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In which hints become facts: XNA Game Studio 4.0

Today we announced what I've been hinting at this past few weeks: XNA Game Studio 4.0 is coming soon* to a phone near you! Quick summary: New platform Windows Phone 7 Series New features Integrates with Visual Studio 2010 Dynamic audio output Microphone
 
ShawnHargreaves
Mar 10 2010 05:32 AM
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Working with the HTML5 Community

We’re always excited to engage with members of the W3C including the developers of other browsers as well as the broader web development community to help shape the direction of emerging Web standards, particularly HTML5.  This includes
 
ieblog
tags: w3c
Mar 10 2010 06:51 AM
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Why is the fine for a basic traffic infraction in the state of Washington such a random-looking number?

Willy-Peter Schaub was puzzled by a sign reminding drivers that the fine for obstructing an intersection is $101 and wonders what the extra $1 is for. The laws of the State of Washington defer the monetary value of traffic fines to the Infraction Rules
 
oldnewthing
Mar 09 2010 09:45 PM
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Tab Isolation

Tab isolation has recently become a more popular topic. This post is a quick survey of what tab isolation is, how it works, and what it provides. What is it? Tab isolation is a way to improve a browser’s reliability by containing the impact of a crash.
 
ieblog
Mar 05 2010 06:36 AM
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The ethics of aggregating other peoples' content

Content theft Most of the recent - what I'll call - "discussions" about content aggregators have revolved around content theft. I'm not going to flip-flop on that topic: when you use someone else's work, you ask first, and if given the okay, you
 
AaronBertrand
Mar 11 2010 06:45 AM
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Sometimes I have code blinders on

This is a piece of code that I am using in RDB, at some point, it threw a null reference exception: I am ashamed to admit that I started doing some really deep debugging to understand the bug (this happen only under very strange circumstances). When I
 
Ayende Rahien
Mar 05 2010 05:07 PM
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Why doesn't double-right-click bring up the Properties dialog?

kip asks why double-right-click isn't a shortcut for Properties. Recall the logical consequences of the way Windows converts single-clicks into double-clicks. The double-click action is an extension of the single-click action. In the case of context
 
oldnewthing
tags: other
Mar 08 2010 08:30 PM
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We moved your ASP.NET website cheese, in a good way

We've just pushed live an update to the http://www.asp.net site. This is the first of a series of updates to the site we'll be making this year. The home page for the site was getting bogged down with info and was too visually busy. It was too complex
tags: msdn
Mar 11 2010 06:43 AM
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The Problem With Opera

Few people have a bad word to say about Opera. But that's possibly because so few people use the browser. Craig pinpoints some of its problems and suggests a number of ways Opera could attract a higher audience. Related posts:Can Opera Ever Become
 
Craig Buckler
Mar 10 2010 03:36 PM
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Is Opera 10.5 the Best Browser Ever?

Could this be the fastest, best-looking, and most configurable browser available? Craig reviews the newly-released Opera 10.5. Related posts:Can Opera Ever Become Popular? Opera is one of the fastest and most innovative browsers....What’s New in
 
Craig Buckler
Mar 09 2010 06:11 PM
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A Trip Down Memory Lane - Presentations over 10 years old

I've been presenting for a long time. It's great fun, mostly it's stand-up comedy with code and PowerPoint. I also keep everything, always, so earlier today when I was asked by a friend to find some ten year old code, I found a few 10 year old
Mar 09 2010 07:09 AM
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WPF and Text Blurriness, now with complete Clarity

The #1 complaint I hear about WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) is that many fonts end up looking "blurry." It's a darned shame because really great applications like Evernote get criticized because of this one issue*. The blurriness
Mar 09 2010 01:27 PM
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The best actors in the business still lean into the microphone when they talk

Now let me get this straight. The Oscars honor, among other things, the best actors in Hollywood. These are people who have devoted their professional careers to reciting dialog in front of a camera and making it look spontaneous and natural. But for
 
oldnewthing
Mar 09 2010 07:09 AM
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Slaying relational hydras (or dating them)

Sometimes client confidentiality can be really annoying, because the problem sets & suggested solutions that come up are really interesting. That said, since I am interesting in having future clients, it is pretty much a must have. As such, the
 
Ayende Rahien
Mar 08 2010 02:16 PM
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Getting code ready for production

I am currently doing the production-ready pass through the Rhino DivanDB code base, and I thought that this change was interesting enough to post about: public void Execute() { while(context.DoWork) { bool foundWork = false;
 
Ayende Rahien
Mar 06 2010 04:24 PM
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How do I access the magic IEEE floating point values like NaN in code?

There are functions like _isnan, _isnanf, _finite, and _fpclass for detecting that a floating point value is one of the special values like NaN, but how do you actually generate one of these values? You can access these values from the
 
oldnewthing
tags: code
Mar 05 2010 08:30 PM
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IE8 SmartScreen Filter - Protecting Users at Internet Scale

The RSA 2010 Security Conference is just finishing up here in San Francisco, and I’m struck by how many of the conference sessions and keynotes have warned about the threat that socially engineered malware poses to the security of the Internet. Malware
 
ieblog
tags: security
Mar 06 2010 10:08 AM
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8 Design Elements Your Blog Should Have

if (typeof Meebo == 'undefined') { Meebo=function(){(Meebo._=Meebo._||[]).push(arguments)}; (function(q){ var args = arguments; if (!document.body) { return setTimeout(function(){ args.callee.apply(this, args) }, 100); } var d=document, b=d.body,
 
Mark Thompson
Mar 09 2010 07:15 AM
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Download IObit Advanced SystemCare Free – Maximize Your PC’s Potential

When an application is downloaded almost a Million times in one week (last week), from CNET alone, you have to think, there must be something to it. Application popularity is not always indicative of an application’s strength of course – I can think of
Mar 05 2010 11:35 PM
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HTML Minification

Good old Kangax has been playing with HTML minification and has shared his new tool in an early stage. What does it do? Kangax has forked John Resig’s HTML parser which parses the HTML and sends that into the Minifier. This has rules that do things
 
Dion Almaer
Mar 10 2010 05:45 PM
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One of the consequences of accepting a job offer is that you might end up working with an interviewer who didn't like you

At an informal gathering, my colleagues and I started talking about our experiences being interviewed at Microsoft. One of the people there remembered how one of the pieces of feedback on the interview lo these many years ago was that although my
 
oldnewthing
tags: other
Mar 11 2010 02:23 AM
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Effortless Time Tracking With Chrometa

Most time tracking and management applications require some up front work before you can roll with them, but not Chrometa. This app starts working for you as soon as you install it. Running in the background, Chrometa tracks all your computing activities.
 
Meryl K Evans
Mar 10 2010 02:40 AM
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Why I’m Not Using an e-Book Reader

Like a lot of web workers, I spend a fair amount of time traveling. I like to read books and catch up on the news while I'm away, so it seemed like a good idea to try reading electronically.
 
Charles Hamilton
Mar 10 2010 12:31 AM
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Inbound Marketing: A Social Media Primer

While we may not all agree on the "rules" when it comes to marketing, we can all agree that marketing has changed considerably in recent years, largely due to social media. "Inbound Marketing" is a primer for those looking to make the most of social
 
Meryl K Evans
Mar 10 2010 12:30 AM
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SQL SERVER – Improve Performance by Reducing IO – Creating Covered Index

This blog post is in the response of the T-SQL Tuesday #004: IO by Mike Walsh. The subject of this month is IO. Here is my quick blog post on how Cover Index can Improve Performance by Reducing IO. Let us kick off this post with disclaimers about Index.
Mar 09 2010 07:09 AM
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Why You Still Need Business Cards

As a web worker, I handle most of my communications online. My first contact with many of my clients is via email or, sometimes, phone. But I still have a big box of business cards sitting on my desk, and I think they come in handy.
 
Thursday Bram
Mar 09 2010 02:30 AM
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Application compatibility layers are there for the customer, not for the program

Some time ago, a customer asked this curious question (paraphrased, as always): Hi, we have a program that was originally designed for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, but we found that it runs into difficulties on Windows Vista. We've
 
oldnewthing
tags: other
Mar 11 2010 11:20 PM
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Strengthening your domain: Encapsulated collections

Previous posts in this series: A Primer Aggregate Construction One of the common themes throughout the DDD book is that much of the nuts and bolts of structural domain-driven design is just plain good use of object-oriented programming.  This is
 
bogardj
Mar 10 2010 08:05 PM
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Using Lucene – External Indexes

Lucene is a document indexing engine, that is its sole goal, and it does so beautifully. The interesting bit about using Lucene is that it probably wouldn’t be your main data store, but it is likely to be an important piece of your architecture. The
 
Ayende Rahien
tags: design
Mar 10 2010 05:40 PM
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Backward compatibility

If you've been paying attention to my recent posts, you probably noticed I have been thinking about ways we could improve the XNA Framework API. Which begs the question: how much is it possible to clean up an API while maintaining backward compatibility?
 
ShawnHargreaves
Mar 05 2010 09:27 PM
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Delete Invasive Flash Cookies – Two Free Tools

Invasive Web Sites – Another Look at Flash Cookies. I first wrote on the issue of Flash Cookies back in September 2009, (LSO (Flash Cookies) – A Serious Attack on Your Privacy), and since then, if my own experience with these obnoxious web trackers is
Mar 09 2010 07:12 AM
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Bad habits to kick : creating the uber-view

In my last post in this series , I talked about using ancient copies of Books Online, and why it can be important to keep your local documentation current. This time I wanted to touch on massive and wasteful views that are re-used a little too much.
 
AaronBertrand
Mar 08 2010 06:07 AM
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Save Time Money and Aggravation – Physically Clean Your Machine

Clean and maintain your computer, in 5 easy steps. Recently, I was reading an article by another Blogger, in which he described and illustrated the “inner workings” of a typical PC. What I found surprising, was the number of comments from his readers,
Mar 07 2010 12:59 AM
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Programming Practices: Part 2 – Thoughts on TDD

Well, it seems the last post wasn’t too controversial.  Let me try something that might be a bit more controversial.  Heck, it might even get some people down right agitated with me but that’s OK, disagreement is a useful tool to drive clarity
 
bharry
Mar 11 2010 02:26 AM
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Programming Practices: Part 1 – Watching from a distance

I figured I’d start the series with a more abstract post about what watching me code looks like.  It was interesting to observe myself doing it because I didn’t really realize the degree to which I do some things.  If I were to summarize my
 
bharry
Mar 09 2010 10:22 PM
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W3C HTML Working Group Publishes New Drafts

Last week, the W3C HTML Working Group reached a decision to publish several new working drafts and these are now available. The discussion about what to publish and how to structure the HTML5 specification has taken several months. In November, at the
 
ieblog
tags: w3c
Mar 06 2010 03:49 AM
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Delegation of responsibilities within a family during pregnancy

When friends of mine were expecting their first child, the wife frequently received comments like "That's okay. You're eating for two now." The husband had a response ready: "If she's eating for two, I'm drinking for three!"
 
oldnewthing
Mar 06 2010 12:29 AM
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Friday fun: Let’s translate YUI3 to jQuery

I just came across this wonderful Gist on gitHub: PLAIN TEXT JAVASCRIPT:   var $; YUI().use('*', function(Y){   $ = Y.get;   for(var p in Y) {       $[p] = Y[p];  
 
Chris Heilmann
Mar 05 2010 09:26 PM