.NET and me

Fixing WCF/WPF VS 2005 Extensions installation after installing VS 2008 or .NET 3.0 SP1

rachelreese — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:01:00 GMT

Just wanted to point folks to a fix I just found helpful:

Thanks to http://blog.tfanshteyn.com/2008/01/fixing-wcfwpf-vs-2005-extensions.html

Basically, once you've installed VS2008 or .NET 3.0 SP1, the registry key saying that .NET 3.0 has been installed is removed. If you want to, say, install Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP, you'd recevie errors to the effect that .NET 3.0 wasn't installed, and was a prerequisite.

Thanks!

Be Careful

rachelreese — Mon, 19 Jul 2004 17:19:00 GMT

I know this is something many of you have had to deal with for a long time... but for future reference, be careful what you type while at work:

http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/0719workemail19.html

“The poll said 25 percent of companies fired a worker for violating e-mail policies, up from 2 percent last year....

“About 0.5 percent of companies said instant messages have been subpoenaed.”

Gmail

rachelreese — Wed, 19 May 2004 18:13:00 GMT

Apparently the 1TB offer for mail that some folks reported was only a glitch. :-(

Full article: http://news.com.com/2100-1024_3-5215599.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=news

Google definitions

rachelreese — Wed, 05 May 2004 18:38:00 GMT

I'm sure someone's blogged this before, but how cool is this!?

If you Google what is a web browser (for example) the first link that comes up is "Web definitions for Web Browser". Click on it, and you get a list of definitions of “web browser”. Nice.

Reflection

rachelreese — Tue, 04 May 2004 18:10:00 GMT

I posted a question late last week to a couple listserves I'm on:

Given only a string variable containing the name of the property you wish to call, how does one go about calling it?

The answer came back fivefold nearly immediately: “Use reflection. It's really easy.” Oh goody, thinkest I, a chance to learn something.

For those of you who haven't picked it up yet, there's really not much to the concept. By far the most helpful thing I found, was Bipin Joshi's article covering it, on DotNetBips.com:

Introduction to .NET Reflection

Happy reading!

Linux hacked more than Windows

rachelreese — Thu, 04 Mar 2004 18:51:00 GMT

All of Microsoft's security pushing seems to be paying off. The article makes the point that it's just because less experienced folks are deploying the solutions. But of course, with Microsoft catering to the less experienced and locking things down that should be locked down by default, fewer attacks happen, whether these folks are experienced or not.

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/0,2000061733,39116229,00.htm

" An analysis of hacker attacks on online servers in January by security consultancy mi2g found that Linux servers were the most frequently violated, accounting for 13,654 successful attacks, or 80 per cent of the survey total. Windows ran a distant second with 2,005 attacks. A more specific analysis of government servers also found Linux more susceptible, accounting for 57 per cent of all breaches.

" In a similar analysis last year, Windows proved far more vulnerable, with 51 per cent of successful attacks on government servers made on some version of the Microsoft operating system. "

More on the Application Blocks

rachelreese — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 20:18:00 GMT

Just a couple good articles I found this morning over on 4Guys:

An Introduction and Overview of the Microsoft Application Blocks

Examining the Data Access Application Block

Microsoft Application Blocks

rachelreese — Mon, 02 Feb 2004 17:32:00 GMT

I've seen people blogging on the application blocks before, but I ran across a few people this weekend that had never even heard of them, so I thought I'd create a short list of available application blocks.

These are all written or approved by Microsoft, and can make your life a hundred million gazillion times easier. Compare it with: buying a robot to do your dishes, laundry and vacuuming, given that there are clothes and dishes in various piles all over your countertops and floor. Seriously.

Happy Programming. :-)

Update: Heh. Oops. I *swear* I have this one copied into the notepad version of this message I was working on... <shrug>
The Caching Application Block: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnpag/html/CachingBlock.asp?frame=true

Helllloooo Gadget Stores

rachelreese — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 16:31:00 GMT

Now, this is something I've known for quite some time, being a gadget freak gal, but I'm glad some of the consumer elcetronics folks are perking up their radar. It's also one of about a billion reasons I prefer shopping online.

http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/0116womengadgets16.html

“...women are involved in almost 75 percent of all electronics purchases...

“Women actually spent more on technology last year than men, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.... But electronics stores have been slow to catch on. Nearly three-quarters of women surveyed by the industry group complained about being ignored, patronized or offended by sales people when shopping for electronics.

“Forty percent of the women said they were treated better when accompanied by a man.

“A meager 1 percent of women surveyed thought manufacturers had them in mind when creating products, according to the report, released at last week's Consumer Electronics Show.”

Fortune 500 companies headed by women CEOs gain more in 2003 than their male-run counterparts...

rachelreese — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 19:05:00 GMT

Eight Fortune 500 companies have female CEOs, and as a group they outperformed the broader market by a substantial margin ... a 52 percent gain for the women vs. a 27 percent gain for the index of all large companies.

http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/0105womenceos05.html

Working with ASP.NET's Graphics on the fly?

rachelreese — Fri, 02 Jan 2004 23:17:00 GMT

This is one of the coolest, most useful ASP.NET things I've ever seen.

Interactive Mapping Using SVG & ASP.NET

Tax tips for Arizonans

rachelreese — Wed, 17 Dec 2003 20:48:00 GMT

Donate to AZ Quest for kids for a tax credit. I'm sure other states have similar programs, and god knows us contractors need the break this time of year.

About AZ Quest For Kids
Arizona Quest for Kids is a nonprofit organization that nurtures the hopes and dreams of children who may otherwise not be able to attend college. The program provides adult mentors and college scholarship to talented and deserving young students from families with few financial resources

Candidates for the program are identified at the fifth-grade level and are matched with an adult mentor until they reach the college age. Currently, there are 75 students participating in the program. Once the student successfully graduates from high school, Quest for Kids provides the equivalent of four year's tuition at an Arizona university.

David Highmark, chairman and chief executive officer of Northern Trust Bank of Arizona, founded Arizona Quest for Kids in 2000 to help improve the state’s low number of students graduating from high school and provides financially disadvantaged youth the opportunity to attend college. Through Quest for Kids, he and other organization sponsors hope to provide scholarships to thousands of children across the state.

http://www.azquestforkids.org/school%20tax%20credit.htm

Arizonans: Get training, give to charity...

rachelreese — Fri, 12 Dec 2003 18:00:00 GMT

This just posted on the AZDNUG site..... http://www.azdnug.com/Families.aspx

............................................................................
Arizona.net Christmas Charity Auction

Most of you know of and have visited our user group sometime over the last 2 years. Interface Technical Training is Arizona's leading Technical Training Provider.

Their training classes vary in price from $510 - $3000 usually depending on the level of difficulty, the technology at hand, and the length of the class.

I have a voucher good for one free training class. ANY training class at Interface Technical Training!!!! The only limitation on this voucher is that it can't be used for any of the Red Hat training classes, and really who cares about that?

I wanted to do something this year for Christmas with lower income families, but that takes money. Buy some clothes, buy some food, and really help out as many people as we can. I would like to do all of this in the name of Arizona.net User Group, and Interface Technical Training.

There is an auction on E-Bay for the above voucher. Every penny that comes in from this auction is going to go towards helping families for Christmas.

This voucher is good until the end of 2004.

I'm also going to need some volunteers to help me with the families. We'll need shoppers, wrappers, and deliverers (is that a word?) so if you are interested in helping please e-mail me at ChristmasHelper@AZDNUG.com

I'm really hoping to get more than $1000 (or more) for this program, but don't let that stop you from bidding. It is an official eBay auction, and the highest bidder will in fact get the certificate, no matter how high (or low) the auction ends at.

The eBay Auction is here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3645164527

Happy Holidays

A reiterated call to Amazon

rachelreese — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 17:18:00 GMT

Some days back, Julie pointed me to Danah Boyd's blog (RSS).

This morning, she makes a call to Amazon, and publishers in general, to expand their text-based searching: have text-based searching capability on books that Amazon knows you own. She (and I) understand the copyright implications of a text-based search on everything Amazon offers but, obviously, once you've purchased the books, you already have permission to them.

The only thought/concern/question I have is this:
Amazon allows you to check a little checkbox next to books they offer to say “I own it.” While that would be perfect for those books you find at garage sales and random family members' houses that strangely happen to answer all of your latest questions, clearly that's much too easy to get around. I can't think of a way to get around this, other than having to purchase ALL of your books from Amazon to be able to text search them. I still love the idea, and I want it now, but I wonder how many people would use the option with that caveat.

Apparently enough:
Her post got a response from Ian Grove-Stephensen,

Well, I am a publisher (not in your area, unfortunately) and I'm listening. In fact I will go one step better - I'll put my entire list of 400 titles onto a public website as print-locked PDFs, so Google can index them. We've tried this with samples already and been really pleased with the results. We lose a few sales from people who then read them online, but against that we generate a lot of good will and a lot of site traffic we would not otherwise have had. It'll take about three months to complete the project, so watch this space!

Go Tell It on the Mountain

rachelreese — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 21:54:00 GMT

Diplomats from 191 countries meet this week in Geneva for the three-day United Nations World Summit on the Information Society. It's the occasion for The Helloworld Project to project thousands of 500-foot-high laser-light SMS messages onto the Geneva fountain.

More here: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,61103,00.html