November 2004 Entries
In these days I've seen on different forums on the net (the last is the Neowin Forum) posts about how to increase the Windows XP performances to make it faster.The "magic tip" to make Windows XP faster is signalled on this guide on IRCSpy. In summary, according to this giude, if you want to make XP faster you've to go on the registry, Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM, Current control set > Control > Session Manager > Memory Management > Prefetch Parameters and then change the value in EnablePrefetcher from 3 to 5.Guys, please don't do that... it's a fake....
As I was thinking, Google has decided to release a single package of all its software products (Google Toolbar, Google Desktop Search, Picasa Photo Organizer, Google Deskbar and Gmail Notifier).The package (about 5MB) is available to download on the Google Software Downloads page.
This is a preview image sent out by Microsoft for the new MSN Search... Do you recognize the browser in use? Firefox!!!
In a period where the fans for Firefox are growing, there are some nostalgic fans of IE (or they simply hate Firefox success) that are building a support site like these Antifirefox.com. However, a nice forum guys! P.S. I'm a Firefox lover but I hope on IE resurrection...
This is a question I have to do... I'm using Visual Studio .NET 2005 Beta 1 on a Virtual machine and all works good but... what could happen if I'll try to install it on the same machine where I've installed Visual Studio .NET 2003? The 1.1 and 2.0 Framework can live together without problems?I need to setup a new machine at work to start working with VS2005 Beta and I need this feedback before starting...
It's the time to blog this tip because I receive always the same question... what are these buttons in your Visual Studio .NET?? Some times ago I've written an article (in italian) to show a little tip for VS.NET and now I'll try to explain it...How many times you're going to take a conference or a demo for a customer and you have received the question "Excuse me, can you increase the font size? We can't read the code..."? I think a lot of time...The normal action to perform this task is going to the Tools --> Options --> Fonts...
I'm starting to create a development group (composed by computer engineers focused on Windows and Linux development in many platforms) and I have at the moment a big problem... I need to create a good company name!!! Can you help me? The group will be focused on solutions development and systems architecture. Blogging people... if you have more fantasy than me, can you try to suggest me a possiblle company name?? All possible suggestions are welcome!
The Blog Spamming world is moving... Today I've received some spam posts (always about the same arguments) but with a different format that I've never seen before. On the Sender field of the post was placed the spam message title, on the URL field the spam URL and on the message body nothing about spam, no links, no messages, but some absurd phrases like "He ran hard, very hard. He felt the cramps in both of his thighs...".A new way to avoid filtering? Curious...
Today, Google announced the availability of the Google Deskbar API (Application Programming Interface). This technology makes it possible for software developers to build their own features, or plug-ins, for the popular Google Deskbar.What is wonderful is that plugins (or other types of application with this API) can be written in any .NET language, such as C# or Visual Basic.NET... wow! :)
Are you an MSDN subscriber? This is one of the most exciting CTP released in these days... The first Community Technical Preview release of "Avalon" is out and ready to try!Avalon is the new graphics display which unified documents, graphics, media and user interfaces into a single platform. Using a new vector-based compositing engine, Avalon takes full advantage of modern graphics hardware and provides the capabilities for building rich, immersive applications with 2D and 3D capabilities. Avalon also introduces XAML, a markup language that maps XML markup to objects in the .NET Framework and is built to allow designers...
I'm terrible sorry to talk about this argument, but I really don't understand the responses that the VB.NET Staff is giving to the community... Ok, now I think that eveyone know that the VB team is NOT going to be able to implement Refactoring in Visual Studio 2005. I know also that maybe the VB.NET staff is true by saying that VB.NET in Visual Studio 2005 is the best VB.NET ever, with the return of Edit and Continue features (the community request number 1), more than 500 Intellisense code snippets, My, AutoCorrect and many of other VB features.I can understand also that implementing...
The toys around Google's tools are growing... My last diascover is DNKA, an interesting Remote Desktop Search tool based on Google Desktop Search.It acts as a web server (search server) by interacting as a layer between Google Desktop Search (GDS) and user and allow other users to search, view, download your files, emails, chats and web history. Key FeaturesSimple to access the search (GDS) from another desktopAllow/Deny access from external hosts to the search server. By default (as installed) access is only granted to the local machine.Allow to change port number for web serverServe the files from a local machineWeb...
Too much work, too much problems, and the consequence of these was that yesterday I was blocked at office and I've missed the Microsoft Technical Conference in Milan. What is hurting me? I've missed the Bill Gates speaking...
Two new Internet Explorer vulnerabilities are discovered and they can be exploited by malicious people to bypass the security features in Microsoft Windows XP SP2.According to Secunia, the flaws are:1) Microsoft Windows XP SP2 has a security feature which warns users when opening downloaded files of certain types. If the downloaded file was sent with a specially crafted "Content-Location" HTTP header, in some situations no security warning will be given to the user when the file is opened.2) An error when saving some documents using the Javascript function "execCommand()", can be exploited to spoof the file extension in the "Save HTML...
On our User Group, Pierre Greborio today has asked an interesting question: 1 or 2 years ago, all the interest of the community was around the Web Services world. Now, if you observ with attention what is the road on the real world, you can see that the Web Service adoption is not so widespread.Why this? Why many realities don't use Web Services for their applications?In my opinion, the main cause of this poor adoption in the real world is that the Web Services architecture and their standards are in a continuous evolution and modification. For many realities, this is really a...
An entire afternoon to perform a post on my blog... this is what happens sometimes (too often) here on DotNetJunkies Weblogs (plus errors during logins etc.). Seeing always these problems is really frustrating... DNJ uses a really old version of .Text (0.94) and now (expecially with the big number of users on the community) the upgrade to the 0.95 version is really necessary. The 0.95 is more stable than the version we've here now, so... PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, WE NEED AN UPGRADE SOON!!!
The number of Gmail tools available is rapidly growing and this is a good sign of interest for the new Google mail service.The last nice tool I've discovered is the Gmail Image Viewer. If you receive a mail with multiple images as attachments, with Gmail you've to click each one to open and see it. If you want to see all the images at once, this is the right tool. Gmail Image Viewer is a small browser add-on that adds a right-click menu item that will automatically inline image attachments in your Gmail messages in Internet Explorer. Nice... I've not...
Really curios this fact... Yahoo today has announced that it was beginning to test and use its DomainKeys signature to verify every email address, it has increased the available space to all the mailboxes and has announced improved mail searching capabilies and DHTML instant autocomplete features for email addresses.Google is using all these feature for months in its Gmail service (DomainKeys included) so... maybe Yahoo is observing Gmail with attention and interest?
Oh Oh... my last full immersion at WPC has caused some lacks on my personal software update... Fedora Core 3 is just released and an upgrade of my Linux system is really necessary after seeing the new features (GNOME 2.8, KDE 3.3, Evolution 2.0, Remote Desktop, Helix Player and Firefox only to resume some of them).I've to start download the ISO ---> priority=high!="/P">
This is one of the most frequent question I've received in the past months and (because I'm not a Google worker ) my answer was only a supposition: better testing or maybe trying to release the final Gmail version with a new and more complete Google suite (Instant Messaging, browser etc.)?No... the answer seems not be these. According to this article on TechUser, seems that part of the reason why Gmail is invite-only and still in beta is because Google is waiting for patent the idea of scanning emails and serving advertisements based on email contents. What could happen to...
I don't know if someone has talked about this but during the WPC I've discovered that Google has launched a special Mozilla Firefox Start Page. It's really nice... if you're a Firefox user, I recommend to setup it as the default web page at startup.
I was very interested from a lot of time to the Smart Client world, but after the WPC and the discussions with Francesco Balena my interest is really increased...Smart Client solutions have lots of interesting features, such as:Local Resources utilization: They are applications that are executed at the client side, so they use local CPU, local disk, local memory etc. exactly lime a common Windows Form application.They are connected applications: a Smart client applications works on a distributed environment, so it can interact remotely with Web Services, remote databases etc.They are capable to work offline: A smart client applications can work also...
No, this is not a post to say what Google and Mozilla could (or not) perform together in the future, but to signal a nice picture I've seen yesterday (before leaving the WPC) on a comment by Andy Beal to an article appeared on ZDNet about possible Google and Mozilla affairs.Congratulation Andy... you're an artist!!
The Full Immersion week at the WPC 2004 in Milan is finished... It was really an interesting week... special thanks to Francesco Balena, Dino Esposito and Andrea Saltarello, the best 3 sessions I've listened.This is the result of this week:A total physical devastation...
No, I'm not disappeared...
This week is really a full week for me, I'm totally busy with the WPC 2004 in Milan... lots of sessions from 8 AM to 8 PM and the WPC Nights (entertainments) from 9.30 PM to 11.30 PM.
The logical question is: and sleeping???? Sleeping??? What's this word???
However, the conference is really interesting, I've something to talk with the Blog Community (I need your opinions) so stay tuned!
I see that here there's a lot of interesting around Sharepoint 2003... this is one of my lack, I don't know the platform and so I can't...
This is a short weekend at home for me, because tomorrow evening I've to go to Milan for the Windows Professional Conference 2004.Next week will be a full immersion week on .NET and related technologies. I'll meet Dino Esposito, Francesco Balena, the UgiDotNet Spiderman Andrea Saltarello ( ) and many other.My schedule will be focused expecialy on .NET programming and what I'm planning to listen will be:Francesco Balena: Windows Form & Smart Client programming, .NET Worst Practice, news on the 2005 platforms.Dino Esposito: ASP.NET Programming, optimization and scalability, ASP.NET Security, ASP.NET 2.0 Giuseppe Di Mauro: N-Tier Enterprise Programming with .NET (really curious to see...
I've seen this decision only now... the Refactoring feature will be cut off from Visual Basic .NET 2005! The decision is announced officially on the Visual Basic .NET Team Blog. Really a bad news...Seems that the main problem for this cut is the limited time to release the product... I don't agree with this, I think that all the community and VB developers will be more happy to have a complete product some months later than an incomplete product soon. The Sam Gentile's post about this completely respect my opinions.Why VB.NET must be always a step under C#? I agree...
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This update addresses an issue when you view a Web page that can render vector graphics on screen in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 running on Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), Internet Explorer may stop responding or crash and you receive an access violation in Vgx.dll. You can download the patch from HERE.I hope also the patch from the URL spoofing vulnerability previously signaled...
As he promised me on my last post about .Text spamming problems, Miguel Jimenez has released a control for .Text Blog Engine (available also for all the ASP.NET applications that requires validations) that adds the CAPTCHA image protection to the feedback section.Ok, maybe Miguel it's not the first to have developed a control like this, but his solutions is the best I've see because it requires no coding and no recompiling, just a couple of lines in your web.config and your aspx file.You can download the control from the following link: Clearscreen HIP Control 1.0. The README file on the archive explains...
Last week on my Blog (and I've seen also on others) a bid discussion about blog spamming was started... I like a lot the CAPTCHA images solution to approve a comment, but it requires modifications to the .Text Blog Engine core.Today I've see an interesting idea by Chrissy ... why not prevent the blog spamming using a SQL Trigger that search for special spam keywords and remove the post with them? Obviously, it's not the best solution but it could be a quick way to reduce spamming comments.You can see the details of Chrissy ideas and the Trigger code HERE. If you're...
The releasing date for the new version 3.0 of DotNetNuke, announced for today, is officially delayed. However, I totally agree with Shaun Walker, releasing a low quality product on schedule is far worse than delivering a high quality product a couple weeks late. I'm waiting and I'm sure it will be a great product...