Thushan Fernando

Windows 2003 Service Pack 1 & Windows XP 64Bit Service Pack 1

After a long period of testing Microsoft have finally RTM'd Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2003, download from here. Weighing in at 337MB its somewhat larger than SP2 for XP:-)

Some of the highlights

Service Pack 1 Offers Customers New Security Enhancements

Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 provides new functionality to address known security vulnerabilities and prepares companies to better face future security threats. These new technologies include the following:

• Security Configuration Wizard. Customers can more easily reduce attack surface area with the new Security Configuration Wizard. The tool reduces the attack surface by gathering information about specific server roles, then automatically blocking all services and ports not needed to perform those roles.
• Windows Firewall. Customers can increase their security with the new Windows® Firewall on the server, allowing networkwide control through Group Policy. Also released with Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Firewall serves as a host (software) firewall around each client and server computer on a customer's network.
• Post-Setup Security Updates (PSSU). Servers are vulnerable during the time between their installation and application of the latest security updates. In response, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 blocks all inbound connections to the server after installation until Windows Update has delivered the latest security updates to the new computer.

Other Service Pack 1 features that offer customers a more robust security defense include Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Metabase Auditing, which allows administrators to identify potential malicious users should the store become corrupted, stronger defaults and privilege reduction on services to establish a minimum security threshold for applications, and the addition of Network Access Quarantine Control components to allow administrators to isolate out-of-date virtual private networking (VPN) assets.

"Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 has enabled us to take our network security to the next level, and installation was practically seamless," said Jonathan Addington, network administrator at K2 Corp. "With the latest security updates, we've once again reduced our system vulnerability to viruses, worms and hacker attacks, and added functionality that continues to reduce system management costs."

Increased Reliability, Performance and Extensive Testing
Customers also can expect to see an increase in overall reliability and performance with the enhancements in Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1. Microsoft internal testing shows customers can expect increased performance and reliability up to 50 percent, depending upon workload, after deploying Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1. In addition, Microsoft worked closely with its hardware and software partners to ensure the highest possible level of application and device compatibility for Service Pack 1. Microsoft tested a wide range of server applications including anti-virus, firewall, database, communication, business intelligence, Web development, financial and more. Microsoft also tested many Windows Server-based devices for compatibility with Service Pack 1.

John Carmack (Id Software) gives J2ME a hammering... Ouch!

Anyone who has a phone would no doubt whip it out on your daily PT (its the hip cool new way of saying Public Transport... take note!) and get worked up on Nibbles (ahhh yess... 1999-2002 nibbles was king!) but how easy or hard is it to write games for your phone? Most games are written in J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition) and if you've ever come across "NullPointerException" on your phone when loading a game you know its the Java Micro VM... so i was curious as to what my idol (all hail..) John Carmack was thinking about writing java games with J2ME.

Read the entire article here.

Some parts I found quite amusing..

It turns out that I’m a lot less fond of Java for resource-constrained work. I remember all the little gripes I had with the Java language, like no unsigned bytes, and the consequences of strong typing, like no memset, and the inability to read resources into anything but a char array, but the frustrating issues are details down close to the hardware. 

The biggest problem is that Java is really slow. On a pure cpu / memory / display / communications level, most modern cell phones should be considerably better gaming platforms than a Game Boy Advanced. With Java, on most phones you are left with about the CPU power of an original 4.77 mhz IBM PC, and lousy control over everything.

Ouch! Then...

Write-once-run-anywhere. Ha. Hahahahaha. We are only testing on four platforms right now, and not a single pair has the exact same quirks. All the commercial games are tweaked and compiled individually for each (often 100+) platform. Portability is not a justification for the awful performance.

The trade of with using platforms like Java and .NET is performance and the increased resource consumption. But now with Longhorn coming and Xbox II, DirectX Next, XNA and .NET 2.0 will game developers move their code to managed code or continue writing in unmanaged code purely for performance? (NOTE: The quake 2 running in Managed code was admirable but I dont think it will set off a new generation of .NET games - imagine Half-Life 3 or Halo 2.5 running in Managed code...)

Another powerful earthquake in Sumatra:O

I stumbled apon this article on Martin Plante's blog (The lead dev at Xceed Software) it seems on Monday there was yet *another* powerful earthquake in Sumatra. This measuring 8.7 in the rhector(?) scale...

see Reuters article here.

I'm praying it doesnt offset another Tsunami to already devastated areas.

Whidbey: 'View Class Diagram' *drool* & Cool Refactoring functionality

Just a glimpse of what the autogenerated UML Class Diagram looks like in the new Whidbey release appears here. Its pretty fantesticle i say... right click on the solution and select 'View Class Diagram' and after a few nervous seconds of wandering whether it will work or give an exception, Whidbey loads up a very sexy CD:-)

Not only does it look cool, you can edit attributes of the CD in realtime and the project will be updated as necessary. I'm too impressed...

The other thing is to try Refactoring, something that most still havent tried in the newer CTP releases of Whidbey.

1. Create a new class
2. Add some instance variables
3. right click on the instance variable
4. Goto 'Refactor > Encapsulate Field'
5. *Budam Tssss* autogenerates Get/Set Methods for your class:-)

Then theres Auto generating of Method stubs, simply write a method name, right click and select "Generate Method Stub"...

One of the most lovely features in Whidbey is refactoring, but if you cant wait for Whidbey and working on VS.NET 2003 take a look at Resharper (by the same guys that wrote the IntelliJ IDEA IDE for Java - another cool IDE!) I've been using this baby(resharper) for a while now and its been a time saver when working on VS.NET 2003. Hihgly recommended IDE enhancement, dont know what i'd do without it;-)

How long till the Java Studio guys catch up with Whidbey i wonder:P

REFOLD v2.0.6 goes live and Published in NatureMethods journal!

After a gruesome month or two of code fixing and renovations "under the hood" i've released the final (?) update to REFOLD II for our client (Version v2.0.6.xxxx).

REFOLD is a database of protein refolding experiments and their results for Protein researchers to ponder through on their daily miserable lives (like us developers). It houses 154 known proteins at this stage, as time goes we hope the wider scientific community brings together more and more newly discovered protein refolding experiments and "Contribute" their work to REFOLD.

From a technical aspect, REFOLD is written in PHP5 with MySQL v4.1 as the backend (roughly 20 tables of which 16 are related to each other - imagine the joins for searching:D) took some 6 months of development to get it to where it is now. Basically its a portal for scientific researchers to "Collaborate" and "Contribute" their experiments and to share the common knowledge about protein structuring. Our goal was to write something like DeveloperFusion only for protein researchers with user-deposition (DF: Submitting Articles/Code), rich Searching functionality (DF: Google?) and be able to interact with other users in REFOLD (DF: Forums?).

Some highlights of this release:

• Some 124 bugfixes including 39 cosmetic issues with browsers (Opera mostly)
• Sql query tune ups (Optimising sql in graphs, admin functions and some search queries)
• NEW: Contributions area was redone with a new design to show in a nicer format (rather than numbered list of items).
• NEW: Statistics box on the left navigation box
• NEW: Latest Additions list on left hand navigation (included in Milestone 3+ when using ?rss in querystring) consumes the RSS feeds
• UPDATE: Search queries are cached for commonly used queries
• UPDATE: RSS Feeds updated to have the "refolding method" rather than "solubilization buffer" (dont ask)
• Lots more fixes for Users and Administrators:-)

NatureMethods journal has published an article on REFOLD which has been causing quite abit of visitors of late. Read it here.

Feedback for Whidbey tabs (which do you prefer?)

Just saw this on Aaron Brethorst blog, the vS.NET team is looking for feedback on the tabs in Whidbey and what users would prefer. I have to admit they've got some very nice jazzed up designs here. Cast a comment voting for which you prefer... heres one that looked a little appealing.. (design 3)

Working with SQLite in VB6

There is NO EXCUSE for using Access these days for new applications unless your simply using it for the inbuilt forms etc. (or theres migration issues) consider the lightweight, no bloated Sqlite engine. Sqlite is an embedded database that uses the SQL92 standard and is a very fast and no bloat Sql engine perfect for databases for any application (desktop) that doesnt require any external dependencies (outside the DLL) or OBDC drivers installation (u can if you want to).

I've been looking at various wrappers for VB6 developers and came across two worth mentioning (theres more but these seem pretty solid)

• A&G Software's Sqlite Wrapper
• SQLiteDB from Terra Informatica

I've written a wrapper around the DLL for AGS Sqlite wrapper that I hope to release in the next few days to kick start some talk on Sqlite in VB6, but in hte .NET world you may like to look at the .NET Wrapper for Sqlite.

Happy Easter!

I dont believe in wishing someone a happy easter until easter day itself - remember we have Good Friday first - but I hope all wondering souls/nuns that come across this blog for some unfortunate reason a happy and relaxing easter. Personally we had a family BBQ on a sunny sunday (after church in the morning), played some cricket with the boys and ofcourse spent the whole day outdoors.

Just to leave you with something to think about, in the sermon today (thats when the priest talks during the church service about something or other relating with the passage they've read or experiences they've had if your not a church go'er) our priest said something that made sense to me. Sometimes we believe in something we may not fully understand or be able explain. I've often felt that way about a lot of things (none that come to mind after all that sport) but I was glad that its something normal and everyone goes through and not just myself. Oh wait, just remembered going back to that infamous John Safran vs God Exorcism episode some believed it was a real exorcism whilst not fully understanding what was going on... (like me)

For the proper meaning to what easter really means - sorry kids, its not *just* an excuse to go eating chocolate bunnies and eggs... - read what Paul has written in his latest blog entry.

VB:Tabbed IE Browser (VB6 source)

Doing my daily rounds on PSC today I came across Niranjan's updated submission of his IE Tabs extension. I've been using this beauty since it first appeared on PSC and is highly recommended if you find your in need of a tab fix for IE. This version seems *alot* more stable than the previous version. Kudos to Niranjan!

Escape DLL with VS.NET 2005 (Registration Free COM)

Just read up on MSDN Magazine's April issue about escaping DLL hell with VS.NET 2005's new registration free COM feature. This handy new addition basically creates a new manifest file for the COM component in question and as the article points out the rest is handled by the VS.NET compiler at runtime...

Every COM reference in Visual Studio 2005 has a new property called Isolated. By default, this property is False, indicating that it should be treated like a normal, registered COM reference. If this property is True, it causes a manifest to be generated for the component at build time. It also causes the corresponding component files to be copied to the application folder. When the manifest generator encounters an isolated COM reference, it enumerates all of the CoClass entries in the component's type library, relating each entry with its corresponding registration data. In this manner, manifest definitions are automatically generated for all the COM classes in a file.