Decent Windows Service Tutorial

This page covers the basics for creating a Windows Service.

http://www.beansoftware.com/NET-Tutorials/Create-Windows-Services.aspx

Truespace 7.6 Free

I guess Microsoft bought Caligari software last year. Caligari's flagship software program was a pretty cool 3D package called Truespace.

As part of Microsoft's Virtual Earth push, Truespace, which once was around 600 bucks, is now FREE.

Need to spice up some GUIs? Then check out Truespace.

http://www.caligari.com/Products/trueSpace/tS75/brochure/intro.asp?Cate=BIntro

On a sadder note, I hate to see these smaller companies starting to succumb. When I first got into programming I really enjoyed using some of the smaller 3D packages out there like Poser, Bryce, Cool 3D, etc... It is a shame these companies are generally either going out of business or being bought up.

A Peak at Goggle Trends

I read a blog recently that sighted some Goggle Trend data, so I figured I'd take a peak on what is going on. I found some interesting data, and saddly things don't look that great for the future of America being the hope of the most internet developers. Check out these few facts.

I checked out the search trends for ASP.Net, and I found the following-

• Out of the top 10 originating search cities, only three where American (Houston, Atlanta, and Phoenix).
• The United States was 8th over all in searches, even Iran beat us.
• The top search language is suprisingly Vietnamese, followed by English at number two (probably due to the fact that most Indian programmers speak English). It looks like there is a large outsourcing effort going on in Vietnam.

Now let's check out the search trends for php.

• Only San Fransisco made it on the top 10 originating cities list, and the United States didn't even make it on the top 10 originating search regions.
• English didn't make it on the top 10 languages used in the search
• It looks like Indonesia (Jakarta specifically) are doing the most with php right now.

Ok, Now lets do a trend for jQuery.

• America doesn't make it on the top 10 search regions.
• San Fran seems very active in its searching for jQuery, so is Redmond, else the other cities are all foreign, many of them being Asian cities.
• Russians seem to be eating up jQuery, Russia being the top search region and top originating search language.

And lastly, lets do a trend search on Java

• English is the 6th in originating search languages.
• No American cities show up on the top 10.
• The United States doesn't show up on the top 10 originating search regions.

One last one, lets do Actionscript-

• New York, San Fran, English as the 3rd searched language, US not in the top 10 for search originating regions.

So, it seems like America has a few tech hubs (San Fransisco, Redmond, to a lesser extent Phoenix, Houston, and Atlanta). Other than that it looks like there are multiple regions in the world that are way more active in at least web development then America is. Right now it seems like America drives technology (though a suprising amount of what Microsoft, IBM, and Apple deliver is from outsourced teams).

So are we seeing the slow death of the American web developer?

Not sure.

CGI Advancement

CGI takes another huge step forward, pretty cool.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4557935.ece

Very cool way of passing a DataSet to a WCF Service

Wanna generic WCF to consume any dataset you pass to it, and spit out a dataset on the other side?

I found this post, might get you started.

http://pstaev.blogspot.com/2008/04/passing-dataset-to-wcf-method.html

Chucking Rocks at the Moon with WCF and NTLM Errors

So, I've been reading, studying, and toying mentally with WCF, but it was now time for me to do something with WCF.

So I created my "hello world" WCF service, and straight off the get go...problem.

I created my WCF web service (in an existing web app, going that route), left everything as default, and got the service running in debug mode. I copied default URL (with the ?wsdl) that comes up when you run the web service.

I then created a new web project, right clicked in VS 2008 on the Add Web Service, and pasted in the URL from above. The discovery took place, and everything looked good.

So in the code behind page_load method on my default page, I do something like this. Not your names will very.

ServiceReference1.WCFTestClient x =
        new Consumer.ServiceReference1.WCFTestClient ();
      try
      {
        Response.Write ( x.GetData ( 3 ) );
        x.Close ();
      }
      catch ( System.Exception ex )
      {
        Response.Write ( ex.ToString () );
      }

then I fire it up...bomb. Something about an NTLM anonymous blah blah blah error.

I read, figure out you can turn NTLM off (if you are using Cassini, right click on your web application sln, properties, start up, uncheck NTLM). But that wasn't going to work as the web app that I'm adding the web service into actually needs NTLM.

So, I played around. By default, the binding used is wsHttpbinding. You can change that to get things running. In the web config on the web app that host the service, I changed the binding entry from wshttpbinding to basicHttpBinding. On my consumer web app, I updated the web service reference, then went into the web config and changed the security mode setting lines in the basicHttpBinding.

<security mode="TransportCredentialOnly">
      <transport clientCredentialType="Ntlm" proxyCredentialType="None"
       realm="" />
      <message clientCredentialType="UserName" algorithmSuite="Default" />
     </security>

Well, once I fired up again in debug, everyting works, and allegidly NTLM is still in place. Hope this helps someone. Not sure how secure all this is, so I will keep playing.

Nuke War Anyone?

I was thinking, does anyone really realize just how close to nuclear war we are? Try this very plausable scenario on for size.

* Russia shoots down an American C-17 Cargo plane carrying humanitarian supplies to Georgia
* Russia blockaids more Georgian ports.
* America tries to send in more aid.
* Either a Russian fighter or a Russian naval vessel fires on an American vessel. There is return fire and the Russian vessel is destroyed.
* A Blackjack bomber test American air defenses, and due to the present crisis, is shot down
* Scattered skirmishes between Russian and American forces through out the world.
* KAAABOOOOM!

I hope cool heads prevail here.

Email Obfuscator

From time to time you may want to post an email address on a web page. That's fine, but there are numerous web spiders that crawl pages looking for valid email addresses to add to email to be spammed lists. But with some clever javascript, you can post your email address, and hide it from the pesky spiders and crawlers.

http://www.jottings.com/obfuscator.htm

Georgia and Russia Go At It

[Update]

A fast naval response by the Russians further indicates advanced planning on their part-

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/08/while-the-media.html

Read the third paragraph.

[Update]
Further evidence that Russia was planning aggression against Georgia in advance.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/08/georgia-under-o.html

Basically the Georgian's saw the writting on the wall, so they made a pre-emptive move on their break away republics...or the Russians saw the Georgian's planning an assault, and began to build up their forces...not sure which, probably and chicken or the egg question a that point. Both sides have interest in break away areas.


The flare up, and possible war, between Russia and Georgia will be interesting. Here are a few links that will help you understand the conflict.

There is oil involved.
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1358

Russia started the recent flare-up. http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL768040420080808

The Georgians are feeling perhaps a little overconfident, having had recent military training and funding from the U.S. and Israel , and ground combat experience in Iraq http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/08/the-new-war-in.html http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/08/did-us-military.html

I predict that the Russians will prevail, but if it comes to out and out full blown combat, the Russians will end up with a suprisingly big bloody nose before the conflict is over. It might be good for Russia's ego to be trimmed a bit. In either case it is sad to see that a bunch of young people are probably going to be killed over money and nationalistic pride.

Apple Slaves

I've got a lot of bad things to say about Apple. And I do not come to my conclusions from a point of ignorance. For now, I'll just link to this article, which points out the well known horrible conditions in which technical Apple employees, pretty much from day one, often have found themselves working in. Read this SlashDot article for the latest-

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/07/132229&from=rss

Why do I bother to post this? Apple has a fanatical following that often pits Apple (the good guys) against Microsoft (the bad guys). I wish to dispell this myth. There are no good guys. Apple in many ways fleeces its flock worse then Microsoft does. Yet the faithful cry out in blissful ignorance, "Give us more!". This has ALWAYS made me a little sick.

3 Important JSON / WCF Problems and Solutions

If you are using jQuery with .Net, you might want to check out the following post-

http://encosia.com/2008/06/05/3-mistakes-to-avoid-when-using-jquery-with-aspnet-ajax/

Encosia outlines three little items that could end up making you pull a lot of hair out of your head wondering why your JSON jQuery WCF communication isn't working

Props to the Pakistani Airforce

The Pakistanis had some balls during the 80ies. Check this out-

http://www.pakdef.info/pakmilitary/airforce/war/indexafghanwar.html

I feel bad for Pakistan. They are in a rock and a hard place now.