Sam Gentile: .NET

Rotor Comes to Linux

Rotor Comes to Linux. Shaun Bangay has ported the shared source .NET CLI project, Rotor, to Linux. It's not just for FreeBSD anymore. [O'Reilly Network Articles]

It looks that this has gotten even further, Very cool!

GACUtil Add-in

GACUtil Add-In. I needed a simple way to invoke GACUtil as a custom build step. Utility makefiles were clunky, NAnt was too extensive (but cool) and the BuildRules sample wasn't quite extensive enough. So I built my own. [sellsbrothers.com: Windows Developer News]

At work, we were looking for something like this or about to build our own as part of our built involves the custom install of multiple PIAs in the GAC. Thanks Chris!

Safe Simple Multithreading in Windows Forms

In his latest WinForms column, Chris Sells demonstrates how to perform long-running operations while still showing progress and keeping the UI responsive to user interaction.

Sam comments on the newtelligence Web Services Extensions for ASP.NET, saying "This is great news. I know of at least one company desiring .NET implementations of WS-Security". Although I was pretty excited when I first read about the toolkit because this would be the first .NET implementation of WS-Security, reading the licence took the edge off a little - even though it's TechEd 2002 demo code, it's not like most of the Microsoft samples that you can take and use in your own apps at your own risk. The source isn't yet available and the licence is for "educational and noncommercial use only" - basically it allows you to download and test the software on one machine only & lasts for 30 days from the initial download. The web site doesn't state clearly if this is going to be a product at some point in the future, hopefully it will be. In any event, we should definitely thank Clemens et al for doing the work, but this isn't yet the 100% solution for ISVs waiting on .NET WS-Security toolkits. [Peter Drayton's Radio Weblog]

Shoot. Thanks Peter for looking into that. That pretty much makes it only useful for me to learn from and not much else then. Sigh.

Web Service Extensions for ASP.NET - incl WS_SECURITY

Clemens Vasters announced the newtelligence Web Service Extensions for ASP.NET. From the announcement: "...experimental implementation for WS-Security's Kerberos and Username Authentication, propagate two-phase commit transactions via TIP, allow cookieless, header-based session management and...classes for management and performance metering". [Peter Drayton's Radio Weblog]

Thus is great news. I know of at least one companu desiring .NET implementations of WS_SECURITY. Thanks!

MCAD for Microsoft.NET coming to a workplace near you

MCAD for Microsoft .NET.
Microsoft has just announced the Microsoft Certified Application Developer credential [link]. Sorry no C++ for now :) This begs the question, how important is it to be certified ?
[/serdar/] [Wrinkled Paper]

Oh joy. So we can have another generation of "certified" Microsoft programmers who have no clue other than to answer memorized questions and no job experience or data structures or fundamentals (Brad Wilson is exempted because he is a bone fide .NET and overall wizard). I can't wait.

The answer is in the Source, Luke

Thank-you Microsoft [IUnknown.com: John Lam's Weblog on Software Development]

Great point (that all the answers can be found in the sources). I wish the .NET wannabes would hear and stop asking "Do I need to install the runtime to run my .NET program on Grandma's machine?" Yes , its still happening constantly!!

Congrats Drew!!

Mimeo lands $6.5 million financing.

Mimeo Lands $6.5 Million Financing

Here's a link to some quick coverage. Guess this means investors feel we've got ourselves a good product here. I know I certainly do! ;) Congratulations to my fellow employees who have worked hard and sacrificed during these tough times.

We're currently putting the finishing touches on our next-generation offering. I can't actually discuss the details yet, but suffice to say that we listened to what our users wanted, picked a few of the most requested features and that's what we're delivering (soon).

[Drew's Blog]

Wow! Conrats Drew!!

What's a method? [IUnknown.com: John Lam's Weblog on Software Development]

Make sense of WS_DISCOVERY

According to this article, "Microsoft deprecated DISCO search for ASP.NET Web services in Visual Studio .NET's Add Web Reference dialog. RC-1's "Find Web Services on the Local Machine" link is missing. DISCO isn't gone; it's hibernating. Learn how to re-enable DISCO searches with a simple change to your machine.config file. Get ready for DISCO's replacement, WS-Inspection, with C# examples that generate .wsil files."

Speech.NET primer and demo

This is cool!! An in-depth step-by-step article about developing with the new Speech.NET beta. Featuring a speech primer, recorded demos, live demo app, and some source code

Digging Into the Soap Headers with the .NET Framework

I'm not a SOAP guy, but this looks like an interesting article on Digging Into the SOAP Headers with the .NET Framework. Matt Powell looks at using SOAP headers in the .NET Framework, including what information should go in the header, how to read and write message headers, and how to extend the SOAP infrastructure by using SoapExtensions to handle header-block processing.

Creating a System Tray Application in C#

Eric Gunnerson: Creating a System Tray Application in C#

Where Do You Find the Time?.
Real software engineering has so little to do with actual technology, it's kinda sad. I'm lucky. I only have to do the technology part. My question is, how do people with full-time jobs find the time to learn the technology?
[sellsbrothers.com: Windows Developer News] Sounds like you have much more than a full time job Chris! I mean -- Genghis, WebServices DevCon, books, consulting -- and more?! You sound like a pretty busy guy to me. For someone like me, it can be difficult. I've got a full time job that (like many other coders) winds up usually being a 9 hour day (and then some). Plus I have a wife and two kids I enjoy spending time with. And I enjoy sleeping every now and then too. ...[Wrinkled Paper]

Great description, Patrick, of the struggles of us married types with kids trying to squeeze in time here and there! I'm real lucky that my full time job is 100% .NET and usually involves leading edge research since many of the things we do push the edge. But you nail it right. Commute, wife, kids, sleep...I was talking about this with Peter Drayton recently, finding enough time to do research for the next book and of course the answer is to not work and do pure research for a while but that won't jive with my wife and my creditors!

Software development process [IUnknown.com: John Lam's Weblog on Software Development]

John like Brad's book idea. I do too.

Welcome to the Neighborhood!

Another blog in the bitstream... Decided to start a blog today. I looked into Radio back in January of this year, but didn't have the time to really dig in and see what it was all about. I've recently learned more about the whole RSS newsfeeds and I think it's a great way to quickly gather and share information. I'm looking forward to this! :) [Wrinkled Paper]

Welcome! Subscribed. :) What's the story behind the name?[The .NET Guy]

I noticed you in my Referal logs today. Thanks and welcome! RSS-subscribed.

Samgentile.com is live! (but limited)

My new website samgentile.com is live (with ASP.NET)! Only first two pages so far. Let me know what you think.

Update: I have copied the rest of the pages up there. They are still html pages and need to be converted. Some of the naviagtion bars need to still be done. For those of you who read the old site, you'll see that the new .NET main page is not cluttered with Amazon books. They have been removed in favor of cleaner layout and more information. Its no longer going to be a selling site.

Web Services Security - HTTP Basic Authentication without Active Directory

Greg has a nice post and sample code

Sam Ruby: Devcon East: Sessions and Speakers. When I get back home, I'll submit a title and abstract. Anybody have a suggestion on what they would like to hear me talk on?

Apache, AXIS, non-MSFT stuff that I know nothing about

SML.NET

Another .NET functional language has just been released - SML.NET. Hopefully I'll get some free time to play with it - I picked up a book on ML programming a month ago and I'd like to investigate this new .NET version in detail.[Jason Bock]

SOAP 1.2 goes to Last Call [Simon Fell]

Effective NAnt [IUnknown.com: John Lam's Weblog on Software Development]

DevCon East Speakers Up

DevCon East. The initial list of speakers is up for Chris Sells' Web Services DevCon East. Lots of others have said it, but I will too: if you're interested in Web Services, go. I see that Peter Drayton, Steve Loughran, Craig Andera, Eugene Kuznetzov, Keith Ballinger, Andy Gray, and Tim Ewald are all back. I'm interested to hear what Stuart Celarier has to say as well. Lots of these talks look like reprises of what went on in Portland last March, all of them worth repeating. [Gordon Weakliem's Radio Weblog]

It was quite an experience and really the seed that got my Blog going. Every single session was worth attending. I hope to go again.

Jashua Allen Nails It On GPL and Its Prophets

Joshua Allen nails it on the contraditons of the GPL and its prophets:

One cranky coder has taken exception to this particular argument in my "No Love for GPL" post, replying, "insuring that something you give as a gift to the community remains collective property is not organized crime." Pleasantly, this statement shows an understanding of GPL that is lacking in many OSS advocates. GPL philosophy is that intellectual property should be collective property. I don't believe that collectivism is criminal, or even wrong in all cases. But I think that collectivism is best used sparingly. Collectivism (the rejection of individual property rights) is the antithesis of freedom. When RMS champions a collectivist platform and cynically says it embodies "free as in freedom", it's not exactly the end of the world. Naive, pathetically retro, and cynical are adjectives that come to mind.

But I am concerned that so many otherwise bright developers fail to see the obvious incongruencies in GPL philosophy. Computer people are smart; we are supposed to be able to figure things out. So why is it that nobody is throwing a compiler error on a guy who says (collectivism == freedom)? Not only do they fail to see the typo in that statement, they even cut-and-paste the equation into every ZDNet forum they can find. The other major bug in GPL philosophy relates to my comments about transparency. GPL advocates often assert that ((IP == secretive) && (GPL == transparent)). This equation is only true in a very narrow scope that is mostly irrelevant (source code) to most developers, and is exactly opposite in most places where it matters. This flawed equation is basically the same as saying that ((capitalism == secretive) && (collectivism == transparent)). Asserting such is like saying that down is up and up is down - capitalism has produced some secretive and shady folks, but collectivism brought us Pol Pot and Josef Stalin. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that GPL is "a threat to mankind". I am simply pointing out that it should be self-evident that ((capitalism == transparent) && (collectivism == secretive)). When someone suggests that collectivism (GPL) is the way to encourge more transparency, while insinuating that capitalism (IP law) encourages secrecy, my mind suffers severe cognitive dissonance. I believe that most people are pretty intelligent, and have honorable intentions. So it is really difficult for me to understand how someone could truly believe that GPL promotes transparency. Initially, I rationalized the GPL as being a typical cute prank pulled by a clever social engineer (in the spirit of Church of Subgenius). But the fact that nobody has called the bluff for so many years leads me to believe that a whole lot of people are just plain duped, and have some very fundamental defects in their understanding of democracy and freedom. I am sure that GPL is not the cause of this deficiency, but rather a symptom. Our schools don't teach civics or logic anymore. And that isn't good for democracy.

Don Box on XML and Inclusion

XML and Inclusion. "I just read your 'Object vs. XML' post on the spout and I'd be pleased if you would allow me to respond with my own personal spoutlet. Here goes:" [sellsbrothers.com: Windows Developer News]

Personally, I'm in the XML Schema camp. I totally see the value in having loosely formed XML documents as well, but having a schema enables much richer integration with other environments.[Drew's Blog]