Hi Everyone,

Well, chances are that if you're using Hypervisor (Hyper-V) as I am, you might also be using a Wireless Network Interface Card (NIC) to connect to the Internet and/or other sources.  Personally, I prefer the versatility.

Hyper-V doesn’t support wireless network cards by design (which I happen to disagree with). 

Unfortunately besides something like  “As a primarily server focused product this is a reasonable limitation” - I can’t get much more of a rationale other than “it makes sense not to support wireless network cards” for Hyper-V.

Well, agree or disagree, if you want to have Virtual Machines hosted in Hyper-V connecting to a network via a wireless network card, you’ll have to do something which is surprisingly simple.

First off, don’t bother with adding the Network Policy and Access Role.  This requires port forwarding (according to an unhelpful article I read) and is not necessary.

Secondly, don’t bother with Internet Connection Sharing (another unhelpful blog post elsewhere).  ICS makes your shared NIC a static IP address which may not be convenient for your network setup (it sure wasn’t for mine), plus ICS is stupid for any meaningful network setup.

So, to our actual solution. 

The premise

1. I have Windows Server 2008 x64 with Hyper-V (RTM)
2. Hosted in Hyper-V is a guest OS.
3. My server has a wireless (WLAN) card and is setup appropriately
4. I want to allow the guest OS hosted in Hyper-V to use the Wireless network card

Simple enough, right?  Hyper-V is quite happy to let me bind the guest OS to a physical (non-wireless) network card, but not to my wireless NIC.

Solution

In Hyper-V Manager, create an internal virtual network.  Open Hyper-V Manager, click on “Virtual Network Manager” (right hand side of screen).

Next, right hand side of the window select Interla and then “Add” button.  Call the new network whatever you like.  Mine is called ‘WWW’ (as you can observe in the screen shot below):

Once everything is properly configured, open Control Panel –> Network and Sharing Centre.  Click on the left hand side “Manage Network Connections”.

Select both your Wireless Connection and the Virtual Network Connection (mine is called ‘WWW’) and right click and select ‘Bridge Connections’.

Once configured, you should see something like this:

Now, simply assign Virtual Machines to the network you created (mine is called ‘WWW’), and you will be assigned IP addresses depending on the status of your wireless network card.

Hi Everyone,

Given that (Microsoft’s) TechEd 2008 is a little over a month away now, I thought I might find out who is planning on attending in Sydney this year?  Last year I didn’t think about it until the week before TechEd.

This year, I’m thinking it would be a good idea to throw a pre- or post- TechEd drinks somewhere in the city for those who are attending/would like to attend/don’t care but like to drink.

I have a few ideas on location.  Having lived in Sydney for the better part of eight years, including two and a half in Pyrmont, there’s a few CBD locations I’ve frequented over the years which may be suitable venues.

Email me at rob.sanders@gmail.com (Subject: ‘TechEd Drinks’) if you’re interested in getting the details should I manage to put together something. 

Added bonus news: Web site which helps you convert a Windows Server 2008 install into a workstation – including how to get the look and feel of Vista without Vista.  That’s a free plug :)  I’m using Windows Server 2008 as a Workstation and it’s been brilliant.

Cheers, R

Well, in an article that should shock no one, Australians are paying too much for video games [smh] (both online and retail).  This will come as no shock to anyone who has ever been overseas – and applies to many other markets equally, especially automotive (cars in the US are typically half the cost of cars in Australia).

There are a number of economic, geographic and political factors, but this is where regional encoding really becomes anti-competitive.  If importing the games directly nets a significant price reduction, then regional encoding is anti-competitive.

Forcing consumers to buy locally due to a region lockout prevents free market acquisitions (which would force distributors to set realistic RRPs in line with other countries).

In other news, another warning to be careful when using popular social networking site Facebook as it evidently still can track user’s activities – even when not logged on [zdnet].

This is an extension of an ongoing controversy for Facebook users which began late last year and surrounds the ‘Beacon’ application (optionally installed by users).  I find it interesting that Facebook developers would see the need to broadcast the habits of Facebook users publicly – what is the motivation here?

Lastly, it’s been an interesting week. 

Stay tuned for some interesting rants about BizTalk developer tools in Visual Studio 2005 (and why are using VS 2005 in the day and age of Visual Studio 2008?).

Also: please don’t forget to vote in either blog posting below.

Okay, time for a little Lego Star Wars outtake..  

Have a great weekend folks!

Well, how my blog writing process goes (yes, there is actually a process) is that I typically think of something to write about – and then I’ll post a draft to the blog.  This can happen almost any time of the day or night.

What basically ends up happening, is that I end up with a few unfinished drafts – sometimes they are half thoughts or musings (which might explain some of the past posts).

So I have a number of unfinished drafts at the moment, and I’m not sure which ones I will complete and post.  Without giving you any additional information about them, here’s a list of the unfinished drafts:

Admittedly, the names need reworking (part of the refinement process) but hopefully you can guess the intention of the entries.  Things like ‘[Mini Project]’ you’ll have to treat as a grab bag (mystery post).

Now, you get to vote!

Either e-mail me at: rob.sanders@gmail.com or add a comment below. 

Just tell me which of the drafts you’d like to read about (or perhaps even suggest an entry you’d like to see – within reason).

Let me know of the four which you’d like to see finished and posted.  I await your feedback!

As usual, please read my liability waiver with regard to post quality and sanity (or the lack of guarantee of either).

My folks are visiting Washington DC this week, so I started musing about US Presidents.  This is timely, given that it’s an election year.

So, I was thinking, of the choices listed below who would you (hypothetically) vote for if an election was called today, assuming the people below were able to be elected, and assuming you were eligible to vote in the United States (I’m encouraging non-US citizens to respond)?

1. Hillary Clinton               (Democrat Senator, New York)
2. George W Bush             (Republican, Incumbent President)
3. Barack Obama              (Democratic Nominee)
4. John McCain                 (Republican Nominee)
5. Jebediah ‘Jeb’ Bartlett*  (Democrat)
6. Arnold Vinick**             (Republican)
7. Al Gore***                   (Democrat, Former Vice President)
8. Bill Clinton                    (Former Democrat President)
9. Arnold Schwarzenegger (Republican, Governor of California)
10. Other [Specify]

Add a comment below to register your vote today!  Hurry, the voting centers are closing soon :)  In the spirit of the US, voting is not compulsory!

*   Martin Sheen’s fictitious President in the TV show, “The West Wing”
** Alan Alda’s fictitious Presidential nominee in the TV show “The West Wing”
*** As seen on “The Simpsons” ROFL!

If you know anything about storing meaningful data for compact (mobile) applications, you've probably looked at SQL Server Compact Edition or SQL Server Mobile Edition (2005) in the past.

You also probably disregarded previous versions due to their inherent restrictions or lack of support for very mainstream SQL concepts and functionality.  Enter SQL Server Compact Edition 3.5.

Despite the baffling return to the original naming "Compact Edition" or CE, SQL Server Compact Edition is almost upon us and not a moment too soon.  When SQL Server CE goes released to manufacturing (RTM) sometime in late August/September (dates not set yet) we will get a far more mature database for compact devices (and desktops).

Unfortunately we will not see support for Stored Procedures (which I feel is a major failing) but we do get some very important changes.  Since the changes are rather large, I thought I would publish what is listed in the RC0 version of SQL Books Online for SQL Server 2008:

SQL Server Compact 3.5

SQL Server Compact version 3.5 was released with Visual Studio 2008. Starting with the SQL Server Compact 3.5 release:

• SQL Server Compact supports local transaction scope on desktop computers.
• The SQL Server Compact Table Designer in Visual Studio 2008 has been enhanced to provide a user interface for creating primary key and foreign key relationships between tables.
• SQL Server Compact now supports the following Transact-SQL statements:
  • Nested queries in a FROM clause
  • CROSS APPLY and OUTER APPLY
  • CAST
  • TOP
  • SET IDENTITY INSERT
• SQL Server Compact 3.5–based applications can be developed for desktop computers by using Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition and Visual C# 2008 Express Edition.
• You can administer a SQL Server Compact database stored on a smart device or on a desktop computer by using SQL Server Management Studio Express (SSMSE) in SQL Server 2008.
• SQL Server Compact implements the timestamp (rowversion) data type.
• SQL Server Compact supports LINQ to SQL. LINQ to SQL is a component of the language integrated query (LINQ) project. It provides a run-time infrastructure for managing relational data as objects without giving up the ability to query. It translates language-integrated queries into Transact-SQL for execution by SQL Server Compact, and then translates the tabular results back into the objects as defined by the application developer.

Source: SQL Server 2008 Books Online

There are some great inclusions in this release.  Some of the important inclusions to single out are:

• Timestamp column type - allows optimistic concurrency patterns
• Proper admin support through SQL Management Studio
• Support for LINQ to SQL (which is pretty imperative given the lack of Stored Proc support).
• Obviously, the T-SQL statements.  This undoubtedly reflects improvements in memory management

The question is: when will we see the great results that are possible with SQL Server Compact Edition?  Hopefully soon!

Hopefully database synchronization has been fixed too - my experience with prior versions left me with the impression that synching a mobile database with a full-strength SQL Server database was the biggest headache of all.

If I get any spare time soon, I'll try to investigate this further.

We all by now have probably heard about the increase in SQL injection attacks to popular (and unpopular) web sites.

A SQL Injection attack is where an external party passes potentially harmful or exploitive data in the form of raw, formatted or encoded T-SQL in a way in which it is executed as a query within a database. 

This typically can occur if a web site has not been well designed and allows the transfer of user supplied data to the database (to be executed, in a manner described as ‘dynamic SQL’) without being first checked (validated).

Microsoft have helpfully published a Security Advisory for their customers.  Additionally, if you refer to this blog entry by Denis Gobo, there are three tools helpful in supporting users in protecting against SQL Injection attacks (and detecting potential problems and threats).

UrlScan has been around for a while now, restricts the types of requests which can be made of an IIS server.  It integrates into Internet Information Services as an ISAPI filter.  The latest beta works with IIS versions 5.1 or later, including IIS 7 (shipping on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008).

Microsoft Source Code Analyzer is a .Net Framework 3.0 based tool which analyzes and detects first order and second order sql injection attacks in ASP pages.

Limitations

The tool has the following known limitations:
- The tool understands only ASP code that is written in VBScript. It currently does not analyze server-side code that is written in any other languages, such as Jscript. 
- A new ASP parser was developed as part of this tool development process. However, this parser may not cover all ASP constructs. Therefore, you may see some parsing errors.

Drawback: This doesn’t work with ASP.net…just classic ASP.

HP Scrawlr is a tool I haven’t used before, apparently trawls web pages and tries various parameter injection attacks.  It’s main use appears as a testing tool to test the security/integrity of web sites.

A download link is located here.

To learn more about ways to protect against SQL Injection in a design, look at using parameterized SQL queries – you can read about it here.

This just in: a blog posting about a secret Lego vault in Denmark containing every Lego(tm) set ever produced.

Apparently, Lego uses the kits in copyright cases which is why the boxes remain both mint and unopened - in the vault is every kit ever made (commercially, I’d guess).

Which pretty much sounds like a (big) kid's dream - years and years of building madness.
I do hope it's properly secured (of course it would be)!

Check out the link for pictures of kits which haven't been seen in mint condition....since they were released.
The popular City, Castle and Space kits are all present and accounted for.

Finally, sick of running low end machines incapable of handling the latest and greatest, on the weekend I bought and built a new machine; a workstation.

It’s been some time since I last built a machine by hand (aside from years of reworking old Dell parts into working laptops), so this was quite an adventure - did I mention it's been a while?  Admittedly, I put together a partially built AMD system in 2006 (my first time using Serial ATA drives) so it's not entirely foreign territory.

The Specs:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad - 2.5GHz
Motherboard: An awesome ASUS P5Q-E with ATI CrossFireX
Memory: Corsair 4x2GB DDR2 (1066MHz)
Video: NVIDIA GE 9800 512 MB
HDD: 4x250 GB Seagate 7200 RPM/24-7 in a RAID 5 Array

The Case:

Chosen more for size and heat management (those many, may fans - thy Quad core CPU runs very hot) I have the case below:

Case is an Antec "Nine Hundred" which has four different fans inside - it's a REALLY quiet running machine (ironic, given my Dell XPS sounds like a 747 during takeoff).  You have to see the motherboard's cooling configuration, quite simply amazing.  Also, it comes powerless so I got a Toughpower 750w "Cable Management" supply which has an amazing assortment of cables for all sorts of internal devices.

My Other Machines:
Motion Computing Tablet - Purchased Dec 2006
Dell Inspiron XPS (Gen 1) a.k.a 'The Noisy B*stard' - Purchased Nov 2004 and still functioning!

The good news is that everything’s up and running smoothly.  I’ll start to do some thinking for the longer term though, I think this new host will just be a short term (12 months) gig.

The good news is that I’m receiving email again, so if you sent me something and it bounced, please resend.

Bonus link: Simpsons Face Generator! Go convert a photo of you and get it converted into a Simpsons character.  Mine looks like this:

/R

Well, it’s a fair to wonder why I spend money buying old vintage vinyl records. 

Some time ago I wrote a blog post discussing the resurgence of vinyl records, but I didn’t really tell my side of the story.

When we lived in Sydney, there were a number of places I sourced record albums from.  I found that both the price and sound quality made them a very interesting prospect. 

To a certain extent it limits the choice and range of genres (most music produced after the late 80s was distributed on Compact Disc and Cassette but no vinyl LPs).

My early acquisitions included U2 (Rattle and Hum), Cold Chisel, Midnight Oil, Pink Floyd and Dire Straits.  I’d usually be able to pick up local (Australian) and overseas bands for roughly between $5 - $20 per album (in various conditions).

These days it’s much harder (shame) but there are some very interesting albums still out there. 

Now, I know I’m going to get harassed for my taste in music being that it is rather eclectic, but I’ll list some of my most favourite records in my collection:

1. The Beatles (‘White Album’) with original inserts!
2. Pink Floyd ‘The Wall’
3. U2: Rattle and Hum
4. Split Enz Collection 1973-84
5. Led Zeppelin IV (with Stairway to Heaven)
6. Pink Floyd ‘Dark Side of the Moon’
7. The Doors ‘Weird Scenes inside the Gold Mine’ (compilation)
8. Deep Purple ‘Mark I & II’ (compilation)

My wish list:
- AC/DC
- Bob Dylan
- More Beatles, Doors
- Late 80s/Early 90s LP Stuff

Mitch Denny presents: codename 'Rosario' a.k.a Team Foundation Server 3.0.

Edit: Rosario is the code name for the next edition of Team Foundation Server.  The next release of Visual Studio Team Suite and various other denominations of Visual Studio will contain large feature improvements for Developers, Software Testers, Build Managers, Database Administrators and Project Managers.

The following are notes taken by me during the presentation, which otherwise explains the haphazard nature.  Consider this a list of musings/thoughts on the topics.

Caveats: No guarantees.  Features in Rosario are subject to change (or be dropped). 

New Features in Rosario

For Developers:

Historical Debugger ("Debug History" window) = 'Proteus'  records execution history - records parameter values, and locals.

Configurable: can change verbosity of trace.

Standalone Debugger - drop files (copy to remote machine) and debug on the remote machine.  Allows graphical shell for debugging!  Some limitations?

For Project Managers

Hierarchical work items!  Ability to define relationships between TFS work items -allows Parent/Child tasks.  Process templates being updated.

http://www.complex.com/templex - Collection of communal TFS templates

For Build Engineers 

Innovation for Build Systems (new build process) - New - Built on Windows Workflow (WF). 
Build controller opens up parallel build options.

WIX (windows Installer in XML)  will be included (officially) and perhaps will lead to proper support, too!

More on Multiple Processes in the new build:

User Interface to define build system.  Inclusion of test metadata files.

Considerations for build & branching.....feature creep?

Change history for build changes?

Build Agents
Can tag a build with a dependency e.g. for licensing reasons.  Tag a build agent to run with specific dependencies, e.g Enterprise Library (you still need to install it)

For Testers

Rosario includes test case & test-plan management.  External to Visual Studio.

Optimised for Testers.  Codename 'Camano'.  WPF based, except for test cases!

Granularity in recording actions in test cases.  Group into Test Plans.  

Edit: ?Some automation support planned?

Testing Activity centre supports long running tests.  Define a test run?

Tooling Support for Manual Tests including ability to screen cap & attach to test run result.

For Database Professionals:

GDR for VS for Database Professionals out now (beta).  Compiles a metadata change for schema change deployment.  Allow schema partitioning across conceptual boundaries!.

Wrap Up: Grab the CTP today and clean house now: i.e. prepare your TFS installation today for Rosario, tomorrow.

Edit: Special thanks to Mitch for his presentation, Brisbane as always, salutes you :)

Well, I’ve found two second hand record shops in the Brisbane CBD, located almost around the corner from each other.

The first is The Record Exchange which is located upstairs on level 1, 65 Adelaide street and has a huge range of LPs and singles.  They have a private catalogue which I’ve not seen yet with a lot of rarer and collectable titles.  Prices are aligned to condition, popularity and rarity.

The second place is Rocking Horse Records which is located in the Queen Street mall part of Albert street (245 Albert Street) and is a bit more orientated towards sale of dance/techno (less older records).

Edit/Update:I went into Rocking Horse records a little while ago.  They have an impressive range of re-release records (vinyl) but not vintage (authentic original) records.  The prices aren't cheap (average $30 for a record).  Their basement section is basically for DJs wanting to stockpile the latest trance/techno/rave music on vinyl with an impressive array of mixing boards, turntables and so forth.  Couldn't find any second hand vinyl, and I doubt it would have been cheap. 

There was a basement place further up Queen street which had second hand LPs but the condition of said LPs was questionable, selection also questionable but prices were reasonable.

Some may know that I’m a bit of a home theatre enthusiast. 

Our current setup merges two HDMI-compliant devices into the one room (our lounge room) and presented us with an interesting challenge: having both displays side-by-side.

I’ve recently double-checked the projector distance verses our screen size and everything looks great.  You might want to consider this (or a similar) tool to calculate your appropriate throw range if you have (or are planning to purchase) a home theatre projector.

For the curious, we have an Optoma HD-72i projector (5000:1 contrast ratio) and a Samsung Full-HD 42” LCD TV (15,000:1 contrast ratio).  Sound is amplified courtesy of a Sony 7.1 amp accompanied by Mission satellite speakers. 

We’ve finally set this up in a preferred rectangular shape (although width is sacrificed for length) so that acoustically, the surround works properly.

The topic of how to improve Tech Ed (Australia) came up today from various avenues.  Me being me, I’ve decided to blog my comments/feedback.

• More in-depth sessions (make them longer if need be)!  Potentially half of the attendees work with the technology on a daily basis, we don’t need the ‘fluff sessions’ as much..
• More ad-hoc (not aligned strictly to one track) sessions and activities (where do XNA, Robotics Studio, Windows Mobile Development, Performance Point, Parallel Extensions, Software Testing, Accessibility, Internationalisation etc fit into the current track taxonomy?) but more in depth than the cabana or chalkboard sessions
• Less marketing (last year felt like one big marketing spiel) or less‘general overview’ sessions (or call them what they are)
• Consider expanding the ‘Q & A with the experts’ into streams, e.g. ‘Q & A with the […Web …TFS …SharePoint …SQL] experts’
• Avoid scheduling all the best sessions side-by-side (ok, this doesn’t happen by design, I realise that)
• Avoid topic duplication (there were at least two competing WPF presentations last year) or at least ensure the two sessions have different outcomes (for differentiation purposes)
• More delegate interaction activities (how about a mini-imagine cup competition held during the conference?)
• We love the giveaways!
• More Luke Drumm
• Guitar Hero ‘rock off’ competition (or, more Xbox stuff)
• Distributed Computing, Microsoft Surface or a Microsoft Research backed exhibition/demonstration – i.e. show us something cool from Redmond (and abroad)!
• Steve Ballmer gives Australia it’s own ‘Developers, Developers, Developers’ speech
• Corporate store prices on Microsoft gear :)
• Three words: real product launch (launch something in Australia as a world first.. perhaps give away free copies too)
• ‘Most geekiest dressed’ award to the most geeky delegate (as judged by an imported special guest)
• ‘Hot Load/Load Fest’ – latest CTP and Beta software available on the Tech Ed LAN

From the laugh-out-loud-funny Department..

http://www.eweek.com/showblog/47247/10-Products-(and-Processes)-That-Should-Be-Put-Out-To-Pasture/

You just have to love collective feedback!

Here’s an interesting article.  Apparently in the .Net 3.5 Service Pack 1 world, strong name verification for .Net assemblies will be bypassed by the Common Language Runtime if the following criteria is met: