Galin Iliev's blog

Today I tried to to RDC(Remote Desktop Connection) to a remote computer (of course) and I got a nasty error basically saying that I need to restart the machine in order to connect to it :) So I searched the web for a bit, connected to another computer in same LAN, shot the command and waited for about 5 minutes and… voila. I was able to connect.

So what is the command?! shutdown, of course :)

shutdown -m //computername -r -f
-s shutdown
-r restart
-f force close any applications
//computername or ip

Or just run shutdown /i and the UI on the right will appear to make you feel more For more information see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article: How To Use the Remote Shutdown Tool to Shut Down and Restart a Computer in Windows 2000. P.S. The target machine was Windows Server 2008 so this one still works :) comfortable.

A friend of mine send me link to article in Wikipedia describing Cross-site request forgery attack.

Cross-site request forgery, also known as one-click attack or session riding and abbreviated as CSRF ("sea-surf"[1]) or XSRF, is a type of malicious exploit of a website whereby unauthorized commands are transmitted from a user that the website trusts.[2] Unlike cross-site scripting (XSS), which exploits the trust a user has for a particular site, CSRF exploits the trust that a site has in a user's browser.

(source Wikipedia)

This is how the attack is performed:

<img src="http://bank.example/withdraw?account=bob&amount=1000000&for=mallory">

Note how simple this would be?! And end user won’t see anything – not even image :).

This illustrates why is so important when implementing REST in your services to do only read on GET requests.

This is how close will become C# and VB in next release:

The items in white-bold are new features…

(Source: PPTX from VS2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Training Kit)

This is what we currently have in .NET 3.5 SP1

And this is what will be included in .NET 4.0

(Source: PPTX from VS2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Training Kit)

MSBuild is very powerful language for automating build process but as every computer thing it could be confusing.

So for a start this should work as Visual Studio solution files (*.sln/*.proj) files are valid MSBuild files:

MSBuild MySolution.sln

So for more script-like example this can show how complex solution with Web Application project can be build and files (result of publish operation) copied to drop location.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns=http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003 

ToolsVersion="3.5">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <OutputFiles>.\OutputFiles\</OutputFiles>
    <ReleseFolder>D:\WcfFileTransfer\Release\</ReleseFolder>
    <PrecompiledWeb>$(OutputFiles)_PublishedWebsites\WebHostApp\</PrecompiledWeb>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <Target Name="Clean">
    <Exec Command="MSBuild.exe WcfFileTransfer.sln /t:Clean" />
  </Target>
 
  <Target Name="Build">
    <Exec Command="MSBuild.exe WcfFileTransfer.sln /t:Rebuild /p:Configuration=Release 

/p:OutDir=..\$(OutputFiles)" ContinueOnError="False" />

    <ItemGroup>
      <!--include needed files-->
      <WebFiles Include="$(PrecompiledWeb)**\*.*"
                Exclude="$(PrecompiledWeb)**\developer.config;$(PrecompiledWeb)**\HOWTO*.*"/>
    </ItemGroup>
     
    <!--show message-->
    <Message Text="Copying to Deployment Dir:@(WebFiles) to $(ReleseFolder) :" />
    
    <!--perform recursive copy-->
    <Copy
            SourceFiles="@(WebFiles)"
            DestinationFiles="@(WebFiles->'$(ReleseFolder)\%(RecursiveDir)\%(Filename)%(Extension)')"  />
  </Target>
</Project>

This script is executed from Visual Studio Command Prompt like this

MSBuild build.proj

For more information  about MSBuild you can take a look at MSDN reference page or Channel9 Wiki:

Or the MSBuild: By Example tutorial:

1. Introducing Well-Known Metadata
2. Formatting Your Output
3. Editing MSBuild Files with IntelliSense
4. Integrating MSBuild into Visual Studio
5. Introducing Custom Metadata
6. Understanding the Difference Between @ and %
7. Using Environment Variables in Your Project
8. Reusing MSBuild Project Elements
9. Dealing with MSBuild Errors

I hope this is good as a start.

After being quite busy for last 4 months it is a time to ramp up with new cool technologies that are on the product line.

So while installing VS 2010 it is a good reading to find out what to do once it is done:

• read what’s actually new in C# 4.0 from MSDN Code Gallery/C# Future section
• Look at IDynamic Object sample and other documents from here
• Download VS 2010 & .NET Framework 4.0 Training Kit – only 26.5 MB

And of course get some free time – a night or two should be enough :) should be enough for starting…

What is it if not the future :)

This could solve the biggest two issues for cell phones and mobile computers – keyboard and screen size