Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

Some interesting observations I read recently from a Flash blogger: Flash was not intended for RIA applications. ActionScript was created for animated vector graphics; queuing messages on a single thread. It was hijacked to support Flex with complex content; but the threading model didn’t change. But Silverlight was built from the start for fully fledged applications. I’m looking forward to the MVP Summit and MIX to see what’s coming in Silverlight 3. Currently, I’m developing real – world application with Silverlight. I’m putting together pieces and utility classes that I expect to be able to use going forward. For me, the clear winner is having a feature – complete subset of the .NET Framework to code with, being able to share my creations in both Silverlight and the full .NET Framework, and not having to deal with the intricacies of the ActionScript learning curve to get what I want. I’ve been coding C# since 2001 and at this late stage of the game I feel prett...

Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.   - Herman Wouk I heard a good piece about “zombie banks” this morning on NPR. "Zombie banks" was the term for Japanese financial institutions propped up by government in the '90s despite their basic insolvency after their real-estate bubble. In a financial "revenge of the living dead", these unprofitable banks cast a decade-long pall over Japan. US banks like Citgroup, Bank of America and others are now in the realm of the living dead. US officials urged Japan to give up on failed institutions. Instead, it pumped 12 percent of its gross domestic product into saving the banks and received a "lost decade" of economic stagnation in return. Sound familiar? Economic analysts across the board agree that the Japanese example must not be repeated - even as our government proceeds to do precisely that! Members of the House Financial Services Committee grilled banking CEO's abou...

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.   - George Bernard Shaw Our new Administration has set a record:  it’s railroaded legislation through Congress that confers the mandate on Government to spend more in it’s first month of office than the previous Administration spent on all of the Iraq war since 2003 . Not a single House Republican voted for this legislation. Most all Senate Republicans held this line. I’m glad to read that Republicans seem to be sticking to their “small government” principles. It’s too bad that they waited until Mr. Obama got elected to have their epiphany —and suddenly find them again! Not only was the last Administration rampant with runaway spending and printing of money by government on both sides of the aisle, you can bet that the Obama-Pelosi cartel will expand this premise in the months ahead. This represents the biggest increase in the size of our Government’s reach in over 60 years, possibly the...

“The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously”   - Henry Kissinger I’ve got Internet Explorer 8 RC running on Windows VIsta x64 and occasionally it freezes up, usually when it is making a request. I have some ideas about why this may be happening, but there isn’t much I can do about it other than kill IE from Task Manager. However, there is an easier and faster way: Download KILL.EXE from Matt Kruse’s “Must Have Utilities” Listing. Put the executable in a folder (I have one called C:\MISC for just such “stuff”). Now make a batch file that looks like this: KILL.EXE -f IEXPLORE.EXE and save it in your folder right next to KILL.EXE as “KILLIE.BAT”. (The ‘-f’ switch means ‘force’, as in ‘DIE NOW, PROCESS, NO MATTER WHAT!’). Now, in Windows Explorer, right –click on KILLIE.BAT and choose “Send to Desktop”. You can change the icon to something meaningful, and you can even drag the shortcut down onto the TaskBar so it is even easier to get to. “Internet Exp...

So it looks like the “stimulus” bill is going to be $935 Billion. Divide by 133.9 million American taxpayers, and you get $6,983 per U.S. taxpayer. In my opinion, most all of this is throwing good money after bad. Not only will it not create any immediate economic stimulus, but a lot of it is simply growing the government way beyond it’s already enormous size and complexity. Truth is, we don’t need all these new laws and all these new programs. The consumer is 70 percent of the U.S. economy. If you want to stimulate the economy quickly, just have the Treasury Department send out the checks to all U.S. Taxpayers. More will get spent – and faster – than any other way. And it won’t grow government by one bit. I am not suggesting “send out the checks” is “the answer” to the problem. But it does shed light on part of the reason why we have the problem in the first place.

  OK, well instead of making guru-like  pronouncements, we decided to ask our visitors and users, since they know better than anybody! Here’s the Eggheadcafe.com Twitter poll . You can follow Eggheadcafe.com (new articles and new forum posts) on Twitter here .

If you are getting into the RC1 Release of ASP.NET MVC – you might want to check this post by Phil Haack – which apparently corrects a couple of problems and provides a corrected download. I have to keep synced with this now because we’re starting a major new project with a client that is already using MVC – and so I need to be able to jump in with both feet. Here is the link to the direct download to the revised installer . And here is a link to Haack’s post about the “refresh”. Phil says that the way to fully ensure you have the refresh is to right click on the downloaded file, select the Digital Signatures tab, and make sure the Time Stamp says Wednesday, January 28 and not Friday, January 23. Kindly note that the link to the “release documentation” with the new installer now links to a real Word document with all the details for your reading pleasure. Well! Let’s get going and hope there aren’t any more “hiccups”!

The list of “compatible” antivirus programs for Windows 7 is short – Norton, Kaspersky, Avira, and AVG. I tried Kaspersky 8 Beta first, but after a couple of weeks I’ve determined that it’s just too bulky and “obtrusive” and has some issues that I’m not happy about.  Recently I uninstalled this (thankfully, the uninstall was very clean and left no traces) and tried AVG Free. AVG free boasts some 80 million users, is MUCH more lightweight, and at this point this is the one I recommend for Windows 7. For a “free” version – this thing has way more features than you’d expect. Since my Avast! license recently expired on my main development machine that runs Windows Vista x64, I installed AVG Free on that too. It found and eliminated nearly half a dozen known threats that Avast! never was able to find.  The only option that is disabled that I could find on AVG Free was the rootkit scan. F-Secure has a free FSBL.EXE scanner to take care of that, so the “free” antivirus option i...

Windows 7 Beta build 7000 has a “Send Feedback” link at top right of every window title bar. That’s fine, I’m happy to send feedback, but the problem is I’ve found I have been accidentally clicking these links and it’s gotten to be a real annoyance. Here’s how to remove the little buggers:   1. Run regedit. 2. Navigate to the key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop . 3. Check to see if you already have a key (in the right pane) “FeedbackToolEnabled”. If so, set its value to 0. 3. If you do not have this key, then  right-click on the right pane and select New -> DWORD (32-bit) value . Name the new value FeedbackToolEnabled and set it's value to 0 . 4. Restart your machine. All of the "Send Feedback"  links will now be gone from the Windows 7 title bars.

“I'm thirty years old, but I read at the thirty-four-year-old level.”   - Dana Carvey Recently I participated in a Twittervation (“Twitter conversation”?) that started with a respected friend, who is a very well-known MVP, book author, and article writer, complaining that Entity Framework was a “pain in the ass”. That was “out of the blue”, it wasn’t in response to somebody else’s tweet. Of course, I felt compelled to respond and tweeted, “NHibernate. Also PITA, but without all the MS data-centric baggage. (Just my 2 cents)”. Almost simultaneously, another MVP friend of mine who has a follower relationship with the first Tweeter and me said, “why not use NHibernate?”. Subsequent Tweets revolved around “Don't get me wrong, not saying you shouldn't use it or that you're wrong for doing so. Just asking if you've seen NH”, and my ending with “I did a lot of research, man. It was painful. NHibernate won. End of story.” Why did I say this? I have no beef with ...