What is the new Bing?

Well, it is the thing that is making the 800-pound gorilla in the room, Google, come out and dance on its toes. 🦍

The new Bing is an overhauled version of the search engine that uses ChatGPT technology to understand questions and generate answers. It runs on the next generation of OpenAI’s language model, which is significantly more capable than the version of ChatGPT that has been available since November 20221. The new Bing provides more relevant results for simple things like sports scores, stock prices and weather, along with a new sidebar that shows more comprehensive answers if you want them3. You can also chat and create with the new Bing, using its natural language and creative abilities4. The new Bing is live starting today, with limited capabilities.

Here is what it looks like:

What is ChatGPT?

If you are curious about ChatGPT, and you have really been living under a rock and don’t know it 🤪, then read up more here .

Searching within a site

Using the updated Edge browser, which extends the new Bing experience to the browser, you can search a site by typing in the site name and then the search term. For example, here I am searching for the word “hacking” on my blog “blog.desigeek.com”:

Chat with Bing

You can chat with Bing and ask it questions like: “tell me a joke about AI developers”

And what is the meaning of life?

Or it can write a poem on #NeuralNetworks:

Neural networks are amazing
They can learn from data and do amazing things
They can recognize faces, voices, and objects
They can generate images, texts, and sounds
They can play games, drive cars, and diagnose diseases
They can do anything, or so it seems

Neural networks are complex
They have layers and nodes and weights and biases
They have activation functions, loss functions, and optimizers
They have backpropagation, gradient descent, and regularization
They have hyperparameters, architectures, and algorithms
They have a lot of math, and a lot of tricks

Neural networks are mysterious
They can be hard to understand and explain
They can be prone to errors and biases
They can be overfitting, underfitting, or just fitting
They can be black boxes, white boxes, or gray boxes
They can be a blessing, a curse, or a challenge

And not only it can write a #Haiku for my wife on our anniversary, but it remembers the context. 💓

Twenty-two years passed
We are still in love and laugh
You are my better half

And of course, we can do just plain old vanilla #Haikus’ too:

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator

And it can even write code:

#include <stdio.h>

// A function that prints a funny haiku
void write_funny_haiku()
{
    // Declare and initialize an array of strings
    char *haiku[3] = {"Haikus are easy", "But sometimes they don't make sense", "Refrigerator"};

    // Loop through the array and print each line
    for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
    {
        printf("%s\n", haiku[i]);
    }
}

// A main function that tests the write_funny_haiku function
int main()
{
    // Call the write_funny_haiku function
    write_funny_haiku();

    // Return 0 to indicate success
    return 0;
}

And of course we can do some sports. #F1 rules 🏎️

And finally, we can even have some fun. 😆

There once was a search engine named Bing
It could find anything and everything
It was faster and smarter
More helpful and friendly
And it made Google look like a ding-a-ling

Happy searching! 🤓

I also wanted to dogfood some of the things we built at work, though in my case that wasn’t the primary motive, just another nice to have. 😄

So over the last few days, I took the plunge to work through moving this; most of it is working, and have had a test instance running for some time to iron out things. I think other than an odd link or old image, most of it is working now. The fact you are reading this on the main ‘production’ site shows that this has been promoted in the release pipeline. The only thing I still have left to do is get LaTeX working with markdown and a couple of other things. As a backup, I still have the old blog running, so if something goes wrong, I can always revert.

I was already familiar with Hugo to some extent given I am running on one of my sites - thebahrees.com using that - also deployed on Azure and using Static Web Pages. The actual move wasn’t as complex as I had thought. I was a little worried given I have had this blog for a while with posts going back 18 years 🤯.

To start with, Hugo themselves lists a few options to help move from WordPress. I remember reading a couple of others who had already done this (see Robert’s post - whitematter.tech and also my buddy Matthijs went through the same thing last year ).

Most of the tools didn’t work for me, or not as well as I wanted them to. In the end, the wordpress-export-to-markdown is the one that did work. One needs NodeJs to run this, and you export your WordPress site to an XML file and follow the instructions as prompted. I choose to create a year and month folder, and a folder for each post.

The image below shows the first level of folders created for the posts. These are grouped by year and month.

And within each month folder, there is a folder for each post. The folder name is the post title, and the markdown file is the same as the folder name.

I tried a few themes and settled on the forked version of PaperMod by Robert. I like the simple look and also made a few more tweaks to this.

On Azure, I already have a few subscriptions, and getting Hugo deployed and hooked up to a GitHub repo was pretty easy. If you are new to this, just follow the docs on Static Web Apps . The hugo-specific docs are here . And don’t forget to also check out the details on how to configure static web apps to get the most out of it.

The docs are pretty good, and I was able to get this up and running in under an hour. 👍

Hugo docs also outline details on how to use Azure Static Web Apps to host your site.

I am still working on a few things, but I am pretty happy with the move. I am sure I will find a few things that I need to tweak, but overall, I am happy with the move. 💚

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions or comments. 🖱️

I still write code and people get surprised by that sometimes - maybe it’s the quality of the code 🤓.

As a simple example, with Docker, on Windows (as in my case), I can run a dockerized app, on a different OS than the host, which can also be interactive. 

The command below will spawn a container, pull down the image of Ubuntu and then run an interactive terminal, tying the terminal to the standard input. Of course in this example, this requires that you already have Docker installed (the Community Edition would be just fine to play around with).

docker run --interactive --tty ubuntu bash

Now, with Docker if you do get the following error (on Windows): “Error response from daemon: operating system on which parent image was created is not Windows.” as also shown below, the way to fix it is to switch on Experimental features.

To try and fix this, right click on the docker icon in the system tray, choose Settings, and from the setting screen, in the Daemon tab, enable experimental features as shown below.

And after enabling the experimental features, the docker daemon will restart. And post that, if you run the docker command again, it would work as expected:

• It pulls down the image (which is used to run in the container)

• Runs Ubuntu in an interactive session (this is because of the option I choose)

• And all within my PowerShell console on Windows.

This is just the beginning, there of course is a lot more to it.  :)

I guess you can see the similarity. No? 😈

Once you install it, you connect more or less in the same manner; I think most people will like the live streaming option. There is a bit of latency between the device and what is shown, but that could be somewhat because of our (possibly crappy) wireless which was overloaded with many folks at work.

All in all, this is a little more polished and end-user friendly. Useful when demo’ing the mixed reality solutions you are building.

It is a must have if you want to stream your apps (including Holograms) so that others can see it, or alternatively you can record and then share. And of course there are details for various debug situations and the Virtual input saves your fingers from getting tired! 😄 You also use this to side load the apps you built. There are REST APIs you could use if you want to program, and there is also a UAP app on the store (more on that in part 2 ).

To get to this, you browse to the IP address. Below are a few screenshots from my playing around which shows you the various aspects of the portal and what all you can do. And the beauty of this is, as a Windows developer, this all should be very familiar and nothing new. 😄

[

I really like how Rick explains and expresses this both in terms of definition and thinking. The clay analogy I think really helps.

$$i\hbar\frac{\partial}{\partial t}\left|\Psi(t)\right>=H\left|\Psi(t)\right>$$

Ohh, looks pretty! Though some LaTeX is being finicky, need to take out time to start posting some stuff here, given this is supported. 😁

A good bunch of these are controlled and integrated with Smartthings, and some I can interact with other apps (e.g. Amazon Echo or Philips Hue etc.).

Most are Z-Wave based and some are WiFi. I wanted to know if there are any z-wave visualisers? Essentially software that uses a USB z-wave network device as a node and then can plot what the mesh looks like. Would be awesome to be able to debug the packet hops from the controller to the device.

Any suggestions?

As an example, here is what a interactive bubble chart looks like for the blog:

Build bubbles for your page Dashboards

My main browser is Firefox, and whilst I also have Chrome and of course IE - I use them only on occasions of in some cases when I have to use them for one reason or another.

When trying to login to WordPress from Firefox, I just cannot seem to login and get the dashboard. I know the user name and password is correct, and I don’t get any error - but keep getting the login screen again. Logging in again with IE is not a problem. I can’t recall when this started - if it was when WordPress was updated or FireFox - but both have recently, and it is very annoying to say the least!

I haven’t had the time (yet) to try and figure out what is wrong.

StrongROM version 03.30 Build:_P

Powering it off or on, did not help. Neither did trying to get into the BIOS to try and change some things.

I did get this back up and running, and in the end the solution was quite simple - I had to physically take out the power cable (just powering it down was not enough); wait a few seconds and then plug the power cord in, and boot it back up.

1. IDA - A cool debugger which runs on most platforms and different from the MS variety.
2. TypeScript - as the name suggests, it is strongly typed JS which compiles down to standard JS! This can only be good I think given all the crazy things one can so in JS. More details here .
3. Can you hide anything from NSA?
4. TV Tuners - did you know they can let you spy - who knew?
5. grepWin - a powerful regex-based search and replace tool - and can work across multiple files.
6. Twine - is a wireless sensor block tightly integrated with a cloud-based service. What all things one can do with Twine? Here are a few examples for inspiration .
7. Visual.ly - tell your story visually; good resource for infographics and data visualisation
8. Can an $11,111 coffee pot turn out a better cup of joe?
9. What the Internet of Things (#IoT) needs to become a reality? Freescale has an interesting paper (pdf) on it.
10. High expectations Asian Fathers - enough said!
11. How to be a hacker ?
12. 14 Kickstarter projects to watch out for in 2014
13. Alloy.UI - a really cool HTML and JavaScript library with lots of useful UI features . Builds on top of YUI3 and Bootstrap.
14. DON’T PANIC - The Facts About Population . Very interesting, especially the visualisation. You can find more on that here .
15. As sites and services become product aware, the age of pervasive commerce begins  (remember Minority Reports ?).

I was quite surprised as this is supposed to last more than this given both what it is meant to do and the cost of the device as well. Now this is an expensive paperweight.

Here are a few photos. This is what it looks like now, and cannot be locked, making it useless:

This is how it was when it broke and fell apart - we tried to rescue and pick up everything we could, but it seems there is a very small spring inside which is lost. This spring is crucial for the ’lock’ and which acts as a rocker. Without this spring, this is useless.

This is I was trying to figure it out how to put it together and when I figured the small metal part (silver in colour) needs a spring which rocks it up and down. When one locks and unlocks this that spring is what is acting and allowing you to open and close this.

This is how the broken piece looks like after I put it together, everything looks OK, except it won’t lock.

I am not very happy with this situation right now - if this was a year after using the Nike FuelBand, perhaps I could still understand but 4 odd weeks of usage and this breaking is not acceptable.

I don’t have much hope in Nike, as where I am currently living, this is not sold and I am sure they would try and squeal out of trying to replace this or fix this.

I needed to look for a new wiki software. I recently moved from ScrewTurn Wiki (which was great BTW, but then is a dead project now) to DokuWiki which is perfect for my needs. I run two wiki’s at home and has much of our day-to-day things we as a family need. There are some sections of the Wiki, which are sensitive and I don’t want anyone one the network getting to it. I wanted to authenticate the user and once they login only then get to that.

As it turns out, securing your DokuWiki is quite simple. If you are interested in a similar setup then here is what you need to do:

1. Disable the registration option on Configuration settings. Some details on this can be found here .
2. Update the ACL (more of that here ), there is a user group called ‘ALL’; set the permision for this group to “None”.
3. For the user group “User”, change the permissions to Edit.

This will ensure only logged in (and of course authenticated users) can read and edit and an anonymous user cannot see anything.

The only catch in this is that you need to manually maintain the users (e.g. add new users); my userbase is very small at home, so this is not a challenge at all.

When you are in another country and timezone (like I am right now), does Vodafone have any idea on how irritating this can be?

Here are some of my favourite ones (in no particular order) and those with keen eyes would notice a few of these already.

•  AddToAny: Share/Bookmark/Email Button - Help people share, bookmark, and email your posts & pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, Digg, etc.
• Akismet - this is for comment spam control and is used by millions! Excellent!
• WP FollowMe - allows you to add a twitter Follow me badge on your wordpress blog.
• Google Analyticator - name says it all I think.
• Google XML Sitemaps - same as above.
• Lightbox 2 - Used to overlay images on the current page.
• My Page Order - allows you to set the order of pages through a drag and drop interface.
• Really Simple CAPTCHA - CAPTCHA module intended to be called from other plugins; really works too!
• Search Everything - Adds search functionality and includes search highlight, search pages, excerpts, attachments, drafts, comments, tags and custom fields (metadata). It can also exclude specific pages and posts. It does not search password-protected content.
• Shockingly Big IE6 Warning - doesn’t the name say it all?
• Simple Tags - Excellent plugins, to manage your tags. Includes, suggested Tags, Mass edit tags, Autocompletion, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Related Tags, etc
• StatPress Reloaded - real time stats for the blog
• SyntaxHighlighter Evolved - code to your site without having to modify the code at all; you cannot use the Visual editor with this.
• TinyMCE Advanced - Enables advanced features and plugins for the visual editor
• Twitter for Wordpress - displays your last few tweets
• WP-Cumulus - Flash based Tag Cloud for WordPress
• WP-DBManager - Excellent plugin, that manages your Wordpress including optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, etc. I use to exclusively for the automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of the database.
• WP-SmugMug - I use SmugMug for my photos online ; this plugin integrates the SmugMug galleries into the blog.

I would highly recommend the above and suggest you play with them. 

These plugins I have only recently installed and they seem interesting, but I have not used them enough to have the confidence to highly recommend them - yet.

• Wordpress Backup (by BTE) - Backup the upload directory (images), current theme directory, and plugins directory to a zip file. I have only recently installed this plugin, and not used it enough to say how useful it is at this point.
• Automatic WordPress Backup - Automatically upload backups of important parts of your blog to Amazon S3. I am a huge S3 fan, and this seems very promising. Hopefully I can come back in a few days and weeks and blog about it.

Finally, when using plugins I would recommend the following:

• Search and install from these via the “Plugins” menu which you see when log into your WordPress dashboard. Don’t download the code manually and then try and upload it to your site. That is a more painful process.
• Try and have a test blog running - seperately from your main blog where you can test different permutations and configurations. In case something goes wrong, you won’t have your main blog go down. Of course needless to say, you should keep both your test and main blog on the same version.
• It is not a good idea to install all of the plugin’s all at the same time as you never never which plugin can cause conflict with another . Well, you can install all the plugins at the same time, just activate them one at a time and test that your blog is still running as expected after you have activated each plugin.
• Before you upgrade the version of WordPress - irrespective of how big or small the upgrade is always backup your database and files first. This would allow you to revert back to a “clean slate” in case something goes wrong.

Suggestions for any apps? My phone is HTC wildfire and nothing fancy so the apps should be able to run on this phone.

Update: The official TED video below is quite cool and in addition to the one above, also adds more interesting features such as video – check it out.

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, [email-address-removed] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Overall it was simple to setup via the .htaccess file and some simple regex. The only thing I found the hard way was that I should be using “RedirectMatch” when setting up the regex rule rather than the “Redirect” which is what I was using. You would use Redirect when trying to redirect without any variables.

So, as in my case I wanted to redirect from the old url (of community server) to the new one (of wordpress)

• Old: http://desigeek.com/weblog/amit/archive/2009/10/25/installing-openscenegraph-on-ubuntu.aspx
• New: http://desigeek.com/blog/amit/2009/10/25/installing-openscenegraph-on-ubuntu/

So I need to make the following changes:

• Change the “/weblog” to “/blog”
• Get rid of “/archive”
• Get rid of the “.aspx” extension

The following rule helped me achieve this:

RedirectMatch 301 /weblog/amit/archive/(\[0-9\]\[0-9\]\[0-9\]\[0-9\])/(\[0-9\]\[0-9\])/(\[0-9\]\[0-9\])/(.\*)\\.aspx$ http://desigeek.com/blog/amit/$1/$2/$3/$4

Of course there are a few more rules I have which I cannot go into details.

Along the way i also discovered a few interesting tools which can help you view the results – one is LiveHTTPHeaders ; another good one is http://web-sniffer.net/ .

If you are new to this, then a few very good tools online. I would suggest start with this post from Zo and this tutorial on regex .

i still have one outstanding issue where if I want to redirect part of the URL and not the complete thing, I am not sure how to do it. For example if I want to redirect the old url above to just the year/month of the post instead if the actual post, not sure how to go about doing it. So I want the url below to map to the the one below that.

• URL to Map: http://desigeek.com/weblog/amit/archive/2009/10/25/installing-openscenegraph-on-ubuntu.aspx
• Should map to: http://desigeek.com/weblog/amit/archive/2009/10/

Am surprised by the negativity on the blog. I am no Linux expert and am more comfortable in Windows, but having used more of Ubuntu (9.04 and 9.10) over the last few weeks for my studies has made be appreciate some aspects even more. Is it perfect? Of course not, and nor is Windows or OS X or insert-your-favourite-OS-here. Maybe I should try and start a blog hater blog.

Also I tried using the %tag% field, but it does not like it and had to revert to using %categories% as you probably can see. Again, any suggestions there?

Update: Also should be able to use Windows Live Writer when posting the code. Am I asking for too much here? :)

• Make sure you use a “flash” drive (or USB stick) and not a USB HDD drive as some of those have issues with this.
• Check different USB ports – all of them may not allow to boot up.

• 89.139.84.130
• 86.151.215.171

And Port Scans from this guy/gal (apparently in China)

• 61.139.105.163

To disable Auto-Tuning:

1. Click the Start button

   

   , and then, in the Search box, type cmd.
2. Press CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER to run the program as an administrator.

   

   If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
3. At the command prompt, type netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disable, and then press Enter.
4. When the process has finished, restart your computer. If this procedure does not solve the problem, you can turn Auto-Tuning back on by repeating steps a and b of this procedure, typing netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal, and then pressing Enter.

While overall I have been happy with CS 2007 off late I have been quite put off with it due to a few reasons:

• I liked the open source elements and CS now is just too commercialized for my taste.
• Even though I have configured comments and feedback – all of that is broken and I just can’t seem to fix it (part of the reason is not having too much time to dig into a lot of details).
• Upgrade to CS 2008 fails – miserably – many moons ago I spend a whole day trying to get this upgraded and it just did not work. No one on Telligent’s forum could successfully point to what is wrong. I rolled back to CS 2007.
• Upgrades other than not working – generally are quite painful.

I am ready to move to something else – but there are a few things that need to be supported:

• I host my own domain (stating the obvious if you are reading this), etc so need this running in something I control – or in other words hosted blogs (e.g. MSN, Google’s, etc.) are out. I already have IIS and SQL Server database.
• Need to be able to move my existing posts from CS 2007 to whatever I move to.
• Preferably: Support multiple blogs – though right now it’s only one, but some off the family members might want one later.
• Need to support XML-RPC (a.k.a MetaWeblog API)
• Ability to post code and script snippets – am ignoring the XRC issues obviously.

  

I have looked at BlogEngine.NET and that does look quite promising. Has anyone used that? What about the other things out there such as Wordpress and Movable Type (don’t know much about them)? There are quite a few listed here but I am not sure which one is fit for my needs..

The easiest way to see this will be to type the following in a cmd prompt:

echo %logonserver%

1. Business intelligence
2. Enterprise applications (ERP, CRM and others)
3. Servers and storage technologies (virtualization)
4. Legacy application modernization
5. Collaboration technologies
6. Networking, voice and data communications
7. Technical infrastructure
8. Security technologies
9. Service-oriented applications and architecture
10. Document management

One is the new open source application called Songbird which is my choice for listening to Music. Songbird is from the same guys who wrote Firefox and the quality is pretty good. I particularly like the Lyrics add-on which displays lyrics of the song you are listening to. Another add-on can scrobble to Last.fm .

Another option is to use RadioBeta which uses Ajax and you need to have that window open in your browser.  The search option is cool and it allows you to search for radios and themes that you otherwise won’t probably think of. One of the stations I like listening to is “All California Rock”. I think there is a lot of scope of improvement – maybe they should create an add-in for Songbird and allow on to view lyrics, etc.

I will be blogging from there – but not during the sessions – need to ensure I am not distracted – especially as the Avalanche is coming ! Expect to get some posts later in the evenings.

It will be interesting to see how Zurich responds with SQL Server. I wish I could say more.

VMware Workstation for example is so much better than VPC and is not even in the same league. Looking at cars as an analogy, the VPC is a Ford Ka (who come’s up with these names?) and the VMware Workstation is a Aston Martin DBS .

Their bandwidth utilization averages about 120 mb, but within 24 hours they went from that to 1 GB which saturated their 1 GB connection to their upstream provider (see graph below). That they say is equivalent to about 667 T1 Lines!

A couple of guys have implemented two Captcha controls (I had first implemented this as part of upgrading to CS 2.1 Beta 2) for CS 2007.

1. Brenda Tompkins’s Captcha control (which I am using here) - this in addition to the blog comments also supports contact, photos, file comments and registration - cool. Steps to install this is fairly straight forward and you don’t need to modify any of the skin files - which makes life quite easy!
2. Jose Fco Bonnin also has released a Captcha control which I have not tried out so cannot comment first hand.

There are still a few things which I have not tried like the Google CS plugin, and I suppose the CAPTCHA control will stop working. I would need to look at those over the next few days.

Meanwhile, if you find something that is not working drop me a note.

Video: Avanade - Where Microsoft Innovation Meets Unrivaled Insight

The next version of CS , does have lots of code-names, but I don’t know what to make of it. It is supposed to be out sometime in Q1 07.

Update: I found out some more information on CS 3.0

This can also scan documents and send it to a machine on the network and that was one of the features that was very useful at home, but the Windows Firewall did not like it and would block the incoming request. To allow the Network Scan to work you need to open up the UDP Port 1054 on your firewall to allow this.

Once you have opened the port, you should be able to intimate a Network Scan from the printer to the machine, however I still cannot initiate a scan from the machine itself (it comes with PaperPort and the usual TWAIN drivers/apps).

Don’t have time to dig into that now, but some day and if I find something will post it here.

Here is what I get when I tried to install Flash on IE 7 x64:

Flash Player is not supported for playback in a 64-bit browser.

However, you can run Flash Player in a 32-bit browser running on a 64-bit operating system.

Update: Here is a screen shot:

See I keep saying, common Sense ain’t very common.

(via fellow Avanut, Christopher T Clark)

When I had originally upgraded from CS 2.0 to 2.1 Beta 1, I had started to get a collation error in SQL – but only when I clicked on any specific tag to see posts listed by that tag. I had posted this to the CS forums with no luck . Now, I had selected the default SQL collation when I was installing it on one of my dev boxes at home. After profiling SQL Server, the culprit was the stored procedure called “cs\Tags\Get”.

In my example I was selecting the Food tag which resulted in the following SQL and parameters to be executed:

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SELECT SectionID from cs\Sections WHERE SectionID IN (3) and IsActive = 1'  
@CategoryList='<Categories><Category>Food</Category></Categories>'  
@SettingsID=1000

And this resulted in the following exception: “_Cannot resolve the collation conflict between "SQL\Latin1\General\CP1\CI\AS" and "Latin1\General\CI\AS" in the equal to operation.”_

For the sake of completeness, below is the SQL exception you will see on ASP.NET:

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SqlException: Cannot resolve the collation conflict between "SQL\Latin1\General\CP1\CI\AS" and "Latin1\General\CI\AS" in the equal to operation.\]
   System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior cmdBehavior, RunBehavior runBehavior, Boolean returnStream) +742
   System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.ExecuteReader() +41
   CommunityServer.Data.SqlCommonDataProvider.GetTags(String sectionQuerySql, Object tagXml) +273
   CommunityServer.Data.SqlCommonDataProvider.GetTagsBySections(Int32\[\] sectionIDs, String\[\] tags) +32
   CommunityServer.Components.Tags.GetTagsBySections(Int32\[\] sectionIDs, String\[\] tags) +210
   CommunityServer.Components.Tags.GetTagsBySection(Int32 sectionID, String\[\] tags) +33
   CommunityServer.Blogs.Controls.TagCloud.get\Tags() +62
   CommunityServer.Controls.BaseTagCloud.DataBind() +25
   CommunityServer.Controls.BaseTagCloud.OnLoad(EventArgs e) +16
   System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +35
   System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +98
   System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +98
   System.Web.UI.Control.AddedControl(Control control, Int32 index) +307
   System.Web.UI.ControlCollection.Add(Control child) +153
   System.Web.UI.Control.AddParsedSubObject(Object obj) +38
   System.Web.UI.Control.System.Web.UI.IParserAccessor.AddParsedSubObject(Object obj) +4
   \ASP.View\TagBrowser\ascx.\\BuildControl\\control3(Control \\ctrl) +94
   System.Web.UI.CompiledTemplateBuilder.InstantiateIn(Control container) +10
   CommunityServer.Controls.LayoutTemplate.AttachChildControls() +97
   CommunityServer.Controls.TemplatedWebControl.CreateChildControls() +108
   System.Web.UI.Control.EnsureChildControls() +100
   System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() +38
   System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() +125
   System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() +125
   System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() +125
   System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain() +1499

So, what is the resolution? Unfortunately other than ensuring your collations are the same there is not much else you can do. Check this KB article on how to change database collation.

I do have to admit she was brave running the original version of Windows Mobile released on a Motorola MPx200 .

Now, can you recommend any programs for the Windows Mobile Smart phone 5 that you cannot live without?

However, other than this issue, it seems to be working fine – I’ll spin this around for a while and lets see how it goes.

n. 1. A proposed joint venture of Andersen Consulting and Microsoft. 2. An organization that will help its customers leverage the Internet and advanced technologies to achieve strategic advantage.
[avan-, advance, advantage, avenue + -ade, action, act]

However, when I trawl through the log file, I did find a few exceptions, a couple of which are listed below. The only reason the font is small on those is so it would fit and render fine in here. You can copy and paste that in notepad or something and see if in a bigger font; alternatively you can download the log file (see the end of this posting).

Exception 1:

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Entering function CreateCentralAdministrationSiteForm.CreateCentralAdministrationSiteFormInitializeBeforeShow  
...  
A SocketException was thrown with SocketError ConnectionRefused  
Connect has been refused for port 12838, so we will consider this a free port  
Have not found a free port yet.  Number of tries is 1.  Min port we will try is 1024, Max port we will try is 49151  
Leaving function CentralAdministrationSiteTask.GenerateRandomUnUsedPortForTheAdminVs  
Leaving function CreateCentralAdministrationSiteForm.CreateCentralAdministrationSiteFormInitializeBeforeShow

Exception 2:

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Entering function ResourceAccess.SetAccessRule  
Entering function ResourceAccess.SetRegistryAccessRule  
Entering function ResourceAccess.RetrieveRegistryRightsFromResourceAccessPermissions  
Leaving function ResourceAccess.RetrieveRegistryRightsFromResourceAccessPermissions  
Task secureresources has failed with an unknown exception  
Exception: System.InvalidOperationException: This access control list is not in canonical form and therefore cannot be modified.  
   at System.Security.AccessControl.CommonAcl.RemoveQualifiedAces(SecurityIdentifier sid, AceQualifier qualifier, Int32 accessMask, AceFlags flags, Boolean saclSemantics, ObjectAceFlags objectFlags, Guid objectType, Guid inheritedObjectType)  
   at System.Security.AccessControl.DiscretionaryAcl.RemoveAccess(AccessControlType accessType, SecurityIdentifier sid, Int32 accessMask, InheritanceFlags inheritanceFlags, PropagationFlags propagationFlags)  
   at System.Security.AccessControl.CommonObjectSecurity.ModifyAccess(AccessControlModification modification, AccessRule rule, Boolean& modified)  
   at System.Security.AccessControl.CommonObjectSecurity.ResetAccessRule(AccessRule rule)  
   at System.Security.AccessControl.RegistrySecurity.ResetAccessRule(RegistryAccessRule rule)  
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ResourceAccess.SetRegistryAccessRule()  
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ResourceAccess.Secure()  
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.SecurityTask.SecureResources()  
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.SecurityTask.Run()  
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.TaskThread.ExecuteTask()

I think I have everything outlined in the installation document for the Beta 1 Technical Refresh. BTW, I have this on Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition with SP1 and all latest patches. SQL Server 2005 Dev. Edition and VS.NET 2005 Professional Edition.

There are a couple of more exceptions along the same line - if it would help I have upload the full log file which you can download here (53 kb). But the real question is any idea what is broken and why?

Date: Friday Evening, July 8th, 2005
Time Window: 9:00PM - 2:00am PST

During this time window, the server will be offline for approximately 60 minutes.

Now, I am quite skeptical, as businesses evolve and change so does their systems, and yes while there might be some value in doing schema and signature validation, but how easy will it be to update the schema as that evolves? The more one needs to do - the closer we are going to something like a EAI product (BizTalk, Tibco, etc.). Is Cisco changing direction to get into that business?

What is it? Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and security on the Internet. Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and more. Tor also provides a platform on which software developers can build new applications with built-in anonymity, safety, and privacy features.

Your traffic is safer when you use Tor, because communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers, called onion routers. Instead of taking a direct route from source to destination, data packets on the Tor network take a random pathway through several servers that cover your tracks so no observer at any single point can tell where the data came from or where it’s going. This makes it hard for recipients, observers, and even the onion routers themselves to figure out who and where you are. Tor’s technology aims to provide Internet users with protection against “traffic analysis,” a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.

How does it work? The solution: a distributed, anonymous network. Tor helps to reduce the risks of both simple and sophisticated traffic analysis by distributing your transactions over several places on the Internet, so no single point can link you to your destination. The idea is similar to using a twisty, hard-to-follow route in order to throw off somebody who is tailing you—and then periodically erasing your footprints. Instead of taking a direct route from source to destination, data packets on the Tor network take a random pathway through several servers that cover your tracks so no observer at any single point can tell where the data came from or where it’s going.

So my recommendation is not to use the wizard at all but instead go straight to the options page, which not only has more features but also gives you more control. How do you get there? Thought you would never ask. Right-click on your project name in the Solution Explorer and select properties. In the new window select the second last tab on the left called Publish - voila you are there. If you see the screen shot you will notice I have highlighted the urls you need to be careful of. This is where you can add other external dependencies, called Prerequisites (which were not automatically picked up as they are not referenced at design time). Most of the other options are self explanatory.

Also, if you go over the Sandbox to check out the Clock v2.0 (which was recompiled for Beta 2 - no new features other than to get it compiling), and try to install it, you will notice you cannot; instead you would see a funky looking xml (ain’t that funky btw). Well that is because the “.application” MIME type is not registered on the server that hosts this site. Since this is not a dedicated server, I don’t have any control over it and cannot just “switch it on” - I need to open a ticket for that and not sure how that will go. But, till then if you do look at the xml you can find out some of what is under the skin of ClickOnce.

You can download the list from here .

For example, if your applications do not use CGI, you can simply remove that component from your IIS configuration. Today, IIS functions are mostly monolithic, making you install core functionalities whether you use them or not. When a patch for CGI comes around, you need to apply it even though you don’t use it. With IIS 7.0, you’ll need to worry only about the components you chose to install. This will support even more secure configurations of IIS.

In addition, the componentization of IIS will allow Microsoft to build the service onto a set of public APIs which will allow third-party vendors to build their own functionalities into the Web server. And because each functionality is a specific component that can be added to or removed from IIS, these third-party add-ons will be completely transparent to the system.

Another key aspect of IIS 7.0 will be its complete integration with ASP.NET. Currently, ASP.NET consists of additional functionality that is tacked on top of IIS. Although they integrate well, it still takes two different sets of instructions to manage the two together - IIS is managed through its Metabase, and ASP.NET is managed through web.config files. In version 7.0, IIS will be completely integrated with not only ASP.NET but also the .NET Framework, ADO.NET, and even Indigo - the next version of the Microsoft Web Services platform. This means that there will be a single configuration point for all components of an application and the engines used to run it. The greatest advantage of this level of integration is that you will be able to deliver an application complete with its associated Web server configuration when you need to deploy it. This will vastly simplify administrators’ jobs.

What do I like? I have spent my last 6-7 years at work in a Aero Chair manufactured by Herman Miller and absolutely love them. There is also a newer version by them called Mirra Chairs which are supposed to be better.

Given that between I and my wife we are going to spend a lot of time in front of the computer, I don’t mind spending a little money on a good chair in the long run – cheaper to invest in the chair than in a chiropractorJ.

What do you recommend?

[Listening to: Track 03 - New Artist (38) - New Title (38) (05:05)]

[Listening to: Hook - Blues Traveler - (3:38:32)]

I would go so far as to argue that the CD-ROM product could even run slower (which obviously would be the case), and you’d still have more people buying it. The 30K program could compete only by being cheaper!

Now imagine the 30K product has tight, fast, bug-free code, but is more expensive. What would be the result? I’m guessing three percent market share.

This is the dilemma Apple faces, and there is no way around it. The long-term consequences are obvious. Apple is the easy-to-use, less complex platform. Thus it should be cheaper, not more expensive. It’s that simple.

[Listening to: Tez Dhaar - Musafir [Club Mix - CD1] - Musafir (05:20)]

• Magnitude: 9.0

• 

• Date-Time: Sunday, December 26, 2004 at 00:58:49 (UTC)

• Location: 3.244°N, 95.825°E

• Depth: 10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program

• Distances:

• 255 km (160 miles) SSE of Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia

• 315 km (195 miles) W of Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia

• 1260 km (790 miles) SSW of BANGKOK, Thailand

• 1590 km (990 miles) NW of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia

• Location: Uncertainty  horizontal +/- 5.6 km (3.5 miles);

In the region of the earthquake, the India plate moves toward the northeast at a rate of about 6 cm/year relative to the Burma plate. This results in oblique convergence at the Sunda trench. The oblique motion is partitioned into thrust-faulting, which occurs on the plate-interface and which involves slip directed perpendicular to the trench, and strike-slip faulting, which occurs several hundred kilometres to the east of the trench and involves slip directed parallel to the trench. The December 26 earthquake occurred as the result of thrust-faulting.

Preliminary locations of larger aftershocks following the mega-thrust earthquake show that approximately 1200 km of the plate boundary slipped as a result of the earthquake. By comparison with other large mega-thrust earthquakes, the width of the causative fault-rupture was likely over one-hundred km. From the size of the earthquake, it is likely that the average displacement on the fault plane was about fifteen meters. The sea floor overlying the thrust fault would have been uplifted by several meters as a result of the earthquake. The above estimates of fault-dimensions and displacement will be refined in the near future as the result of detailed analyses of the earthquake waves.

The world’s largest recorded earthquakes have all been mega-thrust events, occurring where one tectonic plate subducts beneath another. These include:

• Magnitude 9.5 1960 Chile earthquake
• Magnitude 9.2 1964 Prince William Sound, Alaska, earthquake
• Magnitude 9.1 1957 Andreanof Islands, Alaska, earthquake
• Magnitude 9.0 1952 Kamchatka earthquake.

As with the recent event, mega-thrust earthquakes often generate large tsunamis that cause damage over a much wider area than is directly affected by ground shaking near the earthquake’s rupture.

More Information:

• http://tinyurl.com/5ory8
• http://tinyurl.com/6prlz

[Listening to: Don’t Throw It Away! - Dirty Vegas - One (04:19)]

[Listening to: Roses - Dirty Vegas - One (04:08)]

ClickOnce applications can be self-updating; they can check for newer versions as they become available and automatically replace any updated files. You can specify the update behaviour; an administrator can also control update strategies, (e.g. making an update mandatory). Updates can also be rolled back to a previous version by the end user or administrator.

ClickOnce deployment overcomes three major issues inherent in deployment:

• Difficulties in updating applications - earlier any time an application is updated, the user must reinstall the entire application; now the updates can be provided automatically, and only those portions of the application that have changed will be reinstalled.
• Impact to the user’s computer - till now, applications often rely on share components with the potential for versioning conflicts; now, each application is self-contained and cannot interfere with other applications.
• Security permissions - Windows Installer deployment requires administrative permissions; but now non-administrative users can install and grant only those permissions necessary for the application.

How does it work?

The core ClickOnce deployment architecture is based on two XML manifest files,an application manifest and a deployment manifest.

• The application manifest (created using mage.exe) describes the application itself, including the assemblies, dependencies and files that make up the application, the required permissions, and the location where updates will be available.
• The deployment manifest (also generated using mage.exe) describes how the application is deployed, including the location of the application manifest and files and the version of the application that clients should run.

After a deployment manifest is created, it is copied to the deployment location which can be a Web server, network share, or even a CD/DVD. The application manifest (and all application files) are also copied to a deployment location that is specified and this can be the same as the deployment location or different.

The users can download and install the application as simply as clicking an icon pointing to the deployment manifest file on a Web page or in a folder. In most cases, the user will be presented with a simple dialog box asking the user to confirm installation (including elevated permissions if needed), then installation will proceed and the application will be launched without further intervention.

The application is added to the user’s Start menu and to the Add / Remove Programs group in the Control Panel. Unlike other deployment technologies, nothing is added to the Program Files folder, the registry, or the desktop, and no administrative rights are required for installation!

When the application developer creates an updated version of the application, he/she also generates a new application manifest and copies files to a deployment location. The administrator updates the deployment manifest to point to the location of the new version of the application.

Also, the deployment manifest also contains an update location (a Web page or network file share) where the application will check for updated versions. You can set properties to specify when and how often the application should check for updates. Update behaviour can be specified in the deployment manifest, or can be presented as user choices in the application’s user interface by means of the ClickOnce APIs. The, Publish properties can be employed to make updates mandatory or to roll back to an earlier version.
 

I will probably have more meaningful posts on this when I had a chance to use it in the “real world”.

• Pocket PC 2003 SE Emulator
• Pocket PC 2003 SE Emulator (Legacy)
• Pocket PC 2003 SE VGA Emulator

Every time I try and “Deploy” to that the emulator comes up fine and I can connect to it, etc. but it cannot install the application for it and always get the Deploy error message (see the screen shots below). Also every time I try and “Power Off” the emulator, it comes right back up and does not really quit - it does not matter, if I save the state or do a soft or hard reset. All this time VS.NET is waiting for the emulator to exit. Ultimately I have to kill the process (DeviceEmulator.exe).

Image 1: The Emulator “Boots” Fine

Image 4: VS.NET is not Happy

I also get the following errors below, which are probably the crux of the issue.

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No way to resolve conflict between "System.Xml, Version=2.0.3600.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=969db8053d3322ac, Retargetable=Yes" and "System.Xml, Version=2.0.3600.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=969db8053d3322ac". Choosing "System.Xml, Version=2.0.3600.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=969db8053d3322ac, Retargetable=Yes" arbitrarily.

No way to resolve conflict between "System, Version=2.0.3600.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=969db8053d3322ac, Retargetable=Yes" and "System, Version=2.0.3600.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=969db8053d3322ac". Choosing "System, Version=2.0.3600.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=969db8053d3322ac, Retargetable=Yes" arbitrarily.

No way to resolve conflict between "System.Windows.Forms, Version=2.0.3600.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=969db8053d3322ac, Retargetable=Yes" and "System.Windows.Forms, Version=2.0.3600.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=969db8053d3322ac". Choosing "System.Windows.Forms, Version=2.0.3600.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=969db8053d3322ac, Retargetable=Yes" arbitrarily.

No way to resolve conflict between "System.Drawing, Version=2.0.3600.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=969db8053d3322ac, Retargetable=Yes" and "System.Drawing, Version=2.0.3600.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=969db8053d3322ac". Choosing "System.Drawing, Version=2.0.3600.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=969db8053d3322ac, Retargetable=Yes" arbitrarily.

ResGen.exe /useSourcePath /r:"..\\..\\..\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\SDK\\v2.0\\CompactFramework\\WindowsCE\\Microsoft.WindowsCE.Forms.dll" /r:"..\\..\\..\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\SDK\\v2.0\\CompactFramework\\WindowsCE\\mscorlib.dll" /r:"..\\..\\..\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\SDK\\v2.0\\CompactFramework\\WindowsCE\\System.Data.dll" /r:"..\\..\\..\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\SDK\\v2.0\\CompactFramework\\WindowsCE\\System.dll" /r:"..\\..\\..\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\SDK\\v2.0\\CompactFramework\\WindowsCE\\System.Drawing.dll" /r:"..\\..\\..\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\SDK\\v2.0\\CompactFramework\\WindowsCE\\System.Windows.Forms.dll" /r:"..\\..\\..\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\SDK\\v2.0\\CompactFramework\\WindowsCE\\System.Xml.dll" /compile Form1.resx,obj\\Debug\\PocketPCApplication1.Form1.resources

Csc.exe /noconfig /nostdlib+ /warn:4 /define:DEBUG;TRACE /reference:"..\\..\\..\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\SDK\\v2.0\\CompactFramework\\WindowsCE\\Microsoft.WindowsCE.Forms.dll" /reference:"..\\..\\..\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\SDK\\v2.0\\CompactFramework\\WindowsCE\\mscorlib.dll" /reference:"..\\..\\..\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\SDK\\v2.0\\CompactFramework\\WindowsCE\\System.Data.dll" /reference:"..\\..\\..\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\SDK\\v2.0\\CompactFramework\\WindowsCE\\System.dll" /reference:"..\\..\\..\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\SDK\\v2.0\\CompactFramework\\WindowsCE\\System.Drawing.dll" /reference:"..\\..\\..\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\SDK\\v2.0\\CompactFramework\\WindowsCE\\System.Windows.Forms.dll" /reference:"..\\..\\..\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\\SDK\\v2.0\\CompactFramework\\WindowsCE\\System.Xml.dll" /debug+ /optimize- /out:obj\\Debug\\PocketPCApplication1.exe /resource:obj\\Debug\\PocketPCApplication1.Form1.resources /resource:obj\\Debug\\PocketPCApplication1.Properties.Resources.resources /target:winexe Form1.cs Form1.Designer.cs Program.cs Properties\\AssemblyInfo.cs

Does anyone have any idea on what is wrong or point me in the right direction?

Speaking of the topic at hand, if you are interested in joining Microsoft check out the blog Technical Careers @ Microsoft . I am surprised I had not heard of this till now - not that I was going looking for a job working for Microsoft. :) There seems to be good advice that is applicable to just common sense and could be applied to wards any company and environment.

Searching - Before you can work with Wings objects, you must first be able to find them. Searching Wings is fairly straightforward. It uses the OPath syntax that is part of ObjectSpaces. Searching within Wings begins with the ItemContext class. The ItemContext class supports a FindOne method that will return the first object that satisfies the search. The FindOne method takes a Type of the objects we are searching for and the OPath search string. FindOne returns either the first found object or null if no matches are found.

What is OPath? OPath is a specialised syntax for dealing with object graphs. OPath is made up of XPath sprinkled liberally with SQL syntax. At its most basic, OPath supports property comparisons. Microsoft has attempted to create a simple and powerful search language by merging ideas from XPath and SQL. Using OPath you can do:

• Property Searches
• Wildcard Searches
• List Searches
• Collection Element Searches
• Compound Searches
• Relationship Searches

You can learn more about the OPath here .

Conclusion:

Wings makes searching and manipulating Wings objects very straightforward. Searching through Wings allows us to specify a very simple syntax for most cases but supports a rich search syntax to perform complicated searches when needed. Searching by specifying the type of object we are looking for allows us to use the hierarchical nature of the Wings schema to our benefit when searching. In addition, the Wings API allows us to deal with Wings object like any other managed objects when we need to manipulate them. In most cases we can deal with Wings objects just like any other classes that we work with in our applications. The power here is that the API should be very intuitive for users of Wings objects. We can create objects, change objects by manipulating properties, delete objects, and save our changes in batches.

For more information check out:

• http://tinyurl.com/3zksb

• http://tinyurl.com/4x79s

• http://tinyurl.com/4td5t

• http://tinyurl.com/6louv

But till the “real source repository” ships, for most small development teams VSS is still not a bad product and is quite useful in those situations. I have not checked out the API so am not sure if that has changed, but I would assume (quite safely) that it is the same. For those who are curious to see how the GUI has changed, here are some screen shots below.

Adding a File to VSS - Well the dialogue boxes also have not changed, with the Folder and Drives view still from the old Windows 3.x days!! If you have a deep hierarchy it does make is a big pain to navigate. Not to mention long filenames that do not fit in the listbox.

VSS File Menu (Context) - Again the same as before except newer icons.

VSS Toolbar:

VSS Working Folder:

VSS About:

VSS Application - As you can see below, the changes are only cosmetic but everything else is more or less the same. Click on the image below to see the fullview.

Update: Intead of scaling down the image for the client I moved it right to the end of the post as it was spilling over to the content on the right hand side. I also scaled down version and if you click on it then you can see the fullimage.

A SecureString is similar to a String in that it has a text value, but, the value of an instance of the SecureString class is automatically encrypted, can be modified until your application marks it as read-only, and, when no longer needed, it can be deleted from computer memory by either your code or the GC. The value of an instance of SecureString is automatically encrypted when the instance is initialised or when the value is modified. Your code can render the instance immutable and prevent further modification by invoking the MakeReadOnly method.

Note: SecureString has no members that inspect, compare, or convert the value of a SecureString. The absence of such members helps protect the value of the instance from accidental or malicious exposure.

• Support designing and implementing applications
• Composing applications into deployable systems
• Modelling logical representations of the target datacenter
• Defining and validating deployments of the systems you compose against the logical datacenter models.

The designers help software architects and designers, developers, and operations analysts resolve the following high-level goals:

• Illustrate, communicate, and document application designs and the application host environment in a datacenter.
• Maintain and synchronise design documents with source code.
• Compose and configure systems from reusable applications and other systems.
• Validate systems against target deployment environments to determine whether those systems can deploy successfully, even before you implement the applications in those systems.

DSD’s support the following high-level tasks:

1. Design, implement, and connect applications using Application Connection Designer.
2. Specify and review operations provided by Web service applications using the Endpoint Details window.
3. Compose deployable systems from the applications you design using System Designer.
4. Design CLR classes visually using Class Designer.
5. Design a logical representation of the target datacenter environment using Logical Datacenter Designer.
6. Specify settings and constraints for applications in the logical datacenter using the Settings and Constraints editor.
7. Define and validate deployment for applications in the systems you create to the logical servers in the target datacenter using Deployment Designer.

Step 1 - I am going to create a new web site project (as shown in the screenshot ) with only one page ( default.aspx ) that has a GridView control. More on this control in a few steps.

Step 2 - Adding a database connection. For this exercise I have SQL Server Express 2005 installed, but there is no reason why you cannot do this with SQL Server 2000 or MSDE. I am going to use the sample pubs db for this. Here are the steps:

• Add a new connection (as shown ).
• Select SQL Server as the data provider .
• Select the Server and the database you want to connect to. e.g. here I connect to the pubs db.

Step 3 - Now that you are connected to a database we would want to add a table. I select the author table and drag and drop it to the default page as shown .

Step 4 - When you drag and drop the table, Visual Studio automatically created a GridView control. This control automatically picks up the various columns from the table by default. You can configure the data source to your needs, configuring all the selects, updates and deletes. As you can see , the control also has built in paging, sorting, updating (if there is such a word), etc. You can also select one of the many built-in autoformats to give the control a cool and consistent look and feel.

What is a GridView control? A GridView control, allows you can display, edit, and delete tabular data from many different kinds of data sources, including databases, XML files, and the data exposed by a business object. is the successor to the DataGrid control. This controls displays the values of a data source in a table where each column represents a field and each row represents a record. The GridView control allows you to select, sort, and edit these items. I will detail out the differences between the two in another post.

Step 5 - Lets give it a spin. Press Ctrl+F5, to compile and run the app. As shown the data is automatically selected and shown in the selected format. You can also update the records if authorised to do so and also sort and paginate the rows returned automatically.

Step 6 - Well we don’t really have any more steps, but I want to show you what the project and the code looks like. You can see the default.aspx in design mode and the source mode . Now onto the more interesting stuff, lets see what the code-beside looks like. Interesting right, there is not a single line of code!

Here are some more screen shots showing the configuration of Visual Studio 2005.

• In Built Web Server - There is built-in web server , so one does not need IIS installed. This will help answer a lot of companies (especially in the Enterprise environment) security issue of having IIS run on every developer’s machine and not tightened down. This server can be accessed only locally and not via a remote machine. Also, this starts only when you run an application (either in Debug or Release mode) and is shutdown when you stop the application.
• Web Site Properties - There are a bunch of new properties of a web applications. You can add references , set build options  and set accessibility options  which are cool. They allow to ensure your application meets the required standards. e.g. most companies that do business with the federal government need to adhere their web sites to Section 508. When I checked the default.aspx for all the accessibility options, unfortunately as you can see , it failed and that too miserably. You can also of course set both the Startup and MSBuild options.
• Web Site Admin Tool - The admins in your organisation will love this. Till now the only way to modify this was manually updating the .config file, which means either the admins need to understand the various sections in the .config files or the developers need to provide extremely good documentation (now there is an oxymoron), that would help the admins. But in ASP.NET 2.0 there is a tool that makes their job easier. You can setup the security , manage profiles , manage applications  and the data provider .

Summary - To summarise, the demo in itself is nothing great from a technical perspective, but what is interesting is that a developer did not have to write one single line of code. To achieve the same today (in ASP.NET), is not difficult, but does take considerable effort to write, unit-test and debug, especially when you account for the updates of rows, pagination, sorting, etc. Just a small sampling of the new power of ASP.NET 2.0 in Whidbey and all the host of new features that promise to make the live of a developer much better!

Also, I picked most of the default settings and have c# as my primary language set. I also installed SQL Server 2005 Express and have some shots of that too.

Setup Screen Shots:

• [Loading]

  

• [Start page]

  

• [Options page]

  

• [Validations]

  

• Installation - [Part 1]

  

• Installation - [Part 2]

  

• [Office dependency]

  

MSDN Screen Shots:

• [Welcome]

  

• [Customer information]

  

• [Customisation]

  

• [Installation]

  

• [Complete]

  

• MSDN - [Home Page]

  

Visual Studio 2005:

• [Environment Setting]

  

  (First Time)
• [Splash Screen]

  

• [About]

  

• [New Project]

  

• [IDE]

  

  (Default View)
• [Code View]

  

  (for a Windows App)
• Toolbox - [Part 1]

  

• Toolbox - [Part 2]

  

• [Toolbar]

  

  Options
• Property Window and [Docking]

  

  Options
• Better [Intellisense]

  

• Breakpoints and [Tooltips]

  

• [Exception View]

  

• [Server Explorer]

  

• New [Web Site]

  

  Project

SQL Server 2005 Express

• [Computer Management]

  

Misc.

• Quick Start [Sample Setup]

  

  - Part 1
• Quick Start Sample Setup - [Part 2]

  

• .NET Whidbey [Command Prompt]

  

• Customer Experience [Program]

  

What is MSBuild you ask? MSBuild is a long overdue IMHO technology installed with the CLR in Visual Studio 2005 and “Longhorn”. Its goal is to replace makefiles by project files written in XML that let you build large-scale systems. In a project file, targets are used to organise and define high-level construction sets with explicit dependencies. Within a target, tasks are executed to modify inputs and generate outputs that can be passed to the next task or target in a loosely coupled way.

When you create either an application or a class library using Visual Studio 2005, a project file is generated. This file is an MSBuild project file, which explicitly defines every step or target that will be computed when you ask Visual Studio to build it. Yes, no more black box. You know exactly what Visual Studio is doing when it builds your project. With the bits given at the 2003 PDC, the integration of MSBuild and Visual Studio is not complete (as you have seen with the .targets files yet to be finished), but this will definitively be fixed for Visual Studio 2005.

With MSBuild, it is possible to compute the solution files created by a developer using Visual Studio .NET: there is nothing special to install on your build lab machines. This article shows how easy it is to write your own logger extension and to handle the events raised by the MSBuild engine when you want to create custom build reports.

You can check out the first , second and final parts of the article.

The crux of the matter is disclosing your email address. Some spammers get address lists from Web sites where you may have signed up for free offers, ordered something online, or entered a contest. They can also get your address from Internet white pages listings, newsgroups, resumé postings, and chat rooms. Follow these tips whenever you can:

• Set up an e-mail address dedicated solely to Web transactions. Consider using a free mail service to set up an e-mail account for your online transactions. This will help you keep your real e-mail address private.
• Only share your primary e-mail address with people you know. Avoid listing your e-mail address in large Internet directories. Don’t even post it on your own Web site.
• Disguise (or “munge”) your e-mail address. Use a munged address whenever you post it to a newsgroup, chat room, or bulletin board. For example, you could give your e-mail address as “s0me0ne@example.c0m” using “0” (zero) instead of “o.” A person can interpret your address, but the automated programs that spammers use cannot.
• Watch out for checked boxes. When you buy things online, companies sometimes add a check box (pre-checked!) to indicate that it’s fine to sell or give your e-mail address to responsible parties. Click the check box to clear it.

• Understanding Code (MDLView) - The first demo is all about how you get up to speed on an existing code base. To emphasise the problem I renamed nearly all the files so they were numbers which brings home the point about not understanding what the code is actually doing.
• Debugging Code (DebugDemo) - This demo really requires some setup by showing and talking to how information was shown in VS 2003. The main issues with the current display are one, too much information (VS 2003 simply dumps the members of a type in alphabetical order) and two not enough context (e.g. in VS 2003 looking at the list you can’t tell what something is e.g. is it a property, is it public etc?)
• Writing Code - Writing code has historically been a strong point for Visual Studio and in VS 2005 there are a number of features that make this experience even better.

You can also directly download the powerpoint presentation from the for the TechEd session and the demos themselves.

A quick note, all the screenshots here seem a bit washed out - that happened when I tried to convert them to png. If you rather see the screenshots in their full glory then you can download this rar’d version of a Word document (which is 3.89 mb). Also if you don’t know how to uncompress a .rar file then check out WinRar .

The installation went quite smoothly and was much better than the previous experience where the setup was stuck for approximately 2 hours when detecting pnp devices (leading me to think many times it has hung), but I am pleased to say that has been fixed (at least on my machine). I would also like to point out that I am running this natively and not in an emulator like Virtual PC or VMWare. Once I provided the basic information to the setup such as the computer name and keyboard language, timezone, etc I walked away and came back after about 45 mins to see the familiar Ctrl + Alt+ Del of the Longhorn logon. Like I said, overall this has become more stable. Earlier WinFS was a resource hog and ended up taking most of the CPU for a very very long time. Now that has tamed and it does not eat your CPU cycles as much. This is not to say that it does not eat memory right now, it absolutely does, check out the vmusage and you will see WinFS.exe (the WinFS service) is using 213mb!

The following services depend on WinFS; the important ones to know are the MSSearch ones - is that Microsoft’s upcoming new search engine integrated into Windows (as its been rumoured)? Check out a screenshot if you want.

• Windows File Promotion Manager
• MSSearch Gatherer
• MSSearch Indexer
• Windows Filestream Agent

As you can see the desktop has not really changed much - all the changes from an end-user perspective are superficial (which something I don’t care about). Some icons have changes a little (e.g. the Search and the Recycle Bin), and the theme has changed a little and the new default wallpaper with the leaves. to me the most important changes are underneath - the stuff that “makes” the OS.

This build has certainly improved with not as much memory leaks (at least that is what seems, I have not monitored this yet). For example earlier if one had the sidebar enabled in the PDC bits your machine would slow to a crawl after a couple of hours or so because of all the memory leaks from the Sidebar. But, now this seems to be running fine.

Speaking of superficial changes here are some more as most people get excited about this than the underlying stuff:

• Different faces for the clock including the timezones you can set.
• Shutdown “button“ is now a menu which to me makes more sense.
• IE looks a little different - renders about the same. You can also see the new options such as a Download Manager and a Inbuilt Pop-up blocker - about time to add those features I would say. Now if only they could to a MDI like Opera or Firefox.
• This build also has built-in parental controls which I am sure parents with young kids/teenagers would like. I have not played with this so I am not sure how it works, but seems like its not only the web but also could alter the whole usage of the computer - e.g limiting the games they can play and probably how long too.
• There is a new sync manager that seems to have more functionality that the “My Briefcase“ feature from the past.
• There is also a new Contact Manager which all applications running can make use of. This seems to be independent of Outlook, etc and the data stored can be extended by any application as they wish-to. Here is screen shot of a new contact.

As I start playing with this more I’ll ofcourse be uploading more information here - and those would be more interesting (in my opinion).

So the problem is, that since I have used this service for 4+ years I just remember my yodlee login and all the others login I go thru Yodlee and I don’t really recall my login and passwords for the other sites such as all the credit card companies, phones (cell and landline). etc. Why one would ask? Well primarily because I had this service available so I did not bother to save my credentials somewhere and like best practices, my passwords are different on each.

Now, yodlee has been down since last weekend (I tried it on Sunday - May 30th) and everyday they have been updating their site to say it would be available the next day and finally today saying that they are working on it and it would be back whenever its fixed. So the lesson here is for both myself - not to be so dependent on technology and use my poor brain (for a change) - imagine if someone like me who is a little more on the savvy end of technology can mess up, what of the poor non-geeky souls out there? The lesson also learned for Yodlee is to set expectations correctly and not publicly screw-up - again and again and again. Hopefully some young hotshot has learned his/her lesson from this - and if you are reading this - don’t worry everyone learns the hardway - I was in your shoes at one time. :)

BTW, the Java implementation is a bit different on how Whidbey is going to proceed (as of now), but the next version of the J2EE specs (I think changes it, not sure, any J2EE knowledgeable folks reading this care to comment)?