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  • Microsoft Async CTP for DDD9 UK Developer Conference - slides and source code now available

    - by Liam Westley
    Thanks to all the nice comments from people who attended my presentation at DDD9, and extra thanks to Jon Skeet, Mark Rendle and Mike Hadlow for coming on stage for the last ten minutes to help debate whether the Async CTP is the correct way to go to enhance C# 5.0. The presentation is available at Prezi.com http://prezi.com/gysz5nohltye, which I can recommend as a refreshing change to the more standard PowerPoint slidedecks. I've also uploaded all the code samples into a single ZIP file. You will need to install the Async CTP to be able to run them, and I would remind everyone that the current Async CTP is not compatible with either ASP.NET MVC 3 RTM or Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 so you may need to use a test system of virtual machine to play with it! Source code - http://www.tigernews.co.uk/blog-twickers/ddd9/AsyncSrc.zip Again, thanks for all the positive feedback and the whole of the DDD team for putting on a fantastic conference for all the presenters and delegates.

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  • Setting XSL-FO XML Schema in Visual Studio

    - by Lukasz Kurylo
    I'm playing lately with an XSL-FO for generating a pdf documents. XSL-FO has a long list of available tags and attributes, which for a new guy who want to create a simple document is a nightmare to find a proper one. Fortunatelly we can set an schema for XSL-FO, so will result in acquire a full intellisense in VS. For a simple *.fo file, we can set the path to the schema directly in file: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <fo:root       xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"       xsi:schemaLocation=" http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format http://www.xmlblueprint.com/documents/fop.xsd"> ...   We can of course use the build in VS XML Schemas selector. To use it, we must copy the schema file to the Schemas catalog (defaut path for VS2012 is C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Xml\Schemas). Then we can go to Properties of the opened xml/xslt file and set the new added schema to file:                 From now, we should have an enable intellisense as shown below: .

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  • [XSL-FO] Characters from other than English languages

    - by Lukasz Kurylo
    My client have departments in Europe Central and East, so there is highly possibility that in the generated pdfs there will be at least in the people names and/or surnames some specific characters for the country language.   With the XSL-FO we can use some out-of-the box fonts, e.g. the default is Times. We can change it for specific block of text or the entire document to other like Helvetica or Arial. All will be good to the moment that we use only an english alphabet. If we want to add e.g. some characters from polish or bulgarian language, in the *.fo file:         <fo:block >                 <fo:inline font-weight="bold">english: </fo:inline>                 <fo:inline font-weight="bold">yellow</fo:inline>       </fo:block>       <fo:block>                 <fo:inline font-weight="bold">polish: </fo:inline>                 <fo:inline font-weight="bold">zólty</fo:inline>       </fo:block>       <fo:block>                 <fo:inline font-weight="bold">russian: </fo:inline>                 <fo:inline font-weight="bold">??????</fo:inline>       </fo:block>       <fo:block>                 <fo:inline font-weight="bold">bulgarian: </fo:inline>                 <fo:inline font-weight="bold">????</fo:inline>       </fo:block>       <fo:block>                 <fo:inline font-weight="bold">english: </fo:inline>                 <fo:inline font-weight="bold">yellow</fo:inline>       </fo:block>       <fo:block>                 <fo:inline font-weight="bold">polish: </fo:inline>                 <fo:inline font-weight="bold"  font-family="Arial">zólty</fo:inline>       </fo:block>       <fo:block>                 <fo:inline font-weight="bold">russian: </fo:inline>                 <fo:inline font-weight="bold" font-family="Arial">??????</fo:inline>       </fo:block>       <fo:block>                 <fo:inline font-weight="bold">bulgarian: </fo:inline>                 <fo:inline font-weight="bold" font-family="Arial">????</fo:inline>       </fo:block>   The result can be diffrent from the expected depending on the selected font, e.g:                 As you can see Timer nor Arial work in this case.   The problem here is not related to XSL-FO, but rather to the renderer we are using. I have lost a lot of time to find a solution for the using by me XSL-FO –> PDF rendered to acquire these characters in my generated files. Fortunatelly all what have to be done it is to embed the font (or part of it) in the file(s) during rendering.   The renderer that I’m using it is an open source FO.NET.   For this one, the code to generate a pdf file looks that:   var fonet =  Fonet.FonetDriver.Make(); fonet.Render("source.fo", "result.pdf");   To emded the font in the pdf, we need to set the appropriate option to the driver:   fonet.Options = new Fonet.Render.Pdf.PdfRendererOptions() {       FontType = Fonet.Render.Pdf.FontType.Embed }; Right now, the pdf we get should look like this:               As you can see, the result for the Arial font looks exactly how it should, because this font has a characters included not only for the english language like the default Times, which we shouls avoid if we not generating a english-only documents.   This is worth to notice that in this situation the generated pdf file is quite large, it has more than 400 kb in size. This is of course because of embedding the entire font in it to make the document portable to systems, where the used font is not present. Instead on embedding the entire font, we can only embed the subset of used characters by changing the options to:   fonet.Options = new Fonet.Render.Pdf.PdfRendererOptions() {       FontType = Fonet.Render.Pdf.FontType.Subset };   Right now, this specific pdf is only 12 kb in size.

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  • How To Validate an Email Address

    - by Richard Jones
    I’m using my blog today as book mark service today. I just found this article on howto really validate if an email address exists. I’ll have a go at wrapping this article into a WCF/Webservice http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2009/how-to-check-if-an-email-address-exists-without-sending-an-email/

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  • Get to Know a Candidate (6 of 25): Jill Stein&ndash;Green Party

    - by Brian Lanham
    DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting. Information sourced for Wikipedia. Stein is a physician with degrees from Harvard College and Harvard Medical School.  She serves on the boards of Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility and MassVoters for Fair Elections, and has been active with the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities Jill Stein advocates a "Green New Deal" in which renewable energy jobs would be created to address climate change and environmental issues with the objective of employing "every American willing and able to work". Citing the research of Dr. Phillip Harvey, Professor of Law & Economics at Rutgers University, as evidence of the successful economic effects of the 1930s' New Deal projects, Stein would fund the plan with a 30% reduction in the U.S. military budget, returning US troops home, and increasing taxes on areas such as capital gains, offshore tax havens and multimillion dollar real estate. Stein plans on impacting what she sees as a growing convergence of environmental crises in water, soil, fisheries and forests, through the creation of sustainable infrastructure based in clean renewable energy generation and sustainable communities principles such as increasing intra-city mass transit and inter-city railroads, creating 'complete streets' that safely encourage bike and pedestrian traffic and regional food systems based on sustainable organic agriculture The Green Party of the United States was founded in 1991 as a voluntary association of state green parties. With its founding, the Green Party of the United States became the primary national Green organization in the United States, eclipsing the Greens/Green Party USA, which emphasized non-electoral movement building. The Green Party of the United States of America emphasizes environmentalism, non-hierarchical participatory democracy, social justice, respect for diversity, peace and nonviolence. Their "Ten Key Values," which are described as non-authoritative guiding principles, are as follows: Grassroots democracy Social justice and equal opportunity Ecological wisdom Nonviolence Decentralization Community-based economics Feminism and gender equality Respect for diversity Personal and global responsibility Future focus and sustainability The Green Party does not accept donations from corporations. Thus, the party's platforms and rhetoric critique any corporate influence and control over government, media, and American society at large. Stein has access to 403 electoral votes and is a write-in candidate in GA, IN, and MS Learn more about Jill Stein and Green Party on Wikipedia.

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  • Development Quirk From ASP.NET Dynamic Compilation

    - by jkauffman
    The Problem I got a compilation error in my ASP.NET MVC3 project that tested my sanity today. (As always, names are changed to protect the innocent) The type or namespace name 'FishViewModel' does not exist in the namespace 'Company.Product.Application.Models' (are you missing an assembly reference?) Sure looks easy! There must be something in the project referring to a FishViewModel. The Confusing Part The first thing I noticed was the that error was occuring in a folder clearly not in my project and in files that I definitely had not created: %SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\(versionNumber)\Temporary ASP.NET Files\ App_Web_mezpfjae.1.cs I also ascertained these facts, each of which made me more confused than the last: Rebuild and Clean had no effect. No controllers in the project ever returned a ViewResult using FishViewModel. No views in the project defined that they use FishViewModel. Searching across all files included in the project for “FishViewModel” provided no results. The build server did not report a problem. The Solution The problem stemmed from a file that was not included in the project but still present on the file system: (By the way, if you don’t know this trick already, there is a toolbar button in the Solution Explorer window to “Show All Files” which allows you to see files all files in the file system) In my situation, I was working on the mission-critical Fish view before abandoning the feature. Instead of deleting the file, I excluded it from the project. However, this was a bad move. It caused the build failure, and in order to fix the error, this file must be deleted. By the way, this file was not in source control, so the build server did not have it. This explains why my build server did not report a problem for me. The Explanation So, what’s going on? This file isn’t even a part of the project, so why is it failing the build? This is a behavior of the ASP.NET Dynamic Compilation. This is the same process that occurs when deploying a webpage; ASP.NET compiles the web application’s code. When this occurs on a production server, it has to do so without the .csproj file (which isn’t usually deployed, if you’ve taken your time to do a deployment cleanly). This process has merely the file system available to identify what to compile. So, back in the world of developing the webpage in visual studio on my developer box, I run into the situation because the same process is occuring there. This is true even though I have more files on my machine than will actually get deployed. I can’t help but think that this error could be attributed back to the real culprit file (Fish.cshtml, rather than the temporary files) with some work, but at least the error had enough information in it to narrow it down. The Conclusion I had previously been accustomed to the idea that for c# projects, the .csproj file always “defines” the build behavior. This investigation has taught me that I’ll need to shift my thinking a bit to remember that the file system has the final say when it comes to web applications, even on the developer’s machine!

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  • Get to Know a Candidate (19-25 of 25): Independent Candidates

    - by Brian Lanham
    DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting.  Information sourced for Wikipedia. The following independent candidates have gained access to at least one state ballot. Richard Duncan, of Ohio; Vice-presidential nominee: Ricky Johnson Candidate Ballot Access: Ohio - (18 Electoral)  Write-In Candidate Access: Alaska, Florida, Indiana, Maryland Randall Terry, of West Virginia; Vice-presidential nominee: Missy Smith Candidate Ballot Access: Kentucky, Nebraska, West Virginia - (18 Electoral)  Write-In Candidate Access: Colorado, Indiana Sheila Tittle, of Texas; Vice-presidential nominee: Matthew Turner Candidate Ballot Access: Colorado, Louisiana - (17 Electoral) Jeff Boss, of New Jersey; Vice-presidential nominee: Bob Pasternak Candidate Ballot Access: New Jersey - (14 Electoral) Dean Morstad, of Minnesota; Vice-presidential nominee: Josh Franke-Hyland Candidate Ballot Access: Minnesota - (10 Electoral)  Write-In Candidate Access: Utah Jill Reed, of Wyoming; Vice-presidential nominee: Tom Cary Candidate Ballot Access: Colorado - (9 Electoral)  Write-In Candidate Access: Indiana, Florida Jerry Litzel, of Iowa; Vice-presidential nominee: Jim Litzel Candidate Ballot Access: Iowa - (6 Electoral) That wraps it up people. We have reviewed 25 presidential candidates in the 2012 U.S. election. Look for more blog posts about the election to come.

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  • Powershell: Connect to Exchange server powershell

    - by marc dekeyser
    Connecting to Exchange powershell is, for normal operations, as simple as opening the shortcut on you start menu :).However, if you have the need to have some scripts perform actions against your Exchange you can use the below code to make that happen!$s = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri http://YourCASServerFQDN/PowerShell/ -Authentication Kerberos  Import-PSSession $s    Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Exchange.Management.PowerShell.E2010  . $env:ExchangeInstallPath\bin\RemoteExchange.ps1  Connect-ExchangeServer -auto

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  • Organization &amp; Architecture UNISA Studies &ndash; Chap 6

    - by MarkPearl
    Learning Outcomes Discuss the physical characteristics of magnetic disks Describe how data is organized and accessed on a magnetic disk Discuss the parameters that play a role in the performance of magnetic disks Describe different optical memory devices Magnetic Disk The way data is stored on and retried from magnetic disks Data is recorded on and later retrieved form the disk via a conducting coil named the head (in many systems there are two heads) The writ mechanism exploits the fact that electricity flowing through a coil produces a magnetic field. Electric pulses are sent to the write head, and the resulting magnetic patterns are recorded on the surface below with different patterns for positive and negative currents The physical characteristics of a magnetic disk   Summarize from book   The factors that play a role in the performance of a disk Seek time – the time it takes to position the head at the track Rotational delay / latency – the time it takes for the beginning of the sector to reach the head Access time – the sum of the seek time and rotational delay Transfer time – the time it takes to transfer data RAID The rate of improvement in secondary storage performance has been considerably less than the rate for processors and main memory. Thus secondary storage has become a bit of a bottleneck. RAID works on the concept that if one disk can be pushed so far, additional gains in performance are to be had by using multiple parallel components. Points to note about RAID… RAID is a set of physical disk drives viewed by the operating system as a single logical drive Data is distributed across the physical drives of an array in a scheme known as striping Redundant disk capacity is used to store parity information, which guarantees data recoverability in case of a disk failure (not supported by RAID 0 or RAID 1) Interesting to note that the increase in the number of drives, increases the probability of failure. To compensate for this decreased reliability RAID makes use of stored parity information that enables the recovery of data lost due to a disk failure.   The RAID scheme consists of 7 levels…   Category Level Description Disks Required Data Availability Large I/O Data Transfer Capacity Small I/O Request Rate Striping 0 Non Redundant N Lower than single disk Very high Very high for both read and write Mirroring 1 Mirrored 2N Higher than RAID 2 – 5 but lower than RAID 6 Higher than single disk Up to twice that of a signle disk for read Parallel Access 2 Redundant via Hamming Code N + m Much higher than single disk Highest of all listed alternatives Approximately twice that of a single disk Parallel Access 3 Bit interleaved parity N + 1 Much higher than single disk Highest of all listed alternatives Approximately twice that of a single disk Independent Access 4 Block interleaved parity N + 1 Much higher than single disk Similar to RAID 0 for read, significantly lower than single disk for write Similar to RAID 0 for read, significantly lower than single disk for write Independent Access 5 Block interleaved parity N + 1 Much higher than single disk Similar to RAID 0 for read, lower than single disk for write Similar to RAID 0 for read, generally  lower than single disk for write Independent Access 6 Block interleaved parity N + 2 Highest of all listed alternatives Similar to RAID 0 for read; lower than RAID 5 for write Similar to RAID 0 for read, significantly lower than RAID 5  for write   Read page 215 – 221 for detailed explanation on RAID levels Optical Memory There are a variety of optical-disk systems available. Read through the table on page 222 – 223 Some of the devices include… CD CD-ROM CD-R CD-RW DVD DVD-R DVD-RW Blue-Ray DVD Magnetic Tape Most modern systems use serial recording – data is lade out as a sequence of bits along each track. The typical recording used in serial is referred to as serpentine recording. In this technique when data is being recorded, the first set of bits is recorded along the whole length of the tape. When the end of the tape is reached the heads are repostioned to record a new track, and the tape is again recorded on its whole length, this time in the opposite direction. That process continued back and forth until the tape is full. To increase speed, the read-write head is capable of reading and writing a number of adjacent tracks simultaneously. Data is still recorded serially along individual tracks, but blocks in sequence are stored on adjacent tracks as suggested. A tape drive is a sequential access device. Magnetic tape was the first kind of secondary memory. It is still widely used as the lowest-cost, slowest speed member of the memory hierarchy.

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  • FREE Windows Azure Platform Compute and Storage through the Cloud Essentials Pack for Partners

    - by Eric Nelson
    It can be difficult to find something to look forward to in January – but this year it was a little easier as a) I got lots of great Xbox 360 games and b) the Windows Azure Platform element of the Cloud Essentials Pack for Microsoft Partner Network partners went live. I have previously explained what the Cloud Essentials Pack is and how you can access – but at the time I couldn’t share the details of the Windows Azure Platform element. The Windows Azure Platform element is now available. It gives you each month, for FREE: Windows Azure: 750 hours of extra small compute instance 25 hours of small compute instance 3GB of storage and 250,000 storage transactions SQL Azure: 1 SQL Azure Web Edition database (5GB) Windows Azure AppFabric: App Fabric with 100,000 Access Control transactions and 2 Service Bus connections Plus: Data Transfer:  3GB in and 6GB out (More details of the offer) To activate this offer You need to: Sign your company up to Microsoft Platform Ready (NB: there are other routes to get this benefit – but I know about MPR) Read about Microsoft Platform Ready Visit http://www.microsoftcloudpartner.com/ and sign up.

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  • Maps for Africa

    - by samkea
    My friends and some people from i-network Uganda, have been requesting me to help them with some international maps. I have uploaded these ones here, you can download and re-use them. They are not so upto-date but are the one s i use. I will continue posting any updates here and will remove the older ones if need be. Enjoy! Africa Bounderies: http://cid-5e33c7b2ca3aa2a9.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Maps/0412010AdminBdries^_Africa.rar   I will be posting others soon, keep checking....

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  • Update

    - by Jeff Certain
    This blog has been pretty quiet for a year now. There's a few reasons for that. Probably the biggest reason is that I view this as a space where I talk about .NET things. Or software development. While I've been doing the latter for the past year, I haven't been doing the former.Yes, I took a trip to the dark side. I started with Ning 11 months ago, in Palo Alto, CA. I had the chance to work with an incredibly talented group of software engineers... in PHP and Java.That was definitely an eye-opening experience, in terms of technology, process, and culture. It was also a pretty good example of how acquisitions can get interesting. I'll talk more about this, I'm sure.Last week, I started with a company called Dynamic Signal. I'm a "Back End Engineer" now. Also a very talented team of people, and I'm delighted to be working with them. We're a Microsoft shop. After a year away, I'm very happy to be back. Coming back to .NET is an easy transition, and one that has me being fairly productive straight out of the gate.(Some of you may have noticed, my last post was more than a year ago. Yes, it's safe to infer that I didn't get renewed as an MVP. Fair deal; I didn't do nearly as much this year as I have in the past. I'll be starting to speak again shortly, and hope to be re-awarded soon.)At any rate, now that I'm back in the .NET space, you can expect to hear more from me soon!

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  • Hell and Diplomacy: Notes on Software Integration

    - by ericajanine
    Well, I'm getting cabin fever and short-timer's ADD all at the same time. I haven't been anywhere outside of my greater city area in FOREVER and I'm only days away from my vacation. I have brainlock because the last few days have been non-stop diffusing amazingly hostile conversations. I think I'll write about that. So then, I "do" software. At the end of the day, software is pretty straightforward. Software is that thing we love and try to make do things not currently in play, in existence. If a process around getting software to do something is broken (like most actually are), then we should acknowledge it and move on. We are professional. We are helpful beyond the normal call of duty. We live and breathe making the lives better for those apps being active in the world. But above all--the shocker: We are SERVICE. In a service frame of mind, all perspectives shift to what is best overall for system stabilization vs. what must be in production to meet business objectives. It doesn't matter how much you like or dislike the creator of said software. It doesn't matter what time you went to bed last night or if your mate appreciates your Death March attitude. Getting a product in and when is an age-old dilemma in a software environment where more than, say, 3 people are involved. We know this. Taking a servant's perspective eliminates the drama surrounding what a group of half-baked developers forgot to tell each other in the 11th hour about their trampling changes before check-in. We, my counterparts in society, get paid to deal with that drama. I get paid to diffuse that drama and make everything integrate as smoothly as possible. At the end of the day, attacking someone over a minor detail not only makes things worse, it's against the whole point of our real existence. Being in support or software integration means you are to keep your eyes on the end game. That end game? It's making a solution work for all stakeholders, not just you or your immediate superior. Development and technology groups exist because business groups need them to exist and solve their issues. The end game? Doing what is best for those business groups ultimately. Period. Note: That does not mean you let your business users solely dictate when and if something gets changed in an environment you ultimately own. That's just crazy. Software and its environments are legitimately owned by those who manage it directly, no matter how important a business group believes it is to the existence of mankind. So, you both negotiate the terms of changing that environment and only do so upon that negotiation. Diplomacy is in order. So, to finish my thoughts: If you have no ability to keep your mouth shut in a situation where a business or development group truly need your help to make something work even beyond a deadline, find another profession. Beating up someone verbally because they screw up means a service attitude is not at the forefront of your motivation for doing what is ultimately their work and their product. Software, especially integration, requires a strong will and a soft touch to keep it on track. Not a hammer covered in broken glass.

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  • Creating an anonymous site in SharePoint 2010

    - by shehan
    Here’s how: Open up the Central Administration site and click on “Manage Web Applications” under the “Application Management” section From the ribbon click on “New” (Note: if its an existing web app, then click on “Extend”) Fill in the fields with appropriate values. Under “Security Configurations” make sure to select “Yes” for “Allow Anonymous” Click OK Once the web application has been created, a site collection would need to be created. Navigate to “Application Management” –> “Create Site Collection” Fill in the fields with the appropriate values and create the site collection Next sign into the newly created site collection as the Site Collection Administrator. From the “Site Actions” menu, select “Site Permissions” In the permissions page that loads, click on the Anonymous Access button appearing on the ribbon. A modal dialog would popup. Select the appropriate option and click OK. If you selected “Entire Web Site” its advisable to restart the browser to test anonymous access Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2010,anonymous,site collection,web application

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  • Why is NDA so hard to understand?

    - by Dave Campbell
    Maybe this concept is simpler for me because of all the jobs I've been on over the years requiring security clearances. I've signed quite a few NDA forms. Some for big companies, some for small, but the meaning of "NDA" remains constant: Non-Disclosure Agreement. To me, that takes no further explanation, but apparently it's confusing to some people, and I don't understand how you can be confused. The papers I signed with the U.S. Army in 1970 read "10 years and $10,000" for a violation... can't imagine what it's up to now, but THAT is a strict NDA :) So those things I've been told, I cannot talk about, period. Even if the entire world knows about them, I cannot speak about them until the information goes off NDA. An example was a Silverlight release a while back. It might have been Silverlight 3, I don't remember. Everyone was anxiously awaiting the release so they could post their material. Of course the entire world knew it was coming out and imminently so. Some enterprising folks had even found the bits on a server before the official announcement. So then the situation became: everyone knew about it, some were even coding with it and blogging about it and yet we couldn't talk about it. Scott Guthrie's posting about it opened the flood gates and then it went off NDA, but up until that moment, we were locked. Sitting out on the edge you're uninstalling and re-installing all the time and you get frustrated when things that used to work don't, but hey... those bits were still warm when you got 'em, and that's the fun. But that fun comes at a price, and the price is the NDA. Awkward yes, confusing no... See you at MIX10, and Stay in the 'Light! MIX10

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  • Sneaky Javascript For Loop Bug

    - by Liam McLennan
    Javascript allows you to declare variables simply by assigning a value to an identify, in the same style as ruby: myVar = "some text"; Good javascript developers know that this is a bad idea because undeclared variables are assigned to the global object, usually window, making myVar globally visible. So the above code is equivalent to: window.myVar = "some text"; What I did not realise is that this applies to for loop initialisation as well. for (i = 0; i < myArray.length; i += 1) { } // is equivalent to for (window.i = 0; window.i < myArray.length; window.i += 1) { } Combine this with function calls nested inside of the for loops and you get some very strange behaviour, as the value of i is modified simultaneously by code in different scopes. The moral of the story is to ALWAYS declare javascript variables with the var keyword, even when intialising a for loop. for (var i = 0; i < myArray.length; i += 1) { }

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  • Visual Studio 2010: Fun with extensions

    - by BizTalk Visionary
    One of the powerful things that has come into Visual Studio over the last few years has been joy of extensions. With 2010 there seems to be even more!! Of course teaching old dogs like myself new tricks always takes time but interestingly enough some of the rules I learnt early in my working life over 30 years ago still hold true!! A derivation of one that was knocked into during my engineering apprenticeship and associated exams was RTFQ! Read the ‘flippin’ question. (I replaced the original ‘F’ with a more palatable version here!). Today I forgot that rule and didn’t RTFI (I being instructions) and spent a fruitless hour wondering why my Entity Framework POCO generator never appeared in the new project template list when I wanted to add it!! It was simple of course – I had only installed the Entity Framework POCO generator for web sites and not building a web project meant it would never appear!!! A quick look again I found the ‘other’ extension that supported my project type! So RTFI!!

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  • Better than dynamic SQL - How to pass a list of comma separated IDs into a stored proc

    - by Rodney Vinyard
    Better than dynamic SQL - How to pass a list of comma separated IDs into a stored proc:     Derived form "Method 6" from a great article: ·         How to pass a list of values or array to SQL Server stored procedure ·          http://vyaskn.tripod.com/passing_arrays_to_stored_procedures.htm     Create PROCEDURE [dbo].[GetMyTable_ListByCommaSepReqIds] (@CommaSepReqIds varchar(500))   AS   BEGIN   select * from MyTable q               JOIN               dbo.SplitStringToNumberTable(@CommaSepReqIds) AS s               ON               q.MyTableId = s.ID End     ALTER FUNCTION [dbo].[SplitStringToNumberTable] (        @commaSeparatedList varchar(500) ) RETURNS @outTable table (        ID int ) AS BEGIN        DECLARE @parsedItem varchar(10), @Pos int          SET @commaSeparatedList = LTRIM(RTRIM(@commaSeparatedList))+ ','        SET @commaSeparatedList = REPLACE(@commaSeparatedList, ' ', '')        SET @Pos = CHARINDEX(',', @commaSeparatedList, 1)          IF REPLACE(@commaSeparatedList, ',', '') <> ''        BEGIN               WHILE @Pos > 0               BEGIN                      SET @parsedItem = LTRIM(RTRIM(LEFT(@commaSeparatedList, @Pos - 1)))                      IF @parsedItem <> ''                            BEGIN                                   INSERT INTO @outTable (ID)                                   VALUES (CAST(@parsedItem AS int)) --Use Appropriate conversion                            END                            SET @commaSeparatedList = RIGHT(@commaSeparatedList, LEN(@commaSeparatedList) - @Pos)                            SET @Pos = CHARINDEX(',', @commaSeparatedList, 1)               END        END           RETURN END

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  • Microsoft Build 2012 Day 1 Keynote Summary

    - by Tim Murphy
    So I have finally dried the tears after watching the Keynote for Build 2012.  This wasn’t because it was an emotional presentation, but because for the second year I missed the goodies.  Each on site attendee got a Surface RT, a Lumia 920 and a voucher for 100GB of SkyDrive storage. The event was opened with the announcement that in the three days since the launch of Windows 8 over 4 million upgrades have been sold.  I don’t care who you are that is an impressive stat.  Ballmer then spent a fair amount of time remaking the case for the Windows and Windows Phone platforms similar to what we have heard over the last to launch events. There were some cool, but non-essential demos.  The one that was the most fun was the Perceptive Pixel 82” slate device.  At first glance I wondered why I would ever want such a device, but then Ballmer explained it’s possible use for schools and boardrooms.  The actually made sense. Then things got strange.  Steve started explaining features that developers could leverage.  Usually this type of information is left to the product leads.  He focused on the integration with the Charms features such as Search and Share. Steve “Guggs” Guggenheim showed off an app that would appeal to my kids from Disney called “Agent P” which is base on Phineas and Ferb.  Then he got to the meat of the presentation.  We found out that you could add a tile that can be used to sell ad space.  In the same vein we also found out that you could use Microsoft’s, Paypal’s or any commerce engine of your own creation or choosing. For those who are interested in sports and especially developing sports apps you would have found the small presentation from Michael Bayle of ESPN.  He introduced the ESPN app which has tons of features.  For the developers in the crowd he also mentioned that ESPN has an API available at developer.espn.com. During the launch events we were told apps were coming.  In this presentation we were actually shown a scrolling list of logos and told about a couple of them.  Ballmer mentioned specifically Twitter, SAP and DropBox.  These are impressive names that were just a couple of the list impressive names. Steve Ballmer addressed the question of why you should develop for the Windows 8 platform.  He feels that Microsoft has the best commercial terms for developers, a better way to build apps than other platforms and a variety of form factors.  His key point though was the available volume of customers given the current Windows install base and assuming even a flat growth of the platform.  This he backed with a promise that Microsoft is going to do better at marketing and you won’t be able to avoid the ads that they are bringing out. The last section of the key note was present by Kevin Gallo from the Windows Phone team.  This was the real reason I tuned into the webcast.  He impressed upon those watching that the strength of developing for the Microsoft platform is the common programming model that now exist.  While there are difference between form factor implementations you can leverage code across them. He claimed that 90% of developer requests for Windows Phone 8 had been implemented.  These include: More controls with better performance Better live tiles including lock screen integration Speech support in custom apps Easier submission to the market place App camera integration VOIP and chat support Bluetooth and NFC support Native C++ development Direct 3D development   The quote from Kevin that stood out for me was that “Take your Dramamine and buckle your seatbelt type of games are coming to Windows Phone 8”.  He back this up by displaying a list of game development frameworks and then having Unity come out and do a demo. Ok, almost done … The last two things of note for me were the announcement that the SDK is immediately available at dev.windowsphone.com and that they were reducing the cost of an individual developer account to $8 for the next 8 days. Let the development commence. del.icio.us Tags: Build 2012,Windows 8,Windows Phone 8,Windows Phone

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  • More Stuff less Fluff

    - by brendonpage
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/brendonpage/archive/2013/11/08/more-stuff-less-fluff.aspxYAGNI – "You Aren't Going To Need It". This is an acronym commonly used in software development to remind developers to only write what they need. This acronym exists because software developers have gotten into the habit of writing everything they need to solve a problem and then everything they think they're going to possibly need in the future. Since we can't predict the future this results in a large portion of the code that we write never being used. That extra code causes unnecessary complexity, which makes it harder to understand and harder to modify when we inevitably have to write something that we didn't think of. I've known about YAGNI for some time now but I never really got it. The words made sense and the idea was clear but the concept never sank in. I was one of those devs who'd happily write a ton of code in the anticipation of future needs. In my mind this was an essential part of writing high quality code. I didn't realise that in doing so I was actually writing low quality code. If you are anything like me you are probably thinking "Lies and propaganda! High quality code needs to be future proof." I agree! But what makes code future proof? If we could see into the future the answer would be simple, code that allows for or meets all future requirements. Since we can't see the future the best we can do is write code that can easily adapt to future requirements, this means writing flexible code. Flexible code is: Fast to understand. Fast to add to. Fast to modify. To be flexible code has to be simple, this means only making it as complex as it needs to be to meet those 3 criteria. That is high quality code. YAGNI! The art is in deciding where to place the seams (abstractions) that will give you flexibility without making decisions about future functionality. Robert C Martin explains it very nicely, he says a good architecture allows you to defer decisions because if you can defer a decision then you have the flexibility to change it. I've recently had a YAGNI experience which brought this all into perspective. I was working on a new project which had multiple clients that connect to a server hosted in the cloud. I was tasked with adding a feature to the desktop client that would allow users to capture items that would then be saved to the cloud. My immediate thought was "Hey we have multiple clients so I should build a web service for these items, that way we can access them from other clients", so I went to work and this is what I created.  I stood back and gazed upon what I'd created with a warm fuzzy feeling. It was beautiful! Then the time came for the team to use the design I'd created for another feature with a new entity. Let's just say that they didn't get the same warm fuzzy feeling that I did when they looked at the design. After much discussion they eventually got it through to me that I'd bloated the design based on an assumption of future functionality. After much more discussion we cut the design down to the following. This design gives us future flexibility with no extra work, it is as complex as it needs to be. It has been a couple of months since this incident and we still haven't needed to access either of the entities from other clients. Using the simpler design allowed us to do more stuff with less stuff!

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  • MVVM Light V4.1 with support for Windows Phone 8

    - by Laurent Bugnion
    Today is a very exciting day: After the official release of Windows 8 (and Microsoft Surface!) on Friday, and the official release of Windows Phone 8 on Monday, the Build conference is starting! This is the conference in which we will learn all about the developer experience for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. As a partner of Microsoft, I had the privilege of trying out some of the new things early, and this gave me the opportunity to port MVVM Light to Windows Phone 8 (it was already running for Windows 8), and today I am officially publishing this new version. Before you go and update, please not the following: V4.1 (4.1.24.0) only supports Visual Studio 2012 (and Express). If for some reason you are still using Visual Studio 2010, don’t despair! In the next few days I will publish an update supporting these versions as well. But for now, please only upgrade if you are on VS12! That being said, here we go: The download page is available on Codeplex and you can download the updated MSI and install it. Please make sure to read the Readme HTML page that automatically opens in your web browser after the MSI completes! It contains important information on how to install selected Project and Item templates for the frameworks of your choice. This version also support the following versions of Visual Studio: Visual Studio 2012 Pro, Premium, Ultimate Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows 8 Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows Phone 8 Visual Studio 2012 Express for Web (Silverlight 4, Silverlight 5) Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows Desktop (WPF3.5, WPF4, WPF4.5) We also support Expression Blend of course. Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 are very very exciting opportunities for developers in the whole world. There are already a number of apps running on top of MVVM Light in the Windows Store and of course a large range of apps for Windows Phone too. With this release, we hope to support the developers and speed up application development. It is a pleasure to serve such an innovative and creative community! Happy coding Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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  • Guid Generation

    - by StuartBrierley
    If you need to create a guid you can obviously make use of the Microsoft GuidGen tool, but what if this tool is not available on the system you are using? I recently came across the online guid gen tool which may be able to come to your rescue:   To get a new guid pres the "Create New Guid" button and away you go!

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  • The Case for Complimentary Software Copies

    - by GGBlogger
    As the Geriatric Geek you can understand that I’ve been writing and studying for over 60 years. That means that I’ve seen insane changes in the computer software industry. I’ve made the joke that I get a new college education every 6 months or so. Of course that’s an exaggeration but it doesn’t make the feeling go away. I have a long standing and strong relationship with Microsoft so I’m armed with virtually every tool they make. It also means that I have access to tons of training material. But here’s the rub… Last year I started a definitive read of Professional Visual Basic 2008. The purpose was to fill in holes in my understanding of various things. I’m currently on page 1119 of some 1400 pages. During this sojourn I’ve decided that the future is web related which is to say that the future of “thick client” applications running as Windows applications is likely to slowly disappear. To that end I’ve taken a side trip or two into the world of ASP (including XML), Silverlight and cloud development. After carefully avoiding (that’s tongue in cheek) XML for years I finally had to bite the bullet, so to speak, and start learning XML in earnest. The most recent result of that was trail downloads of Altova’s MissionKit 2010 for Software Architects and Liquid Technologies Liquid XML Studio Developer Edition. These are both beautiful products and I want to learn them and write about them. Now comes the rub… While 30 day evaluations are generous in allowing casual users to assess these technologies for purchase they are NOT long enough to allow an author to evaluate, learn and ultimately write about them. Even if I devoted the full 30 days to learning, using and writing about say Altova’s suite I wouldn’t have enough time. Liquid XML may be a little easier to learn (one product as opposed to 8).  Add to that the fact that I frequently get sidetracked to add to my kit and it really blows out. It can be extremely frustrating when I’ve devoted hours to a project and suddenly discover that to complete it I will either need to purchase a license or abandon the project. Since my life blood does not depend on the product I end up abandoning the project and moving on. So to the folks from whom I request complimentary copies… I guarantee that if I convert your product to doing paid development work I will purchase a license to do that but as long as I am using your product to study for the purpose of writing samples, teaching use or otherwise promoting your product to other paying customers I will ask that you give me a license so that I can do that without facing the dread expiration of a 30 day trial.

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  • Future Of F# At Jazoon 2011

    - by Alois Kraus
    I was at the Jazoon 2011 in Zurich (Switzerland). It was a really cool event and it had many top notch speaker not only from the Microsoft universe. One of the most interesting talks was from Don Syme with the title: F# Today/F# Tomorrow. He did show how to use F# scripting to browse through open databases/, OData Web Services, Sharepoint, …interactively. It looked really easy with the help of F# Type Providers which is the next big language feature in a future F# version. The object returned by a Type Provider is used to access the data like in usual strongly typed object model. No guessing how the property of an object is called. Intellisense will show it just as you expect. There exists a range of Type Providers for various data sources where the schema of the stored data can somehow be dynamically extracted. Lets use e.g. a free database it would be then let data = DbProvider(http://.....); data the object which contains all data from e.g. a chemical database. It has an elements collection which contains an element which has the properties: Name, AtomicMass, Picture, …. You can browse the object returned by the Type Provider with full Intellisense because the returned object is strongly typed which makes this happen. The same can be achieved of course with code generators that use an input the schema of the input data (OData Web Service, database, Sharepoint, JSON serialized data, …) and spit out the necessary strongly typed objects as an assembly. This does work but has the downside that if the schema of your data source is huge you will quickly run against a wall with traditional code generators since the generated “deserialization” assembly could easily become several hundred MB. *** The following part contains guessing how this exactly work by asking Don two questions **** Q: Can I use Type Providers within C#? D: No. Q: F# is after all a library. I can reference the F# assemblies and use the contained Type Providers? D: F# does annotate the generated types in a special way at runtime which is not a static type that C# could use. The F# type providers seem to use a hybrid approach. At compilation time the Type Provider is instantiated with the url of your input data. The obtained schema information is used by the compiler to generate static types as usual but only for a small subset (the top level classes up to certain nesting level would make sense to me). To make this work you need to access the actual data source at compile time which could be a problem if you want to keep the actual url in a config file. Ok so this explains why it does work at all. But in the demo we did see full intellisense support down to the deepest object level. It looks like if you navigate deeper into the object hierarchy the type provider is instantiated in the background and attach to a true static type the properties determined at run time while you were typing. So this type is not really static at all. It is static if you define as a static type that its properties shows up in intellisense. But since this type information is determined while you are typing and it is not used to generate a true static type and you cannot use these “intellistatic” types from C#. Nonetheless this is a very cool language feature. With the plotting libraries you can generate expressive charts from any datasource within seconds to get quickly an overview of any structured data storage. My favorite programming language C# will not get such features in the near future there is hope. If you restrict yourself to OData sources you can use LINQPad to query any OData enabled data source with LINQ with ease. There you can query Stackoverflow with The output is also nicely rendered which makes it a very good tool to explore OData sources today.

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