I took the absolutely last possible time slot to take the Security Beta Exam (vb 70-330, c# 70-430)
I just wanted to point out (and say thanks!) Jason Row’s compilation of info for this test. Most of the official materials won’t be out for quite some time.
Good little lesson in security and deployment over here at Early & Adopter
I just had my first call from a friend who got the Sasser Virus. The sad thing is that she works in a company where there are i.t. people responsible for ensuring that she is safe.
An important thing to stress with clients/friends/my parents (aiming here at people who are not computer professionals) is that as soon as Microsoft announces and releases out a windows patch, the virus writers are quickly behind them to get all of the people who did not update windows (what’s your guess? – mine is 90% of windows users).
I happen to use Symantec Norton AntiVirus and use their SPARC website as my first place to look for help. Here they already have removal tools, etc.
It seems that a bunch of developers have finally cracked under the pressure of too much information on the future stuff and just not enough focus on the current technology that most developers are working in (referring to .NET 1.1, there).
I definitely understand.
Take a look at Greg Robinson‘s post and the comments in there as well as Brady Gaster’s. Rob Chartier is wondering the same thing as I. There are probably more I haven’t seen yet.
I was asked (not trying to beat a dead horse hear on my recent DevSource interview so I’m just NOT going to link to it…but if you read it you would know this question…) what my exposure to developers in my user group was teaching me about developers that Microsoft might not know.
My response was, based on what I see in Vermont.NET, that most developers really aren’t interested in the upcoming technologies. They want to learn what they can use now. I did try to point out that I don’t think Microsoft is unware of this, considering DevDays was mostly about 1.1 and the ASP.NET RoadShow was, also. And just to mention a few others: Microsoft just began releasing a series of 101 demo videos on VB.NET (and it looks like all 1.1); MSDN VS.NET Developer center just put 1 of 3 planned chapters from a new book on VS.NET2003 (from Brian Johnson’s blog).
But it isn’t Microsoft that Greg and Brady (and others) are pointing the finger at so much in regards to the onslaught of future “moving target” technologies. It is the tech magazine publications.
I think in the blogging community there is a very high concentration of people out on the bleeding edge and if Microsoft or the publishers are using this as their gauge of “what developers are thinking and what they want…” then that is probably a big mistake. I [personally] think the folks who are more interested in .NET 2.0 or Longhorn than in 1.1 are a very small percentage of developers.
Late last year, I finally began tackling WSE and then followed that up with some (now postponed boo hoo) very excited digging into WSE2.
During that time I had read a very useful article on WSE by Jeannine Hall Gailey and heard from her that she had a WSE2 book coming out.
The insatiable programming book reader, Jason Salas, has just read, really liked and reviewed the book. Here’s his review.
WSE2 is still in technical preview mode, but if you haven’t gotten your feet wet with it yet, better hurry up! Here is a slew of MSDN articles.
Hannes Preishuber (who I met at the summit. Hi, Hannes!) learns something very scary about TSQL.
Here are some great reasons to protect yourself from SQL Injection through things like validation (Hannes points out that a typical search for quotes won’t help in this case), using stored procedures and using least priveleged accounts for your webdatabase
Shutdown – Shuts Down SQL Server
Revoke – Revokes user permissions
Grant – Give yourself any permission you want
Drop Table /Index/Rule/Procedure Etc.
Drop Database – ouch!
Loren Heiny, who is a developer first and a tablet pc (MVP and) expert second (that ranking is my own personal opinion), (and even an author) — spent some time using his new Toshiba M200 as a development machine to answer the question many developers have asked – “but can I use a tablet as my development box?”
I can tell you that as much as I LOVE LOVE LOVE my little Acer C110, that would be impossible with the tiny little screen and the tiny little resolution. There is, however, a chance of an M200 in my near future, but I wish I could keep my Acer for travelling (when I don’t have to do any programming).
However, Loren was surprised that his experiment resulted in him wanting to use the tablet full time as his dev box. His post discusses the many pros and cons, keyboarding, inking, landscape, portrait, etc…. click here for the details!!!
[BTW – he says he is using Visual Studio and I wanted to point out that it is, of course, VS.NET, oh unless he’s talking about Visual Studio 2005 Technical Developer mid-March Preview or whatever that really long name that seems to include every word in the dictionary except for .NET]
Oh no! Someone “leaked” the decks from the MDC talks on developing applications for TabletPC with the TabletPCSDK. This is terrible. Now anyone will be able to write tabletpc applications! So please, don’t show anyone these links!
Found by way of whatisnew.com and tabulapc, too. Naughty leakers… (and just in time for me to prepare my DevTeach presentation….heh)
”Visual Basic at the Movies” A ton (101 I think) of videos by 3Leaf (that’s these guys btw – oh but they have a new blog now, thanks Robert!) and the whole kitten caboodle is presented like an advertising campaign for a series 50’s (40’s?) B-movies. If it weren’t 10 pm and I didn’t still have a few hours of work to do, I would be checking them out right now! Found via Duncan MacKenzie.
From the info on the page, some of these look like it’s to continue to help VB6 developers who haven’t made the leap to .NET yet, since they are giving away a free copy of vb.net if you view and rate five of the videos.
I love reading posts like this from Sam Gentile. (Though I am timid about writing about them, as I’m always worried I’m gonna get something wrong! 🙂 ) But these posts are where you can really see his expertise through the experience he has had in drilling into very complex and detailed areas. I think my “vast” [read sarcasm there] experience with COM Interop is not much more than managing a bunch of dynamically called activex controls and maybe a bitmap here and there. Nothing that creates the real issues of dealing with COM resources in a managed environment. For the “lay” .NET developer (as in layman, layperson), the GC is something to just let it do it’s thing. My guess is your average VB6 –> .NET developer is not that aware of the GC much less worried about the types of issues that Sam points out. (And hopefully they aren’t working on anything where NOT knowing is a big detriment to anyone.) Then there are probably the C++ –> .NET developers that are working on the type of projects where, truly, the GC is able to handle everything, but they just can’t let go of that nagging feeling that they must hand code every release of objects and memory. But on the large scale .NET apps that are growing out of large scale COM apps, this is definitely not a light weight issue.
I’ve played with the new GC Memory Pressure functions in whidbey/vs2005 and wondered if they would be enough for people doing the types of projects that Sam is working on or satifsfying enough for people with the level of knowledge that he has. It was interesting for me, then to see that Sam says that yes, it is a huge step, but still the problem remains, what to do today?.