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• My search what the Cloud will mean for my Work, part 2

  - by Kay Sellenrode

  My experience with the cloud and why work will change and not disappear. Until now I have multiple experiences with the cloud, for the most good. i have worked on multiple cloud solutions in the past but let me describe them as 0.x versions. For me the 1st real serious cloud experience was a bit more than 1 year ago, when our company switched from an in house server to Microsoft BPOS as a complete replacement. Since we are a small consultancy firm and don’t have that much else to do than consulting, our IT requirements are quite simple. We need Mail and Storage space for our documents. With the in house server we had multiple outages during a year, mostly by lack of administering. Being consultants in the field and hardly having time to maintain a server, BPOS was and still is for us the right solution. Since the migration we have less outages and a much more robust solution. Have we run into issues with BPOS for our own environment? No not that I’m aware of. Based on this experience I made a stance about deploy ability of BPOS and cloud solutions, they are suitable for MKB (Dutch for Medium and Small Businesses). Most Small businesses don’t have the amount of work to hire a full time it admin. Hiring a service provider to maintain their own server might be even more costly than hiring an admin. So seeing the capabilities of BPOS and the needs of most businesses I see it as a great solution that gives the business a complete Server replacement solution for a fixed price per user. resulting in a clear budget for IT spending, something most small businesses were looking for, for a long time. So right now I’m deploying BPOS with a customer, and I run into some of the Cloud 1.0 issues. In my opinion BPOS is a good working Cloud version 1.0 solution. What do I mean with 1.0? Well 1.0 is mostly a tested solution (unlike 0.x versions) but still have quite some limitations caused by too few market experience. in my opnion this is also the reason why we don’t see that much BPOS customers yet and why I think Office 365 will make a huge difference. What I have seen of 365 shows me it is a Cloud 2.0 version, meaning it has all needed features and is much more flexible to the customer. This is also why I see changes happen in my work field, changes and not unemployment due to Cloud solutions. Cloud 1.0 solutions gave me the idea that if every customer would adopt them I would be out of work. But in reality Cloud 1.0 solutions are here just to set the market needs. The Cloud 2.0 and higher versions will give the customer much more flexibility, but also require the need for a consultant. Where the 1.0 versions are simple to setup and maintain, the 2.0 solution needs more thought upfront and afterwards. ie. BPOS in its 1.0 version brings you a very simplified Exchange 2007 solution, Suitable for some customers. Looking at Office 365 you receive almost a full blown Exchange 2010 solution. I expect this to be even more customizable in the next version. In my search for the changes to my work I try to regulary write a post with my thought around the Cloud and the impact on my work as a consultant. I'm also planning to present around this topic, so if anyone is interested to see me present around this topic, you're more than welcome to contact me.

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• Reflecting on 2010 and Looking into 2011

  - by Sam Abraham

  In early 2010, I had blogged and shared my excitement as I was about to embark on a new journey relocating to South Florida.     As I settled down and adjusted to my new life, I was presented with an opportunity to get actively involved and volunteer in the local Florida .Net and Project Management communities.  I have since devoted a significant portion of my time to community initiatives, coordinating the West Palm Beach .Net User Group, volunteering as a member of the INETA Speaker’s Bureau and traveling to attend/speak at .Net code camps and user groups throughout the states of Florida and New York. I have also taken on various volunteer roles at the South Florida Chapter of the Project Management Institute starting as core team member on the chapter’s mentoring initiative and ending the year as Project Manager of the chapter’s mentoring program and as Director of Electronic Communications on the chapter’s IT team. I am also serving a one year term (2010-2011) as secretary and founding board member of Florida’s first official chapter of the International Association for Software Architects (IASA).   A big thank you is due for those who afforded me the opportunity and privilege to take part of these initiatives and those who provided guidance and encouragement when I needed them the most.   Looking ahead into 2011, I hope to continue my community involvement and volunteer activities. I will start by dedicating the first 5 weekends in the New Year to teach a free comprehensive Microsoft PowerPoint class at church. My goal will be to start from scratch and slowly cover the various available PowerPoint features that can be leveraged to create captivating presentations. Starting February, I will be resuming my user group/code camp speaking engagements at our South Florida .Net Code Camp and the West Palm Beach .Net User Group.   I look forward to continuing to meet, chat and share with our technical community members and to another active year in community service.   All the best, --Sam Abraham

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• Multiline Replacement With Visual Studio

  - by Alois Kraus

  I had to remove some file headers in a bigger project which were all of the form #region File Header /*[ Compilation unit ----------------------------------------------------------       Name            : Class1.cs       Language        : C#     Creation Date   :      Description     : -----------------------------------------------------------------------------*/ /*] END */ #endregion I know that would be a cool thing to write a simple C# program use a recursive file search, read all lines skip the first n lines and write the files back to disc. But I wanted to test things first before I ruin my source files with one little typo. There comes the Visual Studio Search and Replace in Files dialog into the game. I can test my regular expression to do a multiline match with the Find button before actually breaking anything. And if something goes wrong I have the Undo button.   There is a nice blog post from Paulo Morgado online who deals with Multiline Regular expressions. The Visual Studio Regular expressions are non standard so you have to adapt your usual Regex know how to the other patterns. The pattern I cam finally up with is \#region File Header:b*(.*\n)@\#endregion The Regular expression can be read as \#region File Header Match “#region File Header” \# Escapes the # character since it is a quantifier. :b* After this none or more spaces or tabs can follow (:b stands for space or tab) (.*\n)@ Match anything across lines in a non greedy way (the @ character makes it non greedy) to prevent matching too much until the #endregion somewhere in our source file. \#endregion Match everything until “#endregion” is found I had always knew that Visual Studio can do it but I never bothered to learn the non standard Regex syntax. This is powerful and it is inside Visual Studio since 2005!

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• Adventures in MVVM &ndash; My ViewModel Base &ndash; Silverlight Support!

  - by Brian Genisio's House Of Bilz

  More Adventures in MVVM In my last post, I outlined the powerful features that are available in the ViewModelSupport.  It takes advantage of the dynamic features of C# 4.0 (as well as some 3.0 goodies) to help eliminate the plumbing that often comes with writing ViewModels.  If you are interested in learning about the capabilities, please take a look at that post and look at the code on CodePlex.  When I wrote about the ViewModel base class, I complained that the features did not work in Silverlight because as of 4.0, it does not support binding to dynamic properties.  Although I still think this is a bummer, I am happy to say that I have come up with a workaround.  In the Silverlight version of my base class, I include a PropertyCollectionConverter that lets you bind to dynamic properties in the ViewModelBase, especially the convention-based commands that the base class supports. To take advantage of any properties that are not statically defined, you can bind to the Properties property of the ViewModel and pass in a converter parameter for the name of the property you want to bind. For example, a ViewModel that looks like this: public class ExampleViewModel : ViewModelBase { public void Execute_MyCommand() { Set("Text", "Foo"); } } Can bind to the dynamic property and the convention-based command with the following XAML. <TextBlock Text="{Binding Properties, Converter={StaticResource PropertiesConverter}, ConverterParameter=Text}" Margin="5" /> <Button Content="Execute MyCommand" Command="{Binding Properties, Converter={StaticResource PropertiesConverter}, ConverterParameter=MyCommand}" Margin="5" /> Of course, it is not as pretty as binding to Text and MyCommand like you can in WPF.  But, it is better than having a failed feature.  This allows you to share your ViewModels between WPF and Silverlight very easily.  <BeatDeadHorse>Hopefully, in Silverlight 5.0, we will see binding to dynamic properties more directly????</BeatDeadHorse>

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• SCSF for Visual Studio 2010

  - by Anthony Trudeau

  The Smart Client Software Factory (SCSF) for Visual Studio 2010 was uploaded tonight.  You can get it, the source code, and the documentation on the patterns & practices page. Note: Do not forget to "unblock" the documentation (CHM) file after you download it.  To unblock it right click the file, choose Properties, and click the Unblock button.

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• Taking a screenshot from within a Silverlight #WP7 application

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  Often times, you want to take a screenshot of an application’s page. There can be multiple reasons. For instance, you can use this to provide an easy feedback method to beta testers. I find this super invaluable when working on integration of design in an app, and the user can take quick screenshots, attach them to an email and send them to me directly from the Windows Phone device. However, the same mechanism can also be used to provide screenshots are a feature of the app, for example if the user wants to save the current status of his application, etc. Caveats Note the following: The code requires an XNA library to save the picture to the media library. To have this, follow the steps: In your application (or class library), add a reference to Microsoft.Xna.Framework. In your code, add a “using” statement to Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media. In the Properties folder, open WMAppManifest.xml and add the following capability: ID_CAP_MEDIALIB. The method call will fail with an exception if the device is connected to the Zune application on the PC. To avoid this, either disconnect the device when testing, or end the Zune application on the PC. While the method call will not fail on the emulator, there is no way to access the media library, so it is pretty much useless on this platform. This method only prints Silverlight elements to the output image. Other elements (such as a WebBrowser control’s content for instance) will output a black rectangle. The code public static void SaveToMediaLibrary( FrameworkElement element, string title) { try { var bmp = new WriteableBitmap(element, null); var ms = new MemoryStream(); bmp.SaveJpeg( ms, (int)element.ActualWidth, (int)element.ActualHeight, 0, 100); ms.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin); var lib = new MediaLibrary(); var filePath = string.Format(title + ".jpg"); lib.SavePicture(filePath, ms); MessageBox.Show( "Saved in your media library!", "Done", MessageBoxButton.OK); } catch { MessageBox.Show( "There was an error. Please disconnect your phone from the computer before saving.", "Cannot save", MessageBoxButton.OK); } } This method can save any FrameworkElement. Typically I use it to save a whole page, but you can pass any other element to it. On line 7, we create a new WriteableBitmap. This excellent class can render a visual tree into a bitmap. Note that for even more features, you can use the great WriteableBitmapEx class library (which is open source). On lines 9 to 16, we save the WriteableBitmap to a MemoryStream. The only format supported by default is JPEG, however it is possible to convert to other formats with the ImageTools library (also open source). Lines 18 to 20 save the picture to the Windows Phone device’s media library. Using the image To retrieve the image, simply launch the Pictures library on the phone. The image will be in Saved Pictures. From here, you can share the image (by email, for instance), or synchronize it with the PC using the Zune software. Saving to other platforms It is of course possible to save to other platforms than the media library. For example, you can send the image to a web service, or save it to the isolated storage on the device. To do this, instead of using a MemoryStream, you can use any other stream (such as a web request stream, or a file stream) and save to that instead. Hopefully this code will be helpful to you! Happy coding, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• jQuery "Auto Post-back" Select/Drop-Down List

  - by Doug Lampe

  I have one common piece of jQuery code which I use to submit a form any time the selection changes on a drop-down list (HTML select tag).  This is similar to setting AutoPostBack = true in ASP.Net.  I use a single CSS class (autoSubmit) to annotate that I want the drop-down to force the form to submit on change so the HTML looks something like this: <select id="myAutoSubmitDropDown" name="myAutoSubmitDropDown" class="autoSubmit">     <option value="1">Option 1</option>     <option value="2">Option 2</option> </select> Then the following jQuery will look for any element with this CSS class and submit the parent form when the value is changed: function wireUpAutoSubmit() {   $(".autoSubmit").each(function (index) {     $(this).change(function () {       $(this).closest('form').submit();     })   }); } I put this in a separate function since I might need to wire this up explicitly after an ajax call.  Therefore I use the following code to set this method to fire when the DOM is loaded: $(document).ready(function () {   wireUpAutoSubmit(); });

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• XenApp 6.5 – How to create and set a Policy using PowerShell

  - by Waclaw Chrabaszcz

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Wchrabaszcz/archive/2013/06/20/xenapp-6.5--how-to-create-and-set-a-policy.aspxHere is my homework Add-PSSnapin -name Citrix.Common.* -ErrorAction SilentlyContinueNew-Item LocalFarmGpo:\User\MyPolicycd LocalFarmGpo:\User\MyPolicy\Settings\ICA\SecuritySet-ItemProperty .\MinimumEncryptionLevel State EnabledSet-ItemProperty .\MinimumEncryptionLevel Value Bits128cd LocalFarmGpo:\User\MyPolicy\Filters\WorkerGroupNew-Item -Name "All Servers" -Value "All Servers"Set-ItemProperty LocalFarmGpo:\User\MyPolicy -Name Priority -Value 2  So cute …

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• Fight for your rights as a video gamer.

  - by Chris Williams

  Soon, the U.S. Supreme Court may decide whether to hear a case that could have a lasting impact on computer and video games. The case before the Court involves a law passed by the state of California attempting to criminalize the sale of certain computer and video games. Two previous courts rejected the California law as unconstitutional, but soon the Supreme Court could have the final say. Whatever the Court's ruling, we must be prepared to continue defending our rights now and in the future. To do so, we need a large, powerful movement of gamers to speak with one voice and show that we won't sit back while lawmakers try to score political points by scapegoating video games and treating them differently than books, movies, and music. If the Court decides to hear the case, we're going to need thousands of activists like you who can help defend computer and video games by writing letters to editors, calling into talk radio stations, and educating Americans about our passion for and appreciation of computer and video games. You can help build this movement right now by inviting all your friends and fellow gamers to join the Video Game Voters Network. Use our simple tool to send an email to everyone you know asking them to stand up for gaming rights: http://videogamevoters.org/movement You can also help spread the word through Facebook and Twitter, or you can simply forward this email to everyone you know and ask them to sign up at videogamevoters.org. Time after time, courts continue to reject politicians' efforts to restrict the sale of computer and video games. But that doesn't mean the politicians will stop trying anytime soon -- in fact, it means they're likely to ramp up their efforts even more. To stop them, we must make it clear that gamers will continue to stand up for free speech -- and that the numbers are on our side. Help make sure we're ready and able to keep fighting for our gaming rights. Spread the word about the Video Game Voters Network right now: http://videogamevoters.org/movement Thank you. -- Video Game Voters Network

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• Marshalling the value of a char* ANSI string DLL API parameter into a C# string

  - by Brian Biales

  For those who do not mix .NET C# code with legacy DLL's that use char* pointers on a regular basis, the process to convert the strings one way or the other is non-obvious. This is not a comprehensive article on the topic at all, but rather an example of something that took me some time to go find, maybe it will save someone else the time. I am utilizing a third party too that uses a call back function to inform my application of its progress.  This callback includes a pointer that under some circumstances is a pointer to an ANSI character string.  I just need to marshal it into a C# string variable.  Seems pretty simple, yes?  Well, it is, (as are most things, once you know how to do them). The parameter of my callback function is of type IntPtr, which implies it is an integer representation of a pointer.  If I know the pointer is pointing to a simple ANSI string, here is a simple static method to copy it to a C# string: private static string GetStringFromCharStar(IntPtr ptr) {     return System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.PtrToStringAnsi(ptr); } The System.Runtime.InteropServices is where to look any time you are mixing legacy unmanaged code with your .NET application.

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• The First Microsoft Dynamics NAV Builds on TFS 2010 Server

  - by ssmantha

  We are now successfully, able build Dynamics NAV solutions using the TFS Build workflow mechanisms. Lots of test builds were made, the builds can restore the NAV Database and start from a fresh solution, take latest of the NAV objects and then import it to Navision and call the compile method. The workflow is also able to generate FOB files as output which can be directly shipped to the customers. I think this is the First in the world implementation of the TFS build concepts in conjunction with NAV. I think this is a time to change the thinking caps and try to approach ERP development and include the practises of ALM into ERP Product Development.

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• New Enhanced Visual WebGui WINWEB and .NETHTML5 Versions

  - by Webgui

  After a long wait and huge anticipation from the Visual WebGui community, I am happy to announce the release of new versions for the WINWEB and .NETHTML5 branches. The new 6.4.0 Release d and 6.4.0 beta3 versions are available after an extensive work on core capabilities of Visual WebGui including extension of existing controls and adding new controls such as Strip Controls, RibbonBar, DataGridView, ComboBox, PropertyGrid and RadioButton, DataGridView, ComboBox, PropertyGrid and RadioButton, as well as some major enhancements to both versions in terms of cross-browser support and performance.We apologize for the delay in the release of those most expected versions, but we believe that the extra time lead to a more mature and complete product. As you can see the changelog is pretty long and includes a list of enhancements, new features and bug fixes: http://visualwebgui.com/Developers/KB/tabid/654/article/w_changelogs/Default.aspx The new versions are available for all versions with open source and for The new versions are available for all versions with open sources for Visual Studio 2005, 2008 and 2010. You are welcome to download the WINWEB Free Trial and the Free .NETHTML5 beta on the downloads page.

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• Using a SQL Prompt snippet with template parameters

  - by SQLDev

  As part of my product management role I regularly attend trade shows and man the Red Gate booth in the vendor exhibition hall. Amongst other things this involves giving product demos to customers. Our latest demo involves SQL Source Control and SQL Test in a continuous integration environment. In order to demonstrate quite how easy it is to set up our tools from scratch we start the demo by creating an entirely new database to link to source control, using an individual database name for each conference attendee. In SQL Server Management Studio this can be done either by selecting New Database from the Object Explorer or by executing “CREATE DATABASE DemoDB_John” in a query window. We recently extended the demo to include SQL Test. This uses an open source SQL Server unit testing framework called tSQLt (www.tsqlt.org), which has a CLR object that requires EXTERNAL_ACCESS to be set as follows: ALTER DATABASE DemoDB_John SET TRUSTWORTHY ON This isn’t hard to do, but if you’re giving demo after demo, this two-step process soon becomes tedious. This is where SQL Prompt snippets come into their own. I can create a snippet named create_demo_db for this following: CREATE DATABASE DemoDB_John GO USE DemoDB_John GO ALTER DATABASE DemoDB_John SET TRUSTWORTHY ON Now I just have to type the first few characters of the snippet name, select the snippet from SQL Prompt’s candidate list, and execute the code. Simple! The problem is that this can only work once due to the hard-coded database name. Luckily I can leverage a nice feature in SQL Server Management Studio called Template Parameters. If I modify my snippet to be: CREATE DATABASE <DBName,, DemoDB_> GO USE <DBName,, DemoDB_> GO ALTER DATABASE <DBName,, DemoDB_> SET TRUSTWORTHY ON Once I’ve invoked the snippet, I can press Ctrl-Shift-M, which calls up the Specify Values for Template Parameters dialog, where I can type in my database name just once. Now you can click OK and run the query. Easy. Ideally I’d like for SQL Prompt to auto-invoke the Template Parameter dialog for all snippets where it detects the angled bracket syntax, but typing in the keyboard shortcut is a small price to pay for the time savings.

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• How to display Sharepoint Data in a Windows Forms Application

  - by Michael M. Bangoy

  In this post I'm going to demonstrate how to retrieve Sharepoint data and display it on a Windows Forms Application. 1. Open Visual Studio 2010 and create a new Project. 2. In the project template select Windows Forms Application. 3. In order to communicate with Sharepoint from a Windows Forms Application we need to add the 2 Sharepoint Client DLL located in c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\ISAPI. 4. Select the Microsoft.Sharepoint.Client.dll and Microsoft.Sharepoint.Client.Runtime.dll. (Your solution should look like the one below) 5. Open the Form1 in design view and from the Toolbox menu Add a Button, TextBox, Label and DataGridView on the form. 6. Next double click on the Load Button, this will open the code view of the form. Add Using statement to reference the Sharepoint Client Library then create two method for the Load Site Title and LoadList. See below:   using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Data; using System.Drawing; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Security; using System.Windows.Forms; using SP = Microsoft.SharePoint.Client;   namespace ClientObjectModel {     public partial class Form1 : Form     {         // url of the Sharepoint site         const string _context = "theurlofthesharepointsite";         public Form1()         {             InitializeComponent();         }         private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)         {                    }         private void getsitetitle()         {             SP.ClientContext context = new SP.ClientContext(_context);             SP.Web _site = context.Web;             context.Load(_site);             context.ExecuteQuery();             txttitle.Text = _site.Title;             context.Dispose();         }                 private void loadlist()         {             using (SP.ClientContext _clientcontext = new SP.ClientContext(_context))             {                 SP.Web _web = _clientcontext.Web;                 SP.ListCollection _lists = _clientcontext.Web.Lists;                 _clientcontext.Load(_lists);                 _clientcontext.ExecuteQuery();                 DataTable dt = new DataTable();                 DataColumn column;                 DataRow row;                 column = new DataColumn();                 column.DataType = Type.GetType("System.String");                 column.ColumnName = "List Title";                 dt.Columns.Add(column);                 foreach (SP.List listitem in _lists)                 {                     row = dt.NewRow();                     row["List Title"] = listitem.Title;                     dt.Rows.Add(row);                 }                 dataGridView1.DataSource = dt;             }                   }       private void cmdload_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             getsitetitle();             loadlist();          }     } } 7. That’s it. Hit F5 to run the application then click the Load Button. Your screen should like the one below. Hope this helps.

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• What label of tests are BizUnit tests?

  - by charlie.mott

  BizUnit is defined as a "Framework for Automated Testing of Distributed Systems.  However, I've never seen a catchy label to describe what sort of tests we create using this framework. They are not really “Unit Tests” that's for sure. "Integration Tests" might be a good definition, but I want a label that clearly separates it from the manual "System Integration Testing" phase of a project where real instances of the integrated systems are used. Among some colleagues, we brainstormed some suggestions: Automated Integration Tests Stubbed Integration Tests Sandbox Integration Tests Localised Integration Tests All give a good view of the sorts of tests that are being done. I think "Stubbed Integration Tests" is most catchy and descriptive. So I will use that until someone comes up with a better idea.

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• Thoughts about MVC

  - by ayyash

  so i figured this one out, as a newcomer to the web development scene from the telecom biz, where we dealt with low level hardware API's, and a C++ fanboy, i tend to be bothered by automagical code, yes i appreciate the effort that went into it, and i certainly appreciate the luxury it provides to get more things done, but i just don't get it. so i decided to change that, and start investigating the new MVC based web apps, and at first it was like hitting a brick wall, i knew MVC from MFC days, so i'm familiar with the pattern, but i just couldn't get my head around the web version of it, till i came to realize the routing, is actually a separate feature to be inspected, much like understanding how LINQ works by better understanding anonymous objects. and so this article serve as an introduction to the following blogs where i share my views of how asp.net routing works, and then leverage that to the MVC level, and play around that field for a bit. as with most of my shared knowladge that may seem trivial to some, but i guess a newcomer's point of view can be useful for some folks out there.

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• Introducing Deep Fried Devcast

  - by Matt Christian

  I've been working on a new podcast for the game development community called the Deep Fried Devcast.  Currently we are in pre-production but should have some episodes up in the near future.  Here is a quick FAQ about the show: What is the Deep Fried Devcast? The Deep Fried Devcast is a bi-weekly show all about game development.  The show will feature developer interviews, a focus on the technical aspects of game development (programming, technical design), the business of team game development (time management, project management), and other areas focused around the actual development of games. Wait, no game design?  No game discussions?! Calm down, calm down.  Although the focus of the podcast is on the technical aspects of game dev, there will be episodes and content focused on all areas of the gaming industry, including discussion on design, story, recent game releases, games we've been playing, etc...  Anything could show up in the Deep Fried Devcast and nothing is off limits. How can I help? We're always looking for new content ideas, emails, and anything you want to send us (within some kind of reason!).  You can even be a guest host if you want!  Email us at: deepfrieddevcast [AT] gmail [DOT] com Where's the podcast?! We're still recording it!  Don't worry, it will be up soon.  Keep an eye on www.deepfrieddevcast.com for the latest updates (that will be up soon too!).

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• How Estimates Became Quotes

  - by Lee Brandt

  It’s our fault. Well, not completely, but we haven’t helped the situation any. All of what follows comes from my own experiences which, from talking to lots of other developers about it, seems to be pretty much par for the course. Where We Started When we first started estimating, we estimated pretty clearly. We would try to imagine something we’d done that was similar to the project being estimated and we’d toss it about in our heads a bit and see how much bigger or smaller we thought this new thing was, and add or subtract accordingly. We wouldn’t spend too much time on it, because we wanted to get to writing the software. Eventually, we’d come across some huge problem that there was now way we could’ve known about ahead of time. Either we didn’t see this thing or, we didn’t realize that this particular version of a problem would be so… problematic. We usually call this “not knowing what we don’t know”. It’s unavoidable. We just can’t know. Until we wade in and start putting some code together, there are just some things we won’t know… and some things we don’t even know that we don’t know. Y’know? So what happens? We go over budget. Project managers scream and dance the dance of the stressed-out project manager, and there is nothing we can do (or could’ve done) about it. We didn’t know. We thought about it for a bit and we didn’t see this herculean task sitting in the middle of our nice quiet project, and it has bitten us in the rear end. We now know how to handle this in the future, though. We will take some more time to pick around the requirements and discover all those things we don’t know. We’ll do some prototyping, we’ll read some blogs about similar projects, we’ll really grill the customer with questions during the requirements gathering phase. We’ll keeping asking “what else?” until the shove us down the stairs. We’ll take our time and uncover it all. We Learned, But Good The next time comes, and you know what happens? We do it. We grill the customer for weeks and prototype and read and research and we estimate everything down to the last button on the last form. Know what that gets us? It gets us three months of wasted time, and our estimate will still be off. Possibly off by a factor of four. WTF, mate? No way we could be surprised by something! We uncovered every particle. We turned every stone. How is it we still came across unknowns? Because we STILL didn’t know what we didn’t know. How could we? We didn’t know to ask. The worst part is, we’ve now convinced the product that this is NOT an estimate. It is a solid number based on massive research and an endless number of questions that they answered. There is absolutely now way you don’t know everything there is to know about this project now. No way there is anything you haven’t uncovered. And their faith in that “Esti-Quote” goes through the roof. When the project goes over this time, they might even begin to question whether or not you know what you’re doing. Who could blame them? You drilled them for weeks about every little thing, and when they complained about all the questions, you told them you wanted to uncover everything so there would be no surprises. SO we set them up to faile Guess, Then Plan We had a chance. At the beginning we could have just said, “That’s just a gut-feeling estimate, based on my past experience with similar projects. There could still be surprises.” If we spend SOME time doing SOME discovery and then bounce that against our own past experiences, we can come up with a fairly healthy estimate. We can then help the product owner understand that an estimate is a guess. Sure, it’s an educated guess, but it is still a guess. If we get it right it will be almost completely luck. Then, we help them to plan the development by taking that guess (yes, they still need the guess for planning purposes) and start measuring early and often to see if we still think we are right. We should adjust the estimate and alert the product owner as soon as we see problems (bad news does not age well) and we should be able to see any problems immediately if we are constantly measuring our pace. In lean software, we start with that guess and begin measuring cycle times immediately. Then we can make projections based on those cycle times and compare them to our estimate. This constant feedback is the best way to ensure that there are no surprises at the END of the project. There sill still be surprises, but we’ll see them sooner and have a better understanding of how they will affect our overall timeline. What do you think?

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• Blogging from Office RT

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  During the last Build conference all attendees were given a brand new sparkling exciting Surface RT device (I love that machine despite its name but that's beside the point). On it came a version of Office 2013 RT, or better: the preview version. Now, I translated that term "Preview" to "Beta". Which is OK, since I've been using a lot of beta products from Microsoft and they all were great. And then I wanted to post a blogposting from Word. I knew I could, I have been doing this for a long time (I prefer Live Writer but that isn't available on Windows 8 RT). So I wrote the entry and hit "Publish". Instead of my blogsite I got a nice non-descriptive error telling me I couldn't post. So I fired up my other (Intel based) Win8 tablet, opened Word RT Preview, it loaded my blogpost (you've got to love the automatic synchronization through Skydrive) and tried from that machine. Same error. So, I installed Live Writer (remember, the other machine is Intel based) and posted from there. That worked like a charm. Apparently, there was something wrong with Word. I gave up and didn't think about it anymore. Yet… what you're reading now is written in Word 2013 RT on my Surface RT. So what did do? Simple: I updated from the Preview version to the final version. That's all there was to it. So…. If you're still on the preview I urge you to upgrade. You need to go to the "classic desktop update" window instead of going through the Windows Store App style update since Office is a desktop system, but once you do that you'll have the full version as well. Happy blogging!

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• Save the dates &ndash; Tech.Days 2011 23rd to 25th of May in London

  - by Eric Nelson

  In May Microsoft UK (and specifically my group) will be delivering Tech.Days – a week of day long technical events plus evening activities. We will be covering Windows Phone 7, Silverlight, IE 9, Windows Azure Platform and more. I’m working right now on the details of what we will be covering around the Windows Azure Platform – and it is shaping up very nicely. There is a little more detail over on TechNet – but for the moment, keep the dates clear if you can. P.S. I think the above is called a “teaser” in marketing speak.

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• Backup Azure Tables with the Enzo Backup API

  - by Herve Roggero

  In case you missed it, you can now backup (and restore) Azure Tables and SQL Databases using an API directly. The features available through the API can be found here: http://www.bluesyntax.net/backup20api.aspx and the online help for the API is here: http://www.bluesyntax.net/EnzoCloudBackup20/APIIntro.aspx. Backing up Azure Tables can’t be any easier than with the Enzo Backup API. Here is a sample code that does the trick: // Create the backup helper class. The constructor automatically sets the SourceStorageAccount property StorageBackupHelper backup = new StorageBackupHelper("storageaccountname", "storageaccountkey", "sourceStorageaccountname", "sourceStorageaccountkey", true, "apilicensekey"); // Now set some properties… backup.UseCloudAgent = false;                                       // backup locally backup.DeviceURI = @"c:\TMP\azuretablebackup.bkp";    // to this file backup.Override = true; backup.Location = DeviceLocation.LocalFile; // Set optional performance options backup.PKTableStrategy.Mode = BSC.Backup.API.TableStrategyMode.GUID; // Set GUID strategy by default backup.MaxRESTPerSec = 200; // Attempt to stay below 200 REST calls per second // Start the backup now… string taskId = backup.Backup(); // Use the Environment class to get the final status of the operation EnvironmentHelper env = new EnvironmentHelper("storageaccountname", "storageaccountkey", "apilicensekey"); string status = env.GetOperationStatus(taskId);   As you can see above, the code is straightforward. You provide connection settings in the constructor, set a few options indicating where the backup device will be located, set optional performance parameters and start the backup. The performance options are designed to help you backup your Azure Tables quickly, while attempting to keep under a specific threshold to prevent Storage Account throttling. For example, the MaxRESTPerSec property will attempt to keep the overall backup operation under 200 rest calls per second. Another performance option if the Backup Strategy for Azure Tables. By default, all tables are simply scanned. While this works best for smaller Azure Tables, larger tables can use the GUID strategy, which will issue requests against an Azure Table in parallel assuming the PartitionKey stores GUID values. It doesn’t mean that your PartitionKey must have GUIDs however for this strategy to work; but the backup algorithm is tuned for this condition. Other options are available as well, such as filtering which columns, entities or tables are being backed up. Check out more on the Blue Syntax website at http://www.bluesyntax.net.

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• WIF-less claim extraction from ACS: SWT

  - by Elton Stoneman

  WIF with SAML is solid and flexible, but unless you need the power, it can be overkill for simple claim assertion, and in the REST world WIF doesn’t have support for the latest token formats.  Simple Web Token (SWT) may not be around forever, but while it's here it's a nice easy format which you can manipulate in .NET without having to go down the WIF route. Assuming you have set up a Relying Party in ACS, specifying SWT as the token format: When ACS redirects to your login page, it will POST the SWT in the first form variable. It comes through in the BinarySecurityToken element of a RequestSecurityTokenResponse XML payload , the SWT type is specified with a TokenType of http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2009/11/swt-token-profile-1.0 : <t:RequestSecurityTokenResponse xmlns:t="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/02/trust">   <t:Lifetime>     <wsu:Created xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd">2012-08-31T07:31:18.655Z</wsu:Created>     <wsu:Expires xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd">2012-08-31T09:11:18.655Z</wsu:Expires>   </t:Lifetime>   <wsp:AppliesTo xmlns:wsp="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2004/09/policy">     <EndpointReference xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing">       <Address>http://localhost/x.y.z</Address>     </EndpointReference>   </wsp:AppliesTo>   <t:RequestedSecurityToken>     <wsse:BinarySecurityToken wsu:Id="uuid:fc8d3332-d501-4bb0-84ba-d31aa95a1a6c" ValueType="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2009/11/swt-token-profile-1.0" EncodingType="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-soap-message-security-1.0#Base64Binary" xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd" xmlns:wsse="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd"> [ base64string ] </wsse:BinarySecurityToken>   </t:RequestedSecurityToken>   <t:TokenType>http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2009/11/swt-token-profile-1.0</t:TokenType>   <t:RequestType>http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/02/trust/Issue</t:RequestType>   <t:KeyType>http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/NoProofKey</t:KeyType> </t:RequestSecurityTokenResponse> Reading the SWT is as simple as base-64 decoding, then URL-decoding the element value:     var wrappedToken = XDocument.Parse(HttpContext.Current.Request.Form[1]);     var binaryToken = wrappedToken.Root.Descendants("{http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd}BinarySecurityToken").First();     var tokenBytes = Convert.FromBase64String(binaryToken.Value);     var token = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(tokenBytes);     var tokenType = wrappedToken.Root.Descendants("{http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/02/trust}TokenType").First().Value; The decoded token contains the claims as key/value pairs, along with the issuer, audience (ACS realm), expiry date and an HMAC hash, which are in query string format. Separate them on the ampersand, and you can write out the claim values in your logged-in page:     var decoded = HttpUtility.UrlDecode(token);     foreach (var part in decoded.Split('&'))     {         Response.Write("<pre>" + part + "</pre><br/>");     } - which will produce something like this: http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2008/06/identity/claims/authenticationinstant=2012-08-31T06:57:01.855Z http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2008/06/identity/claims/authenticationmethod=http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2008/06/identity/authenticationmethod/windows http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2008/06/identity/claims/windowsaccountname=XYZ http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/[email protected] http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/[email protected] http://schemas.microsoft.com/accesscontrolservice/2010/07/claims/identityprovider=http://fs.svc.xyz.com/adfs/services/trust Audience=http://localhost/x.y.z ExpiresOn=1346402225 Issuer=https://x-y-z.accesscontrol.windows.net/ HMACSHA256=oDCeEDDAWEC8x+yBnTaCLnzp4L6jI0Z/xNK95PdZTts= The HMAC hash lets you validate the token to ensure it hasn’t been tampered with. You'll need the token signing key from ACS, then you can re-sign the token and compare hashes. There's a full implementation of an SWT parser and validator here: How To Request SWT Token From ACS And How To Validate It At The REST WCF Service Hosted In Windows Azure, and a cut-down claim inspector on my github code gallery: ACS Claim Inspector. Interestingly, ACS lets you have a value for your logged-in page which has no relation to the realm for authentication, so you can put this code into a generic claim inspector page, and set that to be your logged-in page for any relying party where you want to check what's being sent through. Particularly handy with ADFS, when you're modifying the claims provided, and want to quickly see the results.

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• Override an IOCTL Handler in PQOAL

  - by Kate Moss' Big Fan

  When porting or creating a BSP to a new platform, we often need to make change to OEMIoControl or HAL IOCTL handler for more specific. Since Microsoft introduced PQOAL in CE 5.0 and more and more BSP today leverages PQOAL to simplify the OAL, we no longer define the OEMIoControl directly. It is somehow analogous to migrate from pure Windows SDK to MFC; people starts to define those MFC handlers and forgot the WinMain and the big message loop. If you ever take a look at the interface between OAL and Kernel, PUBLIC\COMMON\OAK\INC\oemglobal.h, the pfnOEMIoctl is still there just as the entry point of Windows Program is WinMain since day one. (For those may argue about pfnOEMIoctl is not OEMIoControl, I will encourage you to dig into PRIVATE\WINCEOS\COREOS\NK\OEMMAIN\oemglobal.c which initialized pfnOEMIoctl to OEMIoControl. The interface is just to split OAL and Kernel which no longer linked to one executable file in CE 6, all of the function signature is still identical) So let's trace into PQOAL to realize how it implements OEMIoControl and how can we override an IOCTL handler we interest. First thing to know is the entry point (just as finding the WinMain in MFC), OEMIoControl is defined in PLATFORM\COMMON\SRC\COMMON\IOCTL\ioctl.c. Basically, it does nothing special but scan a pre-defined IOCTL table, g_oalIoCtlTable, and then execute the handler. (The highlight part) Other than that is just for error handling and the use of critical section to serialize the function. BOOL OEMIoControl(     DWORD code, VOID *pInBuffer, DWORD inSize, VOID *pOutBuffer, DWORD outSize,     DWORD *pOutSize ) {     BOOL rc = FALSE;     UINT32 i; ...     // Search the IOCTL table for the requested code.     for (i = 0; g_oalIoCtlTable[i].pfnHandler != NULL; i++) {         if (g_oalIoCtlTable[i].code == code) break;     }     // Indicate unsupported code     if (g_oalIoCtlTable[i].pfnHandler == NULL) {         NKSetLastError(ERROR_NOT_SUPPORTED);         OALMSG(OAL_IOCTL, (             L"OEMIoControl: Unsupported Code 0x%x - device 0x%04x func %d\r\n",             code, code >> 16, (code >> 2)&0x0FFF         ));         goto cleanUp;     }            // Take critical section if required (after postinit & no flag)     if (         g_ioctlState.postInit &&         (g_oalIoCtlTable[i].flags & OAL_IOCTL_FLAG_NOCS) == 0     ) {         // Take critical section                    EnterCriticalSection(&g_ioctlState.cs);     }     // Execute the handler     rc = g_oalIoCtlTable[i].pfnHandler(         code, pInBuffer, inSize, pOutBuffer, outSize, pOutSize     );     // Release critical section if it was taken above     if (         g_ioctlState.postInit &&         (g_oalIoCtlTable[i].flags & OAL_IOCTL_FLAG_NOCS) == 0     ) {         // Release critical section                    LeaveCriticalSection(&g_ioctlState.cs);     } cleanUp:     OALMSG(OAL_IOCTL&&OAL_FUNC, (L"-OEMIoControl(rc = %d)\r\n", rc ));     return rc; }   Where is the g_oalIoCtlTable? It is defined in your BSP. Let's use DeviceEmulator BSP as an example. The PLATFORM\DEVICEEMULATOR\SRC\OAL\OALLIB\ioctl.c defines the table as const OAL_IOCTL_HANDLER g_oalIoCtlTable[] = { #include "ioctl_tab.h" }; And that leads to PLATFORM\DEVICEEMULATOR\SRC\INC\ioctl_tab.h which defined some of IOCTL handler but others are defined in oal_ioctl_tab.h which is under PLATFORM\COMMON\SRC\INC\. Finally, we got the full table body! (Just like tracing MFC, always jumping back and forth). The format of table is very straight forward, IOCTL code, Flags and Handler Function // IOCTL CODE,                          Flags   Handler Function //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ { IOCTL_HAL_INITREGISTRY,                   0,  OALIoCtlHalInitRegistry     }, { IOCTL_HAL_INIT_RTC,                       0,  OALIoCtlHalInitRTC          }, { IOCTL_HAL_REBOOT,                         0,  OALIoCtlHalReboot           }, The PQOAL scans through the table until it find a matched IOCTL code, then invokes the handler function. Since it scans the table from the top which means if we define TWO handler with same IOCTL code, the first one is always invoked with no exception. Now back to the PLATFORM\DEVICEEMULATOR\SRC\INC\ioctl_tab.h, with the following table { IOCTL_HAL_INITREGISTRY,                   0,  OALIoCtlDeviceEmulatorHalInitRegistry     }, ... #include <oal_ioctl_tab.h> Note the IOCTL_HAL_INITREGISTRY handler are defined in both BSP's local ioctl_tab.h and the common oal_ioctl_tab.h, but due to BSP's local handler comes before "#include <oal_ioctl_tab.h>" so we know the OALIoCtlDeviceEmulatorHalInitRegistry always get called. In this example, the DeviceEmulator BSP overrides the IOCTL_HAL_INITREGISTRY handler from OALIoCtlHalInitRegistry to OALIoCtlDeviceEmulatorHalInitRegistry by manipulating the g_oalIoCtlTable table. (In some point of view, it is similar to message map in MFC) Please be aware, when you override an IOCTL handler in PQOAL, you may want to clone the original implementation to your BSP and change to meet your need. It is recommended and save you the redundant works but remember to rename the handler function (Just like the DeviceEmulator it changes the name of OALIoCtlHalInitRegistry to OALIoCtlDeviceEmulatorHalInitRegistry). If you don't change the name, linker may not be happy (due to name conflict) and the more important is by using different handler name, you could always redirect the handler back to original one. (It is like the concept of OOP that calling a function in base class; still not so clear? I am goinf to show you soon!) The OALIoCtlDeviceEmulatorHalInitRegistry setups DeviceEmulator specific registry settings and in the end, if everything goes well, it calls the OALIoCtlHalInitRegistry (PLATFORM\COMMON\SRC\COMMON\IOCTL\reginit.c) to do the rest.     if(fOk) {         fOk = OALIoCtlHalInitRegistry(code, pInpBuffer, inpSize, pOutBuffer,             outSize, pOutSize);     } Now you got the picture, whenever you want to override an IOCTL hadnler that is implemented in PQOAL just Clone the handler function to your BSP as a template. Simple name change for the handler function, and a name change in the IOCTL table header file that maps the IOCTL with the function Implement your IOCTL handler and whenever you need to redirect it back just calling the original handler function. It is the standard way of implementing a custom IOCTL and most Microsoft developers prefer. The mapping of IOCTL routine to IOCTL code is platform specific - you control the header file that does that mapping.

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• Geekswithblogs.net | Congrats to the new and renewed MVPs

  - by Geekswithblogs Administrator

  We just wanted to send a shout out to all those who have entered or have been renewed into the MVP program. I always wondered why they wouldn’t move the April date off of April Fool’s Day cause that would be an interesting email to get on April 1. If you are a GWB blogger and an MVP but your name does not have an MVP logo next to it on the homepage, let us know via support and we will get you added. Related Tags: Geekswithblogs.net, MVP, Microsoft

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• Telesharp: An application metadata repository that enables true agility in enterprise .NET applications.

  - by Vishal

  Tellago Studios proudly announces its newest product, a third one within a year of time : TELESHARP .NET Configuration Management has always been a nightmare for any enterprise. TeleSharp is an innovative product that addresses the most common challenges of .NET applications in the enterprise. After years of struggle developing and managing large .NET applications, we decided to create a tool that makes .NET applications truly agile. You can read more about Telesharp and what difference it can make into your enterprise. Also if you want to see Telesharp in action, check the videos about it. Click here to get more information about TeleSharp trial version! Click here to register for the TeleSharp webinar on July 6th from 2PM - 3PM EST.   -Vishal

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