October 1, 2003

MS “Send comments on this topic” really works!

If you see a little "Send comments on this topic" link, it launches an email to MS where you can complain about the docs, e.g. the .NET Mutex ctor. I had always ignored that link, thinking that I'd never get a response to email sent that way, but I was wrong. In fact, when one of the readers of my WinForms book [1] was trying to mix single-instance detection and no-touch deployment, he found that he couldn't. When he looked at the Mutex docs, they didn't list the appropriate permissions that creating a named Mutex requires. So he complained. And he got a response w/in 24 hours! And I got dragged into the ensuing conversation to fix the problem! I had *no* idea that little link would yield those kinds of results. Today I am proud to be a Microsoft employee. : ) [1] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0321116208
October 1, 2003 .NET

.NET Resource Kit CD

While the .NET Resource Kit is targeted at VB programmers, it comes with tons of real 3rd party controls for free that work just as well for C# programmers as well as VB.NET programmers.
October 1, 2003

Nice video intro to Office 2003

"Are you curious about the new Microsoft® Office System, including the latest versions of Office Professional Edition, Outlook®, and the all-new OneNote™ note-taking application? The current Insider show is a perfect way to whet your appetite for their release this fall, plus get the latest information on Tablet PC."
October 1, 2003

BillG using his power for good, not evil

An interesting summary of the impact that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is having, and about to have, on the world.
September 30, 2003

I *Trust* MIT

Sure, sure, MIT is well known for their high-tech education, blah, blah, blah. What I think is *much* cooler is that MIT's Open Courseware project has also put up a large number of courses from the Sloan School of Management, where I can learn all kinds of investing, finance, marketing and business basics from folks that aren't trying to upsell me. I wish MIT provided discussion forums so that I could talk with other students "taking" the OCW courses when I was or MIT students or faculty that didn't mind answering questions, but just having the materials up is *huge*. I think I'll start with 15.433...
September 29, 2003 Spout Writing

Creating Doc-Centric Apps in WinForms, part 1 of 3

This 3-part series really belonged as a chapter in my WinForms book, but after doubling the estimated size of the book (not to mention the amount of time it was supposed to take to write it), my publisher was anxious for me to stop writing. For those folks accustomed to the document management support in MFC or for anyone that needs to build document-centric WinForms application, I think you'll like this series. Part 1 discusses the basics of document management in SDI WinForms apps. Part 2 discusses MDI apps and deeper shell integration. Part 3 wraps most everything up into a reusable component, turning the construction of document management features in .NET largely into some drag-n-drop and some property browser settings. The resultant FileDocument component is available in the latest Genghis sources (although not yet in the release zip) @ http://www.genghisgroup.com Enjoy.
September 29, 2003

Interview with Tim Bray, co-inventor of XML

Tim talks on the topic of the business value of XML and web services, the difficulting in programming XML, and the strides that tools like .NET are making in making XML less difficult to program.
September 28, 2003 Spout

Men Extinct Soon — Only 125K Years Left

As well as women would do without us, it's clear to me that the two sexes have evolved as a pair, although whether that'll be enough to make saving us worth the trouble, I don't know. For example, my wife may well decide to replace me with a footstool to reach things on the high shelves and call it good. : ) [boingboing.net]

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