Scott Dorman writes Absolutely not! While I understand the desire to monetize every "product" coming out of Microsoft, it sometimes ends up hurting the community as a whole...The other problem is that you then start sending mixed signals to the community. On one hand you say that running static code analysis is a best practice but you then restrict that capability to companies/developers willing to spend $10K+ on a Team System SKU. This makes it hard for the community to recognize the real value since it becomes seen as a restricted/ elite/ enterprise-only feature. It also makes it harder for us to talk about things...

Steve Schofield writes "...script accepts a domain, resolves the IP(s) used in DNS, runs an HTTP Get on the host name and / or hostname with WWW. It returns a status code, the AbsoluteURI. This is handy when you are processing 100's of domains trying to determine if they are valid. PS - One of my favorite features is the EmulateDig option..."

Deepak Kapoor writes "There are two things which I as a consultant / developer come across many times. One is verifying connectivity to a database which is often a cause of production issues and second is creating valid connection string in the least amount of time. This is the way I do it. Hopefully it will be of help to you. First of all..."

Dmitry Sotnikov writes "Just got easier (and faster!) in AD cmdlets 1.4! Before this release you still could manually filter user or computer records by pwdLastSet or LastLogonTimestamp – now user and computer retrieval by a bunch of attributes with an easy command like:..."

Eric White writes "...using LINQ to write a recursive-descent parser for SpreadsheetML formulas..."

Cameron Fuller writes "...I have 3 servers in a web farm I want the farm icon to go red when more than 2 of them are offline...I started with a simple distributed application as shown below which monitors two websites, which are dependant upon one service and two databases. The website is monitored by a distributed application. The distributed application is shown below:..."

Don Patterson writes "...This is an advance notification of one out-of-band security bulletin that Microsoft is intending to release on August 2, 2010. The bulletin addresses a security vulnerability in all supported editions of Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2, that is currently being exploited in malware attacks...."

Albert Pascual writes "...found that trying to load just one xap file was giving me this error: [System.InvalidOperationException...The package downloaded successfully but an error occurred while reading the contents of the package. I made sure there wasn’t any circular reference and the metadata was like the sample provided and still didn’t had any success. How can I load a xap containing other resources besides UserControls?"

Deepak Kapoor writes "...how to find Data Providers installed on a machine. Data providers in .NET Framework provide the plumbing necessary to connect to databases. There are different data providers available which can connect to SQL Server, Oracle or other databases through OleDb. You can find the data providers installed..."

Philip Colmer writes "...I’ve installed it on my PC and some quick testing of recorded TV programmes, a DVD, music, photos and videos all show that the problem does indeed seem to have been fixed. You can read more about the problem and the resolution for Windows 7 and Vista at KB 974324. The hotfix can be requested electronically and you’ll receive..."

Scott Hanselman writes "...Here's some things I was impressed with:...Some things I had trouble with:...It'll take a while to get used to "it just works" from Microsoft. All in all, I'm pleasantly surprised as everything has just worked...I took a few moments and filmed some guerilla video of me exploring the phone..."

Mary Jo Foley writes "...Microsoft execs attempted to clarify where the company is focusing its efforts currently and in the coming year. Officials also emphasized repeatedly that in spite of all its talk and high-profile marketing push on the consumer front, Microsoft’s enterprise products constitute a huge part of the company’s revenue base. Actually, Microsoft has eight core focus areas..."

Public Sector DPE Team writes "...very cool...131 Visual Studio 2010 Code Snippets for use with jQuery”..."

Robert MacLean writes "Visual Studio 2010 has the ability to undock code windows by clicking and dragging on the code window tabs...I like the ability to undock the windows because it lets me view two different parts of the same file at the same time...get a full screen side by side view which is GREAT for comparing code..."

Aaron Tiensivu writes "To begin, follow the instructions here for the usual Server 2008 R2 workaround/fixes for Server 2008 R2 and OCS 2007 R2. 1. From an elevated PowerShell prompt...[8 steps]...Celebrate, at this point you'll have a working Group Chat install on Server 2008 R2..."

Joris Poelmans writes "On a SharePoint 2010 development machine you typically want to see the full stack trace when an error occurs. In SharePoint 2010 you will need to modify 2 web.configs:..."