What's the difference between Local , LocalLow and Roaming?

From Superuser.com:

"Windows uses the Local and LocalLow folders for application data that does not roam with the user. Usually this data is either machine specific or too large to roam. The AppData\Local folder in Windows Vista is the same as the Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data folder in Windows XP.

Windows uses the Roaming folder for application specific data, such as custom dictionaries, which are machine independent and should roam with the user profile. The AppData\Roaming folder in Windows Vista is the same as the Documents and Settings\username\Application Data folder in Windows XP."

and

"Roaming is the folder that would be synchronized with a server if you logged into a domain with a roaming profile (enabling you to log into any computer in a domain and access your favorites, documents, etc. Firefox stores its information here, so you could even have the same bookmarks between computers with a roaming profile.

Local is the folder that is specific to that computer - any information here would not be synchronized with a server. This folder is equivalent in XP to C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Application Data.

LocalLow is the same folder as local, but has a lower integrity level. IE8, for example, can only write to the locallow folder (when protected mode is on)."

MS Word: What Happened to the Normal View

[reprinted from http://www.worldstart.com/ms-word-what-happened-to-the-normal-view/ ]

If you’re using either Word 2007 or 2010 and preferred working in the Normal view, then you’re probably wondering what happened to it.

I’m sure you've investigated the View tab of the Ribbon and this is what you found:

[Print Layout] [Full Screen Reading] [Web Layout] [Outline] [Draft]

While on the surface it seems that they've done away with the Normal view, the truth is that they just renamed it. Try the Draft view.

Feeling better?

Yeah, I though you might.

Of course the happiness will be short-lived when you save a file in the Draft view and then find that later it opens in the Print Layout view again.

After you’ve changed the view of each document you open to Draft for a few days, you’ll be tired of it and wonder why they created the Draft view if Word wasn’t going to keep the setting when it’s opened again at a later time.

Well we can stop wondering about the whys and still not give up on having things presented to our liking…

Microsoft has included in the program options a place to tell Word whether or not you prefer to allow documents to open in the Draft view.

If you like that view then you’ll want to allow it, and here’s how you can make Word do just that.

Begin in the Office Button / File tab and choose Options.

In the Options dialog box choose the Advanced category on the left

No more System.Data.OracleClient

from Artinsoft's blog: http://blogs.artinsoft.net/Mrojas/archive/2009/08/07/No-more-SystemDataOracleClient.aspx


 Microsoft announced that they won’t support the System.Data.OracleClient anymore :(

The message says that it will still be available in .NET 4.0 but “deprecated” and that it wont impact existing applicatoions.

So what are my options?

Well you have to go to a third party. Not now but eventually.

Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET) (Oracle states that ODP.NET is Free)

DataDirect ADO.NET Provider for Oracle

dotConnect for Oracle

Migration to ODP.NET

Installation

Microsoft OracleClient to ODP.NET Application Migration: Code Migration

Oracle provide general instructions. In summary you need to:

1. Add the references to Oracle.DataAccess
2. Change namespaces: System.Data.OracleClient by  Oracle.DataAccess.Client; and maybe add “using Oracle.DataAccess.Types”
3. Update the connection String (most attributes are the same). Change Integrated Security by  "User Id=/", change “Server” attribute to “Data Source” and remove Unicode
4. The following is anoying but you have to add after all OracleCommands something like OracleCommand1.BindByName = true;

Deployment

• Oracle Universal Installer (either in normal installation or Silent Install)
• XCopy (I like this :) ) just remember to download the ODAC xcopy version

Microsoft Lost the Backwards Compatibility Religion

Excerpt from Joel Spoelsky:

"

Microsoft Lost the Backwards Compatibility Religion

Inside Microsoft, the MSDN Magazine Camp has won the battle.

The first big win was making Visual Basic.NET not backwards-compatible with VB 6.0. This was literally the first time in living memory that when you bought an upgrade to a Microsoft product, your old data (i.e. the code you had written in VB6) could not be imported perfectly and silently. It was the first time a Microsoft upgrade did not respect the work that users did using the previous version of a product.

And the sky didn't seem to fall, not inside Microsoft. VB6 developers were up in arms, but they were disappearing anyway, because most of them were corporate developers who were migrating to web development anyway. The real long term damage was hidden.

With this major victory under their belts, the MSDN Magazine Camp took over. Suddenly it was OK to change things. IIS 6.0 came out with a different threading model that broke some old applications. I was shocked to discover that our customers with Windows Server 2003 were having trouble running FogBugz. Then .NET 1.1 was not perfectly backwards compatible with 1.0. And now that the cat was out of the bag, the OS team got into the spirit and decided that instead of adding features to the Windows API, they were going to completely replace it. Instead of Win32, we are told, we should now start getting ready forWinFX: the next generation Windows API. All different. Based on .NET with managed code. XAML. Avalon. "

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html

Windows uses Unicode, and specifically UTF-16 encoding

Windows natively supports Unicode strings for UI elements, file names, and so forth. Unicode is the preferred character encoding, because it supports all character sets and languages. Windows represents Unicode characters using UTF-16 encoding, in which each character is encoded as a 16-bit value. UTF-16 characters are called widecharacters, to distinguish them from 8-bit ANSI characters. 

Unicode and ANSI Functions

When Microsoft introduced Unicode support to Windows, it eased the transition by providing two parallel sets of APIs, one for ANSI strings and the other for Unicode strings. For example, there are two functions to set the text of a window's title bar:

• SetWindowTextA takes an ANSI string.
• SetWindowTextW takes a Unicode string.

Internally, the ANSI version translates the string to Unicode. 

New applications should always call the Unicode versions. Many world languages require Unicode. If you use ANSI strings, it will be impossible to localize your application. The ANSI versions are also less efficient, because the operating system must convert the ANSI strings to Unicode at run time.

Size of a pointer

Pointer Precision Types

The following data types are always the size of a pointer — that is, 32 bits wide in 32-bit applications, and 64 bits wide in 64-bit applications. The size is determined at compile time. When a 32-bit application runs on 64-bit Windows, these data types are still 4 bytes wide. (A 64-bit application cannot run on 32-bit Windows, so the reverse situation does not occur.)

• DWORD_PTR
• INT_PTR
• LONG_PTR
• ULONG_PTR
• UINT_PTR

Reliving the Evolution of Visual Studio...

On a 64-bit Win7 laptop:
Year 1998. Starting with Visual Studio 6 (aka Visual Basic 6). Installed successfully.
Year 2002 Visual Studio .NET.  Refused to install on 64-bit machine.
Installed on my old laptop, a 32-bit XP Pro.
Flaky when tried installing from disc, so had to copy files locally to a folder named DVD1 (per some online advice).  Gives option to install MSDN Help.
Year 2003. Visual Studio .NET 2003.  Installed on 64-bit laptop.  MSDN NOT installed with main app!  Rather, it came with separate discs (3 CD's) to install separately.
Visio, though marketed as the distinguishing feature of this Enterprise Architect edition, was provided as a standalone disc and standalone installation.