November 2004 - Posts
In these days I've seen on different forums on the net (the last is the Neowin Forum) posts about how to increase the Windows XP performances to make it faster.
The "magic tip" to make Windows XP faster is signalled on this guide on IRCSpy. In summary, according to this giude, if you want to make XP faster you've to go on the registry, Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM, Current control set > Control > Session Manager > Memory Management > Prefetch Parameters and then change the value in EnablePrefetcher from 3 to 5.
Guys, please don't do that... it's a fake. This is not a valid value and your XP will not have better performances (but maybe the opposite).
The Prefetcher service on Windows XP basically monitors the different programs that start during startup and helps them launch faster. The important key is EnablePrefetcher, and the default value for this should be set to 3. The admitted values are only 1,2,3 and 0.
1 means to prefetch boot processes only.
2 means prefetch applications only
3 means prefetch both
0 is used if you want to disable prefetching (useful only if you hae a low amoun of RAM on your system).
So, if you want that your Windows XP will remain stable, don't play with the Prefetcher... 
As I was thinking, Google has decided to release a single package of all its software products (Google Toolbar, Google Desktop Search, Picasa Photo Organizer, Google Deskbar and Gmail Notifier).
The package (about 5MB) is available to download on the Google Software Downloads page.
In a period where the fans for Firefox are growing, there are some nostalgic fans of IE (or they simply hate Firefox success) that are building a support site like these Antifirefox.com. 
However, a nice forum guys!
P.S. I'm a Firefox lover but I hope on IE resurrection...
This is a question I have to do...
I'm using Visual Studio .NET 2005 Beta 1 on a Virtual machine and all works good but... what could happen if I'll try to install it on the same machine where I've installed Visual Studio .NET 2003? The 1.1 and 2.0 Framework can live together without problems?
I need to setup a new machine at work to start working with VS2005 Beta and I need this feedback before starting...
It's the time to blog this tip because I receive always the same question... what are these buttons in your Visual Studio .NET??
Some times ago I've written an article (in italian) to show a little tip for VS.NET and now I'll try to explain it...
How many times you're going to take a conference or a demo for a customer and you have received the question "Excuse me, can you increase the font size? We can't read the code..."? I think a lot of time...
The normal action to perform this task is going to the Tools --> Options --> Fonts and Colors menu of Visual Studio .NET and change the font dimension.
I've done exactly like these for a lot of time, but some months ago I've learned that VS.NET has a powerful editor for macros... So, why don't create a macro to perform this task? The great thing of a macro is that you can call it from a button placed on the VS.NET toolbar so, imagine how useful could be to have buttons on the VS.NET toolbar to increase or decrease the font size of the code window as you want.
Performing this task is quite simple...
We can create a new macro for VS.NET by going to the Tools --> Macros --> New Macro Project menu.
A new macro project is started. We've to choose the working directory and the project name and then push the Open button. The Macro Explorer window will magically appear to you.
On the Macro Explorer window you can see a module (Module1). Rename it as you want (I like to do so) and place the code above on it:
Imports EnvDTE
Imports System.Diagnostics
Public Module Presentazioni
Public Sub Incrementa() 'Increase the font size
DTE.Properties("FontsAndColors", "TextEditor").Item("FontSize").Value += 1
End Sub
Public Sub Decrementa() 'Decrease the font size
DTE.Properties("FontsAndColors", "TextEditor").Item("FontSize").Value -= 1
End Sub
Public Sub Config_Presentazioni() 'Configuration used on presentations
DTE.Properties("FontsAndColors", "TextEditor").Item("FontSize").Value = 16
End Sub
Public Sub Config_Lavoro() 'Configuration used at work
DTE.Properties("FontsAndColors", "TextEditor").Item("FontSize").Value = 10
End Sub
End Module
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As you can see, I've created a macro that works on the VS.NET environment properties and has 4 methods, 2 for increasing and decreasing the font size and 2 for automatically set font configurations to use at work (normally font size=10) and for presentations (normally font size=16).="/FONT">="/P"> After saving the project, now we've to create the buttons on the VS.NET Toolbar to use the macro. To do this, right click on the VS.NET Toolbar, Customize. on the Customization window, select the Commands tab and on the Categories list select Macros. On the right box you can see the list of your macros available with all their methods.
To add the buttons on the toolbar, just select the methods to add and drag&drop them on the VS.NET toolbar in the position you want. VS.NET will create a button for you. Right click on this button and you can customize it as you want (image, text etc.)
The final result is something like this:
This is what I have on my VS.NET. By pressing the + or - buttons you can easily increase or decrease the font size of your code window.
You can download the macro code from HERE.
I think it's a tip really useful for presentations...
I'm starting to create a development group (composed by computer engineers focused on Windows and Linux development in many platforms) and I have at the moment a big problem... I need to create a good company name!!!
Can you help me? The group will be focused on solutions development and systems architecture.
Blogging people... if you have more fantasy than me, can you try to suggest me a possiblle company name?? All possible suggestions are welcome!
Michael Howard has recently written an article on MSDN about "Browsing the Web and Reading E-mail Safely as an Administrator".
In this article Michael explains the danger that you're exposed to when you are running all your applications with administrator privileges. He has also written a great little application called DropMyRights that helps users who must run as an administrator to run applications in a much safer context (that of a non-administrator). It does this by taking the current user's token, removing various privileges and SIDs from the token, and then using that token to start another process, such as Internet Explorer or Outlook. This tool works just as well with Mozilla's Firefox too.
If you type something like this:
dropmyrights.exe "c:\program files\internet explorer\iexplore.exe"
you will be able to have the admin privileges of your machine but you can run Internet Explorer with non-admin privileges.
An interesting tool to download and install in offices or similar...
The Blog Spamming world is moving... 
Today I've received some spam posts (always about the same arguments) but with a different format that I've never seen before. On the Sender field of the post was placed the spam message title, on the URL field the spam URL and on the message body nothing about spam, no links, no messages, but some absurd phrases like "He ran hard, very hard. He felt the cramps in both of his thighs...".
A new way to avoid filtering? Curious...
Today, Google announced the availability of the Google Deskbar API (Application Programming Interface). This technology makes it possible for software developers to build their own features, or plug-ins, for the popular Google Deskbar.
What is wonderful is that plugins (or other types of application with this API) can be written in any .NET language, such as C# or Visual Basic.NET... wow! :)
Are you an MSDN subscriber? This is one of the most exciting CTP released in these days... The first Community Technical Preview release of "Avalon" is out and ready to try!
Avalon is the new graphics display which unified documents, graphics, media and user interfaces into a single platform. Using a new vector-based compositing engine, Avalon takes full advantage of modern graphics hardware and provides the capabilities for building rich, immersive applications with 2D and 3D capabilities. Avalon also introduces XAML, a markup language that maps XML markup to objects in the .NET Framework and is built to allow designers and developers to work together in the user interface development process.
The great news is that now Avalon is not only a Longhorn feature, but it's available also for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 (this CTP works with these systems, you've only to install the .NET Framework 2.0).
The next download is scheduled...
I'm terrible sorry to talk about this argument, but I really don't understand the responses that the VB.NET Staff is giving to the community...
Ok, now I think that eveyone know that the VB team is NOT going to be able to implement Refactoring in Visual Studio 2005. I know also that maybe the VB.NET staff is true by saying that VB.NET in Visual Studio 2005 is the best VB.NET ever, with the return of Edit and Continue features (the community request number 1), more than 500 Intellisense code snippets, My, AutoCorrect and many of other VB features.
I can understand also that implementing Refactory on VB could be a long work and a big delay on Visual Studio 2005 release date, but I'm terrible disappointed for this lack on the next VB version. Why VB must be always a step under C#? 
However, this post was only to ask a personal question: why spent so long time to implement a feature like MY?
I think I'll use it not too much often on my work and personally I don't think it could be really useful and revolutionary as someone is showing. All the things you could do in future with MY you can easily do NOW. Who has schedule the working table for the VB staff? Why the MY priority above Refactoring? Unbelievable...
We don't need toys like MY, we need working tool like Refactoring!!
The toys around Google's tools are growing...
My last diascover is DNKA, an interesting Remote Desktop Search tool based on Google Desktop Search.
It acts as a web server (search server) by interacting as a layer between Google Desktop Search (GDS) and user and allow other users to search, view, download your files, emails, chats and web history.
Key Features- Simple to access the search (GDS) from another desktop
- Allow/Deny access from external hosts to the search server. By default (as installed) access is only granted to the local machine.
- Allow to change port number for web server
- Serve the files from a local machine
- Web interface for search server options
- Password protected access to search server options
- Runs automatically when a GDS start up
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Personal opinions about this tool: interesting only if you have a LAN with different computers or a small office and you want to easily search every computer (you can authorize only the IP addresses you want). Obviously, there are the normal security issues of every GDS installation (it index all your files and everyone is authorized to access your machine can see them).
Too much work, too much problems, and the consequence of these was that yesterday I was blocked at office and I've missed the Microsoft Technical Conference in Milan.
What is hurting me? I've missed the Bill Gates speaking...
Two new Internet Explorer vulnerabilities are discovered and they can be exploited by malicious people to bypass the security features in Microsoft Windows XP SP2.
According to Secunia, the flaws are:
1) Microsoft Windows XP SP2 has a security feature which warns users when opening downloaded files of certain types. If the downloaded file was sent with a specially crafted "Content-Location" HTTP header, in some situations no security warning will be given to the user when the file is opened.
2) An error when saving some documents using the Javascript function "execCommand()", can be exploited to spoof the file extension in the "Save HTML Document" dialog.
Successful exploitation requires that the option "Hide extension for known file types" is enabled (default setting) and a combination of vulnerability 1 and 2 can be exploited by a malicious website to trick a user into downloading a malicious executable file masqueraded as a HTML document.
For the moment there are no patches available, but the solution could be disable Active Scripting support and the "Hide extension for known file types" option.
On our User Group, Pierre Greborio today has asked an interesting question: 1 or 2 years ago, all the interest of the community was around the Web Services world. Now, if you observ with attention what is the road on the real world, you can see that the Web Service adoption is not so widespread.
Why this? Why many realities don't use Web Services for their applications?
In my opinion, the main cause of this poor adoption in the real world is that the Web Services architecture and their standards are in a continuous evolution and modification. For many realities, this is really a big problem: why we've to work on a project with a technology that maybe between some months could totally change and we've to rewrite our project?
What do you think about?
An entire afternoon to perform a post on my blog... this is what happens sometimes (too often) here on DotNetJunkies Weblogs (plus errors during logins etc.).
Seeing always these problems is really frustrating... DNJ uses a really old version of .Text (0.94) and now (expecially with the big number of users on the community) the upgrade to the 0.95 version is really necessary. The 0.95 is more stable than the version we've here now, so... PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, WE NEED AN UPGRADE SOON!!!
The number of Gmail tools available is rapidly growing and this is a good sign of interest for the new Google mail service.
The last nice tool I've discovered is the Gmail Image Viewer.
If you receive a mail with multiple images as attachments, with Gmail you've to click each one to open and see it. If you want to see all the images at once, this is the right tool. Gmail Image Viewer is a small browser add-on that adds a right-click menu item that will automatically inline image attachments in your Gmail messages in Internet Explorer. Nice...
I've not tryed the tool yet but after a quick review I've a big lack (for me obviously!): the tool is a Javascript code that is installed into the installation directory and a registry entry (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MenuExt\Gmail Image Viewer) that adds the relevant menu item to Explorer. Will it work with Firefox????
Really curios this fact... Yahoo today has announced that it was beginning to test and use its DomainKeys signature to verify every email address, it has increased the available space to all the mailboxes and has announced improved mail searching capabilies and DHTML instant autocomplete features for email addresses.
Google is using all these feature for months in its Gmail service (DomainKeys included) so... maybe Yahoo is observing Gmail with attention and interest?
Oh Oh... my last full immersion at WPC has caused some lacks on my personal software update...
Fedora Core 3 is just released and an upgrade of my Linux system is really necessary after seeing the new features (GNOME 2.8, KDE 3.3, Evolution 2.0, Remote Desktop, Helix Player and Firefox only to resume some of them).
I've to start download the ISO ---> priority=high!="/P">