May 2005 - Posts

Excessive comment spam : Turned off

So obvious. I could no longer handle the amount I have started receiving as comment spam. I hope to find a way out soon.
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Karen's Power Tools : Cool VB6 programs

Karen is the author of the popular Power Tools, free programs (free for personal, non-commercial use) that make life with Windows a lot easier. I have been using a couple of them infrequently (Computer Profiler & Drive Info).

I could not find anywhere on her site if she plans to switch over to VB.NET any time soon.

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ShortCutter

ShortCutter is a hotkey utility and can be used to perform user defined action based on a key combination. I have been using Hotkeycontrol XP till now but thinking of switching to ShortCutter. Their is another open source candidate I am considering AutoHotkey. It is more powerful but require a learning curve.
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EnterpriseDB 2005

Took up the PostgreSQL code base and added some propriety technology to make it more reliable, secure, better performer and compatible (mainly with Oracle); and finally renamed it to EnterpirseDB. Its status about Open Source is unclear to me. Sys-Con and  TechSpot call it open source where as eWeek and Database Journel fails to mention so. Even EnterpirseDB website is not clear about its status. It is free for development, test, and low-volume production but enterprise production will cost money.

The only good thing is that it was a breeze to install it on Windows machine. Downloading incentive include a golf shirt provided you are in US.

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Netscape breaks IE's XML Rendering

It is being reported that Netscape 8 is causing problem to Internet Explorer's XML rendering ability (IEBlog, ZDNet). So, I tried to browse the RSS feed of this blog on a Windows XP SP2 machine with IE6, Netscape 8 & Firefox 1.0.4. Firefox was working fine so was Netscape 8 with Firefox rendering. IE was displaying a blank page. Even Netscape 8 showed a blank page when I switched to IE engine. Microsoft is advising users to unistall NS 8 till it work out a solution with Netscape. Bad going for netscape.
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Netscape 8 require IE for dual-rendering feature

There is blog entry which says that IE rendering engine of Netscape 8 require Internet Explorer. It was tried on 98lite which did not have IE installed. Great to prove a point, but then, will MS let you install OS without IE.
(From OSNews.Com, FlexBeta.Net)

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Foundstone .NET Security Toolkit

A free tool for personal and/or non-commercial use.

The Foundstone S3i™ (Strategic Secure Software Initiative) .NET Security Toolkit is designed to help application developers and architects to build secure and reliable .NET software applications. The new toolkit is comprised of the Validator.NET, .NETMon and SecureUML template tools which help developers validate, debug and analyze vulnerabilities during the design and development of .NET applications.
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ASP.NET 2.0 Beta Site

ASP.NET 2.0 web site is now available at http://beta.asp.net/
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Mainsoft let you develop for Linux from Visual Studio.NET

Mainsoft yesterday announced availability of Visual MainWin for J2EE Developer Edition (Grasshopper), a free plug-in for Visual Studio.NET, which allow to develop web application for Linux using VS.NET. Grasshopper enables developers to develop, debug and deploy web application and web services for Windows, Linux and any Java-enabled platform (Apache Tomcat application server) using C# or VB.NET in Visual Studio.NET .

Commercial product Visual MainWin for J2EE Enterprise Edition will feature advanced feature such as multi-CPU capabilities and fully-featured J2EE servers (look here for feature comparison).

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AOL Netscape 8 is released

Update:As it was based on Firefox 1.0.3 and carried the same security vulnerabilities that were fixed last week in Firefox 1.0.4, Netscape has released the update for its one day old browser.

America Online's Netscape team has released the final Netscape 8.0. Based upon Firefox, it supports rendering with both Mozilla's Gecko and Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser engines. If a page doesn't render or work properly in the Gecko engine, the user can flip it to IE with a single click.

Netscape has included a Multibar feature that combines customizable toolbars into single buttons.

Feature includes:

You may want to directly download it from here. (approx 13.2 MB)

IE7 Tabs

IEBlog is asking for feedback on tabs in upcoming beta of IE7. Yes, IE7 will support tabs. In my opinion Maxthon has quite good implementation of tabs. You can put tabs at top or bottom, can have close button on tabs, can save all the tabs as a group and restore them late and can open a tab from a clipboard hyperlink. I think these are basic features and IE7 should have these.
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Visual Studio Team Foundation Server with limited users for MSDN subscribers

You will get the Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server with limited capability in you MSDN (Universal/Enterprise) subscriptions. Microsoft has reacted to feedback and said will place a limited version of Team Foundation Server in each Visual Studio Team System role edition.  This version will be restricted to a maximum of 5 users, though I would have liked a figure of 10.

You can read more detailed product information on the entire Visual Studio 2005 line and a comparison of each product's contents at here.

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Windows OneCare Live : Microsoft's new security service

Sounds like a Windows Update client to me including the feature of MBSA and WUS.

"Windows OneCare is the next major advance in our ongoing efforts to help keep consumers' Windows-based PCs 'healthy' in a way that's simple and as worry-free as possible for them," said Ryan Hamlin, general manager of the Technology Care and Safety Group at Microsoft. "We're designing the service so it will continually update and evolve over time, helping to ensure that our customers will have the most complete and effective protection and safety services in place every time they turn on their PC."

Windows OneCare is being designed to address core safety concerns such as worms, viruses and spyware, but also to span broader PC health issues: helping protect electronic assets such as digital photos, music, financial data and software; and guarding against performance degradation and system clutter that can result from heavy use. Key capabilities and features of Windows OneCare will include the following:

  • Defense against evolving threats. Windows OneCare will provide automatically updated anti-virus, anti-spyware and two-way firewall protection.
  • Performance and reliability tools. PC owners will be able to choose to have Windows OneCare automatically carry out periodic maintenance tasks such as disk cleanup, hard-drive defragmentation and file repair. The service also will offer boot-time information and proactive support tools to help improve the customer experience.
  • Backup and restore capabilities. Windows OneCare will enable automated backup of files by category on CD and DVD, along with the option to back up all files on the system or only those that have changed since the last time the action was performed. If files are accidentally deleted or corrupted on the PC hard drive, the service is designed to restore saved versions or map them on a new PC.
  • Simple, integrated service experience. PC users will have one simple point of reference for checking the overall health of their system. Windows OneCare will automatically notify users of available updates or other recommended actions and enable users to easily act as needed. Otherwise, the service stays quiet and in the background.
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