April 2006 - Posts
Microsoft put together a site with the 400 plus differences between Studio 2005 and 2003. The marketing geniuses came up with a great self describing website.
http://www.400plusdifferences.com.
I know this tool has been out there for a while, but it is highly recommended. It seems every time I refresh my ie7 beta I need to reinstall this plug in, get a new machine, or new job; I never can remember exactly what it is called and it takes me too long to find it.
This is a great BOON to a Web Developer that came from the desktop application side. I have learned HTML/CSS as I have went, and this IE plug in practically made it were I don't have to learn anything else about CSS. :)
It's not that great of a toolbar, but it really helps when trying to figure out exactly what I am doing wrong with my styles. Plus it has dynamic style changing and the IE Window is reflected immediately, no hitting F5 here!
Compared to some of the Firefox CSS plugins, this tool does everything that it does better than Firefox's, but Firefox has a really nice style sheet viewer. So you can see better how the cascading in style sheets really work.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e59c3964-672d-4511-bb3e-2d5e1db91038&displaylang=en
No, this isn't some secret list I have hacked out of the NSA, a black market purchase, or this is not intel that the terrorist could use. This is the list of IP addresses that the government uses. So as a responsible technologist (sounds more like a doctor doesn't it?), you should not scan this.
The government already wastes enough tax money, why make them waste more performing a background check on you because they traced the packets to some experimental network discovery windows service you are writing for your Network Admin...just because you can? More importantly they might discover something about your past, that you would rather the government not find out about.
Thanks to Eric for posting this list.
Microsoft has release the source code for the built in ASP.NET providers. This includes all the Navigation, Menu, Security, SessionState, etc. Good stuff!
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/04/13/442772.aspx
I thought every piece of software except for Microsoft's was perfect and had no security flaws? Well apparently the "evil, non-caring" corporation of Oracle has its own problems.
The flaw in question affects versions 9.1.0.0 through 10.2.0.3 of Oracle's database software running on any operating system. Not only did the posting reveal details of the vulnerability, it also included computer code to test it, said Kornbrust, who runs Germany's Red Database Security and often hunts for bugs in Oracle products.
Software is easy to write, good software is hard to write, and perfect software is impossible to write, no matter what company you work for, or what software you buy.
Currently in the US they are having a big debate about Net Neutrality. The companies that own the backbone wiring want to throttle their bandwidth based on subscription deals. Currently all traffic is permitted to flow freely across everyone's network without any additional charge or discrimination.
The companies are wanting to change it. (These are made up business relationships) Verizon wants to be able to sign a deal with Disney that gives Disney's packets preferential treatment as far as bandwidth comsumption. So if two people on Verizon's backbone are each downloading information from Disney and Disney's competitor, the Disney download will finish first.
Without getting into the reasons "how the companies got the backbone", that seems like a perfectly reasonable solution to me. Someone put together a map that shows how far the internet backbone is from a monopoly. This is just the North American map.
http://blogs.cio.com/node/209
Okay, it really doesn't matter what cell phone provider you have. All cell phones drop calls, all cell phones loose signal, etc. What usually happens is one cell phone will drop. Both people on the call will realize what happened, and both will try to call back. This results in both people getting sent straight to voice mail.
They both will try a couple times until one of them stops trying to call. If both people didn't stop calling at the same time one of the calls will finally go through and the conversation can continue. I have been thinking about this dilemma for a couple days now and want to propose a resolution.
When two people are engaged in normal conversation and the call drops, the younger will initiate the call back.
This will help with any double call situations and will alleviate the reconnection. Most people know amongst their friends who is older and who is younger. So the younger always calls...end of story.
I was recently speaking with a friend about IIS 7.0 and was trying to explain to him why it was such an important step forward with Web Server Technology from Microsoft. IIS 7.0 is being release with Vista (or Longhorn...whatever it is called). There are two big changes that caught my eye.
First are the config files to control IIS. If anyone has tried to move a website from dev to production, it isn't a pleasant experience if you have different caching rules for different folders, handlers, etc. There will be an xml config file way to configure your virtual directory. This is a godsend for anyone that has used "inetmgr". It is not going away, but there is a better way.
The other big one is writing IIS level .NET modules. Currently I can write an HttpModule that runs inside the AppDomain of my website application. This is fine, but there are a couple jumps the HttpRequest makes as it worms it way through Http.sys -> inetinfo.exe -> w3wp.exe and then finally to the AppDomain.
It is going to be possible to sit a .NET module equal to IIS. My friends and I were talking about what this really meant. I would think it would make online gaming much easier. Right now, all online games typically use some random port that you have to poke holes in your firewall to get on.
I think you would be able to, with relatively few lines of code, be able to write a gaming server, or at least a server dispatcher that could use IIS to host a gaming server. This would enable games to be played over port 80 and skip out on all the firewall problems.
It's from February 2005...but here is Scott Guthrie's talk about it from channel 9.
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