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February 29, 2004

.NET Remoting VS ASP.NET Web Services

Here is an excellent article on MSDN that came out in September '02, it compares .NET Remoting VS ASP.NET Web Services. The quote that interested me was: ".NET Remoting is more versatile and extensible in terms of enabling communication between objects using different transport protocols and serialization formats. TCP, HTTP, and custom protocols are supported as are Binary, SOAP, and custom formats...", yet in Longhorn, the next release of the .NET framework, we are encouraged to use Web Services over .NET Remoting. Go figure. [0] REF: Building Distributed Applications with Microsoft .NET

Posted by 0xFF3300 at 04:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 25, 2004

Mono Team Meeting, March 5-6 in Cambridge Mass

On March 5th-6th (Friday and Saturday) there will be an
open-house meeting for people interested in Mono to get
together with the Mono developers at the Novell offices in
in Cambridge Massachusetts:

http://www.ximian.com/about_us/contact

The whole Novell Mono team will be here (Atsushi Enomoto, Dick
Porter, Duncan Mak, Erik Dasque, Gonzalo Paniagua, Jackson
Harper, Jordi Mas, Lluis Sanches, Manjula, Martin Baulig,
Miguel de Icaza, Mike Kestner, Paolo Molaro, Peter Bartok,
Sebastien Pouliot, Sachin Kumar) and hopefully Joe Shaw, Nat
Friedman, Peter Williams and Ravi Pratap will be joining us as
well.

Todd Berman from Mono Develop will also be coming.

Posted by 0xFF3300 at 05:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 24, 2004

Free UML Design Tools for .NET

I was browsing for some free UML tools that can actually do .NET, here is what I came up with:

VP-UML (Visual Paradigm for UML Community Edition) pretty decent tool with great VS.NET integration. Being as it's free, I would say hands down, this is the one of the best .NET UML design tools out there.

RE.NET is a reverse engineering utility that builds a UML representation of the classes in any .NET assembly, including third-party assemblies and COM wrappers for which the source code is not available.

ArgoUML doesn't do .NET, as it's geared toward Java developers, but will do great for downright quick design, great user interface, you'll need the Java Runtime 1.2 or higher.

Dia is good, but rather basic. It kind of works like Visio, which I am not a fan of. It's target at gtk+ Linux users, and I don't believe there are any plans to run it on windows.

Posted by 0xFF3300 at 01:25 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 19, 2004

machine.config W2k Security Issue

I had a recent problem with reading the custom setting section from machine.config. It turned out to be a security issue. The user the application is running as, should be allowed to 'Act as part of the operating system' or you may set the appropriate read access to the user to read machine.config.

Posted by 0xFF3300 at 11:49 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 17, 2004

.NET User Interface Components

I was looking for some .NET UI components/libraries to use in a new app I've been developing, as the .NET framework comes with barely enought to get by. Although I wouldn't call my new application a 'killer app' by any means, but it could certainly use some help in the GUI area. It's funny most of them have an implementation of VS.NET or an Outlook example. Here is what I have so far:

* http://www.dotnetmagic.com/
* http://www.componentsource.com/


Posted by 0xFF3300 at 10:55 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 16, 2004

MSBuild = Ant?

Back in October, 2003 Steve Loughran had posted his first-glance thoughts on MSBuild. Although mostly critical, he has made some very valid points and observations. It looks like this new tool is a bit more limiting than Ant or Nant. Microsoft has done nothing illegal (or have they?) being that Ant is open source, but where does that put the Ant/Nant development community?

[0] This is where you will find the docs on MSBuild from the PDC.

Posted by 0xFF3300 at 01:06 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Auto Logon to Windows XP

You can configure Windows XP to automate the logon process if your computer is not part of a domain.

1. Click Start, click Run, and type control userpasswords2.
2. Clear the Users must enter a username and password to use this computer check box.
3. Click Apply.
4. Enter the user name and password you wish to automatically log on with, and then click OK.
5. Click OK again and you're all done.
This feature allows other users to start your computer and use the account that you establish to automatically log on. Enabling auto logon makes your computer more convenient to use, but can pose a security risk.

Posted by 0xFF3300 at 12:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 13, 2004

Visual SourceSafe Frequently Asked Questions

MichaelIs.Net has put together one of the most comprehensive FAQs for Microsoft Visual Source Safe yet. I came across it while searching for a fix to corrupted VSS file, as this is commonplace with VSS. Since my company insists on using VSS for reasons that are confidential, it looks like we will be sticking with it for the time being. View the VSS FAQ here.

Posted by 0xFF3300 at 08:15 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

February 08, 2004

Bacula: Cross-Platform Client-Server Backups

When looking for a decent backup solution for my FreeBSD server I came across Bacula: Cross-Platform Client-Server Backups by Dan Langille -- Bacula may not be the first name that comes to mind when you think of open source backup software. Dan Langille claims it's effective and useful, despite the odd name. He describes configuration and usage across multiple platforms and hardwares.

Posted by 0xFF3300 at 07:09 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

NVelocity the .NET Port of Velocity

As I may have mentioned earlier Velocity is hands down one of my favorite MVC framework tools. It allows logic to be executed within a Web page, by it's own scripting language known as Velocity Template Language (VTL). To truly understand the power of this concept is to divide the work into roles, it allows Web Designers to easily work with component developers due to the very straightforward VTL. The language is simple but for a reason, the things you can do in a web page SHOULD be limited. It practically forces component development. Recently, I have played around with NVelocity, the .NET port of Velocity and have found it to be excellent.

Posted by 0xFF3300 at 05:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 04, 2004

Build.Net: Getting it Together

It's been a long time coming, as I've decided to get my release together for Build.Net. This all started when I began using Nant, mainly the SolutionTask and found that the task barely works for large heterogenous builds. Previous to Nant, I had used make, nmake, various home-grown batch files and the awesome Ant. So I decided to create my own build tool; nothing fancy, just something that can take a list or directory of Visual Studio project files and create an automated build. Where my tool differs greatly form the SolutionTask is that is treats each independent .*proj file as it's own build, and emits and dependent binaries that are needed for the build, then it creates a nice little csc command line and outputs the appropriate binary. Since I do like Nant auotmating things (just not building) I have also made a Nant task to support it's use.

Posted by 0xFF3300 at 10:33 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Movable Poster

Ok, a while back I said I was looking for a remote pusblishing tool for MT, well
this one kicks butt.

Posted by 0xFF3300 at 08:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Aggie : news aggregator

I was browsing the web for a .NET news aggregator and I cam across
Aggie. Looks promising enough, I'll let you know how it goes.

Posted by 0xFF3300 at 08:14 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

February 01, 2004

Installing MIMEDefang from FreeBSD Ports

MIMEDefang is a milter ("mail filter") that can be used with sendmail to filter incoming e-mail during the SMTP conversation. It's installation and configuration are well documented at the MIMEDefang web site(http://www.mimedefang.org/), and includes a very helpful HOWTO. This document consists primarily of notes and observations from installing MIMEDefang on FreeBSD.

Notes on Installing MIMEDefang from the FreeBSD Ports Collection

Posted by 0xFF3300 at 07:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

SpamAssassin + sendmail

With Sendmail, Spamassassin can be called for every user by editing /etc/procmailrc . More details at http://www.stearns.org/doc/spamassassin-setup.current.html#sitewide
An alternative is to use the smtp-vilter high-performance content filter using the sendmail milter API which has a backend for Spamassassins spamd. More details at http://www.etc.msys.ch/software/smtp-vilter/

IntegratedInMta - SpamAssassin Wiki

Posted by 0xFF3300 at 07:15 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack