MSDN Blogs

Debugging TPL apps in VS2010

DanielMoth — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 08:18:00 GMT

The new parallel debugger windows in Visual Studio 2010 (Parallel Tasks and Parallel Stacks) have had many fixes and updates.

I have refreshed the existing content and also added new material for Beta 2. Find links to all of it from my blog post on Parallel Debugging.

Cheers
Daniel

Ready for Hibernation

alexhomer — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 06:02:00 GMT

Usually the only time I feel like digging a big hole and climbing in is when I make some inappropriate remark at an important social event, or tell a rather too risqué joke during a posh dinner party. However, since I never get invited to posh dinner parties, and extremely rarely have the opportunity to attend any "cream of society" gatherings, I've so far avoided the need to invest in a new shovel. And, not being a polar bear, I don't have a tendency to view large holes in the snow as suitable resting places for the winter either. In fact, even though I'm quite adept at sleeping, it turns out I'm a rather late convert to the notion of hibernation....(read more)

Willkommen Los Angeles: Professional Developer Conference 2009

Holger Sirtl — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 05:34:40 GMT

Nach einem langen Flug endlich angekommen: in Los Angeles. Dort startet in zwei Tagen die lange erwartete Professional Developer Conference 2009. Hier wird es eine Reihe von Bekanntmachungen geben:

Produktivsetzung der Windows Azure Platform
Neueste Funktionen und Leistungsdaten (einschließlich Service Level) zur Windows Azure Platform
Informationen zu Silverlight 4
Programmierung mit Visual Studio 2010

Selbstverständlich kann ich zum aktuellen Zeitpunkt keine Details nennen. Ich werde im Laufe der Woche aber regelmäßig über die neuesten Bekanntmachungen berichten.

Stay tuned…!

ご無沙汰しています！PDC09に参加してきます！

hiwatan@microsoft.com — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 05:29:00 GMT

１か月ぶりの更新となってしまいました。
まとめて更新しようと思って、貯めてしまうとダメですね。
また、コマ目に更新したいと思います。
PDC09に参加できることになりました。今日からLAに行ってきます。
初PDC、初LAで、とても楽しみです。

Innovation Showcase Headlines – 11/09/2009

mikecra — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 05:15:23 GMT

Lots of terrific articles posted this week on the Innovation Showcase news site. Read about new features in Visual Studio 2010, check out David Chappells’ whitepaper on the SharePoint 2010 Developer Platform and see video interviews with Don Box and Dave Thompson.

	Visit the Innovation Showcase Site
	Subscribe to the Innovation Showcase Feed
	Follow Innovation Showcase on Twitter

Technorati Tags: Innovation Showcase,Windows 7,Silverlight 3,Windows Azure,Visual Studio 2010,SharePoint 2010

Published Sunday, November 08, 2009 10:39 PM by Mike Cramer

Filed under: Windows Azure, Windows 7, Innovation Showcase, Silverlight 3, Visual Studio 2010, SharePoint 2010

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Videos: Azure Services in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 with Jim Nakashima

Charlie Calvert — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 04:41:53 GMT

Here are three videos showing how Visual Studio 2010 provides support for the development and deployment of Azure Services applications. In these short How Do I Videos, I filmed Jim Nakashima as he demonstrated practical techniques for quickly deploying applications to the cloud. These videos will eventually be published in the How Do I section of the C# Dev Center. I’m hosting them here for now, so that they will be available in time for PDC.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Download the Videos

Click the links below to download the videos to your local machine and view them at their native 1024 X 768 resolution.

Will Cloud Computing Change Your Life?

allandcp_ms — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 03:45:00 GMT

eek! Finally the wait is over and the Microsoft PDC gets into full gear next week in LA. I’m one of the fortunate ones able to attend in person – meet new folks, rekindle old friendships and forge partnerships with the various Microsoft product teams. I plan to attend as many sessions as I can but plan not to miss the Birds of a Feather session at Lunch: Will Cloud Computing Change Your Life?

See you there! Oh, and the answer to the question is a resounding YES…now the trick is whether the change will be positive :)

Forecast – Cloudy w/ Chance of Gold

jamespru — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:21:30 GMT

Next week (ok in few days), the 2009 PDC will be underway. PDC is a special event for developers and enterprise architects (and everyone in between) that plays a role building great software for companies big and small.

This will truly be a great event.

There will a great success stories …I can’t tell secrets but there will be some great solutions in our showcase. Every story demonstrates the potential of the technology…the How. Even better, every story will demonstrate the business potential and in some cases the new business model that resulted…the Why, When, and Where.

Two things your should take from each solution story:

A Fact: Top companies are using Microsoft technology to gain a competitive edge in this new economy.
A Question: Are you taking advantage of your opportunity?

Check back this week for a list of PDC stories to test the facts and hopefully ask the right questions.

- jmp

Upcoming ConfigMgr07 topics from my blogging come back…

Shitanshu — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:26:00 GMT

First of all I would like to answer that where I was so many days and why no updates and what’s next. Actually there have been many instances where I committed myself to come back for blogging with regular updates and sharing my ConfigMgr production experiences and stories. But unfortunately it did not happen as life at work & personal side was going very busy with planning, changes, releases one after other and did not allowed to focus on my blogging. And after hrs. & weekend I was busy with my new born cutie Eshaan and going through new parenting experiences…last facebook and twitter was also good excuse for the not being active in blogging.

Anyway coming back to the ConfigMgr07 topics, here is what you can expect in upcoming updates from my blogging…

· Best Practices for deploying ConfigMgr07 Management Pack

· How Microsoft IT is monitoring ConfigMgr07 hierarchy – a 360 degree approach

· Implementing role based security model in ConfigMgr07 – Part 2

· ConfigMgr07 SP2 upgrade experiences

· Microsoft IT ConfigMgr07 Virtualization Story

Stay tuned for the updates..

Small Basic Programs in 25 lines

vijayeg — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:52:33 GMT

Note: All the programs listed below can be downloaded directly into Small Basic. Just import the programs using their published Id.

What started as a fun challenge in our Small Basic Forums, quickly turned into a repository of very interesting programs, all conforming to a 25-line limit. It is amazing to see enthusiastic participants come up with very creative patterns to embed complex logic in as few lines as possible.

The challenge started with the classic game of Rock/Paper/Scissors, written in 24 lines by Coding Cat and published as CTB433. This was meant to be just an example for the challenge, but within days, Jason Jacques posted a 9 line version of the same program, published as CTB433-1. And the race was on.

Recently Rushworks posted a trick to initialize Small Basic arrays in a single line. Hours later, Davey-Wavey came up with a feature-par version of the original Rock/Paper/Scissors in 3 lines flat! This version is published as CTB433-2.

And using a few tricks and assumptions about the size of the text window, Jason came back and posted the same program in just 2 lines! It is published as CTB433-5.

As this race was going on, litdev published the Swarm of Bees as MSH031 in 25 lines.

Simultaneously, Dudeson published a similar program, RRS083 which simulates an atom with the mouse center as the nucleus. And Grzegorz Tworek, published his Lissajou’s Curve simulator program as GQP876, in 11 lines.

Dudeson went back and improved his atom code to publish RPW587, which runs much faster.

Other programs that you’ll find on this forum:

Sudoku Solver

(25 lines)
by Jason Jacques: CGW786

Sub Hunt

(25 lines)
by Coding Cat: KDN168
also by Davey-Wavey: KDN168-0

Space Invaders

(20 lines)
by Davey-Wavey: XDK444

Windows Azure and Visual Studio 2010

wzack — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:28:43 GMT

Microsoft just released several new features for Windows Azure through the Windows Azure Tools and SDK .This release adds support for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and VWD Express 2010 Beta 2. What’s New? Service Model UI Windows Azure Service Hosting Runtime Managed Library Windows Azure Diagnostics Managed Library Windows Azure Storage Client Managed Library Certificate Management Variable-size Virtual Machines (VMs) External endpoints for worker roles Persistent Local Resource Storage Development...(read more)

ACS SAML / ADFS v2 Sample

justinjsmith — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 22:55:25 GMT

The November 2009 CTP of ACS integrates with Active Directory Federation Server v2. ACS can act as a bridge between enterprise identity and REST web services.

The runtime flow is pretty simple (shown below).

At runtime, the client app requests a SAML bearer token from AD FS v2. The easiest way to do this is with Windows Identity Foundation (WIF).
The client app POSTs the SAML token to ACS over SSL. ACS uses configurable rules to calculate the claims in a Simple Web Token (SWT), creates a SWT, signs it, and returns it to the client app. The protocol for this exchange is OAuth WRAP.
Next, the client packages the SWT in the HTTP Authorization header and sends it to the REST web service along with whatever payload the REST web service requires.
Once the REST web service receives the token & payload, it validates the token and checks the claims in the token. The REST web services allows or denies access based on the outcome.

Viola. You have a REST web service that integrates with AD FS v2 via OAuth WRAP and SWT.

Mini AD FS setup (for this scenario only)

There is some setup required to enable this scenario (other than acquiring an ACS Service Namespace). For starters, you’ll need an AD FS v2 server. Since this requires a domain, I’ve provided a service that replicates the basic token issuing behavior of AD FS (at the bottom of this post). The only relying party trusted by this service is ACS.

To setup the service, you’ll need to update the App.config file. Update the “signingCertName” to a cert in your LocalMachine / Personal cert store. Also update the “serviceNamespace” to your ACS service namespace.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 
<configuration> 
  <appSettings> 
    <add key="signingCertName" value="CN=localhost"/> 
    <add key="stsBaseAddress" value="localhost/miniadfs"/> 
    <add key="stsPath" value="Trust/13/Windows"/> 
    <add key="serviceNamespace" value="justinpdcdemo"/> 
    <add key="acsHostname" value="accesscontrol.windows.net"/> 
  </appSettings> 
</configuration>

You’ll also have to setup SSL for your IIS install (http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/144/how-to-setup-ssl-on-iis-70/)

You’ll also need to install the WIF RC. Available here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=defd2019-a61f-4327-9332-6a4b6103527a#tm

From there, you should be able to run the service.

Fed Metadata Setup with ACS

After you have the mini ADFS service running, you’ll want to use the Fed Metadata it publishes to create an issuer in ACS. Also in the sample below is some code that shows you how to programmatically do that.

If you’d rather use a tool, you can use the Management Browser (http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/acmbrowser).

Simply create a new Issuer, select FedMetadata from the Algorithm drop down, and set the URL of the fed metadata server. In the miniADFS server, that URL is https://localhost/LocalADFSv2/FederationMetadata/2007-06/FederationMetadata.xml

Creating a Scope & Rule for the new Issuer

Next, you’ll want to create a scope and a rule that refers to that issuer. The sample at the bottom of this post uses a scope with an applies_to URI of http://localhost/samltest. You can use the Management Browser to create one.

With the scope in place, we can create a rule. All rules require the name of the Issuer and a claim type in the antecedent. When you create an Issuer using Fed Metadata, the Issuer name is fixed in the Fed Metadata. My MiniADFS server uses an issuer name of https://localhost/miniadfs/Trust/13/Windows. It also spits out claims of type http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/name.

With that data, you can create a Passthrough rule. Passthrough rules basically countersign the input claims. In this case, a passthrough rule would countersign any http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/name claim issued by the issuer https://localhost/miniadfs/Trust/13/Windows. The consequent of the rule can be of any type you choose. To keep the token compact, I’ll use a claim type of “name”.

You can set all this up using the management browser, as shown below.

Acquiring A SAML Token

With the Issuer, Scope, and Rule setup, let’s get a SAML token using WIF (the RC). The code for doing this is in the SAMLClient project from the code sample in this post. The WIF code is pretty straightforward:

private static string GetSAMLToken()
{
    WSTrustChannelFactory trustChannelFactory =
        new WSTrustChannelFactory(new WindowsWSTrustBinding(SecurityMode.TransportWithMessageCredential),
            new EndpointAddress(new Uri(samlUrl)));

    trustChannelFactory.TrustVersion = TrustVersion.WSTrust13;

    try
    {
        RequestSecurityToken rst =
            new RequestSecurityToken(WSTrust13Constants.RequestTypes.Issue, WSTrust13Constants.KeyTypes.Bearer);
        rst.AppliesTo = new EndpointAddress(acsUrl);
        rst.TokenType = Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.SecurityTokenTypes.Saml2TokenProfile11;

        WSTrustChannel channel = (WSTrustChannel)trustChannelFactory.CreateChannel();
        GenericXmlSecurityToken token = channel.Issue(rst) as GenericXmlSecurityToken;
        string tokenString = token.TokenXml.OuterXml;
        return tokenString;
    }
    finally
    {
        trustChannelFactory.Close();
    }
}

The only trick is to ensure you are using the Bearer key type (Yes, you can use WIF to request a Bearer token).

Using the SAML token to get a SWT

Next, you can use the SAML token to request a SWT from ACS:

private static string SendSAMLTokenToACS(string samlToken)
{
    try
    {
        WebClient client = new WebClient();
        client.BaseAddress = acsUrl;

        NameValueCollection parameters = new NameValueCollection();
        // ensure the applies_to URI is created in your ACS
        // service namespace
        parameters.Add("applies_to", "http://localhost/samltest");
        parameters.Add("wrap_SAML", samlToken);

        byte[] responseBytes = client.UploadValues("", parameters);
        string response = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(responseBytes);

        return response
            .Split('&')
            .Single(value => value.StartsWith("wrap_token=", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
            .Split('=')[1];
    }
    catch (WebException wex)
    {
        string value = new StreamReader(wex.Response.GetResponseStream()).ReadToEnd();
        throw;
    }
}

Viola! That’s all there is.

Here’s the full code sample – Let me know any feedback you have…

Mise à jour des Outils Windows Azure pour Visual Studio & du SDK Windows Azure (Novembre 2009)

tconte — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 22:53:20 GMT

Juste à temps pour la PDC! Voici une version mise à jour du SDK Windows Azure ainsi que des Outils Windows Azure pour Visual Studio (2008 et 2010 Beta2). Vous les trouverez en téléchargement à ces emplacements:

Windows Azure Software Development Kit (November 2009)
Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio (November 2009)

Ce paquet inclut également le SDK

Nous aurons le temps de revenir sur ces nouvelles versions dans le courant de la semaine prochaine.

Windows 7 Features That Your Mother Should Know About

jonbox — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 22:19:36 GMT

After working several event booths doing demo’s and hosting a launch party at my house, it’s always interesting to me to see the different reactions to Windows 7. There’s the user who still is a Windows XP user, and there’s the user who’s running Windows Vista. And there are a lot of people running Windows XP, so there’s a lot of features that they just don’t know about that I take for granted. There are a few here too, that the Vista user might not be aware of.

Taskbar

Preview (Aero Peek)
Pinning
Jump Lists

Window Actions

Snap
Shake
Desktop / Minimize

Other features

Start / Search
Ribbon
Win+P
Speech
Gadgets
Windows Media Center (also look at adding Hauppauge TV Tuner)

IE8 (don’t have to wait for Windows 7 for this one)

Web Slice
Accelerator
Visual Search Provider

Live Essentials (don’t have to wait for Windows 7 for this one either)

Photo Gallery
Panorama
Make a movie
Photosynth
Movie Maker
Messenger / Web Cam
Writer
Family Safety

Unix to Windows API dictionary project

Wenming Ye — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 20:42:13 GMT

As an HPC cross platform developer, I have spent a good part of my 20s working on scientific codes under different operating systems. Windows, Mac, LINUX, HPUX, AIX, IRIX, Solaris. Building /compiling code is a full time job, not to mention porting and making changes due to the API differences. This is what I call the #ifdef jungle.

In any case, I found a group of 3 musketeers, that shared my pain, and we would like to save you time when it comes to porting your applications to Windows, where almost a billion users can run YOUR code. The wonderful folks at Interopsystems agreed to host our project for us on their website. http://www.interopcommunity.com/dictionary/index.php

This dictionary is organized by frequently used HPC Unix calls. Each entry show the Unix function, its Windows equivalent (if it exists), required header files, an example of use, and related discussion. As you (or your compiler) discovers functions that are platform-specific or otherwise need modification, you can look up the offending function to find out what changes should be done. Information not specific to a function as well as overall suggestions and strategies can be found in the Porting Tips.

We hope this will save you time, but also please provide us with feedbacks on the site. Feel free to discuss and provide your personal porting tips, and we would love to add them to the collection.

Super computing 2009 next week

Wenming Ye — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 20:08:42 GMT

Quite a few folks from the Microsoft HPC team will be heading down to Portland next week to attend the 2009 super computing conference. I will be distributing a new version of the memory stick containing reference materials. (download in one zip)

Feel free to find me and get a copy at the Microsoft Booth.

This year Microsoft and IBM are sponsoring ASU students (the cluster devils team) going to the sc09 cluster challenge. This year’s challenge includes running:

1. CHOMBO 2. WRF (binary here). 3. HPCC 4. VisIt 5. NWCHEM These codes cover finite element/structure, weather simulation, benchmarking, visualization of data output, and computational chemistry. The students will be measured on performance/power consumption, efficiency, when running these codes. I wish them the best of luck!

PDC 2009 – Web Platform Chalk Talks

mjbrown — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:55:10 GMT

Hey everybody. At the PDC this year the Web Platform Team at Microsoft has lots of great stuff in store for you all.

The Web Platform Pavilion in the Big Room at PDC is hosting a series of Chalk Talks during PDC with some really exciting sessions that you won’t see anywhere else. There are talks on What’s new in IIS, Demystifying SEO and the IIS SEO Toolkit. There’s also the new Bing Maps Silverlight Control which just released at Tech Ed in Berlin, and deep dives on SketchFlow, how to extend Expression Encoder and a not to be missed panel discussion with Scott Hanselman, Sara Ford, Bertrand LeRoy, Glenn Block, Clemens Vasters and Shaun Walker, on Open Source Software and ASP.NET. Plus a bunch more sessions you can take a look at below. These are special sessions you won’t find in the regular PDC schedule so make a note of the date and time. You can find the Web Platform Pavilion in the Big Room in the LA Convention Center. It’s right next to the Surface Lounge.

While you are in the Web Pavilion make sure to stop by and talk to the engineers who build your favorite web platform products and technologies at Microsoft including: Silverlight, Expression Studio, Internet Explorer, Bing Maps, IIS, ASP.NET and Visual Web Developer. Plus some very special booths for Windows Presentation Foundation, Live Labs and our new partner program for Web Agencies and Hosters, WebsiteSpark. And before you leave make sure to stop by the Information Booth in the Web Platform Lounge to get a “Make Web Not War” T-Shirt and sticker for your laptop. We’ve only got a limited quantity of these so stop by and get them early. –See you there.

Schedule	Title	Description	Speaker
11/17/09 11:00am	What's New in IIS and the Microsoft Web Platform	The Microsoft Web Platform is becoming an increasingly powerful set of technologies for building Web applications and services. In this session, you will learn how to use the new Web Platform Installer to more quickly develop, deploy, and host ASP.NET and PHP Web applications. You will also see how server administrators can use IIS 7.5 in Windows Server 2008 R2 - with built-in support for .NET on Server Core - and new IIS extensions to simplify Web server configuration and management.	Raúl Eduardo González
11/17/09 12:00pm	Extending Expression Encoder	An informal discussion about the experience of building apps with Expression Encoder’s SDK: Demos will include enhancing Expression Encoder with Powershell, distributed peer-to-peer encoding and publishing content to the Windows Azure CDN-enabled blob store.	James Clarke
11/17/09 1:00pm	Deep Dive on Bing Maps Silverlight Control	The Bing Maps Platform has grown immensely over the past year from our Bing Maps AJAX Map Control to our Bing Maps Web Services and now our Bing Maps Silverlight Control. Come and join us as we take you on a tour of all the features and dig deep into the code to show you how to build your own Bing Maps applications in Silverlight.	Keith Kinnan
11/18/09 11:00am	Deep Dive into WPF4 Multi-Touch APIs	We’ll look closely at WPF4’s multi-touch platform to build first class multi-touch user experiences. We will discuss the details of manipulation and inertia events, integrating multi-touch experience with existing controls, raw touch events and building on extensible touch devices.	Anson Tsao
11/18/09 12:00pm	SEO your Site with the IIS SEO Toolkit	The IIS SEO Toolkit, is a brand new tool from Microsoft that takes the guesswork out of SEO to build the best quality and easiest to find Web sites on the Internet. We'll show features for gaining site intelligence through built in reporting and error identification for broken/invalid links, duplicate content and tag validation. Best of all, you can customize it so you can plug in your own rules and customizations to make the IIS Search Engine Optimizer the complete answer to your SEO needs.	Mark Brown
11/18/09 1:00pm	Super Cool Microsoft Ajax Tricks & Tips	Learn some of the advanced tricks of the new Microsoft Ajax Library. In this talk, you learn how to take advantage of many of the advanced features of Microsoft Ajax such as recursive templates, dynamic templates, and dynamic placeholders	Stephen Walther
11/18/09 2:00pm	Panel Discussion: Open Source Software + ASP.NET	Join us in this panel discussion on open source and ASP.NET. Hosted by Scott Hanselman, Sara Ford, Bertrand LeRoy, Glenn Block, Clemens Vasters, and Shaun Walker will be there to answer your questions and ask you some too.	Panel
11/19/09 10:00am	Bing Maps APIs	Bing Maps is a cutting edge geographic-based data visualization platform with several interfaces for integrating maps into your own applications and web sites. Come learn about what’s new with the different Bing Maps APIs and gain a full overview of the platform from the penultimate Bing Maps blogger and mapping expert, Microsoft’s Chris Pendleton.	Chris Pendleton
11/19/09 11:00am	Prototyping with SketchFlow	Using and extending Expression Blend and its prototyping vocabulary	Christian Schormann
11/19/09 12:00pm	Expression Blend for Developers	See a walkthrough of how Expression Blend can be used to design rich user experiences for Silverlight and WPF.	DoRon Motter

See you at PDC.

TimeCode Ranges from Windows Media Metadata

jitghosh — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:46:23 GMT

As a follow up to my previous post , I have updated the code to add the ability to extract SMPTE timecode ranges. The WMMetadataReader class (in WMMetadataReader.h) now has a public method like below: System::Collections::Generic::List<SMPTETimeCodeRange^>^ GetSMPTERanges(String^ FilePath, int StreamIndex); This allows you to explicitly get the time code ranges, for a specific video stream in a WMV file. If you want all the metadata, the GetStreamMetadata() method on the...(read more)

Dealing With Complexity

Alfred Thompson — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:39:42 GMT

I had an interesting conversation with two teachers last week. One the chair of the computer science of a large state university and the other a teacher in a career/technical high school. We were talking about how beginning programming students worked on their programs. I said that time and again I’d seen students trying to fix nested loops by adding end loop constructs in random places until they got a clean compile. Then they were often surprised that the code didn’t work as they expected. The others responded that a lot of those sorts of problems came from students trying to write too much code at once rather than working more iteratively.

For example, one teacher is using Alice which is a great tool. But many students start by adding all the characters they think they need all at once and then have trouble getting them to all work the way they want. The college professor related students trying to write all the methods and functions in a project at once and before testing any of them. The end result was code that was all but impossible to debug because finding where there heart of the error was is so difficult.

Students want instant results though. They think that they can keep many more details in their head then they actually can. Perhaps it comes from multi-tasking so much. Perhaps it is just youthful vanity. or perhaps it is because they see others keep large amounts of details in their head (perhaps their teacher) and assume that it is easy. Lots of students assume they are smarter or more knowledgeable than their teachers. Usually they’re wrong. What they fail to realize is that years of practice and experience gives their teachers an edge that only time and practice will let them catch up to.

I think we all try to get students to break problems down into small pieces. We emphasize modular coding with small methods and functions. We talk a lot about top down design where we break a large problem down in to progressively smaller pieces. I wonder if we don’t always talk enough about getting each small piece to work right before moving on to the next one. Do we talk enough about unit testing? Do we talk enough about keeping it simple?

I think this is a point that goes far beyond programming BTW. In English class I remember being told to start with an outline and then fill in the outline. One didn’t try to write the whole paper as one run-on sentence. Rather one planned out each section and wrote them in order. Well maybe not exactly in order but one typically made sure one section was in good shape before moving on to another section. Or at least that is always what worked for me. Many problems work better if one focuses on one piece of the project at a time. That is the most efficient way to do things.

Software is getting more and more complex all the time. Student projects are generally fairly simple compared to professional software development. that just means that it is more, not less, important that they learn to keep it simple, work in phases, and deal with complexity from the very beginning.

Float DataType is evil

Qingsong Yao — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:27:19 GMT

Let us try following T-SQL script on SQL Server: declare @a float =300000000000000000000000000000000000 select @a + 50 -@a select @a -@a +50 go Guess what is the result? the first is 0 . and the second result is 50 . Floating point data is approximate; therefore, not all values in the data type range can be represented exactly. When you add a small number with a very big number, the small number might just lost in the end result. As a end-user, we want consistent and correct result. However, float...(read more)

Management Browser uploaded

justinjsmith — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:15:29 GMT

Since releasing the new version of ACS on Nov 5, we’ve received quite a bit of feedback that we should provide a UI for managing ACS rules/scopes/issuers/token policies. In response, Cyrus put together a little WPF app that does the trick. It’s available on MSDN code gallery here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/acmbrowser

In the coming milestones, we are going to work on refining a UI – cutting it out of the Nov 5 release was a difficult decision. I’m confident that we will release a supported one in the coming milestones.

For now, hopefully this one will help. As always, please send us your feedback.

Tertiary Collation and the performance impact on order clause

Qingsong Yao — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:04:26 GMT

Today, One customer asked about collation SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI with non unique nonclustered index we are getting a sort on the query plan. The sample script is: CREATE TABLE TableWithASColumn(ID INT PRIMARY KEY, CharData VARCHAR(100) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS) CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_CharData ON TableWithASColumn(CharData) CREATE TABLE TableWithAIColumn(ID INT PRIMARY KEY,CharData VARCHAR(100) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI) CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_CharData ON TableWithAIColumn(CharData)...(read more)

How can the United States (and other countries) stay technically literate?

RandyMiller — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:04:00 GMT

Thanks to plastic bricks from Denmark, kids in the United States (and all around the world are learning to program at age 8). I had the priviledge of coaching a young team of NC kids (9 to 11 years old) to win the NC State Championship in FLL in three years. The Microbots were a dedicated group of kids, none of whom knew how to program when they started FLL. One of these kids quit football to dedicate himself to programming. I tell folks about this program all of the time. If you have a child, aged 8 to 13, and you don't think that he/she will be a pro-football player (wow - the odds are 1:a gizillion) when he or she grows up, get them on the leading edge of technology (oh and he/she can play with plastic bricks too).

OK - so you have an older kid? There is a corresponding program for high school kids. Microsoft has graciously sponsored Team Awkward Turtle, a high school team from Southwest Wake County in NC (five local high schools and the home schoolers too). Check out this robot! High school kids built and programmed this! I spend a certain amount of my time training the next generation to be great!

I recently showed pictures of the team to a researcher from China. He said that they didn't have anything like this happening in their high schools. I say this not to bust on China. I am so sure that it is just a matter of time before they are doing this too. My point is, your sons and daughters will be competing with these kids (from all over the world).

I love watching football and look forward to spending my Monday nights watching the stars but I will feel much better about the world at large if more people were doing this on their weekends like I am.

Where’s rustock?

tzink — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:01:00 GMT

Win32/Rustock is a multi-component family of rootkit-enabled backdoor trojans, which were historically developed to aid in the distribution of spam e-mail. First discovered sometime in early 2006, Rustock has evolved to become a prevalent and pervasive threat. It is the largest spamming botnet that sends mail to our servers.

I decided to take a look at where its spamming IPs were located, geographically, for the date of November 12, 2009. Below is the chart:

In a surprising twist and departure from the norm, the United States is very under-represented in the above chart. South America is strongly over-represented. The top countries are below:

Rank	Country	Distinct IPs
1	Brazil	3274
2	India	2687
3	Columbia	1211
4	Poland	899
5	United States	836
6	Argentina	760
7	Czech Republic	745
8	Romania	731
9	Thailand	630
10	Israel	464
11	Spain	447
12	Italy	440
13	South Korea	419
14	South Africa	379
15	Great Britain	372
16	Germany	372
17	Turkey	368
18	Peru	363
19	Vietnam	361
20	Ukraine	332

Three of the top six countries are in South America. Only one is in Asia, and one is in Europe. This differs significantly from the total spamming IP distribution where the United States has 18% of the total IPs:

For this one day, South America’s representation has doubled compared to its global IP distribution for all spam, the United States is around 1/3, but Asia and Europe are about the same. For some odd reason, the United States seems to be more resistant to relaying spam from rustock than other countries. And for some reason, South America is more prone to relaying it. I’ll take some guesses in my next post as to why this is.

Behind the ISO Curtain

k8em0 — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:55:00 GMT

When people ask me what I do at Microsoft, in the style of one of “the Bobs” in Office Space posing the question “What would you say ya do here?”, I point them to things like the SDL , the SDL Pro Network , which I manage, or MSVR , which I founded and is now managed by Adrian Stone over in MSRC . Someday, in the next 2-3 years, I’ll also be able to point to an ISO standard. Never in my 9 lives would I have expected to say that at all, let alone with such passion and enthusiasm. To my friends who...(read more)