Paying real money for software components!

Tools

I have been VERY spoiled in the last few years as a user group leader, INETA volunteer, MVP and babbling blogger because people like to push software my way. Here! use it, write about it, tell the world, give it to your user group. No problemo, dude! Now that I found a product I really want and need (XCeed) I am about to pay for software for the first time in a really really long time! Here’s why. And happily of course – to contribute to the independent software economy!

BTW – Eric if you are reading this, I am still waiting to rebuild my server so I can add more software, including YOURS!

Kate Gregory and Scott Mitchell Interviews

dotNET

By way of Amy Sorokas , I find this interview about the wonderful, Toronto-based, Kate Gregory (also an MSDN R.D.) that is titled so:

Widely Regarded, Internationally Renowned Developer on: .NET, XML, UML, C++, Java, ASP, VB, Perl, Internet, Web services…

and here’s one of Scott Mitchell (4 Guys from Rolla), too:

Renowned International Development Expert on ASP.NET and Microsoft Technologies…

These are coming from Stephen Ibaraki who has interviews with a lot of well-known geeks. He also presented at Comdex in November on Building Business Models for Web Services. So if you don’t know the name, he’s one experienced, smart and well-connected guy.

Everybody’s Blogging about Mary Jo!

Just Rambling

It just struck me that I have noticed mentions of and pointers to Mary Jo Foley and Microsoft Watch a lot lately from a variety of the blogs that I read (ooh now I can show you my real blog roll, btw). It’s interesting to me. I imagine there are people who just always see someone in her position as someone to “watch out for”, but it’s looking to me like she is being embraced by this blogging community. 

Website security and Emailing Passwords

Just Rambling

As I was sitting in Pat Hynds phenomenal presentation on ASP.NET Security at VTdotNET last Monday, I started thinking about how people work SO hard to secure websites with password protection but then almost every website will email you your login and password. If we spend so much time worrying about people “hopping on” to authenticated HTTP transports, don’t those same people have the ability to read/grab/reroute our emails? Maybe the answer is “no” and everything is still right with the world, but it sure did make me wonder.

Visualizers in Whidbey

dotNET

In a few posts about debugging in Whidbey, I have asked questions that were responded to in my comments with one magic word “Visualizers”. Watch for an upcoming MSDN article by the Program Manager for the debugging team, Scott Nonnenberg. Apparently bits and pieces of it are in the PDC release but undocumented.

Also, you should be able to see some of this magic in the Advanced Debugging Techniques session from PDC which I have to invent some extra time to watch myself.