Two years ago, I blogged about the "Mobile PC" division at Microsoft which encompasses all of the mobility technology - Tablet PCs, handhelds etc. Today, for the first time, I noticed that this is finally catching on. There are lots of people walking around with bright orange hats. When I commented on one in the elevator to an attendee, he said "yeah, the Mobile PC team is giving them out and they are giving out a Mobile PC every day during the conference." So it sounds like people are getting it now. A mobile pc has a lot of features that enable mobility and ink is only one of those features.

My i.m. pal Michal Chaniewski has just (finally) become an MVP. Michal is one of the most connected guys in the .NET community in Poland. I'm so happy to see him get recognized. I met Michal when I noticed in his blog that he was from Poland and learned that he had lived in the small city that part of my family (generations past) came from. The town was called Langhfur but the name was changed to something wtih lots of w's, r's, s's and z's and maybe a vowel thrown in for fun that I couldn't pronounce for the life of me! Something like a great chocolate torte that is all eggs, sugar and chocolate with a teaspoon of flour added.

He also told me that Maja Ciemienga has become the first female MVP in Poland! Yay. Maja is the INETA lead for Poland. Here is Maja's blog - if you can read Polish!

Though it was 70 degrees on Friday, it is back to the 30's here in Vermont so the warm weather is just one more thing I am looking forward to as I take off for Florida shortly (shortly as in I should be putting my bags in the car, not sitting in front of the computer.)

This will be my 4th time speaking at DevConnections. Paul Litwin teased me last year because I was sad that I was missing all of the awesome sessions - since I was spending most of my time preparing my sessions. The pre-con sessions are running today. Tomorrow (Monday) is Microsoft Day and I could very happily sit in sessions all day long. We'll see how that goes. Tuesday and Wednesday are the "third party" speakers.

I just love DevConnections as a speaker and as an attendee (I was that at one time) and yes, it would be great if I could somehow make copies of myself so that I could be in many rooms at once attending every talk and at the same time focus on my own sessions so that I can do the best job presenting that I can.

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I had to back up one of my VPC's to DVD - a just in case measure as I head down to Florida or DevConnections with a VPC dependent demo. In my folder was the VPC drive file and an extra file, I thought a backup. The main file was about 4GB and the second about 3GB. So I backed up the main file and the vpc settings file and then went to test the backup which gave me hard drive errors - I couldn't boot up. Out ofcuriousity, I made a copy of the VPC file on my hard drive.Same problem. Then I dropped that "backup" (V01 extension) file in there and it worked.

A little googling tought me that the drive capacity for a VPC is 4 GB nnd my 7GB file was split into two drives. Aha! Here is a good explanation from JoeN at Microsoft who had learned the hard way, too.

So, I had already made he back up of the first part of the VPC at 7:12 pm. Now the timestamp of the two files that are in use are past that. Whichmight have meant having to reburn both files so that I had a matching pair. I did a little experimenting with mismatched files (that had no changes, just had been opened up) and the VPC disk went through a big repair but then booted up  just fine. I still may just toss that frst DVD and have a matched backup. Just in case.

I almost missed a great sight the other night as I had my nose glued to the computer! But Rich mentioned it and I turned my head to the left to see

D.K. Smith Forum presents:

“Outsourcing:  Opportunity or Threat?”

Wednesday, May 3, 2006, 4:30-6:00 P.M.

216 McCardell Bicentennial Hall, Middlebury College

A reception will follow in the Tormondsen Great Hall

Moderator

Pieter J. Schiller ’60, Partner(retired), Advanced Technology Ventures, Waltham, MA

Panelists

Nick Laird ’88, Chief Executive Officer, Global Realty Outsourcing.  GRO is one of the leading providers of business process outsourcing solutions to the real estate and financial services industries.
Michael E. Zeliger, Partner, Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, Nicholson, Graham, LLP.
  Mr. Zeliger focuses his practice on complex civil litigation, with particular emphasis on patent and other intellectual property litigation.
Scott Hardy, Founder and President, NEOS Overshoes.  New England Overshoes is a Vermont firm designing and selling “performance overshoes” for personal, recreational and professional use.

In The World is Flat, Tom Friedman contends that software, the global fiber-optic network and ubiquitous Internet access is fundamentally altering virtually every aspect of our lives. For one, it is empowering individuals, groups and countries to collaborate and compete globally:

   We are all becoming neighbors.

   People can now go global seamlessly.

   Outsourcing is a direct consequence of a flat world, and is here to stay.

   Distance no longer insulates us from competition or impedes seizing global opportunities.

   We can now run global businesses, collaborate with (outsource to) partners and feel competition from around the globe without ever leaving home.

   Globalization is fundamentally altering how:

        People

            Are educated and prepare themselves for careers;

            Communicate and establish, build and maintain relationships;

            Work and play; and

        Companies

            Conceive, launch and grow entrepreneurial enterprises;

            Develop and secure intellectual property;

            Operate within increasingly transparent, global supply chains; and

            Compete and collaborate for markets and customers.

Questions and Issues

Does outsourcing jobs really mean we are outsourcing America? Or does outsourcing create more jobs than it moves offshore?

Does outsourcing mean that America will not be able to compete in anything, and that eventually there will be no jobs here?

If so, how do we explain the fact that, because outsourcing is making it so much more efficient and competitive, U.S. manufacturing is increasingly healthy, growing, and vibrant?

What are the implications of a “flat world” for intellectual property?

   Can companies secure world-wide protection? What are the critical factors and costs?

   What are the distinctions between “hard” products like shoes and machinery, and “soft” products like business processes, software and services?

   How do we deal with the reality that some countries do not recognize IP?

   How are courts looking at IP in this new environment?

A special thanks to the late Edward Schaefer ’56, Laura Schaefer Buckley ’79 and Edward Schaefer III ’84 for their generosity in establishing the Professor David K. Smith Visiting Economic Lecture Series in honor of David K. Smith’s work as a teacher and mentor at Middlebury College.

This event is free and open to the public.

Questions?

E-mail mosborne@middlebury.edu

Everything I thought I knew about how to interop messages between WCF and WSE3.0 went down the toilet with the newest bits of WCF.

Thanks to some serious counseling from William Tay this morning (who has been diving deep with WCF for a long time and has also kept up with the changes that affect all forms of interop, even WSE3.0) and then lots of hours of just trying, failing, thinking, adjusting (rinse and repeat) I finally got a WCF client app to talk to a WSE3.0 secured web service using a UsernameforCertificate binding/policy.

And yes, it's all secured on the wire. I had every problem. Wrong X509 certificates installed, wrong encryption algorithms, hitting a few WCF bugs and more. Luckily, all of the work I have done with WSE3.0 has helped me prepare for troubleshooting this stuff. To me, that is one of the most important lessons!

Here are a few of the things I can share.

I was doing what Willie tells me is the hardest thing with interop - UsernameOverCertificate. But being bullheaded I had to go forward with it.

I tried writing my own, but didn't understand well enough (though now I think I could tackle that) and instead used WSEHttpBinding that is a custom binding in one of the WCF samples.

That binding uses the Aes128 algorithm for it's default security binding and secure conversation. I kept getting a message that the algorithm was insufficient to encrypt and key wrap. Changing them both to Aes256 fixed that. It took me a while to realize there were two spots to change, but I had the right idea! Uggh.

At one point, I was still getting an error, but looking at the web service's trace, I could see that everything on that end had finally happened correctly. Therefore the problem was on the client side. Google gave me ONE response, and naturally it was from a blog post of Willie's! He had seen a similar problem in the Sept. CTP, but it was enough to fix my problem (Feb CTP).

Since this stuff is still in flux, I think I will wait for WCF beta2 to be released before I attempt to update my article on preparing WSE3 web services for WCF. Truly the hard part (until the new bits are all sorted out) is writing the WCF client. I didn't have to do anything to my web service to get this to work.

Willie's got a pair of great articles on WCF on The Server Side (first, second) and I hear there's a WSE3/WCF interop article coming soon from him as well. Lucky or the rest of us!

I will never have the deep knowledge of this stuff hat Willie and his compadres (Michele Butamante, Christian Weyer, Juval Lowy, etc.) have, but as long as I am willing to battle this stuff out so that I can share it with other programmers who are floating on the surface, I'll keep at it.

I'll be looking at more of this stuff in my WSE3 for WCF session at DevConnections next week. My focus is on making sure the WSE3 services are written correctly so that you can talk to them in the future from WCF. I won't be teaching WCF. You can go across the hall to see Michele for that.

The next Vermont.NET meeting is Monday April 10th.

I will be presenting a session called "5 Supposedly Scary Things in.NET". It will be a high level introduction to

1. Declarative programming with attributes
2. Reflection
3. Delegates
4. Threading
5. Code Access Security

I have a full license to VS2005 Professional and SQL Server 2005 Standard to license off.

Pizza & Soda will be sponsored by DottNetJobs.com, a job portal for .NET jobs as well as SQL Server and ASP jobs.

Vermont is in the midst of "sugarin'" season when the sap is flowing and sugarmakers everywhere are boiling one of Vermont's trademark products. The local paper, Burlington Free Press has some stories, a video and a slide show of sugarin' and boilin' on their site today.

DonXML took the plunge and went back to being on someone's payroll. This has been on my mind a lot since I read his post. [read more...]

[A DevLife post]

Hopefully a word of warning to future crown-toothed friends.

I suffered through a 2 hour dentist appointment yesterday. It was #2 of what was supposed to be three appointments for getting crown. #1 was to build the tooth back up. #2 (yesterday) was to prep the tooth, take molds for the crown and get a temporary. #3 is going to be applying the crown.

However,this morning, when I was brushing my teeth, the temporary popped off and though I tried to spit it into my hand, was nowhere to be found. Obviously down the drain. I was a little tired to actually think to close the drain first. Duh.

So tomorrow morning, it's back to the dentist (for which I have no insurance) for another temporary crown. Oy vey!

I just happened to be looking at the INETA "Upcoming Speaking Engagements" page and was struck by the fact that there are SIX events tonight!

It's also amazing to see events scheduled all the way through to the end of 2006. It's definitely hard to plan that far ahead, though I do have some INETA talks already scheduled in September!

There was an article in the local paper about Computer Camps offered by the South Burlington School District this summer.

Maybe it's because I don't have kids, but I was definitely a surprise to see a robotics class for 6 year olds!

Here's the whole list which sounds like a blast! (No pun intended wrt the rocket tech class )

Robotics: Beginning robotics for grades one-three; mastering mazes for grades four-seven.

Rocket Tech: Grades three-six; learn how to build, test and launch solid propellant rockets.

Programming a Computer Game with HyperStudio: Grades four-eight.

3D Computer Animation: Grades six-12; introduction, advanced modeling, advanced animation and advanced team project.

Animating Your Web Site with Flash: Grades seven to adult.

If you've ever wondered how Rick manages to churn out so much, the secret is out....

Not only can you write web services today that can be consumed by WCF (Indigo) apps in the future, but working with WSE 3.0 today to secure your web services will also help you get a handle on many of the concepts of WCF. I have written an article for DevSource called "Using WSE 3.0 Today to Secure Web Services Tomorrow" based on current guidance (based on WSE 3.0 and WCF Beta 1) on just such a topic.

I will also be doing a talk on this topic next week at DevConnections.

Thanks to Mark Fussell for his insights on this topic.

With most conferences,speakers need to submit their powerpoints way in advace of the conferences. Attendees are provided with books filled with the printouts of the decks so that they can take notes during the conference. It is not uncommon with a new talk to fine tune it between that early preparation and the actual time you your presentation.

Though this has only happened once, it struck me (and stuck in my brain) when an attendee wrote on an eval that it was a pain that the slides in my talk were different than the book.

So this time around,rather than hoping that I'm going to remember in the middle of a talk and say "oh, I changed this slide a little (for your benefit)" I am just putting tiny little notes on the bottom of modified slides: "This slide is slightly modified from the original printed version".

Hopefully that will mean one less negative comment this time around!

I now have built three VPCs to be used as bases for various testing. I can make a copy of a VPC and then use that copy to install "dangerous" bits - eg betas, ctps etc.

My first VPC is a clean Windows XP SP2 system with all of the current updates.

My second VPC is that plus .NET 2.0,  VS2005 RTM and SQL Server Express RTM. I can the throw things like Atlas or WinFX on top of them. It took quite a long time to install this. So I won't have to do that again.

My third VPC is #2 PLUS the WinFX February CTP Components , SDK and VS2005 Extensions for WinFX. I plan to experiment with WCF (and need a very clean copy of this for a DevConnections session) with and without Atlas installed on top of it (ergo I want two) and also WPF.

I spent about two days creating them and then tucked them away onto my 200GB drive. Then I can make a copy on my external hard drive and go to town.

My quiet (snowless boo hoo hoo) winter at home is winding down. Soon I will have to start tugging at the roots that have been deeply embedding me into my beautiful little place in the world and flit about the country ...err continent, that is.

It all begins again in about a week.

April 3 - 6: DevConnections in Orlando (I have 1 talk at ASPConnections and 2 at VSConnections)

April 10: Not a trip, but I'll be presenting at Vermont.NET!

April 11-13 - Maybe attend  Devscovery in NYC.

April 22: Deeper in .NET in Milwaukee.This will be new for me - a big one day user group event with myself and 4 other speakers that I am honored to be included with (Michele on Indigo, Scott Hanselman on ASP.NET seen through dasBlog, UI guru Jason Beres and ASP.NET book author Bill Hatfield)! I also get to spend a few days visiting a good friend.

May 2: Huntsville, AL to speak at the HUNTUG User Group run by Lori McKinney (an INETA event). I am looking forward to this as well, though I won't be doing the usual INETA speaker visit to the nearby Space Museum. nor two attractions that are more up my alley: Cathedral Caverns State Park and Burritt Museum.

May 9-11: Montreal for DevTeach! Yay yay! One of my favorite conferences. It's less than 3 hours from my house. Many of my friends are there as speaker and attendees and Montreal is beautiful in the spring! Then after that Alan Griver and Beth Massi are coming home with me for visit and Alan will be speaking at VTdotNET. Yay.

June - A whirlwind. I'm hoping to announce soon a Vermont Code Camp in early June. Then there's TechEd and then I'm off on a 10 day trip that is a combined vacation and INETA tour (with my hubby) to the Atlantic Provinces in Canada. I have always wanted to go to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and have been eyeing the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick for years, as well. I will be visiting New Brunswick.NET, the .NET Nova Scotia and finally We Develop.NET in St. John's Newfoundland.

The list goes on. I have a whole bunch of INETA gigs scheduled through September already and am talking with Thom Robbins about a possible mini-code camp, too.