If you find this interesting you should really read: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671015206/datagridgirl20

Enjoy!
Marcie

# May 5, 2003 2:59 PM

Robert McLaws said:

It was definitely very interesting. I read the first 10 pages from the sample. I'll pick it up from your store the next time I get some spare green.

# May 5, 2003 3:45 PM

Justin said:

Yes I do leave tracing on when I deploy a web-site. But since I use log4net, I can easily control where the output goes...

Sorry...just being a little pedantic today (the week has not started well for me) :-)

# May 5, 2003 5:21 PM

James Avery said:

I understand what you are saying Robert, and I agree, but I think it would have been better to just shoot the offending people an email.. instead of adding more noise to the main feed.

- James

# May 5, 2003 6:16 PM

Robert McLaws said:

It was for EVERYONE to see, present and future testers. I don't have time to e-mail everyone individually for a discussion. it's in the main feed and everyone saw it. Now they'll use their deleter next time.

# May 5, 2003 6:24 PM

Khurram Aziz, khurram@nexlinx.net.pk said:

Regarding #2, what you want me to do.

# May 6, 2003 2:32 AM

TrackBack said:

heLP .Net Blog

# May 8, 2003 12:12 PM

Anon said:

I don't see passion in your posts. I see a lot of ranting and personal comments....

# May 8, 2003 2:27 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Hey cool. I thought it was my blog and I could do whatever I wanted with it.

# May 8, 2003 2:35 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Besides, you are entitled to see whatever you want. Anyone that knows me knows that I am extremely passionate about what I do.

# May 8, 2003 2:36 PM

Phil Weber said:

"My wit and sarcasm go unedited for the first time..."

Not to mention your modesty! ;-)

# May 9, 2003 1:54 PM

Robert McLaws said:

???

# May 9, 2003 2:58 PM

Jesse Ezell said:

Welcome to the world of third party components. I have yet to find a single third party component that is up to snuff (and I have used quite a bit of them). Even EntityBroker, as cool as it is, has been a hassle to work with.

# May 12, 2003 1:43 PM

Robert McLaws said:

It's not exactly a component. More like a website plug-in.

Have you used my GenX.NET yet? I worked really hard on that architecture, and I'll be refining it again for 3.0.

# May 12, 2003 1:48 PM

Jesse Ezell said:

The DAL is supposed to know a lot about the DB, it is the other two layers that shouldn't. If you want maximum maintainability, dynamic queries are a heck of a lot better than stored procs. I'm not talking about your standard hard coded SQL statements, I am talking about true dynamic queries. Yes, if all your app does is use hard coded queries, using stored procs is debatable. However, many applications with complex domain models choose to use an object mapping tool such as EntityBroker (http://www.thonaconsulting.com or Hibernate (http://hibernate.bluemars.net/?cowiki=c52ed0bab39a75fc12df3bed651d710a) which take the maintainability ratings for your SQL code off the chart. Why, because you never have to write any in the first place. A great thing about a DAL that truly utilizes the potential of dynamic queries is that it can automatically switch between Oracle, SQL, Access, MySql, etc. without recoding any of your command objects. You can't do anything remotely close to this with stored procs. So, the end result is that you save a couple hundred hours and have more time to make sure your server and your code are both secure and don't get hacked in the first place.

# May 14, 2003 3:16 PM

Robert McLaws said:

You still have to open direct query permissions on the database, which is completely unacceptable. I'd rather write more DAL code then leave my system open for attack, and you should too.

# May 14, 2003 3:24 PM

Frans Bouma said:

Robert:
1 SqlServer machine, 1 Application machine with IIS5 and ASP.NET, running a webapplication written in .NET.

Tell me, how are you going to implement the security? On the stored procedures? You only have 1 user to add rights for: OR the user the website runs under and which is a domain user (BAD) OR the user the website runs under and which has the same password as the user you give rights to (Less bad) OR the sqlserver user you login with using the connection string.

Either way: there is no security necessary on the stored procedures, simply because there is just 1 user logging in!

Maintainability? I hit 'generate', the code is compiled, I go. With stored procedures, I hit 'generate' the code is compiled plus I have to update the stored procs with the generated script.

Security is something you think out thouroughly, not something you apply in 1 spot and it magically works everywhere.

# May 14, 2003 3:52 PM

Jesse Ezell said:

Opening direct query permissions is by no means leaving the system open for attack. If your web server or network gets compromised in the first place, that is the issue. Put the SQL server behind a firewall and enforce proper security on your web tier and you shouldn't have any issues. Assuming someone compromised a web server in the first place, not having query permissions doesn't mean much. They don't need query permissions to screw you over.

# May 14, 2003 4:55 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Wait until my article comes out, and I will explain my security concepts further. I've spent a long time developing what I believe to be the best security architecture for SQL out there, which is why you may not quite understand what I am talking about yet.

# May 14, 2003 5:32 PM

Frans Bouma said:

Robert:
Without your article it's perfectly understandable what to do: you don't have that much options when it comes to webapplications and sqlserver spread over more than 1 machine. Even when they're run on 1 machine, you will probably use 1 connection string and use 1 user to connect to the database (because all accesses are anonymous f.e.).

# May 15, 2003 1:34 AM

Jeff Julian said:

Jeff Julian

# May 15, 2003 4:08 PM

Mike Sax said:

Yes!

# May 15, 2003 4:17 PM

Phil Weber said:

<b>-1</b>

Given a choice between having them write code, and having them write <i>about</i> writing code, I'd prefer that they spend their limited time creating cool tools for me to use.

# May 15, 2003 4:27 PM

TrackBack said:

ScottGu's Blog

# May 15, 2003 4:49 PM

David Stone said:

<voice type="Shaggy">ScotGu...where are you?</voice>

Seconded. :)

# May 15, 2003 6:15 PM

Roy Osherove said:

0.02$ :)

# May 15, 2003 6:23 PM

Jason Mauss said:

especially rob howard...stop doing .NET Shows and blog instead!! heh..just kiddin' that show was cool.

# May 16, 2003 1:10 AM

Rajiv said:

rajiv - rajspace.blog-city.com

# May 17, 2003 4:21 AM

TrackBack said:

Robert McLaws

# May 20, 2003 3:39 PM

TrackBack said:

Robert McLaws

# May 20, 2003 3:39 PM

Phil Weber said:

This line looks like a bug waiting to happen:

If System.Environment.Version.Minor = "0" Then

What happens when this code is run on version 2.0 of the Framework?

# May 21, 2003 12:53 AM

Frans Bouma said:

I already thought I was crazy. I got a truckload of crap thrown over me yesterday that I was wrong, giving bad advice etc. but I'm not. It IS a problem. I'm glad someone else finally understands what I'm talking about.

In the comments on my blog about this problem an NUnit developer posted a piece of code which might help. I'll test that today, perhaps it's a solution.

# May 21, 2003 1:36 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Frans,

It's not as big a problem as you're making it out to be, and if you read my previous post, I flamed you too for making that comment. Other peoplr read this stuff and you need to be careful.

Go back and read the link to my first post on the subject and re-read what I wrote. I've been supporting 2 versions of my code without incident for 6 months now. Don't get all Henny Penny on everyone, that's all. We want people to stop using VS.NET 2002. That's not gonna happen if people read stuff like "ISV's - DONT USE 2003"

# May 21, 2003 1:42 AM

Robert McLaws said:

This code assumes that it REALLY wouldn't run on 2.0 because of the changes to the configuration system, et. al. Besides, the code does not run anyways, although it was a nice idea, I'm still missing a piece to the puzzle.

# May 21, 2003 1:44 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Besides all this, your primary concern should be ease of use to end users, not the time you have to put into making it work. Having 2 separate versions is just good policy... removes confusion or configuration issues.

You could include both versions in your redistributable and use Strong Name Signing and versioning similar to MS's to specify which version is which.

# May 21, 2003 1:47 AM

Frans Bouma said:

Well, what I want is 1 version of the assemblies I have to distribute and generate code against. If I have 2 versions, this will be cumbersome, because the user then has to manually add the right assembly, which can lead to mistakes and thus a bad experience with the product. I understand that maintaining 2 versions is an option, however it IS extra work, for the same code, which shouldn't have been necessary.

Microsoft seems to think every sole who bought vs.net 2002 (which are over 1 million people) is upgrading to vs.net 2003 within a month, but I doubt it will be that way. I too talk to developers and what I hear is that a lot still have to work with vs.net 2002 and can't or won't upgrade soon. That's a problem that's a reality, no matter how much we all want it to dissapear.

Robert, if you think flaming me is helping the problem go away, you're wrong. After reading the flames and crap I received over yesterdays article I'm not going to change the title of the posting. I understand now this site as a whole gets bad press when a blogger types in "Microsoft sux" or similar, but you all also have to understand blogging is about writing personal opinions. It's not about news, we're not jounalists, we're developers.

# May 21, 2003 2:07 AM

Robert McLaws said:

So don't do anything 1.1 specific. Fortunately for me, I make use of the platform as a means of education, therefore, as part of the sales process, I educate my developer customers as to why .NET 1.1 is better. In the case of GenX.NET, it allows me to support more databases with a fewer number of dependencies than my 1.0 version.

Remember also, that just because you WANT to do something, doesn't mean you CAN. I'd like to have one version too, but I can't. GET OVER IT. It's one of the pitfalls of the system you're developing for.

Further, research that I've seen shows that over 6 million developers are using .NET. One guy said it perfectly right: 1.0 = DirectX 8, 1.1 = DirectX 9. Educate your friends, developers, and customers, and push them to switch. Don't be anal about it just because you don't like what you are forced to deal with.

Bottom line: .NET 1.0 assemblies will run on .NET 1.1 99% of the time. If you don't want to take advantage of the improvements in 1.1 , then you can have 1 version. but I think you do yourself and the community a disservice if you do so.

Further, you still have not recognized your responsibility to this community. You say you have a personal opinion, then title your post "Why I Think People Shouldn't Use VSNET 2003". Don't entitle it "ISV's - stay away at all costs" which is pretty much what you did. If you got flamed by it then you got what you deserved.

# May 21, 2003 2:22 AM

Frans Bouma said:

Hmm. So it isn't obvious for people who blog that blogs are personal? I'll change the title in what you suggested. Look, I don't want to receive heat because I think ABC and the 'community' or Microsoft thinks CBA, and I do not want to bring Scott in trouble because I have the urge to tell people about what I think (btw, who carez anyway what I think, I'm definitly not important or a 'prominent'-.net person).

The root of the problem is: if you pick .NET 1.1 (which I do not have a problem with, its free, download it and be happy), you also force an upgrade to visual studio.net 2003, because you can't develop with visual studio.net 2002 and .NET 1.1. That's the problem, or better: I'm not in the position to tell a customer to upgrade to another version of an expensive tool. Now the short-time offer is 29$, but VS.NET 2003 EA upgrade costs here over 2000EURO. I can't tell a developer to shell out that money. I wished everybody swapped platforms and editors on the spot so there wouldn't be any problem.

To use the DX analogy: in VS.NET 2002 you can developer DX8, in VS.NET 2003 you can develop DX9. Now, would that be acceptable? I don't think so. However .NET developers are in that position.

# May 21, 2003 2:41 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Why is it such a bad position? I think it's perfectly acceptable. Why are we so damn hell-bent on supporting old technology? MS is offering an incredibly cheap deal in allowing upgrades for $29. The goal is to get you to do it now. If you wait till later, I have absolutely no sympathy for you. You snooze, you lose.

You can always command line compile your stuff too. You don't NEED VS.NET 2003 if you just want to recompile to 1.1.

# May 21, 2003 2:47 AM

Frans Bouma said:

[quote]
Besides all of this, I have said several times that .NET 1.1 is not an upgrade, it's a sidegrade. VB6 was not an upgrade to VB5... it ran totally separate. Could you build VB5 apps in VB6? Could you build VB6 apps in VB5? So WHY IN THE BLOODY HELL do you expect to be able to build VB 7.1 apps in VB 7.0 or vice versa?
[/quote]
Why in the bloody hell? Well, I'll tell you: BECAUSE I AM NOT IN THE POSITION TO TELL MY CUSTOMERS TO BUY YET ANOTHER IDE FROM MICROSOFT WHICH COSTS MONEY.

So there. In VB5 you still can use dlls written in VB6 (hell, even VC++ or Delphi). In VS.NET 2002 I can't use assemblies written in VS.NET 2003 unless I add a long list of redirects to a config file. And because I'm on VS.NET 2002, I do not think about that, because I never had to and MS is NOT TELLING ME TO ADD THEM TOO. Only some dork from The Netherlands is, who you flamed out of the water with this posting.

I changed the title of my article and added a note. Then I read this posting. Thanks a lot, Robert.

# May 21, 2003 3:19 AM

Jonne said:

I totally agree with you...

# May 21, 2003 3:20 AM

Frans Bouma said:

Not all versions are valid for that upgrade. Not all companies upgrade a.s.a.p. (see the win2k upgrade cycle), and upgrades cost a lot of money if you miss that deal. I find it pretty amazing that a customer should shell out extra money to run your software he bought.

Of course I can jump through hoops and come up with lots of versions of the same code, for each platform a different version. Which hoops though? It's not documented. The only solutions seem to be 1) command line compile, 2) keep two versions and 2 IDE's installed (yeah right). This is not that good since maintaining 2 codebases for 1 codeset is a pitfall for errors 3) tell customers to include a set of assemblyBinding redirect tags in their config file.

Customers can't see from the outside an assembly is for .NET 1.1. Not all developers read the documentation cover to cover before they start developing. Are you paying for the supportcosts? My goal is to write software for developers which works as easy as possible. Any hurdle a developer has to take is a hurdle too many.

Ok, I can tell my customers to run out the door and buy the latest and greatest MS IDE because *I* think they should, but personally I don't think that way, because it is MY problem if a customer can't use my software on his machine, not the customer's problem.

# May 21, 2003 3:35 AM

Scott Watermasysk said:

Careful, I never said I did not like it.

I only said I saw it, looked it up on Amazon, and read some horrible reviews of it. Nothing more, nothing less.

-Scott

# May 21, 2003 7:57 AM

Jamie Cansdale said:

I'm interested.

# May 21, 2003 9:10 AM

Greg Robinson said:

wow, at first glance I thought I could start liking him now..having read his post though, afraid not.

# May 21, 2003 10:08 AM

Frans Bouma said:

I've found a solution for the 'framework-hell', so you can compile your class libraries from inside vs.net 2003 and use them in vs.net 2002 and thus .net code 1.0 without having to worry references to f.e. system.data.dll are crashing the 1.0 application (and you do not need any references). I'll write a blog about that within an hour or so. It's very easy: put your class lib in its own solution. remove all .net 1.1 references, add references to the .net 1.0 equivalents. Compile. Ready to go :)

# May 21, 2003 2:23 PM

Greg Robinson said:

I posted this a while back:

http://discuss.develop.com/archives/wa.exe?A2=ind0302C&L=DOTNET-CLR&P=R4015&I=-3

got a lot of interesting replies...even one from Jim Hogg himself.

# May 21, 2003 3:20 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Awesome. I'd still like to find a way to do it programmatically. The ultimate goal is to have a redistributable assembly that your project references. This assembly would tie into the existing Framework's compatibility system, and then you would add compatibility attributes to your code. Then you'd never have to worry about it again.

# May 21, 2003 3:32 PM

Sudhakar Sadasivuni[MVP] said:

scott...are you there?

# May 22, 2003 4:40 AM

JosephCooney said:

I know this is over a month old now but I have to bite. If you don't like the tools other people write....don't use them. It _really_ is that simple.

# May 23, 2003 12:38 AM

Frans Bouma said:

If you target 1.1 and not 1.0, it's of course not that clever to build against 1.0. If you want to target 1.0, you can't target 1.1 anyway and can't include 1.1 features. If you still want to offer 1.1 customers a true 1.1 experience then you have to opt for 2 codebases. (and when you patch, you have 4, and after you patch, you have 6 etc). :)

It's a matter of choice. For the projects currently in development, all targeting 1.0, it's an option to keep it on 1.0 and go for 1.1 in next projects.

# May 23, 2003 3:38 AM

Adam Hill said:

So what is MS's recommended "drop-off" point going to be? Five versions back, six, seven? Will there need to be a version for every Framework rev?

If .NET continues on for a while we will be trading DLL/COM hell for Assembly hell.

adam...

# May 23, 2003 9:22 AM

steven vore said:

Heh. When I take Nyquil (like earlier this week), I *immediately* turn off the light, buery myself under the covers and don't even think about coming up for 8 hours. I'm impressed that you could even *try* to code /under the influence/.

-Steven

# May 23, 2003 10:12 AM

Mike Sax said:

I've posted a brief note on my blog that explains what most developers need to know about this. I don't think it really applies to the case with the Oracle driver, but it certainly covers the general case the Frans was talking about.

# May 24, 2003 6:45 PM

Scott Sargent said:

Yes, Definitely More blogging!

# May 26, 2003 10:19 AM

Frans Bouma said:

I don't see your problem with IDataReader. It has all the methods you want, so you can create the physical datareader in a factory and work with the instance through the interface definition, which results in database-generic code.

# May 27, 2003 2:14 AM

Robert McLaws said:

You misread my post entirely. I love the IDataReader that's why I'm using it.

# May 27, 2003 3:20 AM

Dan F said:

Not really having much of a clue what GenX does, I'll lead with a qualified yes.

If you're talking about being able to set properties at design time, maybe even a custom properties dialog window thingy ala VB6, then I'd be voting a definate yes. It makes it easier to just "fiddle" to get used to the component. Using a custom properties dialog also helps guide the user through the job of setting up the component.

Although, (get ready for a flipflop), that'd make it a bit like the VB6 equivalent of using an ocx that had no runtime visual component and could have been done just as easily as a dll. Which I could never really see the point of :)

Its a definate maybe :-)

# May 27, 2003 7:42 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Well, see, that's exactly why I'm torn. GenX.NET outputs an Excel file to the server. It doesn't have a UI whatsoever, it just has some properties that are set, usually in code. Now, should I give something like this design-time support, JUST so that I can make it easier to use... or should it always be manipulated programmatically?

# May 28, 2003 2:58 AM

Philip Rieck said:

The problem with using the assembly file version is that it's not really used by the CLR for versioning issues. Say you have a no-touch app that's loaded via an href.. the dlls are pulled into the machine's downloaded assembly cache. If you update one of the dlls, but only update the fileversion attribute, then the CLR will NOT download the new dll, and you'll have some clients running with the new version (those that cleared the download cache, or those that never ran the app before), and some running the old. Ouch.

# May 28, 2003 8:29 AM

Scott Swigart said:

It sounds like you are not advocating bindingRedirect, or publisher policy files when you patch a component. Simply drop in a new one right over the top of the old one.

Also, I'm not convinced that having the AssebblyVersion and the AssemblyFileVersion say 2 different things is the best idea.

I also agree that it makes sense to maintain separate versions of components for different frameworks. You might want to cover having two different project files that point at some of the same source files as a way to share common code, and not have 2 completely separate source bases to maintain.

# May 28, 2003 1:00 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Well, I think making your end users manage binding redirects and distributing publisher policy files is a little much to make your end users deal with. Besides, I don't want a component vendor telling me which version of the component I should use. It's my decision most of the time, not theirs. Besides, it kinda negates the idea of XCOPY deployment if you have to modify the web.config or register a new assembly in the GAC as part of the deployment process.

Well, I know that the AssemblyFileVersion attribute is not used for the CLR, it's for YOU to be able to tell the difference.

I'm not really talking about mo-touch deployment scenarios. While I think no-touch is really cool, I don't think it's advisable in a server control situation. I'm mostly yalking about server controls, where you have redistributables available for download off the web.

# May 28, 2003 1:25 PM

TrackBack said:

ISerializable

# May 31, 2003 8:15 AM

Roy Osherove said:

Cool! Congratulations :)

# May 31, 2003 11:10 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Thanks Roy!

# May 31, 2003 5:14 PM

Paul Alexander said:

If you take a look at any of the .NET framework core assemblies that have been patched or upgraded they follow this versioning scheme. The idea behind breaking the version into two attributes was to accommodate easy updates that do not include breaking or binary changes. In a no-touch environment you'll just want to keep updating the version number and let the framework handle it. But if you're dealing with server side controls, or shared components it's you should be able to release an update that doesn't require a re-build. Plus the bindingRedirect and publisher Policy files have additional security impleications and Polciy files only work when installed into the GAC. That's not an option for shared hosting environments and other such isolated projects.

# June 1, 2003 11:36 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Well said, Paul.

# June 2, 2003 1:08 AM

TrackBack said:

Santomania

# June 2, 2003 3:44 PM

Robert Scoble said:

Heh. Yeah, that would be fun. I think the PDC will be even more fun than TechED. But, I'm jealous too.

# June 2, 2003 5:53 PM

Addy Santo said:

Robert,

The thing which really gets me is how much my position has changed in the past 6 months. Last year Microsoft Israel flew me over to the TechEd in Eilat where I gave 3 great presentations and chatted with the likes of David Chappel. But since then I moved to the other side of the world (NYC), changed jobs, and basically left behind everyone who knows how good I am :)

Which leaves me here at work - while I rebuild my reputation from scratch everyone else is out having fun at TechEd...

-Addy

# June 2, 2003 8:12 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I wish Microsoft would send ME to TechEd. All I got was a lousy book. Well, it was a really good book. I guess I still have some dues to pay.

# June 2, 2003 9:21 PM

Darren Neimke said:

Well done Rob! I know - only too well - how good it feels to jump over another architectural bar. Just this week, I too felt that my coding form has evolved to a higher place, but, alas, I still haven't reached OONirvana :-)

# June 3, 2003 8:29 AM

DonXML said:

Rob,
Congrats! I know how you feel. There's a bunch of known “intellectual plateaus”, that once you make it, you feel like you’re on top of the world. The problem is that once there, there isn’t anyone around to share it with. Other architectural “intellectual plateaus” are:
Truly understanding XML as an object representation
Understanding declarative programming (XSLT is the big one).

DonXML

# June 3, 2003 11:13 AM

Drew Marsh said:

If it's something you discovered that gives you a competitive edge then, personally, I wouldn't be mad at you if you didn't share it. You deserve to keep that edge as long as you can. Let the others work hard now to figure out what you're doing. If they're public about trying to figure it out, then you can chime in with: "Yes, that's right... here's how I discovered it/do it.".

Just my 2¢,
Drew

# June 3, 2003 1:03 PM

TrackBack said:

Drew's Blog

# June 4, 2003 10:28 AM

Paul Wilson said:

Just use C# :)

# June 4, 2003 7:23 PM

Robert McLaws said:

har de har har

# June 4, 2003 7:31 PM

SBC said:

I think it has to do with the rendering of embedded picture - I had a similar problem with my postings which had embedded pics. Then again, you probably know that already.

# June 5, 2003 8:48 AM

Mike Gunderloy said:

Remember, you can get some compensation for talking about the design by writing it up as an article, even after you fill us in on the Great New Technique here. You seem to be able to turn out grammatical text quickly, so any edtor is going to love you.

# June 5, 2003 10:00 AM

sirshannon said:

If you are going to run a site that may offend your customers, etc, with your opinions, I would highly suggest you not use your real name. Google has cost many people many dollars.

# June 5, 2003 11:57 AM

Phil Weber said:

"One should not believe in an 'ism'. They should believe in themselves." -- Ferris Buehler

# June 5, 2003 1:28 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Good Idea SirShannon. Then I can piss people off anonymously ;)

Let's hear it for Phil Webber. He knows what's up.

# June 5, 2003 4:28 PM

Josh Ledgard said:

Thanks for posting this. I also wanted to let you know that we have now set up a gotdotnet workspace for the community to use and contribute to the powertoys projects. Here is the forum post that announces it...
http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/MessageBoard/Thread.aspx?id=107870

Thanks Again,
josh

# June 5, 2003 10:04 PM

Nick Katsivelos said:

blog on boyz

# June 6, 2003 9:52 AM

TrackBack said:

Dan's Brain Wasteland

# June 10, 2003 4:15 PM

TrackBack said:

.NET Brain Droppings

# June 10, 2003 4:15 PM

Don said:

Thanks for the info Robert. Oh well, guess I'll use the trusty web interface for now... =)

# June 10, 2003 6:45 PM

Marc said:

Well, he cannot be President (not born on US soil) so the world can only go so insane.

That said, I would vote for him if I lived in CA.

# June 10, 2003 6:50 PM

Brian Desmond said:

I've had a page fault BSOD from my 2003 dev box - i suspect it has something to do with all the "stuff" I have loaded on it.

--Brian

# June 10, 2003 7:26 PM

sirshannon said:

wow. I REALLY wish I could say I've never seen a BSOD on XP. There are at least 7 incidents in the online Crash Report system for this install of XP. But I'm not complaining, I have been running this install since XP went gold, quite a relief after the almost bi-weekly installs during the Whistler betas.

# June 10, 2003 8:25 PM

TrackBack said:

Ryan LaNeve

# June 11, 2003 3:05 PM

randy said:

Why not do both? It isn't hard. Personally, I prefer C# due to what I perceive as its "first class" status. But I see a place for VB, and other languages.

# June 11, 2003 5:51 PM

Jesse Ezell said:

I don't know of anything better (unfortunately). I agree that the design of this component is really sucky though. We have considered writing our own component for this (which we would, of course, make available to others), but, alas, there are not enough hours in the day and we have more pressing projects to finish up right now. In the mean time, we will use dot net ship, because it does actually work great once you have everything coded, it is just the initial coding that can be a pain because of the way they architected the component. But hey, that doesn't make them any different from any other third part component vendor.

In my experience, 99% of programmers live in a little bubble where that "teach yourself VB in 21 days" book tells them everything they ever needed to know about programming. They don't care about design (at least of their products, but shame on any developer who gives them code that is hard to work with). I think, the other 1% work for Microsoft... they sure as hell don't work for any third party component vendors I've seen.

# June 11, 2003 5:52 PM

Jesse Ezell said:

PS: I suggest you do what we did till you find a better solution, write a quick little facade/wrapper that hides the component so that when you do find a better component, you can switch w/o changing anything but the implementation of your facade/wrapper. As a matter a fact, our shipping provider facade does happen to convert all the values to DataTables from their custom collections :-).

# June 11, 2003 5:56 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I can code both, but my primary language is VB.NET.

# June 11, 2003 6:00 PM

Scott Galloway said:

Looks like C# still pays more...according to the recent Fawcette survey! I was an old VB coder - and VBScript in the ASP times. When I started learning .NET, I began by using VB.NET...hmm..I did not enjoy it, it has all the clumsiness of VB (CType...ick!), so I decided to go for C# instead. C# has the advantage that it's strict by default (no Option Strict or Option Explicit), is so similar to Java as to be a very simple transition - java coders are in general better OO coders than VB ones - sorry, they just are! I could also more easily repurpose my J2EE architecture skills into C# - I have no clue why it was easier, just seemed more natural.
Also, the jobs market here is FAR better for C# (added advantage, you can flip back to Java more easily if need be - the job market is really tricky!)

# June 11, 2003 6:25 PM

Scott Galloway said:

I agree with Jesse...but look on the bright side, there's so many .NET developers out there right now looking for interesting project that this thing will be superceded in a few months...

# June 11, 2003 7:06 PM

Scott Galloway said:

And also, .netShip has VERY limited support for non-US shippers!

# June 11, 2003 7:07 PM

Tim Marman said:

I use WinRAR personally. Check it out.

# June 11, 2003 7:40 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I use both, but I like WinZip's UI better. Cleaner, more professional. WinRAR still clings to that Windows 95-esque UI.

# June 11, 2003 7:45 PM

Tim said:

If you like it and use it why not pay for it? I have. Your last line "It's not like it stops working after 30 days anyways... it just has that nag screen. " isn't exactly helpful to shareware authors is it?

# June 11, 2003 9:56 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Good point. <edited>

# June 11, 2003 10:06 PM

Robert Scoble said:

I should clarify my position a bit. Does it really matter? But, yeah, if you want status at Microsoft, it seems most of the hard-core folks I know here at Microsoft are C# types.

# June 11, 2003 10:32 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I think that goes in line with Scott's comment that C3-ers are usually better at OOP cause they come from Java. I think if VBers actually <i>understood</i> OOP, which is what I am focusing on, then maybe they would get somewhere, especially at MS.

# June 11, 2003 10:41 PM

George Doubinski said:

Have you tried http://www.vbcentral.net/ShipRater/ ? Looks like a decent alternative to me.
Georged

# June 12, 2003 1:19 AM

Tim Marman said:

Maybe I'll give Winzip 9 another shot, but I especially like WinRAR's shell integration.

# June 12, 2003 2:37 AM

Ryan LaNeve said:

We've despised .netShip since we bought the thing almost a year ago. FedEx support broke when the FedEx site was re-designed because the component scrapes instead of using the FedEx API. Then DHL support broke (twice), and if I remember correctly Airborne or UPS broke once, as well. Never, in any of those cases where the component broke for *all* users, did the developers of .netShip inform their customers that they were working on or had a fix ready. Furthermore, on two occasions the "fixes" provided were half-baked and introduced new rediculous bugs, such as "oops, all rates are getting multiplied by 10!". The tone of their emails is always infuriating, as well - sounding as if they're always doing *us* a favor by giving us a fix for their broken fix.

Finally, I'd had enough and began rolling our own, opting to use the published APIs for Airborne, FedEx and UPS. As others have said, there really isn't time in the day, but it's to the point where rates can be returned for all three providers. More work remains, but we always intended to release the source. If anyone wants it as it stands now, we can go ahead and setup a project for it on SF or GDN Workspaces.

# June 12, 2003 2:58 AM

JesseEzell said:

Please! :-)

# June 12, 2003 2:11 PM

Tim said:

Be sure to check out the Outlook addin at WinZip also. Adds buttons to your new mails enabling you to automatically zip up attachements prior to the mail going out. Great time saver.

# June 12, 2003 3:45 PM

TrackBack said:

Jonne Kats

# June 12, 2003 4:03 PM

TrackBack said:

Robert McLaws

# June 12, 2003 5:15 PM

TrackBack said:

Robert McLaws

# June 12, 2003 5:15 PM

Jason said:

This happened to me too. The only way to get it to stop was to give it the FrontPage CD. A strange thing also occurred after installing Adobe Reader 6.0: Now opening the .NET Framework docs causes the Windows Installer to try and reconfigure Visual Studio. Wierd...

# June 12, 2003 5:44 PM

Jason said:

One more thing. Now it seems that I can't view in PDFs in my browser anymore because it freezes when I try and use the Back button. Both IE and Firebird.

# June 12, 2003 5:45 PM

TrackBack said:

Robert McLaws

# June 12, 2003 7:46 PM

sirshannon said:

Every time I search for files on the Win2K machine in one of my client's offices, I am asked for the Visio 2002 Professional disk over and over until I can cancel out of it twice in a row fast enough to make it realize I REALLY don't want to install anything.

PITA.

# June 12, 2003 9:53 PM

Alex Hoffman said:

Thanks for pointing that out - I had just about given up on w.Bloggar

# June 12, 2003 10:13 PM

Frans Bouma said:

Thanks for the pointer!!!

# June 13, 2003 5:14 AM

Frans Bouma said:

That's all fine what MS thinks I should do but what I think MS should do is make their IDE able to work with older CLR's so people can choose a new IDE while writing a control for 1.0 or 1.1. MS didn't even bother creating a config file for a library so a library can be made runnable on 1.0 with redirects.

# June 13, 2003 5:19 AM

TrackBack said:

Ryan LaNeve

# June 13, 2003 8:05 PM

Ryan LaNeve said:

The Workspace is setup, though I haven't gotten a chance to upload the code as it currently stands. I should be able to get to it this weekend, though. The name is "DotNetShipping", and the link is below.

http://www.gotdotnet.com/community/workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=29bbb7fe-2d18-4f82-a273-9445b978d1bf

# June 13, 2003 10:03 PM

Ryan LaNeve said:

Some of us are getting together to implement an open-source alternative. The GotDotNet Workspace was just setup last night and the initial source upload should happen sometime over the weekend. Any assistance - via code submissions or just suggestions/comments - is very welcome.

http://www.gotdotnet.com/community/workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=29bbb7fe-2d18-4f82-a273-9445b978d1bf

# June 13, 2003 11:30 PM

Jesse Ezell said:

VERY COOL!

# June 14, 2003 4:18 AM

Stephane Rodriguez said:

Yeah, I'd like to know where are the toilets in building 54. I love sensible information.

# June 14, 2003 7:21 AM

OmegaSupreme said:

Nice post, for me there was nothing I was interested in until I started programming and therefore no reason to bound out of bed.

Now the only thing stopping me jumping out of bed is the fact that Im up all night programming ;)

# June 14, 2003 3:03 PM

Dave said:

I'm constantly amazed at how differently people define career success. Lately this has become very important personally too.

Two years ago I was well-paid, secure AND working on various web and windows apps. In other words in heaven.

Today I am well-paid, secure and toiling away writing ABAP code for a newly implemented SAP system. In other words, unhappy and frustrated.

Many around me know this. Their reaction? Stick with the well-paid and secure job. Hell, a few mention that ABAP programmers make a ton of money.

My feelings? Unless something happens (and it may soon) with my current employer, I'm easily able and greatly willing to take a 30% cut in pay and/or do a startup of some sort. You see, my definition of success is exactly that of John Maxwell.

Thanks for the post!

# June 14, 2003 4:48 PM

Jim Arnold said:

The public API should of course be documented, but I probably wouldn't provide comments for the private implementation.

I find code clarity much more important than comments (I usually delete comments before looking through unfamiliar code). If the code is easy enough to understand, it should not need comments.

Jim

# June 15, 2003 8:39 AM

Frans Bouma said:

I'd provide a reference manual generated by NDoc for the public api. Besides that, I'd provide 'how to use' documentation which guides the user through all the usages of the component/tool you're selling. This way, the user learns how to use the component plus can always check out the reference manual for details.

Private member documentation is of no use for a user, because the inner workings of a library is of no use, the api provided is the sole api the user can interact with anyway. It has to be said that that API documentation of course has to describe how a method M performs its tricks. If it formats the harddisk before doing its thing, the user should know :)

# June 15, 2003 10:11 AM

Paul Wilson said:

I too want to enjoy what I'm doing, but if two paths are nearly identical and one often pays more and brings more respect, then yes you will find me trying to make the extra money!

# June 15, 2003 11:21 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I don't respect you any more for knowing C#.NET over VB.NET. Respect should be earned by the quality of the code and the quality of your presentation.

I just recall the gentleman the other day who commented in my blog that he is going to quit his job to take a 1/3 pay cut to work on a startup...

# June 15, 2003 11:43 PM

EricK said:

Dave,
Having done a stint in PeopleSoft work (3 jobs, actually - I moved a lot looking for happiness) I can definitely related to what you are talking about. Pay and security are only useful if you can keep getting out of bed and go to work, which becomes really hard when you spend all you time working on that data interface that is just a little bit different than the one you built the day before, or changing that column heading on that report because the accountant uses a different term...

Actually, it amazes me that people pay so much for ERP "programmers".

# June 16, 2003 12:54 PM

Alex Hoffman said:

Yes and Yes.

We generate and use documentation internally which includes non-public member information. It's considered extremely helpful and important. Insufficiently documented code (especially non-public) is rejected during code-review if comments are not deemed adequate.

If one can reduce the huge proportion of time any one developer spends trying to work out what's going on when maintaining (or developing against) existing code it's worthwhile. Good code is maintainable code.

As a former development manager, I have no time for team developers who claim that comments are inherent in the code.

# June 16, 2003 11:27 PM

Greg Robinson said:

Wow, too cool. Watching the overview now.

# June 17, 2003 11:44 AM

Alex Lowe said:

I don't know anything about GenX.NET but if you wanted to alleviate the memory allocation couldn't you use some kind of event architecture to flush out the data when each row is ready (or something like that)?

# June 17, 2003 7:24 PM

Jesse Ezell said:

This is what Streams are for. Use them. (StreamWriter will give you nice StringBuilder like text writing functions).

# June 17, 2003 7:25 PM

TrackBack said:

A Blog for Graymad

# June 18, 2003 3:51 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I am using streams.

# June 18, 2003 4:03 PM

Jeff said:

Thanks Robert. I'm new to the world of .NET and after about a month of skulking about the .NET Weblogs feed, I decided to ask one of the bloggers about the best way to get my hands in .NET. I asked a pretty general question, shouldn't be much of a stretch to give me even a canned response, and ... nothing.

If you're blogging on a specific topic, and then don't want to answer questions regarding that topic, why even bother having a contact page?

I'm glad to see the entire community doesn't shared the closed-door policy. Thanks.

# June 18, 2003 6:06 PM

Victor Lindesay said:

I agree

# June 18, 2003 6:22 PM

Garrett Fitzgerald said:

Ah, another 1776 fan, I presume. :-)

# June 18, 2003 6:32 PM

Jesse Ezell said:

No one is censoring anyone. It is just a request. Feel free to do what you want, but please think twice before posting questions that would be better suited for a newsgroup. Why? Well, because if you don't then the .net weblogs main feed could very quickly turn into a newsgroup quality feed, and then no one will want to read it anymore. I already know quite a few people who have unsubscribed from the main feed and only read individual feeds, since the overall quality of the main feed has been significantly degraded from what it once was.

Again, posting questions for discussion is one thing, but asking what is wrong with a specific line of code or code block in a blog posting is just lame when there are other resources that are designed specifically for that type of thing. It is up to individual bloggers to decide what is best suited for the individual mediums, but all we ask is that you think before posting. I don't think that is too burdensome a request.

As far as your comments go:

"By blogging here, you have a responsibility to your community members to help them out. This anti-social mentality will only turn away readers who may learn something from what we all have to say. If you can't handle that responsibility, don't blog. Go back to moderating the Forums and the Newsgroups and let us talk about our experiences."

I think you miss the point. The point is that a lot of bloggers here do not want to moderate forums or newsgroups. Why? Not because they don't like helping people, but because they don't have a lot of spare time in the first place, and what little time they do have left during the day they would rather spend with their wife and kids than some people they have never met. Those bloggers that do have extra time and want to help people out hang out on those newsgroups anyway, so by posting there instead, you won't be spamming anyone, just posting to those who are able and willing to devote time to help you out.

# June 18, 2003 6:36 PM

Jason said:

Well your response was a lot nicer then mine was going to be. :)

I agree totally with you. I still to this day get people emailing me (from the contact page no less) about a problem I posted a while ago. I'm not against helping them out when I can. This is another resource for developers to use, I see no reason not help out people. If a person doesn't have time or can't help the person send them to another resource, there maybe some that you know about that other people don't.

# June 18, 2003 6:36 PM

Roy Osherove said:

Jeff: Hope that wasn't me who didn't answer(I recall someone asking me that and I answered as a blog post to his question)

# June 18, 2003 6:46 PM

Jeff Julian said:

This brings up a couple questions. Are blogs going to be like emails where everyone is going to have 10 just to get out the information they want? Does the MainFeed need to be like TechEdBloggers.net where only .NET topics are feed to it?

# June 18, 2003 7:06 PM

TrackBack said:

Robert McLaws

# June 18, 2003 7:12 PM

Robert McLaws said:

<Adams> "... and the three, Franklin, Washington, and the horse, fought the entire Revolution singlehandedly.
<long pause>
<Franklin> "I like it."

# June 18, 2003 7:24 PM

Robert McLaws said:

stupid UrlEncoding....

# June 18, 2003 7:24 PM

Scott Watermasysk said:

Actually, HtmlEncoding ;)

I think you missed the point.

Broad thought provoking questions are O.K. Part of blogging is sharing what's on your mind and getting feedback on it

I think what Jesse was getting at is questions about how to property page a datagrid are not necessary. There are many other viable (and I would even say better :D) resources for these kinds of questions.

# June 18, 2003 8:04 PM

sirshannon said:

If newsgroups were frequented by the same type of people that read and write the blogs on this site, putting a question in a newsgroup would be a good idea. The level of intelligence and maturity on newsgroups can not be compared to this community.

# June 18, 2003 8:13 PM

Robert McLaws said:

right.

Well, Scott, unfortunately what came across was a community-disrupting post telling those who don't know better to basically go to hell. What gives anyone except you the right to tell people what they can and can't talk about if they're only talking about PROGRAMMING. it seems to me that property pages relate to .NET (seeing as how it is called VS<b>.NET</b>. We already can't talk about ANYTHING else.

Hey SirShannon - AMEN!

# June 18, 2003 8:19 PM

Jesse Ezell said:

The reason those intelligent people hang out here is because they aren't pelted by annoying questions like "what is a null reference exception?" Keep wasting their time with things like this, and I they will leave, or at least go back to their old blog roll.

# June 18, 2003 8:33 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Jesse,

You're gonna need a ladder to get yourself out of the hole you keep digging yourself. What you did just now was make yourself seem like an arrogant, self-important jerk, who doesn't have "time" to answer "annoying" questions from people who are unfortunate enough not to know as much as you. So, as I said in my first post, go back to your blogroll. You're no longer on mine.

# June 18, 2003 8:50 PM

Jesse Ezell said:

I used to spend hours a day answering newsgroup postings (go to google groups, and query my name and you will have more than enough posts to read for the next couple days / weeks / months). Unfortunately, I can no longer do so because I am busy helping out people that have such a need for help that they are willing to pay for it. I wish I could help people for free all day long (I am literally behind my monitor from 9:00 AM to about 2:00 - 3:00 AM on a daily basis). The fact of the matter is that you can easily spend 24 hours a day answering newsgroup postings and get nothing done at the office, but this doesn't pay the bills, keep food in your stomach, or gas in your car.

As Julie pointed out, no matter how much help you have given to the community, there is always a group of people that doesn't seem to appreciate it. They just get addicted to the free advice and code samples and want more, more, more of your time. They think, "can't you just answer one question for me?" Yes, but then Bob and Jim and Jill and Billy all have their own questions they want answered and you have to draw the line somewhere. It is quite unfortunate that when you do decide to draw the line, some people act as if you don't have that right and are somehow rude for not donating yourself out of house and home.

# June 18, 2003 9:12 PM

Eric Kepes said:

Years ago, Microsoft had a service called "Members Helping Members". I was among the first to sign up. It seemed like a good way to expand my skills - helping others.

The I think I took three before I quit. One was a simple question about data environments and queries, and at the time that stuff wasn't well documented beyond the examples, so I was happy to help. But then the other two basically wanted me to be a PSS engineer and write their programs for them.

If you have a question, and I have the time, I'll find it on one of the newsgroups I read. If you know me, or were in a class I taught, or whatever, fine - ask away. If I can help, I will. But if you just want me to do the work for you, forget it.

That's what Jesse is talking about - there are lots of people who say - "Hey, look, this guy seems to know something. Let's see if we can trick him into doing some work for me..."

Its not arrogance. Its called protecting your most valuable asset - your time.

# June 18, 2003 9:24 PM

Robert McLaws said:

It was not what you said but how you said it. Your message did not say any of these things. you did not explain your reasoning as you did in this last post. You just said people's posts were boring and that you didn't have time to answer annoying questions. And you assigned this viewpoint to the entire community, which is not accurate. I may not get to you right away, but if you ask me a question, you're in the queue.

My time is not any more valuable than anyone elses. If they take the time to ask then I am obliged to take the time to answer. I'm sorry you had a bad experience. Don't make blanket statements that can be interpreted by others as applying to the entire community.

# June 18, 2003 9:36 PM

Robert McLaws said:

They didn't apply to me and I wanted to make note of it. Sorry if you didn't like that.

# June 18, 2003 9:40 PM

Dave said:

If the major issue is the .NET weblog main RSS feed, why not enforce some kind of category across all the blogs?

First off, I don't think anyone here is talking about comments. These are not part of the main feed AFAIK. Very few blogs here even have their own individual comment feed.

So why not have 'questions' category and it can have it's own separate .NET blog feed? This should take care of any diluting of the main feed right? (If I'm asking something impossible forgive me... I'm not a blogger here so I'm unaware of the technical details needed to accomplish this. But I do see such things on individual blogs so I'd think you could do this here.)

# June 18, 2003 11:54 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Just to make it quite clear, I've spent tons of time on the ASP.NET Forums answering questions, as well as the private Beta forums for MS software.

You guys are missing the point here. THE POINT WAS: Jesse's views are not shared by everyone, and I will not censor what I write about in regards to programming. I already have to have 3 blogs to separate out my writing topics, I will not separate it out any more.

THE POINT WAS: Anyone should feel free to write about whatever they want... INCLUDING questions on "What is a NullReferenceException?" How is that any different from "I'm not understanding the Factory design pattern" or "how should I version my components?

THE POINT WAS: Excercise your right NOT TO READ IT because you're smarter than the rest of us. Let us stupid people talk about our boring topics.

# June 19, 2003 12:32 AM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

Robert,

You seem to be taking this all just a little too personally. No one called you "stupid" or "boring", and no one asked you to "censor" yourself.

What people have asked, INCLUDING THE PERSON WHO CREATED THIS SITE, is that bloggers on weblogs.asp.net keep in mind the main focus of the site, which is .NET. That shouldn't be so hard to do, IMO. And in the meantime, I hope that you can hear that from an outside perspective, it appears that you take any suggestion that bloggers here should stay on-topic as a personal attack. Not meaning any distrespect, Robert, but it's not always about you. ;-)

# June 19, 2003 9:41 AM

Robert McLaws said:

LOL. Thanks Andrew. You're right, it's not about me. I wasn't taking offense for me (cause if you think I'm boring, don't read my stuff) I was taking offense for all the newbies who are still getting the hang of this stuff. The topic is .NET. Asking about property pages or exceptions *IS* on topic. You answered the first part of my last comment while ignoring the second. "What is a NullReferenceException" is no different from "I'm having problems implementing the Builder design pattern". I felt as if Jesse's comments would be taken as the mood of the entire blogging community when looked at by a newcomer, and I wanted to portray that this was not the case. I was not personally hurt by anything that was said.

# June 19, 2003 5:13 PM

Robert Rolley said:

looks liek a blog void from Redmond since TechEd!

# June 23, 2003 1:26 AM

Mads Nissen said:

I've used it for a month now, and although it's beta it just rules. Just the BugTracker is such a productivity boost. I hadn't even heard about vs.net integration?

# June 24, 2003 8:55 PM

Paschal said:

It suits you very well :-))))))))))))))))

# June 26, 2003 4:05 PM

Robert McLaws said:

<rolls eyes>

It's because of my distinctive nose not my personality.

# June 26, 2003 4:28 PM

Paschal said:

Maybe both ;-))

# June 26, 2003 5:26 PM

Brian Desmond said:

A long time ago.

# June 26, 2003 5:34 PM

Jerry Dennany said:

Interesting - I really think that this will make life a whole lot easier for your customers. Of course, you have the advantage that your customers are developers, and all of this will automatically make clear and logical sense to them... What are you going to do for your 'less rational customers?'

# June 27, 2003 12:21 AM

Robert McLaws said:

How many of anyone's non-developer customers really care what version number you're using internally? Besides, IMO you can only do so much for people.

# June 27, 2003 4:16 AM

Abandoned said:

At least you're not stuck holding a h1910 staring at the upgrade page with a confused look.

# June 27, 2003 7:56 PM

Robert McLaws said:

They aren't going to upgrade that model :(. Sorry man.

# June 27, 2003 8:04 PM

Robert McLaws said:

It answers that questions on the FAQ's link on the bottom of that page.

# June 27, 2003 8:05 PM

Abandoned said:

for any other frustrated xscale owners out there - an article discussing user petitions for upgrades: http://www.brighthand.com/article/Users_Petition_for_OS_Upgrades
The h1910 petition: http://www.pocketwerkz.com/
The e740/e330 petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/e300e740/petition.html

# June 27, 2003 9:20 PM

Abandoned said:

Oh, and just so I don't seem too cranky, or to be straying too far from .net - at least the compact framework and sql ce work on these second class devices :)

# June 27, 2003 9:23 PM

Phil Scott said:

I made a breakout clone for the TI-82 that someone in California posted on the internet some how (I'm in Kentucky). That was pretty cool finding out that many people were using your program. That was probably my first application in the wild that people where using. I thought I was pretty smart for using a matrix to store stuff instead of the variables.

Good times. Good times.

# June 29, 2003 2:46 PM

Chad Osgood said:

I created quite a few games for my TI-83 in math class. I also created a chat application with a friend that would use the link that you normally use to transmit programs to another TI to transmit characters.

Geeks have to have some outlet for their interests, and the TI was handy.

# June 29, 2003 5:49 PM

Dave said:

Problem is, he already is back, speaking of making his point - feels like he wanted to teach his 'community' a lesson.

# June 29, 2003 10:37 PM

Marc said:

51.28205% - Super Geek

# June 29, 2003 11:26 PM

TrackBack said:

Loosely Coupled

# June 30, 2003 12:08 AM

TrackBack said:

Datagrid Girl

# June 30, 2003 12:08 AM

TrackBack said:

Blogging Alone

# June 30, 2003 12:08 AM

Robert McLaws said:

awwww crap.

# June 30, 2003 1:21 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Someone decided to post a link in my comments to my rant about this situation. I cleaned it up, and here it is:

How I Was Fooled by Dave Winer

# June 30, 2003 6:10 AM

the voice of experience said:

hey dude, don't know much about the background to your little flamewar, but trust me in my experience flaming gets you nowhere, no matter how much of an idiot the other guy might be. It will cheapen your name, and if you think his is already cheap, why go down to his level.

# June 30, 2003 7:22 AM

Robert McLaws said:

<robert to voice on shoulder>Hello voice! Thanks for speaking up so much lately. You've been a great help. Don't stop any time soon. I like to learn.

# June 30, 2003 7:48 AM

Damian said:

>>What have you done since then, BESIDES piss everyone else off?

What have you done EVER ? Besides piss everyone else off

# June 30, 2003 8:08 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Ouch. That's ok. I have pissed people off. Call it youth, call it inexperience. That's why I'm glad I have all these voices of experience to help me achieve the balance I'm looking for in my writing.

I've also wrote a lot of code since I started too. Like my code-free content management system, or my ADO.NET data export subsystem. And about 5 other products. I've grown a lot personally, and had some great experiences.

To answer your question, I've done more in my 21 years than some do by their 40s. Don't believe me? That's cool. Check out my personal blog. I'll be talking about those experiences in the days and months ahead.

# June 30, 2003 8:24 AM

Dave said:

Robert, you just expressed everything I meant by my comment in your last post.

Like you, I had started feeling that Dave Winer had a point - that he was willing to extend RSS to include the technical imporvements that Echo supposedly addresses. I wasn't yet convinced (as I know firsthand how abrasive Dave can be in matters requiring compromise) but I was beginning to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Unfortunately the antics of Dave this weekend appear to be only the tip of worse things to come. He speaks often - and actually quite accurately too - about the importance of the community. Too bad that like everyone, even his actions speak louder than his words.

# June 30, 2003 8:30 AM

Dave Winer said:

The reason I started posting again is because I heard from the people I needed to hear from, the good people who read Scripting News on a summer Sunday, not the selfish flamers. I might publish the emails, there are about a hundred, and only one was from a guy like you, making accusations. My humanity is not in question Robert, despite what you say. Whether you have an axe to grind here, is.

# June 30, 2003 9:01 AM

Robert McLaws said:

You're right, Dave. Your humanity is not in question. Although it SEEMS inhuman of you to toy with my emotions like that, you did not read the post before this one, one which Scoble also linked too, which apologized and wished you luck. I thought you were genuinely trying to change. Instead it just appeared that you took your ball back and went to go play with someone else.

# June 30, 2003 11:26 AM

Rogers Cadenhead said:

What has Dave Winer done since co-creating RSS? He co-created XML-RPC, created OPML, created the MetaWeblog API, created the XmlStorageSystem API, and evangelized all of these protocols and APIs (and others).

He's even helped give Echo a considerable boost by announcing that he'll encourage UserLand to implement the protocol and linking to it numerous times on Scripting News. If he really wanted to take his ball and go home, wouldn't he do the opposite?

One of the ironies of this situation is that Dave gets accused of not working well with others in an environment built in considerable part by collaborative protocols and technology he developed.

# June 30, 2003 11:47 AM

Phil Wolff said:

A few thoughts on this flame war.

First, it appears to me that many people are taking this all a little too seriously. No lives, careers, or freedoms are on the line, so why all the name calling? When passions run hot, take a deep breath.

Second, Dave is a very public figure, so when name calling cascades, well it must be overwhelming. The presumption that he has rhino-thick skin is clearly overstated. Manners exist to permit people who don't necessarily like each to coexist in peace and even to cooperate on tasks of mutual interest.

Third, while people post in the moment, blogging is a cumulative act. In the process, it reveals much about people (too much?). Try not to judge people by the post that gored you today, but by their overall autoblogphraphy. You will have a better measure of the blogger, and so make better choices.

Inhale.

Count to ten.

Exhale.

Repeat.

# June 30, 2003 12:12 PM

TrackBack said:

#region /* comments */

# June 30, 2003 3:42 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Yay... I love new readers.

All very good stuff.

Phil, if it's any consolation, this was one of my calmer posts. I've worked really hard to cut back on the tongue-lashing.

# June 30, 2003 4:09 PM

Anon said:

Work harder

# June 30, 2003 4:53 PM

Robert McLaws said:

LOL. Thank you. Self improvement is a constant process. I work every day at improving some aspect of my life. I think that the same notions could be applied to RSS. If it dies, it's because Dave killed it by not allowing it to improve any more. Just like my personality would die if I let it stagnate.

# June 30, 2003 4:59 PM

Brian Carnell said:

Phil Wolff wrote:

"Second, Dave is a very public figure, so when name calling cascades, well it must be overwhelming. The presumption that he has rhino-thick skin is clearly overstated. Manners exist to permit people who don't necessarily like each to coexist in peace and even to cooperate on tasks of mutual interest."

And Dave has yet to show any. I mean, he's the biggest bomb thrower of them all who then has the audacity to complain about people flaming him.

The Movable Type and Blogger folks are simply taking Dave's advice not to listen to flamers. I bet developers have a lot better things to do than try to figure out what the hell Winer's talking about when he calls them "funky" and posts mini-essays attacking them for allegedly usurping his role.

The only surprising thing about this blowup is that it didn't happen sooner.

# June 30, 2003 5:24 PM

Robert McLaws said:

See, I'm not the only one that said he took his ball and went home.

# June 30, 2003 5:42 PM

Ken said:

Winer is so annoying. I agree with you completely, he can dish it, but can't take it. It would be so nice if everyone could put egos aside and accomplish something.

# June 30, 2003 6:56 PM

Alex Hoffman said:

Appreciate the post - wish their were more like this amongst the increasing noise. One comment I would make is about "Version 3.0.5000 is enhanced for Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1". This statement invites the question from a layman - what is enhanced - what does it mean? I think it is better to be authoritative and simply say "Version 3.0.5000 requires Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1"

# June 30, 2003 6:57 PM

Alex Hoffman said:

I guess I'm dated - TI wasn't a contenter in my dinosaur days. I was way into a HP41c (http://press.ehsal.be/pcx/Museum/hp41cv.htm) - still wish I had it! Geek? Well I'm not from America and we don't have them here :)

# June 30, 2003 7:07 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Because we update the code for each version to take advantage of the enhancements of that framework version. it's subliminal thing to get them to upgrade to 1.1.

# June 30, 2003 7:57 PM

anon2 said:

"I've done more in my 21 years than some do by their 40s"

That's true of a suprising number of people in their twenties. That's the age that people have the energy and the free time to do more. That's the age when they think what they are doing will be recognized in twenty years by people in their twenties.

Few people that young have achieved anything that takes 30, 20, or even a mere 10 years to come to fruition. Or have the perspective to fully appreciate the difference.

A lot more goes into a single flower spike of a century plant than a whole field of day lilies.

# June 30, 2003 10:24 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Well, I'm sure it's probably easy to see that as a "he's a 21 year old who thinks he knows everything" approach, but it's not the case. I know there is much that I need to learn. I've been working on starting my own company for going on the 4th year. I won't stop till it's done. 10.. 15... 20 years? Who knows?

The difference in Dave's case is, if it took so long to do and achieved so much, why is he so eager to let his mouth completely distroy that investment and accomplishment?

# June 30, 2003 11:47 PM

Doug Thews said:

Yes, definitely more posts!

# July 1, 2003 5:10 PM

Robert McLaws said:

OK Doug you officially have the coolest blog subtitle.

# July 1, 2003 5:57 PM

TrackBack said:

Eric J. Smith's Weblog

# July 2, 2003 3:20 AM

Duncan said:

Web design is a bit like government :- nobody is absolutely sure how to do it right but everyone can point out any number of times when it has been done wrong ;-)

# July 2, 2003 8:45 AM

Duncan Mackenzie said:

No luck... It is Windows Forms code (of course... I'm pretty consistent)... doesn't mean you couldn't adapt it though... assuming the same Win32 API calls will work without a logged-on user.

# July 2, 2003 9:27 PM

Don said:

Ummm... great website design? Going the url provided without Flash, gets you a totally blank page.

# July 2, 2003 10:34 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Ok, well upgrade Flash and look at it again.... BTW it's supposed to be a joke.

# July 3, 2003 1:08 AM

Frans Bouma said:

But then I need 2 vs.net versions installed. :)

# July 3, 2003 5:04 AM

Robert McLaws said:

<smacks forehead>

# July 3, 2003 5:06 AM

Phil Wolff said:

I don't know if anyone's noticed, but Dave may be going through a sea change. In the last year he started walking for an hour a day, stopped smoking, sold his house, bought a new one three thousand miles away, sold off his company, started a new job that is non-techie and all policy/education/evangelism, picked up new stakeholders, made new friends, is travelling less. That's a lot in a short time.

Just by way of looking for deeper causes.

hmmmmm. I wonder if psychotherapists can analyze someone just from their blogging...

# July 3, 2003 3:52 PM

Firebird! said:

Install it so you can "test asp.net" across browsers... you'll end up using it full time. "Coffee" theme is great for Mac fans. Also, can download the "developer toolbar" which lets you validate, resize to common resolutions, toggle features and images, and do bad things (tm) with your forms.

# July 5, 2003 1:25 AM

wolfgang manousek said:

try netcaptor (www.netcaptor.com), great browser extension, the tabs are a killer feature in netcaptor

# July 5, 2003 6:10 AM

Stephane Rodriguez said:

Nice. Until today you thought IE had competitive browser features.

# July 5, 2003 9:21 AM

Tariz said:

I've been using MyIE2 for the last 6 months. When everyone in blogsphere started saying how good Firebird was, I went duh!!! these guys havent seen myie2, but no one took notice of poor ol me's comments.
Finally its out of the bag - MyIE2 rocks.
and I hope lot of people notice.
And all the MS team has to do now, is make the IE engine faster.

# July 6, 2003 9:10 AM

chadb said:

Man - I hate all these complaints.. The whole idea has always been:
Microsoft provides tools and base implementations - ISV's add value!

This is the way it is supposed to work...

# July 6, 2003 3:28 PM

Robert McLaws said:

LOL You know what I hate? Anonymous people posting comments!

# July 9, 2003 11:20 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Also, I want them to be able to ask that question... because .NET 1.1 is so much better than 1.0... I want them to convert ASAP.

# July 11, 2003 1:47 AM

Duncan said:

Looking forward to the article on namespacing - major split in the developer team here as to how it should be done.

Sláinte,
Duncan

# July 11, 2003 10:17 AM

Mads Nissen said:

I'd sure like to see that namespacing and code org. article. The way we've started to do it seems to work great both for building and source control.

# July 11, 2003 1:24 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Well, I hate to disappoint you guys, but again, this is really stuff I already talked about. I didn't really release any new information. Builder.com does not have a very large .NET community... it's mostly Java/Open Source people who only have biased opinions about .NET/MSFT but no hard facts. I introduce them to new topics and bring resources like the Weblogs to the table, so they get better information then their left-wing liberal developer media

# July 11, 2003 5:38 PM

HumanCompiler said:

Sure there are lots of reasons to be playing around up there...it's called, closing the form! ;) I've tried it up at the top and just could never get used to it! :-\

# July 11, 2003 10:50 PM

Frans Bouma said:

Why do you need a desktop that looks good? I've vs.net maximized all day on 1600x1200 so a fancy graphic is not visible anyway. Or are you staring at the desktop a lot? ;D :) :P

Startmenu at the top is for people who work with macs a lot (or amigas ;D) I never use the menu much, but I have a lot of icons on the quicklaunch. Because of the 1600x1200, I don't need autohiding which is great. If I can advise something it would be that everyone who does serious things with his computer should buy a 19" or 20" monitor and run 1600x1200 at least.

# July 12, 2003 6:28 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Not everyone can afford a 20" monitor...

Fitt's Law of UI Design says that the Mac UI is the best UI, because it's more intuitive, and it takes considerably less effort to navigate thru. If you combined elements of both navigation systems you'd have a real winner.

# July 12, 2003 6:38 AM

Damit said:

Does the emulator work with VS.NET 2002?

# July 13, 2003 12:03 PM

Brian Desmond said:

>HOW FREAKIN COOL IS THAT?

Rather!

# July 13, 2003 3:35 PM

JosephCooney said:

Lots of familiar names there ;-)

# July 15, 2003 12:28 AM

HumanCompiler said:

I didn't make the cut! Ouch! :P Guess I'll have to suggest myself! :|

# July 15, 2003 12:52 AM

Frans Bouma said:

This still doesn't change the referenced system.dll to version 1.0.3300 when compiling under vs.net 2003, it allows you to keep 2 separate codebases in one codebase. The problem I referred to was that you had 1 codebase, a .net 1.0 compatible one, and it is compiled using a tool which only understands .net 1.1.

# July 15, 2003 7:49 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Um, that's why you compile the same code file under VS.NET 2002 as well (which was stated in the article). You have one codebase, but 2 assemblies. I know you only want to have one assembly.... dude that's just tough. You make it harder on your customers that way, just to save yourself some time. That's not the way it's supposed to be.

At any rate, applications perform 20% faster when compiled against 1.1 than the SAME CODE compiled against 1.0. That simpole fact right there means that I wouldn't buy your products, because your 1.0 code with your 1.0 references will only dog my machine down in high-traffic situations.

Put both assemblies in the same installer, and follow the versioning policy I blogged about here. Paul from Xheo.com and I will be pushing this as an industry standard with the various component vendor groups very soon. It's solid, really smart, and it just makes sense.

# July 15, 2003 8:00 AM

Mel Grubb said:

Amen to that!

I suspect that the shuffle algorithm is trying to pick out songs you like based on how often you listen to them or something. The problem with this is that it feeds into itself like holding a microphone up to the amp. The more it plays songs I don't want to hear, the more likely it is to do it again. Then again, it could just be a coincidence. I've taken to shuffling the "Songs I haven't heard in a while" to combat the situation, but even then I'm hearing repeats. Sheesh.

# July 15, 2003 10:15 AM

Justin Bigelow said:

Thank God I'm not the only that this pisses off to no end! Hopefully somebody will be reading your blog and fix this. You are dead on with the damn thing playing the same songs continuously.

# July 15, 2003 11:05 AM

HP & Ipaq said:

HP are really taking the piss on this one. Suffice to say that I would have bought a copy of Windows Mobile 2003 for my Ipaqs, but have got bored and downloaded it from Emule.

It is:

about 10 times faster at copying files (activesync file from PC to Ipaq)
faster overall
useable IE implementation - works on SSL and cookie sites
better bluetooth

It also has windows media 9, although I not sure why anyone would want this. Are you watching movies on your Ipaq, because Media Player 8 plays mp3s and wmas just fine....

# July 15, 2003 12:55 PM

Robert McLaws said:

How did you get it on the EDonkey? I thought it was iPaq model specific....?

Contact me privately thru my contact page please.

# July 15, 2003 1:10 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Thanks! I'll check it out :).

# July 15, 2003 1:29 PM

ipaq said:

rom is for 3970, which I own. Still interested?

# July 15, 2003 1:42 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Nope. I have a 3835. ROM is not due out till October.

# July 15, 2003 1:45 PM

Marc LaFleur said:

33? You get 33? You bastard. Mine plays the same 15 all day long. :)

# July 15, 2003 1:55 PM

trade it in! said:

3835s go for up to $285 on ebay

Replace with 2215 (aka 2210) for $355 on pricewatch.

Get 400 MHz processor instead of 200Mhz
Get XScale rather than StrongArm, and feel the incredible power which only was realized with ppc 2003
Get PPC 2003
Get 200Mhz bus instead of 100 MHz
Get the best IPAQ design yet (http://www.brighthand.com/article/iPAQ_h2210_Review)
Get bluetooth
Get longer battery life
Get a well-designed machine

Sold?

# July 15, 2003 2:05 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Nah, because I bought mine with a sleeve, GPS, and a whole bunch of other crap, and that new one doesn't even have the same form factor. If I get one, it's gonna be a smartphone with WiFi, GPRS, and Bluetooth all in one. Which means I won't be getting one for a while.

# July 15, 2003 2:19 PM

HumanCompiler said:

MusicMatch has a pretty crappy shuffle too...maybe it's a new get rich quick scheme...write your own shuffler and be a millionaire! :P

# July 15, 2003 2:47 PM

HumanCompiler said:

You might want to post this in the GDN Workspace...

http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/Workspaces/Workspace.aspx?id=424aa445-63a0-4c4f-b1ad-286ee87c68c6

TaskVision is really cool, but I agree...hard to debug...you might actually want to skip the Web Reference and just add a Reference to the Classes (the two WebServices) directly so you can debug and what not. Just a thought.

# July 15, 2003 2:51 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I haven't even used the source code... I'm using the compiled client with web.config settings for the web service urls...

# July 15, 2003 2:57 PM

Kenneth LeFebvre said:

"my firm belief is that, though our competitors might read what we say and attempt to do the same things, we can do it better. And we will do it better."

I LOVE to see companies take this attitude! I'm on my way to your corporate site to check out what y'all do... :)

# July 16, 2003 12:41 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Well I'm glad you like that. It was not an easy stance for me to take up. If I have a quique selling point, I usually try to exploit it without letting the competition know how I do it. But I figure, my goal is not just to make software better for my customers, but for everyone. That's why I'm involved in the community and I blog. If I remember that, first and foremost, profits will follow.

# July 16, 2003 6:55 PM

Ed Daniel said:

Hi Robert,

perhaps check out the online business networking sites like Ecademy.com or Ryze.com where you may be able to find a good deal on your training.

Regards,

Ed

# July 16, 2003 10:50 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Thanks Ed, but MS is requiring me to go to 3 four day summits to get it. It's all good tho. If I don't make it this round, I'm sure there will be more training opportunities.

Thanks a lot for your help!

# July 16, 2003 10:56 PM

Robert McLaws said:

BTW Ed, I like your site. SLICK! Let me know if you need any .NET related assistance, or need resources for clients in US markets.

# July 16, 2003 10:58 PM

HumanCompiler said:

the nVidia softare that comes with their cards has some similar stuff, but that looks like more toys even :D

# July 17, 2003 2:15 AM

?? said:

is this a public speaking course?

or something to do with voice recognition?

# July 17, 2003 10:14 AM

Robert McLaws said:

<chuckles>

Speech-Driven Software Systems based on the Microsoft Speech Server platform.

# July 17, 2003 4:25 PM

TrackBack said:

Robert McLaws: The Bleeding Edge

# July 18, 2003 8:10 AM

TrackBack said:

Robert McLaws: The Bleeding Edge

# July 19, 2003 6:45 AM

TrackBack said:

HumanCompiler

# July 19, 2003 9:30 PM

Doug Thews said:

I thought you might be interested in knowing I posted some cool feature updates on my LocalDeskop project at: http://www.ddconsult.com/blogs/illuminati/archives/000085.html

# July 19, 2003 11:13 PM

Tim Marman said:

Please do... :)

# July 20, 2003 11:25 AM

Doug Thews said:

Don't know if you are aware, but I released something similar this past Friday, and just provided some feature updates to allow dynamic imaging (windows, custom, or default). Source code & graphics are available to play with.

My primitive RSS parser does handle Schobleizer's lack of <title> elements, plus I believe it works on News.com as well. Let me know what you think.

http://www.ddconsult.com/blogs/illuminati/archives/000085.html

# July 20, 2003 1:04 PM

Robert McLaws said:

It's Scobleizer ;).

I saw the project.. It's really slick. Congrats, you did a great job. The point was not to favor one specific desktop system over the other, it was to provide a killer, real world example of this web control we're going to be selling. Obviously if it doesn't handle titles very well, or whatever borked up RSS that the News.com feeds have, I shouldn't be selling it. That's all.

# July 20, 2003 2:57 PM

Doug Thews said:

No prob. Just wanted to see if you were aware of it. I did mine just 'cause it's a useful example for many different ASP.NET topics. My next being how to provide real-time status updates during the processing of an ASP.NET page. Hope you visit my blog in the future.

# July 20, 2003 3:39 PM

Roy Osherove said:

Very slick!

# July 20, 2003 6:42 PM

kerouac said:

re funkelab - doesn't work in opera though - isn't actually a dropdown just a bunch of layers.

shame...would be really f****ing cool otherwise

# July 21, 2003 12:20 AM

TrackBack said:

Datagrid Girl

# July 22, 2003 8:28 AM

Anon said:

>Hope this is of value to someone.
It isn't.

# July 22, 2003 10:39 AM

Merill said:

Great set of tips.

Thanks a lot!

# July 22, 2003 10:53 AM

Duncan said:

Re: "You shouldn't allow poor practices, ridiculous deadlines, or miscommunication in any way affect the quality of your code."

I am writing an article, "Kaizen and the art of software maintenance" and would like to include that quote...I'll creduit it, natch.

# July 23, 2003 9:04 AM

Robert McLaws said:

no problem :)

# July 23, 2003 10:23 AM

Adam Kinney said:

That darn 'Anon' is always negative in these here blogging parts. He needs to take a vacation or something...

# July 23, 2003 2:19 PM

Robert McLaws said:

he he he. I know, i think he needs a girlfriend.

# July 23, 2003 2:23 PM

Paul Edwards said:

Robert,

Where are you getting the images from? I had seen your desktop on the gallery page before and been trying to find them.

Would look fantastic on my machine!

Cheers,
Paul
paul@vexem.net

# July 23, 2003 7:05 PM

Matt Hawley said:

A coworker pointed that out to me the other day. This, of course, was after I had created my own methods in my Multi-Text List Controls to handle such things.

# July 24, 2003 7:39 PM

Jesse Ezell said:

Yah, it is great, except for the fact that it makes your compiled source incompatible with the 1.0 framework, so you can't use it anyway if you are concerned about someone running on top of 1.0.

# July 24, 2003 11:39 PM

Tim Marman said:

I'm using it now, though I never realized it wasn't in before.

I never used the DropDownList much before, mostly because I never quite figured out how to elegantly use it when binding to an XmlNodeList. DataTextField etc expect a string that maps directly to a property on the DataItem.

Sure, I could load the xml into a DataSet and bind it to the table's dataview, but that always seemed a little bloated to me. I tended to use a select runat="server" and a repeater to generate the options. Gives you more control anyways.

I don't have a 1.0 install handy (or the docs), but I assume there was still an SelectedItem property. From a get perspective, this.Dropdown.SelectedItem.Value is not much worse than this.Dropdown.SelectedValue. I assume your main complaint was that it was settable?

# July 25, 2003 1:54 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Yeah, my point was that it was settable. I had to create a custom control to handle it in 1.0....

# July 25, 2003 5:42 AM

TrackBack said:

Robert A. Wlodarczyk's Blog

# July 25, 2003 6:46 AM

Anon said:

> Now, if only Eric would BLOG MORE OFTEN.
Maybe he's busy doing real work. Some people should blog LESS.

# July 25, 2003 12:22 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Anon:

And maybe you should be on Prozac.

# July 25, 2003 12:26 PM

Adam Kinney said:

Dude, Anon's got it in for you.

w00t, .NET!

# July 25, 2003 12:37 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I know man. But hey, Anon likes to heckle Scoble too, so I'm cool with it. He's a very busy heckler... ;)

# July 25, 2003 12:44 PM

Robert Scoble said:

Is Anon giving you trouble? Send him back to my blog. :-)

# July 25, 2003 3:24 PM

Datagrid Girl said:

*That* was your biggest pet peeve? :p

Marcie

# July 25, 2003 3:24 PM

HumanCompiler said:

SelectedValue and SelectedText have always been in the WindowsForms Controls. Good to see ASP.NET thought it was a good idea too! ;)

I'm in the crowd that never knew it *wasn't* there.

# July 25, 2003 6:17 PM

TrackBack said:

Matthew ".NET" Reynolds

# July 25, 2003 6:20 PM

Robert McLaws said:

LOL Scoble.

# July 25, 2003 6:24 PM

Scott Watermasysk said:

I have heard some good things about the Toshiba Tablet. It still has a pretty crappy CPU, but does support a gig of ram, so you should be able to do some dev on it. It also has a keyboard built in.

If/when I buy one, it will likely be the Toshiba.

-Scott

# July 25, 2003 9:44 PM

Tim Marman said:

I got the Acer C110. It's a beast of a machine, a pretty good value in comparison to the others.

DEFINTIELY play with it first, it's a little small for laptop mode but I prefer the size for tablet mode much more.. and I'm willing to sacrifice a little of size for the portability.

You can definitely develop on this one though. The 900mhz Centrino, 512MB DDR RAM and 400mhz FSB put it well ahead of the Toshiba.

Dependning on your timeframe, yuou may want to look into the new Sharp that was announced - but I still haven't heard of timeframes for it.

If you want to do development "on the go" at all, definitely get a convertible. Right now, only the Compaq (sort of), Toshiba and Acer are in that form factor. The rest are pure slate models and have a docking station.

Check out http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com, and welcome to the club hopefully :)

# July 25, 2003 9:58 PM

HumanCompiler said:

Valid in what sense? ;)

no really, same here...VS.NET all the way! :D

# July 26, 2003 12:20 AM

Robert McLaws said:

valid as in tags that are opened and closed properly.

# July 26, 2003 12:25 AM

HumanCompiler said:

gotchya...just wanted to make sure you weren't talking about XHTML valid or anything like that ;)

# July 26, 2003 12:26 AM

Datagrid Girl said:

I got the Toshiba (Portege), and do all of my development on it.

# July 26, 2003 12:30 AM

Steven Smith said:

I'm still waiting for Dell to enter the market. I'd really like my next PC to be a tablet, but I want to UPGRADE from my Inspiron8100 1GHz P3 w/512mb RAM, so going to a centrino 900Mhz wouldn't really cut it.

Still waiting...

# July 26, 2003 12:45 AM

Dave said:

ROFLMAO! Best comeback I've run across in quite some time.

# July 26, 2003 1:45 AM

Dave R said:

A few days after reading this article, I decided that it was, in fact, necessary to bug the sysadmin until he put the 1.1 framework on our web server :)

I don't know how often I've written code like MyDdl.SelectedIndex = MyDdl.Items.IndexOf(MyDdl.Items.FindByValue(someValue)) ...

# July 26, 2003 2:12 AM

Scott Mitchell said:

That's pretty funny. Keen observation.

# July 26, 2003 3:34 AM

Mike Sax said:

Be sure to check out the (substantial) developer discount from Motion Computing:

https://www.motioncomputing.com/partners/promotions_tdk.asp

# July 26, 2003 3:47 AM

Matthew Reynolds said:

Luke *really* needs to make SharpReader have a "Tablet PC" view, optimized for a portrait display!!!

# July 26, 2003 4:47 AM

Frans Bouma said:

And you think cycling through your tables is less time consuming than a realloc? :)

# July 26, 2003 6:05 AM

Robert McLaws said:

As I said, the performance speaks for itself. In my test it's 60% faster than before I added the algorhithm.

Which is more resource-intensive, exponentially enlarging your memory space, or doing a quick loop?

Hey, besides that, the DataSet doesn't have a "FieldCount" property, but the DataReader sure does. Therefore, it is only run some of the time.

# July 26, 2003 6:15 AM

SBC said:

I have a Motion Computing M1200 at work and I like it! Looking forward to developing on it soon.

# July 26, 2003 9:56 AM

julie said:

touche! Good catch. I had to look at it for about 10 seconds before I saw that extra >

# July 26, 2003 10:46 AM

Tim Marman said:

Actually, while I use VS.NET, it doesn't always spit out well-formed HTML :)

# July 27, 2003 1:54 AM

Robert McLaws said:

I've never seen an instance where it does not open and close tags properly.

# July 27, 2003 2:01 AM

Tim Marman said:

Steve: "I'm still waiting for Dell to enter the market. I'd really like my next PC to be a tablet, but I want to UPGRADE from my Inspiron8100 1GHz P3 w/512mb RAM, so going to a centrino 900Mhz wouldn't really cut it."

Trust me, a 900mhz centrino is an upgrade. The performance is about the equivalent of a 2ghz P4 machine. Actually, the benchmark on that machine was about the same as my new 2.4ghz Dell.

Ironically, this misconception was caused by Intel's marketing campaigns that told us for years that "faster clock speed is better".

Your clock speed just tells you how many cycles are executed per second. If you can execute more instructions per cycle, you can be "faster" even with a slower clock speed.

Now, this means a chip can use less power and generate less heat with performance equivalent to a chip running at twice the clock speed... perfect for a laptop (which is what the Pentium M / Banias) is designed for.

I'll blog on this soon and post some specific benchmarks on the laptop.

# July 27, 2003 2:12 AM

TrackBack said:

HumanCompiler - Erik Porter Blog

# July 27, 2003 5:23 AM

TrackBack said:

ShowUsYour<Blog>

# July 27, 2003 5:23 AM

Roy Osherove said:

If I remember correctly, you can't do indexer overloading in C# or VB.Net(only one indexer per class), only C++.Net lets you do that. Sucks, don't it?

# July 27, 2003 7:44 AM

Roy Osherove said:

You're totally welcome! Glad to help. Cool product :)

# July 27, 2003 10:34 AM

Wilco said:

Roy: Sure you can, at least you can in C#.

# July 27, 2003 10:58 AM

Roy Osherove said:

Methinks Anon likes the exposure and will stop once no one declares any interest in him whatsoever.

# July 27, 2003 11:58 AM

Scott Watermasysk said:

Why are you writing collection code? Save your self a lot of time and download: CodeSmith

-Scott

# July 27, 2003 12:43 PM

HumanCompiler said:

Roy, yes you can, both C# and VB.NET can overload indexers.

Robert, why not Inherit from CollectionBase? It gives you everything you need and then you can write a strongly typed collection by adding just a little code to it.

Looking forward to Generics too though! ;)

# July 27, 2003 2:14 PM

Mr. X said:

<Sarcasm>

Wow...its just soooo hard to do anything nowadays...yikes...I have to write more than 5 lines of code for this program to work...oh, nooooo I have to use my head a little...ahhhhh...I though Microsoft had eliminated all the thinking associated with programming!!!!!!!!

</Sarcasm>

Generics will be nice..but until then, things aren't really that bad!

# July 27, 2003 5:06 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I don't mind coding. What I mind is a lack of coherent documentation.

# July 27, 2003 9:34 PM

Eric J. Smith said:

Robert,

I'm wondering if the lack of coherent documentation comment is directed toward CodeSmith? If so, could you please elaborate on what you thought was missing and how I could make it better. Thanks!

Eric J. Smith

# July 27, 2003 10:02 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Nope, it was directed towards the Framework. I don't use code generators in that way. I have my good friend Visio, who is going to be doing the bulk of my code generation from now on.

I will however, be evaluating it in the near future for one of my Builder.com articles, and I will give you feedback at that time.

Thanks, Eric!

# July 28, 2003 1:23 AM

Kirk Allen Evans said:

Thanks for the mention! Nicely, your Google search seems to have popped my blog up to the first result.

A side-effect: choose your name wisely. Searches for "Kirk Evans" still has my blog in the second page of results. More often than not, employers do Google searches for me as "Kirk Evans".

# July 28, 2003 3:11 PM

TrackBack said:

ISerializable

# July 28, 2003 4:23 PM

brady gaster said:

HA! (that's a very honest compliment on your wonderfully laden sarcasm - love the rip on the ad image. too cool)

# July 29, 2003 12:24 AM

brady gaster said:

dude - just go get a ghosting product like the one norton makes.

# July 29, 2003 12:57 AM

Robert McLaws said:

I was waiting for you to pipe up about this one.

I mean, something from MS where you can buy all the software in one package, and it comes preconfigured from MS for development. Yeah I COULD spend like 9 hours configuring a new machine, and then another hour ghosting it... but who wants to deal with that hassle?

# July 29, 2003 1:04 AM

TrackBack said:

Instructing.NET

# July 29, 2003 1:28 AM

TrackBack said:

# July 29, 2003 1:28 AM

TrackBack said:

Robert McLaws: BoyWonder.NET

# July 29, 2003 3:44 AM

TrackBack said:

# July 29, 2003 3:44 AM

TrackBack said:

# July 29, 2003 3:44 AM

TrackBack said:

# July 29, 2003 3:48 AM

Scott Galloway said:

Just got my access - hurrah! It is a fantastic product - I suspect it will surprise many people just how improved it is...:-)

# July 29, 2003 3:46 PM

HumanCompiler said:

Yup...totally sweet! (y)

# July 30, 2003 12:57 AM

Eric J. Smith said:

OK, had me worried... I know the documentation is not great, but I didn't think it was incoherent! :-) Please feel free to ask me any questions.

Thanks!
Eric J. Smith

# July 30, 2003 2:42 PM

Eric Sink said:

We use Web Services combined with SSL for SourceGear Vault, our version control system. I routinely use this setup from home over a 256K connection which is only quasi-reliable. We have another employee who uses Vault over a plain old 56k modem. In both cases the performance is quite adequate for our application. YMMV.

# July 30, 2003 8:05 PM

Jesse Ezell said:

Don't use WSE if you need to be cross platform (at least not yet). Stick with SSL for a while.

# July 30, 2003 9:22 PM

Derek Stone said:

It isn't just you. I was getting absolute pitiful performance and some strange behavior to boot.

# July 31, 2003 3:27 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Thanks for the feedback guys.

# July 31, 2003 10:32 AM

TrackBack said:

# July 31, 2003 11:17 AM

Jeff Giesbrecht said:

I agree with using VS.NET for doing basic layout and any heavy asp.net lifting and page design, however if you want to make use of the power of CSS Dreamweaver can't be touched. I wish that VS.NET would have a decent interface for working on the look part of the site however it doesn't and one has to resort to tools like Dreamweaver. The one caveat is DW does a fair job handling asp.net tags, it is usable but not to the level of VS.NET.

# July 31, 2003 4:54 PM

Robert McLaws said:

All great comments, but Greg, you are not looking very hard at the graphic.

# July 31, 2003 5:17 PM

TrackBack said:

# August 1, 2003 1:57 AM

julie said:

Robert- I think you need a vacation! :-)

# August 1, 2003 3:44 PM

Jerry Dennany said:

psst.. don't tell anyone, but it's spelled 'dennany'.

# August 1, 2003 5:10 PM

Kris Williams said:

We too use SSL. However, to relieve the web servers in our farm from having to do the SSL processing, which has lead to scalability problems, we offload SSL to a pair of embedded SSL accelerators.

# August 1, 2003 7:57 PM

Joshua Allen said:

It's worth pointing out that a string in .NET is *always* UTF-16, whether or not you assert a different encoding in your XML declaration. We had a lot of problems with this fact in classic ASP/MSXML, since ASP strings are also always utf-16, and people would assert a different encoding in their XML decl, then get confused when things broke downstream (assert utf-8, but dump as utf-16, then get confused when the browser tries to read utf-8 for example). There MAY be some cases where it is correct for you to create XML in a string that is (always) encoded as utf-16 and assert that it is utf-8, but more often than not it is a bug and will lead to undesirable behavior. The XML declaration should normally match the actual encoding of the document instance, and we introduced a lot of bugs prior to .NET by making it too *easy* to use encodings other than utf-16 in a string of XML. I know that is little consolation if you are doing some blackbelt thing and really *need* to use an incorrect encoding decl temporarily, but at least it should explain why .NET is designed this way. I honestly believe that it has eliminated some very frequent user bugs that were common before .NET.

Regards,
Joshua Allen
XmlWriter PM

# August 1, 2003 8:05 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Wow. Thanks Joshua for an amazingly clear explanation. Here is my question then, and forgive me for being dumb, but.... why isn't there a method to change the string encoding to UTF8 for XML?

Are you saying that it's better to write directly to the file system? If you use the method that allows you to select enoding, it writes to a file. But, if this is the case, it's still a string when it gets written to the file....

*still confused*

# August 1, 2003 8:35 PM

Matthew Reynolds said:

Hi Rob,

Have you tried trimming the MemoryStream buffer? This is usally longer than the size specified in the Length property. I usually create an array of length stream.Length and then copy the bytes from the buffer into this. This should remove the dodgy spaces at the end?

Cheers,
Matthew

# August 4, 2003 5:18 AM

Robert McLaws said:

I tried that without success. That was part of the wasted 45 minutes.

# August 4, 2003 10:33 AM

Matt Hawley said:

I was just thinking this yesterday...Scott must have read my mind :)

# August 4, 2003 11:26 AM

HumanCompiler said:

ok, i've never really liked trillian, but haven't tried it in quite a few versions...that's awesome! :D

# August 4, 2003 2:47 PM

Randy Ridge said:

Trillian pro 1.0 had RSS support as well and while I do love trillian, I wouldn't want to keep up with many subscriptions in it. I'll still stick with good ole sharpreader.

# August 4, 2003 3:05 PM

Scott Watermasysk said:

Once again all praise goes to Daniel Nolan for the design/css. I am just smart enough to keep saying yes when he offers his help.

# August 4, 2003 3:12 PM

Robert A. Wlodarczyk said:

ooo. That's pretty nice. :)

# August 4, 2003 4:37 PM

Jon said:

I've been using Trillian Pro since it came out last September and I'm really happy with it. This 2.0 version really rocks :-)

# August 4, 2003 4:40 PM

Daniel Nolan said:

Nice idea, but pushing it the way of ICQ, bloat bloat! It isn't really the best place for putting RSS feeds, it doesnt have the management capabilities for it. Certainly not for the number and weight of feeds I subscribe to.

Trillian does indeed rock though, just a shame it forces me to merge my contact lists if i log on to MSN twice, which can be confusing to anyone who adds me as they all of a sudden have to add some other random person called craig (don't ask, long story).

# August 4, 2003 5:29 PM

Daniel Nolan said:

Might have been wise checking the trillian link before that comment, now supports seperate connection contact lists, woot!

# August 4, 2003 5:30 PM

Dave said:

You might not comment, but Dave Winer appearantly has. Seems he believes the article is "incendiary". If you believe his state-owned blog it's "the last gasp in the Great RSS War of 2003".

(1) Dammit... am I the only one who not only thinks he presents an extremely biased viewpoint - his right to - on his weblog and the major problem is NOBODY CAN COMMENT DIRECTLY TO IT?

(2) IMHO the news.com article was extremely balanced and fair. Which should explain why DW seems to feel it is antagonistic.

# August 4, 2003 7:14 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I agree 100% You'll never catch comments on his blog. EVER. Why? Because he only cares about his own opinion.

# August 5, 2003 3:17 PM

David Stone said:

Does this mean that those of us who haven't had your IM can now add you to our contact lists at will? ;) Since we know your passport account's e-mail address...

# August 5, 2003 4:20 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Go for it. ;) I should have mentioned that. Any of you can feel free to IM me at any time. :)

# August 5, 2003 4:23 PM

Sam Gentile said:

I'm going!

# August 6, 2003 7:57 AM

Joshua Allen said:

Oh, the deal is that String are actually stored as 16-bit characters in memory; in the help topic at:
<http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpref/html/frlrfsystemstringclasstopic.asp>
it says "Each Unicode character in a string is defined by a Unicode scalar value, also called a Unicode code point or the ordinal (numeric) value of the Unicode character. Each code point is encoded using UTF-16 encoding, and the numeric value of each element of the encoding is represented by a Char." -- Then if you look at the definition for Char in the help file, you see Char is stored as 16-bits; or utf-16. I know it is confusing -- all throughout the docs we talk about "Unicode" which could imply that the characters could be encoded using any approved unicode encoding, but in MSFT-speak, "Unicode" really means "Unicode code points encoded using utf-16". In other words, it is common to talk about the difference between "unicode and utf-8" rather than "utf-16 and utf-8", since "everyone" knows that Unicode == utf-16. Anyway, this is a pet peeve of mine and demonstrates incorrect understanding of the issues IMO, but unfortunately it has been the norm at MSFT for a long time. So just remember when reading our docs; 90% of the time when someone says "unicode", they mean utf-16.

Now, as to the question about writing to file (or memorystream, etc.), the answer is that yes that is one way to workaround the issue. But of course the XML is still wrong (which maybe you want?). For example, the following pseudocode:

String s = "<?xml encoding='utf-8'?><blah/>";
TextWriter tw = new TextWriter("out.xml",Encoding.Utf16);
tw.Write(s);
tw.Close();

would work just fine, but the XML on disk is definitely not wellformed, and will throw an error if you try to open it with any XML parser in the world. On the other hand, if you did that and then wrote to a file encoded with utf8, it *would* be right -- but that begs the question of why you used a string in the first place? You could write directly to the textwriter. Anyway, I hope that is helping to clear up a bit.

Another way to look at it is that the System.String class in CLR is used to represent utf-16 encoded streams, and for all other encoded streams you need to use System.Stream class...

# August 7, 2003 4:16 PM

Robert McLaws said:

What a fabulous explanation. Joshua, I thank you for taking the time to provide such a detailed explanation.

Now, having said that. I have the following comment:

WOW. That really sucks.

It should not be that complicated. I'm gonna have to take a serious look at it and see if I can't come up with a cleaner solution. More than likely, I'll have to show you my specific situation to prove why. Are you at the Redmond campus? If so I'll show you next week in person.

# August 7, 2003 4:25 PM

Jason Alexander said:

Awesome Robert! Thanks!

Yeah, that would have been great 15 mins ago... (DOH!) ;) But, now I know! Hehehe.

# August 7, 2003 4:30 PM

TrackBack said:

# August 7, 2003 5:06 PM

HumanCompiler said:

Totally agree...I'd buy it for a project I'm working on right now...actually I was thinking about just writing it, obviously...thinks about being "soooo money" :D

# August 7, 2003 10:38 PM

brady gaster said:

you need a new category - ".net instructors."

# August 8, 2003 1:23 AM

Jonne Kats said:

Me 2, i'm planning on implementing one on our intranet. I even start writing one, because i couldn't find one. Never finished it though...

# August 8, 2003 2:49 AM

Matt Hawley said:

Ask and ye shall receive: http://www.asp.net/ControlGallery/ControlDetail.aspx?Control=1344&tabindex=2

# August 8, 2003 9:59 AM

TrackBack said:

# August 8, 2003 11:06 AM

HumanCompiler said:

holy crap that's awesome...i will sooooo be buying that control!

blog marketing!

# August 8, 2003 11:22 AM

Robert A. Wlodarczyk said:

Gotta love those Polish last names :) Looking forward to meeting you!

# August 10, 2003 11:11 PM

Roy Osherove said:

Dude! Envy is my middle name!

# August 13, 2003 3:22 AM

Tim Marman said:

What weblogger dinner? Where?

# August 13, 2003 9:59 AM

Robert Scoble said:

See my weblog today for the weblogger dinner. http://scoble.weblogs.com

# August 13, 2003 12:35 PM

Scott Glasgow said:

I'm just wondering if ActiveSync will also send some of our (Phoenix) record heat (ok it's cooler today) back to you. We know you must be missing it!

# August 13, 2003 3:07 PM

V said:

I'm scared. :) Truly scared.

# August 13, 2003 5:18 PM

TrackBack said:

# August 14, 2003 3:29 AM

Joshua Allen said:

Per our conversation last night, I would recommend using MemoryStream to store in a particular encoding. I attach a code sample below (Test3 is the one with MemoryStream and a utf8). Also, all three of the examples result in XML that is converted to and from string while staying in the proper encoding, and they all seem to be working OK for me with no padding of bytes, etc. If you want me to check out any padding issues, you can send a repro code that I can compile and run to see if I get the same behavior. Thanks!

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml;

namespace foo {
public class bar {
public static void Main() {
Test1();
Test2();
Test3();

}

public static void Test1() {
string strInput = "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-16'?><foo><bar /></foo>";
XmlTextReader r = new XmlTextReader(new StringReader(strInput));
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
XmlTextWriter w = new XmlTextWriter(new StringWriter(sb));
w.WriteNode(r, false);
w.Flush();
string strOutput = sb.ToString();
Console.WriteLine("Input = {0}, Output = {1}", strInput.Length, strOutput.Length);
}

public static void Test2() {
string strInput = "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-16'?><foo><bar /></foo>";
XmlTextReader r = new XmlTextReader(new StringReader(strInput));
MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
XmlTextWriter w = new XmlTextWriter(ms, Encoding.Unicode);
w.WriteNode(r, false);
w.Flush();
ms.Position = 0;
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(ms);
string strOutput = sr.ReadToEnd();
Console.WriteLine("Input = {0}, Output = {1}", strInput.Length, strOutput.Length);
}

public static void Test3() {
string strInput = "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-16'?><foo><bar /></foo>";
XmlTextReader r = new XmlTextReader(new StringReader(strInput));
MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
XmlTextWriter w = new XmlTextWriter(ms, Encoding.UTF8);
w.WriteNode(r, false);
w.Flush();
ms.Position = 0;
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(ms);
string strOutput = sr.ReadToEnd();
Console.WriteLine("Input = {0}, Output = {1}", strInput.Length, strOutput.Length);
}

}
}

# August 14, 2003 6:13 PM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

"and that it was designed to release a DDoS attack on the entire internet"

Did they really say that? Given that the central notion of a DDoS attack is many "slave" machines attacking a single (or small group of) target(s), the idea of "a DDoS attack on the entire internet" is a little hard to swallow, is it not? If that's what the folks at Cox are saying, that sure explains why we can't rely on ISPs to filter traffic to prevent worms.

# August 17, 2003 2:08 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Well, if you can make a slave machine hit one target, why can't you make it hit hundreds of IPs, or cycle through all the IPs and hit them with large amounts of traffic? Is it THAT farfetched?

And Andrew, why would we want ISPs to filter prots BEFORE attacks? Why don't we just close off the whole internet while we're at it, since they can attack on any nuumber of ports?

# August 17, 2003 3:34 PM

Sam Gentile said:

Right on Robert. Good work.

# August 17, 2003 5:12 PM

Shane Bauer said:

Exactly. Good post. I get so tired of the finger pointing.

Back to the saying:

When you point your finger at someone, three fingers are pointing back at you. (haha ok..it's somewhat like that) Anyway, I'm going to stop being corny.

# August 17, 2003 5:17 PM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

Um...Robert I think you missed my point. I was neither advocating, nor complaining about whether or not Cox should filter ports, though if done properly it could be in their best interests to do so. My point was merely that if your statement of what Cox said about the DDoS attacks was accurate, that I wouldn't trust them to do port filtering properly.

As for your question about slave machines, it's simply a matter of limited resources. The reason DDoS attacks are successful is because the worm author marshals the resources of a large number of machines to attack a small number of machines (with limited resources). It's the concentration of the attack that makes it work. You certainly *could* make a DDoS script cycle through "all the IPs", but how are you going to hit them with large amounts of traffic? It just doesn't make a lot of sense. Sure, you could probably raise the noise level on the Internet a bit, but I have a hard time believing that, absent the coordination of many clients targeting a limited number of machines, you could mount an effective DDoS attack.

# August 17, 2003 5:28 PM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

Robert,

See my response on: http://weblogs.asp.net/rmclaws/posts/24343.aspx#24346

I think you completely misinterpreted what I was saying about Cox. I was hardly "blaming" them for the Blaster worm, nor was I advocating that they *should* do port filtering.

Also, had you read my posts on the subject of the blaster worm, you'd see that we agree that it is the individual's responsibility to make sure that their computer is up-to-date on patches, sits behind a firewall, etc.

So please, before you go making me the subject of a rant, could you take the time to make sure that we actually *do* disagree first? ;-)

# August 17, 2003 5:32 PM

Robert McLaws said:

My apologies. After reading your posts on your blog, I see that you agree :). Unfortunately, however, it does not appear to be the first time you were misunderstood regarding this topic. Sorry if I added to the static.

# August 17, 2003 5:47 PM

Paul Wilson said:

You and the others totally missed the point of Jerry's rant (and its spelled Dennany). Its NOT that the deployment necessarily took too long, it is that the legally required documentation of the testing that must cover in detail every possible thing affected can take a very very long time. Also, like it or not, someone like Jerry usually has other things on his plate as well.

Don't get me wrong, I totally agree that most of the problems are due to sloppiness, whether it be users, sysadmins, or developers. But Jerry was simply pointing out that some people live in a world with more legal restriction than you can possibly imagine, so its simply not always a case of sloppiness. So you are wrong -- SUS has nothing to do with the issue since its not the deployment thats the problem in this type of case.

# August 17, 2003 7:31 PM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

BTW, TCP port 135 is one of those that should ALWAYS be firewalled, along with pretty much any other well-known port number that's not intended to be accessed from the internet.

There are numerous sites on the web (one of my favorites is at http://www.broadbandreports.com/tools) that allow you to perform port scans to determine what's open for a given IP address. http://www.broadbandreports.com/insecure gives a pretty good indication of the severity of the problem with open ports.

# August 17, 2003 7:47 PM

TrackBack said:

# August 18, 2003 5:53 AM

Datagrid Girl said:

Hey, just saw your post--thanks for the well wishes! So far so good, I'm at Tech Ed New Zealand now--one talk to go!

# August 18, 2003 10:20 AM

Robert McLaws said:

If that were the case, then why did he only mention it at the end? It seemed to me the point was the part in red where he said "60,000 nodes". If that was not his point, then maybe he shouldn't have put it in red.

# August 19, 2003 6:05 AM

Robert Hurlbut said:

I also highly recommend the Writing Secure Code book.

# August 19, 2003 6:59 PM

Paul Wilson said:

My recommendation is to quit reading and posting so fast then -- you clearly are trying to achieve some super high numbers with little quality. I'm not claiming my posts are always of high quality either, but at least I keep the noise level down by not posting so many low quality posts. Nothing personal, we're all trying to figure out this blogging thing, but you are definitely posting way too much that simply says me too and look at me. Feel free to critique me too -- I know I've had some look at me posts too.

# August 19, 2003 7:38 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I re-read his post 3 times, and I respectfully disagree. I'm sorry you felt the post was low-quality... you are free to your own opinion. I know at least one person who was helped by my post, so it was not low-quality to me or that person. Thank you for taking the timne to comment.

# August 19, 2003 7:44 PM

Mads Haugbø Nissen said:

This is a great idea. I'm planning to start this very soon myself, and it would be great if we could somehow collect study guides from others on asp.net. We could potentially save tons of time!<br><br>I'll contribute for sure when I get started! Hopefully we could even get pointers and tips from bloggers with the MCSD safely on the wall.

# August 21, 2003 7:27 AM

TrackBack said:

Eric Kepes

# August 21, 2003 9:43 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Well I'm glad you like them. Mads, I'm thinking about putting together just that kind of site. I'll ping you in a few weeks when I'm ready to get it going.

# August 21, 2003 1:36 PM

TrackBack said:

# August 21, 2003 5:39 PM

Paschal said:

Robert did you read my recent post on this issue with Yukon or SQL update ?
No way that i am going to plug my server database to the Net to received some MS updates !
My SQL server is behind 2 firewalls oinly visible from very few machines, and I will not taking any risks to expose my data to make Microsoft happy.
The updates I do are only by CD and that's all.
I am sure that a lot of DBAs work in the same pattern than me.

# August 23, 2003 3:26 PM

Robert McLaws said:

There you go on a negative slant again. It's not so you can make MS happy, it's so MS can make YOU happy.

That is fine. Not everyone is like you. I, for example, also manage my own server farm and patch updates. I make it simple with Software Update Services (I talk about it here), which is a tool Microsoft puts out to run Windows Update on your local network. You sync with MS' servers, approve updates, and your other machines pick up and automatically install the approved patches. The SAME system could take place for Framework updating as well. You could have an intermediate server installed locally that allows you to approve updates for pickup by machines inside the network. This does nto compromise security OR performance.

You could also use MOM to do the same thing.

# August 23, 2003 3:45 PM

Robert McLaws said:

BTW, I have the same network setup that you do. Great minds think alike ;).

# August 23, 2003 3:46 PM

Paschal said:

I have no negative thoughts there but I have a lot of experience on databases and securities.

And I just say that regardind the number of recent flaws MS has in their update system, I will not trust Microsoft blindly to patch my systems without any control.
I don't know for you, but I have sensitive educational material in the database, and a lot of my colleagues are on the same path there.
I am not negative but I don't think an automatic update is possible.
If you are ok to trust MS, you're free, but I stand on my thoughts about this.

# August 23, 2003 3:56 PM

TrackBack said:

# August 23, 2003 4:05 PM

Robert McLaws said:

That's why you can use Software Update Services to give you the control you desire while still having autodeploy capabilities. You focused on my comment about your negativity, yet you missed the whole point of my response. With SUS, one server grab's MS's patches, and notifies you to approve them. Your network machines don't need internet connectivity, only connectivity to that server. If you approve the patch, your Automatic Updates Service redirect automatically grabs and installs it from YOUR SERVER, not from MS.

My proposal is a similar technology using existing .NET Framework capabilities.

BTW, and I mean this with all seriousness, it's always a pleasure talking aboubt this stuff with you. That's not sarcasm. You always bring interesting ideas to the table, and make me think harder about my responses.

# August 23, 2003 4:08 PM

Randy Holloway said:

Paschal, you're not thinking this through. The big issue that Microsoft has with patches is not the installation of the patches, but customer notification and distribution of the software. If customers would automatically receive these updates, yet still maintain control over the change management (deployment of said patches), then the solution would not expose you to the issues you're concerned about yet it could help you to be more informed. See my comments on this.

# August 23, 2003 4:56 PM

Paschal said:

I just maintain what I said before, what is the point of having Microsoft claiming that security is essential in our networks and suddenly give them full access to our systems in a name of some pretentious safety.
like many of my colleagues i don@t trust the internet connection and especially when the idea is coming from big brother :->

# August 23, 2003 7:03 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Full access to our systems? I'm really confused here. How is your computer asking another computer for an update getting full access to the system?

# August 23, 2003 8:51 PM

Paschal said:

If the computer world exist without hackers or marketing people, I would trust the update, but unfortunatly we are living in a real world.
I understood the use of this Software update system you mention, but I don't let my live server open to the wan.
My firewall is setup only as a one way, and I am not going to open the line in both directions just for some updates I can download from my desktop PC burn on a CD and install myself at my convenience.

# August 24, 2003 5:22 AM

TrackBack said:

# August 24, 2003 5:36 AM

TrackBack said:

# August 24, 2003 11:35 AM

Robert McLaws said:

How does your desktop PC connect to the internet? Is it on the same network?

# August 24, 2003 3:46 PM

TrackBack said:

Small Query Blog

# August 25, 2003 6:50 AM

Paschal said:

No Robert my Desktop PC is on a totally separate network, nothing to do with the SQL box.

# August 25, 2003 1:28 PM

TrackBack said:

# August 25, 2003 5:25 PM

Scott Watermasysk said:

I can hit sourceforge.net (via the link above) with no problems.

-Scott

# August 26, 2003 3:34 PM

Robert A. Wlodarczyk said:

I've heard this before too. I don't know where. I know in the slide decks that I used as Student Consultant the XBOX picture was shown under ".NET devices"...

I agree with your comment about opening up the SDK too. I tried getting the SDK for my User Group back at Stony Brook for research purposes, but there are some relaly strict licensing terms on it. I think it has more to do with NVidia than Microsoft though. They may not want the inner workings of the chipset revealed to too many people.

# August 26, 2003 4:46 PM

Dumky said:

How is Verisign involved in digitally signing the code? I thought Microsoft did the signing.

There are at least a couple of hacks to allow running un-signed code on tweaked consoles. Some involve some hardware modifications, while some others just involve memory cartridges with specific data.

It'd definitely be nice to see the consoles out there be more open (and not only the X-Box). Applications like the Xbox Media Player show the potential for allowing "unlicensed" developers on the platform.

# August 26, 2003 5:33 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Usually when you talk about Microsoft and "signing" it involves a VeriSign Certificate in some way. I don't know if it's true in this case, but <shrugs> it's probably a pretty safe assumption.

# August 26, 2003 5:39 PM

Blair Stephenson said:

Interesting Robert.

I had always pictured ADAM as a development and test environment for a normal deploy to a full active directory.

But if what you are saying is what I think you are saying, is that you can use ADAM as it's own store for users and then use it for authenication.

# August 26, 2003 6:42 PM

William Castroleone said:

Hi Robert,
I am a VB6 shareware developer migrating to VB.Net 2003. I love the new VB.Net because of the new wonderful features like security, encryption etc. I am thinking about telling my users in the download page to install the .net framework 1.1 required to run my software. My big concern is if the users are willing to download a 23 Megs file and install something that they have no idea what it is or how it works just to run my software?
I was looking for articles that explain how it will works and if Microsoft will incorporate the .net framework in the future versions of windows making this easy for us, but I couldn’t find anything.
Any advice will be very appreciated!

# August 27, 2003 9:14 PM

Ben Richardson said:

While your waiting have you seen SqlBuddy? I think they have some intellisense - http://sqlbuddy.sourceforge.net/

# August 27, 2003 10:04 PM

Shannon J Hager said:

SqlBuddy's intellisense isn't quite there yet, it is a start but far from perfect.

# August 27, 2003 10:38 PM

Scott Prugh said:

Mssqlexpress has this feature. It is great. Rumor has it that this is coming in Yukon.

# August 27, 2003 11:45 PM

Michael Hensen said:

Indeed it does also on my machine. XP 2003 server. Keep me posted on what it is please.

# August 28, 2003 3:21 AM

Simon said:

That would be an excellent productivity feature.

# August 28, 2003 3:50 AM

Mike Warriner said:

Looks like a suprisingly useful tool from the Microsoft Internet Explorer Administration Kit - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ieak/techinfo/deploy/60/en/iexpress.htm, although it seems to be freely available on Windows 2000 and better. Since it's part of the IEAK, I'd guess it will be supported for a while by Microsoft.

Mike

# August 28, 2003 6:21 AM

TrackBack said:

# August 28, 2003 6:49 AM

Paul said:

QA's replacment, Yukon's SQL Workbench, supports what you are asking for. I would think if that tool supports it, then VS.NET Whidbey should support it too. Maybe not...

-Paul

# August 28, 2003 11:01 AM

Shane said:

Thanks for posting that. I had no idea about it.

It looks to be a self-extraction executable wizard.

# August 28, 2003 12:20 PM

TrackBack said:

# August 29, 2003 2:11 AM

Denny said:

I did not find any such command application with the name shutdown in my system. I use W2K Professional.

# August 29, 2003 7:38 AM

Shannon J Hager said:

keep us posted on the results of the added RAM and VMWare. If it works, I'll be making a RAM purchase next week (not from best buy, though... http://www.pricewatch.com will show me the way.)

# August 29, 2003 1:49 PM

TrackBack said:

# August 29, 2003 2:10 PM

Shannon J Hager said:

don't do it. Buy online and get 2 512 chips. If you get 2 256 chips you're stuck that that until you replace them both and then what will you do with the 2 you remove?

# August 29, 2003 2:12 PM

Phil Scott said:

The first RAM upgrade I did was also some old school SIMMs. I was pretty excited about adding 64mb of RAM. I ended up adding 128 :)

I assume this was Rambus? Stupid Rambus. I've stuck with AMD based systems recently. I like the Intel chips better, but cost and partnerships with Rambus turned my view on those systems sour.

# August 29, 2003 2:21 PM

Scott Glasgow said:

Robert, you know you really want 1GB of memory instead of 512MB. Break down, spend the cash. :)

# August 29, 2003 2:45 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Unfortunately, I don't have the cash to spare. I'm gonna get the 2 chips and have 1GB altogether. When I need to upgrade again.... maybe I'll post an ad in my blog ;). At this point I need the RAM immediately, and I'm low on funds. It will have to do for now.

# August 29, 2003 3:02 PM

Phil Weber said:

FYI: http://www.ftponline.com/dotnetmag/2003_06/magazine/columns/sqlconnection/figure2.asp

# August 29, 2003 5:38 PM

TrackBack said:

# August 29, 2003 5:55 PM

Dumky said:

It's kind of sad that this took so much time to get included :(

SQLbuddy (a C# project on sourceforge.net) already implements completion. I used it for a while, but I think it wasn't selective/smart enough on the auto-completion it offered. But it only is version 0.68 right now and the source is open, so I guess this should improve soon.

# August 29, 2003 6:43 PM

Phil Weber said:

Thanks, Robert! But you didn't link to my blog: http://www.philweber.com/net/ ;-)

# August 29, 2003 7:19 PM

Steve Clarke said:

I switched Outlook 2003 into "Permanently Delete" junk mail on August 19th. I've been running the beta for months and haven't had any significant email deleted. Go ahead and do it. You'll be glad you did. :)

http://steve.wedevelop.net/archives/000142.html

# August 29, 2003 7:31 PM

Randy Holloway said:

Agreed. This guy was pretty dumb also, having a public web site showing off his hacks.

Out of curiousity, how young do you have to be to be considered a "young adult"?

# August 29, 2003 8:37 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Um, yeah I did. It says (via Phil Weber) (with a hyperlink.

# August 29, 2003 9:10 PM

Robert McLaws said:

<shrugs> are you speaking in a legal sense or in a maturity sense?

# August 29, 2003 9:12 PM

Dave said:

Now, I agree. Honestly, I said a worm/virus writer deserves 15 years in prison no matter if he/she is 15 or 35 years old. No parole either.

But I completely disagree with something else here.

You speak of looking at the "damage" he inflicted. Then you go on to speak of "MS" this and "MS" that. Say what?

The costs to MS are actually well-deserved. It is the price one pays for being a market leader. It is the responsibility one has for being a market leader. Surely you don't suggest "MS" should not pay a price for writing a 'secure' OS (the implied contract here) and it is discovered their product has holes in it? "MS" never complained over the years when they gained a great market share. "MS" never complained when they maintained said market share either.... with .NET and eventually various things they are showing off at the PDC.

BTW, I didn't percieve "MS" to complain the last few weeks. They just did what any responsible market leader would who understands the price it takes to keep that market share.... work like the dickens to help out their customers. But I do perceive YOU to be complaining about it.... which isn't your usual style.

This 18 year old is _directly_ responsible for thousands upon millions of dollars lost due to his worm/virus. That money was NOT lost by "MS". That money was lost commerce and time by the millions of "MS" users. For this he deserves the slammer. Nothing sexy about what he did. Teach him and others like him a lesson.

But "MS" shares in the responsibility too. "MS" made the product everyone uses - and that product had holes in it. "MS" either bears it's fair share of the responsibility properly (which they have quite admirably) or else they pay a greater price.

# August 29, 2003 9:33 PM

Dave said:

Well, I now _do_ have an issue with you then Robert. With all due respect - and I mean that sincerely, I really think you have some of the best posts in the .NET blog niche - the attitude you've just expressed is completely abhorrent. Never - NEVER - forget who is the most important person in your business relationships. The customer.

Frankly, I'm glad "MS" doesn't use some of the words you just did... 'retarded', 'bitch-slap', complascent'. Instead, "MS" handled this mess of virii in a very exemplary manner. No whining about how they make quality products. No complaining over lost resources or time. No slamming of the people who put their hard-earned money into their deep pockets. Instead, "MS" just worked harder.

I wasn't talking about "MS" the omnipotent money-welding market leader either. I was talking about "MS" the business venture run by human beings who understand they have responsibilities that go along with the riches (monetary AND other) they've earned from their success. Human beings that understand that if they (a) shirk that responsibility or (b) start calling purchasers of their high-quality products 'retard' they will eventually LOSE that market share.

You spoke of maturity in an earlier comment here Robert. Normally you speak with maturity well beyond your chronological age. But twice now in this thread.... first when you spoke of "MS" this and "MS" that without mentioning even once the 500,000 computers and THEIR inconvenienced users, then now when you call those users retarded.... you spoke in quite an atypical manner for you.

I'm really not trying to make this personal, so I'll stop right here. I really do enjoy your weblog, and hope you reconsider the tone of some of the things you've said in this post.

# August 30, 2003 1:47 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Dave,

I really appreciate your comments. You are completely right.

I appreciate your comments about my age. Unfortunately today I had a short fuse (as you're about to read in my next post) and I let my mouth get the better of me. Another example of my age overriding my intelligence. Fortunately it does not happen too often.

And there you hit on the crux of my problem. My biggest struggle is not sounding like an arrogant asshole. I tend to do that, especially in situations like this. To me, keeping up with updates is common sense. And when people don't do obvious things (you make sure the alarm is on at your house every night, why can't you make sure your firewall is on and your system is patched?)

Most people agree, and do the common sense stuff. Sometimes tho, people just don't get it. You can dumb it down as much as you want, but people are inherently lazy and don't want to put effort into it. If they can't read it and understand it in 15 seconds, most people won't bother.

That is why I come off as an asshole a lot of times. People skim my blog entries and don't take the time to comprehend what I have to say. They pick up five words and go "gosh, this guy's a prick." and write me off. (Unfortunately for me, comments like I made earlier don't help that either).

Now, I have NEVER forgotten about the customer. I work every day for mine. I live, breath, eat, sleep, and die what they need. In this situation, however, it's a bit different. I feel that it is their own fault that their systems weren't patched. Microsoft can't go into everyones homes and walk you're hand-in-hand through patching systems. It's your computer, it's your responsibility. Correct, MS created the problem my opening a flaw. But when a fix is released for months and readily available, I'm sorry. I can't sugar coat it, I can't baby someone into feeling better about themselves. It's their own fault.

Sure, that may be a wholly arrogant and crude attitude. But look at it this way: If I know that there is a hurricane heading for a town, and I put notices on TV, on the radio, and blare vehicles with loudspeakers through the town, and no one evacuates, is it really my responsibility if they all die?

My point is this: It was MS's fault for allowing the hole to exist. It was the customers fault for not installing the band-aid. It was the kid's fault for exploiting the flaw in a negative way and costing EVERYONE time and money (including me). And it was my fault for not being clearer about what I meant earlier.

The blame does not always fall completely on Microsoft. Too often people will lay blame where it is most convenient, instead of where it belongs.

# August 30, 2003 4:04 AM

Dave Burke said:

I've been enjoying your saga of upgrading your memory. So true. Whenever I have upgraded memory over the past several years I photocopied the motherboard pages and read every spec available about the darn RAM SIMMS. Not a small task for something which so be a mindless purchase, you'd think. As for Best Buy, I'm a borderline customer myself. Last time I was there I had to call the manager and complain about something ridiculous.

# August 30, 2003 3:43 PM

Brian Desmond said:

Nothing proprietary there. That's pretty darn standard on the server front. ECC means Error Checking and Correcting. You want that stuff in a server. Pairs has been around since when you put 72 pin EDO simms in. It may be an ECC thing that requires pairs. I know my Compaq Proliant servers all need memory put into the banks in pairs.

# August 31, 2003 1:44 AM

Stephane Rodriguez said:

Ridiculous statements. Microsoft has since many years embrassed security as part of their marketing toilet papers.

# August 31, 2003 9:00 AM

Wayne said:

He is a real idiot if you ask me. No, he did not show how smart he was, just how damm stupid this jerk is. Maybe Daddy can get him out of this mess. I suspect he has had someone get him out all his life.
For the penalty! Start at MS, fix every computer there, move on to everyone he affected. Again, stupid, moron whatever, the damm kid grew up spoiled and now it the time to kick him in the ass and make him work for a living.

# August 31, 2003 1:08 PM

rfigueira said:

Hi friend ;) I will love to see that class (vb.net). I hope you finish that class, with new features, very soon :)

# September 1, 2003 5:15 AM

Dave said:

Thought I'd comment here instead of the old thread. :) And thanks for understanding the tone and intent of my last critical comment.

I'm not sure why, but the term 'educate the users' makes me uncomfortable. Guess it's because I think that genie left the bottle a long time ago.

Should we force a user to show their knowledge of firewalls and bug fixes and computer maintenance before allowing one to get an account with an ISP? Maybe we should force so-called professionals who work in profit-making enterprises to be more diligent in stopping traffic on various server ports and filter out email at the server?

Somehow I think the reality is - we simply cannot do either.

Okay, how about 'pure education'... my 82 year-old mom asked me something the other day. Seems I switched from IE to Outlook by clicking on the taskbar button. Her question: "How did you do that?" This from someone who got the computer as an XMAS gift back in December 2000! Now, how do you 'educate' her?

This is a very tough issue. In no way do I feel MS bears the brunt of the responsibility. But they do share in it. Oh, and they've gotten much better in improving things too. The fix for MSBLASTER did not require a reboot. I remember when such things were commonplace. My only wishes on MS are that (1) they change certain default settings in ALL installs of ALL products, (2) they release their software firewall they have for XP to all other OS versions for free, and (3) they redouble their efforts to release XP SP2 on a more timely basis than end of Q2 2004. None of these are that difficult to employ - surely not with a workforce of 55,000 and a focus on security.

The user is a constant. The user is also a cost of doing business. Just because auto makers put seat belts in my auto and my local goverment fines me $125 if they catch me not wearing it doesn't mean I actually use the damn thing. If the government wants me to be more safe from harm, they need to work with the auto makers to employ airbags, passive restraints, well-designed bumpers and suspensions that track well in various conditions. It's just the reality of things.

# September 2, 2003 6:10 PM

Jakub Skopal said:

Hi,
redgat sql compare bundle might be of your interest too... I use it a lot and I'm quite satisfied :-)

K.

# September 3, 2003 2:55 AM

Jakub Skopal said:

sorry, forgot the url... http://www.red-gate.com/sql/summary.htm

# September 3, 2003 2:56 AM

Roy Osherove said:

Good morning! Beyond compare has beem one of my favorites for a long time. You might want to check out araxis merge as well. They have slightly cooler UI, but less abilities. Still some people prefer them.

# September 3, 2003 3:34 AM

Chris Martin said:

A bit on the pricey side, but only usefull for SQL Server, is SQL Diff. I had the chance to use it once and would buy it in a heart-beat if I needed to do another SQL diff again.

http://www.lockwoodtech.com/index_sqldiff.htm

# September 3, 2003 4:25 AM

Mel Grubb II said:

Have you released this yet? I can't find a link to your "personal site", and a web search turns up a placeholder site with nothing in it.

Thanks
MG2

# September 3, 2003 8:44 AM

Scott Prugh said:

You can also try AdeptSql. It is the fastest I have found(we have almost 2000 tables). Lockwood's product is very good also. I can recommend both. The price on either is more than reasonable seeing what you get.

http://www.lockwoodtech.com
http://www.adeptsql.com/

# September 3, 2003 10:45 AM

n said:

windiff is a free tool that does the same thing....

# September 3, 2003 11:53 AM

William Bartholomew said:

A tool i've used since beta for comparing files is Visual Comparer... very nice.

http://www.nikeware.com/

# September 3, 2003 6:11 PM

William Bartholomew said:

The other thing you can do is download the Microsoft Exception Management Application Block and then you can just call:

ExceptionManager.Publish(exp)

By default it will write it to the EventLog but you can write you own plug-ins to do whatever (eg send emails, generate log files, write to the database). And it can all be configured in a simple configuration file.

# September 4, 2003 2:48 AM

Robert McLaws said:

I've heard that the EMAB is not very user friendly yet. In fact, I had a coleague try to write a plug-in for it, and he had a hard time cause it was so abstract. <shrugs> Maybe we need to revisit it again.

# September 4, 2003 2:58 AM

Scott Prugh said:

There is a big difference between Text differencing tools and SQL Differencing tools. To use text tools to synchronize and compare databases requires one to script all objects to text. Although this is doable, it could take hours if you have 1000's of objects(SQL-DMO is really bad is this regard). Also, you do not get a synchronization script.
These modern SQL compare tools go directly against the schema information for the comparable databases and produce reports AND synchronization scripts for the deltas. The compares are very fast because they bypass SQL-DMO(AdeptSQL and Lockwood).

# September 4, 2003 9:11 AM

TrackBack said:

# September 4, 2003 10:04 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Doing a text diff was not that bad... it only took me about an hour, and I was able to generate a synchronization script no sweat.

That being said, I'd rather use a SQL diff tool. Hopefully this functionality will be in Yukon.

# September 4, 2003 10:52 AM

TrackBack said:

# September 4, 2003 4:07 PM

Julien Ellie said:

That's really cool. You should definitly make some kind of RSS or webservice thing to expose this. It'd be awesome to integrate that kind of information on a website. If you think this is a good idea and need any help with the hosting or coding or whatever I'd be happy to help. My email is julien_ellie at hotmail.com

# September 4, 2003 5:16 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Yeah, I'm thinking I might sybdicate this separately somehow. Not quite sure how I'm going to control it tho. I might put it on a totally separate site, and then again I might bring it under my company's umbrella. We'll see what happens after we launch our new site next week.

I'm glad you like it, and thanks for the offer to help. I'll ping you in a few weeks when I'm ready to make it bigger.

# September 5, 2003 12:38 AM

Robert McLaws said:

I also left a note in <a href="http://www.haloscan.com/comments.php?user=scoble&comment=4429">Scoble's comments</a> on a system for MS to disseminate messages directly to the desktop in a secure manner. Maybe that will help in the Longhorn time frame. I dunno. All I know is, I know I'm not doing enough. Even my new <a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/rmclaws/posts/26297.aspx">Patch Day Review</a> is not enough. Unfortunately, I don't know what would be.

# September 5, 2003 1:23 AM

Chris Martin said:

I realize that your probably an IE type of guy but, it's kinda broken-ish in Mozilla.

# September 5, 2003 1:33 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Yeah, it's broken all over the place. I hate it as it is right now. Gonna try to fix it up this weekend, and then I'll install all kinds of different browsers in VMWare and test all my sites out.

Thanks for the tip though... much appreciated :)

# September 5, 2003 1:59 AM

Chris Martin said:

No problem. If you need any help, shoot me an email @ ghettoblaster@co-=x=-.net. I love screwing with this stuff!

# September 5, 2003 5:03 AM

Thomas Freudenberg said:

I have a Netgear 611WGR, a WiFi DSL router, which support UPnP, i.e. I don't have to forward any ports to Windows Messenger. Instead, the messenger tells the router which ports it requires.

# September 5, 2003 6:18 AM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

I have a D-Link 802.11b/g Router with a 4-port switch, a stand-alone 5-port switch from D-Link, two D-Link PCI 10/100 cards, and a D-Link wireless PC card. I've had no problems with any of them, and I've found D-Link to be, by far, the easiest to configure. The wireless router works fine with both the D-Link card, as well as with the built-in 802.11b in my Dell laptop.

OTOH, I have had more problems than success with Linksys products (though it's been a couple of years since I've used them).

Also, turning off Broadcast SSID is NOT a security measure. The SSID is sent as a part of other types of requests, so it's not possible to hide it entirely. All you're doing by turning off the broadcast SSID is causing more traffic when dealing with roaming computers. If I can find the article I read on this, I'll post another comment with the URL.

# September 5, 2003 8:07 AM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

Here's the link:

http://www.tisc2002.com/newsletters/416.html

I also found an interesting "blackpaper" on Wireless Security at:

http://www.arstechnica.com/paedia/w/wireless/security-1.html

One of the interesting (and counterintuitive) things in that article is the advice to not use Shared authentication (which only allows wireless devices with the correct WEP key to connect). I was using shared auth, on the assumption that it was more secure, but I'll want to do more research on this to make sure that's not a bad idea.

# September 5, 2003 9:11 AM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

Last, but not least, I should point out that if you've only got one AP, there's probably no reason not to disable broadcast of the SSID, since it won't impact your performance if you don't have users roaming from AP to AP. But while that will make it a little harder for a casual war driver to find your network, it still really doesn't count as security, since the SSID is easy to obtain using other means.

# September 5, 2003 9:16 AM

Scott Watermasysk said:

I was talking about this last night.

I personally would stay away from the RSS/Atom debate and focus more on how can the tools that exist today help the .NET communtity (and will get better as others contribute), and what tools/improvments can be made to enhance the community's future.

# September 5, 2003 10:18 AM

Scott Johnson of Feedster said:

Hi,

I'd love to go and pitch in but affording the pdc is hard. Sigh.

Scott

# September 5, 2003 10:25 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Andrew:
Any measure that reduces your overall attack surface is a good one. Yes, turning off the SSID may not be a security feature, but leaving it on makes connecting to your network just that much easier. You can configure your WiFi card to connect to that SSID auromatically without having to discover it.

Also, this configuration was for a personal home use kinda thing. Typically in that situation no roaming is involved, so you don't need to worry about the excess traffic.

And I don't use WEP, cause it can be sniffed out. Use the system that I just configured, then set up your hard-wired computer as a VPN server, and dole out addresses that way. Then you don't have to worry about it, cause the communication is encrypted, and your Windows box manager authentication.

Thanks for the links, I'll go check em out.

Thomas: Yeah, but did you know that there is a security hole in UPnP that caused Microsoft to turn UPnP off by default in Windows 2003? It's really great and all, but how dows that stop a Trojan from getting out of the firewall and accessing the net? No thank you, I'll keep my router hardened and control who gets in and out myself.

# September 5, 2003 10:33 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Not a debate so much as a discussion on the differences. That is specifically why I did not say Atom v. RSS. We won't let it get to a war, but people need to be educated to the differences, and let them make their own decisions.

Besides, I don't think Winer will be there, so I think the conversation will stay pretty civil ;).

# September 5, 2003 10:40 AM

Dustin said:

Great post, Robert. I agree 100% with the D-link comment. I have some older access points that are quite difficult to configure and won't work with their newer stuff. They worked ok out of the box, but if you want "advanced" features like WEP, it was very difficult to configure. Don't bother calling their "support", either. I had one of their guys hang up on me, and the other told me that I must have installed XP wrong.

-Dustin

# September 5, 2003 10:53 AM

Phil Weber said:

Yes, but the hyperlink under my name points to the .NET Magazine article.

# September 5, 2003 11:29 AM

Scott Watermasysk said:

But what I am saying is that most people do not need to know the difference.

I am game for anything, but I would focus on what blogging can do...for the community, idividual...NET.

# September 5, 2003 11:31 AM

Carlos Aquino said:

Hi Robert,

We are starting a security page on http://www.only4gurus.com/v2/security_report.asp since the Blaster Crisis and I believe that your post could be a good content. While you don't start to syndicated it, can I use the post somehow? I would put a link back to your site (or blog), off course. Please, reply to caquino@only4gurus.com .

# September 5, 2003 12:56 PM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

Robert,

You wrote:

"Yes, turning off the SSID may not be a security feature, but leaving it on makes connecting to your network just that much easier. You can configure your WiFi card to connect to that SSID auromatically without having to discover it."

I'm aware of that, and I agree that reducing the attack surface makes sense where possible. But many people (including manufacturers) tout disabling the Broadcast SSID as a security feature, when in fact the SSID can be easily had by other means. Not much of a security feature, IMO. But nonetheless, it's still worth turning it off if you're not worried about any additional traffic it might generate.

You also wrote:

"And I don't use WEP, cause it can be sniffed out."

Granted, you may get better results with your VPN solution, but why not use WEP as well, since it at least raises the bar for casual access? No, you shouldn't rely on WEP if you want to be completely secure. But as with the Broadcast SSID, each additional step a would-be attacker has to take is potentially useful in defending your network.

# September 5, 2003 1:48 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Extremely valid points, and it does seem like I am kind of contradicting myself. In my experience, WAP is a real PITA for end users (lay people) to deal with. So in weighing the benefits vs. effort required, I chose to say no to WEP and wait for WPA. WAP just does not add that much security for the hassles, and it is super easy to break.

It might behoove me to mention too that this was not designed for you guys as much as it was for lay people. Yeah you might have the patience to deal with the problems that come up trying to implement WAP. My mom wouldn't. I really tried to write it as if my mom were reading it (she's fairly computer savvy, so it's a good target for me. If my mom can start understanding my writing I can then move down and try to get my sisters too.)

# September 5, 2003 2:12 PM

Mr. M. Mouse said:

Disney tries to shuttle the critically injured off site so they can say that there have been no deaths on the property. In this case, the person was definately dead at the scene. The list below is SOME of the accidents that have happened at Disneyland.

Here is a link to Disney's Park Safety Site:
http://www.disney.go.com/parksafety/

Here is a list of accidents since 1990 @ Disneyland:

Disneyland accidents since 1990
The Orange County Register

May 5, 2001: Jeanne Gill, 73, suffered a fractured pelvis when a 20-foot oak tree fell in Frontierland. The tree smashed into a popcorn stand and injured 27.

Feb. 1, 2001: Melanie Hershock, 33, fell and hit her head on the plastic benches of a Pirates of the Caribbean boat when the boat jerked forward as she was exiting.

Jan. 21, 2001: A 6-year-old girl lost part of finger on a toy gun on Tom Sawyer Island.

Dec. 21, 2000: A 15-year-old Arizona boy fractured his foot on the Alice in Wonderland ride.

Sept. 22, 2000: Four-year-old Brandon Zucker was critically injured on the Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin ride after being trapped under one of the ride's cars.

July 31, 2000: A German tourist suffered a sprained foot and eight others received bruises after a wheel-support arm on a Space Mountain car came loose, causing the vehicle to skid and halt abruptly.

April 18, 2000: A 13-year-old Lake Forest girl's foot was caught under a car on the Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin ride. She was treated for minor injuries.

Dec. 24, 1998: Luan Phi Dawson, 33, DIED and a woman suffered head injuries after they were hit by a metal cleat that came loose from the Columbia sailing ship. A Disneyland employee also was injured in the accident and had surgery on an ankle.

January 1998: David Fackler, 5, suffered a serious foot injury on the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. His toes were later amputated.

April 17, 1994: A visitor fell 20 feet from the Skyway ride, tumbling into a tree.

March 31, 1990: A 13-year-old Canadian girl was injured when a support arm on the Dumbo Flying Elephant ride collapsed.

OTHERS: Regina Patino settled a lawsuit before trial in May 2002, alleging that she suffered permanent bodily injuries because of the Indiana Jones ride. (On June 21, 2001, Deborah Bynum of San Diego settled a lawsuit out of court alleging a brain hemorrhage was caused by the Indiana Jones ride Nov. 28, 1998. A similar lawsuit filed by Zipora Jacob of Los Angeles – for a brain injury allegedly caused by the violent shaking of the ride – was settled out of court June 1, 1999.)

http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=55601&section=BREAKING_NEWS&subsection=BREAKING_NEWS&year=2003&month=9&day=5

# September 5, 2003 7:02 PM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

Wait...you don't expect lay people to be able to set up WEP, but you *do* expect them to be able to set up a VPN!?! Come on, Robert...surely you jest. First of all, lay persons may not even have the necessary hardware and/or software to set up a VPN, and beyond that, many wouldn't have any clue how to set one up if they did.

So if they're not using WEP, and they're not able to set up a VPN like you did, they're basically sitting there with their wireless network open to anyone who wants to come along and use it.

What I find really funny about all of this is that I've yet to hear wireless AP manufacturers blamed for making it easy for people to get hacked, despite the fact that on most wireless routers and APs, the default settings are completely insecure. Sure, most of them default to NAT and use firewall settings to block traffic from the WAN connection, but that's not much help if someone can easily connect to your WLAN on the default settings. Given how much crap Microsoft gets for their insecure defaults, I have to wonder why there's not more noise about this. Probably because people recognize that it would be next to impossible to sell an AP with completely secure defaults that would still be useful.

# September 5, 2003 7:05 PM

Paschal said:

I am not sure to fully understand the last sentence of your post, are you saying that you are a more important person than this unfortunate man?!?

I would believe it's a mispelling.

# September 5, 2003 7:58 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Between you and Andrew, I swear man you need to quit taking everything so pessimistically.

Funny, I never used the word "I" in the sentance in question.

NO, what I said was, seeing as how it was Labor Day, a lot more people could have been hurt. Oh wait, that's right. You don't celebrate Labor Day.

I dream of the day that you have something nice to say in my blog. I'm not holding my breath though.

# September 5, 2003 8:04 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Again, good points. If you notice, the VPN part was not a part of the initial setup procedures I discussed. It was a response to your query. Had I intended VPN to be a part of the discussion, it would have been included in the tutorial. Note that the comment was specifically targeted at you.

Now, I invite you to go back to that blackpaper link you pointed me to. Click it. Now, try actually reading it this time. Don't just skim it and use it for a rebuttal. COMPREHEND it. You'll find striking similarities to things I said. You'll also find parts where it talks about turning off the SSID, and filtering MAC addresses, and so forth. Yes, it does say that these methods are not 100% secure. I never said they were. I did say they were pretty effective most of the time. Which is exponentially better than nothing.

And on that note, I think I'm finished on this topic. I posted this to help out someone who wanted my advice, not to have a lengthy discussion about WiFi security. For the target audience, my tutorial was adequate and accurate. If you need to implement WiFi in a corporation, look elsewhere. That was not the point. Scoble's house is not a multinational corporation.

# September 5, 2003 8:18 PM

Roy Osherove said:

Congratulations on a great idea and an even better implementation!

# September 5, 2003 9:07 PM

Robert McLaws said:

hey thanks :).

# September 5, 2003 9:09 PM

Rob said:

Robert, I had a similar, stop and makes you think, experience last Sunday.

I was out flying a plane I had rented and had just flown over my house and was jazzed as it was the first time my wife has seen me fly a plane (she was out on the deck) when I had a complete avionics power failure and the battery was drained. The engine was still running fine on the magnetos but I had no radio and no flaps and had to make a precautionary landing at a small air strip where I really needed to nail the landing (because of no flaps and the short length of the field).

Now this wasn't a huge deal because of my training and the fact that the engine wasn't affected, but you can bet when the plane came safely to a stop on the runway, I had one of those moments!...so I know exactly what you are talking about.

Rob

# September 5, 2003 9:32 PM

Toby J Boyd said:

Before I even add my .02 I want to say thanks to Robert McLaws, this "thread" put me down a path that eventually ended in success.

You are all 100% more advanced than I am and have likely moved on, but I had the exact same problem with the memory stream. I decided to stick it out. The key I found was to use

ToArray(); Rather than GetBuffer;
Here are parts of the code I used, I apologize for the sloppiness.

#creating the xmltextwriter
ms = new MemoryStream();
xmlw = new XmlTextWriter(ms, new System.Text.UTF8Encoding());
xmlw.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;

#turning the memorystream into a byte[] array so I can pass to to my socket later
byte[] _message = ms.ToArray();
#This is pivitol, using ms.GetBuffer() results in the extra padding that exists in the memorystream.

#now how I wrote it to file, I test was if it opened in IE (which uses the MSXML parser, then the java server on the other end using sax would be happy)

Stream outputStream = File.OpenWrite(@"c:\zplease.xml");

outputStream.Write(_message,0,_message.Length);
outputStream.Flush();
outputStream.Close();

I hope this helps someone, because it has driven me up the wall for about 4 hours.

My Guess is that Joshua Allen's solution works because he used the Stream Reader on the MemoryStream. I did not try his solution though.

# September 6, 2003 11:28 AM

TrackBack said:

# September 7, 2003 7:57 PM

Paul Wilson said:

Check out my web service -- it uses my master pages and looks just like the rest of my site:

http://www.wilsondotnet.com/Demos/WeatherWS.asmx

# September 9, 2003 6:32 PM

Scott Cate said:

Thanks, these things really help

# September 10, 2003 1:58 PM

Dumky said:

It is amazing the number of blogs that don't set the title correctly, even though it helps the readers and indexers (and thus the author too ;-).
I mailed to Scott (of weblogs.asp.net) and he said he'd probably fix that in .Text in the next major release.

# September 11, 2003 8:11 PM

Dave Burke said:

That was a beautiful post. Well said and thank you.

# September 11, 2003 9:05 PM

Michael Slade said:

Robert,

I am willing to help you put on this BOF.

# September 11, 2003 10:22 PM

Robert McLaws said:

:) Glad you liked it.

# September 12, 2003 12:42 AM

Michael Favro said:

You are the most articulate early-20-something that I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Well said, and keep it up for those of us who can't quite say it as well!

# September 12, 2003 4:13 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Wow. Thank you Michael. I really appreciate that. You made my night.

# September 12, 2003 4:29 AM

Rachel Reese said:

that is way cool.

# September 12, 2003 1:27 PM

Scott Glasgow said:

Robert,

You could try SecureWebs. I used them about 4 years or so ago, so I don't know how they are now, but at the time they provided very good service.
http://www.securewebs.com/Windows+dedicated.html

# September 12, 2003 1:46 PM

Brian Goldfarb said:

Check out http://www.asp.net/hosters/
It has a solid list of hosters that we are working with, you can probably find someone to meet your needs there.

-Brian

# September 12, 2003 1:55 PM

timh said:

www.serverbeach.com -- lowest dedicated hosting available...

# September 12, 2003 1:59 PM

Scott Watermasysk said:

I have had good experiences with http://securewebs.com

I run all of my sites off a dedicated box there now.

# September 12, 2003 2:03 PM

M. Keith Warren said:

www.discountasp.net

Cheapest...

# September 12, 2003 2:11 PM

Martin Spedding said:

Hi,

you could try http://www.crystaltech.com

I have always found them very responsive and they provide an excellent service.

Martin

# September 12, 2003 2:53 PM

TrackBack said:

Builder.com - Developing Components: Assembly Identification

# September 12, 2003 6:05 PM

TrackBack said:

Don Box

# September 12, 2003 6:11 PM

TrackBack said:

Six Apart

# September 12, 2003 6:12 PM

TrackBack said:

Scobleizer Weblog

# September 12, 2003 6:13 PM

TrackBack said:

Basic .NET: Framework Compatibility Issues

# September 12, 2003 6:14 PM

TrackBack said:

Lorenzo Barbieri

# September 12, 2003 6:15 PM

David Knight said:

Whatever you do, don't try aspwebhosting. One day they decided I was using too much cpu time and suspended my account. Those bastards took my site offline, removed my email account, and refused to let me get even backup of sql-server data. The loss of time and effort combined with damage to my business is unforgivable.

# September 13, 2003 1:12 AM

MikeWo said:

I second Martin's recommendation of CrystalTech. Over the past three years they have consistently increased their offerings and features while my cost has gone DOWN! They actually lowered the hosting cost on ALL of their plans when they released a big upgrade to their control center application. I don't have a dedicated plan there, but you might check them out. They are VERY reseller friendly as well.

# September 13, 2003 9:35 AM

Nino Benvenuti said:

I will support Mike (Hi Mike!) and Martin's recommendation of CrystalTech. Features are great, cost is good (gone down!), and service is excellent.

# September 14, 2003 2:04 PM

Jerry Dennany said:

Robert,

Comparing racial bigotry with dislike for a distinct corporation and its practices probably was:

1. Not the smartest thing to do.
2. Not particularly on-point.
3. A flawed analogy.

You are comparing racial stereotypes with an individual corporation. While racial stereotypes are likely baseless, the dislike many people have for Microsoft is usually based on personal experience.

# September 14, 2003 8:35 PM

cameron said:

Yup, if you disagree with Microsoft, you're a racist. Good one!

# September 14, 2003 8:56 PM

TrackBack said:

# September 14, 2003 11:01 PM

Robert McLaws said:

"does not mean that old viewpoints don't stick. Take another old viewpoint for example: Some people still think black people are inferior to white people. Some people will go to their grave with that belief. And there is nothing you can do to stop it."

I think you both misread my post. You might want to read it again. The emphasis was not on racism. The emphasis was on the belief, and how it is hard to change beliefs. I chose one that was easy to understand. Don't take it out of context.

# September 14, 2003 11:05 PM

Shannon J Hager said:

It all boils down to "us vs. them". For the *nix crew, MS is "them". Logic, understanding, etc, isn't important when the only goal is for "us" to beat "them". That is the same thinking that backs racism, nationalism, American politics (unfortunately) and football.
It is okay and harmless (for the most part) in football, but in the rest of the cases, it does more harm than good.

# September 14, 2003 11:21 PM

Dave said:

"Scoble told me recently that it would take a decade for MS to recover from the damage MSBlaster and its variants did to their reputation."

This evokes several reactions from me.

First off, IMHO MS is to blame for MSBlaster and the damage it caused. Yeah yeah they put a patch out a month before, but I'm speaking about the _real_ blame here: a solid decade of work where security was a distant second (or worse) priority to functionality/interactiveness.

Second, I have and will continue to applaud MS for how they accepted their part of MSBlaster and how they responded with what I thought was genuine concern - for once willing to put their resources where their marketing mouth is.

Third, I have and will continue to be critical of MS for their unwillingness to release coherant upgrades/SPs/patches to their existing products because they are so damn focused on products with release dates 2+ years off. If you want to talk about damage to their reputation, look here first. What are non-commercial users and non-developers to think as they discover XP SP4 is being released nearly 9 months late? Or that IE and OE will not have any future releases?

Finally, I feel - and obviously many planners at MS do too - that Scoble is overestimating things here. MS' reputation will recover from the MSBlaster damage quickly and decisively in some 2+ years when Longhorn is released with the same kind of public acceptance that Win95 had.

What does this mean in regards to _my_ 'beliefs' regarding MS? Um, like most everything in life - mixed, with much more grey than either black or white.

# September 14, 2003 11:54 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Just so that you know, MS is releasing a "Security Rollup" pre-SP2 package with 22 patches in it.

# September 15, 2003 1:07 AM

Robert McLaws said:

BTW Dave, it's always great to see your comments. Thanks.

# September 15, 2003 1:08 AM

cameron said:

Robert: "Some people will go to the grave thinking that anyone who works at Microsft should rot in hell."

I've never met anyone that thinks that way, although I've met a lot of people that disliked Microsoft business practices, Microsoft products, or both -- sometimes irrationally so. That's not to say that there could not be some 12 year olds on /. that think just what you wrote, but what are *you* doing (a) wasting time worrying about them and (b) wasting time pretending to defend Microsoft from them?

It's like a siege mentality, except there's no one outside the gates.

# September 15, 2003 8:17 AM

timh said:

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3076701

# September 15, 2003 2:48 PM

TrackBack said:

# September 17, 2003 3:10 AM

Jonne Kats said:

Red alert, battle stations...

# September 17, 2003 3:46 AM

julie said:

are gentials and fallicly an attempt to make sure google doesn't pick up your blog when people actually search on the properly spelled versions of those terms? :-)

# September 17, 2003 3:40 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Actually yes :-D. The last thing I want to to be blocked by some kid content filtering program or rating system.

# September 17, 2003 3:56 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Fixed. Thanks Julia.

# September 17, 2003 3:59 PM

Duncan said:

I think you should always assume that your data is not safe regardless of what database it is on and act accordingly.

# September 17, 2003 6:00 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Well, of course, but how are you gonna protect yourself from a buffer overflow?

# September 17, 2003 6:09 PM

Dan Bright said:

I agree Robert. In the last 2-3 days Ive seen posts on /. about a remote sendmail exploit, AND a remote SSH exploit, but they were both mentioned as almost in passing.

Compare that to the hoopla surrounding the RPC vuln...

# September 17, 2003 6:37 PM

Daniel O'Connell said:

Ya know, a year or two back redhats rpc.statd had a buffer overflow that allowed for rooting of the box.
I saw personally saw more data loss and more people infected by that than I did blaster, although blaster did infect a great deal more than I suspect the entirety of the linux user pool.
These machines were, instead of being used in DDoS rings, being used as pirated file distribution centers, open proxies, eggdrop bots, launch platforms for additional, more intrusive exploiting and other such things.

Still...I had to spend a while researching to figure out what was going on, several of the machines were cleaned up before I saw any mention of it in the mass media.

# September 17, 2003 6:56 PM

julie said:

so why did you change it? Now you will be the favorite porn .net blogger on google! :-)

# September 17, 2003 7:16 PM

Joe said:

"How do you know when you've won? When the company that you are trying to be better than starts copying you."

That couldn't be true or we could have concluded Java as the winner a long time ago.

# September 17, 2003 8:11 PM

John said:

You "KNOW" your data is safe in SQL Server. How? Have you personally reviewed every line of code and verified there are no bugs, no security holes?
Sounds to me like a classic case of burying your head in the sand.
Taking such an extreme position is as bad as any Microsoft-bashing statements from the Linux community.

# September 17, 2003 8:36 PM

Robert McLaws said:

How is knowing my data is safe an extreme position? I know it's safe in SQL Server based on it's track record. The funny thing about knowledge is that it changes from day to day. What I know today may be different tomorrow. It usually is. But that's ok. It's not extreme.

And I am the last person on earth you will ever find burying their head in the sand when it comes to technology.

# September 17, 2003 9:01 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I would agree, but .NET is not a copy of Java. Microsoft has always been about being simple for developers. It took MS kicking their butt at the powerful stuff for Sun to start going after simplicity.

# September 17, 2003 9:03 PM

Cameron said:

The problem for Microsoft is that 90% of the world's population is looking for an alternative to Windows, primarily because they can't afford it or don't want to buy it. That means unless Microsoft makes Windows very affordable and attractive to the world outside the US borders, .NET will die (not literally, but it will not thrive, which for a proprietary development platform like .NET is market death) because those billions of people that will be running Lindows or whatever are all consumers, and a developer using .NET automatically will lose many potential customers.

While that doesn't mean much to the US VB.net developer getting paid $100k to write Windows apps to integrate Excel and SQL Server yet again, it makes a huge difference to the developers making $3k or $10k a year elsewhere in the world selling their software and services for a fraction of what we think of as "the sustenance level".

I don't know if Java (maybe) or Mono (doubtful) or what will be the solution of choice. Hopefully something better than either, and probably not a step backwards into the proprietary-land that .NET represents.

Peace.

# September 17, 2003 10:30 PM

Ray Jezek said:

In this game, as soon as someone says the've won, they've lost.

You just can't stop... ever.

# September 17, 2003 10:52 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Agreed, Ray. And MS is not stopping. You should see Whidbey, Longhorn, and Yukon.

# September 17, 2003 11:46 PM

Arkitect said:

Quote: IBM's DB2 Database program for Linux has an easy to exploit buffer overflow vulnerability

Note: It is not Linux that is vulnerable, it is IBM's program that is vulnerable.

Quote: MSBlaster was only a nuisance

Note: If MSBlaster used the exploit to the maximum, it could have erased all the data from a computer.

Just curious, are you just missing out these facts or are you deliberately trying to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt ?

# September 18, 2003 6:14 AM

Robert McLaws said:

The vulnerability only manifested itself on the Linux version. If you took my statement to read that it was a Linux issue, sorry. My statement meant that buffer overflow issues son't just happen on Windows.

Blaster could have been worse. It wasn't. It could (possibly) have deleted data if it had fully exploited the vulnerability. It didn't. I was speaking to data store vulnerabilities, not OS vulnerabilities.

You call it FUD, and that's you're perrogative. I call it awareness. Plain and simple.

# September 18, 2003 11:20 AM

Ray Jezek said:

I hope i get to see them soon! I should know soon enough.

# September 18, 2003 1:25 PM

Stephane Rodriguez said:

Any figures of .NET adoption in the corporate world? Just curious.

# September 20, 2003 4:31 AM

Robert McLaws said:

I can find out. I saw some at one point when they were talking about Windows Server 2003 adoption.

# September 20, 2003 4:38 AM

brady gaster said:

[insert words here]

(as in, i'm speechless)

# September 20, 2003 5:05 PM

TrackBack said:

# September 20, 2003 5:37 PM

Don said:

Thats funny... I thought I was the only one with the closet addiction of checking my referrer log religiously... I'm like an addict. I click on all the google links to see what people were searching on...

Hell, I'm just stoked people take the time out to read my brain dumps!

# September 20, 2003 6:19 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Agreed :).

# September 20, 2003 6:26 PM

Shannon J Hager said:

If Hotmail and Outlook sent a referrer when a user clicked the link in an email, you'd have a few more in your stats, Robert. I've emailed at least a couple links to your posts.

# September 20, 2003 6:35 PM

Brian Desmond said:

I look at mine sometimes too - I've taken to using Google searches as inspiration for blogs. People search for stuff that I don't have (but click through)...

--Brian

# September 20, 2003 8:52 PM

denny said:

some do that now....

here is the real problem:

many servers relay, some times for good reason.
and even if the reciver tests the IP Vs. MX one error will bounce good email.

My idea: make server operators pay for the traffic the exchange, so if my server gets hundreds of emails from your server you owe me cash money, telco's do this and use in/out
to say if you and I each swap 100 then the payments cross cancel.

this would do several things:
a) every email server sending email would care about the "proof" of the email as coming from a valid user and going to some other server.
b) every reciving server could stop accepting email from a non-paying server.

this takes the word "SPAM" out of the conversation and makes it very easy to regulate UCE -- as it's now "did you pay the bill?"

get it?

# September 22, 2003 2:03 PM

Mathew Nolton said:

I agree. That article is a real nimrod who hasn't done his homework

<cite>
"Contrary to Microsoft's claims, open standards does not necessarily mean open environments. Microsoft's Steve Ballmer has said that .Net delivers benefits as a Web services platform through XML (Extensible Markup Language) connectivity extended across clients and servers. The problem with that simplistic view is that while XML and Web services break down barriers when used with open standards, .Net creates insidious new barriers by promoting vendor lock-in for customers.
</cite>

What barriers. If he is talking about writing Java code on a Windows box. If so, nothing is stopping him. Who says Microsoft has to adopt Sun's standards of Java anyway. duhhh. Furthermore, if he is talking about writing webservices with .net that interoperate with other "java" platforms. They do interoperate. If he is talking about interoperating following WS-Security specification. They do. I just went through a whole proof of concept that proved java could interoperate with our webservices using WS-Security. There are no "insidious" barriers using .net based webservices.

This article and this nimrod really got me fired up. I will have to blog about it later

# September 22, 2003 2:19 PM

Scott Galloway said:

I know you're not into flamewars...but if .NET doesn't run on Linux - I'm seeing things...as I have it running on Linux (Mandrake 9.0) right now with some fairly heavyweight apps. MONO 0.26 is VERY stable and runs *most* .NET apps without any modification.
It's what VMWare was made for (also really annoys my Unix guru friends when I show them a GTK# app :-)

# September 22, 2003 2:59 PM

Mathew Nolton said:

Not into flamewars either. But who says that .Net needs to run on Linux anyway for interoperability of webservices? Take this quote for example:
<cite name="bob cancilla">
Redmond's approach to Web services is a dead-end of closed, Windows-only systems that lock customers into a single computing model. Customers don't have the freedom to choose the best hardware or operating system. Where does that leave the millions of users who rely on non-Microsoft platforms such as mainframes, Unix or Linux?
</cite>
This statement is a moronic statement and wholly without forthought.

If you are writing a webservice on a Microsoft platform, then use .Net or use BEA WebStudio or IBM WSTK 3.3.

I actually like the Java language, but who says that its Microsoft's responsibility to provide it. Or provide an implementation of their tools on Linux. The questions are:
1) Can Java tools run on Windows platform effectively?
Answer) Yes
2) Can Webservices created with .Net interoperate with Java based systems without any special coding?
Answer) Yes

Everything else is academic.

# September 22, 2003 3:27 PM

Jerry Dennany said:

It's considered 'bad manners' and sometimes breaks contractual obligations to resolve IP addresses that you do not 'own'. And we are talking owning in the sense that you own an IP block, not just that you have a semi-permanent "static" IP from your DSL or cable internet provider.

There's actually a new Internet Draft for an SMTP replacement called AMTP. It's an interesting read:

<A HREF="http://amtp.bw.org/">http://amtp.bw.org/</A>

# September 22, 2003 4:02 PM

Robert McLaws said:

I mean, take my company for example. My e-mail address is robert at interscapeusa.com. Now, under this idea, I would have to register my home machine IP in my interscapeusa.com DNS settings, so that the mailserver would query the DNS to make sure my IP is listed as one of the members of that domain. If it's not, it won't let that address be delivered because it does not match the records.

# September 22, 2003 4:10 PM

William Bartholomew said:

Astaro lets you do something along these lines by:

a. Checking that the domain actually is a mail server (often they aren't)

b. Checking that the from address is a recipient on that mail server

A great product, I HIGHLY recommend it. It's free for home use.

# September 22, 2003 5:40 PM

Robert Scoble said:

Do you have an agenda? We should start thinking about things we should talk about.

Also, there'll be a separate weblog event during the big party. More info will come on that soon.

# September 22, 2003 6:55 PM

TrackBack said:

# September 22, 2003 6:58 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Someone helped me brainstorm ideas for the session, but I don't have anything down for an official agenda yet. That is what the BWG (The BOF Working Group, namely you and everyone else that wants to help) is gonna figure out.

# September 22, 2003 7:02 PM

Ugly Troll said:

Uhh...The Open source crowd resemble Republicans (lower taxes - software is free !, less government - no more MS !) and Microsoft is more of a Democrat (desktop computer for everyone !) company.

# September 22, 2003 11:25 PM

bobbyd said:

I agree!

# September 23, 2003 12:34 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Well, I was going more for how they are portrayed in the media then the actual ideal, but I think you get the drift. And I think MS is very Republican.

# September 23, 2003 3:17 AM

gerrard said:

Um, how do I know when/where this is? It's probably on the PDC site somewhere, but I'm lazy.

# September 23, 2003 11:49 AM

TrackBack said:

# September 23, 2003 5:13 PM

Harris Reynolds said:

Yes, the article was not corroborated very well. Furthermore, the author mixes two orthogonal topics: [1] The openness of the .Net *platform* and [2] the MS implementation of web services. Two totally different topics.

There is alot to topic [1]; the .Net BCL is obviously a proprietary MS API, but C# is a wide open standard submitted to the ECMA. Anyone can implement C# which makes that element completely open (i.e. Mono); it'll be interesting to see how MS responds to Mono's exact copy of their API. Some good discussion of the openness of .Net can be found here: http://www.burtongroup.com/weblogs/annethomasmanes/

Regarding topic [2], the MS web services stack is fantastic and likely the most *complete* implementation of open standards available. Additionally it integrates well with Java products like GLUE.

# September 23, 2003 9:31 PM

TrackBack said:

# September 23, 2003 9:48 PM

Scott Galloway said:

Have to wonder if it's a 'protecting the public' type thing or if it's to avoid litigation...

# September 24, 2003 3:51 AM

Greg said:

we welcome him back to the east with open arms

# September 24, 2003 4:00 PM

Robert Scoble said:

How about we do both?

# September 25, 2003 2:18 AM

Christophe Lauer said:

Do you mean that the PDC is over-hyped? ;-))

# September 25, 2003 3:34 PM

Robert McLaws said:

No, I mean that bloggers can't talk about anything more than programming at blogger parties. I would like to get to know people outside of their job too ya know ;).

Of course I'm just as guilty... I talked to Paul at Xheo.com for 3 hours sitting outside Downtown Disney and all we talked about was code.

# September 25, 2003 4:47 PM

Lorenzo Barbieri said:

The comments on the other blog are corrupted.
Missing email module...

Welcome back!

# September 30, 2003 2:27 PM

Robert McLaws said:

What did it do?

# September 30, 2003 2:36 PM

Denny said:

Hmmm...... some kind of "Executive Overview" from the MS web site as a start ??

Aside from that ..... WOW kinda like looking for a book on x86 for non assembers :-)

# September 30, 2003 4:38 PM

Michael Favro said:

Don't know how detailed this book is: http://www.rollthunder.com/imdn.aspx.

Looks like you'll have to write one - in your spare time!

# September 30, 2003 4:40 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Spare time???!?! WTF is that? ;)

# September 30, 2003 4:41 PM

Douglas Reilly said:

Introducing Microsoft .NET is not dated (at least not the current (third) edition. I have given it to a couple of sort of technical (but not at all developer or network people) managers and they fount it to be a good intro.

# September 30, 2003 4:59 PM

Philip Scott said:

We've had a couple of brave souls dig through the Introducing Microsoft .NET. The way it is structured is that David shows common scenarios, and shows how .NET attempts to solve them. Non techies could stop there, because he goes on to show some simple code examples demonstrating .NET solving the problem.

Pretty good book, and probably would only take a sales/marketing guy a couple of hours to go through.

# September 30, 2003 5:02 PM

Eric said:

From what I remember, my manager (semi technical) really liked "Introducing MS .NET" from MS Press.

When I was in Barnes and Noble last, I remember seeing a book the was something like ".NET for Managers". I remember reading the back, and it stated that it was specifically for non-technical people.

Eric

# September 30, 2003 6:36 PM

Randy H. said:

The Chappell book is the one you want.

# September 30, 2003 8:44 PM

Jesse Ezell said:

I agree, Introducing .NET is a really good start.

# September 30, 2003 10:15 PM

Weston Binford said:

I have to agree that Chappell's book is what you should get.

# October 1, 2003 1:04 AM

Ajay Juneja said:

AWESOME :)
congrats on becoming an MVP so early! I'm probably not going the same route, as I'm 22 and a Speech Recognition nut, but it's great to see young minds achieving so much!

# October 1, 2003 9:02 PM

Roy Osherove said:

Congrats!!! you totally deserve it. Keep up the great work!

# October 1, 2003 9:48 PM

Roy Osherove said:

Amazing graphics dude.

# October 1, 2003 9:50 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Thank Paul at Xheo.com for that one.... he did them all himself.

# October 1, 2003 9:54 PM

Roy Osherove said:

Far out! I'm impressed.

# October 1, 2003 9:57 PM

SBC said:

Robert - thanks for your good efforts in keeping us informed!

# October 1, 2003 9:57 PM

Patrick Steele said:

Congratulations Robert! Welcome to the gang!

# October 1, 2003 10:02 PM

Jeffrey Randow said:

Congratulations!! Hope to see you at some of the future events... :)

# October 1, 2003 10:21 PM

TrackBack said:

Congrats to the new MS MVPs!

# October 2, 2003 2:42 AM

Jonne Kats said:

Congrats my friend, i'm also at the age of 21. Hope to join you some day...

# October 2, 2003 3:23 AM

Jason Mauss said:

Robert, it's great to see other young dev'ers out there doing so much. I just turned 23 over the summer and have achieved stuff like writing for major tech publications, consulting to Microsoft on their MCAD certification guides, and starting up a company. Congrats on the MVP award. Don't worry about Brian Desmond, he's just a freak of nature nobody can explain .. j/k ;-)

# October 2, 2003 7:02 AM

Christophe Lauer said:

Looks like Vnunet.fr has found this article soooo good that they have translated it in French:
www.zdnet.fr/techupdate/applications/0,39020852,39125045,00.htm ;-))

# October 2, 2003 9:23 AM

TrackBack said:

# October 2, 2003 10:09 AM

Mattias Sjögren said:

Congrats and welcome to the MVP gang! I know there's at least one more guy younger than you; George Moldova (Office MVP) is about the same age as Brian. And then there's Josh Mitts, who was a .NET MVP two years ago at 15 I believe, and now works for Microsoft. Personally I turn 23 next week.

# October 2, 2003 6:10 PM

Phil Scott said:

I wonder if they have a COM programming section of their site called com.com.com?

# October 3, 2003 4:23 PM

Robert McLaws said:

LMAO

# October 3, 2003 4:26 PM

Doug Thews said:

Quick question. What happens when you want to do a major overhaul on graphics (say, a complete UI change) for your site. Do you just come up with new names for the graphics (like "arrow" or "button") and double the amount of images on your Image site until the application is published?

Otherwise, you've got no way to introduce new graphics without impacting your production site. Plus, if you did pump in newly designed UI graphics (that are unapproved), you'll have to publish them to a production server without really being approved for production.

This can lead to issues - especially if you're coming out with a new design that you want to keep hidden from the public (or competitors) until the official unveiling.

Just a thought.

# October 3, 2003 5:05 PM

Robert McLaws said:

That is a very good point, and one that I had considered. On the next iteration of our site, all the graphics will be stored at http://images.interscapeusa.com/v2 and so forth. This way, we can keep the graphics separate, but if some website on the internet is referencing them (like the ASP.NET Forums), then they won't break.

# October 3, 2003 5:09 PM

Doug Thews said:

Cool. I just wonder how big your graphics are? Are there any storage concerns with keeping multiple versions? Do you foresee any problems with the web hits you'll receive while testing (specifically running stress testing) on your development apps. as they'll be hitting a production server (even though the graphics are in a different subdirectory)?

# October 4, 2003 11:17 AM

Ajay Juneja said:

Congrats! RobW, that was a great idea to post it to NTBUGTRAQ -- I would have suggested it myself if you didn't!!

# October 4, 2003 12:35 PM

Robert McLaws said:

To be honest, I have 120GB of drive space, and over 1TB of transfer, so I'm not terribly concerned about space or bandwidth. Also, there is a big difference in an application versus a corporate-presence website. We do not build graphics-laden web apps, so it's not really an issue for us. In my experience, no one cares how pretty the site is if it doesn't do it's job. IMO, you get the app working 100% like it needs to, without question, and THEN you spend time making it pretty. Once you do that, you do an effective job of graphics caching, so that they do not affect the performance of the app.

# October 4, 2003 7:59 PM

Greg Robinson said:

v 2 is out already...not much difference other than update implementation.

# October 6, 2003 2:33 PM

Dave Burke said:

Loved it, Robert. Thanks. I would have missed a great rosherove comments thread if not for your post.

# October 6, 2003 3:12 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Ya that is the one I'm using.

# October 6, 2003 3:18 PM

SBC said:

Also try the User Interface Process & Excep Handling App blocks (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnbda/html/emab-rm.asp?frame=true). good pieces of work.. got it to work right (finally..)..

# October 6, 2003 4:34 PM

James Avery said:

I would use exceptions, because if I understand it correctly, that is exactly what this is... an exception. Exceptions may be more expensive than some of the alternatives, but if is truly an exception, meaning that it will not happen very often, then it should not be a performance issue.

I think alot of times we get stuck programming for the exceptions, when instead we should be programming for the norm and accomodating the exceptions.

-James

# October 7, 2003 8:18 PM

Mathew Nolton said:

I agree exceptions are the way to go. As for validating parameters/properties, etc. I am a firm believer in the use of Validator classes. For example:

public string SomeMethod(
[StringNotNullValidator()]
string param1 )
{
(new MethodValidator).Validate(
this, "SomeMethod", param1);
}
This implementation is something I have written, but the premise of what you are talking about is the same ( I think ). Defensive coding will always save you many headaches down the road.

-Mathew Nolton

# October 7, 2003 8:25 PM

Toby Tellier said:

The slow loading was irritating but I was too lazy to search out an answer. Thanks so much, your suggestion worked like a charm. I love rss feeds.

# October 8, 2003 6:27 PM

Chris Martin said:

Don't forget to move the directories too.

Thanks man. I can't believe how much faster it loads.

# October 8, 2003 7:29 PM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

That's most certainly an improvement. I'd be interested, however, in knowing just what it is that I'm disabling, in case I need to re-enable it at some point. If anyone has resources for that, a pointer would be nice.

# October 8, 2003 9:12 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Click back througth the guy's links, I thought he talked about it.

# October 8, 2003 9:20 PM

Matt Watson said:

Does this work in Acrobat 5? I went to do it, but it doesn't have a printme.api so I'm hesitant to do anything.

Anyone know?
matthew.watson@prlnet.com

# October 9, 2003 9:18 AM

Darrell said:

Hey, he took that from me! See http://dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/darrell.norton/posts/2095.aspx

# October 9, 2003 9:51 AM

Darrell said:

Forgot to congratulate you on the MVP award earlier. Good job!

# October 9, 2003 9:53 AM

Salim Morgan said:

VS appears to not like its own code. I did a databind to "selectedvalue". Code appeared in the HTML as follows:

asp:DropDownList id="ddlbBusUnitSubset" style="Z-INDEX: 113; LEFT: 720px; POSITION: absolute; TOP: 96px" runat="server" Width="216px" SelectedValue='<%# DataBinder.Eval(dsPromotions1, "Tables[PromoHeader].DefaultView.[0].BusUnitSubsetID") %>'>
</asp:DropDownList>

But it appeared to reject its own code. There was a squiggly line under "SelectedValue" which on mouseover said, "Could not find any attribute 'SelectedValue' of element 'DropDownList'"

Have you ever seen this? Functionally it is NOT working. I've reinstalled the Framework and VS but still have the same symptom on two different machines.

Any Ideas?

(samorgan@java-man.com)

# October 9, 2003 2:35 PM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

You're terrible...but it *has* been a while since they blogged. ;-)

# October 9, 2003 3:51 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Yeah Rob hasn't blogged in 3 months. I wan't kidding about my room tho... it was awful cold when I woke up this morning... ;)

# October 9, 2003 4:02 PM

Shannon J Hager said:

maybe it is part of their job to advertise their upcoming products? those posts are little more than advertisements.

# October 9, 2003 4:14 PM

Michael Favro said:

Well...at least they blogged. Maybe now they remember that blogging isn't at painful as they might remember. And maybe this means that they may be getting a little more time on their hands to blog. And maybe when they blog again, it won't be quite so ad-like. Maybe.

(I'd venture to guess that after PDC, when the cone of silence has been lifted about all the cool stuff I won't get to see since I'm not going, that there will be a flash-flood of blogging from those who have remained silent for so long. More signal, less noise.)

# October 9, 2003 4:24 PM

tim h said:

robert,

regarding your comment of:
"Here is what I still have a problem with: I don't have a way yet for GenX.NET to be able to call up providers through a configuration file instead of an enumeration. I want to completely separate all the providers from the main assembly, so that I can, for example, fix a bug in the XmlFormatProvider (don't even get me started on that HACK) without affecting the main engine assembly. I'll have to figure that out for GenX.NET 3.1, when we also introduce some cool new features for API design."

take a lesson from either asp.net 2.0 design patterns or the petshop design factory...enable Interfaces for your "stuff" and then you can set the provider in a config file...as long as it implements your interfaces, all is well.

# October 9, 2003 7:40 PM

Robert McLaws said:

That is my intention, but I'm waiting until I can get my hands on some official implementation, so that my implementation does not contradict and fufure implementation Microsoft may cook up. Also, we already use interfaces, it's just that I have an enumeration to specify all the internal ones. In the next version, I want to break them all out in a separate assembly, and probably modify the Provider Factories.

For now, the fact that I'm working to introduce the world to Providers, and that the implementation is decent for what I'm needing it to do, is ok with me. I can make it better in the next release. This is not to say that what I'm doing now is bad, I just know it can be better.

# October 9, 2003 7:50 PM

Phil said:

Good post. Something than Kernighan & Pike address in "The Practice of Programming".

# October 9, 2003 9:05 PM

Paul Ferrill said:

FYI - Hell is located about 30 miles northwest of Ann Arbor, MI and will shortly begin to freeze over...

# October 10, 2003 10:49 AM

Robert A. Wlodarczyk said:

Awesome! :)

# October 10, 2003 6:48 PM

Thomas Tomiczek said:

Be careful :-)

I havea shuttle on my desk. It would be relatively silent when I actually would not have anATI Radeon 9700 pro in.

I throw it out next week against a MidiTower with handpicked silenced components: Passive Cooling for the graphics card, super-silent CPU cooler and super silend power supply.

The Shuttle behaves like a heating unig (the air coming out at the end is HOT), and is is NOISY.

I will see ow it behaves when I reactivate it without the additional graphics card and a new fan sysem (that is much less noisy).

# October 12, 2003 5:37 AM

Ashutosh Nilkanth said:

Looks awesome, except for "no parallel ports" ;-)

# October 12, 2003 5:48 AM

denny said:

yep thats it.

a short info on LISP

one of the "Classic" AI languages

stands for LISt Processing
AFAIK recall

can be used for string processing problems.

was used by a school to do an AI system
where it built up a database of word-relations and english grammer / syntax.

a program on PBS showed a sample of one production....

it would ask a question each time it "thought" it found a valid statement.

so it asked if this was true:

a father is to a family as a dictator is to a small country?

this was a ? it made based on it's data about the key words Father,Family,COuntry,Dictator

not bad.... this was I think late 70's or early 80's so it took a day to process a few words and formulate a set of questions.

# October 12, 2003 8:46 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Yeah, I've heard that they can be loud and hot too, but I have a 1U rackmountable server with 4 cooling fans, that makes my room almost 4 degrees hotter than the rest of the house. Anything will be better than that.

Ash... parallel ports? Dude next thing you're gonna want are ISA slots too... ;)

# October 12, 2003 2:11 PM

John Watson said:

Don't remember how long ago it was or where it came from but I've always tried to adhere to the notion of "positive tests" which tends to avoid the notion of "assuming benevolence". So personally I would've written:

DWORD dwRet = IsAccessAllowed(...);
// if success
if (dwRet == 0) {
else
//Security check failed [for whatever reason]

# October 13, 2003 1:50 PM

Robert McLaws said:

John,

I may be mistaken, but isn't that what my second example in the original post showed?

-Robert

# October 13, 2003 1:58 PM

Addy Santo said:

Monkey see, Monkey do, Monkey gets brain formatted because Monkey didn't apply latest security patch.

# October 13, 2003 2:09 PM

Robert McLaws said:

LMAO

# October 13, 2003 2:15 PM

chadb said:

don't leave us hanging! docs DOCS!

# October 13, 2003 11:57 PM

Paul Nicholls said:

I tried it, and it's the second result under Support and Troubleshooting:

http://search.microsoft.com/search/results.aspx?st=b&na=80&qu=enable+dtc&View=en-us

And the first result from support.ms.com. Maybe they've got indexing issues? Strange.

# October 15, 2003 4:59 AM

Mark said:

Join the club :( I was having problems with XP blue-screening all the time. On avg at least once a day. So I turned on Driver Verifier and guess what. Blue-Screen within 15 seconds of boot. After several hours of safe boots and blue-screens gradually removing drivers from Driver Verification I found that once I removed an unsigned driver installed as part of Norton AV, all my problems went away. I ditched AV and went with onother vender. Havn't had a blue screen since. You would 'think' a company with the stature of Symantec would at least sign their drivers, to say nothing of running them under Driver Verifier before release.

# October 15, 2003 8:43 AM

Eric Kepes said:

Not to play pile-on, but what the heck, it is Norton (aka Symantec): Norton AV has been the enemy of developers since the dawn of time.
Get in the time machine and go back to, say, 1999. Just try to install software on a machine with NAV. Go ahead. Now, count how many times you swear as the strange error messages come up... Run out of fingers yet?
Good to know that some things never change. That's why I'm a McAfee guy.

# October 15, 2003 9:06 AM

Harris Reynolds said:

Not sure if NAnt provides this functionality, but Ant allows you to easily toggle the Java compiler for building against different versions of the JDK; maybe that would help your .Net builds.

~harris

# October 16, 2003 8:35 PM

Thomas Freudenberg said:

There's another usage for solution 2 "Add Reference From AAC", at least for WinForm developers. E.g. the Updater Application Block creates for every new version of the application a new subfolder with the name set to the new version. With your proposal, the application would have a single subfolder, which is the AAC, where all its assemblies with all future versions would be stored. Much more elegant, that is.

# October 17, 2003 7:12 AM

tim said:

windows 2003 server doesn't natively support bluetooth client connectivity...

the platform sdk lists this only as a technology...a "platform sdk" isn't really specific to the os...if you look at the platform sdk as a whole...it provides documentation for back to win95, where bluetooth certainly isn't supported :-)

# October 17, 2003 12:24 PM

Doug Thews said:

I wish I could. What's worse is that a specific version of XP SP 1 is required, so you end up having to un-install XP SP 1 (if you can), then run their setup (which includes a specialized SP 1 install), and then their drivers are installed.

I can't find any service or optional component install that has to do with Bluetooth specifically. If I run into something else, I'll be sure and let you know.

# October 17, 2003 3:48 PM

Ingo Rammer said:

I always put the frequently used stuff in one binder. Or actually even in the smaller DVD case so that I can carry it on the road.

Isn't it great to see that all current versions of Windows, the complete development platform, database servers, messaging servers, etc. can fit on just a handful DVDs nowadays?

-Ingo

# October 18, 2003 4:59 PM

Nino Benvenuti said:

I organize my DVD subscription by disc number; that makes it easy to find and replace a deprecated disc.

-Nino

# October 18, 2003 5:30 PM

Douglas Reilly said:

I do so by color, and by number within color.

Have fun!

# October 18, 2003 6:24 PM

Jeffrey Randow said:

Did ya get the DVD or CD version?

# October 18, 2003 10:01 PM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

I put the most frequently-used DVDs into the portable case, and almost never open the binders (in fact, after my last renewal, I didn't even bother putting stuff into the binders).

If I run into something that's not in the portable case, it's usually because I haven't gottent the disc for it yet, in which case I download it from MSDN Subscriber Downloads.

And given that they've once again re-designed how the discs are organized, I'm not sure I'll be any more enthusiastic about spending time putting them in the binders yet again...

# October 19, 2003 12:23 AM

Stanley Tan said:

I keep them neatly organized by color. It's always easier to find discs that way cuz I don't have to think about where I put it. :)

# October 19, 2003 8:56 AM

Dare Obasanjo said:

>Hopefully it will be fixed in Whidbey.

I'm not sure what exactlt is broken that you expect to be fixed.

# October 19, 2003 8:47 PM

Simon Fell said:

Huh ? all XML parsers are required to support at least UTF & UTF16 according to the XML spec

# October 19, 2003 8:54 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Simon: IE wigs out on any and all UTF16 docs I've tried to feed it.

Dare: I would expect that you would be able to change the encoding on ANY XML document, not just on those that get written to the file system using the System.Xml black box "write to file" setup.

It's not that it is broken, but it is not complete IMO because it is missing that key functionality. Maybe I just don't understand the system very well but I shouldn't have to write that kind of hack to get it to work.

# October 19, 2003 11:05 PM

Oleg Tkachenko said:

Never heard of any problems with UTF-16. Of course IE supports it as any conformant XML parser.
"XML is always UTF8" - oh boy :)

# October 20, 2003 7:58 AM

Robert McLaws said:

IE sure as hell didn't support it when I tried it.

Don't believe me? Grab your Northwind database, load some sample data up into a DataSet, parse the DataSet into XML (using a StringBuilder and a StringWriter, not the Black Box file option), manually write it to a file, and open it in IE. Watch what happens. Caused 3 days of frustration. I may be right, I may be wrong. All I know is, it works now, and before it did not.

# October 20, 2003 9:53 AM

Dylan Greene said:

Anything going to be done for those who aren't able to attend?

# October 20, 2003 10:26 PM

James Shaw said:

I really hope you meant to say "shooting the proverbial pool"... ;-)

# October 21, 2003 12:28 AM

TrackBack said:

Blogging BOF is shaping up.

# October 21, 2003 12:57 AM

Brian Desmond said:

For XP, the QFE is on the CD, I believe (I have it if not). You can use a /x switch and just run it manually.

# October 21, 2003 1:10 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Nope. Shoot the proverbial poo. Better than swearing in my weblog. I offend enough people without adding swearing to the mix ;).

# October 21, 2003 1:32 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Dylan,

Not yet, but we'll probably post transcripts of the session after it is complete. Or something.

# October 21, 2003 2:35 AM

TrackBack said:

# October 21, 2003 3:03 AM

Oleg Tkachenko said:

"manually write it to a file" - here must be your problem.
Just to make sure try something more simpler - just open real UTF-16 encoded document, e.g.
http://www.tkachenko.com/temp/source.xml

# October 21, 2003 7:19 AM

Ashutosh Nilkanth said:

I left a message on that for Scott earlier today. It seems like the referrers list is no longer sorted on the date. The referrer records are fine though (they are all not pointing to weblogs.asp.net) - try jumping to random pages and you'll see that the data is intact. Its just the sorting I guess.

# October 21, 2003 7:37 AM

Scott Watermasysk said:

Yes, something got fudged with the referrals.

I had a mini epiphany on how to simplify and clean things up. Hoping to publish the changes by Thursday...but if not, then it will likely be sometime after the PDC.

-Scott

# October 21, 2003 8:28 AM

tim said:

how can you really complain that end user products like that don't work on a *server* product that isn't meant as a desktop workstation? ;-) it really isn't any different how win2k didn't support gaming apps at all...it wasn't meant to be a "home" product...

# October 22, 2003 12:06 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Well, I can complain because MS knows that all their internal guys use it as their desktop OS, and it's a lot different. It's hardware support not software support. It would be like saying you can't install the Voodoo5 because it could be used for gaming.

# October 22, 2003 12:36 PM

Salman said:

BOF?

# October 23, 2003 7:57 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Birds of a Feather. It's one of the session tracks at PDC, where people in the community run their own sessions. It's going to be pretty nifty... you should be there.

# October 23, 2003 7:59 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Thanks for the heads up lol... corrected.

# October 26, 2003 12:01 AM

Phil Weber said:

> I'm 63”

Only 5-foot-3? ;-)

# October 26, 2003 12:43 AM

Jason Nadal said:

Sorry to hear that. The smell of smoke is constant in the air around here. I hope you and the others make it safely.

# October 26, 2003 2:41 PM

Adam C. said:

Yep, I'm stuck at the airport in Denver. If nothing opens up near LA I'll hopefully hop to Las Vegas or Phoenix tonight and drive in. See you there.

# October 26, 2003 2:49 PM

Robert McLaws said:

If you go to drive in, call me and lets carpool. I can't leave until 8pm though... I have a prior engagement this evening.

# October 26, 2003 2:53 PM

Justin Malloy said:

I was cursing at my 7:30 am flight out of Minneapolis but I'm sure glad I had that now, I had no idea where was even a problem we saw the smoke coming in but no one said anything when I arrived at LAX at 8:45 am, hopefully everything goes well for you guys. I'm way out by venice beach and they even have the PDC lamp signs out here, can't wait to go downtown and see all what's happening... good luck..

# October 26, 2003 3:15 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Taking the 1:45am Greyhound. See you guys at 9am.

# October 27, 2003 12:51 AM

Jerry Dennany said:

Good to see that you made it in ok!

# October 27, 2003 6:45 PM

Salman said:

Congrats Rob, the beginning of your empire!

# October 30, 2003 11:09 AM

Dave said:

Robert, I agree with you. But be careful. Please.

The whole incident was slashdotted for one reason only - it involed a MS competitor. Yeah yeah, there is much more to the story, but slashdotting it was solely because of this.

So what's my point? Just this: it is ALL about context. All of it. MS has just cause for dismissal. Just as you have just cause to use the word 'dumb'. Yet, MS _is_ MS. And nowadays, so are you. Longhorn blogs? Scoble? Sure, they have circumstancial context to you. Nonetheless, you are NOW associated with MS. And what you say bears more - more than this idiot - on MS than you think.

Notice.... I can call this guy an 'idiot' and get away with it without being slashdotted. That's purely 'cuz I'm anonymous. But I fear you can no longer call the same idion 'dumb' without many considering that it's really in context of MS considering him dumb.

# October 30, 2003 3:07 PM

James Avery said:

He should not have posted the picture. Microsoft had the right to fire him.

But should they have fired him? No. It was pretty harmless and they could have told him to take it down, never do it again and the problem would be solved. Now you have MSNBC writing about how Microsoft canned this guy for blogging, not good pr.

# October 30, 2003 3:17 PM

Paschal said:

As usual Robert you are still excellent in your language moderation ;-))
Well I find this time you started to have more experience in the choice of your words. I hope someday that you will understand that the world is not divided between you and the 'dumbs', it's a bit more subtle than that !
This privy as you called him reckon he did a mistake, but IMHO Microsoft PR didn't do the best in this case. Some folks called this kind of privy 'disposable'. So named that you can fire this 'cattle' easily. Not sure sometimes I am living in the 21st century.Thanks god I am not working in US !

# October 30, 2003 3:44 PM

Frans Bouma said:

MS was wrong. Not only was the picture harmless, but they increased the focus on the picture by firing the guy instead of speaking to him and reasoning with him and asking if he could take the image down.

In The Netherlands, he would not have been fired. Simply because we have laws here who force the employer to come up with a valid reason to fire a person. A shabby image of a crate of boxes is not a valid reason, sorry.

# October 30, 2003 4:01 PM

Paschal said:

Well said Frans ;-)

# October 30, 2003 4:13 PM

Shane Bauer said:

You just can't go around taking pictures of things that come off trucks. Sure, maybe the punishment was a little too harsh, but he was a temporary employee from an outside company. He wasn't even an intern, nor a full time Microsoft employee. I'd be a little upset if one of my temp. employees was going around taking pictures of things that are coming off the trucks and putting them on his web site. What else could he be taking pictures of?

Who knows, maybe Apple will offer him a job.

# October 30, 2003 5:15 PM

G. Andrew Duthie said:

One correction: I believe the guy was a temp, not an intern (can you even fire interns?).

As for whether it was right or wrong to "fire" him, I'd probably have made the same decision. Good judgement is an important job skill, and he doesn't seem to have it. If it was an employee, I would bet they would have gotten warned, not fired. As others have noted, what's not clear is whether he had any prior performance or judgement problems, etc.

It's absolutely true, IMO, that if you take away the Macs, there'd be no story here, not because Microsoft wants to hide the fact that they purchase Macs, but because then there wouldn't be a reason for people to imply that they do.

# October 30, 2003 5:57 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Thanks guys for the valid points. I'll take that into consideration next time. I'm still getting used to this whole "being associated with Microsoft" thing. Thanks for the advice.

# October 31, 2003 1:40 AM

Bob S said:

...and this page is one of the top results for "power of blogs". Kind of interesting, a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.

I am looking at your site precisely because I, too, am a referer log addict, and someone recently found my web-based journal through that same search, which made me go and look, to see exactly how high I ranked.

This has caused me to try to be careful about overusing certain terms in a posting (such as "power of ... you know"), lest my site become higher-rated for that topic than I really feel is warranted. For example, I am definitely not the person to go to if you want to "get someone yahoo password".

# October 31, 2003 9:57 PM

Robert said:

.NET Reflector (http://aisto.com/roeder/dotnet) is doing that for as long as I can remember. The Asmex folks even copied the UI details for this from Reflector ;-)

# November 1, 2003 4:37 AM

SBC said:

Good posting Robert. It's certainly a good advertising/PR media channel for small startups (entrepreuners).
I like the one about 'mental clarity' & 'BrainDump' - my brain at times fills like it's full... :-)

# November 1, 2003 7:02 AM

Duncan said:

Perhaps "Public Shared Function BrainDump(ByVal everythingDotNet As String) As [Value]"?

# November 1, 2003 8:41 AM

daniel said:

Hello
I'm trying to make an application in visual c++ that uses the bluetooth stack of windows xp. I've bought now some brainboxes bl-554 blutooth dongles, which should support this stack. But i can't install de delivered QFE323183, because it's the wrong language.
Can You help me? Does anyone have some sample programs using the XP Stack?

Thanks for your help!

# November 2, 2003 7:03 AM

Dave Burke said:

Great post, Robert. I'll want to re-read this post in the future, particularly for the well articulated break-outs of the different blog [value] types.

# November 2, 2003 10:00 AM

Koji Ishii said:

Strings are Unicode and thus can never have encodings from its definition. Unicode is one of encodings, so String is always Unicode (UTF-16) encoded.

If you want to manage it as a UTF-8 stream, write it to MemoryStream instead of StringWriter. You will then get a byte stream of your desired encoding. A byte sream can have its associated encoding.

What you get with your hack is, a UTF-8 byte stream but each byte was convereted to UTF-16. So, each byte is represented as 2 bytes on memory. If you write it to a file using UTF-16, you will get UTF-8 file, because UTF-8 was once convereted to UTF-16 but then again converted back, and because UTF-16 does not break any bytes during the conversion. But from spec perspective, it's not guaranteed, and thus you have the risk.

This is very easy to confuse, because in the days before Unicode, a byte stream is a string. However, in the Unicode world, a byte stream itself cannot represent a string; a byte stream + encoding = string.

And .NET's String class uses UTF-16 encoding, so XML to write UTF-16 when you write to String is a correct behavior.

# November 2, 2003 9:21 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Here are my concerns:

a) I'm not the only developer who is trying to build UTF-8 encoded documents with StringBuilders. I understand that it is the correct behavior from a technical standpoint, but it is a completely incorrect behavior from a usability standpoint. Why should I have to deal with a MemoryStream? It's overly complicated to work with. What if I want to just deal with text? What if I want to pass an XmlDocument throught a web service... MemoryStreams are EVEN MORE of a hassle then.

I understand that my hack may provide unpredictable results for very complex documents. But the point is that it needs to work with strings, and it needs to work in the proper manner. I shouldn't have to be a frickin Rocket Scientist to build an XmlDocument, and that's what I feel like I have to be. I DO NOT accept this as the only way it should work.

# November 2, 2003 9:53 PM

Teemu Keiski said:

At least sometime ago it was IE-specific -
A page discussing about the tool (bit old though):
http://www.insidedhtml.com/tips/functions/ts19/page1.asp?main=on

"Encoded scripts only run on browsers that have the 5.0 or later release of Microsoft's scripting engines..."

I don't believe they would have made it cross-browser compatible.

# November 3, 2003 4:57 AM

Dumky said:

DBCombo renders a very different control when viewed in a Mozilla browser. It does a full page post and doesn't have the drop-down, so it is pretty much a no-script variant of the control.

Besides not being cross-browser, the script encoding has other problems: it's not really secure (you can reverse the encoding and extract the original code) and it makes development harder unless you never use "view source" yourself ;-)

# November 3, 2003 2:20 PM

Greg Reinacker said:

To be clear, NewsGator does support categories...it's the .Text plug-in which does not yet support them. A subtle distinction, I know. :-)

# November 3, 2003 5:12 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Well, since I'm working on the plug-in I'll have to make it support categories then, won't I?

# November 3, 2003 5:20 PM

Tony Pino said:

Nice.

It's funny, just last night I wrote an app to do the same thing, except it uses BITS in Win2k and XP.

# November 3, 2003 9:20 PM

Shannon J Hager said:

as far as I can tell, it only works for JScript and VBScript, both of which are MS-only, right?

# November 3, 2003 10:08 PM

TrackBack said:

# November 4, 2003 1:16 AM

tim said:

ever used authorize.net -- usually the commerce provider of choice for most microsofties...

# November 6, 2003 3:55 PM

Robert McLaws said:

That's who I'm using now, but they are just a gateway. You still have to have a merchant account.

# November 6, 2003 4:07 PM

tim said:

ah, can't go wrong with wells fargo ;-)

# November 6, 2003 5:30 PM

Damian said:

Dear Robert

Can you please tell me, in detail, why GenX is more compelling than, say, the a CSV file ?

Translation : If you don't want it, nobody is forcing you to buy it.

# November 6, 2003 9:20 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Well Damian,

GenX.NET makes CSV files, so I don't know what you mean. But thanks for asking.

# November 6, 2003 9:30 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Translation Damian:

I was trying to get Eric Sink to publically answer one of his most-often asked questions about his product, in an effort to help promte his product and to demonstrate the power blogs have to foster conversations between companies. I was setting it up for a later entry I've been working on regarding corporate weblogging. Maybe next time you won't assume that I'm being a jerk or something.

# November 6, 2003 9:35 PM

Eric Sink said:

Ah, the subtleties of written communication. :-)

I'm inclined not to be *too* hard on Damian. I knew at a glance that Robert was pitching me a big, fat 16-inch slow-pitch softball, but the casual reader might have read it differently.

Now what have I done with my big blue aluminum softball bat?

# November 6, 2003 9:58 PM

Damian said:

OK, I take it back then. It certainly came across that way.

FWIW, I don't think that question can be answered better than "try it youself and see what works for you". Anything else would involve putting "competitors" down, which doesn't make anyone look good.

# November 6, 2003 10:00 PM

Eric Sink said:

<smirk>

Damian doesn't know me very well yet. ;-)

# November 6, 2003 10:17 PM

Robert McLaws said:

<shrugs> I dunno, I think the question can be answered honestly. I can answer why I think GenX is better than ExcelWriter without being derrogatory. If an ISV can't, they don't belong in business.

Hey Eric, I'm deep in the outfield with a 3 foot softball glove.

# November 6, 2003 10:36 PM

Eric Sink said:

(SMACK)

# November 7, 2003 12:06 AM

Robert McLaws said:

The ball's streakin towards the foul line...

I didn't see you address the ability to get access to your source code from anywhere on the internet...

# November 7, 2003 12:19 AM

Eric Sink said:

I didn't hit that point because it's an advantage which exists in both systems. If anything GDN Workspaces might have the advantage, due to the fact that it's browser based.

It's still tradeoff of simplicity vs. power though.

Gotta run. Mini-vacation with the family this weekend, so I'll be digitally dark for several days. I'll let the umpire decide if my shot ends up in play. :-)

# November 7, 2003 12:34 AM

Robert McLaws said:

I wasn't sure it Vault let you do that, which is why I asked.

The ball stayed in play. Runner's rounding second. Enjoy your vacation.

# November 7, 2003 12:44 AM

Jamie Seward said:

I am more interested in an analyse in what makes SourceVault better than Perforce. The latter happens to be free for up to 2 users.

# November 7, 2003 1:20 AM

Frans Bouma said:

If you've ever read the EULA for workspaces you'd know it's not meant for production software simply because MS owns the code that's stored there.

# November 7, 2003 3:42 AM

Robert McLaws said:

MS does not own the code that's stored there. I went round and round with MS on that when they released 1.0, and they made it very clear.

# November 7, 2003 3:55 AM

Brad More said:

MY code is on MY server, not THEIR server. A minor distinction perhaps, but significant to me, and, I suspect, others like me (all 2 of them).

# November 7, 2003 7:28 AM

Anonymous said:

I think Damian had a good question though. Why should we spend money on GenX to create a simple CSV file when they're trivial to produce for free already. Its just commas and maybe some quotes running in a loop, its not like you are actually creating an Excel file which may be worth paying for if you did. You go on and on about how GenX is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and yet apparently all it does is create a lowly CSV -- so why should we think differently Robert?

# November 7, 2003 8:07 AM

tim said:

re: comment on vault not being able to access source code over the internet...

my understanding is that is the core technology of the vault product...because it is built on web services, your client can access it from anywhere.

now if you are referring to a non-client based version, then i'll shut up...but i've tested vault (and source offsite) and they both rock!

# November 7, 2003 11:48 AM

tim said:

forgot to ask...where do you see this $50 offer?

# November 7, 2003 11:49 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Anonymous:

If that were all GenX.NET does, I would agree with you. But it's not, that's one small feature. So the question becomes, why spend 3 hours trying to figure out how to write an ADO.NET data conversion engine when you can buy one for $20? Why only give your users the option of exporting to CSV when they can have 4 other options too? Why get locked into one format when you can have an extensible engine that will translate into any format you wish?

# November 7, 2003 3:12 PM

Joe Grossberg said:

I totally agree.

Bad service deserves bad publicity.

I've done it myself:

http://www.joegrossberg.com/archives/000404.html

Though I wouldn't have linked to their website. Why provide the traffic?

# November 7, 2003 4:31 PM

SBC said:

LonghornBlogs - it's like a 'Unicorn Gathering' place.. :-)

# November 7, 2003 4:38 PM

Shannon J Hager said:

When I first saw this post, I was a bit put off, but then realized that you were forcing Eric to snag himself a few new customers. Good job. Unfortunately, it looks like Eric was too busy to fully take advantage of it. Hopefully he'll resume when he returns because he's left a lot unsaid.

# November 7, 2003 7:20 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Thanks guys for the input. Sorry I didn't respond sooner, been crazy busy this week. Duncan, I modified my post title again to reflect your advice. Good call.

# November 8, 2003 9:06 PM

Julie Lerman said:

Robert - Careful with your hyperboles. That is far from true. According to the INETA data there are at least 35 u.s. groups that are larger. No offense to Scott at all. I'm assuming that he is well aware of this. But in some of the large cities, their membership runs into the many thousands.

# November 9, 2003 3:07 PM

julie lerman said:

oh - but - besides that - Happy to see scott blogging! I'll have to add him to my User Group Leaders blogroll!

# November 9, 2003 3:08 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Edited. The last that I heard we were the largest. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

# November 9, 2003 3:14 PM

Dave said:

OTOH, maybe they are too busy providing solutions that work TODAY and not in 2 years.

Seriously, my only issue with S/N is - IMHO - centered around _this_ forum.... weblogs@asp.net. Check out the main RSS feed from gotdotnet, compare it to this one. My... God. This past week alone... how many posts about "I'm installing Longhorn...", "I've installed Longhorn..."? How many posts critiquing the latest Matrix movie?

I'm only glad I didn't subscribe to the comment feeds... then it WOULD be like spending time in a forum.

# November 9, 2003 4:58 PM

Dave said:

Hey, one more thing - now that I read Neopolean.com. Exactly what does this rant - or many other posts - have to do with "shut up and innovate"? You and him could stand to quit bellyaching about MS versus Open Source and take a page from your book... speak of things relevant to providing solutions using .NET _today_.

# November 9, 2003 5:01 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Dave,

I guess you haven't seen my articles on developing server controls (under the "Builder.com Articles" links on the left), or my posts on accessing data type information from an IDataReader. I guess you didn't know that I'm creating a community resource for building server controls, or that I'm writing a huge series on "Whidbey-izing" your 1.X controls today. I guess you didn't know that GenX.NET uses some of the same concepts that will be found in Whidbey, using an extremely similar architecture that will be found in Yukon.

The funny thing is, all of that stuff is right here in my weblog.

I could ask what YOU'VE been doing about building .NET solutions today. The problem is, you never link to anything that you've done in your comments, so it's basically impossible to tell.

# November 9, 2003 5:31 PM

Scott Cate said:

This is a misconception that I actually was under also. I thought we were a pretty large group, until I started working with INETA and found out that we in fact aren't anywhere near the largest of the large groups. In fact we're one of the smallest. One interesting point, is our attendance is between 50-80 every month, so with this small number of users (~480) we get a good turn out. Really this whole thing is not a competition, and I never intended that tone of voice. Just a misconception on my part, due to ignorance I guess. BTW Robert, thanks for the post.

# November 9, 2003 6:21 PM

SBC said:

My recent post about Open So(u)r(c)e - http://weblogs.asp.net/sbchatterjee/posts/34057.aspx

# November 9, 2003 7:15 PM

Rory said:

[Note - I kind of went off in this comment. You have my apologies, Mr. McLaws, if I went on a bit too long :)]

"Exactly what does this rant - or many other posts - have to do with 'shut up and innovate'?"

Well, Dave - For one thing, your camp lost *me*. Granted I was just using the technology and not really improving it, but I'm still a fun guy to have at parties, so that's down the tubes.

"You and him could stand to quit bellyaching..."

I don't do much bellyaching about OSS vs. The Universe. I wouldn't have said anything at all if one of my posts hadn't been linked to from an OS forum in a rather insulting manner.

I'm already regretting having posted the damn thing just because it's attracted a bit of attention, and I, admittedly, am getting caught up in the argument.

It's 9:46 PM PST. I should be getting one last glimpse at Longhorn before hitting the sack, but I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it because some stupid part of me believes that it's important to communicate to the universe that it's entirely possible to lovs MS and not hate OSS, that you can like Coke *and* Pepsi, and be pro-life *and* pro-choice at the same time. People might not like either side, but the sides aren't mutually exclusive, and devoting an inordinate amount of time to fighting for either one means ditching what's *really* important (the coding) and wasting it doing... well, what I'm doing right now.

I took offense to being called a Microsoft "dittohead" because I'm vocal about how much I enjoy what MS is doing right now. I'm not a newbie - I've been coding since 1983, and I've pretty much seen it all. What MS is doing now may not be brand-spanking new, but I don't care. It's making my life as a devloper better, and *that's* why I support it. Not because I'm a "dittohead." I was a Linux/Apache/Tomcat guy before .NET rolled in. However, I never bashed MS during the Java days. For me, it's always been about the technology (although I'm going to have to be really honest here and say that the MS nerds I've met have been the coolest, most secure nerds I've ever encountered, which makes it possible to discuss technology with them rather than "movements" - a social feature for which I am very thankful).

Trust me. If some other company came out with competing technology that won me over, I'd trade camps in a heartbeat. The technology is what convinces me. I could care less about the lawsuits. That stuff is *going to happen*, and there's nothing you can do about it. The money that's trading hands is so far beyond anything you could understand that it's pointless to try and get in the way. While the lawyers fight, the rest of us might as well make the most of the situation and play with the cool toys.

Anyway, unfortunately for the other companies that have competing technology, I've seen Longhorn, and it's going to be an uphill struggle winning my heart away from MS...

OK - Maybe I'm doing a *little* bellyaching here :)

Sorry about the wandering nature of this comment. Passion has mixed with a rather large German dinner (I have the "food stupids"), and I'm pretty much out of my mind at the moment.

# November 10, 2003 1:07 AM

Robert McLaws said:

No need to apologize Rory, I'm honored. And call me Rob. Or "Hey, you!" Whatever works.

The "Genius of AND" reigns once again! Very well put.

# November 10, 2003 1:13 AM

julie lerman said:

well, you are hardly the smallest either. Your group is relatively large in fact. If you are curious, I can email you a spreadsheet with the counts - membership as opposed to butts in chairs. EG: I have 230 members, but get 30-50 butts in chairs at a meeting.

# November 10, 2003 9:56 AM

TrackBack said:

# November 11, 2003 5:28 AM

Dave Schwinn said:

I'm using Vault and I love it.

I won a 5 user copy at a local .NET developers group meeting.

The CD I got was version 1.0 and didn't want to install. I went to their web site and downloaded the latest and it installed like a charm.

It's a great example of just how good a .NET distributed application can be. I haven't had any problems with it at all. Of course, my needs are very simple.

I wrote code from several different machines and from lots of different locations. To be able to get to my source code from anywhere has really solved a lot of my problems.

Go for it!

# November 12, 2003 9:53 PM

Tony Pearson said:

I second the use of vault. I picked up a single user version. 49$ and its worth every penny.

# November 12, 2003 10:39 PM

Andrew Stopford said:

Sounds cool Robert, I am faced with a scrolling data grid issue at the moment so this has come at a good time :) Looking foward to seeing your work.

# November 13, 2003 4:07 AM

Robert McLaws said:

I'm glad this might be able to work out for you. Should be ready to go by Monday.

# November 13, 2003 6:06 AM

Paschal said:

OK Robert it's your choice to delete my comment. But ?I just try to be constructuive here. Your control is surely nice, but on the demo, the columns on the header are not aligned with the column below.

# November 13, 2003 6:22 AM

Paschal said:

OK I try again, hope this post will not be deleted this time !

1) This solution requires you to construct the stationary header by hand. ScrollingGrid handles this automatically, using the same designer techniques as the standard DataGrid component. If your headers change in your DataGrid declaration, our reconstructed headers will change automatically for you. And ScrollingGrid handles the footer too.

Comment: This solution works also with the standard Datagrid element. If the headers changed this will be reflected in the headers too.

2) This solution requires you to add a considerable amount of code bloat to your ASPX pages. ScrollingGrid works with your existing DataGrid declarations by changing only two lines of code. The size of your ASPX page will not change when using ScrollingGrid.

Comment: I don't see there any considerable amount of code. And yes it's only few words to declare in the Datagrid object

3) This solution makes the DataGrid scrollable all the time. You cannot shut it off. ScrollingGrid's scrolling capabilities can be manipulated in the designer or programmatically, allowing you to shut the scrolling off if you so desire. Because of this, I'm sure you'll never want to use the standard DataGrid again.

Comment: Not true this solution don't show the headers ll the time.
But I agree on some points:
It's HTC so not fully cross browser compatible.
And yes your solution is good, not the best, but worth to try it, for 0$

# November 13, 2003 6:33 AM

Frans Bouma said:

The main question about 'grids' is always: does the grid do a BETTER job at databinding than MS' crapgrids do? So, Robert, does your grid do that :)

# November 13, 2003 7:15 AM

Frans Bouma said:

The demo works ok in Firebird :) (Although the header is abit above the grid)

ANY grid that does better databinding than MS grids is great. ComponentOne's isn't for example, that one isn't able to mask away columns which are clearly marked as non browseable.

Besides that, I think a repeater control still is a better solution to grids in webpages, after all it's read-only data.

# November 13, 2003 7:20 AM

Paschal said:

Frans has a point there. I just received Whidbey so I will have a try myself on what MS will propose in the next two years. and yes pagination with datagrids is often a better solution.
Robert are you going to release a free trial on Monday ?

# November 13, 2003 7:34 AM

Jeff Julian said:

Keep selling the products. Your prices are great and the product is good. I totally agree with your point of $10 is definately worth it, if it takes more than an hour. To bad the screensaver contest ended at PDC, the RSS feed Star Wars saver was going to win :).

# November 13, 2003 8:29 AM

U and I said:

I wonder if this kind of scrolling solution is just fixing bad UI by adding more bad UI?

# November 13, 2003 8:55 AM

Shane Bauer said:

Looking good, Robert. I understand where you are coming from. The $10 price is great. Good work.

# November 13, 2003 10:07 AM

Paschal said:

A thing I just missed Robert is that Dino's example you refer is an OLD one. A new one has been published in ASPNetPro november issue. It's call Freeze the Header Scroll the Grid.
Thanks to correct it ;-))

# November 13, 2003 10:09 AM

Ron Green said:

I just took a look at your scrolling grid. Pretty nice but when I went to your website there doesn't appear to be any way to purchase it. I went to "Store" and the only product that appeared was GenX.net.

# November 13, 2003 10:24 AM

Shane Bauer said:

Ron,

I don't think he's released it yet. I read somewhere that he may release it Monday? I could be wrong. I may have created that date in my head.

# November 13, 2003 11:03 AM

Avonelle Lovhaug said:

Keep selling your products. So long as you continue to offer an affordable redistribution license for software I need, I'll be interested and willing to pay. For me, allowing installation on multiple websites is key. I'm an independent consultant, and I'm not interested in buying tools that I can't use for multiple applications, unless the tool is really specialized.

# November 13, 2003 11:16 AM

Robert McLaws said:

Thanks guys for all the comments. Ron, Shane was right, it's not available for purchase yet.

Avonelle, thanks for posting in my blog. Our $10 license will be called the "Developer Edition" and will give you the ability to install the component in any application on any server you choose. As I said, we want everyone to use our control, so we won't restrict how many times you can use it.

Now, because we're not finished yet, the control still has a bug or two. Should be ironed out by the end of the week. It is v1.0, so we're expecting that there will be some minor work done as it gets used by a lot of people.

I'm glad some of you may find it useful. Check back here on Monday :).

# November 13, 2003 12:45 PM

TrackBack said:

Coolbits.nu

# November 13, 2003 6:55 PM

Dave Burke said:

I never would have thought there was so much involved in this. Talkin' about taking a DIV tag to another level! Thanks, Robert.

# November 13, 2003 9:23 PM

felttippin said:

Hey Rob,

Hvae you installed this yet? Is there any documentation for non-msdn subscribes on what the bug fixes are?

Thanks

# November 14, 2003 12:14 PM

Dave said:

IMHO you've downed the 'Scoble' koolaid anymore Robert. Nowadays, not only is MS the be-all for you, you've taken the Scoble bias approach on everything too. Teflon....

$10 is mightly cheap, but it's onlyh worth it for the coding time savings. Personally, I prefer wtriting my own damn inherited control - that's really all you've done, right? - and bank the knowledge gained from doing it that way for future projects.

# November 14, 2003 7:16 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Dave,

Thanks for the perspective. If ALL I were doing is inheriting a control, that would be one thing, but we're also doing some other nifty things too, like retaining your scroll position on postback, and automatically reflecting against the application to check for registered handlers... from inside the control. A lot of expertise went into this, and it's not "just" an inherited control.

Feel free to write your own. This control has 300-some-odd man hours of effort to get it right. If you can afford to waste that time instead of paying $10 go right ahead. It's not as simple a problem as you might think. Check back here in a few hours, I'm working on a 5 part server control write up that will explain exactly why it is more complicated than you would expect.

I'm just wondering what you mean by the "MS be-all" thing? I've always been unabashedly Microsoft. Nothing has changed. Now that I'm more connected with the anthill, I can better elaborate my position. But marketing my stuff with passion does not mean that I'm high on the MS koolaid. I'm passionate about what I do. I don't work for Microsoft, I work with them, and in many ways, they work for me. And that's cool.

I really respect ya Dave, believe me I do. But everyone has bias. You say I have a "Scoble" bias, well I consider that a compliment. He's hooked me up more that I could have ever imagines, and I owe him a lot.

# November 14, 2003 10:31 PM

Cengiz HAN said:

downloading all pdc materials quickly!

thanks Robert! :-)

# November 15, 2003 5:59 AM

Andrew said:

Doesn't gacutil do this?

# November 15, 2003 10:26 AM

Andrew said:

Yuck, gacutil doesn't do it at all.
gacutil was free, but Studio Cost money, I would expect this to be a feature too.

You can point the registry key to the actual location in the GAC instead of to your program files location.
This should make it relatively easy to write some generic code to do the job after gac-ing.

# November 15, 2003 11:08 AM

Linus Concepcion said:

to the question:

-----
Now let me ask you, do you REALLY need paging in a DataGrid that scrolls? Isn't that the POINT of making it scroll?
-----

I think so. We built a grid with the same kind of features, and I struggled with the same question in the beginning. But, after playing around, we really needed both.

Paging is a design that promotes scalability and site performance.

Scrolling is needed when you want to place content to the right, or below the grid, or limit the grid to a specific size/layout despite the size of the grid's content.

Using both turned out to be our best option.

# November 15, 2003 12:49 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Andrew,

This process has nothing to do with the GAC. It is only for referencing assemblies for Visual Studio .NET. Further, the GAC cannot be referenced for these files... if you look inside Studio you'll see physical locations for all the Framework assemblies as well.

-Robert

# November 15, 2003 12:49 PM

Robert McLaws said:

Linus,

That's great, it's cool to see differing perspectives. Since our control is built on top of