Dotmad.net

Thread 1:
lock (a)
{

lock (b)
{

lock (c)
{
//some code
}

}

}

Thread 2:
lock (d)
{

lock (c)
{

lock (b)
{
//some code
}

}

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Main thread:
lock (a)
{
//important code
}

It has been more than a month since I got back from Berlin, so I need to backup my memory of hot spots in there:
Wifi is actually pretty expansive in Berlin - there are many hot spots, but to surf you need to either pay directly to an ISP, or use your own account (assuming you have one).
Here are the few locations I found:

• Cheap connection in the Häagen-Dazs cafe in Kurfürstendamm street
• Free access in Europa center
• Tegel airport

Larry Osterman wrote a very useful post on service debugging.

I read Scott Hanselman’s post on communication, and was reminded of all the times when I had to kick myself and use phone over IM - I just couldn’t stand how slow the conversation was going.
In terms of effectiveness, IM is good to have when you are having a non-committed conversation, meaning you are doing several things while chatting.
When you need to dedicate your full attention to the conversation, use phone - it’s faster.
Not only most people are able to speak faster than they can type, IM forces you to talk serially - while talking is parallel by it’s nature.

Kim Hamilton from the BCL team writes about .NET compression support:
The big format you’re probably thinking about is zip. Currently the .NET libraries don’t support zip but the J# class libraries do. The following article describes using these libraries with a C# app.

Kim should really check out the stuff out there before sending C# developers to Java land.
There is a zip support in dot net, with a library called “SharpZipLib“.
It’s free, and easy to master.

I read about a new site called YoName, which is a search engine for people, meaning it only searches social networking sites, such as LinkedIn.
As any curious person, I tried searching myself there, by my name and by my mail address.

I was shocked to find this mail from the site: “YO. Someone is searching for you on yoName.com”
The content of the message notified me I was searched, advertised the site, and had this text:
“This is a one-time email sent to you from yoName.com. Someone searched for your email address using yoName and while yoName is a free service, it’s also anonymous. To unsubscribe from future emails from yoName, click here.“

Unsubscribe? but I never subscribed, I just entered a search!

Receiving unsolicited advertisement (spam) from the site just because someone else searched your mail address is bad enough.
But now I know my mail is in their database:
I tried entering the search again, and got no further mails, meaning they checked the search result against a database of previous searches.
Seems to me this site is just waiting for a spammer to crack it and retrieve all the mails.

Although the Crystal reports components we get for free with the Visual studio are OK for some uses, some time ago I reviewed a number of reporting components for .Net framework with more advanced capabilities.
I came up with these requirements:

1. Support for framework 2.0
2. Written in native .Net language
3. Source code included (may be with “professional” version)
4. Ability to work with databases, especially SQL server
5. Ability to work with data objects (IList)
6. Run time customization (change the look/content of the report during run time)
7. Execute non-report code during execution of the code (for example: display a message box)
8. Report wizard for the end-user (should be royalty-free)

I was left with DevExpress’s XtraReports and Uniswift’s SwiftReports, both answering to all requirements, and both with an affordable price tag.

While the report wizard is a powerful tool, but not always required, I was amazed to discover some component makers still think that including the source code with their product is optional.