Thanks Benjamin for this info on how to encrypt a UsernameToken. I didn't happen to see it anywhere else. I mostly liked looking at the soap message to see the effect (note that username="John", password="Doe" and I am hashing the password in both cases and then encrypting the UsernameToken in the AFTER). Cool! I love this stuff. It's like a big game. Based on the length of the encrypted UsernameToken, can you tell what I used to encrypt it with?

BEFORE

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Dave Burke found it first! (how fitting )

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Geeze since March! Subscribed. Their second post is about what I need to do: dynamically embed an image into a report at runtime. Of course, it's on www.ASPADVICE.com!

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You probably know that Crystal was bought by Business Objects last year. Crystal is a great product with a horrible support reputation. That's not about individual support people (I spoke with an awesome one last night) but just an overall problem. I have suffered plenty as well. I will never get past the experience of upgrading from 6.0 to 8.0 and how it horribly shattered many of my client applications and the deployment nightmares I went through (and my famous $500 phone bill for calling the free support line in Canada). And still, when I do have a problem, I sometimes cannot find the solution to it (granted at this point I have wierd problems, but still....)

But they are really trying. Now they have a .NET Developer Zone. It's still a work in progress, but the more we use it, the better it will get.

I know that we all want it to be a good resource. So use it and if you don't like it, let them know about it. Let them know what they can do to make it good so that we don't roll our eyes when talking about Crystal Reports.

This is the tool I have used for years and am still using it even though I do keep looking over at ActiveReports and SQL Reporting Services. The hook for me is I know how to use Crystal. I only run into trouble once in a while, but I just don't wnat to have to spend 4 hours researching a problem and still not come up with a solution.

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Well, you can't really vote more than once...JUST VOTE! Vote Vote Vote Vote (of course, I mean if you are a u.s. citizen). I bet there are a LOT of people around the world who wish they could vote in this election.

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Did I happen to mention that I have WSE2 running in a production app? We are replacing the old version of the app with the new one a few users at a time at the client site and on the laptops as well as at the few remote sites. They won't know the difference, but I sure do!

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I have been trying to figure out why my crystal reports are mysteriously growing to 2+MB in one of my applications. Ummm DUH - I kind of forgot that I had embedded a watermark in them and that file is over 1MB. I actually got them to call me to help me about it (awesome tech support guy who has been with Crystal for 7 years). I think sometimes I am too quick to get aggravated by Crystal.

Now I have to figure out how to either shrink the watermark or I was told I can deploy the rpt files outside of the dlls.

Update: not so dopey. Even if I use a 30KB jpeg for the watermark, it still get's morphed into an OLE bitmap and makes a 400KB dll with a crystal report in it go to 2MB. It's just how it works.

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I have always had problems writing cd's. This is with 2 different cdr's and lots of different software over the course of many many years. I would have to toss about 2 cd's for everyone written. So I basically avoid it like the plague. But I just downloaded an ISO image and discovered that Windows XP has built in software and I don't have to struggle any more. I just dragged and dropped the file to the cd in windows explorer and xp handled the rest. Finally. Thanks to whomever put that in there.

Of course I still have to test that it worked...

Okay I confess. I literally copied the ISO so I had to toss 2 cd's after all. Then read the in your face ISO instructions and downloaded ISO Recorder (note there's an XP and a new XPSP2 Beta version) and also note this is shareware. If you use it enough to justify thanking the creator, click on that PayPal button. This makes it pain free - right click on the ISO file and you're almost done. Thanks Alex!!

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Going to Vegas for DevConnections? Looks like 70's during the day, 50 ish at night.

I will also be going to Zion National Park for the weekend. A little colder there.

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no not mine (that went back to my client, remember?), someone else's. Brand new acer c111 (or c112).

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it's just a time thing. I say it's evolution, not revolution.

Softwaremaker has gone the dasBlog route and his new [must read if you are doing anything with WSE] weblog is here: www.softwaremaker.net/blog.

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This is not the first case of worn-out TabletPC enthusiasm I have seen. I really do envision a future where tablets are the norm...where they *are* the laptops. Where a laptop is a tablet and a tablet is a laptop and it's all mobile computing and there is no distinction any more. But the problem for many who have been excited about it for years now is that it is still "a future".

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Steven Lees writes about some upcoming changes for VB in Whidbey. I had to laugh at this understatement: Refactoring is another feature that we've heard a lot about from VB developers.

Posted from BLInk!

One of the local votes on Tuesday is to go ahead with the plans for the Regional Technical Center here in Vermont, bringing together and expanding upon the success of the exsiting Tech Centers in Burlington and Essex Junction. This has been a big controversy in Vermont and one that seems to be fueled by misinformation (or so say those on both sides of the argument). A lot of educators are against it even some that work at the existing Tech Centers. The problem is not in the desire to have the RTC, but in the actual current plan that is being voted on. My understanding is that voting against this plan does not mean that you are voting against the RTC but you are insisting that they go back to the drawing board and make a better plan. I really have had a hard time keeping on top of the arguments pro & con. Of course, everyone wants to see more opportunties created for people in Vermont and it will also benefit Vermont businesses - though this should not be the primary goal, otherwise, we are creating a worker mill.. I wish that teens did not have to worry about their careers at such a young age and can focus on developing life skills. I lived most of my life in NY State where BOCES has been a great success.

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Have you see Jeff Prosise's planes? Here's another one.  I thought they were real, thanks to the way the photos look... until they started accumulating! I knew that he couldn't have so many. Then I looked a little closer and then finally saw this video. Very very cool, Jeff!

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KVM stands for Keyboard Video Mouse. Since I bought a new desktop this summer, my former daily driver was sitting in a corner doing nothing. I just bought a KVM 2 Port Switch made by LinkSys that is one sweet little cable with all of the connections built in. I can now switch between that computer and my regular one without moving any more muscles than my little index finger to tap on the Scroll Key twice. Love it! Now all I need is Ghost so that I can use that machine either to test additional beta software or to emulate a clean client machine to test installations, etc.

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Jim Blizzard is an organized guy. I would never have thought of enabling

• Bulleted
• Lists

or

1. Numbered
2. Lists

in BLInk! without him.

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Bliz has kindly agreed to play around with BLInk for a bit. Hmm - spell checking hadn't thought of it!

I appreciated all of  his nice comments but just wanted to clarify something.

One thing he misunderstood was about the API limitation on categories and titles. That is only for the Blogger API. I saw the common workaround but could not get it to work from my application and finally ditched it. However, the Metablog API absolutely supports titles and categories. I also use dasBlog, as does Bliz and am posting with the Metablog API from BLInk! with titles and categories. No problems at all with that. I don't have to go back to my blog and add those things in after the fact.

.Text and dasBlog support both APIs.

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I'm sorry - is it just me? This is on the windows forms home page. "Just in case you didn't know that there are chicks that write code, we wanted to bring your attention to this gorgeous woman's chest."

Then there's that other picture we've seen a lot of that really cool looking chick in the green shirt. Something about that picture is all about her chest also. I double checked with a number of people when we first saw that photo over and over again during the MVP Summit and they all conferred that it was hard to see the rest of the photo. Something about her boobs - like she wasn't wearing a bra or something - just totally drew your eyes (and mine - totally heterosexual woman, here) right to her chest.

I dunno - I just figure there's got to be a happy medium here somewhere.

Posted from BLInk!