When I was first looking for a house, one of my primary constraints was commute times. I started by asking people – “How long does it take you to commute to work?” I started building a mental map, but then started thinking about putting pins on a real map to help me remember all of the data I was getting from people.
But then I thought, “Hey – computers are supposed to make this kind of stuff easier.” And then, …
Read moreWithout a doubt, we are blessed here on the Monad team with a community of very talented bloggers. To add another to the list, we are now joined by Karl Prosser. His first few blogs are doosies – integrating Monad with SQL server, and hosting Monad in an interface very similar to SQL’s Query Analyzer.
Keep up the great work!
[Edit: Monad has now been renamed to Windows PowerShell. This script or discussion may …
Read moreCryptography is one of the areas about security that many feel is difficult to approach. Encryption, certificates, signatures, public keys, hashing – these are terms that most people like to keep at arm’s length.
That is until you’ve read a good introduction to the subject. Although the topic of cryptography is large and very deep, a good introduction easily provides the concepts in which to frame …
Read moreA long time ago, Raymond Chen wrote about how to interact with the ShellWindows COM object using C++. It was doable, but clumsy. He then revisited his post, showing how much easier it was when accessed through a scripting language as its designers had intended. As can be expected, the comments flowed fast and furious in illustration of the conciseness of various languages that the readers were fond of.
I’ve been …
Read moreAs their blog has so far failed to point out, it looks like MSN Search pushed a new release live today. Unfortunately, I can’t find any mention anywhere on the internet about what’s new.
I very much like the new colour scheme, though. It’s light. It’s fresh. The old blue box made me feel constrained, but the impact goes deeper than that.
When I worked on Encarta, there was a MSN-wide effort to move to the white …
Read moreIn the last article, we continued to develop our version of MSH Logo. In typical software-geek fashion, we designed a train-wreck for a user interface. Rather than provide our users with the power required to make fancy graphics, we shackled them with a handful of ineffective commands. But it was all we thought the users needed!
Many situations aren’t even this clear-cut. For example, the Microsoft Office System …
Read moreRobert Scoble recently asked the question, “Why Do Search Engines Lie?” He calls out that the engines are usually off by a few results - with 692 results instead of a claimed 699, 100 results instead of a claimed 101, etc. The numbers are worse when you count only “unique hits.” That gives numbers like 62 of 713, or 44 of 368. I’m sure that developers of the respective search engines …
Read moreTony has been working on a great series of posts to explore some of Monad’s security features.
He provides a method to start programs using the Administrator account, without having to always type in the Administrator’s password. To do this, he uses the export-secureString cmdlet to export the password to disk, and the import-secureString cmdlet to re-import it when required.
The export-secureString …
Read moreOk, so now that we’ve talked about our grand design for MSH Logo, our next task is to simply integrate this into a GUI. You can download the Visual Studio 2005 project from here.
The most interesting class, by far, is our Turtle class:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Drawing;
namespace Monad_Hosting
{
/// <summary>
/// A turtle class that implements some …
This quick reference summarizes the useful resources available at http://gregg.angelfishy.net. The document puts the Gregg alphabet, and 147 brief forms all in one helpful quick reference. The wallet-sized version is much smaller – suitable for cutting, folding, and placing in your wallet.
Download links: