http://www.martinfowler.com/ieeeSoftware/published.pdf

Enjoy it and discus it J

No âmbito de uma cadeira que frequento este ano, Engenharia de Aplicações, foi desafiado aos alunos um trabalho sobre Reutilização de Código e Design Pattern sem exceder os 15000 caracteres.

Assim, partilho o trabalho que fiz com estas limitações pois não me foi possivel abordar domínios, sistematizações, etc…

Espero que esta “publicação” ajude a alguém: Reutilização de código e Patterns Design

I’m in a busy season however I couldn’t let you pass this Xmas without wish you a EXTRAORDINARY XMAS.

É com grande entusiasmo que será efectuado o follow up do ImagineCup aqui no DEI/ISEP. Esta sessão está marcada para dia 12 de Dezembro de 07 às 12h e trará aos alunos novos motivos para concorrerem.

Para além, do bónus existe uma vasta equipa que irá ajudar todos os concorrentes a tirarem o máximo proveito do ImagineCup2008.

Imagina um mundo onde as tecnologias permitem um ambiente sustentável!

hummm, se te ajudar pensa:

Imagina-te em França onde o ambiente onde estarás é fantástico e tu não o terás que o sustentar…

Nesta sessão temos umas surpresas para ti!

Aparece, estamos à tua espera porque estas iniciativas só fazem sentido se apareceres!

 PS: Sabias que o aluno Rui Neves esteve até ontem em 1º lugar na categoria de Algoritmia? Tu também tens o teu lugar!

I use Sweet Titles for fading tooltips on this website, however in Internet Explorer (IE) it didn’t work. As you see its working now on IE and Netscape based browsers.

I just have to change the following lines on the function tipOver : function(e) that’s on line 64:

switch:

sweetTitles.obj = this;

for:

if(navigator.appName != “Netscape”){
       //IE based
      if (!e) var e = window.event;
      sweetTitles.obj = e.srcElement;
    }else{
       //netscape based
    sweetTitles.obj = this;
  }

Basically in IE the sweetTitles.obj is fill by sweetTitles because this doesn’t return the mouse over object.

The Sweet Titles error on Internet Explorer is solved.

I was surfing around the Web and I stumble on an article by Rob Windsor (Visual Basic MVP, ObjectSharp Consulting).

I’d like to share it with all: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vbasic/bb736015.aspx

This article is in VB .NET!

Hi all,

Webcast Cycles – know the new technologies for development

Microsoft Portugal is presenting MS community with 4 lectures cycles in a webcast format of the following topics:

• Hidden germs of ASP .NET 2.0     22 of October [see more]
• Development with ASP .NET AJAX 23 of October [see more]
• Silverlight Overview 24 of October [see more]
• IIS 7.0 for programmers 25 of October [see more]
• ASP .NET futures 26 of October [see more]

All this lectures will be given in Portuguese and you can register on www.webcasts4share.com.

All session will be recorded and they will be available afterwards to register users.

As I previous had written, I was present in a workshop at Microsoft Portugal. This workshop was a slight overview of XNA but even so it was able of excite me in trying it. The speakers were Vitor Santos (Academic Computer Science Program Manager at Microsoft Portugal), Amintas Neto (Microsoft Brasil) and Verónica Orvalho (Face in Motion).

The workshop started with Vitor Santos giving an overview of XNA framework. This overview was focused on the main aspects of the framework and its future. So, XNA it’s a framework that layered most of the complex technologies that’s needed to create a game: physics, math, audio, storage, input and others.

Below you can see everything that’s necessary to create a game and the beautiful part it’s that XNA encapsulate all making it simple!

Therefore, making a game can be fun and simple but the ultimate experience can be on your xBox 360! Oh, yeah… You program your game in your computer, share it with the on-line community, you can receive upgrades of it and then you can play it on xBox 360. Isn’t that great?

Note that XNA was born last December but Microsoft it’s already creating a version 2, code name Shaman. Integration with Visual Studio, support to xBox live, 2d and 3d tools, etc. I’m seeing a promising future! After Vitor Santos, Amintas Neto spoke about the concept “consumers as creators (and players!!!)”. He presented us with the experience of Brazil on XNA and showed some demos made by a Brazilian MSP. I really liked to hear Amintas and speak to him after the workshop. Later on I’ll post it.

Coffee break, I really needed one! Not that the conference was boring but because I wake up at 5 AM. I used the coffee break to know Amintas Neto and discuss the subject with others MSP’s.

Ok, my battery was recharged and I was ready to continue with XNA demonstration. Then, Veronica Orvalho came to give a more practical view of XNA. I really loved to hear Veronica because she not only understands the technical aspects but also the industry model. But there wasn’t enough time for everything and at the end the conference, the industry model was 75% of the conference.

You can watch Veronica slides here. (to see the slide please press the arrows in your keyboard)

As I wrote above I’m really excited about XNA. So, to try it, I’ve installed visual studio 2005 express(you have to run windows update to update VS 2005 with SP1), XNA game studio express, XNA framework and some samples of XNA.

FLAH NEWS:

Me and Fabio (other MSP) will compete on Imagine Cup on the category of Game Development.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh…. As usual all MSP present and some very OLD MSP went to launch:

A small post for Java programmers! Javajazzup has just released a free magazine. Get a free copy of it free its official website at http://www.javajazzup.com 

First of all, what’s HTTP stand for? Ok, this is too easy HyperText Transfer Protocol. Let’s increase the difficulty of the question. What’s the paradigm that’s HTTP is oriented? Hum… Request/Response, Client/Server, Obvious? I think so too.

So HTTP runs over TCP using by default a well-know-port 80 and till now it’s the major protocol used on Internet. I think that everyone that has a computer connected to Internet already used a browser to access it. I truely hope so! But, few web designer/developers can answer what’s an Internet browser. Most of them will say that “A program that accesses and displays files and other data available on the Internet and other networks” [http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/b/b0511650.html, 19-09-2007] but I expect to hear that from someone else that’s not a web designer/developer. Ok, webdesigner I can understand, but webdeveloper or a system engineer no way! So, someone that develops on web I really like to hear that an Internet browser is a parser application that uses BNF (Backus–Naur formalism) notation to describe the formal languages - HTML. This is the essence of a browser! If you don’t know how to use this notation I can give some advises: read Programming Languages: Principles and Practice, Second Edition: Principles and Practice and use flex/Bison or ANTLR parsers generators to put on practice. My first parser was made with flex/bison to parse a XML file with a known DTD and it was great. Maybe soon I’ll post it!

At the beginning, HTTP didn’t have an official version and the very first one to be deployed was HTTP/1.0 (first HTTP protocol described in a RFC). Therefore, all work that was made before was labelled as HTTP/0.9. If I didn’t mention the creator of this protocol I would be very unfair for him and the scientific community: thank you Tim Berners-Lee for help changing the world! Let’s leave the history to Wikipedia and talk about real stuff!

It’s important to understand the basic of HTTP/0.9 because we have to ride a bike before riding a motorcycle. I think so!

HTTP/0.9 is depreciated because the lack of features that’s necessary to have the web working as we know today. In HTTP/0.9 the only existing method was GET and the type of the message that the client/requester sent was:

MESSAGE FORMAT:

HTTP-message = Simple-Request l | Simple-Response

REQUEST:

Simple-Request = “GET” SP Request-URI CRLF

Request-URI = absoluteURI | abs_path

absoluteURI = scheme “:” *( uchar | reserved )

abs_path = “/” rel_path

note: absoluteURI is used on proxies.

e.g.:

telnet www.example.com 80 (this request was made over HTTP/1.1)

GET /foo/bar/text.txt

RESPONSE:

<HTML><HEAD>

<TITLE>404 File Not Found</TITLE>

</HEAD><BODY>

<H1>File Not Found</H1>

The requested URL /foo/bar/text.txt was not found on this server.<P>

</BODY></HTML>

As you can see the first step was to make the TCP connection to the server in port 80 and send the request. The server will immediately responde to the client sending the resource or simply a message.

If the URI identify a processing unit (e.g. an executable file) then the server executes the file and returns the output of it. This technique is called CGI (Common Gateway Interface). The CGI can be called by the client using a query string that starts after the ‘?’ being followed by several fields separated by ‘&’.

E.g.: “http://www.example.com/login?username=test&password=none&depart=5”

HTTP/0.9 was a blast because is difficult to get something so efficient and simple as this. HTTP/0.9 can carry any kind of file and it does rely on TCP stack as an application-level protocol layer 5.

But, as I said on the beginning, HTTP/0.9 is depreciated and obviously with several limitations. First, every time a request is made a connection is opened and immediately closed which means that if you have X images on your website this request will open X + 1 connection in order to present the webpage. Second, HTTP/0.9 doesn’t have headers whatsoever, so no metadata can be send, for example no cache. Third, the method GET has limitation on the amount of data that can be sent to the server and the information is at naked eye. And so on… I think these are the main lacks.

All this is understandable because the project wasn’t expected to achieve the importance that has today.

So, in order to respond these lacks, the protocol was evolving till the actual version HTTP/1.1 and is expected a new version to compete with new protocols that are being developed.

Note that the importance of study the HTTP/1.0 and HTTP/1.1 regards with security breaches and efficiency. If you are constructing a website you have to be carefull because there are several ways to damage your website just by manipulating different versions/headers of HTTP protocol. In my case when I’m programming in PHP I always validate the headers even if I have a decrease of efficiency because not doing that can put in jeopardy all work done.

Next part will be about HTTP/1.0 and with more practical information. Bye

References:

http://www2.themanualpage.org/http/http_http09.php3

http://www.w3.org/Protocols/

MOREIRA, André, Redes de Computadores: Protocolo HTTP. Porto: Apontamentos teóricos de Redes de Computadores, Junho 2007.

The first time I saw the XAML working I was really impress but strongly septic because MS is behind it! Yes, MS in the last decade has a nasty reputation in the IT community because the several mistakes that were done. MS was used not to be a good company but to be the best possible and widely use.

This dominant market position has made MS arrogant and self-centered. However I thing that MS wakeup for the new market and the competitors position and move forward becoming the better company with new products, new way of thinking and more open to the world. I think that MS has a lot of learn of newest companies like Google but still, I thing that MS has find the right path to success.

But the main subject of this topic isn’t MS market strategies but their newest technologies like .net Framework 3.0 (its coming the .net Framework 3.5 and VStudio 2008, for now in beta version). For seeing more about this techs I was in the last Portugal TechDays 2007 that gave me several ideas and interest on making something with XAML.

So I’m going to try to learn more about C# and WPF for start and then we’ll see. NOTE THAT I WONT LEAVE C/C++ OR JAVA because this are the most beautiful programming languages. For me are!

Lets see what software that have to be install to start working:

Visual Studio 2005 for coding C#

.NET 3.0 SDK “The Windows SDK includes documentation, samples, and tools designed to help you develop Windows applications and libraries using both Win32® and .NET Framework 3.0 technologies targeting Windows Vista.“

.NET 3.0 Visual Studio 2005 Extensions “Provides developers with support for building .NET Framework 3.0 applications using Visual Studio 2005.”

I already have all this and the objective is to make a desktop application that will post and managed this blog. I know the already exists several products but I want to make my own.

Thus, I couldn’t resist and wrote the lines of code that solved this issue. Since the application is written on VB.net I used this language but I don’t like it very must! This were the code that I gave them:

'just declare the object of the container; in this case Application
Dim evLog As New EventLog( "Application")

'use the procedure to changing the option
evLog.ModifyOverflowPolicy(OverflowAction.OverwriteAsNeeded, 7)

Note that this can be used over .net Framework 1.0 - 3.0 but in Windows Vista the default option is delete as need so in this case use this over windows NT/XP.

wmpnetwk.exe is related to media sharing with Windows Media Player 11 that’s useful when you want to share media eg. with you xbox 360…

So, lets suspend this services towards a faster running Operative System of course if you don’t want to share your media!!!

In your Windows Media Player go to the library tab right and click on “media sharing”. Then unclick the “Share my media” and press the button OK.

After this you you have do stop the service. Go under the “RUN” command in the start menu and type “services.msc”. Then look for “Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service” and double click on it. Stop the service and put the “Startup type” as disable or manual!

And that’s all!

It’s a good question, isn’t it? I have this process running in my computer and I don’t know what it does and what is it! Ok, don’t be alarmed because it’s not a virus or something else, it’s a Apple service that’s installed with iTunes called Bonjour and now also installed with Adobe Photoshop CS3. The core function of a Windows Service is to run an application in the background. When iTunes/Photoshop is completely uninstalled this service should be uninstalled too, but when that doesn’t happen you can uninstalled it manually.

Lets see how!

See what Apple says in the product website:

Bonjour, also known as zero-configuration networking, enables automatic discovery of computers, devices, and services on IP networks. Bonjour uses industry standard IP protocols to allow devices to automatically discover each other without the need to enter IP addresses or configure DNS servers. In order to provide a true zero-configuration experience, Bonjour requires that devices implement three essential things.

This tutorial is the hardest and efficient way to uninstall it. First lets identify the service in your board of services running the following command in Start | Run (type) services.msc.

Next you should find a service with the description ##Id_String2.6844F930_1628_4223_B5CC_5BB94B879762##, or something like that, in my case it’s the first service that shows up. Please, double click on the service and stop the service and put the startup type as disable. If you don’t want to continue you don’t have to because this services will not run again!

Even so, we can completely uninstalled the service by deleting the mdnsNSP.dll executing the following program LSPFix.exe. When you open this program mark I know what I’m doing (or enjoy re-installing my operating system…) and select ONLY mdnsNSP.dll and press finish. This program attempts to correct Internet connection problems resulting from buggy or improperly-removed Layered Service Provider (LSP) software.

Now is safe to delete the folder that contains mDNSresponder.exe normally install in C:\Program Files\Bonjour. If no, try to find a folder called Bonjour.

After all this you may think that your problem is completely solved but is not! You must remove an entry from the regedit, for that go to Start | Run (type) | regedit. There you must find the entry ##Id_String2.6844F930_1628_4223_B5CC_5BB94B879762## - consider in using the find tool of regedit - and delete the all chain, normally called Bonjour Service.

Now you are free of the unnecessary consumption of memory and bandwidth that this service used.