Antimail

An interesting article about various uses of the RFID technology: http://www.primidi.com/2004/11/20.html and its associated Slashdot link . But, I actually have a different wish from RFID. I always dreamed of some "smart" hand-held RFID scanner that could...

The rules are the following: 1) Before starting the test, you choose the computer + OS you want, etc. 2) Then, I give you a certain file. 3) You need to create a self-extracting EXE for it, that is always smaller than the original file. You can use any...

This morning, while listening to some boring songs on C89.5, I was thinking that it would be great to have some sort of an "feedback" mechanism. Something extremely simple and dumb, that every radio should have - two buttons: a red and a green one. If...

Here at Microsoft we have lots of discussion groups, probably in the order of thousands. And I am not sure about how many emails are going daily on these groups but you got the idea. Now, since I always liked to have a peek in everything, I ended up being...

Calvin Hsia presented a method to detect a device arrival in Visual Fox Pro. The code looks pretty long, even for a C++ programmer like me :-) I am wondering if there is a shorter variant... Here is a similar code VBScript, which uses WMI events: ...

A funny read at the beginning of the week: http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html

One interesting things about NTBackup in XP and Windows Server/SBS 2003 is that is has two operating modes: with shadow copy and without shadow copy. First, NTBackup will try to create shadow copies of the involved volumes and try to copy stuff from these...

OK, probably you already had your latte this morning but here is nice puzzle: Let's say that a rectangle is "rational" if the ratio between the width and height is a rational number. Now, proof that a rectangle is rational if and only if the rectangle...

I was just looking this morning to beta.search.msn.com - the MSN guys did an amazing work. I thought we went to catch up google but now it looks like we are way ahead in terms of usability. But this is just my personal opinion - go ahead and take a look...

I think this is a good topic for a debate. So what is the best way to use the event log? The classical thinking is that a well-designed event log entry should contain only very easy-to-read, easy-to-follow, pertinent observations such as "the disk space...

So, it looks like Sun finally published the source code behind the WS-Test benchmark. (Disclaimer: what follows is my own personal position which might not coincide with Microsoft official position) For those not familiar with the controversy around WS...

A simple question: Let's assume that some time from now, we have (near) infinite computing power available everywhere at almost zero cost. How the world will look like?

I just finished reading a fascinating interview with Henning Kargemann. The initial theme (and title) of the article is related with the now defunct merger proposal between SAP and Microsoft. But, while the merging subject was addressed just briefly,...

No, this post is not about viruses. The problem is to write a C# program that prints to the console an identical copy of its own source code. If you ever went to this exercise in other languages, you already know that the a self-replicating program in...

For a long time I wanted to get my hands on a true iSCSI hardware target. Without a target, the only thing you can do is to learn about iSCSI in a theoretical manner. iSCSI seems to be one of these disrupting technologies. The goal is simple: reinventing...

It looks like the number of passwords that I have to remember grows linearly over time. Since I don't have the best mnemotechnic abilities I decided today that it is OK to just forget them. Then, I just tell the whatever-site-I-must-log-on that I've forgot...

In my last post I mentioned a simple way to expose a .NET class under a secure DCOM connection. That particular method works best if the class that you securely exposed through DCOM lives in your own EXE service (which is written in C# for example). But...

Updated 12/06/2006 : http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/system.runtime.interopservices.registrationservices.unregistertypeforcomclients.aspx states that PInvoking CoRegisterClassObject is a technique which is not supported. Well, why DCOM and...

I collaborated with Stephen Toub and Steve Lamb on a MSDN article on .NET reflection - check it out! http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/07/NETMatters/default.aspx

One useful feature that you probably noticed in Windows Server 2003 is Shadow Copies for Shared Folders. I will not give too many details about it – suffice to say that it will create periodic versions of your shares. So if you lost or overwritten a file...

I just discovered this site . It contains all sorts of math/cs/algorithm-related problems. Some of them are beautiful, others so-and-so... But at least in my case, the effects can be already seen - red eyes :-) Here is an really nice challenge: ...

The human mind is always in search for some sort of symmetry...

Right now (as I write this paragraph), my blog seems to be the best blog ever - it has no posts whatsoever! No rants, perfect silence... it is a perfect blog. The pure white home page gives me such a good feeling. But, by the time you read this, the...