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Exposing the powerful features in .NET
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If you have not seen Microsoft's comments on the DayLight savings changes then see below: | |
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Dear Valued Microsoft Customer,
In 2005, the United States government passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This act changes the start and end dates for Daylight Saving Time (DST) as of spring 2007. These changes may impact the way applications run. Microsoft is releasing an update for Windows through Microsoft Update that reflects these changes.
Developers who use the .NET Framework may find their applications affected if the application uses the time zone information for historical purposes or if they have derived custom classes from System.TimeZone to provide custom time zone information. The standard System.TimeZone class provides a managed wrapper for the underlying Windows Operating System time zone functions.
In addition, developers who use Visual C++ may find their applications affected if they use the CRT time functions, or the TZ environment variable. Microsoft is currently working on a fix for this issue and will post information about its availability on the Visual Studio Support page.
Most applications that use these affected classes will not need to be modified as this update will ensure that the correct data is provided seamlessly to the application. However, applications that use these classes or the underlying Windows API to perform historical time look-ups will need to be modified.
In most cases, developers who have extended the .NET Framework’s time zone support by creating custom time zone classes derived from System.TimeZone, or by direct access to the Win32 API, will not have to update their applications as long as the available updates to the operating system are applied. However, solutions that rely on private time zone data, or that retrieve system time zone information by accessing the registry directly, may need to be updated. Applications that deal with historical time zone data may also need to be updated.
Microsoft advises all developers who make use of time zone data to test their applications against this update to ensure that their applications function correctly.
For more detailed information and the latest updates please visit http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/bb264729.aspx, Preparing for daylight saving time changes in 2007, and KB928388: 2007 time zone update for Microsoft Windows operating systems.
Further Assistance
Microsoft values your business. For more information visit http://www.microsoft.com/dst2007, or contact Microsoft for assistance. A list of phone numbers is located at http://response.microsoft.com/P/v3/r.asp?r=T1_Url7&e=102271%3B068152%3B29616677%3B2%3B02&a=1007. Microsoft Premier Customers may engage their Technical Account Manager directly.
Please DO NOT REPLY to this email as this is not a monitored inbox. If you have questions/inquiries please visit http://www.microsoft.com/dst2007
This e-mail is intended for distribution within the United States. Please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary for similar offerings outside the US.
Thank you,
Microsoft US Developer Team
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I am hearing more and more about very weired or strange companies that cannot keep employees.
One company actually required the employee to have a company assigned drinking cup. You could not bring your own cup.
One guy got fired at this company for checking his hotmail account online. Apparently he had an emergency and needed information but they did not allow him to
share his reasons they just fired him.
I would like to suggest that we assist each other with information about a company you work at.
I would suggest that you begin to leave comments at www.jobvent.com
(I do not benefit any way from this service, it is the only tool I have found for such assistance) If you like the company, that would be great also because then that would be a good sign for those of us who are
interested in working for that company. Definitely let us know if you like a company so that we can concentrate our employment efforts there.
We need to know who to avoid so that we do not waste our time with eccentric employers. http://www.jobvent.com
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I found out about this new tool from the DotnetRocks latest show. Thanks Carl for the info.
This tool was written by a NASA intern in C#.
He uses many advanced features found in Managed DirectX that may be very useful. I will surely begin looking under the hood of this project.
I ran into limitations in the past with my primitive Dell desktop. Now that I will be receiving my Alienware laptop in a few days, I will really have fun. I will continue to contribute my findings concerning managed directx.
You may also want to check out purple#.
Purplesharp is game engine written in C#. This engine uses the latest in shader technologies that are available in the newest of graphics cards.
“World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth“
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Can anyone tell me why there is so much hype about the IPod? There are competing products out there but I see companies such as BMW, Mercedes Benz etc. creating interfaces and adapters to the product. It seems to me that the popularity of the IPod is driven by the news media. Am I wrong? What am I missing? What is so special about the product.?
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I successfully got through Tom Millers first 7 chapters of the “Managed DirectX 9: Graphics and Game Programming“ book. I found that I had to piece together a lot of missing information. Tom often provides you with examples and best practices but leaves out beginner information. This book is for someone already familiar with 3D programming at a beginner level and not for someone who knows absolutely nothing about 3D programming. So, in order to adjust for my lack of information concerning basic 3D game programming, I went to Amazon and found a lot of positive reviews about the “Beginning .NET Game Programming in C#“ by David Weller
The reviews were correct. This is the book that you want to start with. Once you get through this book, then I would look into using Tom's book. David's book tells you exactly what and why he is doing what he is doing. He explains what methods to call and why and how to use these methods. He covers the basic elementary topics in enough detail so that when you move on to Tom's book, you will understand exactly what is being discussed. He also has an exercise which is designed to bring all of the pieces together. This is a well structured book designed for beginners in 3D graphic programming.
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Steganography - The art of writing in cipher, or in characters which are not intelligible except to persons who have the key; cryptography.
I recently came across a group of articles that discuss Steganography by Corinna John, age 24, from Germany. I am not easily impressed but this girl is a heavy hitter. She is an advanced programmer who has spent a lot of time with this subject of Steganography,Cryptography and Image manipulation. She is very knowledgeble about imaging, AVI, pixel manipulation etc.
Here are a few titles:
1) Hiding messages in the Noise of a Picture
2) Hiding messages in .NET Assemblies
3) Hiding Data in Wave Audio Files etc.
She is a person that should be on the Microsoft training circuit and who deserves recognition in the .NET community.
Check her out.
http://www.codeproject.com/script/Articles/list_articles.asp?userid=475133
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Check out the latest poll results concerning favorite .NET language. Very interesting results. I was pleasantly surprised to see that C# is winning. Why do I like C# better? Because VB.NET is tooo verbose and the syntax is not good for an object oriented language.
What .NET Language are you using?
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I predict that in 10 years, open source software will be the dominant product line used by major corporations around the world. The reason I believe this is because the move by corporations to continue to cut cost, more specifically, IT cost, will draw corporations to use the open source model. Today, Microsoft's licensing model is too demanding and expensive. Companies are forced to continue to upgrade their software and licensing agreement every time Microsoft upgrades its software. Let's say that a company was satisfied with Windows 95 and wanted to remain on this platform, they could not do so because anytime they wanted to add a new system to their network, they would have to install that new system with Microsoft's latest and greatest operating system, which is Windows XP today. So now, this company, who desires to cut cost is now forced spend more than they desired just to add a new employee to the corporate network.
In comes open source. Now let's say that a customer has all of its users on a version of Linux using Novell’s Linux Desktop. They can add as many workstations to the network at minimal cost. They even get to use the latest distribution if they so desire. Microsoft cannot stand up to this change. It is somewhat poetic that Microsoft will fall victim to freeware. They won the browser battle by giving it away. They successfully shut down Netscape. Now their entire product line is under attack by freeware or almost freeware. As the quality of open source grows Microsoft will loose market share.
I do think that Microsoft will survive but they will loose billions per year over time. Now, don't get me wrong. I really love Microsoft's products. I especially like the .NET framework. This is a saving grace for Microsoft. I am just saying that there is a force at work that cannot be stopped. There are people out there who will write high quality code for free just because they enjoy the challenge. Then you have people out there who are coding high quality software for free just to bring down a major corporation's dominance.
Now that Open Office, Linux, FireFox, Jboss, Zope, Novell Evolution etc. exists, how appealing is it for a company to remain on Microsoft? The evidence is already out there. Microsoft is giving away its operating system to countries such as Germany and Taiwan. How long will American corporations sit by and pay top dollar for Microsoft's operating system when they are giving it away to others? The open source movement is a quiet storm that will affect many businesses.
Open Source also brings unprecedented opportunity for businesses that know how to take advantage of this trend.
Once companies like Novell improve on the installation and upgrade of their product line for the server and the desktop, companies like Microsoft will be scrambling to compete.
With all of Microsoft's wealth, they cannot beat the open source movement unless they can continue to encourage SCO to keep its law suit alive and put an end to Linux. The Linux operating system is the heart of this movement. Take down this operating system and this movement will die; at least until the community writes a new operating system to replace Linux. But, I seriously doubt that SCO has a leg to stand on. Bring this case to a jury and SCO will definitely loose.
One more thing. I also get to continue to code in .NET because or products like Mono. .NET is the best thing to happen to the developer community but because of Mono, even this may not help.
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Whoa! What have I been doing lately! I have been missing the “World Chess Championship”! Grandmasters Kramnik and Leko are fighting for the title.
If you are interested, you can observe the game at chessclub.com. Unfortunately, Tony Rook has been in a car accident so you will not be able to listen to commentaries on his radio show located at www.chess.fm. I wish Tony all the best and a speedy recovery.
The next game is tomorrow 9 ET.
One more thing. JIBJAB has another one! www.jibjab.com (“Good To Be in DC“)
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Ok, what I have discovered so far is that 3D graphics programming is, in very simple terms, the manipulation of rendered graphic objects along an axis or multiple axes within a controlled viewing area. When thinking about 3D graphics programming, think of it as having various cameras set up along various point in your artificial world in order to capture certain actions that you want to take place in this world.
Microsoft has a Device class which is used to write and manipulate your graphical object within your world. The Device class actually manipulates your actual hardware device on your computer, and the instantiation of this object is your starting point when programming a 3D world in DirectX.
When we draw a 3D object, we must use vertices to draw the object. With DirectX, this is done using a Vertex Buffer which is nothing but an array of points.
The Device class has an attribute called Transform. This class is used to manipulate the 3D world. There are various transformation properties which change the view of an object in space. The Projection Transform (your camera) defines the working space where you will be manipulating your 3D object(s).
Another transform is the View Transform which transforms world coordinates into camera or view space.
Transformations are achieved with the use of a Matrix. The Matrix is an array of numbers that are subject to some form of mathematical manipulation. For example, after you create an array of vertices, you will desire to modify their position along the Cartesian plane. This will be achieved with the aide of a Matrix object in DirectX.
“Well a matrix is a concise, useful, robust way of uniquely representing
linear transformations. Yeah but what does that mean? Well in 3D land there are
three basic operations that one can do: translate, rotate, and scale. A matrix
allows us to easily do all three.” --TheTutor - GameTutorials.com
I would like to ask that the more advanced gaming programmers bear with me if I get some of my explanations wrong. Your comments and corrections are greatly appreciated.
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In my quest to learn 3D game programming, I came across a very informative article titled “Game Engine Anatomy 101” by Jake Simpson. This article is divided into a ten part series that discusses the current state of gaming engines and how they have evolved in such a short span of time. It goes into great detail about the “renderer”, which is the part of the game engine that deals with displaying of visually exciting effects and scenery. This series also discusses what techniques are currently cutting edge; techniques such as Vertex and Pixel Shaders. I believe that this article is a great place to start, so when you come across certain terminologies and concepts, you will have a basic understanding of what the author is talking about.
I recently started going through the “Managed DirectX 9: Graphics and Game Programming” book by Tom Miller, a leading developer of the Microsoft DirectX API. Although I was able to follow the book, I found that the terminology was foreign to me. I began to build a glossary of terms so that I would know what the author was talking about instead of just churning out code. I have found this glossary to be of utmost importance when following Tom’s examples. Although I believe that I will benefit greatly from Tom’s valuable information, I think that a glossary of terms would have been beneficial to me, a beginner in game programming, given that the book only assumes that you know .NET and not gaming. Despite this fact, I really like this book. It covers very simple but important cutting edge concepts that will get me up to speed. When I am done with the glossary, I will post it here in my blog
Another book that I am using for a reference is Frank D. Luna’s “Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 9.0”. If you plan to venture down the path I have begun, I would suggest having these two books in your arsenal.
Things have changed so much since the first time I bought a game-programming book. Now that Managed DirectX with C# exists, I think it is finally time to pursue this interest more earnestly.
Peace!
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Microsoft uses the XML Document format as its standard when defining its Web Services Description Language (WSDL) file. Well, it turned out that my company implemented an Enterprise Application Interface using Java and their WSDL was in the Java based RPC format. So, to call this Java based web service, I needed to convert this format to Microsoft’s XML based document format. GotDotNet provides a non-supported tool called R2D. This application is an RPC to Document converter and will make your WSDL .NET compliant. This tool was just what I needed. It converted my application and made it compatible with the .NET format. Once converted, Visual Studio will interpret your WSDL and create a proxy for you. Personally, I've found that the WebServiceStudio 2.0 application, also available at GotDotNet, was easier to use than Visual Studio when generating my Proxy class.
WebServiceStudio2.0 is a visual tool which allows you to invoke the methods defined in the WSDL. You can pass in the parameters defined in the WSDL and then invoke the web service. This tool will then return all expected values to the application.
If you are not sure how a specific web service is suppose to behave, then use this application and your doubts will be abated. This is a great tool, and since it also generates a proxy class for you, your work is done.
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The primary purpose of this blog is to discuss issues related to application development using the .NET Framework. In the beginning, my focus will be primarily concerned with ASP.NET web developement and the developement of games using the Managed DirectX(MDX) SDK. I am totally new to game development but it will be an interesting ride.
Stay tuned and join me down the path of discovery.
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