• Chrome opens instantly, letting you write something in the address bar immediately and having autocomplete for search term as well as web addresses. Internet Explorer blocks the CPU for a second or two and, even if it lets you write something in the address bar, it hickups just so that what you wrote is truncated. Firefox is so keen to update every fucking extension that it takes forever to start. Yeah, I know, FF4 is way better. Not compared to Chrome it isn't.
• Internet Explorer is supposed to support the new Silverlight wonder technology. Unfortunately, every single SL video I open is sluggish, blocks my mouse, doesn't respond to simple commands like Space to pause and arrows to skip and every Silverlight app is alower than their Flash counterpart. I've just wasted one hour today to uninstall with a special tool the older Silverlight version as the installer for the new one brutally stopped with a "generic error message". Well, screw that! I would rather download the videos and run them in a "generic" video player
• Javascript: it works 8 times faster on Chrome that on Internet Explorer 8. I know they've just released Internet Explorer 9, but it won't work on Windows XP. I have an old computer, it works fine, I want a browser for it without buying a trillion dollar Windows 7 license. You can't provide it for me, Microsoft!
• HTML5: it is supported in Chrome. If I ever want to start web dev again, I would go with that
• Extensions: I am not a big fan of extensions as they slow the browser down. I do prioritize speed. However, I have AdBlock Plus installed on Chrome and I couldn't install it (even if I have tried emulating it) on Internet Explorer. Having no flashing nonsense on a page when I am reading the text on it is wonderful. Try it!

/// <summary>
/// Helper for Image objects
/// </summary>
public static class ImageHelper
{
  /// <summary>
  /// Get an image from a byte array
  /// </summary>
  /// <param name="iconBytes"></param>
  /// <returns></returns>
  public static Image GetImageFromBytes(byte[] iconBytes)
  {
    if (iconBytes == null || iconBytes.Length == 0)
      return null;
    using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(iconBytes))
    {
      try
      {
        return GetImageFromStream(ms);
      }
      catch
      {
        return null;
      }
    }
  }

  /// <summary>
  /// Get an image from a file without locking the file
  /// </summary>
  /// <param name="fileName"></param>
  /// <returns></returns>
  public static Image GetImageFromFile(string fileName)
  {
    try
    {
      using (var stream = File.Open(fileName, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.ReadWrite))
      {
        return GetImageFromStream(stream);
      }
    }
    catch
    {
      return null;
    }
  }

  /// <summary>
  /// Determines if an image is indexed (with a color palette)
  /// </summary>
  /// <param name="image"></param>
  /// <returns></returns>
  public static bool IsImageIndexed(Image image)
  {
    switch (image.PixelFormat)
    {
      case PixelFormat.Format1bppIndexed:
      case PixelFormat.Format4bppIndexed:
      case PixelFormat.Format8bppIndexed:
      case PixelFormat.Indexed:
        return true;
    }
    return false;
  }

  /// <summary>
  /// Get an image from stream without locking the stream
  /// </summary>
  /// <param name="stream"></param>
  /// <returns></returns>
  public static Image GetImageFromStream(Stream stream)
  {
    try
    {
      using (var image = Image.FromStream(stream))
      {
        var srcBitmap = image as Bitmap;
        var destBitmap = new Bitmap(image.Width, image.Height,image.PixelFormat);
        if (IsImageIndexed(image)&&srcBitmap!=null)
        {
          Rectangle srcArea = new Rectangle(0, 0, image.Width, image.Height);
          BitmapData srcData = srcBitmap.LockBits(srcArea, ImageLockMode.ReadOnly, image.PixelFormat);
          Rectangle destArea = new Rectangle(0, 0, image.Width, image.Height);
          BitmapData destData = destBitmap.LockBits(destArea, ImageLockMode.WriteOnly, image.PixelFormat);

          IntPtr srcPtr = srcData.Scan0;
          IntPtr destPtr = destData.Scan0;
          byte[] buffer = new byte[srcData.Stride*image.Height];
          Marshal.Copy(srcPtr, buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
          Marshal.Copy(buffer, 0, destPtr, buffer.Length);
          srcBitmap.UnlockBits(srcData);
          destBitmap.UnlockBits(destData);
          destBitmap.Palette = srcBitmap.Palette;
        } else
        {
          using (var graphics = Graphics.FromImage(destBitmap))
          {
            graphics.DrawImage(image, 0, 0);
          }
        }
        return destBitmap;
      }
    }
    catch
    {
      return null;
    }
  }
}

From early ages we learn to listen to the people around us, but only at a later time we get to understand that what those people are saying may not be true or in our advantage. I believe this sets us up for the rest of life to partially believe even the most ridiculous claims for the sole reason that someone has uttered them. And who better to take advantage of this than politicians and lawyers.

Check out these stupid ideas:

• Ad blocking may not be entirely legal - In other words, if someone were to help you personally to avoid all the annoying flashing and blinking and popping ads on a site, they would infringe some law of revenue. While this may sound preposterous, try googling for AdBlockPlus and you will see a myriad pages accusing successful ad-blockers of diminishing web site revenues. And if you think this is just the lament of sore losers happy to distribute their content at almost no cost on the Internet, but wanting to take money from you unencumbered, or if you think that being your browser, your computer and your money paying for the connection you should have some sort of rights, check this out: CoralQQ author arrested in 2007.
• Free Internet porn is unfair competition to pay sites! - I may soon be accused of distributing free content on my blog as unfair competition to the ad ridden ones, if that is the case. I sure wouldn't want to hurt those, no sir. I find it terribly funny that the case against free porn was dismissed as an action designed to censor free speech (in legal terms a SLAPP).
• Making software that allows one to make better use of software or a device, be it a computer, XBox, PlayStation or IPhone, is illegal! - As you can see from the Wikipedia link someone wrote in the first paragraph "The distribution and use of cracked copies is illegal in almost every developed country". Major arrested development! You may have heard that recently the unhackable PlayStation3 has been hacked. The funny thing is that with each new version, Sony seems to remove functionality, making PlayStation one of the few devices that are better old than new. When they found out about the hack Sony started a major law action against sites that post the hack solution for their crappy console. Apparently, their perspective is that you never owned the console, but you "rented it", while spending time to make software that allows you, the user, to do what you want with the thing you paid good money for, but is still not yours, it's illegal. They phrase it in a very funny way, too, saying that the hacking actions "are circumventing effective protection methods". Well, they aren't very effective, now, are they?
• Major sites that distribute large content like video should pay extra; people watching should pay extra, too; ISPs should pay a lot; the Internet should be split into low rent and high rent areas. One might argue that since one does pay for the Internet connection at both ends, it should not be an issue what they are doing with it. That may be too late for Canadians, who always seemed very decent to me, as they got a new law voted on the 25th of January allowing Usage Based Billing for ISPs. People are now outraged and are protesting rather than swallow it, but already the coolness of Canada has been forever sullied in my eyes.
• Using encryption of your own data on your own device is illegal! - The Indian government demanded that Blackberry find a way to allow authorities to read the encrypted data on their devices or at least disable the option for Indian devices, else face a national ban. Of course, they "reasoned" it is all for the sake of the people and against terrorist acts. It now seems unlikely they will proceed with the ban, but still, the whole thing begs the question: how come they didn't ask this of other device manufacturers? Also, it may be of some interest to the reader that all major instant messaging tools like Yahoo, MSN (now Windows Messenger) or GTalk do not feature encryption. Skype does, but guess what? They also provide some eavesdropping tools.

The list could go on and on and on, but these were both startlingly ridiculous and pretty recent. Apparently, the DRM bug, the one that made people sell you things and then consider it's still their property, is still alive and thriving. Most such beliefs come from the power we give other by not reacting. It is easier for us to do nothing than do something, so it is easy to take advantage by positioning the average human so that he has to do something to thwart your plans.

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The latest sources are now on Github: C# 4.0 library to generate INotifyPropertyChanged proxy from POCO type. The source from the post, designed as a proof of concept, is not the same as the one from Github.

It all started from a Sacha Barber post on CodeProject, enumerating ways in which one can use Aspect Oriented Programming to mark simple automatic properties so that they get compiled into fully fledged INotifyPropertyChanged properties, thus saving us the grief of repeating the same code over and over again in each property setter. The implementations there were good, but too complex, relying on third party libraries, some of them not even free.
He completely ignored template generators like T4, but then again, that particular approach has a lot of issues associated with it, like having to either parse source files or somehow tap into the compiled assembly... before you compile it.
However, this brought forth the idea that I could do this, maybe in some other way.

Enter Felice Pollano, with his article on CodeProject detailing a method of using CodeDom generation to create at runtime the INotifyPropertyChanged object from an already existing type. This is pretty slow, but only when first creating the type, so with a cache system it would be totally usable. I liked this approach better, but I noticed there were some errors in the generated code and when I tried changing the generating code I had to look at it for half an hour just to understand where to change it. Wouldn't it be better to use some sort of template that would be easy to edit and use it to generate the proxy type?

So this is my take on generating INotifyPropertyChanged classes dynamically, avoiding the repetitive plumbing in property setters. The library contains a template for the class and a separate template for the properties. The proxy type is being generated in memory from a string that is generated from the source type and the two templates. All in all, one class, two templates, three public methods and four static methods. As easy as 1,2,3,4 :) Here is the code:

public static class TypeFactory
{
private static readonly Dictionary<Type, Type> sCachedTypes = new Dictionary<Type, Type>();

public static T GetINotifyPropertyChangedInstance<T>(params object[] arguments)
{
Type type = GetINotifyPropertyChangedType<T>();
return (T) Activator.CreateInstance(type, arguments);
}

public static Type GetINotifyPropertyChangedType<T>()
{
return GetINotifyPropertyChangedType(typeof (T));
}

public static Type GetINotifyPropertyChangedType(Type type)
{
Type result;
lock (((ICollection) sCachedTypes).SyncRoot)
{
if (!sCachedTypes.TryGetValue(type, out result))
{
result = createINotifyPropertyChangedProxyType(type);
sCachedTypes[type] = result;
}
}
return result;
}

public static bool IsVirtual(this PropertyInfo info)
{
return (info.CanRead == false || info.GetGetMethod().IsVirtual)
&&
(info.CanWrite == false || info.GetSetMethod().IsVirtual);
}


private static Type createINotifyPropertyChangedProxyType(Type type)
{
var className = "@autonotify_" + type.Name;
var properties = type.GetProperties().Where(p => p.IsVirtual());
var sourceCode = getINotifyPropertyChangedSourceCode(className, type, properties);
var assembly = generateAssemblyFromCode(sourceCode);
return assembly.GetTypes().First();
}

private static string getINotifyPropertyChangedSourceCode(string className, Type baseType,
IEnumerable<PropertyInfo> properties)
{
var classTemplate = getTemplate("INotifyPropertyChangedClassTemplate.txt");
var propertyTemplate = getTemplate("INotifyPropertyChangedPropertyTemplate.txt");
var usingsBuilder = new StringBuilder();
var propertiesBuilder = new StringBuilder();
usingsBuilder.AppendLine("using System.ComponentModel;");
usingsBuilder.AppendFormat("using {0};\r\n", baseType.Namespace);
foreach (PropertyInfo propertyInfo in properties)
{
usingsBuilder.AppendFormat("using {0};\r\n", propertyInfo.PropertyType.Namespace);

string propertyString = propertyTemplate
.Replace("{propertyType}", propertyInfo.PropertyType.FullName)
.Replace("{propertyName}", propertyInfo.Name);
propertiesBuilder.AppendLine(propertyString);
}
string sourceCode = classTemplate
.Replace("{usings}", usingsBuilder.ToString())
.Replace("{className}", className)
.Replace("{baseClassName}", baseType.Name)
.Replace("{properties}", propertiesBuilder.ToString());
#if DEBUG
Debug.WriteLine(sourceCode);
#endif
return sourceCode;
}

private static string getTemplate(string resourceName)
{
var templateAssembly = Assembly.GetAssembly(typeof (TypeFactory));
resourceName = templateAssembly.GetManifestResourceNames()
.First(name => name.EndsWith(resourceName));
using (Stream stream = templateAssembly.GetManifestResourceStream(resourceName))
{
using (var streamReader = new StreamReader(stream))
{
return streamReader.ReadToEnd();
}
}
}

private static Assembly generateAssemblyFromCode(string sourceCode)
{
var codeProvider = CodeDomProvider.CreateProvider("CSharp");
var parameters = new CompilerParameters
{
GenerateExecutable = false,
GenerateInMemory = true
};
var locations = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies()
.Where(v => !v.IsDynamic).Select(a => a.Location).ToArray();
parameters.ReferencedAssemblies.AddRange(locations);
CompilerResults results = codeProvider.CompileAssemblyFromSource(parameters, sourceCode);
#if DEBUG
foreach (CompilerError error in results.Errors)
{
Debug.WriteLine("Error: " + error.ErrorText);
}
#endif
return results.Errors.Count > 0
? null
: results.CompiledAssembly;
}
}

As you can see, the code needs only a type that has public virtual properties in it and it will create a proxy that will inherit that class, implement INotifyPropertyChange and override each virtual property with a notifying one. The templates are so basic that I feel slightly embarrassed; I keep thinking if I should have created template entities that would stay in the same file. :) Here are the templates:

{usings}

namespace __generatedINotifyPropertyChanged
{
  public class {className} : {baseClassName},INotifyPropertyChanged
  {
    public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;

    {properties}

    private void OnPropertyChanged(string propertyName)
    {
      var handler=PropertyChanged;
      if (handler != null)
      {
        handler(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName));
      }
    }
  }
}

public override {propertyType} {propertyName}
{
  get { return base.{propertyName}; }
  set {
    if (!Equals(value,base.{propertyName})) {
      base.{propertyName}=value;
      OnPropertyChanged("{propertyName}");
    }
  }
}

Don't forget to save the templates as Embedded Resource in the assembly.

Update: At Sacha Barber's advice I took a look at the DynamicObject solution for the INotifyPropertyChanged code smell. The link he provided is OlliFromTor's CodeProject article Using DynamicObject to Implement General Proxy Classes. While this works a lot easier than with compiling generated code, it also has a major drawback: the proxy class does not inherit from the original object and so it can only be used as such, but only in dynamic scenarios. Otherwise, it seems to be a perfect solution for proxy scenarios, if you are willing to discard the type safety.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: ASP.NET 4.0.30319.0
Description:
aspnet_wp.exe could not be started. The error code for the failure is C0000142. This error can be caused when the worker process account has insufficient rights to read the .NET Framework files. Please ensure that the .NET Framework is correctly installed and that the ACLs on the installation directory allow access to the configured account.

iisreset /stop
%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\aspnet_regiis.exe -i
iisreset /start

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