Recently, I have been studying for my MCSD .NET. I am about ready to take 70-316, Windows Applications with Visual C# .NET. But I am having second thoughts. I wonder if I should take the VB .NET exams instead...

Obviously, one of the advantages to .NET is that the programming language used in application development can be left as a personal choice. C# and VB interoperate seamlessly, and from a binary code perspective, there are no advantages to developing in either language. That is, the same code written in each language produces the same or similar IL code.

My dilemma is this: I decided some time ago to take the C# exams. I purchased all three study guides. I've spent many hours studying for the first exam. And now... I am working at a job where I use VB .NET. I am starting to understand VB .NET a lot more; and I might start confusing myself when it comes time to take the exam.

Luckily the two exams (VB and C#) have almost identical content. I am sure the question banks are identical as well except the code samples are in different programming languages.

Have any VB developers out there taken the C# exam? Do you regret not taking the VB one instead? I'd appreciate any feedback. Leave me a comment. Thanks.

Here's an interesting Forrester Research survey of the most used development platforms in large companies today:

On which platform will the majority of your development be in 2004?

.NET - 56%
J2EE - 44%

Given that in 2004 .NET is really only now getting accepted as an enterprise development platform, I wonder what those numbers will look like in 2005 or 2006?

I have been having trouble with my Pocket PC (Toshiba e750 with Windows Mobile 2003) and ActiveSync 3.7.1 lately. My Pocket PC won't sync at all - the synchronization process terminates only 2 seconds after it begins. I've tried everything I can think of and then some. Played with all the USB settings. Purchased a stand-alone USB sync cable instead of using the cradle. Nothing worked.

Tonight I decided to try and upgrade every driver and/or software application I can find on my PC in case one of them are interfering. This included the usual - Windows Update, all major peripherals, and of course my ATI video driver. But I also updated my motherboard BIOS because I was 3 versions behind. (Yes, I can be reckless sometimes.)

For the record, I went from AMIBIOS V3.5 to V3.8 for my MSI 6309 motherboard. The Flash EPROM programming utility including in the MSI download is nice. No command line prompt - DOS graphical interface.

All went well. The BIOS flash upgrade finished in seconds. Once done, I rebooted. The BIOS installed fine, although I got a CMOS checksum error the first time I booted. The system put me into the BIOS setup program though, and once I saved and exited, it booted fine the second time.

I attributed this to the fact that, since the BIOS had changed, the CMOS record format may also have changed slightly. The AMIBIOS Setup Utility was updated from 1.3 to 1.51 I think.

As of now, the BIOS update hasn't fixed the problem. But I have to keep trying. The final alternative is to reinstall Windows XP from scratch, and I am not looking forward at all to doing that.

OK, I just checked my GMail account. I have 1,000,000 MB of free storage. That's 1,000 gigabytes, or 1 terrabyte. Holy smokes.

I challenge anyone to fill that up. I currently have 80 GB of total hard disk storage on my home PC. So even if I did a full backup of my home machine, and emailed it to myself, I would still only be using only 8% of my Gmail account. Holy.

I am planning on using Gmail instead of Hotmail for sure. The people at Hotmail must be panicking right now.

Update: Of course, this turned out to be a “bug”. It may have been an intentional bug, but the 1,000 GB was soon reduced to only 1 GB. Oh well.

One of the things I wanted to do for the dasBlog Log Analyzer I recently developed was add a link to my web site from the main screen. It's fairly common these days to have URL's embedded in Windows applications, that cause the browser to open to the appropriate web site when clicked.

This functionality is not fully implemented in the IDE using the System.Windows.Forms.LinkLabel control built into Visual Studio .NET. When I first implemented this control, I looked for a property of the LinkLabel control that would allow me to add a URL. No such luck. Instead, you have to write some code to activate the link as a URL. Here's how you do that.

1. First, import a new namespace at the top of your project code:

Imports System.Diagnostics

2. Next, add a LinkLabel control to your form. I named mine lblURL.

3. Next, add the following two lines of code to the form Load event handler. Of course, if your form does not have an event handler, create one by double-clicking on the form background in the form designer.

lblURL.Links.Remove(lblURL.Links(0))
lblURL.Links.Add(0, lblURL.Text.Length,
    "http://www.mydemos.com/Blog")

4. Next, create an event handler for the lblURL control by double-clicking on the LinkLabel control.

5. Finally, add the following two lines of code to the event handler you just created:

Dim sInfo As New ProcessStartInfo(e.Link.LinkData.ToString())
Process.Start(sInfo)

What does this all do? Well, the Add method of the LinkLabel control creates the LinkLabel text using the URL of the destination web site. And the event handler of the linklabel starts the program associated with URL's in Windows, most likely Internet Explorer.

What a beautiful and elegant implementation.

Based on MSDN Support article 320320.

Actually, it was just the New York Times article that was misleading. The actual Gallup press release is more accurate.

Some soldiers have said that U.S. military intelligence officers ordered the soldiers to "soften up" prisoners for interrogation. About 7 in 10 Americans also blame these officers.

Bingo. Why did the Times neglect to mention that aspect when reporting that the majority of Americans feel the soldiers were not acting under orders?

A recent gallup poll came to a predictable conclusion:

In the Gallup poll, 8 in 10 respondents said they believed the actions of the soldiers violated United States military policy, while fewer than 2 in 10 said it was accepted policy. More than half, 56 percent of those polled, said the soldiers involved in the abusive acts were acting on their own rather than complying with orders. Thirty-four percent said the soldiers were following orders.

Gallup was obviously not asking the right questions. I would count myself amoung the majority of people who say the actions violated official military policy. I also think the soldiers were not following any direct orders. So according to Gallup, I think the soldiers charged must be the only ones to blame, right?

No. The soldiers were not following direct orders, but they were acting with explicit encouragement from their bosses at the prison and military intelligence. “It would be good if this guy had a rough night, ok?” is not a direct order, it's a hint. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

The soldiers being charged have also reported being told, “You did a good job with this guy last night. He broke down right away this morning.“ If that's not explicit encouragement, I don't know what is.

Do I think torture is against official military policy? Of course it is. The fact that these six or eight U.S. soldiers are being charged with crimes under the uniform code of justice proves that. But that doesn't mean torture wasn't tolerated by high-level military officials at the prison or elsewhere. It's just like speedng, everybody does it but it's still illegal if you get caught.

It's the job of pollsters to ask questions, I know. But then they (and the media) jump to conclusions as if there could be no other explanation. The most likely explanation of this case (the people in care of the interrogations directed the soldiers to make things rough for the prisoners) is still supported by the poll. It wasn't just an isolated case, or a few bad apples.