Dot Net Monkey

Keith Brown has written a great introductory article about Code Access Security (CAS) in .NET. His conclusion is:

Deploying code over a network is dangerous without a comprehensive security system to verify and constrain that code, and Code Access Security is Microsoft's solution to the problem. It's a flexible, if somewhat complex beast, and as a developer working on smart clients, you should learn all you can about it, as it will play a big role in your life!

I think he's right so you should go read this article now.

Related Resources
An Introduction to Code Access Security

Now and again I keep threatening to write an application that integrates tightly into Outlook.  Hence, when I came across this link to OutlookSpy I just had to post it so I don't forget about it when eventually I get off my arse and write some Outlook stuff.

What is OutlookSpy?

OutlookSpy is the ultimate Outlook developer tool. Integrated directly into Outlook, it provides fast and convenient access to all Outlook Object Model objects, lets you examine values of the properties, call functions, browse object hierarchy and monitor Outlook events. CDO is supported too!

Whilst we are talking about Outlook, here is a reference to the Outlook 2003 Integration API

Related Refrences
OutlookSpy
Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 Integration API Reference

The other day somebody asked me if it is possible to return a business objects from a web service.  This got me to thinking about how this could/should be done.   For the record, I thought I would find some resources about this.  Here goes:

• Ryan Farley has a good blog entry about returning objects from web services
• Scott Hanselman doesn't like datasets as return types as indicated in his blog entry "Returning DataSets from WebServices is the Spawn of Satan and Represents All That Is Truly Evil in the World"

WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows that provides a funky, zany, drug-induced map of your hard drive (and/or directories).   It's really great for the following things:

1. Working out what percentage of your drive is occupied by MP3 files
2. Deciding on the next victim in your eternal quest for more drive space
3. Visualising your hard drive as a giant uber-complex Tetris game
4. Impressing your friends.  Guaranteed if anyone sees you running this they'll come over and ask what you are doing.

It's available in a few different languages so if you want a really crazy experience turn on Polish and go on a clicking frenzy!  Just see what happens!

Microsoft has released a beta version of the Microsoft Solution Framework (MSF) for Agile Software Development.  It's pretty for sure.  The whole things seems very tightly coupled to Visual Studio Team System 2005.

I think the MSF Agile will be good for more traditional Waterfall shops who want to become more agile but I suspect that Agile shops will find the whole thing a little too rigid.

Mike Gunderloy has an article over at ADTmag.com that discusses it a bit more.

Different people think of users in different ways.  I'm a programmer, so from my point of view, the user is a peripheral that types when my application issues a read request. Luke Wreblewski, on the other hand, seems to like users and even appears to want to make their lives easier by providing these wonderful tips on creating beautiful Web Forms.

For all you hard-core nerds out there who just can't leave the unmanaged world behind, check out some of these resources:

The Microsoft Win32 to Microsoft .NET Framework API Map article identifies the Microsoft .NET Framework version 1.0 or 1.1 APIs that provide similar functionality to Microsoft Win32 functions.

The PINVOKE.NET website attempts to address the difficulty of calling Win32 or other unmanaged APIs in managed code by providing all the PInvoke message signatures for you.

And here is a nice diagram that shows how PInvoke works.