k_nitin_r

Hi!I know the frustration when you buy a new printer and a couple of days later you run out of ink and find yourself at the store buying catridges or toner. However, what you need to realise is that the ink catridges or toner provided with the printer is a 'demonstration sample' (as worded by the store attendant) and offers you very little ink/toner. When you buy an ink catridge or toner separately, you get a normal capacity catridge or toner that you can print with.HP generally charges a higher amount for the printer but you can get the catridges or toner replacement for cheaper. Laser printers cost more initially but their toner is built to last. It makes Hewlett Packard one of the preferred choices in printers for corporate customers. Canon is cheap in both the cost of the printer and the cost of the catridges or toner. Epson sells extremely cheap printers but their catridges and toner can end up costing you quite a bit.If you are on a budget, you ought to get yourself an inkjet printer, which will not last for very long. If you want to have a printer that will last you a while and you intend to do some heavy printing with it, you will want a laser printer. You might have more problems with the laser printer complaining about memory from time to time, but you will have no problem printing text. The toner replacements available for laser printers do more than just provide new ink - it also replaces the drums that are used in printing and although this would give you the idea that laser printers are more expensive for printing larger quantities, the case is actually quite the opposite.

Hi!A disk check for errors can be performed in a few different ways - it can include a check of only the areas of the disk where data is stored, it can include a check of only the blank areas of the disk, and it can combine both the checks. There are also checks for an increased spin-up time of the disk, which is one of the first few signs of gradual disk failure.Hardware either fails gradually which is when it gives you a couple of months of service before finally dying on you completely, or it can fail suddenly. The gradual failure is what makes computer hardware problems hard to figure out at times with only a brief description of the problem i.e. hearing an account of the problem without actually having physical access to the computer to try it out. @web_designerAs you've suggested, a full format is a pretty good way to make sure that a disk works correctly. I'm not aware of the disk error checking capabilities of Norton Antivirus, which you have mentioned in your reply, but Norton/Symantec does provide additional products specifically for performing system checks. I believe Norton 360 might be what you need. The software is not freeware - it costs $80 to $100 - but might be able to get a trial version or you could buy an older version of Norton Utilities off somebody else.Do you remember seeing the videos by Toms Hardware when they took off the processor cooling fans of AMD and Intel processors? The AMD processor literally melted while the Intel processor slowed down before finally coming to a halt. It's a fail-safe mechanism built into Intel processors and the game being demo-ed at the time had a sharp decrease in frame rate before Windows 'panicked' (etymology - "Linux Kernel Panic").I did have an overheating problem with an HP laptop too - it was an HP Compaq 6710b that was 'refreshed' with newer specs and sold last year. I got it as a work laptop to replace the old Lenovo N1000 that they managed to salvage when I first stepped into the office. Running Need For Speed Undercover (without the fancy graphics, since the laptop does not have a dedicated graphics adapter card and the integrated graphics capabilities are less than ideal for the graphics that Need For Speed Undercover has to offer) caused the laptop to overheat and turn off after about half an hour to about forty five minutes.Although HP laptops offer a good value for money.... ummm, let me re-word that... although HP laptops offer a GREAT value for money, they aren't built to last.A co-worker went through two different laptops as she is very accident-prone. She put her laptop into the case and picked it up without fastening the laptop strap or closing the zipper and BAM! The laptop fell out and although there was no visible damage, the LCD panel was cracked from the inside (visible upon closer inspection of the screen). She went to the technical support guy and said, "I dropped my laptop and the screen isn't working. When can you have it fixed? I'm leaving in about five minutes and I need it by then." :-DThe technical support representative gave her the 'look' and said, "We will have to send it to the Hewlett Packard workshop, which is a half-hour drive away, and will have to wait for their service quotation, which we will send to you."Physical damage aside, I've had a Compaq Presario 1800 with a screen hinge that jammed so the computer lid wouldn't shut. Then, I had a Compaq Presario 2132 that has a loose power connector on the board and some of the keys on the keyboard don't work any more. The touch pad works erratically, with the cursor hopping about even with a motionless finger on the touch pad.

Hi!What you have described seems to be a problem with your hard disk more than anything else. Have you been able to swap hard disks with another computer to try them out?Do you have an antivirus software installed? If so, the antivirus scan probably kicks in while playing movie or music files for the sound to keep repeating, but it's pretty speculative until we have performed more tests on your computer.Also, you might want to turn on the computer with the lid taken off to ensure that the processor fan is working correctly. I'm not really sure which fan's temperature you have got because there's the cooling fan located within the power supply unit, and there are cooling fans on processors, with a heat sink sitting between the fan and the processor and some thermal paste to keep the air insulation from forming between the processor and the heat sink. The reason why you ought to check the processor is because when Intel processors heat up, they throttle down to reduce speed and if they are still unable to stay cool, they shut down completely. Chances are that your processor is running hot while the rest of the case is not so the processor slows down and has the sound card play the same sound over and over again due to the circular sound buffer.If all else fails, you can keep swapping parts with another computer till you find that your system does not hang any more. If it still does after swapping out everything including the motherboard and power supply of the computer, you might want to check for software problems again.

Hi!@anwiiThat's pretty interesting to hear. In India, burglars steal drain/manhole covers for the metal. There's this gang that struck an entire neighborhood and made away with their loot. They aren't too keen on stealing copper wires from homes because of the noise involved in breaking through the walls - since most people leave their windows open all day and all night, the sound would be a give-away for the burglars.

Hi!I've read a review recently of the Dell Studio 17 Touch laptop and it seems to be pretty reasonable priced, seeing the difference between the models with touch screens and the models without (perhaps about 40 pounds). The price of the Dell Studio 17 touch was about 1,000 pounds which seems to be pretty reasonable. Although I haven't really wanted a Dell after several classmates and co-workers have had issues with Dell laptops, I might consider a purchase seeing how the price makes the laptop with touchscreen quite affordable.It might take a while till I see any of the touchscreen laptops at stores in my region so I'm not out to purchase one yet.

Hi!I have been able to get my hands on the latest public release of Ubuntu, which is Ubuntu 10.04. The user interface enhancement do seem to match those of Mac OS so I would think that it's a lawsuit just waiting to happen if Apple can claim that the colors and the presence of the minimize, maximize, and the close buttons on the window title bar have been shifted to the left. Mac OS lovers would probably be more willing to move to linux due to the similarity with their current environment. However, I do think that this would prevent some of the novice Windows users from moving to Ubuntu due to the fact that the layout is different - this may not be Ubuntu's target audience so it may not matter for the most part. I believe Ubuntu targets users who are willing to try something different; this could be Windows users who do not want to shell out the cash for getting a MacBook Pro or even a MacBook, or could be the MacBook users who want to have a cheap PC that they could buy and have a familiar environment to work with. Mac users are usually more receptive to changes than Windows users so I am quite surprised Microsoft has decided to change the way that the task bar works in Windows 7. It is perhaps the single major change that I haven't really like in Windows 7 but fortunately, it is possible to configure the task bar to work the same way as it did in previous versions of Windows by un-pinning the programs from the task bar, setting smaller icons, and disabling the taskbar grouping feature.

Hi!I agree with networker - we can't really generalize and say that all of the unregistered .ru domain holders are spammers - some of them do actually have legitimate uses for their domains. In terms of email spam, the Nigerian bank account transfer scams seem to outnumber any of the other spam that I get. When the control over top level domains does tighten, it would still be possible for users to get subdomains so it does not really stop anybody from doing what they are already doing. Perhaps the requiremen of registration for a .ru domain is aimed at improving the image of Russia in the international users community rather than doing anything serious enough to prevent spam.@BuffaloHelpDoes it really help to block the list of spammers? I mean do we get repeat-spam from the same email addresses? For the blog-comment spam that I have been getting, I believe the email address field is populated with a randomly generated name and domain because I don't remember seeing the same email address there twice. Perhaps the requirement of having to confirm their email addresses by clicking on a link would reduce the blog command spam because I'm pretty sure that the spammers haven't created each and every one of the email addresses that they provide while spamming.BTW, it is possible to track down the Internet Service Providers of the spammers and to contact them about the abusive behavior - it might help to some extent if the service providers believe that their resources are being utilized excessively and it is detrimental to the services that they provide to other subscribers too.

Hi!FaceBook has reached 'critical mass'. They have enough users to be able to dictate the terms to their users, unless they do something to go too far, such as to charge for the service in which case users would simply move to a different service. Google Buzz had me move away from Facebook for the simple reason that it is more convenient for me to look up my Google Buzz posts and replies when I access my GMail account. In fact, it is the reason for me to use the Google Talk messenger too because whenever I am signed into GMail, i get any instant messages from online users via Google Talk, and any new email appears within the Inbox listing without having to refresh the page. Perhaps the one problem that Google Buzz does have is that the messages appear within the Inbox instead of a separate Google Talk-like notification 'dialog' and that was one of the biggest turn offs for most users. I'm quite satisfied with the interface that Google Buzz uses, but I really would like have a Google Talk style notification system instead of having the Buzz messages in my Inbox... and, yes, I have heard about setting rules to move Google Buzz messages from the Inbox into other folders and I don't want to have to do that because it would make me less likely to read new messages if they appeared in a folder and I didn't see it.The concept of FaceBook applications has been appealing feature for most users and has been used for games such as FarmVille, Mafia Wars, Scrabble, and Hang Man. Google Buzz, Orkut, and Twitter lack applications, which is why FaceBook rules the roost, although I would imagine MySpace would have a good number of users since it shares many of the features with FaceBook.

Hi! @web_designer You had me look :-) I've looked up the Microsoft Technet article that mentions that it is possible to install the Internet Information Service on Microsoft Windows 7 Home Starter, Home Basic, and Home Premium editions. It is installed via the control panel via the Windows features link. You can get SQL Server Express and Visual Web Developer for free too! BTW, Windows Vista and Windows 7 do not limit the Internet Information Services in any way like the version on Windows XP did - you get access to all of the features of the web server without any restrictions on the maximum number of connections or files. If anyone would like to have a look at the source article for reference, the link to the Microsoft Technet article is: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc731911.aspx

Hi!I like the VLC player too. I'm quite surprised that the poll wasn't edited to include VLC player. MPlayer uses the same libraries, so before VLC I used MPlayer.However, with Windows Media Player 12 (included in Windows 7), I believe we have support for most codecs and do not really need VLC player. In fact, the Windows Media Player has better support for some video formats, such as the MKV format used by many camcorders. Playback in VLC players tends to lag while I get pretty smooth playback with Windows Media Player 12.

Hi!I'm not really aware of how the profile pages on the old forum software worked because I never really used them, but the profile pages setup right now tell you about the forums that members have been most active in and therefore you can tell what a person's interests are. The profile page also tells you when a member was last online, so if you do need to contact a member, you have a fair idea of when you can get a response.@BuffaloHelpThe toolbar doesn't really slow things down at all. Perhaps it was, the first time when I loaded it, but I guess the web browser might have cached some of the files needed for displaying the toolbar.

Hi!It's good to know that you have already taken the first step of installing the software that you require for development. Do you have any prior development experience with Visual Basic .NET or C#, perhaps any Windows Forms development experience? If you do, you will find the Web Forms development quite siomilar to the Windows Forms development that you have been doing in the past. In fact, Web Forms are an abstraction that enables developers to think of web pages in terms that they are familiar with and use an event driven approach.The best way to learn to build applications is to practice. You can look at existing web application projects, watch screen casts, read books, and read tutorials. There is nothing that can substitute actual practice.To get started, within Visual Studio, go to File > New > New Project, and select ASP.NET project from among the available project templates. Select the programming language that you want to use (Visual Basic .NET or C#) and create the project files in the desired directory. At this point, the Visual Studio integrated development environment should provide you with a blank page, with a toolbox on the left and the properties dialog box on the right (unless you've changed the default layout provided by Visual Studio). Drag and drop a textbox and a button onto the page, and double-click the button. This automatically creates an event handler for you to enter code into, so you could set a value for the textbox, such as by doing a TextBox1.Text = "Hello World" if you are using Visual Studio and by adding a semi-colon at the end if you are programming with C#. Press F5 to run the code and click the button to see the execution of the event handler. When you look at the actual code generated by Visual Studio, you would probably notice the HTML markup that Visual Studio automatically inserts into the aspx file and the presence of the ASP.NET tags. You can set various attributes within the ASP.NET tags either manually by editing the markup or by clicking on the tag in the designer and changing the properties from within the properties dialog box on the right of the Visual Studio interface. The aspx.vb file contains the Visual Basic code and the aspx.cs file contains the C# code, within which the editor automatically places the code for the event handler when you've double-clicked on the button.

Hi!@Gyan Chand SharmaIt is hard to define which language is the "best" for a given purpose because each language has its own advantages and disadvantages. You could have programming languages that offer you the ability to write code without ever having to define variables or data types and Visual Studio provides you with that capability for the Microsoft .NET platform but the practice is strongly discouraged because it could lead to errors that cannot be tracked at compile-time and would require significant testing effort to detect. It is possible to enforce the requirement for the developer to declare variables and their types, and to manually type-cast the variables to the desired type instead of having Visual Studio transform the variables into the appropriate type required for a given operation by setting the Option Explicit and Option Strict to On either at the top of each of the code files or by setting it as an option used by the compiler within the project properties.There were folks who would swear by Ruby on Rails (the language and the framework) for the development of web applications and did consider it superior to all else, but then again, you cannot really match the performance of an application written with FastCGI-C, Java, or .NET.@EmilyYou can clear the text boxes by setting the Text property to an empty string. Properties in .NET can be read from and written to with the same reference name, unlike mutators and accessors that have the "set" and the "get" in the name that requires you to use the appropriate name depending on whether you want to set a variable value or get it. This enables you to easily replace variable names with property names. For file manipulation, the classes in the System.IO namespace would provide you with the desired functionality. System.IO.File is probably what you want to look at, along with the InputStream and OutputStream classes.

Hi!@rvalkassNo offense intended, but I disagree. For a person with Visual Basic for Application experience (the original poster who started this thread), I believe Visual Basic .NET is a better solution than PHP for developing web applications. There are tons of free .NET based applications available on CodePlex and Visual Basic .NET is as good a language as C# for developing web applications, since they use the same framework and have access to the same set of classes. The Microsoft .NET framework includes built-in functionality for authentication of users and user registration; the framework also has the user interface pre-built so all you need to do is place the control onto the page from the toolbox with a simple drag-and-drop operation.Visual Basic .NET uses the same syntax that Visual Basic 6 / Visual Basic for Applications has. You still declare variables with the DIM statement, though you have a setting to define if the compiler should enforce the requirement of declaring variables and even a setting to define if the developer would have to manually type-cast variables. With both options turned off, Visual Basic .NET would resemble the behavior of Visual Basic for Applications more closely. The FOR loop, the WHILE loop, and the DO loop have the same syntax but we have the additional FOREACH loop, which I believe did not exist in Visual Basic 6. Arrays are still defined in the same manner but we now have collection classes, which are a part of the .NET framework and are simpler to use than arrays. GOTO statements and labels are still supported but are strongly discouraged within the development community as they tend to create spaghetti code - the GOTO statements and the labels themselves are not of as much consequence as the developers who use them but due to the inability of novice developers to use them effectively and due to low readability of code after using the jumps within the source code, they ought to be replaced with function calls or loops, as appropriate.@kvarnerexpressIf you do have any questions or concerns about how to use Visual Basic .NET, please feel free to post to the forum and I or one of the other members of the forum will gladly help you out with any problems that you may encounter.

Hi!@innosiaYou do not really have to install anything if you want to develop an AJAX-based ASP.NET website with Visual Studio 2008 because the AJAX components are already included. When you go to File > New > New Project, AJAX ASP.NET project is listed as one of the project types that you can create without having to install any additional Visual Studio extensions or third party components.A recent trend among many ASP.NET developers is to use jQuery instead of the Microsoft AJAX libraries, in which case you do not need the AJAX extensions at all - you can create a regular ASP.NET website and add in the jQuery library as a regular Javascript file and include the script onto your ASP.NET pages and master pages.

Hi!@nirmaldanielMainframes are not really stone age technology... they are just as relevant today for high-reliability computing as they were back in the old days. There are tales of military mainframes that continued to work after having a bullet (I can't say that I believe it completely because I read about it on the Internet, but it is possible that an enemy secret agent/spy infiltrated a military base and shot a hand gun at a mainframe, hoping to see the system go down... but if he was really a secret agent, he would know about the redundancy implemented in mainframe systems... or perhaps he was aiming for the scientists and a stray bullet hit the mainframe) go through a system board because the components are built with redundancy in mind.COBOL is used in many software development service firms in India, such as IBM and Cognizant, and large multinationals have mainframes and mainframe developers of their own. Mainframes are not as common as they once were because most of them have been replaced by multiple cheaper Wintel (Intel processor based systems running Windows) machines because they are so much cheaper to maintain when it comes to human resource planning.

Hi!@ayom88The problem of finding the leaf nodes of a tree is a simple one. Irrespective of whether the tree is binary or not, you can have a function that accepts a parameter, the tree node. Initially, this will be called by the main function or any other entry point of your program. The function would then check if the node passed as a parameter has any children. If the node does have children, the function will call itself recursively with each of the child nodes and if the node does not have any children, it can add the parameter into a list. A stack overflow would occur if any of the nodes points back to a parent (immediate or indirect) so you would have to add additional logic to perform a check if you are expecting loops within the tree (a regular binary tree should have none).Most novice programmers are unable to comprehend the usage of recursion and would consider iterative means. The problem can be solved iteratively too, but a recursive solution is simpler.

Hi!@web_designerThe issue of having a different number of posts appearing in different sections of the forum has been addressed. This is due to the fact that on some pages, the scripts associated with the pages count all of the posts that you have made to the forums while on other pages, the scripts count only the posts that count toward the MyCENTs calculation and ignore the other posts that were made to no-post-count sections of the forums.@webishqiptarThe forum software has been upgraded but all of the old data has been retained. We had a different theme (look and feel) to the forum, along with lots of new features included in the new version of the forum software (the forum software we use is the Invision Power Board. I believe they did have the Invision Free forum software but do not provide it any more. They do have a trial version that you could get if you contacted them).@mahesh2kIt would take at least until next week for the MyCENTs to get calculated. In the meantime, do keep posting because the posts that you make this week will be counted toward the MyCENTs calculation too.

Hi!@web_designerThe new Microsoft .NET 4.0 framework is an entirely new runtime, unlike the Microsoft .NET 3.5 framework which was simply a set of additional libraries and classes around the .NET 2.0 framework. The difference between the capabilities of .NET 3.5 and .NET 2.0 may have been significant but there has never really been a change to the runtime so if you do add in the libraries and classes of .NET 3.5 into a .NET 2.0 application, it would still execute perfectly well. However, since .NET 4.0 is an entirely different runtime, you cannot add the new functionality to an old application, though you could take up some libraries such as the ASP.NET MVC framework which includes the class libraries and the Visual Studio templates for creating the MVC project structure. An FYI here, the MVC project template only enables you to create an MVC Web Application project and not an MVC Web Site project... for those of you who don't really know what the difference is between a web application project and a web site project, it really doesn't make much of a difference from a development perspective since you write almost the exact same code for both types of projects.The data structure hierarchy was not much of a problem for me, but memorizing each of the class methods provided in the different namespaces was a bit too cumbersome for me and I just gave up on it because when a certification is more about memorization than about understanding the concepts, the effort that you put into memorizing the class members doesn't really pay off in practical applications because the Visual Studio integrated development environment prompts you with the autocomplete in either case.I'm really looking forward to the new Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist certification for the .NET 4.0 framework since it's a fresh new structure that makes so much more sense than the old structure of the certification.

Hi!Invoking one button handler from another is pretty simple because all you need to do is make a call to the other button handler. In the event handler of the first button, add a "Button2.Click()", passing in any needed arguments from the first button handler.Ideally, you should not be doing this. You ought to create a separate method that is called by both the buttons instead of having one button handler call another button handler because when the code does need to be modified and the second button handler is modified, the unexpected behavior of having the second button handler execution would occur. What I mean is that you can do it and it is possible, but it is a bad coding practice to do so. You might be able to implement the observer design pattern to have the second button handler attach itself to the click events of both buttons instead of having one button's handler call the second button's handler.BTW, what's with the "Find Lawyer" link in your signature? Are you a lawyer? If so or in any event whatsoever, please note that I take no responsibility for any implications arising from the above advice and that any information provided is given on an as-is basis, with no warranty/guarantee provided for the usefulness or accuracy of the above information :-P

Hi! @donneo I know my reply is coming pretty late to your question, but I have noticed that there weren't any replies and anybody who does visit this thread now would be able to follow the thread to find a response. The best place to get started would be the Microsoft ASP.NET portal that provides videos to watch, a couple of podcasts (I believe they don't have any new podcasts), text articles, and links to blogs by Microsoft employees. Check out the site at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/. Visual Basic .NET is quite simple to learn if you have had some experience with Visual Basic 6, or with QuickBASIC or GW-BASIC - the syntax for many of the statements remains the same and you still define variables the same way with the DIM statements. Remarks (code comments) can be added into the source code with the REM keyword or by using an apostrophe. The new feature introduced into Visual Basic .NET is a setting for the explicit declaration of variables, and the explicit type casting of data types - while these features can be disabled, they are enabled by default in the newer versions of Visual Studio and help developers in finding bugs quickly. This follows the tradition set by Java, which went further by requiring developers to either catch every exception that their method calls and code throws, or to at least declare that the method has an exception that is bubbled up to a higher level method call. The Microsoft .NET framework does not check your code to that level, but it does impose some basic checks to catch errors during the compilation phase.

Hi!I never really started preparing for the Microsoft Certified Application Developer and the Microsoft Certified Systems Developer certification tracks because from the time I first looked at the Microsoft developer certification tracks, they've had a separate certification track for different kinds of developers. The exams have been in place since sometime around 2003 which is when the Microsoft .NET 2.0 framework was introduced, along with Visual Studio 2003.The Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist certification is much more focused and you only have to take up the exams that are related to the kind of work that you would actually do while performing in the role. For the Microsoft .NET 4.0 framework, Microsoft would be introducing new certification exams that would make it unnecessary to learn about subjects that are totally irrelevant for developers to use at their work places such as, for example, Windows Services that are just about never used by web developers who work purely with ASP.NET based web forms applications and ASP.NET MVC based applications.If you are planning to take up a Microsoft developer certification, I would suggest that you wait till the introduction of the new Microsoft developer certification tracks for the .NET 4.0 framework.

Hi!@damoonIf you would like to learn about ASP.NET (classic ASP has pretty much been phased out in most organizations), you ought to check out the Microsoft's portal for ASP.NET (link provided by web_designer in the previous post of this thread). They have videos, articles, and links to blogs so there's plenty of information there. There's also a forum on which you can find questions that have already been answered, though you might not always find answers to questions that you are looking for. The CodeProject also has a couple of examples and a pretty active question-and-answer section that frequently comes up in the google search results whenever you look up solutions to problems that you are facing on ASP.NET.@web_designerClassic ASP bears a resemblence with PHP and doesn't have the extensibility that ASP.NET has to offer - ASP.NET is based on the Microsoft .NET framework and it requires some skill in working with C# or Visual Basic .NET (VB7 or higher). I've used Microsoft's ASP.NET portal site initially and I still find it quite useful for picking up newer technologies that Microsoft keeps integrating into the Microsoft .NET framework.

Hi!@MattXtwoI've never really experience the bug that you describe, but it sounds like there's a problem with the mouse controls - it happens when the left mouse button is 'stuck'. You might want to check if you have anything against your laptop's touchpad/trackpoint buttons and if your mouse button works normally in other Windows-based applications.I find the game play of Counter Strike quite annoying because when a player shoots another player at point blank range and the other player gets absolutely no loss of health, then it simply sucks the fun out of the game.Try to have a go at Smokin Guns. It's open-source and free, supports network game play as well as bots, and it doesn't have the game play problem that I have described in the paragraph above from Counter Strike,

Hi!The directory listing denied error indicates that you have not specified the file that you want to access and the web server is configured to not show you a listing of all of the accessible files in the directory. This is a security measure and is pretty normal on most web-facing servers, but since you are accessing your web server from your own computer or from an office local area network, you can enable the directory listing.Also, I would like to mention that the virtual directory is different from an application - configuring a directory as a web application enables IIS to execute the script within a separate AppDomain and gives you an application-level control over the settings that you make to run the web application.Web Service pages do not necessarily provide you with a user interface, and when they do, all they show you is the URL with which you can access the web service and perhaps the parameters that you can pass to the web service. It does not actually execute the web service to show you the results. There are different kinds of web services - there are the ASMX web services or classic ASP.NET web services that can be consumed by non-Microsoft .NET applications, and there are Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) web services that are specific to Microsoft .NET applications. If you were to use a .NET web service from a PHP application, for example, you would create an ASMX web service instead of a Windows Communication Foundation web service.