April 2004 - Posts
Recently I moved to a new home (bigger and in a quieter area) and then discovered that this 'new' area does not support adsl (which we used before) - apparently the exchange does not support itand they only plan to upgrade it in 2006 :(
Anyway, I was just wondering, why can't telkom not allow 24x7 connection on a normal phone line? Yeh sure the connection speed is crappy but at least the connection time in not limited to after hours only. They can charge a flat rate (like they do for adsl anyway) but obviously less than adsl (hey I'm getting a slower service then). That could be a great alternative for people (or perhaps small companies) that cannot afford full adsl yet!
Does anyone else agree this could be a great (ok better than nothing) idea?
With blogs becomming more popular its no suprise that people started making better and better tools to read these blogs or 'feeds'.
The one I'm using (and quite enjoy)is sharpreader from www.sharpreader.com
It's not bug free but its free and has some nice functions - plus its really easy to use. I still believe tools should be simple and straightforward to use (and work!). This app still fits that description.
Wired news got an article about how they plan to get rid of Mosquitos. Nuke them - kinda.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,63210,00.html
Also in the February ed of MSDN mag there is an article about Owner drawing. Very useful if you want to create nice menu items.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/02/CuttingEdge/default.aspx
There's an interesting article covering the 3 types of timers available in the .Net framework
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/02/TimersinNET/default.aspx
I've posted an article on how to implement the ListViewItemSorter property of the ListView control. It is a feature that can provide powerful ways to customize sorting on the ListView control.
http://www.sadeveloper.net/viewarticle.aspx?articleID=184
ATI thinks their Radeon X800PRO will be faster than the new Nvidia GF6800! The next generation cards seems set for another round of speed races Both chipmakers have more powerful chips for later and is holding back (probably watching that the other is doing). it's sure gona be an interesting race and hopefully the end consumer (us) will get the benefit for it.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15406
Now get back working....
For those not subscribed to Channel 9 there was an interesting question about designing systems. Check out:
http://sqljunkies.com/WebLog/ktegels/archive/2004/04/15/larryquestion01.aspx
Perhaps not a pure .Net development thingy but since a lot of developers also love playing games :)
Nvidia seems to have created a winner again trying to forget the troublesome FX series of cards. This card is a monster, both in terms of performance and power consumption!
There are several reviews out by now. Check out sites like:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=2023
http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040414/index.html
http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3340041
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20040414103255.html
There is an interesting article on the different ways to connect to SQL server on msdn. It explains the different libraries and pros and cons of using them
http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnsqldev/html/sqldev_03252004.asp
There is a nice article on msdn on avoiding the problems with editing large xml with the xmldocment object.
Check it out at http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnxmlnet/html/largexml.asp
Apparently Nvidia will not stop producing these great cards! I personally have one of these and can only say it's one of the better cards/chips made by them. For the price it has the best performance you can get from most 3D accelerator graphic cards.
For those that don't know, these cards perform almost as good as a full FX5900 card but at the cost of a middle range card - almost too good to be true. In actual fact, these cards are hurting Nvidia's FX5700 range of card sells because you can get a faster card at the same or lower price.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15204
Microsoft has release some source code of one of its tools. Things are changing....
from the article:
Microsoft published the code for one of its products on an open-source software development Web site late Monday, departing from its hard-line stance against making the underlying components of its technology available to the general public.
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5185549.html
For those that cannot or don't want to code in .Net and stuck on VB 6 or VC++ 6 there is a new service pack out for only those two products.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/downloads/updates/sp/vs6/sp6/default.aspx
Now you know.