PD Consulting and Security

Team is smarter? I don’t think so.

peterw — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:50:42 GMT

Whether the group is smarter than the individual depends on the individual. Individuals who produced amazing results Teams that produced amazing results Michelangelo Mozart Einstein Voltaire Aristotle Shakespeare Newton Darwin Laplace Pythagoras Socrates Sophocles Homer Pasteur Werner Von Braun Porsche NASA in the sixties The Roman army Sparta at Thermopyle Conceivably, a group made up of outstanding people would also be outstanding, but I doubt it because to exercise its advantages a team can only...(read more)

ValueConverter and the mapping domain quandary

peterw — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 13:48:36 GMT

ValueConverter seems like just the ticket for handling data types whose domains are finite sets of named values (think enum). But how do you get the domain definition into scope? Resource dictionaries are wonderful until you find they’re out of scope. And they’re always out of scope for the code of a ValueConverter. You can’t pass them in as ConverterParameter because it isn’t a DependencyProperty. What you can do is use a MultiBinding and a MultiConverter, and pass the resource as one of the binding...(read more)

Solaris Express - Static IPs the Right Way

davidr — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 03:21:00 GMT

The modern way to configure Solaris IP addresses with NWAM - NetWork AutoMagic.

...(read more)

When I were a lad

peterw — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 22:22:49 GMT

The whole declining standards thing is generally nothing more than old people disapproving of people running around being offensively young. Last night, the Queensland State of Origin crowd was graceless, bad-mannered and profoundly unsporting. Booing a defeated team during their concession speech was appallingly bad behaviour. “No one gives a crap, ok thank you.” would have normally be unacceptable but under the circumstances I think the NSW captain handled things well....(read more)

Why the carbon tax is a bloody stupid idea

peterw — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 03:22:02 GMT

Behaviour modification taxes work by changing the path-of-least-resistance. People choose options that don’t involve paying the tax. Since there aren’t any options that avoid the carbon tax, it will have absolutely no effect on taxpayer behaviour. Buy an electric car? Where do you think the electricity comes from? And there will be a great deal of energy expended creating the new car, so this would increase liability. Buy a PV array to generate your own electricity? Not a completely stupid idea but...(read more)

Silverlight as the new UI

peterw — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 00:30:37 GMT

There is a lot of FUD about Microsoft allegedly abandoning Silverlight for HTML5/script. The first big mistake here is assuming it’s an exclusive choice. Why can’t it be both? Windows has two primary markets. In the home market, it sells to users, not developers. It sells on the user experience, and the most visible, most interactive aspect of the new UX is the integration of the Metro touch interface. Metro tiles are basically Sidebar Gadgets on steroids. Sidebar gadgets have always been built with...(read more)

WP7–tips for young players

peterw — Sun, 15 May 2011 10:26:01 GMT

Application state Your two new best friends are PhoneApplicationService.Current.State and IsolatedStorageSettings.ApplicationSettings. Get to know them and they will serve you well. Don’t overdo it with PhoneApplicationService.Current.State because this is automatically serialised and there is a 2Mb limit. Exceeding this limit will produce a rather confusing error that appears to be about access permissions and trustees. Context menus and ListBoxes Let me guess, you’d like to use a context menu with...(read more)

Re-inventing the notebook

peterw — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 13:22:12 GMT

For a long long time I was entirely convinced that tablet computers would never amount to anything. My rationale for this belief was simple and grounded in reality: tablets don’t have keyboards. The keyboard will continue to be weapon of choice for bulk text entry until voice recognition is reliable. This won’t happen until true AI is achieved. Which may be never. A tablet with a keyboard, I smugly opined, is called a notebook. QED. There were other reasons: finger as pointer is tiring, and the fingertip...(read more)

How to fix SP1 Silverlight theme damage

peterw — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:52:28 GMT

If you see this, Then for each theme, navigate to this folder. C:\Users\ YourUsername \AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Extensions\Microsoft\Silverlight Business Application ( theme name )\1.6\~PC\ProjectTemplates\CSharp\Silverlight\t.zip Rename BusinessApplication.Web to BA.Web Yep, that’s all. You don’t even need to restart VS2010....(read more)

How to make a green curry

peterw — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 07:31:58 GMT

Delicatessen 1kg marinara mix Fresh produce section 1 red capsicum 1 coriander bunch 50g beans 2 large brown onions 1 cluster of garlic 1 lemongrass shoot 1 bunch of garlic shoots 300g potatoes 1 chilli pepper 300g mushrooms Asian food section 40g Green Curry paste 2 tins Green Curry mix 1 tin coconut cream 1 tin water chestnut slices 1 tin bamboo shoots 1 tin baby corn spears This dish is normally served with rice or noodles. If you choose rice, then set it cooking just before you prepare the curry...(read more)