Dennis Ritchie Creator of C and Unix Passes Away

Dennis Ritchie Creator of C and Unix Passes Away

Born September 9, 1941(1941-09-09) Bronxville, New York Died October 8, 2011(2011-10-08)Murray Hill, New Jersey Fields Computer Science Institutions Lucent Technologies Bell Labs Alma mater Harvard University Notable awards Turing Award National Medal of Technology Known for · ALTRAN · B · BCPL · C · Multics · Unix

I was planning to blog about the Great Steve Jobs this week and all his accomplishments that had inspired or motivated every wannabe innovators. But after coming to hear of this news I just dropped my thought because I feel this guy deserves equal tribute to Steve Jobs for being the Inventor of The C programming Language and co-creator of Unix Operating system. And the whole world has already given Steve Jobs a mammoth tribute and I didn’t want to be monotonous on that front.

Let us ask ourselves this question. How many developers today have started learning Programming with C when they were under graduated?

I would say 100% at least in India.

C was the first programming language that I personally learned when I was a Novice. Today I still credit all the logical programming thinking every one of us have comes from C.
The very first editions on C was also written by him:

“C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system. C is one of the most popular programming languages of all times and there are very few computer architectures for which a C compiler does not exist. C has greatly influenced many other popular programming languages, most notably C++, which began as an extension to C. Today C is a general-purpose, fast, portable and widely used language.”

Although others might have also learned Java as their first programming language but C definitely has been the foundation of Programming languages and I believe is still the core for most of the Software Technologies out there including Operating Systems we use in our day to day life. Although I am not a die-hard fan of C (ironically I could just be in those .0001% people) but I still cherish the moments when I learned programming concepts starting from basic Looping statements, Pointers and horrifying data structure concepts. Most importantly it teaches you the problem solving skills and basic understanding skills of algorithmic way of writing a program.

I could still remember the first programs I ever executed where of Basic Logo, C and Pascal. The excitement and happiness I had while I successfully executed my very first “HELLO WORLD” program in C is unexplainable.

/* Hello World program */

#include<stdio.h>

main()

{

printf("Hello World");

}

The news of Ritchie’s death was first made public by way of Rob Pike‘s Google+. His post today mentions that he passed away last weekend shows how the news is now slowly spreading across.

I have to agree with my friends comment on Facebook that says “There is no Apple, iPhone ,Microsoft without him”. The sole reason being C was treated as the Mother Of All Programming languages and all other languages where either built over or inspired by it.
Please post your comments on blog to share your experience and share via email or any social media to give the guy a tribute he is worth for.

I really hope the technology world realizes the importance of this man and pay tribute to him for his contribution.

1 Beast And 13 Beauties – Big Boss 5 Contestants Revealed

1 Beast And 13 Beauties – Big Boss 5 Contestants Revealed..

Big Boss is meant for controversies at least that is what I feel. Sunday was the day when hosts (Salman & Sanjay Dutt) together revealed and introduced the participants of this year’s Big Boss Season 5 participants. Although much hype of some very popular names being included in this season was just rubbished off. For instance Names like JaySean ,Shakira,Jhonty Rhodes, Sidhu and many more were not in the final list. Although there could be some surprise guest entries later as the show progresses. Althought there was some disappointment but it didn’t last for long as the participants were revealed one after the other there was a trend being observed wherein the first participant was all very famous Shakti Kapoor and then came 1 lady after the other. Every one kept on expecting another guy turning out but no…Ladies went on coming. And finally here is the list of participants and a 1liner about them. Definitely there is anxiety if this guy will show his true Colors on the Colors Channel. At least he is now surrounded with colors all around him. You can comment your thoughts at my blog link given below J

The controversial figure of Bollywood, Shakti Kapoor. He is not only known for playing comic/villian characters in movies, but also for the most controversial sting operation. Often accused of being “Womanizer”.

Raageshwari is an Indian pop singer, actress, model, television anchor and former MTV VJ. Was surprised to know she had facial paralysis when asked about her. May be that’s the reason she was away for a long time off her career as a pop singer.

Shradha who earned lot of media attention after Raja Chaudhary and her relation came into limelight. She was seen on Emotional Atyachaar and Love Lockup on small screen.

23-year-old Nihita Biswas Sobhraj the wife of Charles Sobhraj known as a serial killer Nicknamed "the Serpent" and "the Bikini killer" for his skill at deception and evasion. Charles is 44yrs elder than her when he married her 3years back.

Shonali Nagarani won the pageant of former Miss India International in 2003. Also, she is an Indian film actress and model and has appeared in Hindi language films. Also seen as an anchor on IPL if I am correct.

Pooja Misra is a model turned actress and popular ramp model.

Sonika Kaliraman is an indian wrestler and has been featured in reality show – Khatron Ke khiladi.

Pooja is the daughter of actor Kabir Bedi and is a former Bollywood actress. Pooja worked in Bollywood films, and appeared in many commercials. The actress has also been part of talk shows and reality shows on small screen.

Laxmi Tripathi, a tall beautiful and handsome transgender. She is confident and vocal about her opinion, and fights to protect the rights of her people.

Juhi is a well known TV personality and a versatile anchor, actress, Television Presenter, singer and dancer. She has essayed many important roles in serials like Shaheen, Kumkum and Devi.

Mandeep Bevli is an anchor and has worked for various channels. Mandeep specializes in hosting shows related to Bollywood rumours.(seen on Headlines Today)

Mahek Chahal: who shares a strong friendship with Salman Khan and has also entered Bollywood with his recommendation.

Vida Samadzai is Miss Afghanistan 2003 and the first Afghan woman to participate in an international beauty pageant

Gulabo Sapera is Rajasthani Kalbelia Folk dance performer who has performed worldwide. She says she was born and was immediately buried alive because she was a girl child . She was saved by her aunt who didn’t have girl child.

Windows8 is Here….

Windows8 OS First Look – Next Version of Windows7

Still getting used to Windows7 then time to also start learning about Windows8 the next proposed version of Windows Operating Systems.

It might sound crazy like Whattttttttttt another OS version??? But the answer is Yes Its true because Microsoft has just unveiled Windows8. (Pre-Beta version)

I would refer to January6th 2011 when we first heard from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer @CES2011 himself giving an insight on what the next version of Windows is going to be about.

I did blog about it then and what was mentioned at that time is now Live to be used by everyone. Below is what I quoted:
“Next version of Windows (An updated version on what I would call it as “Windows8” was given and it will support the SOC architecture(System On Chip architecture). I am still new to what this architecture is all about. MS has already started engineering for the next version of windows partnering with Nvidia/Intel/Qualcomm/AMD etc. That will build products on this technology. This is a demo of just the platform support of the future windows OS and not the UI. High performance and easy portability on any device is the motive of the future windows. It’s also about enabling windows experiences to run natively on ARM extending windows commitment to SOC architectures.)” Read More at link.

With lot of speculations about Windows 8 in recent times Microsoft now had officially cleared some air on what is Windows8 and released the first Windows8 Developer Preview version for public at the Build Conference (Windows). Steve Sinofsky the President of Microsoft’s Windows Division gave a wonderful keynote giving live demos of the Windows8 OS.

In this blog I would give you quick highlights and my views on the OS and feel free to view the Keynote at http://www.buildwindows.com/

Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft’s Windows and Windows Live division, gives a preview of Windows 8.
(Credit: Microsoft )

· All New Start Screen:

The All new Metro Style START Screen……. I personally felt this screen was inspired by the Windows Phone UI with Panorama. You can just keep swiping the screen to the right to view all other Taskbar applications etc. I just loved the demo of the OS and gives you a clear feeling that now the Windows OS is “Socialized”. Your My Pictures are now also integrated with you pictures on your social network etc.

· MultiTask Docking View and SideView:

Provides a more seamless way of multitasking as in the example below a video can be watched while keeping an eye on the News Feed (Left) in parallel.

· Internet Explorer for Metro Style (Chromeless)
There is a customized IE9 Metro App that comes by default with Windows8. It has all the features of the IE9 that has already been released. (Hardware Acceleration etc.)

· Spell Check throughout the system

· Performance:
Below snap clearly depicts approx..50% reduced memory usage of Windows8 compared to Win7

· Windows App Store

My opinion after looking at the keynote its more about Apps, Apps and lot of Apps that exist in the OS by default and also that can be built for the OS using the developer tools…

All of them would be Touch centric as well as the OS completely is Touch Friendly. With the very successful Windows Phone Mobile app store now Microsoft has come up with a Windows App store for the first time where developers can package their applications that they build for Windows8 to the app store. Others can download the apps based free or buy the apps right from the app store. Even they also allow Win32 applications to also be uploaded in the app store. The keynote demos on the life cycle of a Windows8 Application built using the new tools (Visual Studio 11 & Expression Blend 5 Preview). Both these tools provide Windows8 specific templates that make application creation a breeze.

These are just couple of highlights that I have touched upon and there are lots of demos on Windows8 applications for Azure and more deep dive sessions on Windows8 api and lot of cool stuff you can view at Channel9.

All Videos related to Windows8

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011

For instance you can find the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8:

http://watwindows8.codeplex.com/

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20105152-75/windows-8-debuts-at-microsoft-build-live-blog/#ixzz1Xu2vPOYV

You can download Windows8 @ http://dev.windows.com/

Please note this is a pre-beta version and might not be as stable as the final versions of the operating system. It’s definitely recommended not to use it on production environments.

Sharepoint 2010 Firestarter Event Recordings

You might have my earlier blog post or e-mail about Silverlight Firestarter event that happened in Dec last year. If you are a SharePoint Developer this one is for you.

SharePoint 2010 Firestarter Event Recordings:

Microsoft kicked off the new year with the SharePoint 2010 Firestarter event. This all-day, in-person event was held in Redmond, WA and streamed online. The speaker line-up included Office and collaboration experts. Watch the recorded sessions and gain a strong understanding of how SharePoint fits with different pieces of technology that you use every day.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Sharepoint-2010-Firestarter/

Keynote

SharePoint 2010 Developer Overview

SharePoint 2010 Developer Tools

SharePoint Development in the Cloud with SharePoint Online

Integrating SharePoint with Office

Integrating SharePoint with Azure

Integrating SharePoint with Silverlight

Sharepoint2010 Troubleshooting Issues & Fixes

Sharepoint2010 Issues & Fixes:

Hands On Sharepoint2010 after a long time. Have been raring to go since a long time. I have been gaining lot of knowledge on this technology from nearly an year now but finally got chance to apply hands-on. And here are my learnings through some of the initial hick-ups I had.

I might not sound 100% correct and the fixes may not be the only way to solve the issue but these were the fixes that worked for my issues that I faced. So please feel free to refer to various other blogs that might help you fix your issue if the below fixes dont work

Issue:

In Sharepoint designer “Design Forms in InfoPath” option is greyed out in SP2010. Or Infopath Services disabled/not found and not functioning.

Fix:

For this to be enabled we need to enable Entriprise Edition of Office instead of Standard. To enable it go to Sharepoint Central Administration> Migration & Upgrade> Update to Enterprise

Select Enterprise edition and provide the key and this will enable all the services.

Sometimes this might throw an error. In such case check if the Sharepoint Adminstration service is running under domain account. If it still fails then try to repair the Sharepoint2010 services using the Configuration wizard.

Start>Sharepoint 2010 Products > Confugration Wizard

This will enable all the the enterprise features like excel services,infopath, fast search etc. to all your sites.

Error: Back-Up Full Sharepoint Farm:

Object Managed Metadata Service_71b701493b0245768a32d34805d80bf1 failed in event OnBackup. For more information, see the spbackup.log or sprestore.log file located in the backup directory.

SqlException: Cannot open backup device ‘\\servername\Backups\spbr000100000E4.bak’. Operating system error 5(Access is denied.).

BACKUP DATABASE is terminating abnormally.

Fix:

Backup path changed to servers drive (C: drive worked for me) instead of D drive for which SP account doesnt have permissions to access the backup. Or else changing the user account of the DB’s to be domain/local account instead of network user should fix this.

Error:
Could Not Load Type IDataServiceUpdateProvider When Using Rest With Sharepoint 2010
Fix:
Install ADO.NET Data Services Update for .NET 3.5 SP1.

I will keep updating this post as I keep learning so keep an eye on this post.

All in all I am loving SharePoint 2010 J

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,900 times in 2010. That’s about 9 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 28 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 43 posts. There were 36 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 1mb. That’s about 3 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was October 12th with 54 views. The most popular post that day was Windows Phone Press Conference at MWC – Windows Phone 7 Series Release.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were forums.silverlight.net, betaforums.silverlight.net, jeff.wilcox.name, google.co.in, and bigextracash.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for most beautiful flowers, silverlight install problems, silverlight data mining, silverlight resources installationfiles aspx, and silverlight installation problems.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Windows Phone Press Conference at MWC – Windows Phone 7 Series Release February 2010
1 comment

2

Silverlight Installation Problems / Troubleshooting Issues: August 2009
6 comments

3

Deploying Asp.net Websites on IIS7 April 2010

4

Interesting Silverlight Articles April 2010

5

Silverlight Out Of Browser – OOB Application with setup icons and everything else.. February 2010

Gartner comments on Microsoft cloud offerings

Interesting Blog post

http://blogs.pcmag.com/miller/2010/10/gartner_will_microsoft_and_vmw.php

.NET 1.1 Supportability Information

Due to feedback from customers, on June 21, 2010, the Microsoft Support Lifecycle Team (MSL) posted a notice, via the Microsoft Support Lifecycle Blog, stating that version 1.1 of the .NET Framework is not supported on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Click here to read the Blog announcement.

In order to address any remaining questions, the following information has been provided. Please let me know if you have any additional feedback.

Understanding the Lifecycle and Supportability

Below are the Support Lifecycle Dates for .NET 1.1

· Mainstream Support for the .NET Framework 1.1 ended on October 14th, 2008.

· Extended Support for the .NET Framework continues through October 8th, 2013. While support for .NET 1.1 issues is still available, non-security hotfix requests will require enrollment in the Extended Hotfix Support (EHS) program. Please note that security updates will still be provided through the end of support at no charge.

Different from Support Lifecycle Dates, “supportability” defines what software releases will be supported by Microsoft in combination with other software releases. Broadly speaking, supportability is determined by “System Requirements”.

As detailed by the Microsoft Download Center website, .NET 1.1 has the following System Requirements.

· Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000; Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 for Itanium-based Systems; Windows Server 2003 x64 editions; Windows Server 2008 Datacenter; Windows Server 2008 Enterprise; Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems; Windows Server 2008 Standard; Windows Vista Business; Windows Vista Enterprise; Windows Vista Home Basic; Windows Vista Home Premium; Windows Vista Starter; Windows Vista Ultimate; Windows XP; Windows XP Professional x64 Edition

· Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 requires Service Pack 6a.

Based on this information, .NET 1.1 does not meet the system requirements for Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2. For this reason, .NET 1.1 is not supported on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

The decision not to provide support is based on changes in the Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 Operating Systems that will not allow .NET 1.1 to be supported on these platforms.

The Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 builds on the success of the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.0 and 1.1 to provide the best runtime environment for Web and Microsoft Windows client applications.

Microsoft’s compatibility goal for .NET Framework 1.1 applications is that they should work smoothly on the .NET Framework 2.0 except for a set of documented changes as provided here.

In addition, Microsoft recently announced that later versions of the .NET Framework (specifically .NET 3.5 SP1 and later) are now considered Components of the Windows OS. Customers can now be certain of support for the .NET Framework provided they are using a supported release of Windows.

The following links detail compatibility issues, testing scenarios, and other information related to .NET 1.1 compatibility. I hope you find these useful.

Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 and 2.0 Compatibility

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/ms994381.aspx

Compatibility Testing Scenarios

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/ms994387.aspx

List of Breaking Changes

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/ms994364.aspx

Runtime Breaking Changes

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/netframework/aa497239.aspx

Design-Time Breaking Changes

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/netframework/aa570327.aspx

Application compatibility MSDN forum

http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/default.aspx?siteid=1

Deploying Microsoft .NET Framework Version 3.0

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480198.aspx

Office Web Apps Cool Feature Update: Embedd Powerpoint, Excel & Word into your Blog Post

On 23rd Sep there was an important feature update from Office Web apps team that enables us to now embed the already popular Office Web Apps in your own Blog post.
This gives way to very interesting feature set where you can now embed the slides and spreadsheets in your blog itself.

What’s Office Web Apps:
If you don’t know what Office Web Apps is it’s just an online version of the most popular office product MS Office. Where you can actually create and make edits to your office applications without actually having the Software of MS Office in your machine. Off course it has limited feature set available but still very handy if you quickly need to make some last minute changes and all you have is a machine with internet connection then that is just you need to access your slides and make the changes and save them. In more simpler terms if you are already aware of Google Docs this is just what you get from Microsoft. But Microsoft Web Apps is way ahead to be compared with its very rich feature set of Office.
You can now visit http://office.com/webapps to know all the information you need to know about Office web apps.

Steps To Embed a PowerPoint or Excel into your Blog:

All you need to do is use your windows live login id (Hotmail etc.) to signin and then upload your ppt presentations, word documents or excel spreadsheets to your SkyDrive. Then you get an embed URL that you just have to embed in your html.

For ex: I have just placed this 1-2 lines code to embed a powerpoint and an excel webapp in this blog below.

Power Point:

<iframe src="http://r.office.microsoft.com/r/rlidPowerPointEmbed?p1=1&p2=1&p3=SD20F065AFC1ACDB2E!129&p4=" width="402" height="327" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Excel:
<iframe src="http://r.office.microsoft.com/r/rlidExcelEmbed?su=2373508809167264558&Fi=SD20F065AFC1ACDB2E!151&AllowTyping=True&ActiveCell=rngHeight&Item=BMICalculator" width="402" height="346" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
That’s it you will be surprised to see that your blog will display the PowerPoint slides like a slide show and your excel spreadsheets embedded in your webpage with all the formula’s running which is really a very cool feature. you can try changing the weight and height in the above excel to see that BMI automatically gets calculated and updated in the excel sheet.

You should finally also visit this blog for a video demonstrating these features.

http://blogs.office.com/b/office_blog/archive/2010/09/23/office-web-apps-reach-20-million-new-features-today-7-more-countries.aspx

You might also be interested to read about Windows Live Essentials that I blogged couple of months back
http://fazal.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/windows-live-essentials-beta-wave-4-released/

Very Important Asp.Net Security Vulnerability & Workaround

Hi All,

Recently there has been public disclosure of a security flaw in security aspect of Asp.net which was of a very severe nature.

Especially if you are already having an Asp.net application deployed and is sharing some really confidential information.

Since this was publicly disclosed recently and Microsoft has taken an immediate step to get a work around initially to prevent your apps from being vulnerable.
Most concerning thing is that this vulnerability exists in all versions of ASP.NET and so if you or your customer has an application that is vulnerable then please give this article a look to ensure you are not being hacked due to this security flaw.

What does the vulnerability enable?

An attacker using this vulnerability can request and download files within an ASP.NET Application like the web.config file (which often contains sensitive data).

At attacker exploiting this vulnerability can also decrypt data sent to the client in an encrypted state (like ViewState data within a page).

So please check the more details at the below blog that gives you information about:
How the Vulnerability Works
How to Workaround The Vulnerability

Enabling the Workaround on ASP.NET V1.0 to V3.5

Enabling the Workaround on ASP.NET V3.5 SP1 and ASP.NET 4.0

How to Verify if the Workaround is Enabled

How to Find Vulnerable ASP.NET Applications on Your Web Server

How to Find More Information about this Vulnerability

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/09/18/important-asp-net-security-vulnerability.aspx

Currently there is just a workaround but Microsoft is planning to release a patch pretty soon.

Thanks & Regards,

Fazal