12 March 2006

Readable/Watchable

• As always, start here. Then check out gotdotnet.com's user samples. And read the VB team blog postings.
• Feature articles in the 2/20/06 issue of VARBusiness on Cisco. Here, here, and here.
• Good series of articles by Lisa Phifer. The third part focuses on free e-mail clients including MemeCode i.Scribe, Mozilla Thunderbird, Opera Mail, Pegasus Mail, and Qualcomm Eudora. (Part I is on Outlook Express, Part 2 on Free Web browsers, and Part 4 is on free firewalls for Windows).
• Good MSDN TV show featuring Jan Stranik going through the CLR Managed Debugger (Mdbg) sample.
• Good introductory article by Eric Pimpler on developing with Google Maps. Related: two excellent blogs on location technology and GIS here and here.
• How to Determine the Permissions for a ClickOnce app. (There are some limitations to the Permission Calculator tool. The tool performs a static analysis of the code and cannot determine permissions required for late-bound code or for dynamically loaded assemblies. In addition, if you have designed your application to dynamically modify its permission demands when running in an environment with lesser permissions, the tool will report the maximum required permissions.)
• Troubleshooting ClickOnce Deployments.
• Interesting article on Computer Associates by J. Nicholas Hoover.
• Current issue of IBM Systems Journal focusing on online game technology.
• Ken Getz' 3/06 MSDN Magazine article on setting Word properties programmatically with VS 2005.
• Good article, Storage for the Long Haul, by Lowell Rapaport.
• Peter De Jong's feature on workflow. The same issue has another excellent article by Derek Miers on Best Practices for BPM as well as one on autonomic computing and EMS (Execution Management Systems).

VB KBs

• 100+, including 50 Howto's, so check them out yourself by selecting "7 days" in the Modifed field.

SQL KBs

• 914174 How to build an OLE DB application for SQL Server CE in Visual Studio 2005
• 913815 Error message when you install a SQL Server 2005 failover cluster on a node: "The drive specified cannot be used for program location"
• 914596 The incorrect type for the union element is returned when you run XQuery against XML data that contains the union element.
• 914158 You receive an error message when you try to upgrade an expired installation of SQL Server 2005 Evaluation Edition to a retail version of SQL Server 2005
• 914261 Error message when you run the ALTER SERVICE MASTER KEY REGENERATE statement in SQL Server 2005: "The current master key cannot be decrypted"
• 913967 How to add the SQL Server 2005 tools or SQL Server 2005 Integration Services to an existing instance of SQL Server 2005
• 914638 You receive a NULL value when you use XQuery to retrieve the value of an XML element in SQL Server 2005

Downloadable

• TDWI's third annual Best of BI in digital format. Requires free reg.
• Presentations and screencasts from the Microsoft Federal Government Developer and Platform Evangelism Team Site.
• 118 VB.NET and C# samples related to Crystal Reports.

Browsable

• Mumbai-based Bipin Joshi's DotNetBips site. Three open source downloads (DefaultButton, Bulk Copy Tool, and DatabaseHelper) plus lots of good articles and a link to Bipin's blog.
• SecurityWire's podcasts.
• Map showing locations of UK universities.
• Charles Betz's year-old ERPit site has numerous thoughtful posts.
• Design Patterns Study Group of NYC, founded in 1995 " for the study and mastery of software patterns and pattern languages." Good links, too!
• Leslie Walker's blog on the recent O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference.
• Information about looming RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substance) compliance with regards to lead.
• Larry Constantine's site.
• Forbes list of the world's 793 billionaires.

Jargon Alert

• 5S (Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain, by just-in-time expert and international consultant Hiroyuki Hirano).
• MAID - massive array of inexpensive disks
• PALs - passive aquatic listeners (to detect audio pollution that might impact marine life, not audio signals associated with espionage)
• Sea turtles. Overseas Chinese who have returned to their motherland for work and business opportunities. Play on the characters hai gui, which means "returned from overseas studies."

Misc

• Apache community folks want to bring harmony to Apache efforts via this incubator site.
• OpenOffice.org's Open Office software supports Export as PDF.
• Koha is an open-source Integrated Library System (ILS) that even individuals who loan out lots of books to friends might want to consider. Uses MySQL. Related: MarcEdit.
• Excellent business blog.
• Growing, grassroots effort to connect teachers to donated resources.
• Sounds like a relevant read: Pamela Walker Laird's new book, Pull: Networking and Success since Benjamin Franklin.
• Doonesbury's recent comic strip on the intricacies of "situational science." Not to be confused with sound science, flawed science, or, to be sure, speculative science.

2 March 2006

Readable/Watchable

• As always, start here. Then check out gotdotnet.com's user samples. And read the VB team blog postings.
• John Mueller's excellent article on making the most of the Visual Studio command line.
• Eric Giguere's Amazon database viewer and blog post about it. Here and here.
• Info about the seven annotations provided in the J2SE 5.0 release.
• SQL SMO (Server Management Objects). MVP Bill Graziano has posted a splendid article (with code) about his ClickOnce SMO app that scripts objects directly from a Web site. David Hayden has also written a good article on creating a table using C# and SMO. Here's a good URL for accessing ten sample SMO apps that illustrate basic tasks.
• Avner Aharoni has posted some useful info on XML futures in VB 9.0.
• Gerald Pattyn's feature on ASP.NET 2.0 membership in the March issue of Visual Studio Developer (of which I am editor).

Selected KB articles

• 818410 How to save a graphic from the Clipboard to a file by using VB.NET/2005.
• 301111 How to navigate XML with the XPathNavigator class in VB.
• 814741 You receive a "System.Security.SecurityException" exception when you run an application that calls the SystemInformation.UserName property.
• 315528 How to implement the Dispose method in a derived class in VB.NET/2005.
• 318357 How to debug a VB.NET/2005 app that doesn't respond.
• 316511 BUG: You receive an unrecoverable compiler error if you reference the ListManager property.
• 818419 BUG: You receive a "CustomMarshalers not found" error message when you move an element in the XML Schema designer.
• 818412 BUG: "System.Runtime.Serialization.SerializationException" exception if you declare a static local variable in a method of a Visual Basic .NET or Visual Basic 2005 class and try to serialize the object of the class by using BinaryFormatter or SoapFormatter.
• 317699 How to debug client-side script in VB.NET/2005.
• 320305 "The Visual Basic 6.0 upgrade tool is not installed on this computer" error message.
• 321773 How to switch between forms in a Windows Forms app.
• 321104 ListView control can only display 259 characters per column.
• 833902 You receive a "Column 'Column Name' does not allow nulls" message when you add a record or when you move through records in a database by using a data form.
• 814740 You receive an "System.ArgumentException" exception on a Microsoft Windows 98 operating system when you set the CurrentInputLanguage property.
• 894438 You receive an "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" error message when you try to open a project that contains an inherited user control in VS.NET/2005.
• 829145 System.Environment class does not have a method to set the environment variable for the current process.
• 908018 How to create a package template in SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio.
• 913668 Error message when you use a common language runtime object in SQL Server 2005: "Cannot load dynamically generated serialization assembly".

Downloadable

• ActiveBPEL 2.0. Active Endpoints' open source engine runtime compliant with BPEL4WS 1.1. (BPEL generally pronouced beeple, alternately bipple)
• Microsoft's Anti-Cross Site Scripting Library can be used to provide comprehensive protection to web-based applications against Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks.
• Movable Type plugin for adding tags.
• Karen's twelve SQL eXTRAs from 2005.
• Adobe Flex 2.0 beta. (Free registration required to download.)
• Access 2.0 to Access 2003 converter. (Not new, but might be useful to remember.) (Mentioned in a recent copy of Heln Feddema and Peter Deegan's Access Watch. Send email to sign up for free newsletter.
• APEx, Application Protocol Explorer.

Browsable

• Microsoft's identity blog site.
• John Furrier's Podtech podcasts. Recent interviewees include Doc Searls and Kaboodle's CEO.
• devCity.NET and blogs.vbcity.com. Recent articles on refactoring, enumerations, for example.

Misc

• Info about Sun's Neuromancer project (large-scale distributed networking).
• Compete for cash prizes in VMware's Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge contest.
• Linux shell one-liners. Example: ps -ef | grep ppp | awk '{ print $2 }' | xargs kill -9. [It's hard to believe I used to be able to whip these sorts of things out without a second's thought. Rod]
• Info about EU's data retention directive.
• Yet another story of AOL woes.
• Euan Garden's post on the history of SQL Server (roots in Sybase).
• Cartoons I've enjoyed recently: 1) The scene: Man holding a fish seated next to a mermaid on a TV show set. Man says "We knew a mixed marriage might be difficult, but we never expected this." 2) Wife to husband in front of TV with large CBS-style eye filling the screen: "I hope this is CBS." 3) The scene: Man, driving a clunker belching smoke. Signage on car door: "As heard on Car Talk." 4) Man gazing upon piece of furniture in his living room: "And this thing was a treasured family heirloom till I saw it appraised on 'Antiques Roadshow.'" 5) Caption on cartoon showing man (presumably Tony) gazing at his comb, wallet, etc. on grass behind him - along with back pocket, hanging by a thread: "Tony is a purchaser of cheap pants." 6) The scene: Man seated on stool playing guitar and singing to a man at the Complaints window.

26 February 2006

Readable/Watchable

• As always, start here. Then check out gotdotnet.com's user samples. And read the VB team blog postings.
• Greg Shultz's article on MMC 3.0 describes the new UI and built-in snap-ins. Also by Shultz - a 4-page PDF on 10 things you should know about working with the Windows registry.
• Preview of Benjamin Wulfe's 4/06 MSDN Magazine article on ManagedSpy, Spy++ for .NET 2.0.
• Dan Sellers' post on sharing Forms Authentication between ASP.NET 1.1 and ASP.NET 2.0 apps and on changes to ASP.NET 2.0's forms authentication persistent cookies. Here and here.
• Deny and Permit usage. Here and here. Related: delay signing (of CLR assemblies).
• Paul Thurrott's latest insights on the probable packaging of Vista (his best guess: 9 different ones). Related: Vista's encryption scheme.
• Office 2007 pricing details.
• ASPI flaw in XP SP2 drains laptop batteries.
• Sydney-based Garry Robinson, an Access/Excel/VB/SQL guru who should be an MVP IMHO, forwarded this link for anyone interested in Access 2007 user level security. vb123.blogspot.com. Related: Garry's site and access to his archived newsletters.
• Sample chapter from Brian Noyes' new book on Data Binding with Windows Forms. [Note: Karen and I got errors with this link. Mine may have been caused by an older version of Acrobat Reader. Rod]
• Interesting article by Jon Bachman on the emerging SOA maturity model.

Selected KB articles

• 316478 BUG: "Object variable or With block variable not set" error message when you access a public object variable .
• 818410 How to save a graphic from the Clipboard to a file by using VB.NET/2005.
• 315935 How to build and use XML Web services by using Visual Studio .NET or Visual Studio 2005.
• 301111 How to navigate XML with the XPathNavigator class in VB.
• 814741 You receive a "System.Security.SecurityException" exception when you run an application that calls the SystemInformation.UserName property.
• 820659 How to use Visual Basic .NET or Visual Basic 2005 to create a resource file by using the ResourceWriter class and how to retrieve a resource file by using the ResourceManager class.
• 315528 How to implement the Dispose method in a derived class in VB.NET/2005.
• 318357 How to debug a Visual Basic .NET or Visual Basic 2005 application that doesn't respond.
• 316511 BUG: You receive an unrecoverable compiler error if you reference the ListManager property.
• 829145 System.Environment class does not have a method to set the environment variable for the current process.
• 316136 How to synchronize the access to a shared resource in a multithreading environment with VB.NET/2005.
• 913668 (SQL) Error message when you use a common language runtime object in SQL Server 2005: "Cannot load dynamically generated serialization assembly"
• 328306 (SQL) Potential causes of the "SQL Server does not exist or access denied" error message.
• 911003 (SQL) You may receive an error message when you try to export a table by using the SQL Server Import and Export Wizard.

Downloadable

• Additional Visual C# code snippets.
• User Profile Hive Cleanup Service (which may help with slow logoff and unreconciled profile problems.)
• Tim Rains' utility (command line and GUI versions) to detect network sniffers.

Browsable

• Info on MCPD for VS 2005, .NET 2.0 devs.
• Rocky Lhotka's site.
• Paul McNamara's new BuzzBlog.

Heads Up

• GM's forthcoming 11-acre autotainment site (Drive) in Las Vegas where drivers 18 or older will be able to test drive the likes of Hummers and SUVs on a rugged site.
• MEDC 2006 (Mobile and Embedded DevCon), May 8-11 in Las Vegas.
• Apply to download ISA Server 2006 Beta (Standard or Enterprise).
• ESRI (think maps and GIS) Developer Summit, Mar 17-18 in Palm Springs.

Jargon Alert

• GMLJP2. OpenGIS GML in JPEG 2000 for Geographic Imagery.
• PrP - prion protein, which, when misfolded, can kill neurons and enlist other proteins to misfold as well. Here, here, and here.
• Type 1 encryption. NSA terminology.

Questions and Ponderables of the Week

• Not too long ago, I finished Tim Egan's remarkable book about the dustbowl (Worst Hard Time), so it was particularly interesting to read the HBR editor Ted Halstead's recent editorial promoting a new Homestead Act for what he sees as the atrophying 21st century middle class. Do you worry about the plight of poor Americans? Katherine Boo's excellent 2/6/06 New Yorker article, "Swamp Nurse," (not online, but Q&A here) tackles the same topic.
• In an interview with the Christian Science Monitor's Robert Marquand, embattled Chinese journalist Li Datong says that his Freezing Point site is meant to show people that "fear is not a normal state of existence." I invite you to ponder your own personal fear level, and trends in fear levels in different communities. From the February 24, 2006 edition. Related: Washington Post article on Li Datong with excellent links.
• We've all heard the terms "sound science" and "flawed science" used recently, especially in a political context. Do the terms mean anything to you? Can you think of better terms?
• It's my observation that kids who are good at algebra have a hard time with geometry and vice versa. Was this the case with you? With your kids?
• A question on a local newspaper's kid's page intrigued me: "What chess piece are you?"

Misc

• Joke I've enjoyed (this, thanks to Ed Nisley in his 3/06 Dr Dobbs "Embedded Space" column where Ed talks about the value of professional licenses): Q: What's the difference between an electrical engineer and a civil engineer? A: EEs build weapon systems. CEs build targets.
• Yahoo, MSN, and Google aren't the only sites being monitored and/or muzzled in China. Wikipedia's off limits, too.
• Annotated lists of think tanks. Another list of US-based ones.
• Interesting research on how planarian neoblasts control regeneration.
• Cartoons I've enjoyed recently: 1) Scenario: man and woman seated on couch, observing elderly man dancing on their dining room table with his cane held aloft. The man says, "Your grandfather just paid off his student loan." 2) Series of placards above Army recruiting station: "An Army of Juan," "Some Juan," "Any Juan." 3) Man at entrance to something that looks like a junkyard for cars: "I need two pickles for a '96 cheeseburger." 4) One Secret Service agent to another, observing former Presidents Bush and Clinton seated next to each other at a drive-in that's showing Brokeback Mountain, "I'm begining to think their friendship's real." 5) Forest Fire Level-type sign in front of a church: "God's Wrath Level: HIGH", 6) The scene: a little kid is standing in front of a snowman. The kid, who holds a bag of baby carrots says to the snowman, which has a normal carrot nose, "For 20,000 bucks, I can replace that with a cute little baby carrot." The caption: Future Plastic Surgeon. 7) Banner over a local high school on Presidents day: "Send Presidents Day Greetings Over Wiretap"
• Caltech Professor Libbrecht's wonderful (art *and* science) Snowcrystals.com site.
• Info about equatorial launch platform Sea Launch.
• Sounds useful: YakTrax snow/ice grippersHistory News Network.
• Royal Society's 2005 inductees. Here and here.
• Northern City Shift (in pronunciation of vowels). Related: this and this.
• WarNewsRadio. An innovative online radio show created by Swarthmore journalism students.
• Micro*scope - Internet Resources for Microscopy, including microbe biodiversity.
• 21-year old David Lehre's site (self-taught film maker of "MySpace: The Movie" parody fame). The movie.
• Interesting "ad," which seems to offer AK-47s for sale, by Amnesty International UK.
• Sandra Gittlen's well-written article on How do the feds tap phone lines.
• New earthquake hazard maps showing color-coded hazard zones in SF.
• Recommended book: Clifford Conner's "People's History of Science." It's written in the spirit of Howard Zinn's "People's History of America" and has tons of footnotes that will entice you to further reading and thinking. Good review with excerpts.

19 February 2006

Readable/Watchable

• As always, start here. Then check out gotdotnet.com's user samples. And read the VB team blog postings.
• Good article by Andrew Flick and Anthony Lombardo on writing scalable AJAX apps.
• Excellent article by MVP Steve Orr about his Firefox-compatible custom SearchBox control. Related: Source code and Steve's site. (See a recent article on client-side callbacks in AJAX, for example.)
• C# MVP Paulo Morgado has written a very good article on implementing HTTP compression in .NET 2.0.
• Time Magazine's 2/20/06 cover story on Google.
• Scott Mitchell's excellent article on the subtleties associated with providing a read-only UI on your data-driven web apps.
• Good overview of Microsoft's Composite UI Application Block, aka CAB.
• Good 10-pager by Bill Sempf on converting VB6 UI controls to VB 2005.
• Kenny Kerr explains credential management with .NET for C++ programmers.
• SQL Server MVP Bill Wunder's primer .NET/OOP and SQLCLR.
• SQL PASS's BI SIG chair Steve Mong interviews Panorama's Dr. Allon Cohen about Panorama's BI platform.
• Nigel Pendse's 1/16/06 commentary, The Microsoft Effect (about Analysis Services 2005).

HowTo KBs

• 841291 How to write an app that supports the Fast User Switching feature in VB.NET/2005 in Windows XP.
• 832679 How to access an ftp site in VB.NET/2005.
• 823179 How to access serial and parallel ports in VB.NET.
• 821772 How to set culture info programmatically in a Windows app using VB.NET/2005.
• 821771 How to use a WebClient class or a WebBrowser control to display an HTML page in VB.
• 821769 How to call the EnumJobs function from a VB.NET app.
• 818364 How to access a Web service in a Windows-based app with VB.NET/2005.
• 818361 How to disable the Close button on the title bar of a console application in Visual Basic 2005 or VB.NET.
• 319234 How to change the foreground and background text colors in a console window in VB.NET or in Visual Basic 2005.
• 316302 How to bind a DataGrid control to an ArrayList of objects or structures in Visual Basic 2005 or VB.NET.
• 315832 How to upload an image file to a Web site with VB.NET/2005.
• 315577 How to create threads in VB.NET/2005.
• 311330 How to overloading methods in VB.NET/2005.
• 311321 How to dynamically add a control without hardcoding the control type in VB. 311318 How to create a Key property for a TreeView node in VB.
• 309963 How to add a ToolTip to a TreeNode in VB.NET/2005.
• 309617 How to upgrade a VB6 project group to VB.NET/2005.
• 309480 How to create similar functionality to the Line and Shape controls in Windows Forms in VB.NET/2005.
• 304990 How to determine the OS SP level in VB.NET/2005.
• 304289 How to determine Windows version in VB.NET/2005.
• 301273 How to write a simple Web service in VB.NET/2005.
• 301053 How to compute and compare hash values in VB.NET/2005.

Other KBs

• 897299 You may receive a "vbc : Command line error BC2017 : could not find library" error message when you compile an application in VB.NET 2003/VB 2005.
• 834063 BUG: You receive a COMException exception when you pass late-bound parameters to methods of Office objects in VB.NET/VB 2005.
• 833898 You receive error messages when you try to inherit from a class that contains only private constructors in Visual Studio .NET/2005.
• 822490 BUG: The control size is not preserved when a form is minimized and then the form is restored.
• 822483 The ListView control does not support drag-and-drop functionality for items at run time.
• 820644 "PrintDocument Class" does not implement the PrintToFile feature.
• 814736 You receive an "Unable to get the window handle" exception when you display a child form that contains ActiveX user controls.
• 814723 Incorrect help topics for CodeModel.AddFunction and CodeModel.AddVariable in Visual Studio .NET.
• 814717 BUG: "Unable to start debugging on the Web server" error message when you run an ASP.NET Web app.
• 814319 "ControlType is not accessible in this context because it is Friend" error in an inherited Windows Form application that inherits the form in another app.
• 814309 You cannot drop text in a RichTextBox control in a code sample from MSDN docs.
• 326440 BUG: AddNew method of CurrencyManager fails with bound CheckBox.
• 321434 Firewall software may cause a Visual Studio 2005 or Visual Studio NET installation to stop responding (hang).
• 317552 Error message occurs when you try to change Visual Studio .NET components: "A selected drive is no longer"
• 316581 BUG: Compile error message when you implement a class in a referenced COM library.
• 316137 Error message when you use square brackets as a delimited identified in VB.NET/2005: "Identifier expected".
• 307420 BUG: Setup fails when you install Visual Studio .NET/2005 over a terminal service session from a mapped drive.
• 304260 You may receive an error message when you use an invalid namespace in VB.NET/2005.

SQL KBs

• 913423 You can't run a statement or a module that includes the EXECUTE AS clause after you restore a database in SQL Server 2005.
• 913392 Error message when you open SQL Server 2005 Books Online: "Microsoft Document Explorer cannot be shown because the specified help collection 'ms-help://MS.SQLCC.v9' is invalid"
• 913050 Error message when you run a query in SQL Server 2005: "Internal error: An expression services limit has been reached"
• 911841 You may receive an "Error 22022: SQLServerAgent is not currently running so it cannot be notified of this action" error message when you run a SQL Server Agent job in SQL Server 2000
• 324362 PRB: Subqueries that you define on merge articles are not re-evaluated.
• 309422 Guidelines for choosing antivirus software to run on the computers that are running SQL Server.

Downloadable

• Solutions Architect MVP Beth Massi's sample on speeding up binary serialization of datasets in ADO.NET 2.0.
• Free copy of IBM DB2 Express-C (think IBM's equivalent of SQL Server 2005 Express Edition.)
• CTP2 of an open source MOLAP product.
• Alpha of Visual NDepend and CQL. Note - thanks to Mike Gunderloy's Daily Grind #821 for these two links.
• Sophus, aspect programming library for .NET.
• Free migration assistants for classic ASP, PHP, and JSP to ASP.NET.

Browsable

• Atlas January 2006 release, links to hands-on lab, forum, wiki, etc. Related: Brent Sheets' Ajax Learning Guide and sample Chapter 9, Dynamic Double Combo, from Dave Crane and Eric Pascarello's Ajax in Action. See also Ajax lessons.
• Patterns & practices security wiki.

Jargon Alert

• OLPC - One Laptop Per Child. Refers to an initiative spearheaded by MIT's Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte to distribute $100 laptops.
• KAM - Key Account Management.
• VOA - Virtualization-oriented architecture.

Question of the Issue

• Jefferson once said, "I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple. Were we directed from Washington when to sow when to reap, we should soon want bread." He was raising the old question about centralized government, of course. How do you think we're doing in our era?

Misc

• Blue Planet: World Biomes.
• George Legrady's exhibition of algorithmic variations.
• Cartoon I've enjoyed recently: 1) Jill to Jack, "Jack, when we get down the hill, let's put the pail up for auction."
• The DOD Quadrennial Defense Report. (113-page PDF)
• Bush presents medals to the newest batch of 15 National Science and Technology laureates.
• Info about Alonzo Church (1903-1995). Church is credited with having invented lambda calculus and is associated with the Church's Theorem, showing the undecidability of first order logic.
• Audio replay of the 12/9/05 Science Friday radio show featuring Alan Lightman talking about his new book "The Discoveries," his selection of the most significant discoveries (including original papers) in 20th century science.
• Borland sells dev tools (did *you* cut your teeth on Turbo Pascal? [Actually I started with UCSD P-System Pascal and then moved to Turbo Pascal--Rod]) to focus on ALM (app lifecycle) market. Related: REALbasic offer for Delphi devs.
• Lotus/Tivoli exec Frank Moss to head MIT Media Lab.
• Water Cooler Games - "video games with an agenda." Categories include politics, advertising, education, healthcare, society, and design. A recent BW article "Video Games are the Best Revenge" led me to the site.
• James Bottomley's thought-provoking article on the risks of over-virtualization.
• Read Henry Adams' chapter on Darwinism from his early 20th classic, The Education of Henry Adams. The entire book is online.
• HBR's annual list of Breakthrough Ideas. See this year's 20.
• Informative 10-minute podcast of an interview with Irene Sanders, Executive Director and Founder of the Washington Center for Complexity & Public Policy from last August.
• World Lecture Hall. Portal to online courses.
• Ross Mayfield's blog entry about Mitch Kapor's thoughtful, optimistic closing keynote (at the recent OSBC) on Wikipedia. Related: Stephen O'Grady's OSBC Day 1 post.

12 February 2006

Readable/Watchable

• As always, start here. Then check out gotdotnet.com's user samples. And read the VB team blog postings.
• 30-minute MSDN TV episode (1/19/06) about Atlas.
• Mike Chambers' article about encapsulating Ajax XMLHTTPRequest Calls within JavaScript classes.
• Ian Bicking's tutorial on WSGI (Web Server Gateway Interface).
• Good short article by Bill Lewis on using XMLSpy to solve the Many-to-many relationships in XML schema: Hints and tips for the busy E-R modeler. Related. Note: Modules for .NET integration are available for the Professional and Enterprise editions of XMLSpy.
• Jeff Juday's article about BizTalk 2004 adapter alternatives for handling Web services. Related: BizTalk Virtual Lab Series.
• Info about Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006.
• Watch a video replay of Russ Ryan's 1/31/06 keynote on how Microsoft does software engineering from last week's VSLive!.
• Watch a video replay of Pat Helland's 1/31/06 keynote on building scalable apps from the recent Software Architecture Summit. Pat, now Amazon's Senior Technology Manager, was hired away from Microsoft where he had worked for two decades. Related: Peter Varhol's blog entry about Pat's Software Architecture Summit presentation.
• Doug Putnam's 3/02 article, How Much Software Can Be Built in a Year?
• Clive Maxfield's *excellent* article on rounding algorithms (15 of them). Related: his DIY Calculator. And David Goldberg's classic paper on What Every Computer Scientists Should Know about Floating-Point Arithmetic.

Info/HowTos

• 893667 User controls vs. Custom Controls.
• 822492 HOW TO capture a pressed function key and then perform an action on a Windows app.
• 821775 HOW TO enumerate the software products that are installed on a computer.
• 821770 HOW TO determine the connection state of your local system and how to initiate or end an Internet connection in VB.NET/2005.
• 821762 HOW TO encrypt a string in VB6 and HOW TO decrypt the string in VB.NET/2005.
• 818805 HOW TO use Mathematical functions, Type Conversion functions, and String functions in VB.NET/2005.
• 818359 HOW TO create a screen saver in VB.NET/2005.
• 811399 HOW TO display the ContextMenu that is specific to a highlighted node in a TreeView control in VB.NET/2005.
• 811203 HOW TO programmatically set the DataGrid column width to the longest field in VB.NET.
• 320107 HOW TO provide automatic text completion for a ComboBox control in VB.NET/2005.
• 317885 HOW TO use the Visual Basic Upgrade Wizard.
• 317421 HOW TO create a Setup project for a Windows Service in VB.NET/2005.
• 317030 HOW TO handle arrays returned as a Variant from a VB COM object.
• 313417 HOW TO trace and debug in VB.NET/2005.
• 313334 HOW TO bind an array of structures to a Windows Form in VB.NET/2005.
• 310082 HOW TO extend a Web Form control to work with the validation controls in VB.NET/2005.
• 307222 HOW TO use inheritance in VB.NET/2005.

Bugs

• 897298 You receive an "unhandled exception of type 'System.Runtime.InteropServices.SEHException'" error message when you call the Application.EnableVisualStyles method in VB.NET/2005.
• 834614 The Visual Studio .NET or Visual Studio 2005 client application can't catch the events that are raised by an Office Spreadsheet 11.0 ActiveX control.
• 834057 You can't add a smart device application to an existing solution in Visual Studio .NET.
• 829445 BUG: The System.Collections.Queue.Clone method loses data while cloning objects.
• 823240 BUG: Breakpoints that are added by macros are not highlighted in the source editor.
• 822497 Controls are not displayed on Windows Forms that are larger than the screen resolution.
• 822491 BUG: The "Localizable" property of a Windows Form doesn't properly handle culture-specific contents of the ListView control.
• 822488 BUG: The icon that is displayed on the control loses the alpha channel when you set the Image property of a Microsoft Windows Form control to a 32-bit alpha-blended icon.
• 822487 BUG: The column width of a ListView control isn't preserved when you re-create the handle of the control in VB.NET/C#.
• 822486 BUG: The sizing grip doesn't work correctly on a Maximized Windows Form with a StatusBar control.
• 822480 BUG: TreeView fisplays node icons display after the images are removed from the ImageList.
• 821790 BUG: You can't create a new Microsoft VB.NET project in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003.
• 820656 BUG: "Type
• 820653 The Data Form Wizard doesn't display the "Choose the display style" panel in a Web Application project.
• 820643 BUG: Project references are regenerated when you add a reference to an ActiveX control from Visual Studio .NET.
• 820639 The Windows Forms Timer event isn't raised in a Windows service.
• 820638 BUG: TextBox content isn't automatically scrolled to display selected text on receiving focus.
• 820636 BUG: The ListBox control or the ComboBox control copies list items several times in VB.NET/C#.
• 820634 BUG: Error message when you use the FindString method or the FindStringExact method in VB.NET or in Visual C# .NET: "System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException."
• 820629 BUG: A control on the hidden TabPage isn't visible when you use the Control.Select method or the Form.ActiveControl property in VB.NET or in Visual C# .NET.
• 819354 BUG: You can't use the Me keyword before the property name in a VB.NET structure.
• 819352 BUG: The Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll assembly isn't marked with the CLSCompliant(True) attribute.
• 819346 You receive an "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" exception for the DataGrid control in VB.NET.
• 819345 BUG: Error message when you set the Width property of a Boolean DataGrid column to 1 in VB.NET or in Visual C# .NET: "System.ArgumentException."
• 818411 BUG: You receive a "Reference required to assembly" error message when you run a VB.NET app.
• 818217 Conditional compilation symbols that use string literals are not compiled by Vbc.exe.
• 818216 BUG: "Public Overrides WriteOnly Property..." error when you try to override a VB6 property in VB.NET.
• 814606 BUG: "Out of memory" error if you sse the GetSetting function to retrieve an empty string from the registry in VB.NET and in VB6.
• 814603 BUG: Late-bound calls to overloaded methods of a structure instance do not work as expected in VB.NET.
• 814357 BUG: You receive an error message if you change the case of a control name on the form.
• 814353 BUG: Menu shortcuts put "D" in front of numbers.
• 814349 BUG: You can't load images in the ImageList control by directly assigning the ImageStream property from one ImageList to another.
• 814348 BUG: Focus is on the hidden child control while the Visible property of the parent is set to False.
• 814347 BUG: The value in the NumericUpDown control doesn't reset to the maximum or minimum value if you use the TAB key or mouse to shift focus.
• 814345 BUG: Font of TabPage text doesn't change when you change the Font property of the TabPage control.
• 814328 BUG: "Method can't handle event" error when you build a VB.NET 2003 project.
• 814318 BUG: The Find method of the RichTextBox control searches text from the zero position when the Start parameter is equal to the length of the string.
• 814310 BUG: The RichTextBox control loses formatting when you change the DetectUrls property or the RightToLeft property at run time.
• 810921 BUG: You can't use the Cut command and the Paste command with the Microsoft Windows DataGridTableStyles collection.
• 327555 BUG: The Text property of a data-bound ComboBox returns an incorrect value when you set the value in code.
• 326442 Setting e.Handled in the KeyDown event has no effect in VB.NET/2005.
• 325118 Visual Studio.NET/ 2005 debugger doesn't step into the Load event.
• 320567 Visual Studio .NET and Microsoft Developer Network files corrupted during installation from Samsung DVD-ROM.
• 320369 BUG: "Old format or invalid type library" error when automating Excel.
• 317273 Unhandled exception when you pass non-public class object to COM DLL in VB.NET.
• 317098 BUG: "Sub Main was not found in WindowsApplication1.Form1" error message when you change the Name property of a Startup Form in VB.NET.
• 316741 BUG: You receive a "Method not found" error message when you add a UserControl to a form if the UserControl code invokes AXControl methods.
• 913395 (SQL) Error message when you use Database Engine Tuning Advisor in SQL Server 2005: "Attempt to initialize the CRT more than once"

Downloadable

• Beta of new free, entry-level VMware Server!
• Steve Lasker has posted a zip containing his slides and demos from the two sessions he gave during last week's VSLive! They're on "Occasionally Connected Smart Clients" and "Advancements in Data Access." Thanks, Steve! Related: video of his 1+ hour smart client session.
• CTP for VB9. Related: Soma Somasegar's post about the CTP.
• Paint.NET 2.6 RC1.
• User Profile Hive Cleanup Service.
• Security Configuration Wizard (SCW) documentation.
• Business Scorecard Manager 2005 (BSM) update rollup.
• Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 Desired Configuration Monitor (DCM).
• Unlocker 1.7.9 (freeware from Cedrick "Nitch" Collomb).
• IBM Research's Virtual XML project, with the ability to view and process non-XML data as though it is XML. Related.
• Nmap Security Scanner 4.00.
• RustemSoft's freeware RadioGroup ActiveX control (Replaces the VB6 OptionButton). Also free: XMLFox. Also from RustemSoft - a short XSD tutorial.
• Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer CTP.
• Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator Version 2.01 (build 1748).
• TechNet Quarter 2 FY06 Downloadable docs.
• Open source PERT and Gantt charting.
• Open source FreeMind - brainstorming and "mind mapping" tool.
• Dimitri van Heesch' Doxygen.
• Another flavor of Wiki.
• CustomizeGoogle plug-in for Firefox.

Browsable

• Composite UI Application Block (CAB) hands-on lab for VB 2005. C# version here.
• Betanews.
• Microsoft's 2005 Annual Report.
• Amsterdam-base Steven Bink's website ("Watching Microsoft like a hawk") with news, technology, and download links.
• Firewall leak tester.
• Discovery Channel news.
• Scott's Botanical Links.
• (SQL) Steve Muise's blog. He's in the midst of doing an *excellent* 14-part MSDN Webcast series on using .NET procedural code in SQL Server.
• WWII military situation maps (416 from 1944-45).

Jargon Alert

• AXT - Alien Crosstalk, electromagnetic noise that can occur in a cable that runs alongside one or more other signal-carrying cables. Not to be confused with NEXT, near-end crosstalk.
• TSAT. Transformational Satellite Communications System, the USAF's initiative to develop next-generation, space-based communications over the Global Information Grid, the Pentagon's voice, video and data network.
• Greenfield mode. Type of 802.11n backward compatibility that addresses a pure network of 802.11n APs and clients, taking full advantage of the high-throughput capabilities of the 11n MIMO architecture.

Heads Up

• RSA 2006, Feb 13-17 in San Jose. Related: .Net Security blog post, CryptEncrypt and RSACryptoServiceProvider::Encrypt.
• BASTA, Feb 13-17 in Frankfurt.
• Gartner BI Summit 2006, Mar 6-8 in Chicago.
• SD West 2006. Mar 13-17 in Santa Clara.
• GDC Conference and Expo, Mar 20-24 in San Jose.
• Microsoft ASP.NET/VS/SQL Server/SharePoint Connections, Apr 2-5 in Orlando.
• KioskCom, Apr 10-12 in Las Vegas.
• Maker Faire, Apr 23-23 in San Mateo.
• TechEd 2006, June 11-16 in Boston.

Questions of the Week

• Gandhi once observed that, "As the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence." Do you agree?
• In an excellent essay on the curious topic of "players," in the February issue of Harper's, Garret Keizer begins by taking issue with a statement by a recent National Teacher of the Year that teaching students to write essays was irrelevant. (What they need to know was how to write good memos.) Do you agree?
• Valentine's Day question: Do you remember the 1993 movie, Indecent Proposal, where a billionaire offered a young couple a million dollars if the wife would sleep with him? What's your bottom line? Would you ever betray your spouse/significant other for a huge sum of money? What if you had to sleep with someone to save your significant other's life. Would you?

Misc

• Dr. Math. Related: this and this.
• Sample chapters from Vyvyan Evans' books on cognitive linguistics and the structure of time.
• Thomas Knierim's essays on "the big questions" including spacetime and the uncertainty principle.
• Online issue of Vectors journal (online digital art).
• The European Digital Library Treasures.
• Links to subway maps and related transportation sites.
• Cheating Microsoft Pinball.
• Cheatsheet for bypassing IVRs (phone trees) so you can talk to a real person.
• Funny t-shirts and more.
• Top-notch feature, Credibility of Analysts, by Larry Greenemeier and Paul McDougall in the 2/6/06 issue of Information Week. The focus is on potential conflicts of interest in the IT research market.
• Cool invention - LifeStraw.
• Recommended book: Timothy Egan's splendid Worst Hard Time about the Dust Bowl era.
• US "data sweep" program, ADVISE, described.
• Cartoons I've enjoyed recently: 1) The scene: man and woman at a restaurant. The man says, "Sorry if I've been kind of quiet, but I misplaced my talking points." 2) The scene: Panhandler holding sign that says "Zero hits on Google." 3) Sign in coffee shop: "Warning: Too much food can make you fat." Cook to customer: "It was my lawyer's idea." 4) Sign advertising sidewalk vendor with computer: Vet Your Date. 5) Brokeback-inspired: a) Man in old-fashioned long johns approaching bed where another man is working on his laptop. Computer guy to the first man, "And what if I don't want to be Jack *or* Ennis?" b) The scene: Two elderly cowboys sitting on their shack's porch. One asks, "Were we gay?" 6) The scene: Two farmers on porch looking at groomed poodle: "That dawg won't hunt." 7) Attorney to his son: "Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to sue, and he'll eat for a lifetime."

6 February 2006

Readable/Watchable

• As always, start here. Then check out gotdotnet.com's user samples. And read the VB team blog postings.
• Dan Mabbutt's two-part article on VB.NET's hashtable here and here.
• MVP Jim Wilson's blog entry on configuration file settings in .NET CF 2.0.
• Mark Nottingham's tutorial on proxy caches.
• Arian Kulp's Coding4Fun article on wallpaper cycling (VB and C# versions of code available).
• Keith Brown's MSDN Magazine article on security enhancements in .NET 2.0. Related: his blog.
• MVP Alex Homer's article on what's new in System.Xml 2.0. Related: other DeveloperFusion bloggers.
• Brad McCabe's article on using the new SystemSounds class.
• Ian Griffiths' thoughts about implicit interfaces, dynamic vs. static typing, and COM - in response to Martin Fowler's ImplicitInterfaceImplementation. Related.
• Interesting paper from MSR describing the design and implementation of the storage layer of BitVault, a "content-addressable retention platform for large volume of reference data." (Uses a distributed hash table).
• Several excellent TechNet Webcasts on Friday 2/3/06 including ones on configuring DHCP Servers, securing Windows servers, and the first of Steve Muise's 14-part series on SQLCLR. Here and here.

Selected KB articles

• 311340 ItemData property does not exist for ListBox and ComboBox controls.
• 306978 How to use QueryPerformanceCounter to time code in VB.NET/2005.
• 814362 Items in the ComboBox control aren't selected while you type the first characters.
• 316155 BUG: "Type System.IO.IOException" error message after you upgrade to VB.NET/2005.
• 820640 BUG: TransparencyKey doesn't work for double-buffered controls in 32-bit color mode.
• 309023 How to check security in a VB.NET/2005 COM+ application.
• 822495 BUG: The TransparencyKey property isn't effective for Windows forms if the color depth of the monitor is set to a value that is greater than 24-bit.
• 311324 Install VB.NET/2005 on the same computer as a VB6 upgrade project.
• 814601 BUG: The VB.NET/2005 Upgrade Wizard reports an incorrect warning message for user-defined data types.
• 311329 Option Explicit and Option Strict in VB.NET/2005.
• 318600 How to set tab stops in a list box in VB.NET or Visual Studio 2005.
• 315703 How to serialize an object to XML in VB.NET/2005.
• 313638 How to bind an ArrayList or Collection of structures to a Windows Form with VB.NET/2005.
• 819347 You receive a "System.InvalidCastException" error when you use the FormatNumber function in VB.NET/2005.
• 308046 HOW TO: Use Base Classes to Reduce Code Forking with Managed Providers in VB.NET.
• 322025 How to make a VB.NET/2005 class usable in a For Each statement.
• 311338 You receive a "Constant vbFromUnicode wasn't upgraded" message in Upgrade Report after you upgrade a VB6 project to VB.NET/2005.
• 820631 You receive a "Too many files selected" error message when you use the OpenFileDialog control.
• 834059 BUG: You receive a "System.InvalidCastException" error message when you upgrade a VB6 app that holds a user control to VB.NET/2005.
• 311328 VB.NET and VB 2005 do not support default properties.
• 818215 BUG: You can add a member after a zero index in a VB.NET collection.
• 306961 How to implement custom collections in VB.NET/2005.

Downloadable

• SnideSoft's SnIco Edit (icon editor).
• Microsoft's PnP (patterns & practices) PDF poster.
• SQL Server SSIS sample component: RTrimPlus, which takes a string or unicode column and removes trailing spaces.
• Documentation, sample code and xml files that demonstrate working implementations of the algorithms presented from the Simple Sharing Extensions for RSS and OPML Specification.
• Task-based C# snippets.
• TestDriven.NET 2.0 beta.
• NUnit 2.2.6.
• Meaty, 360-page Web Service Security Guidance PDF documenting WSS patterns, scenarios, and implementation.

Browsable

• Dr. John Dalbey's some proposed "standards" for pseudocode. Also from Dr. D (as in DOS): SpiderWorld, a robot simulation for teaching introductory programming principles.
• AppSec CTO and founder Aaron Newman's fall 2005 presentation and demo files on protecting databases. Here and here. Related: his white paper on how search engines can attach databases.
• Rod found this one! VB Advantage Free Tool Club including a VB 3to VB 6 conversion tool.
• Harish Ranganathan's ASP.NET site has some good time-saving nuggets.
• Doug Rohm's site.

Jargon Alert

• IaM Identity and Access Management.
• Reference implementation (defined).
• Crimson - Codename for Windows Eventing 6.0

Heads Up

• Waterfall 2006 on April Fool's day in Niagara Falls.
• Good editorial by Stuart Johnson on a reorg at Microsoft, merging Exchange and RTC groups.

Misc

• Bob Ward's URLwire.com site.
• 2006 Bloggies.
• Two-part article by Peter Haumer on the IBM Rational Method Composer, a (commercial) process and content management framework that builds on the open source Eclipse Process Framework (EPF) and basically replaces the well-known Rational Unified Process (RUP). Part 1 and Part 2. Notable: Peter's discusssion in Part 2 on "Managing intellectual capital and assets as method content and guidance: Related: an article by Ricardo Balduino of the Basic Unified Process (BUP) for small and agile projects.
• Asteroids!
• Microsoft interview questions.
• Facts about Microsoft. Examples: US employees 75 percent male, avg age 36. Almost half of all Microsoft employees in sales and marketing.
• Interesting, if depressing, four-part series on how only half of the class of 2005 in a Van Nuys, Calif. high school graduated. (You probably have to register to read it.)

29 January 2006

Readable/Watchable

• As always, start here. Then check out gotdotnet.com's user samples. And read the VB team blog postings.
• Neat post by Keith Brown on VS 2005 extensibility. "was building a data access layer today and got really sick of typing data-holder classes that are really only around to make the GUI guy's life easier when he goes to use databinding (which requires properties). Kind of like this..."
• Transaction Management in Windows.
• Ken Getz' PPT and code on ASP.NET 2.0 Membership features.
• 18-page paper on ASP.NET 2.0 for Hosters. Related: DNS Step-by-Step Guide.
• Microsoft (MSN and MSR) opens two new labs under the direction of Dr. Gary William Flake, Microsoft technical fellow who joined Microsoft last year.
• Several new MSDN TV programs in the archive.

Selected KB articles

• (SQL) Recent SQL 2005 KBs.

• 319524 How to set a hook in VB.NET.
• 301070 How to encrypt and decrypt a file by using VB.NET/2005.
• 301279 How to write to an event log by using VB.NET/2005.
• 306271 How to add a user to the local system by using Directory Services in VB.NET/2005.
• 308230 How to define and use properties in VB.NET/2005.
• 306821 How to improve string concatenation performance in VB.NET/2005.
• 308054 How to use a Web service as a data source for a client app in VB.NET.
• 311326 Error handling in VB.NET/2005.
• 308537 How to create a forms collection in VB.NET/2005.
• 307933 How to work with the HashTable collection in VB.NET/2005.
• 304654 How to programmatically compile code with the VB.NET/2005 compiler.
• 305705 How to programmatically start the default Internet Browser in VB.NET/2005.
• 312120 BUG: An ActiveX control may disappear from a form in design view in a Visual Studio .NET Windows app.
• 309482 Image file is locked when you set the PictureBox Image property to a file.
• 311323 How to create an indexer property in VB.NET/2005.
• 319714 How to troubleshoot Visual Studio .NET installation.
• 302309 How to read a text file by using System.IO in VB.NET/2005.
• 307967 How to add TreeView drag-and-drop functionality in a VB.NET/2005 app.
• 323088 How to create a smooth ProgressBar in VB.NET/2005.
• 312383 How to remove Visual Studio .NET Beta and Release Candidate versions.
• 315847 How to use ActiveX components in VB.NET/2005.
• 811004 How to implement a managed component that wraps the Browse For Folder common dialog box with VB.NET/2005.
• 811401 How to print the content of a RichTextBox control by using VB.NET/2005.
• 305368 How to wait for a shelled app to finish in VB.NET/2005.
• 308371 How to create and use shared members by using VB.NET/2005.
• 318603 You may receive a "System.Resources.MissingManifestResourceException" error message when you access the .resources file of the form at run time.
• 302656 How to obtain the NetBIOS and DNS computer names in VB.NET/2005.
• 315903 How to manage multilanguage Web Forms solutions in Visual Studio NET/2005.
• 834610 BUG: "System.IO.FileIOException" error message when you run a project that indirectly references the Microsoft.VisualBasic.Compatibility library in Microsoft VB.NET.
• 320583 How to trap keystrokes in .NET controls by using VB.NET/2005.
• 316163 Error messages when you attempt to build a Class Library project in VB.NET/2005.
• 841293 How to pass an array between a VB.NET or VB 2005 app and a Visual C++ .NET or Visual C++ 2005 function.
• 316563 The Image.Save method does not save the file as the selected file type in VB.NET/2005.
• 827046 How to open multiple image files without using the OpenFileDialog class in VB.NET/2005.
• 316422 Roadmap for threading in VB.NET.
• 318003 BUG: Visual Studio .NET Setup fails on AddShareAndPermissions custom action.
• 832680 How to call a subroutine in a Windows Form class from another Windows Form class.
• 315698 How to write to and read from Microsoft Message Queue Server in VB.NET/2005.
• 814564 How to manage event logs by using VB.NET/2005.
• 321296 How to access properties of the current cell in the Datagrid with VB.NET/2005.
• 814732 BUG: Windows Forms Resource Editor can't open inherited forms.
• 811603 How to use the Forward button and the Back button for WebBrowser control in VB.NET or in VB 2005.
• 306969 How to provide file drag-and-drop functionality in a VB.NET/2005 app.
• 841295 You receive a System.Threading.ThreadStateException exception when you try to create an instance of a Windows form.
• 322222 How to make a UserControl object behave as a Design-Time control container with VB.NET/2005.
• 811400 How to support multiple bitmap icons for VB.NET or VB 2005 apps.
• 819349 BUG: You may receive a "Visual Basic internal compiler error" error message when you use the ADDHANDLER statement or the REMOVEHANDLER statement in Visual Studio .NET.
• 814314 BUG: Error at run time after you upgrade a Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 project that uses the ImageList control to Microsoft VB.NET.
• 814320 BUG: "Index was out of range" error message when you access a VB.NET 2002 collection object that implements IList with -1 Base.
• 315472 Error message when you use "Start Without Debugging" mode: "The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect".
• 306394 How to determine when a shelled process ends in VB.NET/2005.
• 321078 A string that you pass to an unmanaged Win32 API in Visual Studio .NET or in Visual Studio 2005 returns empty.
• 327305 BUG: Inconsistent behavior when you bind the Visible property of a Windows Form control to a Boolean field.
• 815252 Form key events are not raised when you type in a DataGrid cell with the KeyPreview property set to true.
• 311331 The behavior of variable declaration changes in VB.NET/2005.
• 834615 You may receive a "TargetInvocationException" error message when you delete the UserControl1 user control from a Windows Service project in a VB.NET or VB 2005 app.
• 818363 How to make the characters uppercase when you enter text in the TextBox with VB.NET.2005.
• 327821 How to fire KeyDown or KeyUp while pressing TAB in a Windows Forms control by using VB.NET or VB 2005.
• 322188 How to use single and multicast delegates in VB.NET or in VB 2005.
• 814321 The Text property of the Masked Edit control does not work at run time in VB.NET or in VB 2005.
• 814734 BUG: Subitems in a ListView control are displayed in incorrect colors and incorrect fonts.
• 814733 BUG: New folder button is visible at run time when the ShowNewFolderButton property is set to false.
• 814316 BUG: The DrawCell event of the vsFlexArray and vsFlexGrid controls in VB6 isn't upgraded to VB.NET or to VB 2005.
• 811402 Microsoft VB.NET or Microsoft VB 2005 parser incorrectly evaluates the data type if the minimum value of the numeric data types is parsed.
• 814358 Compile error when you try to create an instance of System.Drawing.Imaging.PropertyItem.
• 313506 VB.NET or VB 2005 does not support the comImport attribute to manually declare a COM component.
• 814735 Degradation occurs when you try to serialize and deserialize 32-bit icons.
• 316643 BUG: The Resx file is not updated when you remove a control.
• 306720 BUG: VB.NET/2005 code examples overwrite text in console window.
• 810229 BUG: Incorrect events are listed in the Event drop-down list for a TextBox control.
• 327213 BUG: SaveFileDialog object returns "Cancel" whether or not you overwrite an existing file.
• 820655 BUG: "An unexpected error has occurred" error when you use the Convert Wizard in Visual Studio .NET 2003.
• 311333 The lower bound for arrays is always zero in VB.NET.
• 319720 "High encryption mismatch" error message occurs when you try to install Visual Studio .NET.
• 822489 Text of a ListView item is changed when the Text property of the first subitem is set.
• 311337 You receive an "Image Cannot be Converted to Icon" compiler error message after you upgrade a VB6 project to VB.NET or VB 2005.
• 814354 BUG: Node element does not paint after you call the EndUpdate method.
• 814359 BUG: The ShowNetwork property of the PrintDialog cass does not display the Network button.
• 820625 You receive a "System.MissingMemberException" error message while you use an ActiveX Imagelist control.
• 313519 BUG: You receive an "Unexpected error in Microsoft Visual Macros. It is safe to save your work and restart both Visual Studio Macros and Visual Studio" error message and Visual Studio macros fail when you close a modeless Windows form in Visual Studio.
• 814743 The user control array isn't painted on the form after you upgrade your VB6 project.
• 318004 Visual Studio .NET IDE closes unexpectedly when you try to install a printer.
• 326443 BUG: IntelliSense displays namespaces with inaccessible members in VB.NET/2005.
• 820657 You receive an "Overflow" error if you use -9223372036854775808 (Long.MinValue) in VB.NET/2005.
• 814312 Text after the first line is lost when you modify the Multiline property of the RichTextBox control from true to false.
• 814738 BUG: The window style flags that you set when you inherit from the CreateParams property are not applied to the control after you call the Control.SetTopLevel method.
• 316662 How to use ASP.NET validation controls from VB.NET/2005.
• 231619 (SQL) SQLIOStress - updated for SQL 2005.
• 911839 (SQL) How to change the SQL Server 2005 service accounts by using the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Provider for Configuration Management.
• 300488 (SQL) How to run SQL Server stored procedures from an ASP Page.
• 306574 (SQL) How to call SQL Server stored procedures in ASP.NET from VB.NET.

Downloadable

• Microsoft's SDKs.
• Visual Studio 2005 Automation (VSMacros) samples.
• Live Meeting 2005 API Reference - updated version 1.2, published 1/20/06.
• ASP Store Locator sample for MapPoint Web service for VB6 SP5 users. Related: Chris Pendleton's webcast on Building a Store Locator with MapPoint's Web Service and a new Microsoft site for government users.
• iTextSharp, a .NET 1.1 port of iText, a free Java PDF library. Related: Bruno Lowagie and Paulo Soares's iText site.
• (SQL) Ed Barlow's open source Generic Enterprise Manager (GEM) beta.

Browsable

• Marco Bellinaso's ASP.NET 2.0 site.
• DLL Dump. Sounds legit. (Another link from Steve's WP column here.)
• Regional Director Blogs.
• Microsoft Research's Virtual India.
• askSAM's browsable eBooks and eDatabases, including US State of the Union addresses since 1790.
• Visual Studio 2005 Team System TechNotes.
• (SQL) Info about creating Analysis Services 2005 MDX Scripts (in the Business Intelligence Development Studio).

Jargon Alert

• 5S.

Heads Up

• VSLive! 2006, Jan 29 - Feb 2 in SF. (Rocky Lhotka promises public beta release of CSLA .NET 2.0 there.)
• Xplore 2006, Feb 1-5 in Miami Beach.
• SD West 2006, March 13-17, Santa Clara.
• MIX 06, March 20-22 in Las Vegas.

Questions to Ponder

• Marshall McLuhan once observed (rather depressingly, it seems to me) that the successor to politics will be propaganda - "Propaganda not in the sense of a message or ideology, but as the impact of the whole technology of the times." Do you agree? McLuhan also said that "Those who distinguish between education and entertainment don't know the first thing about either." Well, what do you think?
• Food for thought: "There is nothing accidental [then] in the fact that democracy in politics is the twin-brother of scientific thinking..." Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), in Drift and Mastery (1914)

Misc

• SIGKDD Explorations Dec 2005 issue: Link Mining.
• Wikipedia's Tower of Hanoi page.
• Beginner's Guide to Mathematica download files.
• A different kind of Boston tea party.
• (SQL) Interesting interview with Kirk Haselden about SSIS.
• Jan 12 Dilbert about a new employee who'd never been "cubicled."

22 January 2006

Readable/Watchable

• As always, start here. Then check out gotdotnet.com's user samples. And read the VB team blog postings.
• As part of the SQL 2005/VS 2005 launch, Microsoft's Roger Wolter wrote a great 11-page article on SQL Server 2005 Express Edition User Instances where he provides excellent advice aimed at Visual Studio developers.
• In the February 2006 issue of MSDN Magazine, Scott Swigart discusses the his "Paste As Visual Basic" add-in for Visual Studio 2005 that converts C# to VB. As Scott explains, it's really an interface to existing Web-based code converters (Kamal Patel's C# to Visual Basic code converter Web service at ConvertCSharp2VB, and Carlos Aguilar Mares's AJAX-powered code converter at CodeTranslator), but Scott's integrating solution provides and elegant form-based interface and also shows you how to create add-ins. Very cool.
• Fritz Onion has written an interesting Extreme ASP.NET column in the January issue of MSDN Magazine about subtle changes in the codebehind model in ASP.NET 2.0. Here's an excerpt: "There are two differences between this model and the previous 1.x model-the introduction of the CodeFile attribute in the @ Page directive and the declaration of the codebehind class as a partial class."
• PDC presentation on developing managed code snap-ins for MMC 3.0.

Selected KB articles

• 317113 How To Automate Microsoft Access From VB.NET.
• 304427 How to do basic file I/O in VB 2005 or in VB.NET.
• 303016 How to use a DataSet with the Office XP Chart Component and ASP.NET.
• 302814 HOW TO: Handle Events for Excel by Using VB.NET.
• 317297 Roadmap for debugging hangs, memory leaks, deadlocks, and race conditions in VB.NET and in VB 2005.
• 315698 How to write to and read from Microsoft Message Queue Server in VB 2005 or in VB.NET.
• 301112 How to marshal an object to a remote server by reference with VB 2005 or VB.NET.
• 314188 How to search for the URI property of a sender's e-mail submission and to send an e-mail message by using this property in VB.NET.
• 312358 How to implement key-based dependencies for data caching in ASP.NET by using VB.NET.
• 316719 How to set focus to Web Form controls by using client-side script.
• 817248 How to call a VB.NET assembly from VB6.
• 319342 How To Handle Events for the Office XP Spreadsheet Component on a Windows Form in VB.NET.
• 313640 How to bind an ArrayList or Collection of objects to a Windows Form with VB 2005 or VB.NET.
• 821769 How to call the EnumJobs function from a VB.NET app.

Downloadable

• Windows Workflow Foundation 1.2 for Visual Studio 2005.
• Windows Workflow Foundation 1.2 for Office 12.
• Nmap 3.95.
• Source Insight code editor/browser.
• Pable Castro's code from his DAT408 PDC session, ADO.NET 2.0: Advanced Data Access Patterns.
• VSTO stuff here and here.
• (SQL) Bob Beauchemin has posted a page proof version of the 56-page sample Chapter 4 (In-Process Data Access) from his and Dan Sullivan's forthcoming book, SQL Server 2005 Developer's Guide. Unfortunately, you'll have to download (20 MB) and install the new Adobe 7.0 Reader in order to read it.

Browsable

• Google Labs.
• SQL Express Team blog.
• SQL podcasts: here and here.

Heads Up

• 2006 Semantic Technology Conference, Mar 6-9 in San Jose. Free 55-page white paper on the topic.
• GDC 2006, Mar 20-24 in San Jose.

Questions to Ponder

• I went on a tour of the Reagan Library recently, and various displays featuring all the US presidents reminded me how I'd had to learn their names in order. That led me to think of other things I'd had to memorize as a kid. Think back on your own school days: what can *you* remember memorizing - and how good is your memory?
• When was the last time you held a shell to your ear?
• Today's young kids don't seem to have the same opportunities to get neighborhood jobs as they used to - paper routes, weeding, mowing lawns, babysitting, and so on. (They also don't seem to be getting as much homework). Does this worry you?
• Did you ever consider joining the Peace Corps? Why or why not? If it had been an option to a mandatory year of military service, would you have opted for it in favor of military service or work in US inner cities?

Misc

• The Economist Style Guide.
• Surveillance in the UK. In his 1/15/06 Cryptogram, Bruce Schneier comments on "advances" in street surveillance and provides these links for more on the recent developments and trends: 1) Britain will be first country to monitor every car journey, 2) Surveillance UK: why this revolution is only the start, 3) Bigger Brother, and 4) City Cops' Plate Scanner is a License to Snoop.
• Wolf Foundation and Krill Prize awards.
• Cartoons I've enjoyed recently: 1) One winter clad employee to another, entering office: "I won't be in tomorrow. I'm taking a personal snow day." 2) ACLU receptionist answering phone: "ACLU...and maybe the NSA or FBI."
• Pretty funny: 1) David Owen's "Your Three Wishes: FAQ" in the 1/16/06 New Yorker. FAQs include ones about expiration dates, upper limits on wishes, etc. 2) "After age 70, it's patch, patch, patch." Jimmy Stewart
• Online version of Stars and Stripes, longtime newspaper for US military troops.
• Numbers and locations of active duty US troops as of 3/05.
• Good free listens! The LibriVox Catalog. Related: Bringing You Books on Podcast.

15 January 2006

Readable/Watchable

• As always, start here. Then check out gotdotnet.com's user samples. And read the VB team blog postings.
• Matt Gibbs' article on encrypting ViewState in ASP.NET 2.0.
• Richard Newcombe and John Mueller have each written recent articles on using voice with VB. You can read Richard's (VB and Voice Recognition, which focuses on Microsoft's Speech SDK) and John's (Building Speech-Enabled Apps with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8).
• Info about various Platform SDK tools such as Where and Rebase here and here.
• Microsoft's Shared Computer Toolkit for Windows XP Handbook. (Shared computers = public access computers, Internet kiosks, lab computers, and instructional computers).
• Current FOCUS issue of CoDe Magazine features development for Tablet PCs and Windows Mobile PCs.
• IBM developerWorks tutorial written by Scott Kellicker on Eclipse for Visual Studio developers. Free registration required for the PDF, HTML, or ZIP format download. Related: the DB2 add-in for VS 2005.
• Maria Salzberger's 11/05 JavaPro feature on troubleshooting JDBC.
• (SQL) Karen's updated list of sample chapters about SQL Server 2005.
• (SQL) Good introductory article (Part 1) by Don Schlicting on installing and configuring SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services. Related: more articles by Don, notably a series on SQL Server's locking and transactions.
• (SQL) Books Online entry on troubleshooting insufficient disk space in tempdb.

Selected KB articles

• 841870 MS04-017: Vulnerability in Crystal Reports Web viewer re-distributed with Visual Studio .NET could allow information disclosure and denial of service.
• 842689 MS04-017: Vulnerability in Crystal Reports Web viewer could permit information disclosure and denial of service.
• 841924 You cannot have the Remote TSP and a telephony server enabled on the same computer.
• 904795 How to access serial ports by using Visual Basic 2005.
• 555551 HOWTO: Detect if Visual Studio .NET is installed in a Visual Studio Setup package for an add-in.
• 910389 How to troubleshoot the following message in Windows XP: "A network cable is unplugged."
• 906485 How to enable verbose logging on a Windows XP-based computer.
• 841927 Do not use high level languages, libraries, frameworks, virtual machines or runtimes in core operating system processes.
• 826531 List of some programming resources for VB programming in Office 2003.
• 300929 How To Apply an XSL Transformation from an XML Document to an XML Document with VB.NET.
• 303294 How To Use Automation to Get and to Set Office Document Properties with VB.NET.
• 312358 How to implement key-based dependencies for data caching in ASP.NET with VB.NET.
• 839293 BUG: IntelliSense feature stops functioning when you switch from Designer view to Code view.
• 901104 FIX: You receive incorrect results when you compare a NaN value to an integer value in VBScript in IE6.
• 908018 (SQL) How to create a package template in SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio.

Downloadable

• Monad Beta3. x86 code. Docs. As Arul Kumaravel says in his post, Monad Beta3 is feature complete and "contains support for our new snapin model which allows cmdlets to be developed and distributed easily." The scripting shell is expected to ship initially with Exchange 12.
• Microsoft Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) SDK. Additional info here and here, and there's an online virtual lab.
• Patterns & Practices Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT). Related: Dan Cazzulino's HOL for GAT and other downloads.
• Tremapper with Excel add-in.

Browsable

• Randy Franklin Smith's excellent site with articles about Windows security issues. You can look at the article topics by category or date, and you can also register for his free newsletter.
• Get weather maps, forecasts, etc. on your mobile device.
• Craig Skibo's blog.
• XML.gov.
• MSR's social computing team site, with a blogroll that's interesting and useful in itself.
• My SQLblog entry on downloadable chapters from books on SQL Server 2005.

Heads Up

• NASA's comet hunter, Stardust, returned to Earth successfully on Sunday at 5:10 a.m. EST.
• Microsoft Research India ("Scientia") was formally inaugurated Jan. 12, 2005, as Microsoft's third basic research facility established outside the US (the others are in Cambridge, England and in Beijing, China). Scientia is located in Bangalore, and you can read a backgrounder about its mission. You can also download slides from TechVista 2005 inaugural conference and read about TechVista 2006.

Jargon Alert

• LUA. Least-privileged User account. Reportedly in pre-alpha: "LUA Buglight," that will find code bugs that impact compatibility for non-admin users.
• GINA - Graphical Identification and Authentication, a component that serves as the gateway for interactive logons. It's the pluggable part of WinLogon that third parties may replace in order to customize the functionality or the UI of the logon experience in Windows. Keith Brown's two part article on customizing GINA here and here.
• ERA - No, not the Equal Rights Amendment, but the US National Archives' Electronic Record Archives, which will be created by Lockheed Martin under a six-year $308M contract awarded last September. Press release and info here and here.
• SPAWAR - US Space and Navel Warfare Systems Command.
• GMO - genetically modified organisms, which may include plants. Here and here.

Questions to Ponder

• What single item that you've lost, given away, thrown out, or otherwise don't have, do you wish you could have again?
• Imagine that time travel is possible for you as an observer (let's keep things simple by assuming you can't change events). Would you travel forward or backward in time?
• Do you ever envy the job security enjoyed by previous generations of Americans who often counted on "lifetime employment" with a single company? Or would you have found it boring?
• Do you consider yourself more materialistic or less materialistic than your parents? More or less racist (or otherwise bigoted)? More or less religious/spiritual?
• How do you reply to the Biblical question, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

Misc

• Who knew? According to GlobalSecurity.org, four nations have more than a million active duty troops. Can you list them in order? They're China (2.25M), USA, (1.625M), India (1.325M), and N. Korea (1.075M).
• Cartoons I've enjoyed recently: 1) People in gift return line. One holds a grocery bag of cash labeled "From Jack Abramoff." 2) Cartoon title shows line through "Never" in "An Elephant Never Forgets" ("Never" replaced with "Sometimes"). One elephant, reading a newspaper headline "Abramhoff Sings," says, "Jack *who*?" Another says, "We don't know jack." Another adds, "We don't know jack about Jack." 3) Chaotic scene identified as "Iraqi Democracy ca. 2006." The caption: "Intelligent design or Darwinian survival of the fittest?" 4) Receptionist to visitor: "You can see him now. His medication just kicked in." 5) Alioto with red halo, blue devil horns.
• The 10 official US federal holidays for 2006.
• Cultural anthropologist Mizuko Ito's site will be of interest to anyone who's interested in how children interact with digital media. I found Mizuko's 2004 paper on childhood imaginations particularly thought-provoking.
• Sean Kaye's blog entry about the origin of Google's oft-cited motto, "Do no evil."
• Many of the American Museum of Natural History's publications are now available online as pdf files.
• iSpecies.org's species search engine.
• Archive of solar cooker plans and docs.
• ISAAA's 2005 report on biotech/GM crops. Among other findings, it reports that "> 1/3rd US agricultural acreage is planted with biotech crops. Related: Washington Post article.
• Update on time invariance of certain basic physical constants.
• Mark Twain's short story, War Prayer, written in 1905.
• Luke Chung's updated article on the evolution (or should that be intelligent design?) of Access databases. (Thanks to vb123's Garry Robinson for the link in).
• Interesting article on Wal-Mart in China. Walmart reinvents self in China.
• Great New Yorker feature by Laura Miller about Philip Pullman's Lyra trilogy. Related.
• Ubiquity interview with Ray Kurzweil.
• The Edge's annual World Question issue. This year's question: "What is Your Dangerous Idea?"
• Lester Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute, MacArthur Fellow, and author, most recently of "Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble," was a guest during Hour 1 of Science Friday. You can download Brown's book by chapters.
• Update on planetary rings (in case your kids ask). Saturn has 15 named rings, Uranus has 13, there are three Jovian rings, and Neptune has nine.
• US Presidents who owned slaves.

7 January 2006

Readable/Watchable

• As always, start here. Then check out gotdotnet.com's user samples. And read the VB team blog postings.
• Another great article by Juval Lowy on volatile resource managers in .NET.
• Replay of Susan Wisowaty's 1/5/06 MSDN Webcast on the My Namespace.
• Dino Esposito's excellent 21-page white paper, A Crash Course on ASP.NET Control Development: Building Data-Bound Controls. Both VB and C# versions of sample code also available. See also his Dec 2005 MSDN Magazine column on data views.
• Bill Sempf's 13-pager on moving your "legacy" hardware code to VB 2005.
• Brad McCabe's article on application maintenance with VB 2005.
• Rick Strahl's six-page article on a "low level" look at ASP.NET's architecture. Related: a good article on caching Oracle data for ASP.NET apps.
• Aaron Skonnard's MSDN Magazine article on Windows Communication Foundation, WCF alias Indigo.
• Creating your own trace listeners in .NET.
• (SQL) Corey Bunch's Intro to Database Mail in SQL 2005. (Note that it's not supported in the Express Edition).
• (SQL) Good introductory article (Part 1) by Don Schlicting on installing and configuring SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services aka SSRS. Related: more articles by Don, notably a series on SQL Server's locking and transactions.
• (SQL) Returning ranked results from SQL Server 2005.

Selected KB articles

• 321718 How to call Oracle stored procedures in VB.NET with the Microsoft Oracle Managed Provider.
• 305079 How to create a SQL Server database programmatically with ADO.NET and VB.NET.
• 308075 How to use Data Link files with the OleDbConnection object in VB.NET.
• 309018 How To Store Data in Application Scope with ASP.NET and VB.NET.
• 305199 How to automate Visio with VB.NET.
• 307292 How To: Dismiss a Dialog Box Displayed by an Office App with VB.NET.
• 308516 How To Control Page Output Caching in ASP.NET with VB.NET.
• 307224 How to use XML in connected and disconnected ADO.NET apps.
• 814900 Setting the Authentication tag to Windows does not enable Windows authentication for a Web app.
• 912426 How to detect the status of the SQL Server Express service or start the SQL Server Express service by using Visual Basic or Visual C#.

Downloadable

• Composite UI Application Block in VB.NET (and .NET Framework 2.0). Related: Overview of CAB and EdJez's blog.
• OpenOffice 2.0 - which now includes a Java-based database engine (HSQL) that stores data as XML.

Browsable

• Good collection of .NET Compact Framewok FAQs (maintained by Stuart Celarier). These replace an older list that's still available.
• Win32 samples.
• Nikhil Kothari's blog on Atlas. Good starting point.
• Henry Blodget's Internet Outsider site about Internet business. Blodget is also president of Cherry Hill Research.

Heads Up

• National Engineers Week (hope springs eternal, eh?). Feb. 19-25. Here and here. Related: This.

Jargon Alert

• Aperi. IBM-led standards effort related to storage management.
• WIHA (pronounced "wee-haw"). Walk-in hunting access. Related: A fascinating feature by Christina Larson about the future of hunting in the US.
• COP/MOP. Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the first Meeting of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. Refers to the carbon credits market.

Questions to Ponder

• You're offered a free face lift, presumably in exchange for use of before and after pictures in the doctor's advertising. Would you accept the offer?
• Do you think people who are suffering from terminal diseases should be able to offer themselves to science as human guinea pigs? Would you be willing to?
• A teenager - perhaps your own - asks you to define "nature." How do you reply? What if someone asks what the soul is?
• Ray Kurzweil (and presumably many others) thinks that pattern processing is the key to human intelligence. Do you agree?

Misc

• CryptoKids.
• NPR's 5-minute audio segments on 1) Year in Science and 2) the Biggest Tech Blunders.
• Ira Flatow's 12/30/05 Science Friday segment with Oliver Sacks on Sacks' new book about memory and music.
• Fly fishing site (I just watched a classic LLBean video on fly fishing that I'd checked out of the library.)
• Cartoons I've enjoyed recently: 1) Scene shows man hugging woman. Caption: Fleece wife. 2) Woman to husband in recliner in front of TV: "Torture others like you'd like to be tortured yourself. Isn't that a no-brainer?" 3) The scene: Father and son overlooking snowy mountain landscape. Father says, "Years ago, your grandfather took me to this spot for my first spinal injury." 4) Four panel cartoon entitled "Why we spy on Americans instead." Panel captions, appropriately illustrated: "They're easier to track down," "They speak English," "They eat normal food (except in California)," and "They're so deep under cover they don't know they have something to hide." 5) Man to single reporter in large, otherwise empty newsroom, "How's that piece on the booming economy coming along?"
• Good 1/9/06 BW cover story on Intel.
• Fascinating investigative report story in the same issue of BW about how online payments are used by cybercrooks and terrorists. Related (hopefully not too closely) - info on China's YeePay, a major competitor of PayPal.
• Microsoft and document and asset management firm Open Text announce partnership that will weave Open Text's Artesia solution into Microsoft's Office 12, SQL Server, and Sharepoint product lines. Related.
• DIY: Read how Nintendo's Game Boy can be hacked to create original music.
• Info about quantum dots.
• Census for marine life on seamounts. A relatively new endeavor focusing on the world's estimated 100,000 seamounts.