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May 2005 - Posts

Never use catch(…)

Yun Jin had an interesting note on the catch(…) operator. There is an additional thing that I would like to mention. On earlier versions of the Microsoft C++ compiler, this language construct was used as a general garbage sink of all exceptions, including Read More...
Posted Tuesday, May 31, 2005 2:47 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments
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How to fix the bogus daylight behavior of DateTime.FromFileTime()

There is an important difference in the way the DateTime.FromFileTime (...) method adjusts for daylight changes versys the rest of the Win32 world. This thing can be truly confusing if you are not aware about the problem. The cause is pretty subtle, and Read More...
Posted Tuesday, May 31, 2005 1:46 PM by AdiOltean | 3 Comments
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A weird-looking concept: End-user development?

Normally, you would think that developers and end users do not mix. And, given the current state of software development, I would agree. But , on the other side I always thought that we need more tools that allow simple end-users to do more or less sophisticated Read More...
Posted Tuesday, May 31, 2005 1:17 AM by AdiOltean | 5 Comments
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My blogging policy

Since this is my personal blog, I am the absolute dictator here :-) Therefore, I reserve absolute rights to add/edit/remove stuff at any time both in posts or my own comments with or without any prior warning. In most cases, this willl be usually related Read More...
Posted Sunday, May 29, 2005 12:35 AM by AdiOltean | 1 Comments

Windows - what are the memory limits?

I keep forgetting this all the time, so I cut & paste the necessary data in my blog so I will not where to look for it next time :-) Note that the memory limits have changed between Windows Server 2003 RTM and SP1, especially for 64-bit support. The Read More...
Posted Thursday, May 26, 2005 6:02 PM by AdiOltean | 2 Comments

Is corporate blogging still risky?

In my personal opinion, probably yes. But right now, I personally think that the risk is pretty moderate. Here are the main reasons: 1) A source of danger in the past was a phenomenon that I will call "rumor rush". The atmosphere around most companies Read More...
Posted Wednesday, May 25, 2005 9:29 PM by AdiOltean | 2 Comments
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Virtual Earth - on Channel 9!

I like Google Maps, and I like Virtual Earth even more :-) Steve Lombardi, Cody Ebberson and others are talking about Virtual Earth on Channel 9: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=71140 Read More...
Posted Wednesday, May 25, 2005 9:04 PM by AdiOltean | 2 Comments
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Article: Volume Shadow Looms Large

I just found out this new article about VSS in the Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine, containing several interesting comments about VSS usage. Ron Rynbrandt, (who works for the Dr Pepper 7UP Bottling Group) had the following observation: We use Read More...
Posted Monday, May 23, 2005 9:25 PM by AdiOltean | 2 Comments
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Puzzle: solve this problem in your head

This problem initially had two parts but now has three. OK, let's start with this: let's assume that we have two, trains, 100 miles apart, each going with 20 mph to the other. A fly travels between them at 50 mph, zig-zagging just before getting smashed Read More...
Posted Thursday, May 19, 2005 6:46 PM by AdiOltean | 24 Comments
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Genetics from a software perspective. With a security touch.

One intriguing observation about the genetic code is that, in the end, it's pure software. In a conceptual sense, the genetic material is just abstract information: sequences of numbers (similar with the machine code). And, while the "software" would Read More...
Posted Thursday, May 19, 2005 10:39 AM by AdiOltean | 1 Comments
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Innovative database technology coming from... High Energy physics

How would you design a database if you have to store gigabytes of new data every second ? A particle accellerator generates a huge amount of data, that needs to be stored in real-time on very large storage systems. Usually, the offline analysis phase Read More...
Posted Tuesday, May 17, 2005 3:36 PM by AdiOltean | 2 Comments

Pure rumors: Is Sun working on a language independent JVM?

The following snippet in CNet News caught my eye: And there's potential that Sun also could be more accommodating of C#, Microsoft's .Net analog to the Java language. Sun Chief Technology Officer Greg Papadopoulos said Sun is examining modified virtual Read More...
Posted Monday, May 16, 2005 9:22 PM by AdiOltean | 5 Comments
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Read this if you plan to install Windows Server 2003 R2 Beta Eval (the web download version)

I posted earlier an article about the newly released R2 Beta release which is available for download on the web for evaluation and preview. But here is a rule which apparently is not described properly in the download page: if you downloaded the Evaluation Read More...
Posted Monday, May 16, 2005 5:23 PM by AdiOltean | 2 Comments
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A funny-looking trace, and a real problem

Matt Pietrek wins my unofficial prize for the funniest call stack of the year. However, there is an insidious issue under the cover... Read More...
Posted Monday, May 16, 2005 5:02 PM by AdiOltean | 2 Comments

IBM employees allowed now to blog

No wonder that everyone is catching the blog virus these days... http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2005/05/scoop_can_blogg.php Read More...
Posted Monday, May 16, 2005 2:10 AM by AdiOltean | 3 Comments
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How does a four-dimensional world look like?

Eric Lippert is running an eye-catcher series on High Dimensional spaces (see here part one and two ). Which got me thinking. The classical laws of Optics work can be easily generqalized to N spatial dimensions. You could easily imagine things like refraction Read More...
Posted Sunday, May 15, 2005 11:54 PM by AdiOltean | 8 Comments
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New article: Localization practices for .NET 2.0

Michelle Leroux Bustamante posted an article on The Server Side about localization practices for .NET 2.0: http://www.theserverside.net/articles/showarticle.tss?id=LocalizationPractices The funny thing is - localization for a front-end system like ASP.NET Read More...
Posted Sunday, May 15, 2005 11:35 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments
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New Identity specifications from Sun and Microsoft

Fortunately, Liberty Alliance and WS-* efforts and are starting to merge... Here are the links: - Web Single Sign-On Interoperability Profile defines an interoperability profile of the Web Single Sign-On Metadata Exchange Protocol that allows using either Read More...
Posted Friday, May 13, 2005 2:47 PM by AdiOltean | 1 Comments
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Do you think that RSA is safe in the next 30 years? Think again.

There is an inherent assumption that cryptography works, and it will be 100% safe at least for near term. The longer the RSA key, for example, the safer is the algorithm. The assumption goes beyond that - the time complexity of the code-breaking algorithm Read More...
Posted Friday, May 13, 2005 2:17 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments
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Firefox downloads bumped up by its security patches?

An interesting quote from ZDNet concerning its 50 million downloads mark: Firefox late last month marked 50 million downloads of its browser since the Version 1.0 release in November. Downloads do not equal users, because a single user often downloads Read More...
Posted Thursday, May 12, 2005 6:16 PM by AdiOltean | 5 Comments
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How PR works

An interesting article about PR here: http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html I especially liked the end of the article when he notes that online writing is more honest. And tastes better than old, corporate PR with its overy cautious language. Is this a Read More...
Posted Thursday, May 12, 2005 1:38 PM by AdiOltean | 1 Comments
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Blogging for kids?

I can imagine the following conversation with my daugher four years from now: Hey dad, can you help me with today's homework?... Our teacher told us that now we are in sixth grade each of us have to create a "blog" and write there one essay about what Read More...
Posted Wednesday, May 11, 2005 7:03 PM by AdiOltean | 1 Comments
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Humor: Tom Lehrer in The elements

It's a classic... http://www.privatehand.com/flash/elements.html You might already know it, especially if you love (or hate) chemistry. If not, enjoy! Read More...
Posted Friday, May 06, 2005 6:25 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments
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Windows Server 2003 R2 Beta is now available for download/preview

First - what is R2? Think of it as an "storage enhancement pack" for Windows Server 2003 SP1. It comes as an additional CD with a set of optional Windows components, mostly for storage management (DFS/FRS, Storage and SAN management, a better NFS implementation), Read More...
Posted Friday, May 06, 2005 3:51 PM by AdiOltean | 6 Comments
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My stupid score?

Argh, I still don't feel comfortable with this result... Read More...
Posted Thursday, May 05, 2005 4:34 AM by AdiOltean | 6 Comments

How to query the list of disks/partitions for a certain volume (and viceversa)

A good comment in one of my previous posts : >>> Any idea how to get a Volume Name ( \\?\Vol{GUID }) or drive letter for a given disk XX + partition XX? i.e. If I have a partition table for DiskDrive0 I need to find out what volume/drive letter Read More...
Posted Wednesday, May 04, 2005 9:13 PM by AdiOltean | 2 Comments

Script recipe: How to enumerate dependencies for all resources in a cluster

A few days ago I wanted to gather more data from a cluster on a customer site. I hoped that the uber-management tool for MSCS called CLUSTER.EXE can be used to enumerate the dependencies for all resources in the system, since it can enumerate the dependencies Read More...
Posted Wednesday, May 04, 2005 7:00 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments
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Kernel-mode ambient transactions, TxF and System.Transaction

One think I really love in Longhorn is the new TxF file system (I blogged about it a while back). Jim Johnson offers more details on how this technology integrates with COM+ and System.Transaction API from a higher level. A nice thing is that we have Read More...
Posted Wednesday, May 04, 2005 4:21 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments
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Microsoft Campus remains in Redmond

I knew that Microsoft planned to expand in Issaquah, but I never knew the technical details behind it. This article (in News.com) details our future building development plans. It looks like the Issaquah plan was abandoned, and the campus will stay undivided Read More...
Posted Wednesday, May 04, 2005 4:00 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments
 
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