Another excellent analogy this time on .Net Remoting

A fabulous post on Marshal-by-ref versus Serializable Objects by Eric Lippert. I need to learn how people come up with such excllent analogies and simple explanation to complex things.

re:The Fishbowl: The Mac is a Harsh Mistress

Charles Miller has really written a excellent and funny analogy comparing Mac/Microsoft/Linux. He shows good knowledge two very complex things females and computers ;).

Longhorn and Loosing your mobile phone

In a recent post I lost my girlfriends phone number. Kevin Moore is very right in saying "Loosing your phone should be a great experience, because it gives you an excuse to get a Pocket PC Phone Edition". And I really look forward to the day where I am not worried upset at loosing my address book and spending enormous amount of time trying to back it up in an excel sheet and keeping it in Sync.
His idea of a unified Address books sounds nice but I still wonder how will they make it possible in Longhorn and how much it will cost as there are many devices today which offer softwares to communicate with the PC and backup the data, but need costly data cables other communication infrastructure.

It feels good to be heard

Few days back I posted my comment to a post Why don't nullable relational operators return bool? instead of bool? on the C# Frequently Asked Questions blog. In response the comment the C# Team updated the post. Its really nice to know that you are being heard.

Some useful links

Recently a collegue of mine needed some help with Creating a Windows Service, Creating an MSI Installer and Updater Application Block for .NET. Being in the middle of a project he prefered something a simple not the boring comprehensive resources from MSDN. Having used all these in my earlier projects more that an year ago, I had a tought time then finding quality resources to help me understand exactly how to use them. MSDN Was the only good place i could find something good. But yesterday when i started searching on the net for some good stuff I was amazed to see how many new resoruces are available. I compiled a list of link which he can use. I would like to share with everybody who may be interested in these.

Updater Application Block for .NET

Downloads
http://microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C6C17F3A-D957-4B17-9B97-296FB4927C30&displaylang=en

How-To
http://www.gotdotnet.com/community/messageboard/Thread.aspx?id=181256
http://www.gotdotnet.com/community/messageboard/Thread.aspx?id=158337
http://www.ballzac.com/updaterblock/Updater%20Application%20Block%20HOW-TO%20generic.htm

The Gotdotnet community Workspace
http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/Workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=83c68646-befb-4586-ba9f-fdf1301902f5

The nuts and bolts
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnbda/html/updater.asp
http://builder.com.com/5100-6373-5080375.html
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.dotnet.distributed_apps
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=5B7C6E2D-D03F-4B19-9025-6B87E6AE0DA6&displaylang=en


Windows Service

Walkthrough
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vbcon/html/vbwlkwalkthroughcreatingwindowsserviceapplication.asp

Tutorial
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/2/window_service.asp

History & Geography (Architecture and related stuff)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vbcon/html/vbconintroductiontontserviceapplications.asp


MSI Installer in .Net

Tutorial
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/Code/2003/April/SetupProjects.asp
http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/C-Sharp/Creating-a-.NET-Windows-Installer--Part-1/

The nuts and bolts
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vsintro7/html/vbcondeployingsolution.asp

Unfourtunately, a majority of links are still from MSDN ;)

MSDN Lab

Stumbled upon MSDN Lab while checking out the Visual Studio Team System site. It seems Microsoft is taking a tip or two from google which has its own labs website where it previews its upcoming/under development products/features.