Windows Server 2003 SP1 Admin Tools Pack

The Admin Tools Pack allows administrators to install the Windows Server 2003 management tools onto a computer running Windows XP Professional to perform remote server management functions.



This download contains some handy snap-ins for the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). I list two of them which allow me to do server stuff from my XP Pro computer :

• Active Directory Users and Computers
  allows management of users, groups, organizational units, and all other Active Directory objects
• Authorization Manager
  allows to set role-based permissions for Authorization Manager-enabled applications

Top 10 Ways to Motivate Geeks

Damn! This article is so true!

How to motivate geeks?

1. Geeks are curious. Let them feed their desire to learn things.
2. Geeks like to be self-sustaining. Let them figure things out on their own.
3. Geeks are creative even if they don’t know it. Give them a chance.
4. Geeks need tools, good ones. Give them more than they need.
5. Private, yet collaborative. Geeks need to be left alone, but not too alone.
6. Free stuff. T-shirts, food, desktop widgets, whatever.
7. Control.
8. Geeks need recognition.
9. Freedom.
10. Compensation.

Read full article.

Update : Top 10 Ways to De-Motivate Geeks.

.NET Remoting - setting credentials

When a client calls a secure remote object that is hosted within IIS (ASP.NET worker process - Windows Authentication), you must specify explicit credentials to be authenticated. You can also choose to use the credentials (DefaultCredentials) of the process hosting the remote object proxy. If no credentials are passed to the remote object, you will be bothered with the HTTP 401 error (Access denied).

This is an easy way to set your explicit credentials programmatically ...

object proxy =  Activator.GetObject(resourceType, endPoint);

 

ICredentials networkCredentials = new NetworkCredential(userName, password, domain);

IDictionary dictionary = ChannelServices.GetChannelSinkProperties(proxy);

dictionary["credentials"] = networkCredentials;

Your proxy is now ready to invoke the necessary secured methods on the remote object. Setting your credentials programmatically can be convenient for quick testing purposes. Most of the time you will solely rely on configuration settings, but this can be a tedious task from time to time.

ASP.NET 2.0

I've been busy lately with migrating some ASP.NET 1.1 stuff to ASP.NET 2.0. On ASP.NET I've found a very useful article about the differences in the ASP.NET page model. There are also some new steps in the Page Lifecycle for ASP.NET 2.0. The PreInit method for example can be very interesting if you want to play with theming, master pages, profiles, ... Other stuff that's briefly mentioned : Cross-Page Postback, Asynchronous Pages, Script Callbacks and Client Scripts.

Blog re-published

Due to some unknown problems, the template of my blog got saved in an inconsistent state. I've taken the opportunity to set a new style for my blog and re-published my entire blog. From now on I will save a backup of my template!

Visug : Team System Event

Yesterday afternoon and today I was present at the Visual Studio 2005 Team System Event. Almost 20 people sacrificed their Saturday to put their minds on Visual Studio Team System. Our local MVP for VSTS Steven Wilssens did a great job in presenting us the enormous capabilities of Visual Studio Team System. All attendees received also a free copy (thanks to MSDN Belgium) of Professional Visual Studio 2005 Team System. During the sessions Steven left us enough room to ask all kinds of questions. It ended up to be a very interactive presentation with live custom demos. Steven promised to post a lot of stuff on his blog, so I'm looking forward to do some VSTS tricks myself.