Ups, I've done it. It's fubar [1] now.

However it's possible to send an error report using the errorreport switch: csc *.cs /errorreport:prompt

Actually I found why the compiler screw up. I use a lot of plattform invokes and because I am lazy I use a constant with the library name.

private const string LIB = "MyNativeDll.dll";

[DllImport(LIB)]
//...

While changing the code, I removed the const modifier by accident, which causes the compiler to fail...

[1] dict.tu-chemnitz.de
[2] msdn.microsoft.com

If you write managed code using P/Invoke, sometimes you have to handle structures returnd by the called methodes. These MSDN articles about marshalling structures [1] and the StructLayoutAttribute class [2] should provide enought information to do so.

[1] msdn.microsoft.com
[2] msdn.microsoft.com

This table took me a few minutes, but will save me hours.

I found a blog entry written by the C# Team, about how to to update user interface from a thread that did not create it [1]? This blog about C# questions could be really awesome, but unfortunately the entries are once in a blue moon.

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/csharpfaq/archive/2004/03/17/91685.aspx
[2] http://blogs.msdn.com/csharpfaq/default.aspx

It usually takes ages until I find the page with the format strings on MSDN. So here's a short note, not to forget it.

C or c Currency
D or d Decimal
E or e Scientific (exponential)
F or f Fixed-point
G or g General
N or n Number
P or p Percent
R or r Round-trip
X or x Hexadecimal

[1] msdn.microsoft.com

Sequoia View is still a great software to visualize your harddisks usage and find big files or directories with many small files. The usage of Cushion Treemaps makes this special look and feel. At the homepage choose Tips & Trix to find some information how to enable right-clicking folders to start Sequoia View. Since harddisks became larger, the tool needs amlost 10 minutes to check my 60G system disk the first time. I remember the first time I used the tool on a 2G disk, it just needed a few seconds.

[1] http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/

Google Earth [1], is a nice application, using DirectX and Google Maps [2]. So I was looking for Microsoft Research in Cambridge [3], UK.

You can really waste a lot of time, scrolling around and looking all the nice places. Beside this I found the German headquarter of Microsoft Deutschland GmbH [4], too.

[1] http://earth.google.com/products.html
[2] http://maps.google.com/
[3] http://research.microsoft.com/aboutmsr/labs/cambridge/default.aspx
[4] http://www.microsoft.de/

I just found the link to this 80x15 button maker [1] on schrankmonster. And I really like its output:

[1] http://www.lucazappa.com/brilliantMaker/buttonImage.php

Today I got the hint to take a deeper look into the AD. Surprisingly I found the following entry in the Active Directory Schema [1]:

Sounds like a joke, doesn't it? If you have a look into RFC 1274 [2] search for section 9.3.5. There you will find

9.3.5.  Favourite Drink

   The Favourite Drink attribute type specifies the favourite drink of
   an object (or person).

     favouriteDrink ATTRIBUTE
         WITH ATTRIBUTE-SYNTAX
             caseIgnoreStringSyntax
             (SIZE (1 .. ub-favourite-drink))
     ::= {pilotAttributeType 5}

Seems like it is no joke at all...

[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/adschema/adschema/a_drink.asp
[2] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1274.txt?number=1274

Because I needed this for a demo CD: just some information how to build autorun.inf files [1].

[1] http://autorun.moonvalley.com/autoruninf.htm