Jeff Knutson

Not leaving, just moving! Look over here!

I decided it was time to create my own blog site, one which contains personal and corporate stuff. Thanks to the Magenic IT staff, I can mirror my Magenic-related content at the Magenic site while keeping all of my own posts at my personal site. This is the best of both worlds!

The updated site URL is http://www.jeffknutson.net/blog/. Hope to see you there!

Cheers

jk

Remote Desktop multi-monitor support

Yesterday I ran across the "/span" and "/f" command line switches for the Microsoft remote desktop client (mstsc.exe; I typically use the command line for this) and wanted to pass them along.

e.g. to remote desktop into a server named "myServer" from the command line and get the RDP client to span dual monitors in full screen mode:

mstsc /v:myServer /span /f

If you use the /? switch to see all the command line arguments, I see there are also width and height settings…

Hope you find this useful!

jk

@ Code Camp IV

Sitting in Neil Iverson's Powershell presentation right now; I need to learn A LOT more about this!

My presentation went well (hopefully the attendees agree!). Here is a link to my deck and code. It will also be available at the http://www.twincitiescodecamp.com web site once I send it to Jason Bock.

Thanks to all for attending my WCF 3.5 talk. It was a great session with good questions and interaction I hads a blast! I'll be video-taping Jason's presentation next (Writing Better Code).  He included one of my favorite anti-paterns "try-catch-eat" (as seen previously on this blog).  Should be a good talk!

Cheers

jk

Rock Band Online Music Store!

I just got a chance to fire up Rock Band tonight for the first time in a couple weeks (getting ready for Code Camp) and noticed that the online music store is finally integrated into the game! This made it SUPER EASY to go grab a new title (I highly recommend My Iron Lung by Radiohead, the guitar riffs are awesome), re-download prior purchases, preview the song…much better than trying to do it from Xbox Live Marketplace…Nice work!

Rock on!

jk

CODE CAMP! CODE CAMP! CODE CAMP!

Code Camp Twin Cities 4 is coming to a favorite Twin Cities suburb near you!

Ok, seriously, the event is sold out (which is funny as it is free J) but sold out *is* sold out! I'm taking out 3 minutes of my preparation time to blog about it (no, my presentation is NOT done, yet…).

I will be posting more information about Code Camp…so stay tuned!

cheers

jk

My new favorite VS.NET 2008 command

The "Organize Usings" -> "Remove and Sort" context menu command. Ok, yes, it is a bit anal and pet peevish of me, but extra code/using directives make me feel 'unclean" J

<I did embed a picture but it didn't get published, sorry!> 

Cheers

jk

Twin Cities Code Camp 4

Hey All!

Spring in Minnesota is a GREAT thing. To celebrate the season, it is time for another Code Camp! Thanks to the efforts of Mr. Jason Bock here and here the next Twin Cities Code Camp happens on April 5, 2008 at the New Horizons Facility in Edina, MN. I participated in the 1^st two Twin Cities Code Camps and it was a GREAT TIME, seriously! J It is fun to get together to talk about technology with other like-minded people and presenting is an especially rewarding pursuit. I will be presenting using the new features of WCF 3.5 (think: REST, JSON, RSS, ATOM).

This is the first post about Code Camp, but definitely *not* the last! It will be a great Saturday, and it is TOTALLY FREE! You can register by following this link.

I'm looking forward to seeing all y'all there!

Cheers!

jk

And you can quote me on this…

Thought I'd break out of my blogging slump with a pithy quote…J

If COM is dead, then I'm a mortician!

jk

SQL Injection comic

My friend Ryan^* sent me this comic about SQL Injection today. Here is a link to Wikipedia in case you are not familiar with SQL Injection. Your favorite search engine will also yield many results.

While it makes for a funny comic, SQL Injection is no laughing matter. As Michael Howard stated in Secure Code (2^nd ed.) p.341, "all input is evil until proven otherwise". I hope every developer who reads this will post a copy of this comic in their as a reminder to validate input and that even a serious topic like security can be made fun!

Cheers to a more secure 2008! J

jk

^* (Ryan has still not registered his name for a web site so I can't hyperlink it here. One of these days I'm going to register it for him and put up a 'fun' picture on it, lol)

Visual Studio 2008/.NET 3.5 installation bug

I'm thrilled that .NET 3.5 and VS.NET 2008 shipped late 2007. I decided to install these shiny new toys on my work computer this morning.

In the meantime, all of the WCF services on my local machine (Windows Server 2003 SP2) mysteriously stopped working. After debugging in code, I poked around IIS and noticed the script maps for .svc were missing! No problem, just run "%windir%\microsoft.net\framework\v3.0\windows communication foundation\servicemodereg.exe –i" to reinstall the script maps, right? WRONG! After an IISRESET, the .svc script mapping did not reappear. Of course I could have registered it by hand, but after a little searching on the web, I ran across a posting on MSDN Forums containing a solution.

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2566916&SiteID=1

<blockquote>

In the mean while, to unblock you the workaround would be to:

1.       Run %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.0\Windows Communication Foundation\ServicemodelReg.exe –s:W3SVC/1/ROOT to configure script maps at IIS://localhost/W3SVC/1/ROOT

2.       Run %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\WFServicesReg.exe /c to ensure that any damage done by the above command to .Net 3.5 configuration is fixed

</blockquote>

This fixed the problem for me, and hopefully this pointer will help others out as well!

Cheers

jk

ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions CTP released

Check out the ASP.NET homepage "Latest Weblogs" section for info on the new ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions CTP. This is the tool that will help bring some MVC goodness into ASP.NET!

Here are some additional links:

http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/2007/12/09/what-is-new-in-the-asp-net-3-5-extensions-preview.aspx

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ScottHanselmanASPNET/~3/197887773/ASPNET35ExtensionsPlusMVCHowToScreencast.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/12/09/asp-net-3-5-extensions-ctp-preview-released.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/2007/12/09/the-wait-is-over-asp-net-3-5-extensions-preview-posted.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/12/09/asp-net-mvc-framework-part-4-handling-form-edit-and-post-scenarios.aspx

cheers

jk

PNRG is not easy (Security)

PNRG is a Pseudo Number Random Generator.

Here are two definitions of PNRG:
Wikipedia
NIST

In case you don't subscribe to the ComputerWorld Security news email, I wanted to put up this post to spread the good word.

Reverse engineering cracks Windows encryption and Microsoft confirms that XP contains random number generator bug.

"Windows only refreshes its "randomness" after the PRNG has produced 128K of output. And since a typical SSL connection between, say, Internet Explorer and a bank consumes just 100-200 bytes of output, it's possible to predict 600-1,200 different SSL connections."

Granted, you need control of the computer to gain access, but nevertheless, this is something to be aware of.

Or, if your glass if half full, this is a good reason to switch to Vista J!

Simulating PRNG is not an easy task. As a security enthusiast, I sincerely hope Microsoft chooses to fix this before SP3!

Cheers

jk

More web service versioning info

Courtesy of LOBOMINATOR from MSDN forums....more links and posts on service versioning... :), plus i'm in a blogging state of mind tonight...!

 https://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1989101&SiteID=1

<quote>

Service Versioning
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms731060.aspx
Best Practices: Data Contract Versioning
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms733832.aspx
Versioning Windows Communication Foundation Services
http://blogs.msdn.com/craigmcmurtry/archive/2006/07/23/676104.aspx
IExtensibleDataObject Interface
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.runtime.serialization.iextensibledataobject.aspx
Forward-Compatible Data Contracts
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms731083.aspx
Data Contract Equivalence
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms734767.aspx
Sample
http://wcf.netfx3.com/files/folders/serialization/entry3789.aspx

</quote>

Ripping code for the first version is always easier than trying to thinking about v-next (and v-next +n)!  Too often consultants don't think enough about v-next which in my humble opinion also provides value for a customer (differentiating a consultant from a contractor)!

jk

WCF Versioning Flowchart

I ran across this post tonight from Craig McMurtry (author of Microsoft Windows Communication Foundations: Hands-on) with a flowchart showing how to version WCF services.

http://blogs.msdn.com/craigmcmurtry/archive/2006/07/23/676104.aspx

Thank you Craig for taking the time to think through these paths (and for the beautiful artwork J)!!!

Cheers

jk

RESTful maps?

I think it would be really cool if the map providers would support a nicer REST addressing scheme for things like countries, states, counties, cities, etc… all of that data is already hierarchical in nature anyway and maps well to a RESTful addressing scheme.

I tried out Google Maps, MapQuest and MapPoint and got very polite error messages.

Instead of dealing with a specific endpoint and a huge querystring+parameters like this:
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?formtype=address&country=US&popflag=0&latitude=&longitude=&name=&phone=&level=&addtohistory=&cat=&address=&city=minneapoilis&state=mn&zipcode=

We could have:
http://www.mapquest.com/USA/Minnesota/Minneapolis

It sure would make their APIs more flexible/interchangeable…

Weather.com gets close with this effort: http://www.weather.com/weather/local/USMN0503?from=search_city J

cheers

jk