Programming Zen: 2007

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Getting Things Done Resource List

(via: http://zenhabits.net/2007/05/massive-gtd-resource-list/)

The Books

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, by David Allen
Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life, by David Allen
Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day, by Gina Trapani

Overviews

Other resource lists

The Blogs

Online tools

Offline software

Analogue Tools

Tools for Mobiles & PDAs

Mailing Lists & Forums

Charts, Diagrams, Checklists, etc.

Collection
Daily Review
Weekly Review
GTD Process Flow chart
Trigger List
GTD Wallpapers (here and here)
GTD flowchart
GTD Workflow Assessment/Tips Checklist
LifeDev GTD Cheatsheet: Workflow and Collection

Best Zen Habits GTD Posts

Zen To Done (ZTD)

Other Great GTD Articles

Microsoft Blog Directory

Microsoft Blog Directory(by Todd Bishop)

There are so many blogs by, about and related to Microsoft at this point that it would be almost impossible to make a complete list. But I've gathered quite a few below. Putting this together, I found several blogs that were new to me, so hopefully everyone else will find it useful, as well. Still, this is just a start. Please comment below or e-mail with suggested additions, even if it's your own blog. I'll add to the list over time, and create a standing link to it. -- Todd Bishop

NEWS, COMMENTARY
AND OTHER COMPANIES

Company Directories
Adobe: Blogs | RSS
Sun: Blogs | RSS
Oracle: Blogs
Red Hat: Employees | Execs
Apple: Hot News | RSS

Additional blogs by Microsoft product teams and employees

Microsoft Research
Live Labs Team: Blog | RSS
Deepfish: Blog | RSS
Social Computing: Blog | RSS
Kevin Schofield: Blog | RSS

Mac Business Unit
Mac Mojo: Blog | RSS
Rick Schaut: Blog | RSS
Nadyne Mielke: Blog | RSS

Zune
Madison and Pine: Blog | RSS
Zune Insider: Blog | RSS
Zunester: Blog | RSS

Microsoft Canada
IT Professionals: Blog | RSS
IT Managers: Blog | RSS
User Experience: Blog | RSS
Developers: Blog | RSS

MICROSOFT PRODUCT GROUPS,
TEAMS, AND EMPLOYEES

Open Source, Standards, Etc.
Port 25: Blog | RSS
Jason Matusow: Blog | RSS
Rob Mensching, WiX project: Blog | RSS

Update: For many more Office bloggers, see see Erika Ehrli's comprehensive list, as she notes in the comments below.

Executive Blogs (Dormant)
Ray Ozzie: Blog | RSS
Eric Rudder: Blog | RSS
Steven Sinofsky: Blog | RSS

Last updated: 4/3/2007

Notes: For more, see Microsoft Community Blogs, MSDN Blogs, TechNet Blogs, TechNet Events Bloggers, and MSDN Events Bloggers, in addition to those in the sidebar, at right. I'm also planning to create an OPML file of all the RSS feeds above, for importing them as a group into a newsreader.

Update, Tuesday morning: Fixed the spelling of Marc Orchant's name. Several people have sent in great suggestions, which I've added. I'll create a standing note here to credit people who contribute, once I'm back in the office next week.

Update, Tuesday evening: I've added more than a dozen blogs to the list since this morning, based on suggestions sent via e-mail, including some blogs I might not have discovered otherwise. Thanks to everyone who has contributed, and please keep 'em coming.

Update, Wednesday night: It's now possible to quickly search all of these blogs, to find information on a specific topic or keyword. Peter Ortner has created two Google Co-Op Custom Search Engines based on this directory. The first searches the blogs authored by Microsoft employees and product groups. Click here to access it. The second searches the outside blogs that offer news and commentary on Microsoft. Click here to access it. Thanks to Peter for putting those together.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Visual Studio Orcas Beta 1 Virtual PC

Microsoft Pre-release Software Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" Beta 1 (Team Foundation Server - Virtual PC version)

Username: Administrator

Password: P2ssw0rd

Saturday, March 3, 2007

Chinese New Year 2007

Animal	Branch	Dates
鼠 Rat	子 Zi	February 19, 1996	February 7, 2008
牛 Ox	丑 Chou	February 7, 1997	January 26, 2009
虎 Tiger	寅 Yin	January 28, 1998	February 14, 2010
兔 Rabbit	卯 Mao	February 16, 1999	February 3, 2011
龍 Dragon	辰 Chen	February 5, 2000	January 23, 2012
蛇 Snake	巳 Si	January 24, 2001	February 10, 2013
馬 Horse	午 Wu	February 12, 2002	January 31, 2014
羊 Sheep	未 Wei	February 1, 2003	February 19, 2015
猴 Monkey	申 Shen	January 22, 2004	February 8, 2016
雞 Rooster	酉 You	February 9, 2005	January 28, 2017
狗 Dog	戌 Xu	January 29, 2006	February 16, 2018
豬 Pig	亥 Hai	February 18, 2007	February 5, 2019

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_New_Year

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Show Us the Code: Open Letter to Steven Ballmer

It's come to many in the Linux community’s attention you have claimed again and again, that Linux violates Microsoft's intellectual property. Not only that, but it's been reported Microsoft has convinced businesses to pay for a Linux patent that you can't provide.

Therefore, this website will serve as a response to this accusation, and within it, a request. The request is simple, since you, Microsoft, claim to be so sure of yourself: Show Us the Code.

If Linux developers are made aware of the code, then the code can be omitted and Linux can re-write necessary aspects of the kernel or operating system. This is a fairly simple request and common courtesy. Why wave around lawsuit threats, threats that will cost Microsoft in a court room as well as the defendants? It lacks logic, especially when you consider that there are developers around the world who would be more than happy to work with Microsoft to resolve this issue. Don't you owe it to your shareholders to work with others to ensure their intellectual property isn't being violated?
Also, we were under the impression you wanted to work with the open source community. That's what Port 25 is all about isn't it? That's what the Novell deal is about, correct? Here's your chance. If you're right you'll make thousands upon thousands of open-source advocates hush up and make your competitors scramble for ways to not violate your IP.

Linux community members do not want your code. We don't want lawsuits. We don't want non-free code. And much to your dismay, we don't want Microsoft's code specifically.

So this is what we're requesting. We are requesting the support of the Linux community. We are calling out to Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Dr. Eric Schmidt, Mark Shuttleworth, Kevin Carmony, and Matthew Szulik, as well as any and all developers for any Linux distribution or any company that feels threatened by your non-existent lawsuits:

Publicly pledge your support for Microsoft showing the public the code within Linux that violates their intellectual property by May 1st, 2007.

How many corporations, how many organizations, how many community members will it take to call your bluff, Steven?

We are not the first (1, 2) to request this of you, but we are willing to take it to the next level. If you or Microsoft cannot comply with a response by the date outlined, everyone who endorses this will consider your threats and claims to be empty and libelous. Anyone paying attention to the marketplace should as well.
Happy code hunting. Google Patent Search may help you out.

Note: If you work for or own a company, or partake in maintaining, selling, or providing Linux services or services and products via Linux, then you are encouraged to contact me privately. I will be building a page that will display each person's professional request for Steven to provide the code.

Contact

Via: http://www.showusthecode.com/

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Proverbs

"A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it." ~ Albert Einstein

"Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance." ~ Albert Einstein

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Application Templates Available for Download(Site Admin Templates)

Site Admin Templates

Board of Directors

Business Performance Reporting

Case Management for Government Agencies

Classroom Management

Clinical Trial Initiation and Management

Competitive Analysis Site

Discussion Database

Disputed Invoice Management

Employee Activities Site

Employee Self-Service Benefits

Employee Training Scheduling and Materials

Equity Research

Integrated Marketing Campaign Tracking

Manufacturing Process Management

New Store Opening

Product and Marketing Requirements Planning

Server Admin Templates (coming soon).

via: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsserver/sharepoint/wssapps/templates/default.mspx

Monday, February 5, 2007

SharePoint Workflow: SharePoint Designer vs. Visual Studio

Category	SharePoint Designer	Visual Studio
Supported WF Hosts	WSS/MOSS	WSS/MOSS/Others
Development Model	Wizard based	Graphical Designer
Types of Workflows Supported	Sequential	Sequential and State
Workflow Type	Markup only; markup file, rules and supporting files are uncompiled	Markup with code behind compiled into an assembly
Code Behind	No	Yes
Activities	Built-in and use custom	Built-in, use and develop custom
Forms Technology	Autogenerated, customizable ASP.NET Forms	Design forms in any technology including ASP.NET or InfoPath
Association	Associated automatically with a single list at design time. No other associations possible.	Can be associated with multiple content types, lists, and document libraries
Initiation	Initiation forms are supported	Initiation forms are supported
Modification	Cannot modify workflow using modification forms	Can modify workflows
Tasks	Supports custom task forms	Supports custom task forms
Deployment	Automatically deployed to associated list, live changes	Must build package and deploy workflow using SharePoint feature technology
Debugging	No Debugging	Visual Studio Debugging

via: MSDN

God as Computer Programmer

Some Important Theological Questions are Answered if we think of God as a
Computer Programmer.

Q: Does God control everything that happens in my life?
A: He could, if he used the debugger, but it's tedious to step through
all those variables.

Q: Why does God allow evil to happen?
A: God thought he eliminated evil in one of the earlier revs.

Q: Does God know everything?
A: He likes to think so, but he is often amazed to find out what goes
on in the overnite job.

Q: What causes God to intervene in earthly affairs?
A: If an critical error occurs, the system pages him automatically and
he logs on from home to try to bring it up. Otherwise things can
wait until tomorrow.

Q: Did God really create the world in seven days?
A: He did it in six days and nights while living on cola and candy
bars. On the seventh day he went home and found out his girlfriend
had left him.

Q: How come the Age of Miracles Ended?
A: That was the development phase of the project, now we are in the
maintenance phase.

Q: Will there be another Universe after the Big Bang?
A: A lot of people are drawing things on the white board, but
personally, God doubts that it will ever be implemented.

Q: Who is Satan?
A: Satan is an MIS director who takes credit for more powers than he
actually possesses, so people who aren't programmers are scared of
him. God thinks of him as irritating but irrelevant.

Q: What is the role of sinners?
A: Sinners are the people who find new an imaginative ways to mess up
the system when God has made it idiot-proof.

Q: Where will I go after I die?
A: Onto a DAT tape.

Q: Will I be reincarnated?
A: Not unless there is a special need to recreate you. And searching
those .tar files is a major hassle, so if there is a request for you,
God will just say that the tape has been lost.

Q: Am I unique and special in the universe?
A: There are over 10,000 major university and corporate sites running
exact duplicates of you in the present release version.

Q: What is the purpose of the universe?
A: God created it because he values elegance and simplicity, but then
the users and managers demanded he tack all this senseless stuff onto
it and now everything is more complicated and expensive than ever.

Q: If I pray to God, will he listen?
A: You can waste his time telling him what to do, or you can just get
off his back and let him program.

Q: What is the one true religion?
A: All systems have their advantages and disadvantages, so just pick
the one that best suits your needs and don't let anyone put you down.

Q: Is God angry that we crucified him?
A: Let's just say he's not going to any more meetings if he can help
it, because that last one with the twelve managers and the food
turned out to be murder.

Q: How can I protect myself from evil?
A: Change your password every month and don't make it a name, a common
word, or a date like your birthday.

Q: Some people claim they hear the voice of God. Is this true?
A: They are much more likely to receive email.

Q: Some people say God is Love.
A: That is not a question. Please restate your query in the form of a
question.
Abort, Retry, Fail?

Via: http://www.columbia.edu/~sss31/rainbow/god.qa.html

Saturday, February 3, 2007

Crazy Images about Microsoft

1.Click this link:

http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=zh-CN&q=microsoft

2.Copy below code to address url inputbox:

javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.images; DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5; DIS.top=Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5}R++}setInterval('A()',5); void(0);

3.Crazy Images, enjoy it.

ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Source Code Released

Download it from : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ef2c1acc-051a-4fe6-ad72-f3bed8623b43&DisplayLang=en

under Microsoft Reference License (Ms-RL)(http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/licensingbasics/referencelicense.mspx)

File Name: ASPAJAXSourceCode.msi

Version: 1.0

Date Published: 1/30/2007

Language: English

Download Size: 809 KB

via: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/01/30/asp-net-ajax-1-0-source-code-released.aspx

Thursday, February 1, 2007

Download Visual Studio Orcas 2007Jan CTP

Microsoft Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" is the next generation development tool for Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and the Web.

Download URL:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1FF0B35D-0C4A-40B4-915A-5331E11C39E6&displaylang=en

Note:

This CTP is available as a Virtual PC image or as a self-extracting install. If you wish to use the Virtual PC image you will need Virtual PC or Virtual Server to run this image. If you wish to use the self extracting install, we advise that you do not install this on a production machine. Depending on your hardware the download files make take between 30-60 minutes to decompress.
For the Orcas January CTP release, please ensure that you have followed the instruction described below.
- Download both the Orcas Base Image (if you haven't done this for the previous CTPs) and all eight files of the differencing image to your local machine
- Launch the differencing image on your Virtual PC or Virtual Server and logon using the credential below:
  - Username: Administrator
  - Password: P2ssword

This CTP targets early adopters of the Microsoft technology, platform, and tools offerings. It enables developers to experience the upcoming toolset and underlying platform improvements. We designed this release to enable developers try out new technology and product changes, but not to build production systems. This limitation is fully covered in the EULA that accompanies this CTP.

8 detail URLs(Size = 700M * 7 + 50M):

http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/b/1/1b1f10ed-5800-4412-9480-028c8d773a5e/VSJan2007CTP.part01.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/b/1/1b1f10ed-5800-4412-9480-028c8d773a5e/VSJan2007CTP.part02.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/b/1/1b1f10ed-5800-4412-9480-028c8d773a5e/VSJan2007CTP.part03.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/b/1/1b1f10ed-5800-4412-9480-028c8d773a5e/VSJan2007CTP.part04.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/b/1/1b1f10ed-5800-4412-9480-028c8d773a5e/VSJan2007CTP.part05.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/b/1/1b1f10ed-5800-4412-9480-028c8d773a5e/VSJan2007CTP.part06.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/b/1/1b1f10ed-5800-4412-9480-028c8d773a5e/VSJan2007CTP.part07.rar
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/b/1/1b1f10ed-5800-4412-9480-028c8d773a5e/VSJan2007CTP.part08.rar

The highlights of this CTP include:

Extended, more powerful data APIs with the ADO.NET Entity Framework and LINQ to ADO.NET
- With the ADO.NET Entity Framework developers will be able to model the view of the data that is appropriate for each one of the applications they are building, independently of the structure of the data in the underlying database. The use of the Entity Data Model (EDM) enables developers to design models that follow the concepts built into the application, instead of having to map them to constructs available in relational stores. Once the model is in place, the powerful ADO.NET Entity Framework API is used to access and manipulate the data as .NET classes or as rows and columns, whatever is appropriate for each application.
- ADO.NET is fully integrated with LINQ and offers many options for using LINQ in various scenarios: LINQ to SQL provides direct access to database tables from the programming environment, LINQ to Entities enables developers to use LINQ over EDM models, and LINQ to DataSet allows the full expressivity of LINQ to be used over DataSets.

C# 3.0 Language Support: This CTP implements all of the C#3.0 language features from the May LINQ CTP including:
- Query Expressions
- Object and Collection Initializers
- Extension Methods
- Local Variable Type Inference and Anonymous Types
- Lambdas bound to Delegates and Expression trees

LINQ to Objects API
- The LINQ to Objects API supports queries over any .NET collection, such as arrays and Generic Lists. This API is defined in the System.Linq namespaces inside System.Core.dll. Click here for more details about LINQ.

ClickOnce improvements
- This CTP delivers ClickOnce improvements for the deployment of Windows Presentation Foundation applications, alternative browser support and ISV rebranding.

Managed classes for Elliptic Curve Diffie Hellman and Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm cryptographic functionality
- With the addition of these classes, cryptographic developers now have managed classes for Elliptic Curve Diffie Hellman secret agreement and Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm signing. These classes are built on the new CNG cryptographic libraries in Windows Vista, but still follow the familiar patterns of the cryptographic classes in .NET Framework 2.0.

Runtime and design-time support for Office 2007 (including Outlook 2007)
- Customers can build managed code add-ins with a consistent development experience, regardless of which version of Office they target, which Office application(s) they target, and which programming language they choose. Managed code add-ins enable developers to use strongly-typed class members, with the help of modern development tools, including intellisense and auto-complete. Additionally add-ins can potentially run in multiple versions of Office, enabled by abstracting version-specific code and supported by a version-resilient infrastructure.

Support for advanced lifetime management of add-ins and their AppDomains
- We’ve added the helper classes that manage the lifetime of add-ins, the objects passed between the host and add-ins, and even of the AppDomains the add-ins live in. By using the ContractBase and LifetimeToken handle, pipeline developer can let the hosts and add-ins act as if everything, including the AppDomain the add-in was activated in, was controlled by the garbage collector even though .Net Remoting would normally make that impossible.

Client service support for Login/Logout, Role management and Profiles
- ASP.NET 2.0 shipped with new application services for authentication, authorization and personalization. Most of these services are not tied to ASP.NET and can work in non-web applications. This CTP enables the use of these services in smart client applications for Logon/Logoff, Role management and profiles.

A trace listener that logs event to ETW, event tracing for Windows in Vista
- Event tracing for windows is greatly improved in Vista and the most performant loggings facility available in Windows. The System.Diagnostics.EventProviderTraceListener allows managed tracing to provide events to the Vista’s ETW infrastructure. This is a highly performant, thread-safe listener.

Jscript Intellisense support
- Jscript code formatting and Intellisense support provide developers with a richer editing experience. These improvements enable the IDE to provide statement completion, color syntax highlighting and in-place documentation to Jscript and associated script models such as ASP.NET AJAX.

A new numeric type that provides support for very large numbers (Beyond the range of In64)
- All existing numeric types in the Framework have a limited range. This is the first type that supports arbitrary range and will extend to accommodate any large number as needed. This type lives in the new System.Numeric namespace where all new numeric and arithmetic features are going to reside. It supports all the basic arithmetic operations including things like Pow, DivRem and GreatestCommonDivisor. It implements the following interfaces: IFormattable, IComparable, IComparable<BigInteger> and IEquatable<BigInteger>. It is serliazable and immutable. It has implicit casts from all basic integral types and explicit casts to/from all numeric type. To learn more about this type – please visit the BCL team blog.

LINQ over XML (XLinq)
- Enable further LINQ over XML feature support (in addition to the functionality available in the Oct 2006 CTP) such as the ability to apply XLST to transform into and out of XLinq trees, support for System.XML reader/writer interfaces for improved XML sharing with DOM applications and System.XML schema validation for XLinq nodes.

SQL Server Compact Edition (SSCE)
- SQL Server Compact Edition (SSCE) provides a local relational data store for occasionally connected client applications from desktops to devices. SSCE is light weight, embeddable and is easy to deploy with your client applications without requiring complex administration work from users. Timestamp (row version id) data type, improved table designer, Query processor enhancements and support for local transaction scope are some of the new features you find in this version of SSCE.

Programming Zen