The antivirus is one of the most important software that should be on installed on any computer. I doesn’t matter if you’re using Windows XP, Vista or Linux. “Fences” like the UAC or sudo aren’t that strong because they’ll just ask if you want to allow a program to run in privileged mode, they won’t tell you what that program will do.

For the last 5-6 years, I’ve been a fan of Kaspersky Antivirus and I recommended it to everybody. Many friends replied that it uses to many resources and the PC runs slow, but the trick was to set the scanning to “performance” (low). That meant a faster system, with insignificantly less security due to the excellent algorithm. It also had some optimizations, like scanning only the modified files (not all) before running them.

But since the last revision, I noticed that it started to leave a heavier footprint on my system, especially on the web and mail scanning. It takes 30 seconds to 5-6 minutes to load a youtube video or the LinkedIn page. Even with the web scanning turned off, it still takes significantly more than with the program turned off.

Jeff Atwood, from CodingHorror.com realised this several months ahead and provides performance data from the quoted study:
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Static Constructors

As Wikipedia explains, a constructor is a special method that is used to initialize member data. This member data can be object’s data, i.e. for each individually object (instance of a class) these fields are initialized with specific values, or class’s data known as static data, available to all instance objects as 1 global resource.

We all know object constructors, but are there any other constructors? Well, YES: static constructors!

Static constructors are used like “normal” constructors, but are prefixed with the keyword “static” and are used to initialize static members. This initialization occurs when the class is used for the first time.

Here is a simple example:

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A couple weeks ago, my colleague Vasile Sumanschi (Schumi) and I held two presentations regarding the concurrency models in Java and .NET. This was part of the Parallel & Distributed Computing Architectures course.

Schumi handled the Java part, while I went on the .NET path. The presentations turned into a discussion and we had a friendly versus between the 2 (Java & .NET). Unfortunately the time was not sufficient for such a vast subject.

The study is a compilation of the documentation available on the MSDN Library, articles on MSDN Magazine, concurrency chapters from the books MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-536) Microsoft.NET Framework 2.0 Application Development Foundation by Tony Northrup, Shawn Wildermuth, Bill Ryan and CLR via C#, Second Edition by Jeffrey Richter, and also my personal experience.

I devised the study in two major parts, following the concurrency models:

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Broken Windows / Linux or some other OS? I’ve faced this problem at least a dozen times. In these situations my best advice is to completely reinstall the OS.

But first you need to…

• recover data
• check your computer for hardware problems

I’ve just returned from my cousin, where a computer crashed. Because there was some important info she needed to recover, she called me before taking the PC to Service. I had 2 posibilities:

1. take the HDD out, physically mount it in another PC, save data and then place it back, or..
2. boot Linux from a Live CD, mount the needed partition, copy data and good bye!

I’ve selected no. 2 and proceeded as following:

• enter BIOS and select the CD-ROM as primary boot device
• boot Linux from live CD (I used Ubuntu 6.06 LTS)
• mount the selected partition using the terminal command
• copy important data either to
  
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I’ve just completed a 3 day training on the Management of Software Projects using Microsoft Solutions Framework and Visual Studio Team System.

This training (or seminar) was organized by Microsoft Romania and it was intended for software pros from the area of Cluj-Napoca. Myself, along with a couple of other Microsoft Student-Partners, were lucky enough to receive an invitation.

The trainer was Adi Stoian from TechReady. I’ve previously met Adi last November at the TechEd Developers Conference in Barcelona.

I was really looking forward to see him in action because last spring he trained around a dozen CS students along with my MSP colegue, Mihai Hudea in an activity of the MS Center in the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca. It was a great succes!

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