Ok, a rare non-technical blog entry here, but this was just hilarious. As I was leaving Tampa this morning, this was on the news programs. I guess they are lacking for a big story down there.
Naked man chased from church pumpkin patch
Looks like this feature is back on, and will be a part of the product. Look for it in the next Community Technology Preview for Visual Studio 2005 next week.
You've heard of hardware, software, and firmware. A student last week introduced me to Meatware, which is a less common synonym for Wetware.
Thanks to Michael Diamant of Maximus for this.
A Cal-Tech spinoff company, iSpheres, plans to publish an early version of the EPL software, short for Event Programming Language, by month's end. It will be royalty free to end users. They plan to make their money selling thier event server. There's even been some suggestion that EPL will compliment BPEL (Business Process Engineering Language).
Their claims of EPL are pretty steep:
“In much the same way that SQL eased the development of database applications, EPL simplifies event-based computing.”
“Rather than write 100 lines of Java code, iSphere's EPL can reduce that to 10 or 20 lines of code.”
Microsoft Learning has finally released BizTalk Server 2004 courseware. I'm looking forward to prepping and delivering course 2157 (Developing) and 2158 (Deploying and Managing).
Microsoft certification exam # 074-100 (MSF Practitioner Exam) is retiring, July 28th and is being replaced by exam # 070-301.
For those MCTs who want to continue to deliver MSF courses, such as Course 1846A, after December 31, 2004, they will be required to pass 070-301 in addition to becoming an MCT with MSF Competency.
As a side note, Microsoft has said that MSF 4.0 exam plans will be announced in the Visual Studio 2005 release timeframe, mid 2005.
Here's a good introductory article on SPOT, written by the product team.
As a reminder, Smart Personal Objects are everyday objects, such as clocks, pens, key-chains, billfolds, and wristwatches that are made smarter, more personalized and more useful through the use of special software.
I'm glad that some of my Regional Director brethren have hung in there and seen the Visual Studio Team System installation through to fruition. Here's a good blog that lists some steps and resources for pulling it off using Virtual PC
http://weblogs.asp.net/cmenegay
Microsoft is currently investigating a reported vulnerability in Microsoft ASP.NET. An attacker can send specially crafted requests to the server and view secured content without providing the proper credentials. This reported vulnerability exists in ASP.NET and does not affect ASP.
Read about the vulernability here and about the underlying issue here (KB 887459).
Follow-Up: The ASP.NET Team has confirmed that all versions of ASP.NET on all operating systems may be susceptible to this potential exploit. They strongly recommend you apply the following code to the Global.asax for each of your applications.
Global.asax code sample (Visual Basic .NET)
Sub Application_BeginRequest(Sender as Object, E as EventArgs)
If (Request.Path.IndexOf(chr(92)) >= 0 OR _
System.IO.Path.GetFullPath(Request.PhysicalPath) <> Request.PhysicalPath) Then
Throw New HttpException(404, "Not Found")
End If
End Sub
Global.asax code sample (C#)
void Application_BeginRequest(object source, EventArgs e) {
if (Request.Path.IndexOf('\\') >= 0 ||
System.IO.Path.GetFullPath(Request.PhysicalPath) != Request.PhysicalPath) {
throw new HttpException(404, "not found");
}
}
Thanks to Jim Blizzard (Sr. .NET Developer Evangelist) for this!
Otherwise known as the next version of Delphi. It'll do Delphi Win32, Delphi .NET, and C# projects all under one IDE. There's support for refactoring and ASP.NET as well. Here's a quick screenshot: 
One industry that stays cutting-edge on technology is the Real Estate industry. They were one of the first to introduce networked computing and then Web based solutions to allow realtors to submit and search for properties. The Multiple Listing Service (MLS) is essentially a giant pay-to-play database of all the properties for sale in the US. MLS then took it to the next level by offering their search via a Web service, so that other companies could provide the search and display functionality.
Well, it was only a matter of time, before these records were joined with satellite data. My friend Jon Beck, while researching property up in Washington, happened across just such a service -- and he looked up my new house. 
As a software developer, I've often wrestled with the decision of how much to price my creation. I remember watching my grandfather create a large, beautiful watercolor painting and then stick a price tag of $10,000 on it. When asked how he could justify $10k in 3 hours his answer was it took him 40 years + 3 hours. That makes sense.
It would be nice if this would apply to software development, because I'd be at 20 years mark!. Since it doesn't work that way, try reading this article on how to compute a price, all the time keeping your revenue in mind.
The Intermountain Venture Forum will be held on October 6th & 7th in Boise Idaho. Fifteen companies will present in front of the top institutional investors in the West. In addition, there will be several panels from leading experts in venture funding, angel investment, and how to sell to the government.
Here is the Web site and agenda.
Been doing some coding this weekend and, in keeping with good TDD practice, I've been writing my tests, albeit paper-based exercises for the users, as I'm writing the code.
I found this good resource: www.testdriven.com -- check out their list of TDD Tools
It seems that Google is breaking one of Philisophical tenants. It seems that Google/China is omitting sites from the Chinese government banned sites. This article exposes the tests and possible reasons.
Had a student point this out last week. Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News aggregator. Personally, I think it's a bit busy but interesting.
Ok, I'm a couple of days late on this one, but since I recommend it to all of my friends, clients, and students, I thought I should post this advisory and patch.
Just wanted to list a few resources here:
As you may know, .NET Framework 1.1 has a service pack out now.
I've been reading a few notes about installing it.
Also, there appears to be a problem w/ the client-side JAVASCRIPT file. If you've upgraded to .NET FW 1.1 SP1, you'll need to copy the old "WebUIValidation.js" into your IIS \aspnet_client\system_web\1_1_4322 folder. This is the old file before the SP1 update and your web app should work as usual now. Here is the thread that mentioned about the workaround.
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=21650
Microsoft and Netdesk have partnered to run several ISV tours throughout the US over the next couple of months.
I'll be personally delivering the W2003 tour. Hope to see you on the trail!
Wow, you really can do everything with Google. Here's a blog entry from a guy who wrote an API in Linux to turn your Google GMail account into a mountable file system.
Wish me luck -- I'm off to install the Client/App/Data components to VSTS TFS in *one* VHD image.
My first snag, was seeing a weird !"ValueType mismatch" error that I couldn't explain, so I did some research. Well, now that IIS 6.0 now has 1.1 and 2.0 versions of the framework, and Sharepoint doesn't work, until you set both of the sites back to version 1.1. Do a restart of the server too, for good measure.
The next speed bump occurred when I was actually installing the software, and specified my local machine as being the database server, at which point I was presented with a dialog reading “Cannot install database server on the local machine. Please enter a remote machine name instead“:
The workaround was to specify 127.0.0.1 as the name of the server, rather than RESEARCH (my local machine name)
I was commenting the other day that many TLAs at Microsoft are getting way too many meanings. Case in point, WSS, which can mean one of many things in this world, even with Microsoft technologies.
At least they honestly acknowledge this.
I love everything about Office 2003, except for the fact that Photo Editor is gone and the (ahem) replacement, is far from what I need. The good news is that you can just re-install the old editor from your Office XP media.
Microsoft's official explanation is here and there's an independent analysis here.
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