home links tools blog about
home

« January 2006 | Main | March 2006 »

February 24, 2006

Wohoo!!!

Wohoooo!

www.origamiproject.com

(via neowin.com)

(Please let them look like this. (Have I mentioned lately that I HATE PPC. Imagine a cute little machine running windows or windows embedded (or possibly vista)...)

Posted on February 24, 2006 | | Comments (1)

February 23, 2006

The Live Train Wreck?

So, it looks like Microsoft Watch (Mary Jo Foley) picked up on same things that drove my fear of Live being the next .NET marketing fiasco.

Since MW has published this, hopefully somebody at MS will spot this (since MS big-wigs don't subscribe to my blog)... and divert the train wreck by switching some of the train cars onto different tracks.

(But hey, in all seriousness, Office will be Office 2007, not Office Live, so phewwww... (on that one))

Posted on February 23, 2006 | | Comments (0)

February 22, 2006

Valuable Resource

If you live in the US, here's a valuable tool to help you map local sex offenders:

http://www12.familywatchdog.us/

It will show home and work addresses where possible. (Make sure to check the non-mappable offenders in your area as well as well as recent moves.)

Posted on February 22, 2006 | | Comments (0)

Coding4Fun: XSL Transform Tool

My latest Xml4Fun article is up on the Coding4Fun site at MSDN. (I didn't even know it was up until I got email about applying the tab-formatting to Rich TextBoxes..)

Anywho... I'll probably be extending the functionality on that little piglet here in a while (to do block tabbing - i.e. grab an entire block of text and tab or shift-tab it to align it). If I do, I'll post the source and binaries on my site.

Posted on February 22, 2006 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 21, 2006

SQL Server 2005 Fixes the WITH NOCHECK scripting Bug

Details about the fix are covered in a recent post on my RepeatableRead blog.  (And I'm going to try to make the writes repeatable as well <g>.)

Posted on February 21, 2006 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 20, 2006

SQL Express Tip

So, if you're like me, you don't want SQL Express running on your workstation. It's not that you don't like it - just that with SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 already running, there's no need for an extra bit of disk/cpu/etc to be gobbled up by an additional instance of SQL Server. (And yeah, I'm too lazy to start/stop it as needed... )

But, if you do dev, you'll frequently find that having SQL Express installed is nice - such as when running samples from MS, or just throwing up quick and dirty webs/etc.

So, why not just lie?

Start > All Progs > SQL Server 2005 > SQL Server Configuration Manager.
Right click the SQL Native Client Configuration > Aliases node, and add a new Alias.
Alias Name: .\SQLEXPRESS
Port No/Protocol: (as you wish, i.e. 1433 and TCP/IP, etc)
Server: .

In other words, just create a new alias to your already installed SQL Server 2005 - and let it handle requests normally directed to an installation of SQL Server Express.

Posted on February 20, 2006 | | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

February 17, 2006

Mikeey Likes it!!!

Boy. Time will NOT pass quickly enough for this piglet.

I was HOPING she would do this, and she has.  (Inside SQL Server 2000 is the BEST SQL Server Book I've ever read.)

Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: The Storage Engine

I'm GIDDY.  Now I won't be able to sleep for 7 months.

Posted on February 17, 2006 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

HP 3210 All in One Printer

Boy, nothing like using the PUSH method for software updates.

Spooky_update

In other words... I started the update process, my local client hit the HP servers, and instead of pulling down the needed update it appears that the remote servers attempted to push the software back down to me (at the very least they attempted to open a socket to me). That's just nuts.

And pretty much sums up the printer: crap software. The printer itself: phenomenal. Prints insanely fast, does astounding photo-quality prints, scans, prints, copies, slices, dices, has less calories, and tastes great - you name, it's got it. Only the software sucks, is sluggish, and offers a bazillion options - 99% of them which aren't needed. Honestly, looking at the software, I'd be pretty comfortable stating that I'm pretty sure that Dilbert works at HP - in the printer software dept.

UPDATE: Looking at that screen cap it looks like it's just some FTP 'goodness' going on (still, that should sum up my overall feeling of ancient-ware about the drivers and such - FTP is 20 years old at this point...).

Posted on February 17, 2006 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

The RIAA wants to tax your computer/ipod

Bahahahaha. Wooooweeee. Oh, my sides. Now that's funny.

Proof positive that the RIAA is the biggest collection of pussy cry-babies on the planet:

US record-label body the RIAA and movie-industry moguls at the MPAA are attempting to argue that copying a CD to a computer for carrying on an iPod does not, and has never, constituted fair use.

A report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation says 14 organisations, including the two mentioned, have submitted a filing as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's regular review process of exemptions to provisions against tampering with technological protection measures.

This means that, in essence, all rights to copy anything are held by the copyright owner. Those rights can be sold or assigned, which is why a record label can reproduce and distribute a given musician's songs. Since copyright holders haven't granted specific permission to make a copy of a song, you aren't allowed to, by the letter of the law.

(From MacWorld - via Neowin.com)
Is that so? Quaint.

Actually, it's just greed - pure and simple. Want to guess where they're going with this? Yup, they've seen all the dough that Apple is taking in with the iPod - and now they're going to try and muscle in on it - maybe try to force Apple to license iPods with the RIAA (since we all know that people will BREAK THE LAW using them to *gasp* copy their own CDs to the devices to *gasp* listen to them). If Apple tries to play hard to get? The RIAA can just refuse to renew their contracts for providing downloads? (though I'm not sure they'd do that). But if Apple some how agreed to this, you can bet that Dell, Sony, HP, Gateway, etc would then all be on the radar, and we'd all be paying extra fees to 'license' the abililty to copy our CDs to our music players/computers.

Honestly, America has gotten to the point that success just makes you a target for corrupt SOBs with lawyers. And hey, speaking of corrupt SOBs with lawyers, doesn't that just 100% describe the RIAA?

Posted on February 17, 2006 | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

February 16, 2006

CF Framework Rant

System.Environment.Newline.

It's a spiffy little member of the environment class to help keep your code more agnostic in the following ways:
1) Rather than adding \n in C#, or vbCrLf in VB.NET, you just do Environment.Newline and get the same functionality (in a windows environment).
2) If you were in Mono, or your .NET code was somehow running on a Mac or Unix box, etc. CR + LF wouldn't be the same thing, so Environment.Newline is your friend - using the appropriate newline functionality for ... *drumroll*... your environment.

Only, I've become very habituated to using that construct/idiom. Now I'm chugging away in a CF app, and System.Newline doesn't exist.

Grrr.

Posted on February 16, 2006 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Next »