Many applications I work on require the reading and parsing of third-party XML streams. These streams often originate with user-entered data and subsequently end up with invalid characters in. Of course, this should never happen, but it does and when it does, you need to be ready for it. It surprised me to learn that not all valid UTF-8 characters are in fact valid in well-formed XML. So with a combination of this fact, and with remote applications allowing user-entered …
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nLite – Windows Installation Customizer
I came across this neat Windows application today. It is basically a tool for creating customised Windows installation disks. I’ve seen similar tools for slip-streaming service packs into disks, but this one goes a step further and makes it dead easy to include drivers and various other Windows tweaks. It is all very straight-forward to use: Point it at the original Windows disk. Tell it what you want to change (point it at service packs, drivers, etc.) Tell it to …