I've been experiencing an extremely high build time on a windows mobile project targeted to compact framework 2.0 before finding out what was responsible of such slowness. Fortunately solving this problem is as easy as adding a line to a configuration file.

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I receive about 20 spam messages in my mailbox every day. I know this can be considered a low number, since I know of users receiving hundreds of spam, with a variety of subjects, ranging from porn sites to viagra, medicines, casino, software, etc.

I wonder how can these spammers think that I'm so stupid to use my credit card to buy their products - but indeed I'm afraid that if they persist in their illegal business is because there are people who buy from them.

Anyway, what can we do to fight against them? There are several services which detect messages and prevent them from reaching our mail client, and mail client add-ons which move suspect messages into a spam folder, so that we don't have to waste time reading messages we aren't interested in. But is this a good way to fight spammers? Do they prevent spammers from sending you emails if you don't buy from them? Unfortunately I don't think so.

What can we do? Report spam.

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I presume that everybody knows what MSDN is, and how much it costs - it's not exactly what I define a cheap product, but it is undoubtedly of great value, since it includes all Microsoft development tools, and it's a must have for any developer involved in the Microsoft technologies.

Not everybody knows about the Empower Program, a MSDN-like subscription offered at the very low fee of 375 USD, which includes software for development, testing and internal business use along with 5 user licenses. The program is available in almost all the countries, with different prices (usually higher) outside US.

Of course, this program is subject to a set of requirements:

• limited to 1 year only, renewable for a second year only
• available once per company
• being a registered member of the Microsoft Partner Program (registration is free)
• having a company's web site
• development of a reusable software application supporting one of the required technologies

The program is equivalent to the Visual Studio Professional + MSDN Premium subscription (formerly MSDN Universal), which includes almost everything, but it doesn't include Visual Studio Team editions - in fact, Visual Studio 2005 professional only is included.

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