Just a quick heads up on a products a lot of my work friends on that has been announced publically. It’s Windows Network Access Protection. The basic idea is that a client connecting to a network is put on a restircted network till it has proven that it’s a safe machine (up to date with patches, running anti-virus, AV signatures are up to date, etc). This restricted network has enough access to do things like update the AV signatures and so forth. It’s a pretty nice idea for all thoose corperate laptops that slip around the firewall and screw your internal network.
Month: July 2004
Chicago Weekend featuring a wedding
This last weekend I went to the wedding of doomsey and nekosensei in Chicago. The wedding was nice and reception was fun. I saw a number of people that I hadn’t seen since college. I believe it was a preparation event to encountering my high school reunion which will be coming up at some point in the future.
WMP Library sample code
Steve Butler has an blog entries on using the WMP SDK to parse Library information and even better has a project about building a UPNP Media Server using some stuff Intel provides to make UPnP usable from managed code.
Lord of The Rings Symphony this weekend
This Seattle Times article is wetting my appetite for the upcoming Lord of the Rings Symphony I’m attending this weekend.
Xen released as Cw aka Comega
Don Box points out that you can now download the Comega compiler that contains Xen (X#) and Concurrency extensions. Xen is what happens when you take databases and xml and make it fundimental to a OOP language.
The problem facing the programming language designer is not only identifying the “heavily used APIs” and “common programming patterns” mentioned earlier but also tastefully realizing them as first-class language features or constructs. Bolting on random features leads to language bloat, potentially destroying any coherence the language may have had. In addition one hopes that by promoting a feature from an API it will be better supported given its existence in the language.
…
In our opinion three areas that are ripe for liberation from their lowly API status are (a) data-access, (b) concurrency and (c) security. [Programming with Circles, Triangles and Rectangles]
Ballard Locks Photo Workshop – Sunday August 1st, 2004: 1PM-4PM
Seattle is pretty cool.
Ballard Locks Photo Workshop – Sunday August 1st, 2004: 1PM-4PM
Training and Test Post
This week I’m taking some training by OSR on advanced driver development. I’ve been testing drivers since I started at Microsoft, but rarely from the kernel directy. As a result I have a fisheye’s view of the kernel that I hope to correct.
In the process of explaining how PnP works they showed off thier tool Device Tree, which is also distributed as part of the DDK. I couldn’t find a copy of the DDK for immediate download (although MSDN has a online copy of the docs), one could order it for just the shipping and handling. One of the cooler things about the recent DDK is that is comes with prefast, a nice tool finding some types of bugs in both drivers and normal code.
It was suprising to hear that people have trouble setting up a kernel debugger for windows kernel development. After noticing a prety good description of how to do it by Jolyon Wright, I feel I can only add two points and quick and dirty step-by-step guide. You can find the debugger on microsoft.com and the builtin “bootcfg” command line tool is a nice way to avoid the whole attrib thing when editing the boot.ini.
Here is the minimum setup:
- Connect the two machines via a NULL modem cable. Notice which serial ports you plugged the cable into.
- Choose a machine to be the debugger. Install the debuggers on this machine. Run windbg. Hit ctrl-k and put in the serial port you are using on that machine with a speed of 115200.
- On the other machine the debugee, run bootcfg. Run something like this: BOOTCFG /Debug ON /PORT COM1 /BAUD 115200 /ID 2
- Reboot the debugee and wait for debug spew to show up in windbg.
- hit the break button in the debugger (ctrl-break). Type .symfix and hit enter. Wait for the symbols to load from the internet’s symbol server and hit g to allow the debugee to continue running.
BTW: This item is a test post, which might get picked up by the Microsoft Community page.
Morning News – 7/1/2004
NYTimes stories and editorials I’m reading this morning:
- Israeli Court Orders Changes to Barrier in West Bank
The Israeli Supreme Court today said the route of the country’s West Bank separation barrier is causing too much harm to the local Palestinian population. - Thousands of Protesters in Hong Kong Take Aim at Beijing
Tens of thousands of protesters on Thursday challenged Beijing’s refusal to allow them to elect their own leaders. - Dude, Where’s That Elite? (By BARBARA EHRENREICH)
With Michael Moore as the left’s most visible spokesman, it’s time to retire the “liberal elite” label. - Those Were the Days (By BRUCE BARTLETT)
The publication of Bill Clinton’s memoirs has led many conservatives to reassess their memories of his presidency.
And some NPR Morning Edition stories:
- After Several Lean Years, States See Revenue Surpluses
Last year, many U.S. states found themselves in serious financial straits. This year, tax revenues are up, and more than half the states have a budget surplus. But their budgetary woes are far from over. NPR’s Wendy Kaufman reports. - Cassini Becomes First Craft to Enter Saturn’s Orbit
After a six-and-a-half-year journey, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft becomes the first to enter Saturn’s orbit. The bus-sized spacecraft will spend the next several years exploring the planet, its rings and its moons. NPR’s Richard Harris reports. - Ear Surgeries Seek to Heal Painful Saddam Legacy
Among the legacies of Saddam Hussein’s reign are the thousands of Iraqis with missing or mutilated ears. Slicing off an ear was standard punishment for army deserters. Now the new Iraqi government is footing the bill for ear replacement surgery. NPR’s Emily Harris reports.