May 2004 Entries
Thanks to Roy Osherove for this segnalation: Dataset Quick Watch "visualizer" Add-in for VS.Net 2003.This project allows you to view the contents of a dataset while debugging, just like the “visualizers” in Whidbey (you select the expression, right click it and hit the “Dataset Quick Watch” menu).Great tool!
DBDesigner 4 is an interesting (open source and totally FREE) tool for designing your database.It's a visual database design system that integrates database design, modeling, creation and maintenance into a single, seamless environment.It combines professional features and a clear and simple user interface to offer the most efficient way to handle your databases.List of featuresAvailable on Linux / MS Windows User Interfaced based on industry standard layouting software Canvas navigation similar to Adobe Illustrator® and Photoshop® Palettes (docked / floating) including "Bird Eyes view" Available objects include tables, realtions, labels, regions, images Extensive Drag'n'drop support Extensive Popup-Menu support Advanced Editors UNLIMITED...
Again with the Longhorn Preview... I agree that it's only a preview and the code is not optimized (presence of lots of debugging code, feature not completed etc.) but... what's this error?It's not so clear...
The first thing that comes in my mind during the little evalutation of Longhorn is: will the future applications ready for Longhorn? Will be ready to use all the powerful feature of Longhorn?I think that this is not a simple question, but a problem that must be well evaluated. Longhorn seems to be a completely revolutionary OS, with features like WinFS and Avalon that we've never seen on the other Microsoft OS.Ok, to run Longhorn in a good way, a new hardware is required... A Pentium 4 3Ghz with 1 Gb of Ram and ATI radeon 9800 128Mb (my machine)...
Today Yahoo has announced that it will add a new feature to its toolbar that allows users to easily remove spyware programs from their computers. This feature is called Anti-Spy and now it's on beta stage on http://toolbar.yahoo.com/.This is a good feature... I hope Google will do the same thing also for its Google Toolbar!
Exchange Intelligent Message Filter is based on Microsoft SmartScreen Technology from Microsoft Research. By using e-mail characteristics tracked by SmartScreen technology, Intelligent Message Filter can help determine whether each incoming e-mail message is likely to be spam. Based on this likelihood, you can choose to block e-mail messages at the gateway or at the mailbox store.
Important...
Download from this link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c1b08f7b-8caf-4147-b074-8c9c8f277071&DisplayLang=en
An useful download: Microsoft Office Data Assistant for Microsoft Office PowerPoint® 2003.
The Data Assistant for PowerPoint 2003 provides an easy-to-use method of inserting and managing graphical data objects such as Microsoft Office Visio® drawings, Microsoft Office Excel charts, and named ranges into PowerPoint presentations.
Great!
URL for download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=786cf731-cd9f-4014-9a40-aecabd46696f&displaylang=en
Google the best also in Italy!This is the result from the last research from Audiweb Nielsen//Netratings that says that Google is the most used search engine in Italy. The result is resumed as follow: Visitors (single IP) x000Google (.it + .com)9,585Virgilio.it8,024Libero.it7,766 However, this is not the completely correct result... Accordingly to an accurate examination by I-Dome, if you consider the sum of the 2 domains .IT and .COM, the winner is MSN: Visitors (single IP) x000Google (.it + .com)9,585Virgilio.it8,024Libero.it7,766MSN (.it + .com)10,082 Now, these last results must be submited to an other consideration: MSN traffic comes a lot from the "autosearch" pages from Internet Explorer (when you type...
One of the greatest feature on Longhorn is obviously WinFS... all the data (documents, images, video, music, contacts, email etc.) are grouped in a unique big catalogue and you can search this catalogue to find what you want.The Find feature in Longhorn now appears like this:Wonderful!! Now the way to search for a document is the same way to search for an email or for a telephone number but... what's the price of this power? This:The WinFS.EXE process (alone) use 140Mb of your RAM and, if you consider what's the RAM usage of Longhorn without WinFS active (more than...
I have a little question about .Text, a little problem that I'd like to solve...Is it possible to do a Blog backup and tranfer in some way? Explanation (I hope it coulkd be more clear): If I have a blog (based on .Text engine) hosted on (for example) weblogs.asp.net and I want to trasfer the entire contents of it an other my blog on (for example) www.dotnetjunkies.com/weblog, how can I do it?Is there a way to perform this task? Any ideas?
Really interesting... This chart displays attributes of different user-installed blog software packages side-by-side for comparison (only server-installed scripts will be included in this list).I reccommend a check and (maybe) contribution.
I saw this notice only yesterday evening: Microsoft Press website has been defaced by an hacker group named "Outlaw Group". Fortunately seems that they've not create too much problems, only some little writings on the website (as you can see below):Official communications about this hacking and about why it tooks place? Maybe someone has forgotten some patches? Not good...
An other interesting free guide from Microsoft: Securing Wireless LANs with PEAP and Passwords.This guide is designed to help small- and medium-sized organizations protect their wireless local access network (LANs). This prescriptive guidance will assist you in planning, deploying, testing, and managing a wireless LAN security infrastructure using Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Pocket PC 2003. This updated guide uses passwords to authenticate users and computers to the LAN instead of digital certificates.The solution uses industry standards such as 802.1X to ensure broad interoperability. Windows XP Wireless Auto Configuration and the Microsoft Active Directory directory service help to...
The application that we're building at work uses reports a lot and all our reports are built with Crystal Report. I think that Crystal Report is a good tool for building reports, but the Crystal Report engine that come swith Visual Studio is sometimes too much limited (and not so simple to use!)
In these days I was reading something about the new SQL Reporting Services by Microsoft, the new Report Engine that comes with SQL Server (SQL Server 2000 SP3 is required). I think that this is a great tool for reporting, well integrated with SQL Server, well designed and...
Davide Mauri signals me an interesting news: Orneta Software House has stopped its MS Smartphone and Pocket PC activity, so it's no longer selling or making software for these platforms. All the Orneta products are now available for free... to get for free the products you can simply go to the Orneta Website. To get for free, no strings attached, registration codes for all our programs please click here. To download the software directly to your smartphone go to http://mobile.orneta.com inside of your smartphone.There are interesting product and if you have a MS Smartphone or Pocket PC I recommend a visit......
I've received today this link, maybe useful for a beginner: VB.NET and C# Comparison.This is a quick reference guide to highlight some key syntactical differences between VB.NETand C#.I think it could be useful!
In these days I'm searching for a good FREE tool for posting on .Text Blogs (my favourite tool, BlogJet, now is not free) and yesterday I've discovered Sauce Reader.Sauce Reader is a good feed reader (with really a nice interface) but has also a good feature: it has the possibility to post on .Text Blogs... wonderful!! I've tryed it and seems to work good.I think it could be soon become my favourite Blog tool... Supports all major feed formats including RSS and Atom. Integrated weblogging environment with full posting functionality. Automatic application updates. Clean, intuitive user interface. Feed discovery and...
I'm really happy to see that Oracle has joined Microsoft's Visual Studio partner program and that later this year it will release a free software download for Microsoft's Visual Studio .Net 2003 development tools.This could be an improvement for applications that use Oracle databases and I hope it could be soon translated into a more simple way to interact with Oracle's DB. This new interest that Oracle seems to have on .NET is really a good thing (but I think that Java will remain their favourite platform to support) !
Yesterday I've received some mails via this Blog that asks me if I know that some "priviledge" Gmail users have the capacity of their mailbox increased to 1Terabyte. My response was that I don't know this and maybe it could be a bug.Today the official answer by Google: A "bug" in Gmail temporarily gave some users one Terabyte of free storage and now the company is working to fix it. I was right!
Security is one of the most "hot" themes in this period, so Microsoft has released a Security Guidance Kit ready to download (LINK: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c3260bd0-2ebb-4496-ad07-7e9d55d0ef1f&displaylang=en)="/P">The Security Guidance Kit is a collection of how-to information, software tools, and detailed prescriptive guidance within a small "viewer" application. The materials within the Kit are all designed to help you implement security measures in your environment. The topics covered include patch management, anti-virus measures, securing remote access, and blocking unsafe email attachments.It contains documentation files along with a viewer application to allow you to navigate the documentation. It also contains free software tools from Microsoft, which...
This is an interesting idea... Miguel Jimenez has built a new add-in for .Text 0.95 that permits you to have a place to upload files, images or documents that you can attach to your posts.You can download from here the File Repository for DotText 0.95Great work Miguel!
The Visual Studio .NET 2005 Community Technology Preview can't be normally installed on any version of Longhorn (the VS installer don't permit it).Miguel Jimenez on his blog has posted a patch utility he has built that exactly do this: you can install the Visual Studio 2005 on any Longhorn build.Interesting...
An other interesting free book published by Microsoft: What's New in Exchange Server 2003.This online book provides important information about using Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003. The purpose of this book is to outline the new features in Exchange Server 2003 and provide the basic information necessary to begin using these new features. This is not a comprehensive document about Exchange, but a guide for getting started with testing and running Exchange 2003.Download it!
I've just read the notice that Google might be backing down on some of its planned ideas for Gmail... Google had an accusation that by scanning the email it was infringing users’ privacy.I hope that Google could continue the good works it's doing on Gmail system. I think that the question about privacy is not so cool as something want to push... You want a free 1Gb Mail account with Google? Ok, you can have it, but you have to submit by our condition.Our condition are not good for you? Ok, you are totally free to choose other solutions.I'm thinking about...
An interesting idea for a new type of BlogReader...Damir Tomicic on his blog signals that Holger Ferstl, a German programmer, wrote the first 3D Blog Reader (it's in german) using .NET and Direct X.It's really cool... ok, I don't believe too much on 3D GUI but this is a nice application... You can try it by clicking on the image below:
Inspired by Jay Kimble's post “Real Programmers... don't use comments??!!“, I want to say my personal opinion about comments in code.I think that code (expecially if it's part of a big project) must always be well commented. A "well commented" code is more simple to understand for others and more simple to maintain. I'm totally disagree with the affermation that “comments are useless; if you can't read my code and understand it, you shouldn't be in it.” ... for me this is terrible wrong. Comments are useful for the program's author when he has to do some modification on the code and a...
This is really curios...Accordingly to a news reported today on TheRegister, there's a new worm out called "Dabber" that infects computers by exploiting a security hole in the Sasser worm.Dabber uses a flaw in the FTP server component of the Sasser worm. The worm will only infect users already infected by Sasser, according to security services firm LURHQ. To remove Dabber LURHQ advises users to kill the package.exe process using the Windows Task Manager. Remove the "sassfix" registry key. Delete package.exe from the Windows system directory and all start-up folders.I think it's the first time that we see something like this......
Out today:The Microsoft® Windows® Script Control is an ActiveX® control that provides developers with an easy way to make their applications scriptable. This, in turn, enables users to extend application functionality through scripts, much as they do with macros today.Could be interesting... http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d7e31492-2595-49e6-8c02-1426fec693ac&="WBR">displaylang=en="/NOBR">
The Queensland University of Technology today has announced the discover of a new flaw in 802.11 wireless protocol. The vulnerability is related to the medium access control (MAC) function of the IEEE 802.11 protocol. Seems that an attacker using a low-powered, portable device such as an electronic PDA and a commonly available wireless networking card may cause significant disruption to all WLAN traffic within range, in a manner that makes identification and localisation of the attacker difficult.Not a good news for WiFi I think... a low-powered device can cause DOS problems to a WiFi network? Terrible... You can find more info
Check it and patch soon... from MS site: Vulnerability in Help and Support Center Could Allow Remote Code Execution (840374):Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 841996 documents a known issue that customers may experience when they install this security update on a system where the Help and Support Center service is disabled. For the installation of this security update to be successful, the Help and Support Center service cannot be disabled. The article also documents recommended solutions for this issue. For more information, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 841996.Affected Software: Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 1 – Download...
The previous versions of Longhorn seems to be slow, maybe not too much optimized.Here you can find an interesting Longhorn Optimization Guide... check it!!
Seems that after the arrest of the Sasser worm's author, another variant has appeared on the Internet a few hours after he was detained (the Sasser.e variant). A new virus replication or only antivirus firms that didn't recognize it immediately?However, the advice is always the same... patch!!!Sasser (A-E) Worm Removal Tool (KB841720)
I'm really happy to see that the Beta 1 of Mono (the .NET Framework Open Source implementation) in the first few hours of its release it had tallied over 40,000 downloads. This is a great success for all the Mono Team (a big interest reveals that the products is great) and simultaneously for the Open Source Community and the Microsoft world, for the great possibility to have a cross platform development tool (a developer may use C#, Python or PHP as their language of choice and deploy on GNU/Linux or Window without issue).Great! This "cross-platform nature" of Mono could be...
ExtremeTech has published an interesting preview of the future Google email service (Gmail).This is a great test... I hope Gmail will be soon available. I want remember to all that now Gmail is only in Beta testing phase, so please don't ask me how to obtain an account... now you can't.
Thanks to Sebastian Weber, I've discovered a good tool for decoding your ASP.NET Viewstate. This tool is created by Fritz Onion and you can download it from his site. This utility lets you decode the hidden viewstate field on any .aspx page to view the contents in a treeview, as raw text, or as parsed XML. However, I want to mention another ViewState Decoder written by Paul Wilson. The curiosity of Paul's Decoder is that it works online, so you can access it everywhere. Good idea Paul! You can find Paul's ViewState Decoder here.
Today I've discovered a bad news... I'm going to the BlogJet site to see features for a new update and... surprise!!!... BlogJet now is not free, but now comes with a 30-day trial and with a $19.95 registration fee. BlogJet is currently my favourite tool for blogging and it's not good to see that a wonderful free project now has stopped its "free nature". Why this choice? Maybe a new business?I think that before pay for BlogJet, I must review all free blogging tools around the net!
I've just spent my hour of relax this morning (rain and rain for the entire week, now the sun seems to appear in the sky so I think I'll go out for shopping ) reading an interesting post on Robert Scoble's Blog about Longhorn and Open Source Community (I'm a big fan of Robert's Blog, one of the best of the net).Scoble (the MS Longhorn Evangelist) starts his post saying an important thing: MS is really interested in interoperability with other platforms. He says that he's also a Linux/RedHat user, that he use Firefox with his Longhorn machine and,...
I've just see on our TV news in Italy that the suspected Sasser Worm author was captured. Seems that he's and 18 year's old high school student from Germany (Rotenburg, north of Germany).My first think was this: the major viruses and worms authors are often young people... maybe they have a lot of free time to spent on these types of activities? Sasser worm spread through an estimated 18 million computers across the world last week and for me this is a big surprise... too many machines not well patched!!I hope MS could continue to give patches available also for illegal Windows...
Seems that Microsoft, with the future Longhorn versions, plans to offer three different graphical interfaces, each requiring a different level of graphics card.The top interface (named "Aero Glass") will have transparency and other advanced 3D shading features but will demand a high-end video card with at least 64MB of video memory. The midlevel interface (named "Aero") will offer most of the improved graphics abilities and will require just 32MB of video memory.The low-powered interface will have an interface designed to replicate Windows 2000.I think this is a great choice... Users could choose the graphics environment that they want easily. I hope that this requirements...
#Develop, one of the best Open Source IDE for .NET development, has ready to release the new Beta 1:Changements on this Beta 1:Ctrl+Space completion Folding fully integrated NUnit integration (via a pad) Assembly Analyzer C++.NET, ILAsm, WiX backend bindings Mini Class Browser panel added to source views VB.NET to C# converter included Alt+Ins code generator revamped (formerly Ctrl+W) Improvements to File Templates Improvements to VS.NET exporter/importer (VB.NET especially) Printing support added New DockPanel Suite integrated, Magic library entirely removed Great!
I'm really really happy to see this: Mono Beta 1 has been released. See our Release Notes, or go directly to the download page.I believe a lot on the Mono Project... I'm curious to see all the power of this Beta 1.
A little post only to signal that a new section was added today to the official Microsoft ASP.NET site: the IIS section.Good... I hope it could be improved soon.
Thanks to Brady Gaster for this advice... Error-Bank is a goot .NET Error Repository, where you can find useful informations about your exception. It's a database of exceptions, errors and their solutions that have been discussed by developers in newsgroups.Really a good link!
I'm really happy to see today that a new release of Knoppix (my favourite Linux distribution bootable from CD) is out. Version 3.4 includes the version 2.6.5 Linux Kernel and improved hardware detection. Where I'm not happy is to see that Koffice has been dropped for space reasons, as well as LaTex. Why??
This is really a noise fact that must be stopped...Beta testers invited by Google to tests Gmail (the new free e-mail service) also received invitations to give to another person, and many of them are selling on Ebay this opportunity (with prices that starts from $61)... for example, the account for hackers@gmail.com now is asking 200 dollars! Currently there are about 190 invitations for sale on Ebay. This is terrible!!! Apart that I think only a stupid person could buy NOW addresses at this price for a BETA email address (and for a future FREE service), this type of actions must be...
I've just read this on InformationWeek: A service Pack for the old Windows 98 SE has been released, but it doesn't come from Microsoft.This Service Pack was written by Alper Coskun and uses updates and hot fixes he collected from the Windows Update site and Microsoft's Knowledge Base database. The service pack includes 70 hot fixes, a solution to the 512MB memory limit of Windows 98 SE, and better USB support.If you're interested , this "unofficial" service pack can be downloaded from here. Now my question is: Do you believe on an unofficial Service Pack? I hope that this first case could not...
I've just read the contents of the annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) on Microsoft Watch.There are interesting preview of all the future MS technology, but a little paragraph has attracted my attention: MS is expected to unveil the system and driver requirements for Longhorn during the conference. Accordingly to MS, the "average" Longhorn PC must have (in resume):a dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHza minimum of 2GB of RAMup to a Terabyte of storagea 1 Gbit, built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g Wireless linka Graphics Processor that runs three times faster than those on the market todayTerrible! I hope...
I'm really happy to see that...Mozilla Thunderbird (my favourite email client ) has released today the new build 0.6 release candidate 2. You can find the download mirror here. I recommend it... it's a great program!
In these days there's a worm, identified as W32.Sasser.worm (with its variants), which are currently circulating on the Internet. Microsoft has verified that the worm exploits the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) issue addressed in Microsoft Security Update MS04-011.To protect your computer against Sasser and its variants, MS has published these instructions: What You Should Know About the Sasser Worm and Its Variants.However, a situation has been identified where the Sasser.A or Sasser.B worms could have infected some systems before the application of MS04-011 [KB835732]. This Sasser.A and Sasser.B Worm Removal Tool will help remove the Sasser.A and Sasser.B worms from these systems....
Notepad is probably one of the most simple and useful applications that comes with Windows from its first versions. It's really useful for a lot of tasks but unfortunately it's always remained the same...Florian Balmer has written a new implementation of Notepad (Notepad2) that it's really nice, with lots of features and a toolbar with buttons.Features• Customizable syntax highlighting:• • HTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript, VBScript, ASP, PHP, CSS, Perl/CGI• • C/C++, C#, Java, VB, Pascal, Assembler, SQL, Python, NSIS• • INI, REG, INF, BAT, DIFF• Drag & drop text editing inside and outside Notepad2• Basic regular expression search and replace• Useful word, line...