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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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  • More Free Apps Bound for the Marketplace

    - by Scott Kuhl
    Microsoft has announced they are raising the limit of free applications a developer can submit from 5 to 100.  But what does that really mean? First, lets look at the reason for the limitation.  The iTunes Store and the Android Market both have a lot more applications available than the Windows Phone Marketplace.  But that says nothing about the quality of those applications.  I attended a couple of pre-launch events and Microsoft representatives were clearly told to send a message. We don’t want a bunch of junky applications that do nothing but spam the marketplace.  That was the reason for the 5 free application limit. Okay, so now what has the result been?  Well, there are still fart apps, but there is no sign of a developer flooding the marking with 1500 wallpaper applications or 1000 of the same application all pointed at different RSS feeds.   On the other hand there are developers who want to release real free apps but are constrained by the 5 app limit. So why did Microsoft change it’s mind?  Is it to get the count of applications up, or is to make developers happy?  Windows Phone Marketplace is growing fast but it’s a long way behind the other guys.   I don’t think Microsoft wants to have 100,000 apps show up in the next 3 months if they are loaded with copy cat apps.  Those numbers will get picked apart quickly and the press will start complaining about  the same problems the Android Market has.  I do think the bump was at developer request.  Microsoft is usually good about listening to developer feedback, but has been pretty slow about it at times.  And from a financial perspective, there will me more apps that Microsoft has to review that they will see no profit on.  At least not until they bake in a advertising model connected to Bing. Ultimately, what does this mean for the future? Well, there are developers out there looking to release more than 5 simple free apps, so I think we will see more hobby apps.  And there are developers out there trying to make money from advertising instead of sales, so I think we will see more of those also.  But the category that I think will grow the fastest is free versions of paid applications that are the same as the trial version of the application.  While technically that makes no sense, its purely a marketing move.  Free apps get downloaded a lot more than paid apps, even with a trial mode.  It always surprises me how little consumers are willing to spend on mobile apps.  How many reviews of applications have you seen that says something like “a bit pricey at $1.99”.  Really?  Have you looked at how much you spend on your phone and plan?  I always thought the trial mode baked into Windows Marketplace was a good idea.  So I’m not sure how the more open free market will play out. In the long run though, I won’t be surprised to see a Bing ad mobile ad model show up so Microsoft can capitalize on the more open and free Windows Marketplace. Bonus: The Oatmeal on How I Feel About Buying Apps

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  • PowerShell ISE: Multi-line Comment and Uncomment Done Right, and other ISE GUI must haves

    - by deadlydog
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/deadlydog/archive/2013/06/19/powershell-ise-multi-line-comment-and-uncomment-done-right-and-other.aspxI’ve written some code that you can add to your ISE profile that adds keyboard shortcuts to quickly comment and uncomment lines in PowerShell ISE.  Feel free to skip the Preamble and get right to the good stuff. Read more at http://blog.danskingdom.com/powershell-ise-multiline-comment-and-uncomment-done-right-and-other-ise-gui-must-haves/

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  • Applications: The Mathematics of Movement, Part 2

    - by TechTwaddle
    In part 1 of this series we saw how we can make the marble move towards the click point, with a fixed speed. In this post we’ll see, first, how to get rid of Atan2(), sine() and cosine() in our calculations, and, second, reducing the speed of the marble as it approaches the destination, so it looks like the marble is easing into it’s final position. As I mentioned in one of the previous posts, this is achieved by making the speed of the marble a function of the distance between the marble and the destination point. Getting rid of Atan2(), sine() and cosine() Ok, to be fair we are not exactly getting rid of these trigonometric functions, rather, replacing one form with another. So instead of writing sin(?), we write y/length. You see the point. So instead of using the trig functions as below, double x = destX - marble1.x; double y = destY - marble1.y; //distance between destination and current position, before updating marble position distanceSqrd = x * x + y * y; double angle = Math.Atan2(y, x); //Cos and Sin give us the unit vector, 6 is the value we use to magnify the unit vector along the same direction incrX = speed * Math.Cos(angle); incrY = speed * Math.Sin(angle); marble1.x += incrX; marble1.y += incrY; we use the following, double x = destX - marble1.x; double y = destY - marble1.y; //distance between destination and marble (before updating marble position) lengthSqrd = x * x + y * y; length = Math.Sqrt(lengthSqrd); //unit vector along the same direction as vector(x, y) unitX = x / length; unitY = y / length; //update marble position incrX = speed * unitX; incrY = speed * unitY; marble1.x += incrX; marble1.y += incrY; so we replaced cos(?) with x/length and sin(?) with y/length. The result is the same.   Adding oomph to the way it moves In the last post we had the speed of the marble fixed at 6, double speed = 6; to make the marble decelerate as it moves, we have to keep updating the speed of the marble in every frame such that the speed is calculated as a function of the length. So we may have, speed = length/12; ‘length’ keeps decreasing as the marble moves and so does speed. The Form1_MouseUp() function remains the same as before, here is the UpdatePosition() method, private void UpdatePosition() {     double incrX = 0, incrY = 0;     double lengthSqrd = 0, length = 0, lengthSqrdNew = 0;     double unitX = 0, unitY = 0;     double speed = 0;     double x = destX - marble1.x;     double y = destY - marble1.y;     //distance between destination and marble (before updating marble position)     lengthSqrd = x * x + y * y;     length = Math.Sqrt(lengthSqrd);     //unit vector along the same direction as vector(x, y)     unitX = x / length;     unitY = y / length;     //speed as a function of length     speed = length / 12;     //update marble position     incrX = speed * unitX;     incrY = speed * unitY;     marble1.x += incrX;     marble1.y += incrY;     //check for bounds     if ((int)marble1.x < MinX + marbleWidth / 2)     {         marble1.x = MinX + marbleWidth / 2;     }     else if ((int)marble1.x > (MaxX - marbleWidth / 2))     {         marble1.x = MaxX - marbleWidth / 2;     }     if ((int)marble1.y < MinY + marbleHeight / 2)     {         marble1.y = MinY + marbleHeight / 2;     }     else if ((int)marble1.y > (MaxY - marbleHeight / 2))     {         marble1.y = MaxY - marbleHeight / 2;     }     //distance between destination and marble (after updating marble position)     x = destX - (marble1.x);     y = destY - (marble1.y);     lengthSqrdNew = x * x + y * y;     /*      * End Condition:      * 1. If there is not much difference between lengthSqrd and lengthSqrdNew      * 2. If the marble has moved more than or equal to a distance of totLenToTravel (see Form1_MouseUp)      */     x = startPosX - marble1.x;     y = startPosY - marble1.y;     double totLenTraveledSqrd = x * x + y * y;     if ((int)totLenTraveledSqrd >= (int)totLenToTravelSqrd)     {         System.Console.WriteLine("Stopping because Total Len has been traveled");         timer1.Enabled = false;     }     else if (Math.Abs((int)lengthSqrd - (int)lengthSqrdNew) < 4)     {         System.Console.WriteLine("Stopping because no change in Old and New");         timer1.Enabled = false;     } } A point to note here is that, in this implementation, the marble never stops because it travelled a distance of totLenToTravelSqrd (first if condition). This happens because speed is a function of the length. During the final few frames length becomes very small and so does speed; and so the amount by which the marble shifts is quite small, and the second if condition always hits true first. I’ll end this series with a third post. In part 3 we will cover two things, one, when the user clicks, the marble keeps moving in that direction, rebounding off the screen edges and keeps moving forever. Two, when the user clicks on the screen, the marble moves towards it, with it’s speed reducing by every frame. It doesn’t come to a halt when the destination point is reached, instead, it continues to move, rebounds off the screen edges and slowly comes to halt. The amount of time that the marble keeps moving depends on how far the user clicks from the marble. I had mentioned this second situation here. Finally, here’s a video of this program running,

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  • Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

    - by CatherineRussell
    I was thrilled to find a free ebook: Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2,by Ross Mistry and Stacia Misner The purpose in Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 is to point out both the new and the improved in the latest version of SQL Server. Great info and they are sharing it for free. Feel free to follow the authors and ask quesitons on Twitter. @RossMistry @StaciaMisner   Here is the link to the book: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/2010/04/14/free-ebook-introducing-microsoft-sql-server-2008-r2.aspx

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  • Accounts in Work Items after migration to TFS 2010 and to new domain

    - by Clara Oscura
    Lately I’ve been doing some tests on migrating our TFS 2008 installation to TFS 2010, coupled with a machine and domain change. One particular topic that was tricky is user accounts. We installed first a new machine with TFS 2010 and then migrated the projects in the old server. The work items were migrated with the projects. Great, but if I try to edit one of the old work items I cannot save it anymore because some fields contain old user names (ex. OLDDOMAIN\user) which are not known in the new domain (it should be NEWDOMAIN\user). The errors look like this: When I correct the ‘Assigned To’ field value, I get another error regarding another field: Before TFS 2010, we had TFSUsers power tool. It allow you to map an old user name to a new user name. This is not available anymore because WI fields with user accounts are now synchronized with AD display names changes (explained here). The correct way to go about this in TFS 2010 is to use TFSConfig Identities before adding the new domain accounts into the TFS groups (documented here). So, too late for us. I’ve found a (tedious) workaround to change those old account in work items in order to allow people to keep working with them. 1. Install TFS 2010 power tools 2. Export WIT from your project (VS | Tools | Process Editor | Work Item Types). Save the definition, for example: Original_MyProject_Task.xml 3. Copy the xml (NoReadOnly_MyProject_Task.xml) and edit it. From the field definition of ‘Activated By’, ‘Closed By’ and ‘Resolved By’, remove the following:        <WHENNOTCHANGED field="System.State">           <READONLY />         </WHENNOTCHANGED> 4. Import WIT in VS. Choose the new file (NoReadOnly_MyProject_Task.xml) and import it in MyProject 5. Open all tasks in Excel (flat list). Display the following columns: Asssigned To Activated By Closed By Resolved By Change the user accounts to the new ones (I usually sort each column alphabetically to make it easier). 6. Publish. If you get a conflict on a field, tough luck. You will have to manually choose “Local version” for each work item. I told you it was a tedious process. 7. Import original WIT (Original_MyProject_Task.xml) in MyProject. We only changed the WI definition so that we could change some fields. The original definition should be put back. And what about these other fields? Created By Authorized As These fields are not editable by definition (VS | Tools | Process Editor | Work Item Fields Explorer), even if they are not marked as read-only in the WIT. You can leave the old values. It doesn’t seem to matter to TFS. The other four fields are editable by definition, so only the WIT readonly rule prevents us from changing them. Technorati Tags: TFS,Team Foundation Server 2010,Work Item,Domain change

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  • Microsoft Forcing Dev/Partners Hands on Win 8 Through Certification

    - by D'Arcy Lussier
    I remember 2.5 years ago when Microsoft dropped a bomb on the Microsoft Partner community: all Gold competencies would require .NET 4 based premiere certifications (MCPD). Problem was, this gave a window of about 6 months for partners to update their employees’ certifications. At the place I was working, I put together an aggressive plan and we were able to attain the certs needed. Microsoft is always open that the certification requirements will change as the industry changes. .NET 1.0 certifications are useless here in 2012, and rightfully so they’ve been retired for a long time now. But now we’re seeing a new tactic by Microsoft – shifting gears away from certifications that speak to what industry needs and more to the Windows 8 agenda. Consider that currently the premiere development certification is the Microsoft Certified Professional Developer, which comes in three flavours – Web, Windows, and Azure. All require WCF and Data Access exams, as well as one that deals with the associated base technologies (ASP.NET, WinForms/WPF, Azure), and one that ties all three together in a solution-based exam. For Microsoft-based organizations, these skills aren’t just valid but necessary in building Microsoft applications. But the MCPD is being replaced with our old friend Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD). So far, Microsoft has only released two types of MCSD – Web and Windows Store Apps. Windows Store Apps?! In a push to move developers to create WinRT-based applications, desktop development is now considered a second-class citizen in the eyes of Redmond. Also interesting are the language options for the exams: HTML5 and C#. Sorry VB folks, its time to embrace curly braces whether they be JavaScript or C#. Consider too the skills being assessed for the Windows Store Apps: Get your MCSD: Windows Store Apps Using HTML5 Get your MCSD: Windows Store Apps Using C# *Image Source: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/mcsd-windows-store-apps.aspx Nov 21/2012 If you look at the skills being tested in each exam, you’ll find that skills like WCF and Data Access are downplayed compared to things like integrating Charms, facilitating Search, programming for the microphone and camera – all very Windows 8 focussed items. Where this becomes maddening is that Microsoft is still pushing Windows 7 with enterprise clients. According to a ZDNet article, Microsoft wants to see Windows 7 on 70% of enterprise desktops by mid 2013. Assuming they somehow meet that (its a pretty lofty goal), there’s years of traditional desktop-based development that will still be required at some level. For those thinking they’ll just write and stick with the MCPD certification, note that most exams that go towards that certification will be retired at the end of July 2013! (Read the small print). And while details haven’t been finalized, its a safe bet that MCPD certifications eventually won’t count towards Gold-level competencies in the Microsoft Partner program. What this means for Microsoft Partners and Developers is that certification for desktop development is going to be limited to Windows Store Apps unless Microsoft re-introduces a traditional desktop (WPF) based MCSD cert. Web Application Development – It’s Not All Bad There’s big changes on the web side of certification, but I actually see these changes as being for the good! Check out the new exam requirements for MCSD – Web Applications: Get your MCSD: Web Applications certification *Image Source: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/cert-mcsd-web-applications.aspx Nov 21, 2012 We now *start* with HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3! Now I’m sure that these will be slanted towards web development in IE, and I can hear designers everywhere bemoaning the CSS/IE combination. Still, I applaud Microsoft for adopting HTML5 as the go-to web technology and requiring certified developers to prove they have skills in the basics of web dev. The fact that the second exam clearly states “MVC Web Applications” shows that Web Forms is truly legacy and deprecated. That’s not to say there aren’t those out there that are still supporting or (for whatever reason) doing new dev with Web Forms, but this move by Microsoft is telling the community they better get on the MVC bandwagon if they want to stay current. Fantastic! And of course Azure needs to be here as well, and this is where the Microsoft agenda fits in. It’s no secret that there’s been a huge push in getting developers on to Azure. I don’t see this as being a bad thing either, as cloud computing (whether Azure, private, or 3rd party) is a necessary skill for developers to have here in 2012. The cynic in me realizes that the HTML5/JavaScript/CSS push wouldn’t be as prominent though if not for the Windows 8 Store App play, where HTML5 is a first class citizen (and an available language for the MCSD Windows Store App cert). In this case, the desktop developers loss is the web developers gain. Get Ready for Changes In addition to the changes in certifications, the Microsoft Partner competencies are going through changes as well. Web and Software Development are being merged into a single competency, meaning that licenses you would have received from having both as Gold are reduced. Other competencies are either being removed or changed, as are the exam requirements. In the same way that we’re seeing faster release cycles from Microsoft, so too will we see the Microsoft Partner Program and MS Certifications evolve faster than ever before. Many of us got caught in the last wave of changes, but this time we can see the wave coming – and it looks pretty big!

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  • Poor Customer Service Example

    - by MightyZot
    Lately I have been frustrated by examples of poor customer service. At least one is worth writing about because I don’t think companies realize the effects of their service policies on loyal customers. Bad Customer Service Example #1 Recently, I received an offer in the mail from my cable company, suddenLink. The offer was for an updated TiVo for $12/mo. Normally I ignore offers like this one because I already have the service they’re offering and many times advertisers are offering alternatives to what is already an excellent product offering. I tend to exhibit a high level of loyalty to the products and brands that I use. In this case, we were looking to upgrade our TiVo and this deal is attractive for several reasons: I don’t want to pay a huge amount up-front for the device, so paying a monthly amount for the device is attractive to me. My entertainment is almost all on a single invoice. I’m no longer going to be billed by suddenLink and TiVo. TiVo is still involved, so I am still loyal to the brand I love. I have resisted moving to other DVRs and services for over a decade. I called suddenLink to order the new TiVo and was rewarded with great customer service. In fact, I can’t remember ever getting poor customer service from suddenLink. They are always there to answer my technical support questions and they are very responsive to outages. Then I called TiVo. First of all, I chose the option on the phone system to change or cancel my service, which was consequently met by an inordinate hold time. (I’m calling this time inordinate because I get through very quickly if I want to purchase something.) This is a trend that I’ve noticed with companies – if you want me to be loyal to you, it should be just as easy to cancel your service as it is to purchase it. Because, I should never be cancelling because I am unhappy. And, if you ever want my business again, or more importantly a reference, then you’d better make the exit door open just as easy as the enter door. After quite some time on hold, I talked to “Victor” who was very courteous. Victor canceled my service and then told me that I could keep my current TiVo and transfer recorded programs to it from the new TiVo.  Cool I said, but what about the cost?  He said there was no extra cost.  This was also attractive to me because I paid for my TiVo and it would be good to use it for something at least.  That was four months ago. This month I noticed that TiVo was still charging me for my original service. I was a little upset, but I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. After all, I am a loyal TiVo customer and I have resisted moving to other solutions for over a decade. I’m sure they will do whatever it takes to keep my business, through TiVo or through suddenLink. After quite some time on hold, I was able to talk to a customer service representative, “Les”. I explained that I am a loyal TiVo customer, but I purchased this deal through my cable provider. I’m still with TiVo, I just wanted a single bill and to take advantage of the pay-over-time option. “Les” told me that he was very sorry to hear that I’m leaving TiVo, to which I responded again that I wasn’t leaving TiVo, I just want one invoice, and to take advantage of the pay-over-time. So, after explaining that I requested a termination of the non-suddenLink account (TiVo can see both of course), I was put on hold again for quite some time while my refund was “approved”.  “Les” said that he could see my cancellation request back in July. Note that it is now November, so they have billed me inappropriately four times. After quite some time, he came back on the line and told me that he was able to “get me most of my money back.” He got approval to refund 90 days. Even though I requested cancellation of one of my accounts, TiVo has that cancellation request on file and they admit overbilling me, I am going to get “most” of my money back. To top this experience off, when we were ready to hang up, “Les” told me that he was sorry to see me go and that he hoped I would come back to TiVo again. Again, I explained to “Les” that I have not left TiVo. I am just paying them through suddenLink. At that point, he went into a small dissertation about how this is a special arrangement they have with suddenLink and very few others. He made me feel like I was doing something wrong. Why should I feel that way? TiVo made the deal with suddenLink, not me, and the deal seemed like a good compromise for me to be able to get what I need. Here is what TiVo Customer Service accomplished on those two calls – I no longer feel like I need to be loyal to the TiVo brand or service. If I had been treated better on these two calls, I would still be recommending TiVo to my friends. They would still be getting revenue from a loyal customer, who paid the same rate for over a decade, and this article wouldn’t be here for you to read. Interesting… In my opinion, if you want brand loyalty, be loyal to your customers!

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  • SL: Showcase

    - by xamlnotes
    One of the sites I go to frequently is www.silverlight.net/showcase. Theres always new stuff showing up here and it gives me tons of ideas. The business section is also awesome because it has tons of samples of great applications that should really jog your brain for ideas. One of the great things about SL and WPF is how we can break the mold of application design and come up with truly great new applications for our   users. That’s one are where the showcase can help to get new ideas on things you can do.

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  • Very Cool &ndash; Miami 311 System for tracking citizen service requests (Windows Azure, Silverlight

    - by Jim Duffy
    Having grown up in South Florida this short, but very enlightening, video explaining how the City of Miami has implemented a 311 citizen service request system using Windows Azure, Silverlight and Bing Maps definitely caught my attention. Miami311 The Miami311 System is a Windows Azure/Silverlight-based solution which enables City of Miami citizens report and track issues reported to city management. The system uses Bing Maps to plot the location and relevant information about each issue reported. Citizens now have the ability to easily see the status of the issue without having to call the city office. What I found interesting were a couple of benefits that a metropolitan area such as Miami can take advantage of in Windows Azure cloud-based solution. For the city of Miami, both benefits center around the weather. Of course the threat of a hurricane is a real issue in South Florida and what better way to make sure your site stays up during a hurricane then to have the site hosted far away from the eye of the storm. Using a Windows Azure cloud-based architecture the City of Miami is able to host the application within the Microsoft data centers safely away from any hurricane passing through South Florida. The second benefit is the inherent scalability of a Windows Azure based solution. During a severe weather event like thunderstorms or even worse, a hurricane, downed trees and power lines are a commonly reported problem. Being able to quickly scale up the computing resources required to handle the spike in citizens reporting these types of problems on the site is a huge benefit. Once the weather event has passed and downed tree reports begin to subside they can quickly reverse the process and scale the system back down to pre-storm levels. It’s kind of day-to-day kind of stuff but very cool stuff nonetheless. Have a day. :-|

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  • A good news for China and Japan developers: Sample Browser is localized to Chinese and Japanese

    - by Jialiang
    Translate this pageArabicBulgarianCatalanChinese SimplifiedChinese TraditionalCzechDanishDutchEstonianFinnishFrenchGermanGreekHaitian CreoleHebrewHindiHmong DawHungarianIndonesianItalianJapaneseKoreanLatvianLithuanianNorwegianPersianPolishPortugueseRomanianRussianSlovakSlovenianSpanishSwedishThaiTurkishUkrainianVietnamese Microsoft® Translator Check out this page in {0} translated from {1}translated fromOriginal:Translated:Automatic translation powered by Microsoft® TranslatorStart translatingStop translatingCloseClose and show original pageSelect The Sample Browser Local Language Support feature is released today!  It is supporting Simplified Chinese and Japanese UI, and is optimized for Chinese and Japanese sample searches.  This should be a good news for China and Japan developers :)  We will add more languages in the near future. Install:  http://aka.ms/samplebrowser If you have already installed the previous version of Sample Browser, you can simply reopen it to get the auto-update. For example, in the Chinese UI, you can directly search samples in Chinese.  The Sample Browser is optimized to surface Chinese samples that match your query first.  This gives China and Japan developers a completely localized experience with code samples!   Particularly thanks to Japan MVPs and Satoru Kitabata – Japan MVP Lead.  Our team leant the strong need of localized Sample Browser from them.  They also devoted much time to translating the UI elements to Japanese, and making it available to Japan developers.

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  • Why CoffeeScript is tough to maintain

    - by Renso
    I recently started trying out CoffeeScript only to find out that it caused more headaches. The abstraction level of jQuery was perfect, it did not dictate to coders how to design their code, it just works. However, I recently posted a request to the CoffeeScript team to consider introducing curly braces to help with more complex code to control the flow of logic. For example a if-then-else with many nested levels can be near impossible to debug without tracing through it when using CoffeeScript. Also with IDEs like Visual Studio, regular JavaScript intellicense and auto-formatting make it easy to appropriate indent nested levels without any work on the part of the developer and reading it is not that hard, especially with some extensions that show vertical lines in the code editor to help see what is nested within what part of the code.However with CoffeeScript that is not the case. The samples given in the CoffeeScript web site are of course just simple examples to explain the features and one gets excited pretty quick over the powerful shortcuts. I tried to convert a piece of JavaScript over to CoffeeScript and gave up since you need to first of all remove ALL non CoffeeScript coding constructs for it to even compile. However js2coffee can help with that. However to keep track of nested levels became something that was simply not manageable using CoffeeScript.Furthermore, any coding language that controls the flow of logic by indentation is extremely dangerous for obvious reasons. I liked CoffeeScript a lot, but the fact that the logical flow of the code is controlled by how much you indent code, spaces or tabs, is not reliable as there is no way the programmer has an easy way of knowing what parts of the code will get hit when the code spans a page.When I suggested introducing curly braces in CoffeeScript the team, one contributor advised me that my code needs to be re-designed! Needless to say that is absurd. When I included a piece of the code he asked my if it was legacy code. It's like saying to a Java programmer, sorry you cannot use Java because we don't agree with how you write your code.jashkenas from the CoffeeScript blog gave some great suggestions and made the point that introducing curly braces would be very problematic for them as they use them to denote objects. Makes sense, but I would still love to see some way to replace code flow control with spaces and indentation to something more concrete and human readable.

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  • What are Collaboration Data Objects (CDO)?

    - by Pranav
    Collaboration Data Objects or CDO, is a component that enables messaging between applications. It's something like the MFC we have in VC++ that enables us to prefer a simpler interface compared to the WIN32 API which, as an interface, still requires lots of escalation work by developers (yet very robust!). CDO is primarily built to simply the creations of messaging applications and we should keep in mind that CDO is NOT a new messaging model but is BUILT ON the MAPI architecture. It is just an extended interface that collaborates with MAPI and simplifies the programming task at hand for creation of messaging applications. CDO replaced Microsoft's earlier Active Messaging. CDO 1.2 enables us to play around with Data, send, receive emails and a host of other functions like rendering in exchange functionalities into HTML and do loads of other stuff. If you've got some firsthand experiences, a couple of tips will be great and will defiantly further my knowledge base in this area and hopefully get me a more refined understanding. Some pointers on MAPI will be pretty cool.

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  • Don't Forget To Enjoy Life

    - by Justin
    I have a pretty clear stance on posting personal information in my blogs. I tend to avoid it almost instinctively. Part of that is because I am a somewhat private person. And the other is because I know how easy it is for personal information to be gathered and collected from sources such as blogs. So, this has remained a tech only blog for me. I've only posted topics mostly related to issues I have encountered at work. In a way this blog is a 'bookmark' for me. If I post something here and run into the issue again it allows me to refer back to a convenient place where the 'fix' is documented in a way that I understand. But today, I am posting something that speaks to everyone. Something PERSONAL. Honestly, I expect this entry to receive zero views. But if nothing else, I can come back to this blog one day when I'm having a bad day or something and run across this post. And I will be reminded... DON'T FORGET TO ENJOY LIFE. Say this to yourself out loud, right now. People, we can get caught up in some rather mundane details as we trek through life. It's so easy to lose track of what really matters that it should be no surprise to find yourself reading something like this and thinking to yourself 'Yeah. You are right, man. Some of this crap I'm clinging on to right now is so small in the grand scheme of things'. I have no reservation, no shame, in saying that I am more often than not caught up in the ever evolving world of 'shit that does not matter'. When you work in technology, you are surrounded by deadlines, upgrades, new versions, support 'end of life', etc. And by time you get done with your 8 hours you go home and put in a few more because you are STILL CAUGHT UP in the things you dealt with at work all day. DO YOURSELF A FAVOR. DO YOUR FAMILY AND FRIEND A FAVOR. When you are done for the day, and you drive home, get those work-related things out of your head before you pull into the driveway. If you are still thinking on them when you park the car, leave the engine running, close your eyes and take a deep breath. If you believe in God, pray. If you don't then meditate for a second with the INTENTION of letting go of the day and becoming the 'real you'. You may have forgotten who the real you is so I'll remind you.... THE REAL YOU IS THAT GUY OR GAL THAT LAUGHS, LOVES, AND LIVES. Be the real you as often as possible. If you can't do it during your 9 - 5, do it at home. YOUR RELATIONSHIPS AND YOUR PERSONAL HAPPINESS DEPEND ON IT. I am going to make you a promise right now. If you do what I've just said, your days will be longer and your joy will be exponential. I can't explain why I know this to be true. But I do know it. And if you are there reading this right now, you know it is true too. We both know it is true because it COMES FROM WITHIN EVERY MAN, WOMAN and CHILD. We are born into love and happiness. Lets not fade away into the darkness so easily found in this world. Lets keep the flame burning. The flame of passion. Passion for LIFE. Peace be with you.

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  • South Florida Stony Brook Alumni &amp; Friends Reception 2011

    - by Sam Abraham
    It’s official, we are kicking off a local South Florida Chapter for Stony Brook alumni and friends in the area to keep in touch.  Our first networking event will be taking place at Champps, Ft Lauderdale on November 17th, 6:00-8:00 PM. Admission is free and open for everyone, whether or not they are Stony Brook Alums. The team at Champps is offering us great specials (Happy hour deals, half-price appetizers,etc.) that we can choose to enjoy while we network and catch up. (Event Announcement: http://alumniandfriends.stonybrook.edu/page.aspx?pid=299&cid=1&ceid=171&cerid=0&cdt=11%2f17%2f2011) I look forward to share and revive my college experience which I believe was the starting line of my ongoing life journey. It would be also great to hear others’ take as they reflect on their experiences throughout their college years. I invite anyone interested in keeping in touch with friends and alums of Stony Brook to join our LinkedIn or Facebook groups.   The Stony Brook Alumni Association – South Florida Chapter LinkedIn Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3665306&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr The Stony Brook Alumni Association – South Florida Chapter Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/114760941910314/

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  • ASP.NET Session Management

    - by geekrutherford
    Great article (a little old but still relevant) about the inner workings of session management in ASP.NET: Underpinnings of the Session State Management Implementation in ASP.NET.   Using StateServer and the BinaryFormatter serialization occuring caused me quite the headache over the last few days. Curiously, it appears the w3wp.exe process actually consumes more memory when utilizing StateServer and storing somewhat large and complex data types in session.   Users began experiencing Out Of Memory exceptions in the production environment. Looking at the stack trace it related to serialization using the BinaryFormatter. Using remote debugging against our QA server I noted that the code in the application functioned without issue. The exception occured outside the context of the application itself when the request had completed and the web server was trying to serialize session state into the StateServer.   The short term solution is switching back to the InProc method. Thus far this has proven to consume considerably less memory and has caused no issues. Long term the complex object stored in session will be off-loaded into a web service used to access the information directly from the database outside the context of the object used to encapsulate it.

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  • Todays Apress $10 Deal - Pro RFID in BizTalk Server 2009

    - by TATWORTH
    Today's $10 Deal from Apress at http://www.apress.com/info/dailydeal is " Pro RFID in BizTalk Server 2009 With extensive code and configuration examples and multiple case studies illustrating how the BizTalk RFID application is being used in various industries, authors Ram Venkatesh, the lead developer of the BizTalk RFID platform, Mark Simms, a leading architect and developer of BizTalk RFID solutions, and Mark Beckner, a BizTalk Server and enterprise architecture specialist, ensure that you will gain the insight and master the tools necessary to be able to confidently and efficiently implement a BizTalk RFID solution. $49.99 | Published Feb 2009 | Mark Beckner "

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  • Business Choices and Evony

    - by Robert May
    Recently, I’ve been playing a game called Evony, and I finally decided to quit the game and thought I should warn others who might be tempted.  I also find a lot of insight with this game as an example.  A few of the companies that I’ve worked with or worked for have been like this and they are NOT good places to be. Evony is a joke designed to milk as much money out of people as possible.  As a professional software developer who mentors teams on how to build better software, here's what I see: They obviously offshore all development and have little oversight over that offshore development, and they probably have a small team at that.  Evidenced by the poor grammar throughout the game. They're seeking to maximize revenue and pushing to do as little development as possible, which would mean a small team. They're horribly understaffed in the customer support department as evidenced by never replying to this forum and never responding to bug reports or help requests (I've had one open with no response AT ALL for over a month . . .) They have way inadequate testing, no CI, and probably no automated unit tests.  You can see this by the poor grammar throughout the game and the type of bugs that show up. They aren't following a formal development process (no Agile, Waterfall, or anything else) as evidenced by their lack of predictable release cycle and lack of visibility. I'm guessing that the internal code base is terrible, otherwise, there wouldn't be an "Age II" that had nothing more than a new visual interface and a few rule tweaks.  This is also evidenced by the itty bitty scope of bug fixes and their inability to really fix bugs. Their Architect sucks.  Really, 42k user is all you can handle on a single server?  Could you REALLY not come up with a better way to scale to handle users?  They've built isolated worlds, instead of a single continuous world. Back to milking people for money--to really progress, you have to spend money. All of this adds up to knowing, deliberate actions on the part of management.  They CHOOSE to do this (like AOL choosing to send more discs instead of improve quality). So, what can we learn? This game will never really improve, since the bosses don't care, they're only in it for the money. The game will never have good support.  Again, the owners don't care. Giving them money only perpetuates this scam (and yes, I've given them money, way too much money. :() They don't care if you quit.  There's a new sucker born every day. Don't EVER go to work for them.  I've worked both with and for people like this and the culture is NEVER good. Ah well. Technorati Tags: Evony

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  • Loading XML file containing leading zeros with SSIS preserving the zeros

    - by Compudicted
    Visiting the MSDN SQL Server Integration Services Forum oftentimes I could see that people would pop up asking this question: “why I am not able to load an element from an XML file that contains zeros so the leading/trailing zeros would remain intact?”. I started to suspect that such a trivial and often-required operation perhaps is being misunderstood by the developer community. I would also like to add that the whole state of affairs surrounding the XML today is probably also going to be increasingly affected by a motion of people who dislike XML in general and many aspects of it as XSD and XSLT invoke a negative reaction at best. Nevertheless, XML is in wide use today and its importance as a bridge between diverse systems is ever increasing. Therefore, I deiced to write up an example of loading an arbitrary XML file that contains leading zeros in one of its elements using SSIS so the leading zeros would be preserved keeping in mind the goal on simplicity into a table in SQL Server database. To start off bring up your BIDS (running as admin) and add a new Data Flow Task (DFT). This DFT will serve as container to adding our XML processing elements (besides, the XML Source is not available anywhere else other than from within the DFT). Double-click your DFT and drag and drop the XMS Source component from the Tool Box’s Data Flow Sources. Now, let the fun begin! Being inspired by the upcoming Christmas I created a simple XML file with one set of data that contains an imaginary SSN number of Rudolph containing several leading zeros like 0000003. This file can be viewed here. To configure the XML Source of course it is quite intuitive to point it to our XML file, next what the XML source needs is either an embedded schema (XSD) or it can generate one for us. In lack of the one I opted to auto-generate it for me and I ended up with an XSD that looked like: <?xml version="1.0"?> <xs:schema attributeFormDefault="unqualified" elementFormDefault="qualified" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <xs:element name="XMasEvent"> <xs:complexType> <xs:sequence> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="CaseInfo"> <xs:complexType> <xs:sequence> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="ID" type="xs:unsignedByte" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="CreatedDate" type="xs:unsignedInt" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="LastName" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="FirstName" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="SSN" type="xs:unsignedByte" /> <!-- Becomes string -- > <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="DOB" type="xs:unsignedInt" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="Event" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element minOccurs="0" name="ClosedDate" /> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> </xs:schema> As an aside on the XML file: if your XML file does not contain the outer node (<XMasEvent>) then you may end up in a situation where you see just one field in the output. Now please note that the SSN element’s data type was chosen to be of unsignedByte (and this is for a reason). The reason is stemming from the fact all our figures in the element are digits, this is good, but this is not exactly what we need, because if we will attempt to load the data with this XSD then we are going to either get errors on the destination or most typically lose the leading zeros. So the next intuitive choice is to change the data type to string. Besides, if a SSIS package was already created based on this XSD and the data type change was done thereafter, one should re-set the metadata by right-clicking the XML Source and choosing “Advanced Editor” in which there is a refresh button at the bottom left which will do the trick. So far so good, we are ready to load our XML file, well actually yes, and no, in my experience typically some data conversion may be required. So depending on your data destination you may need to tweak the data types targeted. Let’s add a Data Conversion Task to our DFT. Your package should look like: To make the story short I only will cover the SSN field, so in my data source the target SQL Table has it as nchar(10) and we chose string in our XSD (yes, this is a big difference), under such circumstances the SSIS will complain. So will go and manipulate on the data type of SSN by making it Unicode String (DT_WSTR), World String per se. The conversion should look like: The peek at the Metadata: We are almost there, now all we need is to configure the destination. For simplicity I chose SQL Server Destination. The mapping is a breeze, F5 and I am able to insert my data into SQL Server now! Checking the zeros – they are all intact!

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  • mongoDB Management Studio

    - by Liam McLennan
    This weekend I have been in Sydney at the MS Web Camp, learning about web application development. At the end of the first day we came up with application ideas and pitched them. My idea was to build a web management application for mongoDB. mongoDB I pitched my idea, put down the microphone, and then someone asked, “what’s mongo?”. Good question. MongoDB is a document database that stores JSON style documents. This is a JSON document for a tweet from twitter: db.tweets.find()[0] { "_id" : ObjectId("4bfe4946cfbfb01420000001"), "created_at" : "Thu, 27 May 2010 10:25:46 +0000", "profile_image_url" : "http://a3.twimg.com/profile_images/600304197/Snapshot_2009-07-26_13-12-43_normal.jpg", "from_user" : "drearyclocks", "text" : "Does anyone know who has better coverage, Optus or Vodafone? Telstra is still too expensive.", "to_user_id" : null, "metadata" : { "result_type" : "recent" }, "id" : { "floatApprox" : 14825648892 }, "geo" : null, "from_user_id" : 6825770, "search_term" : "telstra", "iso_language_code" : "en", "source" : "&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tweetdeck.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TweetDeck&lt;/a&gt;" } A mongodb server can have many databases, each database has many collections (instead of tables) and a collection has many documents (instead of rows). Development Day 2 of the Sydney MS Web Camp was allocated to building our applications. First thing in the morning I identified the stories that I wanted to implement: Scenario: View databases Scenario: View Collections in a database Scenario: View Documents in a Collection Scenario: Delete a Collection Scenario: Delete a Database Scenario: Delete Documents Over the course of the day the team (3.5 developers) implemented all of the planned stories (except ‘delete a database’) and also implemented the following: Scenario: Create Database Scenario: Create Collection Lessons Learned I’m new to MongoDB and in the past I have only accessed it from Ruby (for my hare-brained scheme). When it came to implementing our MongoDB management studio we discovered that their is no official MongoDB driver for .NET. We chose to use NoRM, honestly just because it was the only one I had heard of. NoRM was a challenge. I think it is a fine library but it is focused on mapping strongly typed objects to MongoDB. For our application we had no prior knowledge of the types that would be in the MongoDB database so NoRM was probably a poor choice. Here are some screens (click to enlarge):

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  • Virtualized data centre&ndash;Part four: The design

    - by marc dekeyser
    Welcome back to the fourth post in this series! Today we will have a look at what Microsoft recommends as a “private cloud design” and what I will make of it. Whilst my own solution is based of the reference architecture, it is quite different indeed! An important thing to know is that, whilst I am using the private cloud as a reference, I am skipping most of the steps in designing a private cloud. If that is why you are here, please read the links at the end of the article and skim through my own content. A private cloud is much more process driven than just building a virtual infrastructure… The architecture of it all… So imagine for a minute that you have unlimited funds to build this lab of yours… You’d want redundancy on all levels and separation of each network where possible! Unfortunately we don’t have that luxury and, as you saw me hinting at in the previous article, our own design will be more limited but still quite capable! Networking From the networking perspective I will not have a fully redundant network, after all, this is but a lab environment! Thanks to Server 2012 I will be able to use bonding on my NIC’s and use LACP to improve the performance on that part. Storage As I mentioned in the previous article a Synology DS1218+ will be used for iSCSI provisioning. This device has 2 NICs on-board which can be bonded in to one 2 Gbps interface giving me a decent throughput and making the disks the most limiting factor in the storage design. Domain controllers and extra infrastructure Server 2012 completely supports running domain controllers virtualized and has no need to actually have a reachable DC when booting… That being said I need a remote access machine to power on the hosts (I have no need for them running 24/7) and a possible System Center VMM 2012 box (although server 2012 is not supported until SP1 :( ). Undecided on if I am to install those boxes separately or as a virtual machine… Which amounts to… Something like this pretty picture!                   Sources Microsoft Private Cloud Solutions Repository (en-US) http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/12131.microsoft-private-cloud-solutions-repository-en-us.aspx Reference  Architecture: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/3819.reference-architecture-for-private-cloud.aspx Private Cloud Reference Model: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/4399.private-cloud-reference-model.aspx

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  • The Coming Storm of Blog Entries

    - by StuartBrierley
    Well, maybe. I have realised that I have many many ideas and notes for blogs entries dotted around my desk, along with a number of half completed entries that I have been meaning to get sorted and finished and posted. I am hoping that over the next couple of weeks I will be able to get some of these online, including my experineces installing BizTalk 2009 on two different types of environment, some useful utilities I have used and also some notes on issues that I have encountered recently and not so recently when developing BizTalk solutions. If not a storm it may at least drizzle.

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