December, 2005

I'm off for the next few weeks, to enjoy some of my summer holidays. I'm going to be sitting on a beach on the South Coast of NSW - unconnected, unwired and untethered.

Have a Happy Christmas. Hope Santa is good to you all.

See you all in 2006!!!!

[ Currently Playing : I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus - Jimmy McGriff - Ultra-Lounge Christmas Cocktails, Pt. 2 (06:39) ]

In my meeting with Julian Bajkowski, one thing we spoke about was the introduction of a Phishing filter for IE7.

I didn't have all the answers to the Julian's questions on this, at the time.

I have subsequently found some info, such as a post from the IE7 team, as well these articles "Introducing Phishing Filter in IE" and "Anti-Phishing Whitepaper".

However, you don't need to wait for IE7 to experience this. There is an phishing filter add-in for the MSN Toolbar too. The UI is a bit different, but the technology is the same.

The Phishing Filter Add-in offers access to the beta version of a new dynamic online service, updated several times an hour to warn you and help protect your personal information from these fraudulent websites by:

• Scanning websites you visit and warning you if they are potentially suspicious.
• Dynamically checking the web sites you visit with up to the hour online information via an online service run by Microsoft and blocking you from sharing personal information if a site is a known phishing website.

http://addins.msn.com/phishingfilter/

** Update: New enhancements to Phishing Filter protection for IE

[ Currently Playing : Wonderful Christmas Time - Various Artists - Santa's Top 20 (03:27) ]

I got this email the other day. Looks like I'm going on the road again!

Dear Frank,

As Chief Security Advisor for Microsoft Australia, I'd like to give you advance notice of the key Microsoft Security event scheduled for early 2006.

Top international Microsoft Security experts Steve Riley and Jesper Johannsen are flying in for a series of interactive presentations to key Australian and New Zealand executives. The price for this event will be around $200 which will include valuable resources. Registrations are not yet open, however you will receive an email in the New Year with all the details.

This is something not to be missed, so block out a day in your diary now for the Security event of the year.

•	Adelaide Tuesday 28/02/06
•	Brisbane Thursday 2/03/06
•	Melbourne Monday 6/03/06
•	Sydney Wednesday 8/03/06
•	Canberra Friday 10/03/06
•	Perth Tuesday 14/03/06
•	Auckland Friday 17/03/06

Sincerely,



Peter Watson
Chief Security Advisor
Microsoft Australia

I caught up with Julian Bajkowski yesterday. Julian is a journalist working at Fairfax, in Mark Jones' team. We met up to talk all things Vista. I was there with Jeff Putt, our local Client Business Group Director (Hey Jeff, where's your blog)

In the course of our discussion, I could sense Julian was after a scoop on early Vista adopters in Australia, as well as other juicy insider information.

Anyways, since I was there to represent developers, I felt compelled to let him know that there is much movement in the developer space around Vista. All MSDN Subscribers have access to the latest bits, an active online developer community is growing around WinFX, local bloggers are writing about using XAML, folks from my team doing demos, in short there is growing buzz around WinFx. And, in the coming months it's only going to get louder.

I'm looking forward to see what Julian has to say about the encounter. I don't think I was very controvertial, and since he is writing for MIS Magazine rather than a developer magazine, I doubt anything I said will make it to print this time, so I don't think I'm breaking any news.

[ Currently Playing : The Ricky Gervais Show - Episode3 - Ricky Gervais, Steve Merchant and Karl Pilkington - The Ricky Gervais Show on Guardian Unlimited (31:28) ]

My ASP.NET post from last week generated a few comments, but this one from cankles (which by the way links back to http://www.builderau.com.au/ - is that you Brendan Chase??? ) asks a few good questions that deserve answers:

Monday, December 19, 2005 8:18 PM by cankles

# re: We *HEART* ASP.NET

There would probably be more if ASP.NET 2 worked on non-windows servers. Would be interesting to do a price comparison between running Windows servers with ASP.NET 2 and PHP on Linux.

Also, how about Ruby on Rails vs ASP.NET 2.0?

price comparison between running Windows servers with ASP.NET 2 and PHP on Linux

We have really great story here, which doesn't get told often.

Have you heard of SPLA?  Not many folks have.

SPLA, or Service Provider Licencing Agreement, provides a pricing model tailored for hosted applications. It is a pay-as-you-go model, which means you don't have to pay upfront.  What does this look like, well Windows Server 2003 Web Edition is about A$20 per processor per month under SPLA.  Windows Standard is about A$30 and Enterprise about A$40.  SQL Server 2005 Workgroup is about $80 per proc per month under SPLA.  SQL Standard about A$320 per proc and Enterprise just over $1,000 per proc per month. (I know the branding police are going to be angry with me, but I'll go with it)

Key with SPLA is the fact that one install of Windows / SQL can be shared by numerous businesses web sites running on a single server.  We call it "multi-tenancy" and it's unique to SPLA in terms of licensing programs at Microsoft.  All other licensing programs would necessiate the end customer of the web site licensing SQL Server and Windows Server and then asking the Hoster to run the software on the customers behalf.

Finally, we have a number of case studies for why Windows is a great platform for hosting and best practices & guidance for Hosters to build out infrastructure to obtain the best TCO.

Ruby on Rails vs ASP.NET 2.0

As Wikipedia tells us - "Ruby on Rails, often called RoR or just Rails, is an open source web application framework written in Ruby that closely follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture."

MVC? We can do MVC using ASP.NET. The design pattern has been on MSDN for ages. There's even an article on BuilderAU on this very topic

Now there are plenty of discussions happening online debating ASP.NET v RoR, with people far more qualified than myself. I just wanted to draw your attention to the fact that there are a number of "RoR" implementations on ASP.NET, such as the Castle Project's Monorail. There's also a good post by Andres Aguiar which tries to use the components of ASP.NET, such as  Build Providers and DLinQ to create something "RubyOnRails-esque". But I reckon Joel Spolsky put's it best - What's all the fuss about Ruby On Rails?

[ Currently Playing : Christmas Time in Hell - Marc Shaiman - Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics (02:16) ]

Nigel Parker has a timely post about MSDN Subscribers getting WinFX on Vista on the RTM builds of Visual Studio 2005 just in time for Christmas!

Let me repeat - the December CTP of Windows Vista is *now* available for download to MSDN Subscribers.

So, in other words, MSDN Subscribers will be able to get their hands on Vista and all the necessary bits before anyone else. Yet another great reason to get an MSDN Subscription.

[ Currently Playing : Santa Claus Is Back in Town - Elvis Presley - Christmas Peace Disc 1 (02:25) ]

I was at a Christmas BBQ today for one of my kids, when one of the parents ran up to me furiously. I thought Brice had hit their kid or something, but it turned out that she worked at a local web development company who had recently switched from PHP to ASP.NET v2.0, and was so happy about the experience, she just wanted to tell me all about it.

Turns out she is a subscriber to the MSDN Flash, and had wondered if the kid in her son's class with the same surname as me was infact my child. Had she looked at the class sheet we got at the start of the year, she would have seen my email address and the penny would have dropped earlier, but anyways...

So, I spent part of a sunny Sydney afternoon discussing the merits of web development from a web designer using ASP.NET and how much more productive it is, compared to hacking PHP. The company she works for pumps out 300-400 websites each year for a wide range of small to medium businesses, and so productivity is really important,as is producing standards compliant sites, as well as ease of deployment, not to mention having a set of tools for debugging. I tell you, she was raving about master pages.

This got me thinking. Surely this isn't an isolated incident. There must be other folks who have made the switch from PHP, or Cold Fusion, or even classic ASP to ASP.NET. If you have, drop me a note. I would love to hear from you too.

By the way, Brice did infact have an incident later and there were tears involved. Ah, the joys of parenthood.

[ Currently Playing : Jump - Madonna - Confessions on a Dance Floor (03:46) ]