Hey! someone explains digital signatures so dummies like me can understand. Even If you’re not a dummy, this might help!

Posted from BLInk!

by way of Microsoft Watch

Microsoft KB article: how to tweak security settings in XPSP2 for a slew of MS and 3rd party apps

Although I mentioned before that Guy Barrette lured me to speak at GUVSM (Groupe d’usagers Visual Studio Montreal) where I will get a chance to test out my WSE2 Security for Dummies talk in October (Mon. 10/4) … I just agreed to stay overnight and speak at The Montreal Microsoft .NET Architecture Group (GUMSNET) the very next night. The GUMSNET group will be my “test audience” for another of my ASP.NET Connections talks: “What’s New in the .NET 2.0 Base Class Libraries for ASP.NET Developers“. This will be a spin-off of the more generalized BCL Whidbey talk I have done a few times already. The deck for that one, by the way, is here on my website.

Kit George has a little brain teaser revolving around static/shared methods in a class. If you are not familiar with the static (C/C#/J/C++/etc) or shared (VB) scope, don’t just skip this. Read it, think about it. Google some of the keywords. Google some of the key words in the comment that Richard Blewett left. I promise you will learn something new and valuable.

Did everybody really prepare properly according to the prescribed MSDN warnings? Hopefully they did….and I haven’t seen any “oh NO!“ posts thus far ….

I was just thinking about the first time I really *got* streaming. I couldn’t get past the idea of something like a SQLDataReader being a container or a fileStream being a container. Finally one day it just clicked – it’s a pipe. I remember last spring and summer when I gave a Streaming in .NET talk a number of times, I was very reliant on using my hands to describe this to attendees.

But truly, if you ever have a hard time explaining it to someone who just doesn’t get it … and that’s really only because it is very different from what they may have experienced so far as a developer … use the pipe image. Describe the stream as the pipe that the data is flowing through. Worked for me.

I have called myself, very specifically, a “.NET developer” for a few years and not a “VB developer”. Why? Because I  program to the CLR using the VB language. I think that I may use one or two things from the Visual Basic namespace. Heck, I even use the ol’ Int32 and System.Environment.NewLine just so that I know I can translate my code or skills to C# if and when the need arises.

WHat happens after Microsoft takes away the word (or whatever you call this moniker) “.NET” from our tools? What do I call myself then? I’ve already gone from being a “.NET MVP” to a “VB MVP” since they shifted the buckets for MVPs and that’s the best one for me of the options. They all seem too separate. If I was an ASP.NET MVP then does that ignore all of my work doing WindowsForms? As a VB MVP, you wouldn’t know that I actually program in .NET …since this also incorporates VB6 developers who may not have made the shift.

I like being a “.NET developer”. It speaks to the *many* areas of .NET that I work in.

Well I guess the cat’s out of the bag. I got to spend 3 days hanging out with some of the most amazing people in our industry and to make it even BETTER , we spent the whole time playing with and learning about TabletPC’s and how to write apps for them. And to make it even better, Arin Goldberg and Frank Gocinski brought in one after the other legendary Microsoft researcher to talk to us about the work they are doing around mobile development. Talk about nerd heaven! And it was hot & sunny the whole time – unusual for Seattle. Robert Scoble was invited to join us on a Lake Washington cruise and he mentioned that here. Perhaps I’ll upload some of my photos. But here’s one for a teaser…. me sandwiched between a rocket scientist and a true software legend.

because Rory really needs some link love (not!) – nah – just can’t help myself… here

Speaking of the ASPConnections conference, the resort that it is being held at is astonishing!

I’m hoping to bring Rich and go early and head out to the mountains, so it will be nice to come back to this place for a shower!