Archives
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Business Week's latest on Overseas Outsourcing - Dot Bomb Part Deaux?
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/sep2004/nf20040920_0654.htm
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Infoworld Development Survey
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Commerce One goes bankrupt
http://www.computerworld.com/news/2004/story/0,11280,96156,00.html?from=homeheads
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Everyone else is making money but me.........
Well, not really. I find that people seem to always think that others are making huge money from whatever they are doing.
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Linux -> Windows migration
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HP drops Itanium 2 workstations
http://news.com.com/HP+discontinues+its+Itanium+workstations/2100-1006_3-5381398.html?tag=nefd.top
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Simple Reflection in .NET Whidbey
Here is some simple Reflection code that I wrote to see what is in some .NET assemblies. Suggestions are welcome. Its not very "Whidbey-esque," but it gets the job done.
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Non-techncial - Spyware/Adware appear to be gone
http://weblogs.asp.net/wallym/archive/2004/09/22/232780.aspx#232947
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Personal Opinion - Should MS back port some of the XP IE SP2 fixes to older versions of Windows?
There has been a lot of talk about MS back porting part of their XP SP2 IE fixes to older versions of Windows. I wonder if they truly should. After all, operating systems eventually fall off from achieving support. Here is IBM's support schedule for the AS/400 / iSeries. How well do they support their products after the end of program support? Take the case of Windows 2000. How much support should one expect from Microsoft 4 1/2 years after that product has shipped? NT4? Its been 8 years since that shipped. WinME? 4 years. What about older versions of Linux? How many major features are back ported to 2.2 or 2.4? Microsoft is a business, they are entitled to make money.
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Sql Dependency rules in .NET 2.0 Whidbey
There are a couple of rules that I have been posted in the newsgroups that I wanted to post. "Select * from Table" will not work with the SqlDependency object.
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MSMQ Processing of multiple pieces of data
You want to process a bunch of data associated with a single MSMQ message. First, create a class with the Serializable attribute.
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MSMQ processing of a string
Here is some sample code that processes messages that are in an MSMQ queue (isn't that redundant?). It pulls a string from a defined queue and does something with it. Behind the scenes, it uses the threadpool to process messages in the queue.
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Non-Technical Observation about Technology: Cell phone users are the new smokers
Ever notice how smokers congregate around a doorway on the outside of a building? Well, I see that cell phone users are now doing the same.
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Non-Technical - Adware/Spyware developers and marketing folks are not my favorite people
At one of my customer's, when I am not there, someone else will use the computer that I use, due to resource limitations. That is fine with me, I'm not there all the time. Unforntunately, about a month ago, one of these folks somehow got hoodwinked into installing some adware/spyware. Now, whenever, I show up in the morning, I get one popup screen after another (AOL 9.0, MSN, Refurbished Dell computers (like I would ever buy a Dell again), and such) on this development computer. I have tried Spybot and Ad-Aware SE. Spybot sees almost nothing (yes it is fully updated). Ad-Aware SE sees some of these files, but whenever I instruct Ad-Aware to remove the files, these same files keep coming back. I'm not criticizing Spybot and Ad-Aware for being bad products, merely that they can't handle the current situation. I have googled for all of these adware, spyware, malware products, but I have never been able to get these scum bags removed. These products are wupdt.exe, polmx3.exe, and qwnpln.exe. I am fearful that the only way to resolve this problem is going to be to repave and start over with this machine. About 12 months ago, someone installed some adware product at my office. It messed up everything with the computer and the only solution was to repave. About 3 months ago, I got caught by the Download.Ject virus and I just repaved and started over. These spyware people wonder why no one likes them.......Geez.
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Optimizing Indexes with Sql Server 2005 (Yukon) Beta 2
If you want to optimize your indexes in Sql Server 2000, you probably used the DBCC REINDEX or DBCC INDEXDEFRAG commands. I like the DBCC INDEXDEFRAG because I don't have to take the table offline from the application. I've been looking at for a similar mechanism in Sql Server 2005 (Yukon). I have found the ALTER INDEX command. The advantage that it has over the DBCC INDEXDEFRAG command is that with a DBCC INDEXDEFRAG command, you must manually specify the indexes that you want to defrag. Why am I looking for this? According to the documentation, DBCC INDEXDEFRAG will be removed from a future version of Sql Server.
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Registration free COM?
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Have you seen this in Yukon Beta 2? NewSequentialId() joins the fray
There is a new command in Yukon Beta 2 for generating GUIDs / uniqueidentifiers. It is the NewSequentialId() method. I don't know if it will eliminate the potential performance problems I have seen when using uniqueidentifiers, but it is there. I don't know if it will make it to the final released version.
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Trying to Debug with Win64 and Whidbey .NET Beta 1?
If you are trying to debug using Win64 and Whidbey .NET Beta 1, and you get an error about the remote debugging components not being installed, check out this tip I got from Jeff Schwartz in one of the newsgroups.
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Hooray, my Dell Laptop works again
After two new keyboards, my Inspiron 8200's pointing stick works again. Yippeee. Finally. It only took two new keyboards plus the replacement that they did for me at the depot to fix the problem. I amnot happy with the way Dell handled the situation. One would think that they would send it back from the depot working properly the first time. Second, they sent two faulty keyboards to me. It was the third keyboard that resolved the problem...........Ok, enough whining about that. I am back and I am working.
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The US Economy is definitely on the upswing
The US Economy is definitely on the upswing. Want to know why I know that? Because in the last couple of months, the body shop headhunters have been coming out of the woodwork wanting me to come work for them. I have now been contact 3 times in the last week and 5 times in the last month. All I have to do is take a pay cut and sign away every bit of intellectual property I own and I can belong to them. Oh, oh, what should I do........
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What I know about .NET
(amount of knowledge I have of .NET)
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(total amount of stuff to learn about .NET) -
SqlTypes vs. SqlDbType Confusion
Something to watch out for. I jsut caught myself on this. I am getting easily confused by the SqlTypes class and the SqlDbType enumeration. Thanks to Erik Porter for reminding me of this. SqlTypes are used when getting data out of the database. SqlDbType is used with SqlParameters for calling commands. While not a 100% accurate, I am going to think of them in general like this: SqlTypes are for getting data out while SqlDbType is used for putting data in.
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New Visual Studio .NET SKUs announced
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+courts+mainstream+developers/2100-1012_3-5362696.html?tag=nefd.top
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ASP.NET Wizard control in Whidbey aka ASP.NET 2.0
Have you seen the Wizard Control in Whidbey Beta 1? Very cool idea. Basically, it allows you to complete a series of steps in a fairly easy manner. I did some basics with it. Here is the simple code.
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Wow, what a comeback Georgia Tech 28 - Clemson 24 - Warning non-technical
I don't get into college football too much anymore (being that I am 37 and well out of school), except for when my team (Georgia Tech) plays. I had watched and hoped that something good would happen. When the score was Clemson 17 - GT 7 on a long Clemson run for a touchdown, I knew that all hope was lost. Then, GT scored to cut it to Clemson 17 - GT 14. Clemson came back and scored on another long run to make it Clemson 24 - GT 14. Then, GT scored to make the score Clemson 24 - GT 21. I figured that after GT messed up on the onside kick that the game was effectively over. Then a series of miracles started. On second down and 1, Clemson was stopped for no gain. On third down, Clemson fumbled, but recoved with the result now being that it was fourth down and one. Clemson ran the play clock down and took a five yard penalty for a delay of game. On fourth down, the Clemson snapper, rolled the football by the kicker, who ran back recovered the ball and was buried by a couple of GT players. With about 15 seconds to go, GT had the ball on the Clemson 11 yard line. GT quarterback Reggie Ball thru an 11 yard touchdown pass to Calvin Johnson for the go ahead score. That still wasn't the end of the game. Due to a penalty for excessive celebration, and a 49 yeard kickoff return, Clemson had the ball on the GT 31 yard line with 3 seconds to go in the game. A Charlie Whitehurst pass fell incomplete in the end zone as time expired. And the miracle was complete..............
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Birmingham talk on ASP.NET Whidbey
Tonight's talk in Birmingham went very well tonight.
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ASP.NET Whidbey talk in Birmingham, AL
I am doing a talk on ASP.NET Whidbey in Birmingham, Al tonight at the Birmingham Software Developer's Association. Comeby if you are in the Birmingham area.
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New Oracle ODP.NET Data Provider available
http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/tech/windows/odpnet/index.html
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GetProviderSpecificFieldType() in .NET 2.0 Whidbey
Back with Classic ADO, you could always get the datatype of the field in a recordset (adVarChar and such). I wanted to do that again and get the data in the form of the System.Data.SqlTypes I never did find a way to do that under .NET 1.x. With .NET 2.0 Whidbey, I can use the GetProviderSpecificFieldType() method to get the type of the field as defined by the System.Data.SqlTypes. Here is some quicky code that I wrote to do this:
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Connection String magic with Whidbey
Within the System.Data.Common namespace is the DbConnectionStringBuilder class. This class allows you to manage and easily parse the connection string to make changes as necessary within your application. Why would you want to do this? Well, you might have a database management application and want to change values within the connection string so that you can easily make move between one database session and another. This class is very cool. Check it out.
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MySql Connector/.NET
New build of a .NET data provider for MySql is available.