Archive for June, 2009
Trivia: Equality of objects and strings
A small trivia question for a change; some of my colleagues and friends may already have heard this from me.
Take a look at the following snippet of C# code:
T x1 = V1;
T x2 = V2;
Console.WriteLine(x1 == x2);
Console.WriteLine(x1.ToString() == x2.ToString());
In the code, you need to fill in three missing parts: Name of a type T, and [...]
June 30, 2009
Tags: trivia Posted in: .NET 
2 Comments
Getting answers from Experts-Exchange.com
If your search for answers to technical questions yield links to Experts Exchange, you’ll probably find yourself frustrated by the “This answer is only available for Premium Members” blocks. However, it’s good to know that the content really is freely available.
This popped up again today, so it’s worth a heads-up. The whole issue has, of [...]
June 29, 2009
Posted in: Misc. programming No Comments
The anatomy of Bing search results
Microsoft recently published Bing White Paper for Webmasters and Publishers. While offering little in the actual SEO sense, it does provide other interesting viewpoints, especially for usability guys and web site developers.
The anatomy of a Google and Bing SERP (Search Engine Result Page) are definitely different. Google’s result on “Helsinki” is reasonably simple:
On [...]
June 29, 2009
Tags: Bing, Google, search, usability Posted in: Web No Comments
A look into the last ten years
I turned 30 on Wednesday. It doesn’t really feel like anything, but it’s a good time to take a trip down the memory lane from a web technology perspective. So how has the world changed? (lots of Wikipedia links included!)
I have been programming since I was six and started working full-time in IT almost 15 [...]
June 26, 2009
Tags: history Posted in: .NET, General, Web No Comments
Moving Windows Help .hxw files ain’t easy
After all these years, wouldn’t you think all the system-generated data could be easily moved away from the boot partition?
Let’s say your C: drive gets full. Windows Vista and beyond make repartitioning a snap, but it only helps if said disk has space available on another partition. If not, you’re in for some exercise [...]
June 23, 2009
Tags: Windows Help Posted in: Windows IT No Comments
Which gwaddagak would you pick?
All the noise about adding a browser choice ballot screen on Windows Installation, and who even knows how to use all that power of selection?
My colleague Aki blogged about an interesting video by Google. They’re interviewing people in New York, asking about browsers and search engines. Less than 8% knew what a browser is!
Why would [...]
June 22, 2009
Tags: competition Posted in: Web 4 Comments
Visual Studio web debugging: Attaching to IIS with a keyboard shortcut
Nothing new here, but why do we tolerate repetitive chores so easily?
For some reason web developers seem to have extreme patience when it comes to attaching the Visual Studio debugger to the IIS process (w3wp.exe, aspnet_wp.exe or what have you). It’s ridiculously clumsy to open the Attach to Process window and then find the correct [...]
June 17, 2009
Tags: debugging, macros, Visual Studio Posted in: .NET No Comments
PowerShell: PSObject, custom types and the add-member cmdlet
PowerShell is .NET-based in the sense that it allows reasonably free manipulation of CLR objects. However, the shell language differs drastically from the familiar object-oriented languages that are typically used with classes and objects. In this post, I’ll discuss some of the aspects involved in handling custom objects in PowerShell.
Note: I have posted an update [...]
June 14, 2009
Tags: PowerShell Posted in: .NET 2 Comments
Internet Explorer bundling issue resolved with force – what now?
Just a couple of days ago I wrote on the European Commission’s attempt to dislodge IE from Windows. It would appear Microsoft’s recent unbundling move made things a whole lot more interesting.
Yesterday’s key announcement was that Windows 7 would be shipped as “E” versions ("Windows 7 Home Premium E” and such) in Europe. The E [...]
June 12, 2009
Tags: competition, IE, Windows 7 Posted in: Web One Comment
At least try binging it
Have you binged already? I have, but not much. I have my browser’s default search provider set to Google, and that’s what keeps taking me there. And given that Google is really good at what it does, it’s easy to keep googling.
But you don’t develop knowledge without pushing yourself. So yeah, I set my default [...]
June 10, 2009
Tags: Bing Posted in: Web 3 Comments