Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day: 03/11/2012

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Music of the... Simi Valley couple that's part of the Smithsonian gaming exhibit... (Think "8 Bit Game Geek Music Madness")

Ventura County Star -Simi Valley couple's music is part of Smithsonian gaming exhibit

Simi Valley couple Seth and Michelle Sternberger are proof you can make a career out of video games.

Five songs from their bands — 8 Bit Weapon and ComputeHer — were selected to provide the soundtrack at the entrance to "The Art of Video Games" exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

The exhibit, which runs from Friday through Sept. 30, will explore the 40-year evolution of the genre. When it leaves the Smithsonian, it will tour the country for five years.

Visitors to the exhibit see a 12-foot projection that includes footage from most of the 80 games featured in the show, said Georgina Goodlander, coordinator for "The Art of Video Games."

"The exhibits team struggled to come up with the right soundtrack for this — something that would capture the excitement and energy of the games without being specific to any one title or genre," Goodlander said. "We had seen Seth and Michelle perform and thought that their music was the perfect fit. We are thrilled that they not only allowed us to use several of their tracks, but that they also titled one in honor of the exhibition."

"The Art of Video Game Anthem" and two other songs — "Mini Dub Bounce" and "Chip on Your Shoulder" — from their band 8 Bit Weapon's new album, "Bits with Byte," along with two songs from the "Modemoiselle" album of Michelle Sternberger's solo project ComputeHer — "Twilight Byte" and "Dark Pub" — will be on a continuous loop at the entrance

..."

Not only is this kind of geek-cool, but it's a local couple too! Got to love that...

You have to check out their site, http://www.8bitweapon.com/ and their music page, http://www.8bitweapon.com/music.htm, where you can buy their CD's or download a few of them free (like the TRON one! :)

O what is OAuth? "OAuth: The Big Picture" Free eBook (PDF/Mobi/ePub)

apigee - API Best Practices Blog - OAuth: The Big Picture - Free e-Book »

"OAuth has become standard practice for large social media APIs and it's becoming common across enterprise APIs. OAuth is good for your customers' security and experience making is critical if you want adoption on your API.

Over the past year, we've been talking OAuth with some of the leading API teams around the globe as they design their API security strategies, and we've participated in enlightening discussions with designers and developers on the API Craft google group. All these interactions have helped us build and refine our perspective. We've also received a lot of feedback that people want this stuff for their e-readers so we've pulled our ideas together in this e-book.

If you want to understand how OAuth fits with APIs and the emerging world of open platforms, its advantages and challenges, what role it might play for your products, and without having to know the fine details of the protocol, we hope you will find it useful.

..."

Most of you will know what OAuth is and not need something like this... Until your boss, new project manager, QA member, senior management ask you, "What is this OAuth thing?" Then you'll thank apigee for providing you this free ebook... :)

Introduction
OAuth has taken off as a standard way and a best practice for apps and websites to handle authentication.

OAuth is an open protocol for allowing secure API authorization from desktop and web applications through a simple and standard method. It manages handshakes between applications and is used when an API publisher wants to know who is communicating with the system. Many of the largest API publishers have implemented OAuth to handle write access to their APIs.

We titled it OAuth – The Big Picture because it does not attempt to compete with sites about the protocols as defined by RFC 5849 (OAuth 1.0) or OAuth 2.0 or explain the architecture and in-depth technical and implementation details of OAuth. There are many great sites and discussion groups (including wiki.OAuth.net and OAuth Google groups) that delve into the details of OAuth and the evolving specification.

Rather, this e-book is designed for those who want to understand OAuth, its advantages and challenges, what role it might play for their products, without having to know the fine details of the protocol. We hope it will be a guide for members of the business development team, product managers, technical evangelists, product architects, and so on who make strategic decisions about their API products.

This e-book discusses what OAuth is, how it works, and how it fits with APIs and the emerging world of open platforms. We take a look at the evolving OAuth specification and why implementing OAuth can be complex. We provide some recommendations for how to approach implementing OAuth to ultimately deliver a secure and great user experience for web and mobile apps.

..."

VS 11 ALM DemoMates updated for the Beta

Brian Keller - Visual Studio 11 Beta ALM DemoMates now available

The Visual Studio 11 DemoMates for showcasing application lifecycle management scenarios have been updated based on the beta release. You can download the DemoMates here.

DemoMates are a nice alternative to the Visual Studio 11 Virtual Machine for when you don’t have time or hardware resources to run the virtual machine.

Brian Keller - DemoMates for Visual Studio 11 ALM Demos

"Mar 15, 2012 Update: This post and accompanying downloads have been updated based on the Visual Studio 11 Beta.

...

A DemoMate is a Silverlight-based rendering of a software demo which can be used to easily learn a demo or show it to an audience (albeit in a strict, linear format). It’s not a substitute for the virtual machine and being able to go “off road” of the script, but if you plan on sticking to the script then it’s the next best thing.

...

You can run these DemoMates online, or if you plan on using these in an environment where you might not always have Internet access then I suggest installing the offline version.

Online:
Agile Project Management in Team Foundation Server 11
Building the Right Software - Generating Storyboards and Collecting Stakeholder Feedback with Visual Studio 11
Diagnosing Issues in Production with IntelliTrace and Visual Studio 11
Exploratory Testing and Other Enhancements in Microsoft Test Manager 11
Making Developers More Productive with Team Foundation Server 11
Unit Testing with Visual Studio 11 - MSTest, NUnit, xUnit.net, and Code Clone

Offline: (gets installed locally on your computer)
Agile Project Management in Team Foundation Server 11
Building the Right Software - Generating Storyboards and Collecting Stakeholder Feedback with Visual Studio 11
Diagnosing Issues in Production with IntelliTrace and Visual Studio 11
Exploratory Testing and Other Enhancements in Microsoft Test Manager 11
Making Developers More Productive with Team Foundation Server 11
Unit Testing with Visual Studio 11 - MSTest, NUnit, xUnit.net, and Code Clone

..."

A quick and easy way to see some of the features coming in VS/TFS11...

Here's some snaps from the Building the Right Software - Generating Storyboards and Collecting Stakeholder Feedback with Visual Studio 11 DemoMate

Visual Studio 11 ALM VHD's, VirtualBoxed (and even on x86 hosts too)
Want to play with Visual Studio 11 & TFS 11 Dev Preview but don't want to install it (and have access to a Hyper-V server)? Here's a VHD just for you...

Complete (and eBook version is free) "Introduction to SQL Server 2012" is now available for download...

Microsoft Press - Free ebook: Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2012

"Friends, the final and complete version of Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2012, by Ross Mistry (@RossMistry) and Stacia Misner (@StaciaMisner), is now ready as a free download! You can download the PDF version of this title here (288 pages; 10.8 MB).

We will update this post soon with links to EPUB and MOBI files. We expect these files to be available by March 23.

If you prefer a hard copy of the book, you can order it here for $14.99.

Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2012 includes 10 chapters:

PART I DATABASE ADMINISTRATION (by Ross Mistry)

1. SQL Server 2012 Editions and Engine Enhancements
2. High-Availability and Disaster-Recovery Enhancements
3. Performance and Scalability
4. Security Enhancements
5. Programmability and Beyond-Relational Enhancements

PART II BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE DEVELOPMENT (by Stacia Misner)

6. Integration Services
7. Data Quality Services
8. Master Data Services
9. Analysis Services and PowerPivot
10. Reporting Services

..."

Who Should Read This Book?
This book is for anyone who has an interest in SQL Server 2012 and wants to understand its capabilities. In a book of this size, we cannot cover every feature that distinguishes SQL Server from other databases or previous versions, and consequently we assume you have some familiarity with SQL Server already. You might be a database administrator (DBA), an application developer, a business intelligence solution architect, a power user, or a technical decision maker. Regardless of your role, we hope you can use this book to discover the features in SQL Server 2012 that are most beneficial to you.

Assumptions
This book expects that you have at least a minimal understanding of SQL Server from both a database administrator’s perspective and business-intelligence perspective. This also includes an understanding of the components associated with the product, such as the Database Engine, Analysis Services, Reporting Services, and Integration Services.

Who Should Not Read This Book
As mentioned earlier, the purpose of this book is to provide the reader with a high-level preview of the capabilities and features associated with SQL Server 2012. This book is not intended to be a step-by-step comprehensive guide. Moreover, there have been over 250 new improvements associated with the product; therefore, the book may not cover every improvement in its entirety.

I dug that "Who should not read..." paragraph. You see the "Should" all the time, but rarely the "Should Not".

Note that this book was written using SQL Server 2012 RC0. I don't remember seeing many changes mentioned between RC0 and RTM, but...

Eight ways to "bug" your developers...

Maurits thinks aloud - Bug reporting: 8 ways to annoy your software development team

"As usual this blog post should be read with a large grain of salt. It is a collection of bad practices I have seen during many software development projects. There are positive exceptions. For example when the testers are part of the development team and the whole team is committed to delivering valuable software instead of two opposite parties trying to fight each other. Having said that, the ugly situation mostly happens in fixed-price contracts where the bug versus feature discussion often takes place.

Disclaimer: all the examples are made up. Any resemblance with bug reports from projects I did are pure coincidence

...

..."

This list made me laugh and cry. I think my "favorite" is #4, though #6 & #8 are close to the top... If you've been developing for any length of time (say more than 15.74 minutes) you've seen all eight of these.

But I'll tell you what's worse, it's when you get one of these eight comes from another developer. Those make me want to reach through my screen and [insert description of physical violence and loud profanity here].

SQL Server Cell Level Encryption.. It might not be as hard as you might think.

IT Pro Connection - “The SQL Guy” Post #20: Using Cell Level Encryption in SQL Server

"Last week you learned how to setup the encryption key hierarchy in SQL Server. Now, let’s use encryption to encrypt sensitive data in SQL Server.

It is quite possible that you might have sensitive data that needs encryption at a finer level of detail than the entire database. Most of the row might need to be visible to users, while certain sensitive information such as employee salary might require encryption. You might also want the ability for certain users to be able to encrypt/decrypt certain cells as shown in figure 1.

The solution is to use cell-level encryption in SQL Server.

With cell-level encryption in SQL Server, it is possible to encrypt data in individual cells within a table.

BENEFITS OF USING CELL-LEVEL ENCRYPTION:

(1) Granular, user specific control on encrypting individual cells or column values rather than entire databases (compared to using Transparent Data Encryption – TDE).

(2) Data retains its encrypted state in memory unless it is actively decrypted.

DRAWBACKS OF USING CELL-LEVEL ENCRYPTION:

(1) Requires application changes and analysis of tables to locate sensitive data that needs to be encrypted.

(2) Encryption of data introduces randomization. This makes it impossible to index data and causes a performance impact since indexes on encrypted columns cannot be used while searching for a value.

(3) Cell-level encryption built-in functions only return varbinary type data and the output is limited to up to 8000 bytes.

..."

If you're saying to yourself, "Gee, I wonder if we should encrypt this..." or "Boy, it would suck if someone unauthorized got this data..." or "Heck, no I wouldn't put my personal data in this, even for testing..." or "Encryption is for sissies" or "But we've got lasers protecting our data center!" then you might be in need of this article...

Microsoft GDC 2012 Deck Dump (A bunch of Pptx's from GDC 2012)

Visual Studio 11 for Game Developers

The upcoming version of Visual Studio brings a slew of innovations for game developers with first-class access to build DirectX games on Windows 8. Learn how it enables you to write modern, cross-platform code while unlocking ever more performance from today’s hardware. Speaking of modern hardware, we demo how VS11 embraces the GPU like never before. From new integrated diagnostics support for DirectX to new language extensions for GPGPU, these demos will blow you away.

Game Data Anywhere Using Xbox LIVE Cloud Storage

With gaming capabilities spreading rapidly across devices, there is an ever-increasing need to have service-based data sharing support. With our new scalable and flexible title storage service, developers enjoy the ability to persist user and game-specific data to the Xbox LIVE cloud! Come learn how to leverage these new RESTful APIs to enable cloud-based data storage and sharing for your cross-device game titles.

Developing Metro Style Games on the Full Range of Windows 8 Devices

Windows 8 runs on the broadest range of form factors, from super-light, low-power tablet devices to high-end gaming rigs with 3D displays. This session teaches you essential techniques for getting the most out of the GPU across the full range of form factors. This is a must-attend session for developers who want to reach the broadest possible market for their games.

Innovative Solutions to Gesture Detection

Many successful and innovative games use gestures as input. These games range over a wide variety of genres, platforms and input technologies, from a touch screen of a smart phone device to a full natural motion controller input device such as Kinect. Developing high quality reliant gestures is a non-trivial time consuming engineering task. In this talk we present an innovative new technology for developing high quality reliant gesture detection using machine learning. Demos, results, implementation and optimization details is discussed. Two case studies are also presented where solutions to gestures from Kinect Sports and Kinect Sports: Season Two are discussed.

Xbox LIVE Services - Entertainment Powered by the Cloud

This talk describes how developers can create compelling entertainment experiences on any device by using Xbox LIVE services by way of our new RESTful APIs. Learn how your application can obtain secure access to our service, make HTTPS API calls from a variety of clients, as well as how to use the expansive set of Xbox LIVE services, including some new services, to keep your customers engaged with your experiences. This session provides you with a broad understanding of Xbox LIVE from a platform perspective, as well as insights into the API roadmap.

Xbox LIVE Multiplayer Gaming on Windows 8 and Other Devices

Multiplayer features make a game more fun, and are the driving force behind many successful games today. Cross-device gameplay provides publishers with a unique opportunity to delight players on any device, at any time, wherever they are. But how can a game have compelling multiplayer experiences when a player may be interrupted at any time by a phone call or a business meeting? With Asynchronous Gaming! Come learn how to build great multiplayer games for Windows 8 and other devices using Xbox LIVE services. We cover everything from asynchronous game patterns to best practices for managing sessions, matching players and using notifications to pull players back into the game.

Asynchronous Gaming with Xbox LIVE

Multiplayer features make a game more fun, and are the driving force behind many successful games today. Cross-device gameplay provides publishers with a unique opportunity to delight players on any device, at any time, wherever they are. But how can a game have compelling multiplayer experiences when a player may be interrupted at any time by a phone call or a business meeting? With Asynchronous Gaming! Learn how you can use Xbox LIVE services to create the best possible end-to-end asynchronous gaming experience on a single device or across multiple devices!

Building Cross-Device Xbox LIVE Games

Cross-device gameplay provides publishers with a unique opportunity to reach and delight players on any device, at any time, wherever they are. This type of gameplay experience is going to be a fundamental part of future gaming on Xbox LIVE. Come learn about the platform and experience components that Xbox LIVE is introducing as a means to help create the compelling cross-device experiences that people want to play with their friends, on the device of their choice!

Xbox LIVE Web Games

If you’re not building games for the web, you’re not capitalizing a captive audience. Web games are an easy way to reach millions and millions of eyeballs and integrating Xbox LIVE services keeps customers engaged and allows them to truly play anywhere at any time. Learn how your web games can be even better with Xbox LIVE Achievements, Title Managed Storage, Multiplayer Services and more!

Xbox LIVE on Windows Deep Dive

Xbox LIVE on Windows 8 provides a rich and robust set of APIs that enable game developers to accelerate the integration of Xbox LIVE services. This session is for developers who want to understand how we've taken advantage of the new Windows Runtime model to provide quick and easy access to Xbox LIVE services such as profile, achievements and leaderboards as well as value added scenarios, such as offline support, authentication and Windows integration. We dive into the code and design to ensure you walk away with the knowledge you need to quickly enable your Metro style games with Xbox LIVE.

Monetization Strategies for Windows 8 Games

Windows 8 delivers the opportunity to reach a huge worldwide audience for your games. This session shares key information and insights to help developers and producers maximize gamer engagement and game revenue. We introduce the Windows 8 Store, and discuss revenue-enhancing strategies including app trials and DLC. We discuss Xbox LIVE for Windows 8, and share insights based on real data gathered from successful Xbox LIVE titles on Xbox 360 and Windows Phone.

Kinect Human Tracking - Better, Stronger, Faster

Kinect’s human-tracking algorithms represented significant advances in computer vision when launched just over a year ago. And luckily, the team didn’t stop there. Learn about the new features and quality improvements added since launch, as well as best practices for incorporating this new functionality into your Kinect title.

"Xbox, Play" : Harnessing the Power of Speech

Speech provides the opportunity to create uniquely engaging experiences to delight your audience. Explore the new capabilities of voice recognition for Kinect, focusing on the user interfaces and types of experiences that mesh well with this technology. We present several case studies, including Mass Effect 3 from BioWare, Kinect Sports 2 from Rare Ltd. and BigPark Game Studios, and the Xbox 360 Dashboard. We discuss the benefits of evaluating and incorporating voice UI (VUI) early in the design; share our discoveries and best practices in testing and tuning speech for an optimal experience.

Creating a Great Metro Style Game for Windows 8

Windows 8 delivers the opportunity for you to create engaging games that reach the broadest audience, and run across a wide range of devices. In this session, learn the essentials of the new Windows 8 game development and application environment, including the Windows Runtime, CoreWindow, DirectX 11.1, Process Lifetime Management, asynchronous execution, and C++/Cx. We will also demonstrate Visual Studio capabilities for debugging 3D applications, managing code and basic content types like shaders, textures, and meshes in both design-time and run-time formats. Each key step will be illustrated with code from a Windows 8 SDK sample app such as MarbleMaze or Simple3DGame.

A bunch of decks, no videos or other documents, but something to give you an idea of what we'll likely be seeing in the coming months and years...

Here's some snaps from the first deck in this list, Visual Studio 11 for Game Developers

An Outlook Add-on Round-up

KC's Blog - A good list of free add-ons to make your Outlook better and more efficient

"If you use Outlook you have reason to rejoice, because there is a wide range of free add-ons that greatly enhance Outlook’s functionality and add considerably to it’s user experience.

Here comes a list of them that are free and useful. Tip my hat to FreewareGenius for making a good list of them here and here.

Note that all add-ons listed below are linked to the original posts that have more details about them.

..."

A number of Google related add-on's which I found interesting. Also some bellwethers (Xobni, etc) and some that I've not seen before... If you live in Outlook, this looks like a "must browse"

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

"Microsoft Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell" Beta Released (Think PowerShell ISE Addon to help you search and browse for more PowerShell scripts)

jonoble.com - Microsoft Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell

"Attendees of my presentation to NEBytes in January got an early look at this, but now everyone can join in the fun because today sees the public release of Beta 1 of Microsoft Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell.

An add-in for the PowerShell ISE, as well as a standalone application, Script Explorer brings together a number of online repositories for PowerShell scripts, snippets and modules, like the TechNet Script Center and PoshCode, as well as How To guidance, to make them easy to search and browse. This is particularly useful for people new to PowerShell to find examples of code from which they can learn, but also helps more experienced users to avoid re-inventing wheels.

...

Script Explorer is fully extensible, so you can configure your own focus areas and repositories. The web-based content is accessed through an aggregator that Microsoft are managing, so they can add additional resources dynamically too.

I've already started to build a corporate repository for all the scripts and snippets that I've been writing over the years - useful work that I perhaps haven't been sharing with colleagues as well as I might. I'm able to break those down into the focus areas that are specific to the services we provide and deploy that config with Script Explorer to the rest of my team. It's a definite improvement on the current hierarchical folder structure that we're using on a network share.

..."

Microsoft Downloads - Microsoft Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell (pre-release)

Microsoft Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell (pre-release) helps scripters find Windows PowerShell scripts, snippets, modules, and how-to guidance in online repositories such as the TechNet Script Center Repository, PoshCode, local or network file systems and Bing Search Repository

Version: Beta 1
Date Published: 3/12/2012

Language: English

ScriptExplorerSetup.msi, 1.7 MB

Microsoft® Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell® (pre-release) helps scripters find Windows PowerShell scripts, snippets, modules, and how-to guidance in online repositories such as the TechNet Script Center Repository, PoshCode, local or network file systems and Bing Search Repository. Microsoft® Script Explorer enables:

Integrated community and Microsoft resources to help you unlock the power of Windows PowerShell.

Seamless searching across online repositories to locate script samples relevant to you

Establishing and searching local, network, and corporate script repository is easy

System requirements

Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7 Service Pack 1, Windows 8 Consumer Preview, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2, Windows Server 8 Beta, Windows Vista Service Pack 2

Additional Requirements:

Windows PowerShell 2.0/3.0 ISE (Client computer that is to run Script Explorer as an add-on)

Microsoft .NET Framework 4

..."

I dig that it's extensible, that you can add more repositories to it...

Now THIS is a Lego Mindstorms kit I'd buy in a minute... The "Get a Cool Beer Dude (with Bluetooth remote)"

Gizmodo - The Best Use of Lego Mindstorms Ever In the History of Best Uses of Lego Mindstorms Ever

"I seriously can't imagine any better use for Lego Minstorms than building a machine that can serve two types of Dutch beer, chilling them down at the perfect drinking temperature, opening the bottle and serving them. Can you? CAN YOU?

..."

The NXT STEP - LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT Blog - The Beer Machine

The machine can serve 2 kinds of typical Dutch beers, then it will open the bottle and cool it down to the perfect drinking temperature.

As a beer lover, I sure want to have his machine, but I'm sure it will also work with your favorite brand of soft drinks.

Enjoy the other movies where Jan explains how he build the separate parts of the machine.

You have to watch the video... I SO want one of these. :)

Solar cells into hydrogen?

Earth Techling - Solar Power Makes Fuel Cell Vehicles Truly Green

"In Hempstead, N.Y., the city not long ago began creating truly clean hydrogen fuel for their fuel cell vehicles by hooking a 100-kilowatt wind turbine into the system. But wind is just one renewable way to skin the hydrogen cat: The German research powerhouse Fraunhofer ISE this month fired up a station that uses photovoltaics to create hydrogen fuel with reduced impact on the grid.

The process at play here is pretty simple, actually: Power from solar panels on the charging station canopy and a nearby building is used indirectly to separate hydrogen and oxygen in water by the process called electrolysis. The hydrogen can then be stored and later used by fuel-cell vehicles.

...

One big advantage, for example: Fraunhofer said that a vehicle can fill up with hydrogen in just three minutes and then travel nearly 250 miles. Even the so-called “fast chargers” being developed for battery electrics can do a full charge in less than about a half hour.

...

..."

Glad I'm not a total idiot (well I it depends on who you ask...)

I've been telling just about anyone who will listen that the above process, using solar to crack hydrogen for longer term energy storage and fuel cell usage, is what I want to see. Batteries are lame, They are not a long term, via solution for vehicles, homes, buildings.

Is a huge store of hydrogen a safety issue? Yes. But so is the gas in your car, the natural gas in your house (and/or car), all that crap under your kitchen sink, those old as heck cans of "stuff" on "that shelf",yada, yada. And as if batteries don't have their own issues?

Anyway...

I don't even think it has to be at the house level. Think substations is here the hydrogen is cracked and stored. And where the fuel cells are. Solar panels on the houses for that substation feed into it during the day, surplus is used to build stores of hydrogen, at night, fuel cells are used to generate power back to said houses.

Smart grid baby.

And heck that substation can also act as a hydrogen fueling station for cars?

Until then, I'm keeping my eyes open for at home options for this. I'd SO love to have a fuel cell car that I fueled with hydrogen cracked via my solar panels... :)

.Net 4.5 is what to .Net 4.0? [Replacement++] Or .Net 4.0 = .Net 4.5 but .Net 4.5 != .Net 4.0

Rick Strahl's Web Log - .NET 4.5 is an in-place replacement for .NET 4.0

"With the betas for .NET 4.5 and Visual Studio 11 and Windows 8 shipping many people will be installing .NET 4.5 and hacking away on it. There are a number of great enhancements that are fairly transparent, but it's important to understand what .NET 4.5 actually is in terms of the CLR running on your machine.

When .NET 4.5 is installed it effectively replaces .NET 4.0 on the machine. .NET 4.0 gets overwritten by a new version of .NET 4.5 which - according to Microsoft - is supposed to be 100% backwards compatible. While 100% backwards compatible sounds great, we all know that 100% is a hard number to hit, and even the aforementioned blog post at the Microsoft site acknowledges this. But there's so much more than backwards compatibility that makes this awkward at best and confusing at worst.

What does ‘Replacement’ mean?

When you install .NET 4.5 your .NET 4.0 assemblies in the \Windows\.NET Framework\V4.0.30319 are overwritten with a new set of assemblies. You end up with overwritten assemblies as well as a bunch of new ones (like the new System.Net.Http assemblies for example). The following screen shot demonstrates system.dll on my test machine (left) running .NET 4.5 on the right and my production laptop running stock .NET 4.0 (right):

...

Clearly they are different files with a difference in file sizes (interesting that the 4.5 version is actually smaller).

That’s not all. If you actually query the runtime version when .NET 4.5 is installed you still get:

4.0.30319

There’s no real easy way to tell whether you are running on 4.0 or 4.5 – to the application they appear to be the same runtime version. And that is what Microsoft intends here. It’s intended as an in-place upgrade.

...

..."

I'm of two minds on .Net 4.5. I kind of like that we're not back in the .Net 2.0/3.0/3.5 days. But I also don't dig the uncertainty I believe we're going to see... So if I understand the replacement idea, we can see support issue where someone has built a 4.5 dependent app (let's say using the new Yield in VB) but the user only has 4.0 and so they will break at runtime? If 4.0 is going away and will be replaced everywhere on every system with 4.5 via a mandatory Windows Update, then okay, I'm good. But that's not going to happen. So we're still in the .Net 2.0/3.0/3.5 kind of world, but one that's even more confusing?

I really like that 4.0 apps will "just run" on systems with 4.5.

I don't like that 4.5 apps will "mostly run" on systems with 4.0, until you run into a 4.5 feature at runtime.

I feel I've got to be missing something? Am I being stupid again and this really isn't the case? That at app start up we can know what version of .Net is installed and gracefully handle cases where our 4.5 app is on a 4.0 machine?

<snarkycomment>I'm sure we can build our Setup and Deployment packages to force .Net 4.5 as a dependency. Oh wait! There is no Setup and Deployment projects in VS11.. gee, I forgot. :| </snarkycomment>

I guess you could say that Microsoft (or the teams involved) are being agile and trying to constantly improve with each iteration, learning from the last...? (cough... so I hope at least... cough)

Monday, March 12, 2012

Using SQL Server Authentication (i.e. not Integrated/Trusted)? Concerned about your passwords being discoverable? Wish you could using something like SecureString?Check out the new SqlCredential in .Net 4.5

ADO.NET team blog - Safer passwords with SqlCredential

Introduction

Many users of SqlClient with SQL Server Authentication have expressed interest in setting credentials outside of the connection string to mitigate the memory dump vulnerability of keeping the User Name and Password in the connection string. Starting with .Net Framework 4.5, we have introduced the ability to set the credentials outside of the connection string via the new SqlCredential Credential property of SqlConnection. Now the developer can create a SqlCredential object with a UserId and a SecureString Password to hold the credential values of a connection when connecting to a server. This helps mitigate the threat of credentials being leaked out to the page file in a page swap or being evident in a crash dump.

SqlCredential Class

More information about the new SqlCredential class can be found at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.data.sqlclient.SqlCredential(v=vs.110).aspx

For information on how to get or set the SqlConnection.Credential property, please refer to:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.data.sqlclient.sqlconnection.credential(v=vs.110).aspx

It’s important to note that the SqlCredential constructor only allows SecureString marked as read only to be passed in as the Password parameter or it will raise an ArgumentException. The new credential property is incompatible with existing UserId, Password, Context Connection=True, and Integrated Security=True connection string keywords, and setting the credential property on an open connection is not allowed. It is strongly recommended that you set PersistSecurityInfo=False (default) so the credential property is not returned as part of the connection once it is opened.

Connection Pooling with Credential Property

With this new improvement now the connection pooling algorithm also takes the Credential property into consideration in addition to the connection string property when creating connection pools and getting connections from the pool. Connections with the same connection string and same instance of Credential property will use the same connection pool, but connections with different instances of the Credential property will use different connection pools, even if they use the same UserId and Password. For example, the developer tries to open several connections with different configurations as below:

...

Of course the usage of SQL Server Integrated Authentication Mode is still the recommended way to authenticate for users with an Active Directory® infrastructure as there is no credential propagation and all security sensitive information is stored in the Active Directory’s database. And the usage of SQL Server Mixed Mode Authentication with UserId and Password specified in the connection string remains unchanged.

..."

This is one of those thing that would so easily fall through the cracks with all the recent news and releases, so I wanted to call it out. If you have to use Standard security in your SQL Server apps then when you move to .Net 4.5, take this extra step to secure your users passwords. At first glance it looks pretty painless yet could have a nice security bang for the buck...

Curators Unite! "The Curator's Guide to the Galaxy" (think "Common curation scheme and code")

The Atlantic - The Curator's Guide to the Galaxy

"How do you avoid being a jerk on the Internet? (Beyond, you know, all the obvious ways?) When you post someone's words or images on your blog or your Facebook feed, what's the best way to make clear that it's someone else's words or images? When you pass along an idea on Twitter, how do you show your followers that you're sharing, rather than creating? How do you maximize the generosity ... and minimize the jerkery?

If you're not entirely sure, you're not alone. Linking -- in the narrow sense and the broader one -- is not as simple as it seems. The Internet is still incredibly young, and it's grown up organically. Because of those two things, its users haven't yet come together to determine a fully standardized system for attribution. We're making it up as we go along. Which leads to a lot of experimentation (the hat-tip and the via and the RT and the MT!) ... and to a lot of confusion. On the web, the line between sharing and stealing -- between being a helpful conduit of information and being, on the other hand, a jerk -- can be frighteningly thin.

That could be changing, though. This weekend, Maria Popova (whom you may know as an Atlantic contributor, or as the author of Brainpickings, and either way as one of the web's foremost experts on the art of curation) is launching The Curator's Code, a system -- and, she hopes, a movement -- to "honor and standardize the attribution of discovery across the web." The new project offers both a code of ethics and a common standard for borrowing and sharing. It aims to provide a framework for celebrating curation by way of formalizing it -- or, as Popova describes it, of "keeping the whimsical rabbit hole of the Internet open by honoring discovery."

The code is based on two basic types of attribution, Popova explains, each indicated by a special unicode character (along the lines of ™ for "trademark" and © for "copyright"):

..."

http://curatorscode.org/

Why attribute?

One of the most magical things about the Internet is that it's a whimsical rabbit hole of discovery – we start somewhere familiar and click our way to a wonderland of curiosity and fascination we never knew existed. What makes this contagion of semi-serendipity possible is an intricate ecosystem of "link love" – a via-chain of attribution that allows us to discover new sources through those we already know and trust.

A system for honoring the creative and intellectual labor of information discovery

While we have systems in place for literary citation, image attribution, and scientific reference, we don't yet have a system that codifies the attribution of discovery in curation as a currency of the information economy, a system that treats discovery as the creative labor that it is.

This is what The Curator's Code is – a system for honoring the creative and intellectual labor of information discovery by making attribution consistent and codified, the celebrated norm. It's an effort to make the rabbit hole open, fair, and ever-alluring.

(via http://curatorscode.org/)

Given I seem to have fallen into a curators role, I've been thinking for a while about writing up a "Curators Code of Conduit" so I want to take a close look at this...

The cool thing I guess is that I've been doing this, the "via" attribution, since I started blogging [looks like I started using it in 2004] as I'm a firm believer in giving people their due, attributing them and their work. Not sure I'm going to go with the whole symbol/unicode thing, but maybe... :)

(via Jason Haley - Interesting Finds: March 12, 2012)

Faking it in VS11 - Moles, the Microsoft mocking/isolation framework, is baked into VS11

Cook Computing - Faking In Visual Studio 11

The Problem

Dealing with Now and why I'm almost done with C# and Java — Karl Seguin's post about how the way you code is a by-product of the progamming language you use — discusses how difficult it is to test unit code like this in C#:

...

Visual Studio 11 Fakes

Some of the comments mention TypeMock Isolator and the Moles project from Microsoft, and it so happens the Visual Studio 11 beta reveals that Moles has been productized into Visual Studio as the Fakes Framework. This can inject two types of dummy implementation into unit tests: stub types for interfaces and overridable methods, and shim types for static and non-overridables methods:

...

Faking DateTime

To test the DateTime code, create a unit test project and right click on one of the referenced assemblies in Solution Explorer. This displays a context menu which has an "Add Fakes Assembly". Select this and two more referenced assemblies are automatically added to the project:

Microsoft.QualityTools.Testing.Fakes

Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.UnitTestFramework.10.0.0.0.Fakes.

Visual Studio will automatically generate a file called Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.UnitTestFramework.fakes in a directory in the project called Fakes. This XML file is used to configure the assembly for which fakes are generated and the namespaces and types that are included. We want to generate a shim type for DateTime so we can change the file to specify the mscorlib assembly:

...

..."

I've not seen too much talk yet on this, on how VS11 will have an isolation/mocking framework built in and in the box. They've been working on Moles for a while now and it's good to see it make it into the mainstream product, that should help adoption some. Now what I don't know is if you can replace it with others, like you can the unit testing frameworks in VS11?

Are you ready for VS11? Want to learn about "VS11/TFS in 5 minutes?" The ALM Rangers and the "Visual Studio ALM Quick Reference Guidance" can help...

Visual Studio ALM + Team Foundation Server Blog - ALM Quick Reference Guide BETA has shipped!

"We are pleased to announce that we have released another one of the ALM Rangers Visual Studio 11 Readiness “Gig” projects, which delivers quick references which started in 2009 with a request from Steven van Niekerk (Technical Lead / Architect, South-Africa) initiated this project with his question “Can you tell me about TFS and VSTS in 5 minutes?”

...

For more information on the ALM Rangers Visual Studio 11 Readiness “Gig” please refer to here or click the image above.

For more information on this block buster project, please visit Visual Studio Quick Reference Guide or click the images below.

..."

CodePlex - Visual Studio ALM Quick Reference Guidance

"This project delivers a set of quick reference guides that allows you to quickly get a understanding of the features of Visual Studio ALM. The guides help you to answer that question of what is in the latest Visual Studio and where can I go to get more information. Finally, the Quick References Guides are the entry door to the rest of Visual Studio ALM Readiness Information.

..."

Need a map for all the awesome ALM Ranger resources? Included (with active links for the given guide's site);

Need a map for what's in this cheat sheet set? Included;

Want to see a list of them all?

That should be enough for most to get started... :)

Sunday, March 11, 2012

There's a pile of TFS projects on CodePlex, don't you know?

Alkampfer's Place - Codeplex project for TFS

"Some times ago I blogged a series of links of useful tools for TFS. Today I want to give you a series of Codeplex Project of useful tools. These tools are not only useful to use, but they are invaluable example of using TFS API, so they deserves a special list of their own. It is not a comprehensive list, but it contains some of the most interesting project that you can find on Codeplex.

..."

I thought it cool that all these TFS related projects are hosted on CodePlex (which is kind of meta...). There's a number of projects listed here that I'd like to check out...

NASA making #spaceapps physical or "I just wanted some lasers on my fricken Arduino's..."

open.NASA - Making #spaceapps physical

Did you hear the one about the product designer, the jeweller and the physicist? Oh, and NASA too.

My colleague Jon Rogers (@iledigital) told me that he had just ‘had the Skype of a lifetime’. I guess this is the NASA effect. NASA holds, for many, the sense of adventure and exploration that is often lacking from our everyday lives. For many kids NASA and the space programme are an inspiration that lead them to a wide variety of careers in science and engineering as well as being a dream, that one day they could end up in space. And now NASA wanted to work with us!

Jon is a product designer at the University of Dundee and runs our successful MSc in Product Design. His research emphasis is on physical apps, which as he explains it are a way to take information or data from the internet and connect that to a real world device. He will be showcasing examples of this work making use of paper circuitry (and how it can save the music industry(!) ) at SxSW this week. Physical apps are a way of making the web physical.

NASA’s Apollo rockets made use of computers that are puny in terms of the processing power, storage capacity and memory of your average smartphone. And what do we use this awesome power for? To send the odd email and play Angry Birds. Since the 1960’s NASA has invested huge amounts in space exploration and in the novel technology to work in the harshest of environments, and in doing so has collected huge amounts of data and made many significant technical innovations. They now want to harness these archives to try and make “practical applications that benefit humanity”.

And they want everyone to help. Can you, as a citizen of the world, make some contribution to the big challenges that face the world? Does that seem daunting? By working together with similarly concerned citizens from throughout the world, NASA believes that by sharing your expertise you can make a difference.

...

Our first port of call was to the MSc Product Design students and we set them the task of thinking about what data is and how this can be visualized in a physical manner, and also about how ideas of space link back to life on Earth. Where do the challenges lie? The full list of ideas will be live on the space apps challenge page, but here’s one to give you a flavour of what a space physical app might be.

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We call on makers, bakers, bread lovers, food scientists, product designers, electrical engineers and tinkerers everywhere to come and develop physical apps and hardware as part of the NASA International Space Challenge. Come help us bring home into space, and in doing so, help us shape a better planet.

P.S. If anyone fancies making me a little device that warns when the ISS is about to pass overhead, that’s the simple physical space app that I would really love!"

The Arduino Lasers just struck me as awesome...

That's smoooootttthhhh... The Smooth Streaming Client SDK Beta and Player Framework Beta for Windows 8 Metro

Visual Studio Gallery - Smooth Streaming Client SDK Beta

Smooth Streaming Client SDK Beta 1 enables developers to build Windows 8 Metro Style applications that consume On-Demand and Live SmoothStreaming content w/ PlayReady protection.

Note: To build rich applications, this SDK is best used with the Player Framework which is available for download here.

Smooth Streaming Client SDK Beta 1 release supports the following features:

On-demand Basic Playback (Play, Pause, Stop, Seek)

Live Basic Playback (Play)

VC-1 and H.264 codec support

Content Protection – PlayReady integration

Player Framework by Microsoft - Player Framework for Windows 8 Metro (BETA)

Recommended Download
Microsoft.PlayerFramework.Binaries.2012_03_09_00.zip
application, 791K, uploaded Fri - 36 downloads

Other Available Downloads

Microsoft.PlayerFramework.Source.2012_03_09_00.zip
source code, 307K, uploaded Fri - 36 downloads

Release Notes

Player Framework for HTML/JavaScript and XAML/C# Metro Style Applications.

The binary download includes Getting Started Doc's and the VSIX's.

The source includes the source to the libraries AND test applications (not unit test, but play with the features, tests)

IM an Expert! As in the instant messaging question and answer service you can add to your Lync installation...

Microsoft Downloads - IM an Expert for Microsoft Lync Server 2010

"IM an Expert is an instant messaging question and answer service that you can set up within your organization. With the IM an Expert service, you can use Microsoft Lync or the IM an Expert Welcome page to submit a question to the service. The IM an Expert service will locate an expert for you within your company and initiate an IM session between you and the expert who can answer your question.

Version: 7577.4076
Date Published: 3/8/2012

Language: English

KB Articles: KB2677043

IManExpert.msi, 608 KB

This download was originally released on March 22, 2011. For a complete list of fixes and changes in this latest version, please see KB article 2677043.

This download contains IManExpert.msi, the installer package for IM an Expert. IM an Expert is an instant messaging question and answer service that you can set up within your organization. IM an Expert enables real-time sharing of expertise within your organization. Users can ask the IM an Expert service a question and the service will locate an expert and connect the asker with the expert. Answers are compiled from dialog between the asker and the expert and posted to the organization’s internal IM an Expert website, where they can be searched. IM an Expert provides a great way for people within an organization to save time by sharing their knowledge and expertise. Perhaps equally important, the retained IM an Expert questions and answers can provide a valuable knowledge base that highlights common questions and resolutions to issues within your organization. Users can become experts by entering their Profile information (keywords and URLs related to their area of expertise) on the IM an Expert Website. The IM an Expert administrator may also elect to use other sources of expertise information to help identify experts. The components for the IM an Expert service are described in System Requirements below.

..."

Microsoft Downloads - IM an Expert for Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Documentation Version 1.5

"...

This download provides documentation for IM an Expert for Microsoft Lync Server 2010, including the IM an Expert for Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Setup and Maintenance Guide for administrators, and the IM an Expert for Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Getting Started Guide for end-users. IM an Expert is an instant messaging question and answer service that you can set up within your organization. IM an Expert enables real-time sharing of expertise within your organization. Users can ask the IM an Expert service a question and the service will locate an expert and connect the asker with the expert. Answers are compiled from dialog between the asker and the expert and posted to the organization’s internal IM an Expert website, where they can be searched. IM an Expert provides a great way for people within an organization to save time by sharing their knowledge and expertise. Perhaps equally important, the retained IM an Expert questions and answers can provide a valuable knowledge base that highlights common questions and resolutions to issues within your organization. Users can become experts by entering their Profile information (keywords and URLs related to their area of expertise) on the IM an Expert Website. The IM an Expert administrator may also elect to use other sources of expertise information to help identify experts. ..."

I thought this kind of neat. Not sure if I'd sign up for it if it was offered at my place (not that we've upgraded to Lync yet, but anyway...) but I still think it's kind of cool. If it were not abused then I think I'd go for it. In a distributed work environment, this kind of thing might be pretty useful. Okay, okay... I just like the idea it has "leaderboards" LOL