time to update your PDF reader

If you are not using Foxit reader yet, do your self a favor and download it now; now if you had used it before and you had problems with some pdf files, this is the time to give it a second chance, version 2 just came out and at least in my experience I am able to open all the files now, including those that I couldn't open before

Foxit reader is a lot faster than acrobat reader, and it doesn't install any additional garbage, is just what you would expect from a "pdf file reader"... that's what it does, and (now) it does it well

Fix RadWindow caching

This article applies to Telerik's RadWindow component

This is a nice wrapper to create popups in your asp.net applications, but it has a problem; it caches it's contents automatically; it took me a while to figure it out, but you can solve that with a simple property:

radW:RadWindow
ID="WindowAttachFile"
runat="Server"
NavigateUrl="AttachFile.aspx"
ReloadOnShow="true"
Height="230px"
Width="410px" Modal="true"

hope this is useful for any soul out there

google reader is being updated... scary

They've changed some links to buttons and stuff and I just realized that I have so much stuff in google that "one day without google" would put me behind in a lot of things

programming with a mouse considered harmful

I had a hard time deciding if the title should be "programming with a mouse considered harmful" or "real programmers don't use a mouse"; but I think you get the idea

I'm mentoring a guy right now, and he started using the mouse to move around in the code, I told him

"don't use the mouse, that's a bad practice"

It doesn't matter how many years you have been programming, if you use the mouse, you are implicitly slow, you can do things at least twice as fast using only the keyboard.

leave the mouse for things that you don't usually do, but for everything that you are doing in code there absolutely no reason to use the mouse; if you are new to programming it should be a lot easier to learn to use all the shortcuts, if you have been programming for a while is definitely harder (and you probably think you're better off without them at this point) but you would definitely increase your programming speed

I am known for being pretty fast (and they say I'm cocky for that matter), but one of the main reasons I'm fast is because I learn to use the shortcuts, I had a hard time switching from Delphi IDE to VS, but I did it without remapping the keyboard to use "Delphi IDE style", I think it's a bad idea to remap the keyboard to your specific style, specially is you do some type of pair programming (you are doing paired programming, right?)

you don't have to learn all of the shortcuts available, just the ones for all the little tasks that you do commonly when programming

use the keyboard, program faster

let's all just develop ASP.NET in notepad / is not about the tools

Jeremy Miller started a conversation on .NET testability (or the lack there of), Ayende agrees with him

I can definitely see this, I have suffered from this... but!

I don't think the problem is with the tools, in any case the problem would be of the TDD community, Ruby on Rails is open source, why can't we create asp.net on steroids?
seems like we know exactly what we want, the concept is there, the code is there, just needs to be implemented in .NET

there was a provocative comment to Jeremy's post:
"What if I want RAD and I don't want tests?"
there are some strong arguments against this, but the truth is for most developers that's all they want

everyone can say X sucks, Y in this other language is much better, why can't we say let's create Y for asp.net?

would people really use it? or is this just a TDD religion thing? (I'm gonna get in trouble for this)

I'll tell you what, that's exactly the reason why Microsoft didn't put something like that in ASP.NET, TDD advocates are not the broad audience, the majority of the "developers" don't really know or care about TDD or refactoring or patterns and practices, they just "want stuff to work", and yes, the rest of us have to pay the price, but nobody is forcing you to use RAD if it doesn't work, you have to use the right tool.

I can agree with this:

I really think the .Net community needs to reexamine and debate the merits and appropriateness of the Visual RAD approach.

the key here is the .NET community, people keep asking Microsoft to solve all these problems, are these problems really the developer's problem? or is it just TDD community problem? how big is that community?, where is the community? why can't that community do it? let's stop blaming it on something else

is kinda late, I was just kidding with Notepad and I've just hit another trip around the sun...

what are those S-1-5... things I see on the security tab?

sometimes you right click/properties/security on things like files and you see some garbled things like S-1-5-7blablabla...
They are called security identifiers (SID), I bet at some point you thought that they were just "messed up things" or garbage or something like that?

well, they actually have a meaning, here's a full list:

Anonymous Logon (S-1-5-7): A user who has connected to the computer without supplying a user name and password.

Authenticated Users (S-1-5-11): Includes all users and computers whose identities have been authenticated. Authenticated Users does not include Guest even if the Guest account has a password.

Batch (S-1-5-3): Includes all users who have logged on through a batch queue facility such as task scheduler jobs.

Creator Owner (S-1-3-0): A placeholder in an inheritable access control entry (ACE). When the ACE is inherited, the system replaces this SID with the SID for the object's current owner.

Creator Group (S-1-3-1): A placeholder in an inheritable ACE. When the ACE is inherited, the system replaces this SID with the SID for the primary group of the object's current owner.

Dialup (S-1-5-1): Includes all users who are logged on to the system through a dial-up connection.

Everyone (S-1-1-0): On computers running Windows Server 2003 operating systems, Everyone includes Authenticated Users and Guest. On computers running earlier versions of the operating system, Everyone includes Authenticated Users and Guest plus Anonymous Logon.

For more information, see Differences in default security settings.

Interactive (S-1-5-4): Includes all users logging on locally or through a Remote Desktop connection.

Local System (S-1-5-18): A service account that is used by the operating system.

Network (S-1-5-2): Includes all users who are logged on through a network connection. Access tokens for interactive users do not contain the Network SID.

Self (or Principal Self) (S-1-5-10): A placeholder in an ACE on a user, group, or computer object in Active Directory. When you grant permissions to Principal Self, you grant them to the security principal represented by the object. During an access check, the operating system replaces the SID for Principal Self with the SID for the security principal represented by the object.

Service (S-1-5-6): A group that includes all security principals that have logged on as a service. Membership is controlled by the operating system.

Terminal Server Users (S-1-5-13): Includes all users who have logged on to a Terminal Services server that is in Terminal Services version 4.0 application compatibility mode.

Other Organization (S-1-5-1000): Causes a check to ensure that a user from another forest or domain is allowed to authenticate to a particular service.

This Organization (S-1-5-15): Added by the authentication server to the authentication data of a user, provided the Other Organization SID is not already present.

that's it! now you still don't know what they are because you didn't read this thing, but you have a reference that you can keep in your bookmarks

dude!, I'm not getting a dell, I'm getting a Mac

and one of the main reasons why is parallels. We have seen virtual machines in all the operating systems for quite a while now, where the guest operating system sits there in it's own window.

Parallels takes this to a whole new level, it allows you to integrate the Mac and the guest OS into the same workspace! such that you can switch applications from a Mac app to a Windows app all in the same workspace (desktop), that's amazing!

take a look at the picture to see more detail, both Mac apps and Windows apps "blend" seamlessly although the apps still live in a different OS,
The apps running in windows show up in the Mac "toolbar".
It even allows you to copy and paste between the two (and according to Justin you can also drag and drop)

that's good software.

dude!, I'm getting a Mac... just wait 'til Leopard comes out =o)