Archives
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Why Are Many Coders Mediocre?
Last week, following the publication of this article on Builder.com, I was approached by an editor at Wiley & Sons (Makers of the “...For Dummies” books) in the UK about reviewing a draft of a book they are working on. I agreed, and the past two weeks have been fabulously interesting. I can't discuss the book yet (BELIEVE ME, when I can, I will) but I can say that it now comes in #2 on Robert's List of Books Every Programmer Should Read™, right behind Writing Secure Code, Second Edition.
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IE Flaw Explained - Patch On the Way
News.com has a great article on the IE “address spoofing flaw”, and the forthcoming patch to solve it. It's a must read, so go check it out.
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Microsoft: Eolas Changes Won't be in XPSP2
News.com is reporting that Microsoft has made a statement saying that it will hold off on Eolas-related Internet Explorer modifications until after the appeals process is over. Microsoft is currently awaiting the results of a Patent Office review of the Eolas patent, based upon several possibilities of prior art.
"The action by the patent office may result in the cancellation of the Eolas patent," according to the Microsoft statement. "Given these circumstances, and after consulting industry colleagues and developers, Microsoft, for now, will not be releasing an update to Internet Explorer and does not plan on making the changes it announced in October to Windows XP Service Pack 2."
It will be interesting to see how all this plays out. They already have the changes in the SP2 code that I'm running... I feel bad for the guy that has to go back and comment that all out. -
PDC DVD Materials Arrived
I finally got the DVDs for PDC 2003. It wasn't exactly what I was hoping for, but I'll manage. See, I don't have a DVD-ROM drive in my computer yet. I know, isn't it a shame? Anyways, I was hoping (nievely, maybe) that the DVD would be something that I could stick in my Xbox and watch in the comfort of my living room. Well, you can... if you have a Media Center PC. The videos are WM9 encoded, so you have to run them off of your PC. I guess I have another reason now to pony up and buy one.
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Make Your WinForms Apps Stand Out
My favorite cross-dresser Martin Spedding pointed me to a guy out of the UK by the name of Tim Dawson that has made some killer WinForms controls. His controls add Office 2003 stylings to any app, and are completely customizable. I'd gladly pay $100 bucks a pop for these controls, but he gives them away for free. Awesome! Make sure you put a few bucks in his tip jar and pay the man for his efforts. Martin's putting together a really cool RSS application that's really going to make some waves. Can't wait to see the final version.
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Combating MyDoom.A in Outlook 2003
I had over 80 e-mails in my inbox when I woke up this morning, most from this wonderful new virus that some schmuck that can't get a girlfriend decided to write in his ample spare time. I hope someone nails this jerk. As you can already tell, this virus thing is really starting to tick me off. Since my e-mail server's antivirus filters have not updated yet, I started fighting it the good-ole-fashioned way: Rules in Outlook 2003.
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Advertising In RSS Feeds - My Take
Tim Marman points to a Mike Gunderloy post about advertising in RSS Feeds. This is a subject that I've been grappling with for a few months now, so I'll give you my perspective on it.
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Mars Rover Problems - Update
NASA is now saying that the problem with the Spirit rover is due to the fact that it is “trying to keep track of too many files”. There are many lessons to be learned here. First, humans are no longer the only ones that suffer from this problem. Maybe if Spirit had been running WinFS it wouldn't have been so much of an issue. I'll need to ask Don Box if Indigo communications can be piped through the Deep Space Network. Anyways, the second lesson is simple: Regular maintenance of your computer is key. Defragment your hard drive once a week, and make regular backups, deleting files you no longer use on a regular basis. Whether it's a Martian rover or the family computer, taking these routine steps will ensure your system doesn't melt down at the most inopportune of times.
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Mars Rover Problems
NASA said today that the Mars rover “Spirit“ was online and recovering from its earlier problems. They said they had narrowed the problems down to the Flash memory unit and the file system that manages it. A Microsoft Representative directed JPL personnel to KB Article 743382 - “File Access Causes System Reboot on Windows Mobile 2003 - Interplanetary Rover Edition”. The KB article calls for the rover operator to bypass the Flash memory and access the RAM directly by playing Timothy Busfueld's violin solo from “Revenge of the Nerds“ backwards while holding down the “Ctrl“, “Ins“, “F9“ and “Esc” keys simultaneously.
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Sharepoint Observations - Installation
There has been an explosion in recent days regarding the number of people blogging about Sharepoint, and having just spent 4 days testing and installing the system on my own servers, I thought I'd throw my observations into the ring.
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Dude, Where's My Reference?
My next Builder.com article is finally online. This one talks about how to deploy server control files, and how to make sure they show up in the “Add References” dialog box. It's one of those steps that is often overlooked, but critical to customer usability. If server controls are your thing, then this article is for you. As always, feedback is welcome and appreciated.
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PatchDayReview.com Update
I just spent the past day or so on some new updates to PatchDayReview.com, so I thought I'd give everyone a quick rundown.
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Microsoft Security Strategies Roadshow
Just came across this in the MVP newsgroups, thought you all should be aware:
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Control Confusion
Why is it that no one expects a server control to register information in the Start Menu? I get support questions all the time asking where they can find the docs. I say “Did you check the Start Menu - Start | Programs | Interscape Technologies | ScrollingGrid 1.1 ?” Is it just because few other control vendors do this?
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Sued By IP Address
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MySQL ADO.NET Provider
Look no further than ByteFX. From what I understand, it's the best ADO.NET MySQL Provider out there. And it's already 100% compatible with my DTS Engine for the .NET Framework.
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VB.NET Encryption
ScottC gave me another killer tip for encryption in VB.NET. Good read.
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SQL Identity
Before I forget, I found a great post on @@Identity this morning, and I wanted to get it in my links before I forget. Thanks Duncan!
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Blogging the AZDNUG: CodeSmith - Part 2
[7:15pm]
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Blogging the AZDNUG: CodeSmith - Part 1
[6:45pm]
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LiveMeeting Free for 30 Days
You can get a free 30 day trial of Microsoft Office LiveMeeting here. I've used it with some teleconferences with Microsoft, and it's pretty cool. I highly recommend it. You gotta go through that link though, if you just sign up on the home page, you only get 15 days.
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Neat VS.NET Trick
Scott Cate, leader of the Arizona .NET User's Group (meeting tomorrow night, I'll be there) gives us a neat tip for editing in Visual Studio .NET.
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Smoking Kills
One of my .NET buddies just sent me this. It's made by a Russian ad firm, and is quite funny. Check it out.
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Special Characters in .NET
Soneone a few weeks ago showed me a nifty enumeration in .NET that helps out with dealing with special characters. The trouble is, I can't find it now. It was something like Characters.Quote.
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MS: We Like Win98 After All
Microsoft is extending its support for Windows 98, Windows 98SE, and Windows ME through June 30, 2006. The reason, this article sites, is that developing countries were not as aware of their lifecycle plans as they would have liked. Interesting.
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MSN Missed the RSS Boat
News.com tells us that Yahoo will start testing RSS support in MyYahoo. This report says that a public test date has not been set yet, but this much is clear. With Microsoft's release of the new MSN portal late last week, they completely missed the RSS boat. Not even the efforts of Robert Scoble were enough to convince MSN that they needed RSS support. Now, any addition of RSS to MyMSN will look like a “MeToo” feature.
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XmlConverter for .NET Objects
In this new era, is very important the easy understanding of data transfer. For this reason Devshock developed the XmlConverter tool that hides the complexity of the serialization and deserialization of objects.
I'll be trying this out later tonight, and I'll let you know how it works out. It's free, so you can't beat it.
Xml serialization and deserialization is a very useful tool of the .NET framework that permit us the creation of any kind of objects, convert it to XML (Extensible Markup Language) for the easy manipulation, but in some cases is complex to use.
Now forget of complex translations and just say "Convert this object to XML" or "Convert this XML to this Object"... sound easy no?
Use it too for load configuration from files
Assembly Properties
- Written fully in C#, 100% manage code.
- XML conversion from String and StringBuilder source
- Easy conversion of objects
- All functions are static (Shared in Visual Basic), so don't need to make a new instance of the XmlConvert
- Support thousands of conversions in seconds
- Very useful for data transfer in Server/Client applications
- Convert any type of objects including images
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Yahoo Dropping Google
This is the first I've heard about it.... MSNBC.com
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Everyone's a Critic
Geez. You know, forget the fact that Microsoft was able to fit an FM radio antenna and hardware, and advanced LCD display, and an UltraCompact .NET Framework onto a watch, Gary Krakow's biggest beef is that he thinks the watch models are ugly. Gosh dude, if that's your only beef, then I think we have a real winner here. I bet if you took the word “Sunnto” off the front and replaced it with “Rolex” he would probably think it wasn't so ugly. Personally, I like Sunnto's Copper/Slate look. I think it would go well with most any attire.
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Web Server Certificates
For any of you that run your own web server, VeriSign's Intermediate certificate expired today. Many people need to upgrade their intermediate certs.... if that's you, then check this out.
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Taskline 2.0 for Outlook 2003
OH MY GOSH. I have been waiting for this product for ages. Taskline 2.0 is available for Outlook 2003, and it adds stuff to the MS Outlook task list that MS should have added in Outlook 2000. I won't talk about it too much, save for the fact that I ponied up the $50 on sight, as it will save me countless hours on managing my time (I'm pretty sure that tasks show up on your PocketPC too, as appointments, but I have yet to verify this.). Instead, I'm going to let three screenshots speak for themselves:
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Scrollable Grid Woes
Dino Esposito talks about another reason why building a Scrollable DataGrid isn't all it's cracked up to be. You would never think such a simple concept could be so complicated, and yet it is. That's HTML for ya. I'll have to have Andy check and see if ScrollingGrid suffers from the same problem. It sure is nice having someone work for you that's smarter than you are, don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise.
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New Builder.com Article Out
In my last article, I talked about managing your source code when you deal with different versions of the Framework. Well, while great in theory, this technique sucked in practice. Here's why.
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The New MSN
I opened my browser a second ago, and a butterfly busted out of the page. What are they feeding that thing? At any rate, I like the new MSN.com. I was a beta tester for MSN9, so I finally get a chance to talk about it a bit. MS really puts a lot behind MSN... I was surprised when three weeks ago, a limited edition gold-plated MSN 9 CD showed up on my doorstep (It's real gold, I had it checked). That's one hell of a beta tester thank you. And all I got for Office 11 was a lousy keychain.
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WOO HOO! My XBOX will stream content from my computer!
MSNBC today reports that Bill Gates showed of a new technology today at CES called Windows Media Center Extender, as well as the Xbox Media Extender Kit.
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Linux Learning Some Manners?
This morning I came across these two links, which amount to etiquitte lessons for Linux bigots (don't jump down my throat, the links say that). I thought it was pretty cool that at least SOME people see how their “Linux is the answer to everything, period.” crap does more harm than good. Here's a sample:
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ASPnetMenu 1.2 Released
My friends over at Cyberakt have released a new version of ASPnetMenu. This is by far my favorite menu control, and they've worked for a few months now to make it even better.
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Get The Presents, Get The Presents!
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Secrets Revealed!
Chances are that you've used one of his controls before. His website lists nearly 30 different server controls that do everything from an emulation of the WinForms UpDown control to finding new ways to subclass the <asp:HyperLink> control. I'm pretty sure the only one that knows more about server controls is Nikhil Kothari.
Well, here we are: the moment three or four people have been waiting for. Interscape's secret employee is.....
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I'm a DropLoad fan!
A few days ago, I saw a post from someone about DropLoad.com, a website that lets you leave files for people, and gives them a 48 hour window to download it. It's done in PHP, but what the heck, it's a great system. I hope they add some reporting features and what not... I'd gladly pay a monthly fee to use it. I'm using it to distribute the source code for Interscape's products when they are purchased. What a killer idea!! Thanks DropLoad!
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OPML Fix for .Text 0.95.2004.102
I was working on more upgrades to LonghornBlogs.com tonight, and decided to post a fix for the OPML.aspx bug that I blogged about earlier. This one is an ASPX page that uses inline script instead of a compiled class to do its dirty work. Just tate the “.txt“ off the end of the file name, and drop it into your .Text root folder, and you're golden until the next drop.
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IIS6 Wildcard Mappings and FrontPage Extensions
I was just setting up a new blog site to start working on a global admin console for .Text (adding, editing, deleting blogs, sending bulk e-mails to blog owners, configuring blog groups, etc) when I came across a problem. Though I had set up FrontPage Extensions on that virtual web, VS.NET could not connect to it. When I RDC'd into the desktop to try to access the site's FPSE page, I got an ASP.NET error page, telling me that the FPSE DLL was not found.
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CSS Help Needed
I'll give hyperlink space on Interscape's blog site, a shoutout in my blog here (major GoogleJuice), and a Enterprise Edition of ScrollingGrid to anyone who can fashion me a .Text skin for our corporate blogs that looks similar to our corporate site, only way better than the pitiful attempt I made. Must use .Text 0.95 skins, be clean, and visually appealing, while retaining an Interscape “feel” (doesn't need to be a carbon-copy of the home page).
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Scott Watermasysk is the MAN
Have you seen his new site yet? I'm so freakin jealous man, he's using the .Text API to power his whole site. I want it... REALLY bad. I'm going to have to dive into it and see what I can come up with. Also, ScottW has upgraded this site with my custom FreeTextBox build, so no more HTML errors when you edit a post. YAY! Two of my biggest .Text peeves are eliminated. Seriously Scott, can you be any cooler?
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Shoutout to FirstSay.net
I've been getting a lot of hits from FirstSay.net lately, so I figured I'd give them a shot of GoogleJuice. I'm not sure who runs the site, but he/she must be nuts because they have had three or four of my posts on the front page. It's a pretty nifty web-based RSS aggregator, the only problem it's in PHP... arrgh! (psst.. the name of the platform you should be using is in the last 4 characters of your name...shh!) At any rate, it's a cool site, and a decent source of news from around the web. Lots of javascript going on too. Show the love... go check it out!
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My Experience Upgrading to .Text 0.95
Well, it has been an interesting evening indeed. I just spend the past 4 hours picking apart .Text 0.95, and upgrading LonghornBlogs.com. I figured I might as well start with the hardest upgrade, since it uses all custom skins. I've been waiting for this upgrade for a very long time, so after upgrading Interscape's Support Site yet again, I decided to make plenty of backups, and dig in.
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MSN Messenger Virus Alert
A new virus is being sperad over MSN Messenger. Find out more about it here.
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BACK ONLINE!!!
<whew> Our servers are FINALLY back online. InterscapeUSA.com, LonghornBlogs.com, and PatchDayReview.com are now alive and kicking. You can read more about it here. Sorry for the inconvenience. Hopefully it won't happen again. -
Still More Work To Do
Here's another example of why developers are far from outliving their usefulness. An article on MSNBC describes a digital warfare system that the 4th ID uses to battle insurgents in Iraq. The quote that caught my attention:
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News Section
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<a href="http://blogs.interscapeusa.com/robert">My Corporate Blog</a><br>
<a href="http://www.robertmclaws.com/blog">My Personal Blog</a><br><br></font>
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You should feel free to challenge me, disagree with me, or tell me I'm totally wrong 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 or profane comments, so keep it polite, please.</font><br><br> -
Ring In The New Year With .Text 0.95
ScottW has posted the binaries and source to .Text 0.95 on the GotDotNet Workspaces. This release has a ton of new features, and Scott is using a Wiki to put together an installation guide. It's had a lot of new content posted, so I'd recommend you go check it out. As soon as my servers are back up, all of my blog systems will be updated.
