Brian Johnson works with BizSpark Startups on the East Coast of the United States. For more information about the BizSpark program you can go to http://bizspark.com.
The Free Lunch Is Over: A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software Your free lunch will soon be over. What can you do about it? What are you doing about it? The major processor manufacturers and architectures, from Intel and AMD to Sparc and PowerPC, have run out of room with most of their traditional approaches to boosting CPU performance. Instead of driving clock speeds and straight-line instruction throughput ever higher, they are instead turning en masse to hyperthreading and multicore architectures. Both of these features are already available on chips today; in particular, multicore is available on current PowerPC and Sparc IV processors, and is coming in 2005 from Intel and AMD. Indeed, the big theme of the 2004 In-Stat/MDR Fall Processor Forum was multicore devices, as many companies showed new or updated multicore processors. Looking back, it’s not much of a stretch to call 2004 the year of multicore. And that puts us at a fundamental turning point in software development, at least for the next few years and for applications targeting general-purpose desktop computers and low-end servers (which happens to account for the vast bulk of the dollar value of software sold today). In this article, I’ll describe the changing face of hardware, why it suddenly does matter to software, and how specifically it matters to you and is going to change the way you will likely be writing software in the future.
Writing Secure Code One of the things that my team is responsible for is helping developers understand the importance of writing secure code and how to do it. Rick Samona has joined my team and is working with security experts like Jeff Cooperstein and Michael Howard to begin the process of helping developers think more about security. We did some research and we found that about 50% of developers think it is important to write secure code (what about the rest?) and that they even feel security is more their responsibility than the responsibility of system administrators. And about two-thirds of them they feel like we (that's we, the industry, not just we, Microsoft) don't provide them with enough information, tools, guidance, and so on to write secure code.
Visual C++ 2005Want to get the scoop on Visual C++ 2005? Below you'll find links to Visual C++ 2005 information. We'll add more information as we get closer to release
The Type of a String Literal Revisited ... To briefly review: In ISO-C++, the type of "Pooh" is const char[5]. There is no exact match of "Pooh" to any of the three instances of foo(). However, the trivial conversion of const char[5] to const char* represents a best match, and this is why (3) is invoked. There was no built-in notion of a string literal having any relationship to System::String. And this was changed in the design of C++/CLI. Actually, it was changed twice, and that is the talking point of this entry – to explain why the initial change had to be further refined.
Order Your Free Partner Product DVD Get the most of your investment in Visual Studio .NET with the best of breed third party tools, languages, and components. Order this free DVD and receive over 65 tools, components and languages from Visual Studio Industry Partners. These full version and evaluation products can help save you time and money building applications for Microsoft Windows, mobile devices, the Web, and Web services.
I found the coolest little Pocket PC calculator today. It's called SpaceTime. I can't believe that I hadn't found this earlier, but it's a very advanced graphing calculator for the Pocket PC. They have a special running right now, so I picked it up today for 40% off. Check it out here:
SpaceTime MobileSpaceTime 1.6, a revolutionary graphing calculator for the Pocket PC empowers your mobile device with 2D, 3D, and 4D graphing and nearly all the mathematical capabilities of a TI-83 Calculator.
New article on the Security at Home site about spyware:
Microsoft's strategy for addressing spyware and other potentially unwanted software Microsoft's vision for anti-spyware is that customers should be empowered to make informed decisions about the software that installs and runs on their computers. Microsoft will take steps toward this vision by making it easier for customers to gain insight into what's running on the system, to better discern good software from bad software, and to block and remove spyware from a PC.
Microsoft's strategy for addressing spyware and other potentially unwanted software
Microsoft's vision for anti-spyware is that customers should be empowered to make informed decisions about the software that installs and runs on their computers. Microsoft will take steps toward this vision by making it easier for customers to gain insight into what's running on the system, to better discern good software from bad software, and to block and remove spyware from a PC.
Windows XP Service Pack 2: The Inside Story SuperSite readers will remember Todd Wanke as the guy who ran Microsoft's War Room for Windows Server 2003 (chronicled in Windows Server 2003: The Road To Gold Part Two: Developing Windows). Todd, you may recall, had pledged to never again run a War Room after the grueling Windows Server 2003 development process. "No way," he said, laughing, when I had asked him then if he would do it again. "No way."... ...In early December, I sat down with Todd, Ryan Burkhardt, and Jon Murchinson to discuss XP SP2 and the virtual team that made it happen. Here is their story.
.NET Passport 2.5 Software Development Kit: Software and DocumentationMicrosoft .NET Passport is a suite of Web-based services that help make using the Internet and purchasing online easier and faster. .NET Passport provides users with single sign-in (SSI) capability at a growing number of participating sites, reducing the amount of information users must remember or retype. In addition, Microsoft Kids Passport can help your Web site comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) passed by Congress in November 1998. (COPPA requires that operators of online services or Web sites obtain parental consent prior to the collection, use, disclosure, or display of the personal information of children.)
Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 Release Candidate On this page you'll find information for Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Release Candidate (RC). This version of the software is intended only for installation in a test environment. We advise against installing and evaluating beta software on any production computers.
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 Release Candidate (32-bit) Install Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Release Candidate (RC) to help secure your server and to better defend against hackers. Windows Server 2003 SP1 RC enhances security infrastructure by providing new security tools such as Security Configuration Wizard, which helps secure your server for role-based operations, improves defense-in-depth with Data Execution Protection, and provides a safe and secure first-boot scenario with Post-setup Security Update Wizard. Windows Server 2003 SP1 RC assists IT professionals in securing their server infrastructure and provides enhanced manageability and control for Windows Server 2003 users.