Live Chat Programs

Also see: A Start at Test Driven Development with Silverlight 2

I can’t help myself. I have to keep this discussion about blogging going.

Is blogging just the end result of someone’s input into a Content Management System. Of course it is. So what. You could point a URL to a daily post in a discussion forum. It would have far better interactivity than a blog, and would be just as easy to post as often as the author would like. Does that make the output purely a forum post ? Or for those old school among us, putting up a page on a website could be a blog, a column, a report, whatever. The manner of how you post something to the web is not even worth discussing. A blog is a blog is a blog.

If you blog, regardless of what software you use, you are a blogger and what you produce is a blog. If you want to call yourself a columnist, so be it. If you are a reporter in a 1 page internet only publication, yes you are.

From there, only one question comes up. Why. Why ? Why do you do what you do. Is it because:

You get paid to do it ?

Because you want to promote something or to promote yourself ?

Because you want to start a discussion ?

Because you want to communicate with customers, fans or ??

Because its a way to say whats on your mind ?

Because you want to make money from it ?

I’m sure there are other reasons to communicate on the web. What software you use, even whether you use video, text and/or pictures, really doesn’t matter.

What matters is why you do what you do.

(more…)

Also see: Channel 9 Interview

Pre-v2, when you load an assembly by path through Fusion (LoadFrom(), ExecuteAssembly(), etc.), it can actually cause two binds, not just one. The first bind loads the file at the given path. If that is successful, another bind is done with the display name of that assembly to see if it’s available in the Load context. If it’s not available, the LoadFrom() call is still successful - we throw away the results of the second bind. If it is available, we check the path returned from the first bind against the path from the second bind. If they’re identical, we keep the Load context IAssembly and throw away the LoadFrom one. (That means that that assembly will be in the Load context, not the LoadFrom context.) Otherwise, we keep the LoadFrom context IAssembly.

This is to ensure that the Load context remains order-independent - an important part of the design for that context. It’s an implementation detail, but I bring it up because it has some side-effects that are surprising to customers:

• The second bind shows up in the Fusion log. (It’s just another bind to Fusion.) It’s unsettling to see a failure in the log (for the second bind) when the LoadFrom() call succeeded.
• Doing a second bind by display name causes probing which slows down the performance of LoadFrom(), especially over http, when the file isn’t found immediately.

Fusion has stopping doing the second bind in v2. But, when using an older CLR, customers can avoid both side-effects by putting a redirect from the (more…)

Also see: Where to Find Technical Support

I’m going to the Rose Bowl.

I am a University of Illinois alum and an avid fan of college
sports.  The Illini football team had a great season this year and will play
USC in Pasadena on January 1st.  In fact, this is the just the second time in
my lifetime that Illinois has made it to the Rose Bowl.  For those of us here
in central Illinois, this is a really big deal.  Who knows when it will happen
again?

So last week when the University started selling tickets, I
placed my order.  A few days later I received confirmation that I was going to
actually get the tickets I had requested.  That email said:

“tickets will be shipped to the
address listed above via UPS Overnight Delivery”

I laughed out loud.  UPS Overnight?  I live right here in
Champaign-Urbana.  The University of Illinois Athletic Ticket Office is less
than two miles from my office.  Surely I could just go over during my lunch
hour and pick them up?

No, I suppose not.  These folks are trying to process orders
for over 25,000 tickets and they have very little time to do it.  They probably
just want to have one standard method of handling them all.  Dealing with the
special cases would slow everything down.

The next day I got email from UPS with a tracking number for
my tickets:

(more…)

Also see: We Live in an “Open Book” World, the Lie of Information Overload

I am tickled pink ’n honored to announce the third release of Microsoft Tagspace *, a social bookmarking solution for technical professionals, like you. With this release, Tagspace becomes Microsoft’s first true social bookmarking application for the whole World Wide Web Web. Learn more about Tagspace and its potential to help you save, recall, and connect to the people, subjects, and Web-based resources that matter most to you here.

With today’s release, you can now use Tagspace to:

• Tag Practically Anthing on the Web–Apply tags to practically any site on the World Wide Web, excepting those that are known to contain offensive, malicious, and otherwise inappropriate content.
• Browse Member Tags–See what other users have tagged and view their personal tag clouds, by clicking on their display names.
• “Tag Drafting”–Subscribe to the RSS feed for a tag (like tagspace ).
• “Member Drafting”–Subscribe to the RSS feed for other members’ public tagged items (my Tagspace RSS feed here , by clicking on their names and subscribing to the RSS feeds associated with their tagged items lists. 

• “Tag Drafting ” and “Member Drafting” are excellent ways to stay up to date , diminish information overload , and approach what I like to call “domain omniscience “, at little expense to yourself.

(more…)

Also see: Blogging and Newspapers, a Lesson in How Not to Brand and Market

Also see: A quick update on me.

Also see: Single source code base for Silverlight and WPF solutions

I read a ton. Online, magazines, newspapers. I troll the newsstands for new magazines just trying to see if there is something out there Im missing.

I also get asked all the time what magazines that I do read. I’m not going to go through the list, but I’m going to list two that are must reading for anyone who has an interest in technology. Why ? Because they often cover in technical detail just how 99pct of the bandwidth available to the home is managed, planned and maintained.

It’s amazing to me how all the “internet pundits” truly have no understanding that 98pct of the bandwidth to most people’s homes is not allocated to the internet, its allocated to everything else digital and analog and managed quite differently than the internet bandwidth that you receive. Not understanding the difference between the two (internet and non) pretty much eliminates your ability to understand the future of broadband technology to the home.

To help the uninformed, I decided to share my 2 faves:
Communications Technology

ScreenPlays

These are the 2 magazines that I save every issue of and that I get excited to learn something new.

check em out

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http://www.blogmaverick.com/2008/02/27/the-2-technology-magazines-you-should-read/

Also see: Java design, operator overloading and people

Also see: LoadFile vs. LoadFrom

Also see: Degrees of optimism in projects

By default, old blogs are truncated from this web site.  If you want to read
old entries that have scrolled off, go to the CATEGORIES section at the right hand
side of the web page.  Select CLR (rss) and you’ll see the full list.

http://blogs.msdn.com/cbrumme/archive/2003/11/10/51572.aspx

Also see: DevWeek 2008 Silverlight Precon Demos

Also see: A VS.NET Macro to Generate Machine Keys.

Also see: The Dick Button drinking game

Brian Welcker posts some information on changes they are consindering to how you will administer Sql Server Reporting Services in the next version, codenamed Katmai.

Right now, administering Report Models exposed to Report Builder requires you to launch Sql Server Management Studio tool, while other features require you to launch the Report Manager website.   Also, there are some features that you rarely use, yet are exposed from the Report Manager portal, such as Job Management and System Wide Role & Security configuration.  

It appears that the end result of the proposed tool changes will be to correct these inconsistencies by consolidating server and system-wide configuration and administration tasks into Sql Server Management Studio, and moving some of the more user-facing admin features to the Report Manager.

Not a bad idea overall, now I just hope they fix support for FormsAuth throughout the entire solution (ReportBuilder, nudge nudge).

http://weblogs.asp.net/lhunt/archive/2007/04/24/reporting-services-administration-changes-in-katmai-v-next.aspx

Also see: Web Services with Spring 2.5 and Apache CXF

Last week I was considering the purchase of a piece of
software.  I went to the vendor’s website for pricing.  It wasn’t there. 
Annoyed, I filled out the form so that I could be contacted by one of their sales people.  The
following day I got a response:

Thanks for considering (product
name deleted).  Please write back to me with your phone # or call me at the #
below — we can discuss pricing as I learn about your application and how you
plan to use (product name deleted) for development.

So I sent an email with the following response:

Hi (name deleted),

OK.  Please bear with me for just a
moment while I vent.

#ifdef FRUSTRATED_RANT

First, I hate the fact that you
guys don’t put pricing on your website.  I looked up the old version of your
site using archive.org, so I’ve got a ballpark idea of what the pricing was
around six months ago.  Mostly I just want to know if anything has changed.

Second, it’s absurd that when a
customer asks for pricing, you won’t give it to them.  Instead, you answer the
question with a question.  I’m not even the slightest bit interested in telling
you about our application and how we plan to use (product name deleted) for
development.  I just want to know your pricing and your license terms.

(more…)

Also see: ASP.NET MVC Preview 2

There was a lot of discussion about my previous posts here and here. My point is that the internet is a stable platform. Its a utility. Its evolved to the point where you can count on it and develop applications for it without much fear that its going to change.

What confirms my point is that with all the talk of a possible or existing recession, not a single mention is ever made about how increases in productivity from technology will pull us through. That is counter to the recessions of the past 25 years. Whether it was the early 80s, the 90’s or even the post bubble , economists and others pointed to technology as a catalyst to productivity that would help pull us out of our economic doldrums.

When there were boomtimes , as we saw from about 91 to 2000, technology was given the lions’ share of the credit.

So where are the claims of further productivity enhancements from technology ? They are no where that I can find.

In fact, we can start to make arguments to the contrary. That technology and in particular social network and video sites can be a hindrance to productivity in the workplace.

Further arguments can be made that the MSFT YHOO potential merger is further evidence that the technology industry is maturing.

It is what it is.

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Also see: Claimspace, a Long Tail Recognition System

gs  | Comments

http://www.blogmaverick.com/2008/02/10/the-internet-is-officially-dead-and-boring-its-the-economy-stupi/

Also see: Playing Multiple Simultaneous Sounds in WPF

Also see: Manual CRUD operations with the Telerik RadGrid control

Also see: Load(AssemblyName)

An unmanaged dll can be wrapped in a managed assembly by adding it as a file of a multi-module assembly. Then, it can be deployed and versioned in the same way as managed assemblies. (So, that assembly could contain nothing but metadata and unmanaged code - no managed code, if you prefer. It can also contain multiple unmanaged files in the same assembly.)

If your compiler does not support this directly, you can get this to work by adding that file as a linked managed resource. For example, see Visual Studio’s /linkresource option (if using it for command line compiling).

This is useful in the case where DllImport() is used to access a function in that file. That call should be updated with the new assembly’s info. For example, in the place of “unmanagedfile.dll”, change it to include the display name like this: “unmanagedfile.dll, managedassembly, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089″.

If that unmanaged file needs to be loaded by LoadLibrary() outside of DllImport(), however, it will need to follow the rules of LoadLibrary(), like the usual unmanaged file use outside the CLR. (See Junfeng’s blog for an extra tip regarding that when using v2.)

http://blogs.msdn.com/suzcook/archive/2004/10/28/versioning-deploying-unmanaged-files.aspx