July 2007 - Posts

Office 2007 advert mistake

I saw this advert for Microsoft Office 2007 recently on the Sky News website and had to look twice. Clearly the marketing team has made the same mistake for Excel's calculation engine (numbers don't add up) as they did with Frontpage's Html validation.



Although they did create a nice integrated advert for Office 2007 on MSN the other day.
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Apple Form Factor Evolution

Great image of Apple Form Factor Evolution 1976 through 2007:

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Active Directory Explorer 1.0 from SysInternals

As well as the other fanastic Sysinternals tools comes a new one from Mark Russinovich, Active Directory Explorer 1.0.

Very useful for discovering properties and attributes available in your Active Directory.

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Code review primer

There are a number of code-review products on the market, including Cenqua Crucible and features inside Jetbrains IntelliJ but it's worth remembering a few key points as described by MarkLon:

1. Does the code do what it is supposed to do?
2. Does the code cover all cases?
3. Is the code quality good?
4. Does the code do too much?
5. Does the code do too little validation?
6. Does the code expose too much?
7. Are all exceptions handled?
8. When modifying code, has a new path into the internals of the code been created?
9. Comments that make you think the code does something but actually it is different.

Also well worth all developers reading Refactoring and Code Complete every couple of years (or even months).
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Spiceworks IT Desktop - Free computer management

Thought this looked an interesting free tool for small businesses who don't run Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) or one of the new System Center suite.

Spiceworks IT Desktop:

Your network may be complicated and expensive but your IT management tools don't need to be. Spiceworks IT Desktop is the only application that combines Network Inventory, Help Desk, Reporting, Monitoring and Troubleshooting in a single, easy-to-use interface designed for IT teams in small and medium businesses. Plus, Spiceworks lets you collaborate with IT pros around the world to solve problems, share ideas and decide what additional features you need in Spiceworks.



I haven't tried it myself but it certainly looks impressive for a free product.
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MMC snap-ins on 64-bit

Came across this interesting issue when changing code access security (CASPOL) setting via the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in.

There are separate policies on a 64-bit machine, ie. for 32 and 64-bit runtime versions.

Good explanation why and how to run different mmc versions via command line parameters.
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