Last week I watched Scott Hanselman demo a add-on to Asp.NET named Glimpse. If you are familiar with Firebug in Firefox then Glimpse will look very similar. Glimpse allows you to look at all the information of your website while you are debugging to really find out what information is being transferred. You can watch a small demo video of Glimpse on the Glimpse website.
The problem I have today is really needing a domain server in my home but what I'd really like is a cloud based domain server for home. With having numerous devices in the home and needing to manage permissions and passwords I really just need a domain. When user's change their password on one computer and not the others it messes up the Windows Home Server backups. Plus the people in the house have to remember which password works with which computer.
I've seen where some one was able to do it with Amazon Web Services for a significant price but then it was a hack of DNS forwarding. I wonder if Microsoft has any plans to offer a similar better integrated solution with Windows Azure cloud services. This way I could manage the domain from anywhere and it would be on a very secure and manage network.
I just came back from MS Tech-ed NA 2011 and saw a lot of the capabilities that Azure could do for businesses but I'm wondering how they can help the home power user.
Anybody got any idea's where I could get a Windows Domain in the cloud or is it just a really bad idea?
Tomorrow is the big drop. The day the world will stand still similar to that feeling in the movie Armageddon when they hear it was too late. Our whole lives stand in hands of some of the most skilled men and women from across the world. This problem isn't just BP's problem or a gulf coast problem. This problem is for everyone on the face of the Earth. There will be a time tomorrow when the cap is lowered almost into place that for once we'll have world peace. Maybe only for a few seconds or possibly a few minutes but in that time you will see people from every country crossing their fingers that the cap works. Total silence. People will hold their breath, teachers will stop teaching, traffic will stop almost if someone pressed mute for just a few seconds as the cap is lowered into place. As old saying has it, you could hear a pin drop. It will be that way tomorrow. Will it work? Can it hold the pressure? Nobody knows. But one thing I know, people from all over the world will for once come together as a whole, in peace, to save the fate of all our futures. Below is a quote from the movie Independence Day that I feel has good meaning for what will happen tomorrow.
"Mankind." That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it's fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom... Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution... but from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: "We will not go quietly into the night!" We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!
Here's a question that popped in my head straight from the thinking room today and spark a lot of discussion when I brought it up at work. Can you copyright, trademark, or patent a sequence of numbers? I say no. Numbers are public domain.
You may ask why I ask this...Well everything that is digital is just a sequence of numbers. My stake is that once something is transfered into a digital media, the information in digital media is now public domain. If the media completely stays in a analog means then the information is copyrightable. This now brings the scare that all medical records and cell phone conversations that are on digital media are now public domain. This doesn't mean you can't encrypt the data so that it is easily unreadable but the information belongs to the public because it's made up of just a sequence of numbers.
My thinking behind this is based on my fight against the DMCA. What I've figured out from copyright and trademark laws is that only the single group who the information is associated with benefits and the rest of the human race suffers because this information can't be used without paying an exorbitant amount of money to use the idea. So these laws really don't benefit anyone. Once a movie is released in a digital media like a DVD then that information is now public domain and can not be copyrighted in it's digital form.
I'm not a lawyer so I want to hear what other people have to say. What do you think about this? How do feel about public laws protecting digital media? Feel free to spout out.
I got my monthly email from Cox Communications again. Been getting these emails since about 2001. Blah...
Dear Customer,
This message is to advise that Cox Communications has received a notice claiming that you are using your Cox High Speed Internet service to post or transmit material in violation of U.S. Copyright law. We have included a copy of the complaint, which identifies the party raising it and the material claimed to be infringing.
We ask that you review the complaint and, if it is valid, promptly remove or disable access to the infringing material. If you disagree with the claims in the notice, you should contact the sender, and not Cox, to resolve the matter.
As an Internet Service Provider, Cox is responsible, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"), to advise when we receive a notice asserting infringement by you. We are also required to take appropriate action if further claims are received that you do not resolve.
The material that you post or share online is your responsibility. Cox encourages responsible Internet use, but we do not monitor nor control the information you share. We have a duty, however, to take progressive steps when we received complaints of infringement.
If we continue to receive infringement claims such as this one, concerning your use of our service, we will suspend your account and disable your Internet connection until you confirm you have removed the infringing material.
Notice ID: 131-14041770
Notice Date: 25 Aug 2009 16:46:19 GMT
Cox Communications
Dear Sir or Madam:
BayTSP, Inc. ("BayTSP") swears under penalty of perjury Lionsgate Films has authorized BayTSP to act as its non-exclusive agent for copyright infringement notification. BayTSP's search of the protocol listed below has detected infringements of Lionsgate Films copyright interests on your IP addresses as detailed in the below report.
BayTSP has reasonable good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of in the below report is not authorized by Lionsgate Films, its agents, or the law. The information provided herein is accurate to the best of our knowledge. Therefore, this letter is an official notification to effect removal of the detected infringement listed in the below report. The below documentation specifies the exact location of the infringement.
We hereby request that you immediately remove or block access to the infringing material, as specified in the copyright laws, and insure the user refrains from using or sharing with others unauthorized Lionsgate Films materials in the future (see, 17 U.S.C. 512).
Further, we believe that the entire Internet community benefits when these matters are resolved cooperatively. We urge you to take immediate action to stop this infringing activity and inform us of the results of your actions. We appreciate your efforts toward this common goal.
Nothing in this letter shall serve as a waiver of any rights or remedies of Lionsgate Films with respect to the alleged infringement, all of which are expressly reserved. Should you need to contact me, I may be reached at the below address.
Regards,
Mark Ishikawa
CEO
BayTSP.com Inc. - as an Authorized Agent of Lionsgate Films
PO Box 1314 - Los Gatos, CA 95031
Phone:: 408-341-2305 fax:: 408-341-2399
lions_gate@copyright-compliance.com
Note: The information transmitted in this Notice is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, reproduction, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from all computers.
This infringement notice contains an XML tag that can be used to automate the processing of this data. If you would like more information on how to use this tag please contact BayTSP.
Evidentiary Information:
Notice ID: 131-14041770
Initial Infringement Timestamp: 15 Aug 2009 00:21:24 GMT
Recent Infringement Timestamp: 25 Aug 2009 00:04:47 GMT
Infringers IP Address: 72.205.223.179
Protocol: BitTorrent
Infringed Work: Crank: High Voltage
Infringing File Name: Crank High Voltage [2009]DVDRip[Xvid]AC3 5.1[Eng]-RoCK&BlueLadyRG.avi
Infringing File Size: 1572481024
Bay ID: 5b6ae2c051d0e9e9f1f188e378c6bcc6df949e4c|1572481024
Port ID: 23990
Infringer's DNS Name: ip72-205-223-179.pn.at.cox.net Infringer's User Name:
BayTSP on behalf of Lions Gate Films Mark Ishikawa, CEO P.O. Box 1314, Los Gatos, California 95031
(408) 341-2300,(408) 341-2399 lions_gate@copyright-compliance.com
So the team I work with has inherited a project that seems to never end. The aggravation level of everyone and having to touch this code is at an all-time level because nothing is simple when working with it. I constantly ask myself WTF, and Why? I know the people who wrote the code are pretty good programmers so I wonder why it became this way. I later reflect that maybe they took all the bad code that was written in VB6 and just slapped it into a class in VB.Net and made all the code COM visible so the legacy code could use it.
I read in a magazine one time about why we call code "legacy code". What's the difference between code written today and "legacy code"? Well, "legacy code" is code nobody wants to touch anymore either because it's too complex, lack of documentation, or lack of unit tests to support old ideas. Below are some metrics of this code using Reflector. I was shocked when I saw them!
Type metrics showing complexity per class type. Complexity should be around 15 or less to be considered quality maintainable code. Type metrics showing the number of lines of code. That's a lot! Now the good stuff. Metrics by method showing the method complexity. Again should be around 10 to 15 for good quality code. Lines of code per method. You can see that's a lot of code for a single method. You could probably split the first one into about 15 to 20 classes. I saved the best for last. Metrics by module which is a single file. I only included the dlls and did not include any of the exe files. 9 million lines of code in a single dll. Windows 3.1 had between 4 and 5 million lines of code and that was a whole operating system. Total in all, the files they wrote, probably equal the same number of lines of code as it took to write Windows 2000. Now as a developer, where do you start? Do you just say screw it and start over? Do you just keep putting Band-Aides on it and hope you can make something better in the mean time?
Right now I'm thinking 85 to 90% of the code isn't even used. Now I need to figure out how to isolate the code that isn't used between various .Net and vb6 projects and then loading all the sub-projects into source control correctly using branches and trunks so when a user checks in a small change it doesn't destroy everything.
So yesterday or the day before I came with an idea to classify vb code into a term people like saying. It seems that if a language doesn't have .net or .blah on it then people think it's old or eclectic. There are about 4 different forms of vb and I use them all weekly so I've coined some terms to separate them all so that people always understand what form of the vb language I am talking about.
VB 4/5/6 - VB.Classic or VB# VBScript - VB.Script VBA - VB.App or VB.Applications VB.Net - VB.Net or VB.Net #.#
Now as a developer, where do you start? Do you just say screw it and start over? Do you just keep putting Band-Aides on it and hope you can make something better in the mean time?
Now as a developer, where do you start? Do you just say screw it and start over? Do you just keep putting Band-Aides on it and hope you can make something better in the mean time?