Tuesday, June 27, 2006
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Friday, June 23, 2006
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Microsoft today released the CTP of a software toolkit for building robot applications, pledging to ignite the robot market in the same way it did the PC market some 20 years ago.(WoW!)
Download Microsoft Robotics Studio June 2006 CTP here
read more
Monday, June 19, 2006
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I saw a a very simple demonstration of TDD Approach by Clarke Ching using as simple tools as MS Excel! (yes its in plain VBA). Download his sixteen page walkthrough TDD for managers and non programmers using Excel and VBA .
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
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Just tried Google Spreadsheets (here is a tour ).
It has got basic functionality of a spreadsheet with adding/deliting sheets, formatting, (weird) sorting, formulae, 'save as xls/csv' and 'sharing the sheet with friends.
Yet...a looong way to go, if it’s targeting Excel.
You can signup for Google spreadsheet here
Monday, June 12, 2006
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Here I tried to compile a list of recent and future MS codenames...
Operating System
Longhorn Windows Vista
Fiji Windows OS/update after Vista but before Vienna
Vienna Code name ‘Blackcomb renamed’. Windows OS after Vista.
Singularity A research OS written in Managed code (C#)
Bigtop Experimental grid computing operating system
Development Frameworks
WinFX .Net Framework 3.0(.NET Framework 2.0 + WCF+ WPF+ WWF+ WCS)
Indigo WCF (Windows Communication Foundation)
Avalon WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation)
InfoCard WCS (Windows CardSpace)
WWF WWF (Windows Workflow Foundation)
Monad MSH/Windows Power Shell
Atlas AJAX in ASP.NET 2.0
Programming Languages
LINQ Language Integrated Query Language (C#3.0/VB9.0) with C-omega -like data access features that Microsoft is proposing for the next release of Visual Studio
Communication
Kahuna Windows live mail
Database
Yukon SQL Server 2005
Designer
Sparkle EID (Expression Interactive Designer)
Acrylic EGD (Expression Graphic Designer)
Quartz EWD (Expression Web Designer)
IDE
Whidbey Visual Studio 2005
Whitehorse Set of Web services-based business-process modeling tools in Whidbey
Burton VSTS (Visual Studio 2005 Team System)
Cider Visual Studio Designer for WPF
Orcas Visual Studio (2008?) after Whidbey
Hawaii Visual Studio (2010?) After orcas
Mobility
Magneto Windows Mobile 5.0
Origami UMPC (Ultra-Mobile PCs)
Yamazaki Windows CE 6.0
Crossbow Windows Mobile 5.0 Second Edition
Photon Windows Mobile 6.0
Gaming
Xenon Xbox360
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
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hi was quite busy to post for past couple of months... kept postponing quite some good posts due to time constraints and now that I tried to blog
1. Firstly IE7 to my surprise didn't showed Text tabs (Posts, Articles, Feedback, Links, galleries ...) I wanted to get to the Galleries tab for uploading some screenshots...
2. Well I tried Firefox.. I was able to see the tab (as expected) but cant see that switch to html thing (if I'm right) during posting
3. I tried to upload the screenshots (some 80kb jpeg) and got another error: TODO...The error message related to this problem was as follows: Access to the path "D:\Developers R2\blogs\images\developers_ie\rrawat\95\o_ie7err.JPG" is denied
Is there some quota management thing going on for bloggers? There was a rich text editing tool too.. i guess.. which firefox is not in a mood to show:(
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
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Used this today : at last... a 2 GB Storage from Microsoft!!
and other features as
- Outlook like Reading Pane
- Right Click/Context Menus
- Drag and Drop Emails
- Address AutoComplete
see complete list of features here
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
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Besides 'PE/COFF header' and 'Native Image sections' which are present in typical windows Portable Executable(PE) files - a .Net Assembly adds 'CLR Header' and 'CLR data sections' to the PE.
Lets look inside a .NET PE
1. Create and compile a Console Project at say :\TestConsoleApp
using System;
namespace TestConsoleApp
{
class HelloClass
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.WriteLine("{0}","Hello, World");
}
}
}
2. Open Visual Studio .NET 2003 Command Prompt
3. Run
:\TestConsoleApp\bin\Debug>dumpbin TestConsoleApp.exe /all
output is something like this
Microsoft (R) COFF/PE Dumper Version 7.10.3077
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Dump of file c:\TestConsoleApp\bin\Debug\TestConsoleApp.exe
PE signature found
File Type: EXECUTABLE IMAGE
FILE HEADER VALUES
14C machine (x86)
3 number of sections
...
OPTIONAL HEADER VALUES
10B magic # (PE32)
...
SECTION HEADER #1
.text name
5A4 virtual size
...
Code
Execute Read
RAW DATA #1
00402000: 80 25 00 00 00 00 00 00 48 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 .%......H.......
....
clr Header:
...
Section contains the following imports:
mscoree.dll
402000 Import Address Table
402570 Import Name Table
...
0 _CorExeMain
SECTION HEADER #2
...
RAW DATA #2
...
...
Summary
2000 .reloc
2000 .rsrc
2000 .text
The main function called when CLR header is found is _CorExeMain implemented by mscoree.dll ( MS .NET core/runtime execution engine of CLR - an inprocess COM Server) found in %WinDir%\system32
For looking inside CLR Data (metadata and code) we can use any de-assembler (ildasm.exe ) or programmatically query the .net assembly via Reflection
or better even reverse engineer the source code itself using a decompiler ('.NET Reflector' )
NOTE:
1. dumpbin.exe utility is located at :\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Common7\IDE
it requires
link.exe (in same directory)
mspdb71.dll (in :\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Common7\IDE directory)
incase You are not using VS 2003 Command Prompt make sure these files are in your PATH
2. COFF is Microsoft Common Object File Format specifications which are publicly available
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
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When you try to Reverse Engineer SQL 2005 DB from Visio 2003. You may get this error “The currently selected Visio driver is not compatible with the data source."
I think SQL Server 2005 compatible driver will be shiped later.
However, you may use Generic OLE DB Provider, and then select Microsoft
OLE DB Provider for ODBC drivers, it can successfully interpret tables with
from SQL Server 2005.
I got to see a old server box running sql server 2000 with no service pack. On recommending to install SP4, I was given a SP3a CD. Anyways I tried to install it... but while installing it received an error "A previous program installation created pending file operations. You must retart the computer before running setup." ok you will say what a big deal-just restart the box. But probelm was it came up no matter how many times you reboot.
the solution was just deleting PendingFileRenameOperations key from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager
then repeating for ControlSet001, ControlSet002 ... if required
This may solve this problem but might give other problems like I got (error running script: sp3_serv_uni.sql(1) etc.)
but better solution - just installing latest SP4