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• Hibernation to a swap file 12.04, fragfile output

  - by MrHug10

  I've been trying for some time now, to get hibernation working in Ubuntu 12.04 on my Dell XPS17. I dualboot Windows 7 and Ubuntu, each having their own partition and one shared partition for all my data and documents. As I would like to be able to swtich from ubuntu to windows without losing all the things I was currently doing in Ubuntu, I would like to be able to use hibernation. In order to achieve this I've followed the information at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1042946. Only instead of creating my swap file on my linux partition (which is formatted: ext4), I've chosen to create one on my shared partition (which is formatted: ntfs). There is a problem with this though (at least, that's what I think the problem is), because when I call: sudo filefrag -v /media/data/Ubuntu_Swap_Space/6GiB.swap, I get the following output: Filesystem type is: 65735546 File size of /media/Data/Ubuntu_Swap_Space/6GiB.swap is 6442450944 (1572864 blocks, blocksize 4096) Discontinuity: Block 22 is at 25829097 (was 232498) /media/Data/Ubuntu_Swap_Space/6GiB.swap: 2 extents found So I'm not sure what I need to fill in as an offset to follow the rest of the earlier mentioned information. I've tried both the location of block 22 and the number that is listed after that, but when I then try sudo pm-hibernate nothing happens and this shows up in my /var/log/pm-suspend.log s2disk: Could not use the resume device (try swapon -a). Reason: No such device Hope someone can help me out with this! If you need more information about anything, please let me know!

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• this.BoundingBox.Intersects(Wall[0].BoundingBox) not working properly

  - by Pieter

  I seem to be having this problem a lot, I'm still learning XNA / C# and well, trying to make a classic paddle and ball game. The problem I run into (and after debugging have no answer) is that everytime I run my game and press either of the movement keys, the Paddle won't move. Debugging shows that it never gets to the movement part, but I can't understand why not? Here's my code: // This is the If statement for checking Left movement. if (keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left) || keyboardState.IsKeyDown(Keys.A)) { if (!CheckCollision(walls[0])) { Location.X -= Velocity; } } //This is the CheckCollision(Wall wall) boolean public bool CheckCollision(Wall wall) { if (this.BoundingBox.Intersects(wall.BoundingBox)) { return true; } return false; } As far as I can tell there should be absolutely no problem with this, I initialize the bounding box in the constructor whenever a new instance of Walls and Paddle is created. this.BoundingBox = new Rectangle(0, 0, Sprite.Width, Sprite.Height); Any idea as to why this isn't working? I have previously succeeded with using the whole Location.X < Wall.Location.X + Wall.Texture.Width code... But to me that seems like too much coding if a simple boolean check could be done.

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• Cleaning Up After Chrome

  - by Mark Treadwell

  I find Google Chrome, which I have no interest in, is continually getting installed on machines in my house, mostly due to Adobe Shockwave bringing it along as an install package. (Family members are agreeing to the download, not realizing the Chrome is getting dropped as well.) My major issue after uninstalling Chrome is that you can no longer click on links in Outlook emails. There is a lot on the web about this, and Google has not been proactive at fixing their uninstaller. I have now added a registry file to my Win64 systems to reset the problem registry keys and clear the error. This registry file is pretty simple. It merely resets HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\.htm, HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\.html, and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\.shtml back to their default values of "htmlfile". Chrome takes over the handling of these file extensions because its default install is to make itself the default web browser. The Chrome uninstalled fails to clear/reset them. In troubleshooting this, I looked in my registry based on the web info on the Chrome uninstall problem. Since my system had never had Chrome installed, my registry did not have the problem keys. To troubleshoot, I installed (ugh!) and uninstalled Chrome. Sure enough, Chrome left the expected debris with a value string of "ChromeHTML.PR2EPLWMBQZK3BY7Z2BFBMFERU" or something similar. Resetting these values fixed the problem. I see that Chrome leaves quite a bit of debris behind in the registry. I guess it is creating the keys then leaving them behind, even though their presence (with bad data) subsequently affects operations.

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• Is there a command to "manually automount" an attached disk?

  - by cheshirekow

  I have an extra hard drive which I use for backups. The label on its one and only partition is "backup". When I open nautilus and click on "backup" it mounds the drive in "/media/backup", and then there's a little eject button next to it's icon in nautilus. If I manually mount the drive by creating a directory and using "sudo mount /dev/sdx /some/dir", the eject icon still shows up in nautilus, but when I press it I get an error because the device was not mounted via whatever it is that mounts it the other way. What I would like is to be able to do this "mount to /media/backup and enable the eject button" via the command line. The goal is to have the device mounted by a script which needs the drive, but then leave it mounted until I manually eject it... if I want to. P.S. I'm aware that I can have the drive auto mounted at startup, but that's not what I'm looking for here, and I'd like to know if this is possible. Clarification: I'm looking for a command to "mount the drive the way nautilus would". This should create the directory "/media/backup", mount the device to that directory, and then when I press the eject button from nautilus, it should unmount the device and delete the directory.

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• PyGTK/Quickly Add string to ListStore

  - by AllRadioisDead

  I'm trying to build an application that will prompt the user for a string, and then add that string to a Scrolling Listview object using quickly and PyGTK. I've been following this tutorial: http://developer.ubuntu.com/resources/app-developer-cookbook/multimedia/creating-a-simple-media-player/ When I hit the add button, the prompt comes up properly and I'm able to enter the string. The column appears correctly but the list ends up being blank. What am I doing wrong? import gettext from gettext import gettext as _ gettext.textdomain('spiderweb') from gi.repository import Gtk # pylint: disable=E0611 import logging logger = logging.getLogger('spiderweb') from spiderweb_lib import Window from spiderweb.AboutSpiderwebDialog import AboutSpiderwebDialog from spiderweb.PreferencesSpiderwebDialog import PreferencesSpiderwebDialog from quickly import prompts from quickly.widgets.dictionary_grid import DictionaryGrid import os # See spiderweb_lib.Window.py for more details about how this class works class SpiderwebWindow(Window): __gtype_name__ = "SpiderwebWindow" def finish_initializing(self, builder): # pylint: disable=E1002 """Set up the main window""" super(SpiderwebWindow, self).finish_initializing(builder) self.AboutDialog = AboutSpiderwebDialog self.PreferencesDialog = PreferencesSpiderwebDialog # Code for other initialization actions should be added here. self.supported_web_formats = [".net",".html", ".com"] def on_addbutton_clicked(self, widget, data=None): #let the user choose a path with the directory chooser response, string = prompts.string("Enter a string", "Please enter string:", "Sample Text") #make certain the user said ok before working if response == Gtk.ResponseType.OK: #make a list of the supported media files media_files = Gtk.ListStore(str) #add a dictionary to the list of media files media_files.append({"String":string}) #remove any children in scrolled window for c in self.ui.scrolledwindow1.get_children(): self.ui.scrolledwindow1.remove(c) #create the grid with list of dictionaries #only show the File column media_grid = DictionaryGrid(media_files, keys=["File"]) #show the grid, and add it to the scrolled window media_grid.show_all() self.ui.scrolledwindow1.add(media_grid)

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• Facing a character towards the mouse

  - by ratata

  I'm trying to port a simple 2d top down shooter game from C++(Allegro) to Java and i'm having problems with rotating my character. Here's the code i used in c++ if (keys[A]) RotateRight(player, degree); if (keys[D]) RotateLeft(player, degree); void RotateLeft(Player& player, float& degree) { degree += player.rotatingSpeed; if ( degree >= 360 ) degree = 0; } void RotateRight(Player& player, float& degree) { degree -= player.rotatingSpeed; if ( degree <= 0) degree = 360; } And this is what i have in render section: al_draw_rotated_bitmap(player.image, player.frameWidth / 2, player.frameHeight / 2, player.x, player.y, degree * 3.14159 / 180, 0); Instead of using A-D keys i want to use mouse this time. I've been searching since last night and came up to few sample codes however noone of them worked. For example this just made my character to circle around the map: int centerX = width / 2; int centerY = height / 2; double angle = Math.atan2(centerY - mouseY, centerX - mouseX) - Math.PI / 2; ((Graphics2D)g).rotate(angle, centerX, centerY); g.fillRect(...); // draw your rectangle Any help is much appreciated.

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• 2 folders in Sys/Class/Backlight?

  - by zebrapie

  ISSUE: Backlight brightness does not change. More Detail: Brightness will not change, using both 'System Settings-Screen', or FN keys (Brightness bar shows and moves, but screen brightness does not change). Notcied a post in this thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1866283) about having multiple folders in Sys-Class-Backlight... I HAVE TWO FOLDERS TOO! 'intel_backlight' and 'acpi_video0' Using the function keys, alters the value in the acpi_video0's 'Brightness' file - But doesn't actually alter the brightness of the screen. If I add 'backlight=vendor' in Grub, my function keys then edit the value in the 'Intel_Backlight brightness file. - But again doesnt actually change the brightness of the screen. Computer: Fujitsu Siemans Pi2515, Intel Integrated Graphics, No hdd partition. Already Tried: -Editing grub to contain: acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor -http://ubuntuguide.net/change-screen-brightness-with-fn-key-in-ubuntu-11-0410-10 -sudo apt-get install acpi -$ sudo setpci -s 00:02.0 F4.B=20 -Brightness does not adjust in fallback mode either. -Reinstalling OS, Using Linux Mint (Same problem). -Upgrading and downgrading BIOS. Many thanks for reading, I understand this problem may need a bit of a Linux pro to sort. If anyones up for the challenge i'll spend any amount of time being walked through this, posting results. Don't want to give up here!

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• How to set individual NTFS partitions permissions behaviour for each user account?

  - by ryniek

  I have two NTFS partitions (DOWNLOADS for downloaded files and VM for my VirtualBox .vdi file) for which i must have full permissions for my allday use account. They should be also automounting when i login to this account. But i've also set Guest account for guests. For Guest account, i want make VM partition fully disabled and invisible (and thus it mustn't automount) but DOWNLOADS partition should be shared with limited privileges with Guest account. Editing fstab i'm able to share DOWNLOADS partition with Guest on limited privileges but VM can be only set to limited and have disabled automounting - so guest can't mount it but it still can be seen in Nautilus, plus I must always mount it manually when i login to allday account. Is there some trick to make what i want? Here's my fstab config: # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0 #Entry for /dev/sda1 : UUID=35e66658-5ee9-40cf-bf56-8204959e3df0 / xfs defaults 01 #Entry for /dev/sda2 : UUID=26c714cf-4236-45e7-9c46-cfcf91a215ae /home xfs defaults 02 #Entry for /dev/sda5 : UUID=1315BCB027C44639 /media/DOWNLOADS ntfs-3g auto,uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=0022,nodev,locale=pl_PL.utf8 0 0 #Entry for /dev/sda6 : UUID=60FF39EB72B72264 /media/VM ntfs noauto,uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=0077,nodev,locale=pl_PL.utf8 0 0 #Entry for /dev/sda7 : UUID=c52411f5-105c-45d1-971f-412f962c350e none swap sw 0 0 /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0 Thanks

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• Make a basic running sprite effect

  - by PhaDaPhunk

  I'm building my very first game with XNA and i'm trying to get my sprite to run. Everything is working fine for the first sprite. E.g : if I go right(D) my sprite is looking right , if I go left(A) my sprite is looking left and if I don't touch anything my sprite is the default one. Now what I want to do is if the sprite goes Right, i want to alternatively change sprites (left leg, right leg, left leg etc..) xCurrent is the current sprite drawn xRunRight is the first running Sprite and xRunRight1 is the one that have to exchange with xRunRight while running right. This is what I have now : protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { float timer = 0f; float interval = 50f; bool frame1 = false ; bool frame2 = false; bool running = false; KeyboardState FaKeyboard = Keyboard.GetState(); // Allows the game to exit if (GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back == ButtonState.Pressed) this.Exit(); if ((FaKeyboard.IsKeyUp(Keys.A)) || (FaKeyboard.IsKeyUp(Keys.D))) { xCurrent = xDefault; } if (FaKeyboard.IsKeyDown(Keys.D)) { timer += (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds; if (timer > interval) { if (frame1) { xCurrent = xRunRight; frame1 = false; } else { xCurrent = xRunRight1; frame1 = true; } } xPosition += xDeplacement; } Any ideas...? I've been stuck on this for a while.. Thanks in advance and let me know if you need any other part from the code.

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• need a different backup solution

  - by DigitalJedi

  I just built a new media/backup server using Ubuntu 12.04 64bit. I installed a hard drive to be used only for music, pictures, and videos and formatted it fat32 so my 1 and only Windows PC could map those folders as netshares. My laptop, also running Ubuntu 12.04, is what I am using the most so new media is first downloaded on my laptop. I've already got the music, videos, and pictures folders from my server mounting as shares on my laptop on boot thanks to some fstab edits and sshfs. Now I'm wanting either an app or script that could backup any new files I add to my local media folders to the mounted folders on my server. I've been Googling all day and found a few apps like rsync but they seem to have issues with ext4 to vfat backups. I thought maybe a script would be best but I'm new to scripting in Linux and don't want to mess anything up. Basically I am looking for something that will backup only newly added files to the server. I figure I could schedule it once a week. There are some stipulations. For example, my local music folder has over 700 folders for each artist/band then sub folders inside those for albums. I want something smart enough to only copy newly added content so I'm guessing the modified date would probably be a good condition if I were scripting. I'm rambling. Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated. I'm not finding anything to suit my needs. I'm almost to the point of just learning bas scripting so I can write something but then it will be a couple weeks or so before I have a possible solution and I'd like something in place sooner.

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• C# - How to override GetHashCode with Lists in object

  - by Christian

  Hi, I am trying to create a "KeySet" to modify UIElement behaviour. The idea is to create a special function if, eg. the user clicks on an element while holding a. Or ctrl+a. My approach so far, first lets create a container for all possible modifiers. If I would simply allow a single key, it would be no problem. I could use a simple Dictionary, with Dictionary<Keys, Action> _specialActionList If the dictionary is empty, use the default action. If there are entries, check what action to use depending on current pressed keys And if I wasn't greedy, that would be it... Now of course, I want more. I want to allow multiple keys or modifiers. So I created a wrapper class, wich can be used as Key to my dictionary. There is an obvious problem when using a more complex class. Currently two different instances would create two different key, and thereby he would never find my function (see code to understand, really obvious) Now I checked this post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/638761/c-gethashcode-override-of-object-containing-generic-array which helped a little. But my question is, is my basic design for the class ok. Should I use a hashset to store the modifier and normal keyboardkeys (instead of Lists). And If so, how would the GetHashCode function look like? I know, its a lot of code to write (boring hash functions), some tips would be sufficient to get me started. Will post tryouts here... And here comes the code so far, the Test obviously fails... public class KeyModifierSet { private readonly List<Key> _keys = new List<Key>(); private readonly List<ModifierKeys> _modifierKeys = new List<ModifierKeys>(); private static readonly Dictionary<KeyModifierSet, Action> _testDict = new Dictionary<KeyModifierSet, Action>(); public static void Test() { _testDict.Add(new KeyModifierSet(Key.A), () => Debug.WriteLine("nothing")); if (!_testDict.ContainsKey(new KeyModifierSet(Key.A))) throw new Exception("Not done yet, help :-)"); } public KeyModifierSet(IEnumerable<Key> keys, IEnumerable<ModifierKeys> modifierKeys) { foreach (var key in keys) _keys.Add(key); foreach (var key in modifierKeys) _modifierKeys.Add(key); } public KeyModifierSet(Key key, ModifierKeys modifierKey) { _keys.Add(key); _modifierKeys.Add(modifierKey); } public KeyModifierSet(Key key) { _keys.Add(key); } }

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• Looping class, for template engine kind of thing

  - by tarnfeld

  Hey, I am updating my class Nesty so it's infinite but I'm having a little trouble.... Here is the class: <?php Class Nesty { // Class Variables private $text; private $data = array(); private $loops = 0; private $maxLoops = 0; public function __construct($text,$data = array(),$maxLoops = 5) { // Set the class vars $this->text = $text; $this->data = $data; $this->maxLoops = $maxLoops; } // Loop funtion private function loopThrough($data) { if( ($this->loops +1) > $this->maxLoops ) { die("ERROR: Too many loops!"); } else { $keys = array_keys($data); for($x = 0; $x < count($keys); $x++) { if(is_array($data[$keys[$x]])) { $this->loopThrough($data[$keys[$x]]); } else { return $data[$keys[$x]]; } } } } // Templater method public function template() { echo $this->loopThrough($this->data); } } ?> Here is the code you would use to create an instance of the class: <?php // The nested array $data = array( "person" => array( "name" => "Tom Arnfeld", "age" => 15 ), "product" => array ( "name" => "Cakes", "price" => array ( "single" => 59, "double" => 99 ) ), "other" => "string" ); // Retreive the template text $file = "TestData.tpl"; $fp = fopen($file,"r"); $text = fread($fp,filesize($file)); // Create the Nesty object require_once('Nesty.php'); $nesty = new Nesty($text,$data); // Save the newly templated text to a variable $message $message = $nesty->template(); // Print out $message on the page echo("<pre>".$message."</pre>"); ?> Any ideas?

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• Custom CSS menu, "Active" tab remains on 'Home' not the actual page

  - by user1690254

  I created this custom css menu, but when switching tabs, the "Active" tab design remains on the 'Home' link on the menu, rather than the actual page I'm on. Any idea how I an fix this? Here's the code: .menu{margin:0 auto; padding:0; height:30px; width:100%; display:block; background:url('http://media.datahc.com/Affiliates/43817/Brands/Image/topmenuimages.png') repeat-x;} .menu li{padding:0; margin:0; list-style:none; display:inline;} .menu li a{float:left; padding-left:15px; display:block; color:rgb(255,255,255); text-decoration:none; font:12px Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; cursor:pointer; background:url('http://media.datahc.com/Affiliates/43817/Brands/Image/topmenuimages.png') 0px -30px no-repeat;} .menu li a span{line-height:30px; float:left; display:block; padding-right:15px; background:url('http://media.datahc.com/Affiliates/43817/Brands/Image/topmenuimages.png') 100% -30px no-repeat;} .menu li a:hover{background-position:0px -60px; color:rgb(255,255,255);} .menu li a:hover span{background-position:100% -60px;} .menu li a.active, .menu li a.active:hover{line-height:30px; font:12px Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; background:url('http://media.datahc.com/Affiliates/43817/Brands/Image/topmenuimages.png') 0px -90px no-repeat; color:rgb(255,255,255);} .menu li a.active span, .menu li a.active:hover span{background:url('http://media.datahc.com/Affiliates/43817/Brands/Image/topmenuimages.png') 100% -90px no-repeat;} <ul class="menu"> <li><a href="http://caribbeantl.com/"; class="active"><span>Home</span></a></li> <li><a href="http://caribbeantl.com/hotels/"><span>Testing post</span></a></li> </ul>

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• Tools and Utilities for the .NET Developer

  - by mbcrump

  Tweet this list! Add a link to my site to your bookmarks to quickly find this page again! Add me to twitter! This is a list of the tools/utilities that I use to do my job/hobby. I wanted this page to load fast and contain information that only you care about. If I have missed a tool that you like, feel free to contact me and I will add it to the list. Also, this list took a lot of time to complete. Please do not steal my work, if you like the page then please link back to my site. I will keep the links/information updated as new tools/utilities are created.  Windows/.NET Development – This is a list of tools that any Windows/.NET developer should have in his bag. I have used at some point in my career everything listed on this page and below is the tools worth keeping. Name Description License AnkhSVN Subversion support for Visual Studio. It also works with VS2010. Free Aurora XAML Designer One of the best XAML creation tools available. Has a ton of built in templates that you can copy/paste into VS2010. COST/Trial BeyondCompare Beyond Compare 3 is the ideal tool for comparing files and folders on your Windows or Linux system. Visualize changes in your code and carefully reconcile them. COST/Trial BuildIT Automated Task Tool Its main purpose is to automate tasks, whether it is the final packaging of a product, an automated daily build, maybe sending out a mailing list, even backing-up files. Free C Sharper for VB Convert VB to C#. COST CLRProfiler Analyze and improve the behavior of your .NET app. Free CodeRush Direct competitor to ReSharper, contains similar feature. This is one of those decide for yourself. COST/Trial Disk2VHD Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft's Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). Free Eazfuscator.NET Is a free obfuscator for .NET. The main purpose is to protect intellectual property of software. Free EQATEC Profiler Make your .NET app run faster. No source code changes are needed. Just point the profiler to your app, run the modified code, and get a visual report. COST Expression Studio 3/4 Comes with Web, Blend, Sketch Flow and more. You can create websites, produce beautiful XAML and more. COST/Trial Expresso The award-winning Expresso editor is equally suitable as a teaching tool for the beginning user of regular expressions or as a full-featured development environment for the experienced programmer or web designer with an extensive knowledge of regular expressions. Free Fiddler Fiddler is a web debugging proxy which logs all HTTP(s) traffic between your computer and the internet. Free Firebug Powerful Web development tool. If you build websites, you will need this. Free FxCop FxCop is an application that analyzes managed code assemblies (code that targets the .NET Framework common language runtime) and reports information about the assemblies, such as possible design, localization, performance, and security improvements. Free GAC Browser and Remover Easy way to remove multiple assemblies from the GAC. Assemblies registered by programs like Install Shield can also be removed. Free GAC Util The Global Assembly Cache tool allows you to view and manipulate the contents of the global assembly cache and download cache. Free HelpScribble Help Scribble is a full-featured, easy-to-use help authoring tool for creating help files from start to finish. You can create Win Help (.hlp) files, HTML Help (.chm) files, a printed manual and online documentation (on a web site) all from the same Help Scribble project. COST/Trial IETester IETester is a free Web Browser that allows you to have the rendering and JavaScript engines of IE9 preview, IE8, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Windows 7, Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process. Free iTextSharp iText# (iTextSharp) is a port of the iText open source java library for PDF generation written entirely in C# for the .NET platform. Use the iText mailing list to get support. Free Kaxaml Kaxaml is a lightweight XAML editor that gives you a "split view" so you can see both your XAML and your rendered content. Free LINQPad LinqPad lets you interactively query databases in a LINQ. Free Linquer Many programmers are familiar with SQL and will need a help in the transition to LINQ. Sometimes there are complicated queries to be written and Linqer can help by converting SQL scripts to LINQ. COST/Trial LiquidXML Liquid XML Studio 2010 is an advanced XML developers toolkit and IDE, containing all the tools needed for designing and developing XML schema and applications. COST/Trial Log4Net log4net is a tool to help the programmer output log statements to a variety of output targets. log4net is a port of the excellent log4j framework to the .NET runtime. We have kept the framework similar in spirit to the original log4j while taking advantage of new features in the .NET runtime. For more information on log4net see the features document. Free Microsoft Web Platform Installer The Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 (Web PI) is a free tool that makes getting the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server Express, .NET Framework and Visual Web Developer easy. Free Mono Development Don't have Visual Studio - no problem! This is an open Source C# and .NET development environment for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X Free Net Mass Downloader While it’s great that Microsoft has released the .NET Reference Source Code, you can only get it one file at a time while you’re debugging. If you’d like to batch download it for reading or to populate the cache, you’d have to write a program that instantiated and called each method in the Framework Class Library. Fortunately, .NET Mass Downloader comes to the rescue! Free nMap Nmap ("Network Mapper") is a free and open source (license) utility for network exploration or security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime. Free NoScript (Firefox add-in) The NoScript Firefox extension provides extra protection for Firefox, Flock, Seamonkey and other Mozilla-based browsers: this free, open source add-on allows JavaScript, Java and Flash and other plug-ins to be executed only by trusted web sites of your choice (e.g. your online bank), and provides the most powerful Anti-XSS protection available in a browser. Free NotePad 2 Notepad2, a fast and light-weight Notepad-like text editor with syntax highlighting. This program can be run out of the box without installation, and does not touch your system's registry. Free PageSpy PageSpy is a small add-on for Internet Explorer that allows you to select any element within a webpage, select an option in the context menu, and view detailed information about both the coding behind the page and the element you selected. Free Phrase Express PhraseExpress manages your frequently used text snippets in customizable categories for quick access. Free PowerGui PowerGui is a free community for PowerGUI, a graphical user interface and script editor for Microsoft Windows PowerShell! Free Powershell Comes with Win7, but you can automate tasks by using the .NET Framework. Great for network admins. Free Process Explorer Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded. Also, included in the SysInterals Suite. Free Process Monitor Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity. Free Reflector Explore and analyze compiled .NET assemblies, viewing them in C#, Visual Basic, and IL. This is an Essential for any .NET developer. Free Regular Expression Library Stuck on a Regular Expression but you think someone has already figured it out? Chances are they have. Free Regulator Regulator makes Regular Expressions easy. This is a must have for a .NET Developer. Free RenameMaestro RenameMaestro is probably the easiest batch file renamer you'll find to instantly rename multiple files COST ReSharper The one program that I cannot live without. Supports VS2010 and offers simple refactoring, code analysis/assistance/cleanup/templates. One of the few applications that is worth the $$$. COST/Trial ScrewTurn Wiki ScrewTurn Wiki allows you to create, manage and share wikis. A wiki is a collaboratively-edited, information-centered website: the most famous is Wikipedia. Free SharpDevelop What is #develop? SharpDevelop is a free IDE for C# and VB.NET projects on Microsoft's .NET platform. Free Show Me The Template Show Me The Template is a tool for exploring the templates, be their data, control or items panel, that comes with the controls built into WPF for all 6 themes. Free SnippetCompiler Compiles code snippets without opening Visual Studio. It does not support .NET 4. Free SQL Prompt SQL Prompt is a plug-in that increases how fast you can work with SQL. It provides code-completion for SQL server, reformatting, db schema information and snippets. Awesome! COST/Trial SQLinForm SQLinForm is an automatic SQL code formatter for all major databases  including ORACLE, SQL Server, DB2, UDB, Sybase, Informix, PostgreSQL, Teradata, MySQL, MS Access etc. with over 70 formatting options. COST/OnlineFree SSMS Tools SSMS Tools Pack is an add-in for Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) including SSMS Express. Free Storm STORM is a free and open source tool for testing web services. Free Telerik Code Convertor Convert code from VB to C Sharp and Vice Versa. Free TurtoiseSVN TortoiseSVN is a really easy to use Revision control / version control / source control software for Windows.Since it's not an integration for a specific IDE you can use it with whatever development tools you like. Free UltraEdit UltraEdit is the ideal text, HTML and hex editor, and an advanced PHP, Perl, Java and JavaScript editor for programmers. UltraEdit is also an XML editor including a tree-style XML parser. An industry-award winner, UltraEdit supports disk-based 64-bit file handling (standard) on 32-bit Windows platforms (Windows 2000 and later). COST/Trial Virtual Windows XP Comes with some W7 version and allows you to run WinXP along side W7. Free VirtualBox Virtualization by Sun Microsystems. You can virtualize Windows, Linux and more. Free Visual Log Parser SQL queries against a variety of log files and other system data sources. Free WinMerge WinMerge is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows. WinMerge can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format that is easy to understand and handle. Free Wireshark Wireshark is one of the best network protocol analyzer's for Unix and windows. This has been used several times to get me out of a bind. Free XML Notepad 07 Old, but still one of my favorite XML viewers. Free Productivity Tools – This is the list of tools that I use to save time or quickly navigate around Windows. Name Description License AutoHotKey Automate almost anything by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks. You can write a mouse or keyboard macro by hand or use the macro recorder. Free CLCL CLCL is clipboard caching utility. Free Ditto Ditto is an extension to the standard windows clipboard. It saves each item placed on the clipboard allowing you access to any of those items at a later time. Ditto allows you to save any type of information that can be put on the clipboard, text, images, html, custom formats, ..... Free Evernote Remember everything from notes to photos. It will synch between computers/devices. Free InfoRapid Inforapid is a search tool that will display all you search results in a html like browser. If you click on a word in that browser, it will start another search to the word you clicked on. Handy if you want to trackback something to it's true origin. The word you looked for will be highlighted in red. Clicking on the red word will open the containing file in a text based viewer. Clicking on any word in the opened document will start another search on that word. Free KatMouse The prime purpose of the KatMouse utility is to enhance the functionality of mice with a scroll wheel, offering 'universal' scrolling: moving the mouse wheel will scroll the window directly beneath the mouse cursor (not the one with the keyboard focus, which is default on Windows OSes). This is a major increase in the usefulness of the mouse wheel. Free ScreenR Instant Screencast with nothing to download. Works with Mac or PC and free. Free Start++ Start++ is an enhancement for the Start Menu in Windows Vista. It also extends the Run box and the command-line with customizable commands.  For example, typing "w Windows Vista" will take you to the Windows Vista page on Wikipedia! Free Synergy Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It's intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s). Free Texter Texter lets you define text substitution hot strings that, when triggered, will replace hotstring with a larger piece of text. By entering your most commonly-typed snippets of text into Texter, you can save countless keystrokes in the course of the day. Free Total Commander File handling, FTP, Archive handling and much more. Even works with Win3.11. COST/Trial Available Wizmouse WizMouse is a mouse enhancement utility that makes your mouse wheel work on the window currently under the mouse pointer, instead of the currently focused window. This means you no longer have to click on a window before being able to scroll it with the mouse wheel. This is a far more comfortable and practical way to make use of the mouse wheel. Free Xmarks Bookmark sync and search between computers. Free General Utilities – This is a list for power user users or anyone that wants more out of Windows. I usually install a majority of these whenever I get a new system. Name Description License µTorrent µTorrent is a lightweight and efficient BitTorrent client for Windows or Mac with many features. I use this for downloading LEGAL media. Free Audacity Audacity® is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. Learn more about Audacity... Also check our Wiki and Forum for more information. Free AVast Free FREE Antivirus. Free CD Burner XP Pro CDBurnerXP is a free application to burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, as well as a multilanguage interface. Free CDEX You can extract digital audio CDs into mp3/wav. Free Combofix Combofix is a freeware (a legitimate spyware remover created by sUBs), Combofix was designed to scan a computer for known malware, spyware (SurfSideKick, QooLogic, and Look2Me as well as any other combination of the mentioned spyware applications) and remove them. Free Cpu-Z Provides information about some of the main devices of your system. Free Cropper Cropper is a screen capture utility written in C#. It makes it fast and easy to grab parts of your screen. Use it to easily crop out sections of vector graphic files such as Fireworks without having to flatten the files or open in a new editor. Use it to easily capture parts of a web site, including text and images. It's also great for writing documentation that needs images of your application or web site. Free DropBox Drag and Drop files to sync between computers. Free DVD-Fab Converts/Copies DVDs/Blu-Ray to different formats. (like mp4, mkv, avi) COST/Trial Available FastStone Capture FastStone Capture is a powerful, lightweight, yet full-featured screen capture tool that allows you to easily capture and annotate anything on the screen including windows, objects, menus, full screen, rectangular/freehand regions and even scrolling windows/web pages. Free ffdshow FFDShow is a DirectShow decoding filter for decompressing DivX, XviD, H.264, FLV1, WMV, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, MPEG-4 movies. Free Filezilla FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface. You can also download a server version. Free FireFox Web Browser, do you really need an explanation? Free FireGestures A customizable mouse gestures extension which enables you to execute various commands and user scripts with five types of gestures. Free FoxIt Reader Light weight PDF viewer. You should install this with the advanced setting or it will install a toolbar and setup some shortcuts. Free gSynchIt Synch Gmail and Outlook. Even supports Outlook 2010 32/64 bit COST/Trial Available Hulu Desktop At home or in a hotel, this has replaced my cable/satellite subscription. Free ImgBurn ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit! Free Infrarecorder InfraRecorder is a free CD/DVD burning solution for Microsoft Windows. It offers a wide range of powerful features; all through an easy to use application interface and Windows Explorer integration. Free KeePass KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. Free LastPass Another password management, synchronize between browsers, automatic form filling and more. Free Live Essentials One download and lots of programs including Mail, Live Writer, Movie Maker and more! Free Monitores MonitorES is a small windows utility that helps you to turnoff monitor display when you lock down your machine.Also when you lock your machine, it will pause all your running media programs & set your IM status message to "Away" / Custom message(via options) and restore it back to normal when you back. Free mRemote mRemote is a full-featured, multi-tab remote connections manager. Free Open Office OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose. Free Paint.NET Simple, intuitive, and innovative user interface for editing photos. Free Picasa Picasa is free photo editing software from Google that makes your pictures look great. Free Pidgin Pidgin is an easy to use and free chat client used by millions. Connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and more chat networks all at once. Free PING PING is a live Linux ISO, based on the excellent Linux From Scratch (LFS) documentation. It can be burnt on a CD and booted, or integrated into a PXE / RIS environment. Free Putty PuTTY is an SSH and telnet client, developed originally by Simon Tatham for the Windows platform. Free Revo Uninstaller Revo Uninstaller Pro helps you to uninstall software and remove unwanted programs installed on your computer easily! Even if you have problems uninstalling and cannot uninstall them from "Windows Add or Remove Programs" control panel applet.Revo Uninstaller is a much faster and more powerful alternative to "Windows Add or Remove Programs" applet! It has very powerful features to uninstall and remove programs. Free Security Essentials Microsoft Security Essentials is a new, free consumer anti-malware solution for your computer. Free SetupVirtualCloneDrive Virtual CloneDrive works and behaves just like a physical CD/DVD drive, however it exists only virtually. Point to the .ISO file and it appears in Windows Explorer as a Drive. Free Shark 007 Codec Pack Play just about any file format with this download. Also includes my W7 Media Playlist Generator. Free Snagit 9 Screen Capture on steroids. Add arrows, captions, etc to any screenshot. COST/Trial Available SysinternalsSuite Go ahead and download the entire sys internals suite. I have mentioned multiple programs in this suite already. Free TeraCopy TeraCopy is a compact program designed to copy and move files at the maximum possible speed, providing the user with a lot of features. Free for Home TrueCrypt Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows 7/Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux Free TweetDeck Fully featured Twitter client. Free UltraVNC UltraVNC is a powerful, easy to use and free software that can display the screen of another computer (via internet or network) on your own screen. The program allows you to use your mouse and keyboard to control the other PC remotely. It means that you can work on a remote computer, as if you were sitting in front of it, right from your current location. Free Unlocker Unlocks locked files. Pretty simple right? Free VLC Media Player VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player and multimedia framework capable of reading most audio and video formats Free Windows 7 Media Playlist This program is special to my heart because I wrote it. It has been mentioned on podcast and various websites. It allows you to quickly create wvx video playlist for Windows Media Center. Free WinRAR WinRAR is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce the size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format. COST/Trial Available Blogging – I use the following for my blog. Name Description License Insert Code for Windows Live Writer Insert Code for Windows Live Writer will format a snippet of text in a number of programming languages such as C#, HTML, MSH, JavaScript, Visual Basic and TSQL. Free LiveWriter Included in Live Essentials, but the ultimate in Windows Blogging Free PasteAsVSCode Plug-in for Windows Live Writer that pastes clipboard content as Visual Studio code. Preserves syntax highlighting, indentation and background color. Converts RTF, outputted by Visual Studio, into HTML. Free Desktop Management – The list below represent the best in Windows Desktop Management. Name Description License 7 Stacks Allows users to have "stacks" of icons in their taskbar. Free Executor Executor is a multi purpose launcher and a more advanced and customizable version of windows run. Free Fences Fences is a program that helps you organize your desktop and can hide your icons when they are not in use. Free RocketDock Rocket Dock is a smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. With each item completely customizable there is no end to what you can add and launch from the dock. Free WindowsTab Tabbing is an essential feature of modern web browsers. Window Tabs brings the productivity of tabbed window management to all of your desktop applications. Free

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• Toorcon 15 (2013)

  - by danx

  The Toorcon gang (senior staff): h1kari (founder), nfiltr8, and Geo Introduction to Toorcon 15 (2013) A Tale of One Software Bypass of MS Windows 8 Secure Boot Breaching SSL, One Byte at a Time Running at 99%: Surviving an Application DoS Security Response in the Age of Mass Customized Attacks x86 Rewriting: Defeating RoP and other Shinanighans Clowntown Express: interesting bugs and running a bug bounty program Active Fingerprinting of Encrypted VPNs Making Attacks Go Backwards Mask Your Checksums—The Gorry Details Adventures with weird machines thirty years after "Reflections on Trusting Trust" Introduction to Toorcon 15 (2013) Toorcon 15 is the 15th annual security conference held in San Diego. I've attended about a third of them and blogged about previous conferences I attended here starting in 2003. As always, I've only summarized the talks I attended and interested me enough to write about them. Be aware that I may have misrepresented the speaker's remarks and that they are not my remarks or opinion, or those of my employer, so don't quote me or them. Those seeking further details may contact the speakers directly or use The Google. For some talks, I have a URL for further information. A Tale of One Software Bypass of MS Windows 8 Secure Boot Andrew Furtak and Oleksandr Bazhaniuk Yuri Bulygin, Oleksandr ("Alex") Bazhaniuk, and (not present) Andrew Furtak Yuri and Alex talked about UEFI and Bootkits and bypassing MS Windows 8 Secure Boot, with vendor recommendations. They previously gave this talk at the BlackHat 2013 conference. MS Windows 8 Secure Boot Overview UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is interface between hardware and OS. UEFI is processor and architecture independent. Malware can replace bootloader (bootx64.efi, bootmgfw.efi). Once replaced can modify kernel. Trivial to replace bootloader. Today many legacy bootkits—UEFI replaces them most of them. MS Windows 8 Secure Boot verifies everything you load, either through signatures or hashes. UEFI firmware relies on secure update (with signed update). You would think Secure Boot would rely on ROM (such as used for phones0, but you can't do that for PCs—PCs use writable memory with signatures DXE core verifies the UEFI boat loader(s) OS Loader (winload.efi, winresume.efi) verifies the OS kernel A chain of trust is established with a root key (Platform Key, PK), which is a cert belonging to the platform vendor. Key Exchange Keys (KEKs) verify an "authorized" database (db), and "forbidden" database (dbx). X.509 certs with SHA-1/SHA-256 hashes. Keys are stored in non-volatile (NV) flash-based NVRAM. Boot Services (BS) allow adding/deleting keys (can't be accessed once OS starts—which uses Run-Time (RT)). Root cert uses RSA-2048 public keys and PKCS#7 format signatures. SecureBoot — enable disable image signature checks SetupMode — update keys, self-signed keys, and secure boot variables CustomMode — allows updating keys Secure Boot policy settings are: always execute, never execute, allow execute on security violation, defer execute on security violation, deny execute on security violation, query user on security violation Attacking MS Windows 8 Secure Boot Secure Boot does NOT protect from physical access. Can disable from console. Each BIOS vendor implements Secure Boot differently. There are several platform and BIOS vendors. It becomes a "zoo" of implementations—which can be taken advantage of. Secure Boot is secure only when all vendors implement it correctly. Allow only UEFI firmware signed updates protect UEFI firmware from direct modification in flash memory protect FW update components program SPI controller securely protect secure boot policy settings in nvram protect runtime api disable compatibility support module which allows unsigned legacy Can corrupt the Platform Key (PK) EFI root certificate variable in SPI flash. If PK is not found, FW enters setup mode wich secure boot turned off. Can also exploit TPM in a similar manner. One is not supposed to be able to directly modify the PK in SPI flash from the OS though. But they found a bug that they can exploit from User Mode (undisclosed) and demoed the exploit. It loaded and ran their own bootkit. The exploit requires a reboot. Multiple vendors are vulnerable. They will disclose this exploit to vendors in the future. Recommendations: allow only signed updates protect UEFI fw in ROM protect EFI variable store in ROM Breaching SSL, One Byte at a Time Yoel Gluck and Angelo Prado Angelo Prado and Yoel Gluck, Salesforce.com CRIME is software that performs a "compression oracle attack." This is possible because the SSL protocol doesn't hide length, and because SSL compresses the header. CRIME requests with every possible character and measures the ciphertext length. Look for the plaintext which compresses the most and looks for the cookie one byte-at-a-time. SSL Compression uses LZ77 to reduce redundancy. Huffman coding replaces common byte sequences with shorter codes. US CERT thinks the SSL compression problem is fixed, but it isn't. They convinced CERT that it wasn't fixed and they issued a CVE. BREACH, breachattrack.com BREACH exploits the SSL response body (Accept-Encoding response, Content-Encoding). It takes advantage of the fact that the response is not compressed. BREACH uses gzip and needs fairly "stable" pages that are static for ~30 seconds. It needs attacker-supplied content (say from a web form or added to a URL parameter). BREACH listens to a session's requests and responses, then inserts extra requests and responses. Eventually, BREACH guesses a session's secret key. Can use compression to guess contents one byte at-a-time. For example, "Supersecret SupersecreX" (a wrong guess) compresses 10 bytes, and "Supersecret Supersecret" (a correct guess) compresses 11 bytes, so it can find each character by guessing every character. To start the guess, BREACH needs at least three known initial characters in the response sequence. Compression length then "leaks" information. Some roadblocks include no winners (all guesses wrong) or too many winners (multiple possibilities that compress the same). The solutions include: lookahead (guess 2 or 3 characters at-a-time instead of 1 character). Expensive rollback to last known conflict check compression ratio can brute-force first 3 "bootstrap" characters, if needed (expensive) block ciphers hide exact plain text length. Solution is to align response in advance to block size Mitigations length: use variable padding secrets: dynamic CSRF tokens per request secret: change over time separate secret to input-less servlets Future work eiter understand DEFLATE/GZIP HTTPS extensions Running at 99%: Surviving an Application DoS Ryan Huber Ryan Huber, Risk I/O Ryan first discussed various ways to do a denial of service (DoS) attack against web services. One usual method is to find a slow web page and do several wgets. Or download large files. Apache is not well suited at handling a large number of connections, but one can put something in front of it Can use Apache alternatives, such as nginx How to identify malicious hosts short, sudden web requests user-agent is obvious (curl, python) same url requested repeatedly no web page referer (not normal) hidden links. hide a link and see if a bot gets it restricted access if not your geo IP (unless the website is global) missing common headers in request regular timing first seen IP at beginning of attack count requests per hosts (usually a very large number) Use of captcha can mitigate attacks, but you'll lose a lot of genuine users. Bouncer, goo.gl/c2vyEc and www.github.com/rawdigits/Bouncer Bouncer is software written by Ryan in netflow. Bouncer has a small, unobtrusive footprint and detects DoS attempts. It closes blacklisted sockets immediately (not nice about it, no proper close connection). Aggregator collects requests and controls your web proxies. Need NTP on the front end web servers for clean data for use by bouncer. Bouncer is also useful for a popularity storm ("Slashdotting") and scraper storms. Future features: gzip collection data, documentation, consumer library, multitask, logging destroyed connections. Takeaways: DoS mitigation is easier with a complete picture Bouncer designed to make it easier to detect and defend DoS—not a complete cure Security Response in the Age of Mass Customized Attacks Peleus Uhley and Karthik Raman Peleus Uhley and Karthik Raman, Adobe ASSET, blogs.adobe.com/asset/ Peleus and Karthik talked about response to mass-customized exploits. Attackers behave much like a business. "Mass customization" refers to concept discussed in the book Future Perfect by Stan Davis of Harvard Business School. Mass customization is differentiating a product for an individual customer, but at a mass production price. For example, the same individual with a debit card receives basically the same customized ATM experience around the world. Or designing your own PC from commodity parts. Exploit kits are another example of mass customization. The kits support multiple browsers and plugins, allows new modules. Exploit kits are cheap and customizable. Organized gangs use exploit kits. A group at Berkeley looked at 77,000 malicious websites (Grier et al., "Manufacturing Compromise: The Emergence of Exploit-as-a-Service", 2012). They found 10,000 distinct binaries among them, but derived from only a dozen or so exploit kits. Characteristics of Mass Malware: potent, resilient, relatively low cost Technical characteristics: multiple OS, multipe payloads, multiple scenarios, multiple languages, obfuscation Response time for 0-day exploits has gone down from ~40 days 5 years ago to about ~10 days now. So the drive with malware is towards mass customized exploits, to avoid detection There's plenty of evicence that exploit development has Project Manager bureaucracy. They infer from the malware edicts to: support all versions of reader support all versions of windows support all versions of flash support all browsers write large complex, difficult to main code (8750 lines of JavaScript for example Exploits have "loose coupling" of multipe versions of software (adobe), OS, and browser. This allows specific attacks against specific versions of multiple pieces of software. Also allows exploits of more obscure software/OS/browsers and obscure versions. Gave examples of exploits that exploited 2, 3, 6, or 14 separate bugs. However, these complete exploits are more likely to be buggy or fragile in themselves and easier to defeat. Future research includes normalizing malware and Javascript. Conclusion: The coming trend is that mass-malware with mass zero-day attacks will result in mass customization of attacks. x86 Rewriting: Defeating RoP and other Shinanighans Richard Wartell Richard Wartell The attack vector we are addressing here is: First some malware causes a buffer overflow. The malware has no program access, but input access and buffer overflow code onto stack Later the stack became non-executable. The workaround malware used was to write a bogus return address to the stack jumping to malware Later came ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) to randomize memory layout and make addresses non-deterministic. The workaround malware used was to jump t existing code segments in the program that can be used in bad ways "RoP" is Return-oriented Programming attacks. RoP attacks use your own code and write return address on stack to (existing) expoitable code found in program ("gadgets"). Pinkie Pie was paid $60K last year for a RoP attack. One solution is using anti-RoP compilers that compile source code with NO return instructions. ASLR does not randomize address space, just "gadgets". IPR/ILR ("Instruction Location Randomization") randomizes each instruction with a virtual machine. Richard's goal was to randomize a binary with no source code access. He created "STIR" (Self-Transofrming Instruction Relocation). STIR disassembles binary and operates on "basic blocks" of code. The STIR disassembler is conservative in what to disassemble. Each basic block is moved to a random location in memory. Next, STIR writes new code sections with copies of "basic blocks" of code in randomized locations. The old code is copied and rewritten with jumps to new code. the original code sections in the file is marked non-executible. STIR has better entropy than ASLR in location of code. Makes brute force attacks much harder. STIR runs on MS Windows (PEM) and Linux (ELF). It eliminated 99.96% or more "gadgets" (i.e., moved the address). Overhead usually 5-10% on MS Windows, about 1.5-4% on Linux (but some code actually runs faster!). The unique thing about STIR is it requires no source access and the modified binary fully works! Current work is to rewrite code to enforce security policies. For example, don't create a *.{exe,msi,bat} file. Or don't connect to the network after reading from the disk. Clowntown Express: interesting bugs and running a bug bounty program Collin Greene Collin Greene, Facebook Collin talked about Facebook's bug bounty program. Background at FB: FB has good security frameworks, such as security teams, external audits, and cc'ing on diffs. But there's lots of "deep, dark, forgotten" parts of legacy FB code. Collin gave several examples of bountied bugs. Some bounty submissions were on software purchased from a third-party (but bounty claimers don't know and don't care). We use security questions, as does everyone else, but they are basically insecure (often easily discoverable). Collin didn't expect many bugs from the bounty program, but they ended getting 20+ good bugs in first 24 hours and good submissions continue to come in. Bug bounties bring people in with different perspectives, and are paid only for success. Bug bounty is a better use of a fixed amount of time and money versus just code review or static code analysis. The Bounty program started July 2011 and paid out $1.5 million to date. 14% of the submissions have been high priority problems that needed to be fixed immediately. The best bugs come from a small % of submitters (as with everything else)—the top paid submitters are paid 6 figures a year. Spammers like to backstab competitors. The youngest sumitter was 13. Some submitters have been hired. Bug bounties also allows to see bugs that were missed by tools or reviews, allowing improvement in the process. Bug bounties might not work for traditional software companies where the product has release cycle or is not on Internet. Active Fingerprinting of Encrypted VPNs Anna Shubina Anna Shubina, Dartmouth Institute for Security, Technology, and Society (I missed the start of her talk because another track went overtime. But I have the DVD of the talk, so I'll expand later) IPsec leaves fingerprints. Using netcat, one can easily visually distinguish various crypto chaining modes just from packet timing on a chart (example, DES-CBC versus AES-CBC) One can tell a lot about VPNs just from ping roundtrips (such as what router is used) Delayed packets are not informative about a network, especially if far away from the network More needed to explore about how TCP works in real life with respect to timing Making Attacks Go Backwards Fuzzynop FuzzyNop, Mandiant This talk is not about threat attribution (finding who), product solutions, politics, or sales pitches. But who are making these malware threats? It's not a single person or group—they have diverse skill levels. There's a lot of fat-fingered fumblers out there. Always look for low-hanging fruit first: "hiding" malware in the temp, recycle, or root directories creation of unnamed scheduled tasks obvious names of files and syscalls ("ClearEventLog") uncleared event logs. Clearing event log in itself, and time of clearing, is a red flag and good first clue to look for on a suspect system Reverse engineering is hard. Disassembler use takes practice and skill. A popular tool is IDA Pro, but it takes multiple interactive iterations to get a clean disassembly. Key loggers are used a lot in targeted attacks. They are typically custom code or built in a backdoor. A big tip-off is that non-printable characters need to be printed out (such as "[Ctrl]" "[RightShift]") or time stamp printf strings. Look for these in files. Presence is not proof they are used. Absence is not proof they are not used. Java exploits. Can parse jar file with idxparser.py and decomile Java file. Java typially used to target tech companies. Backdoors are the main persistence mechanism (provided externally) for malware. Also malware typically needs command and control. Application of Artificial Intelligence in Ad-Hoc Static Code Analysis John Ashaman John Ashaman, Security Innovation Initially John tried to analyze open source files with open source static analysis tools, but these showed thousands of false positives. Also tried using grep, but tis fails to find anything even mildly complex. So next John decided to write his own tool. His approach was to first generate a call graph then analyze the graph. However, the problem is that making a call graph is really hard. For example, one problem is "evil" coding techniques, such as passing function pointer. First the tool generated an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) with the nodes created from method declarations and edges created from method use. Then the tool generated a control flow graph with the goal to find a path through the AST (a maze) from source to sink. The algorithm is to look at adjacent nodes to see if any are "scary" (a vulnerability), using heuristics for search order. The tool, called "Scat" (Static Code Analysis Tool), currently looks for C# vulnerabilities and some simple PHP. Later, he plans to add more PHP, then JSP and Java. For more information see his posts in Security Innovation blog and NRefactory on GitHub. Mask Your Checksums—The Gorry Details Eric (XlogicX) Davisson Eric (XlogicX) Davisson Sometimes in emailing or posting TCP/IP packets to analyze problems, you may want to mask the IP address. But to do this correctly, you need to mask the checksum too, or you'll leak information about the IP. Problem reports found in stackoverflow.com, sans.org, and pastebin.org are usually not masked, but a few companies do care. If only the IP is masked, the IP may be guessed from checksum (that is, it leaks data). Other parts of packet may leak more data about the IP. TCP and IP checksums both refer to the same data, so can get more bits of information out of using both checksums than just using one checksum. Also, one can usually determine the OS from the TTL field and ports in a packet header. If we get hundreds of possible results (16x each masked nibble that is unknown), one can do other things to narrow the results, such as look at packet contents for domain or geo information. With hundreds of results, can import as CSV format into a spreadsheet. Can corelate with geo data and see where each possibility is located. Eric then demoed a real email report with a masked IP packet attached. Was able to find the exact IP address, given the geo and university of the sender. Point is if you're going to mask a packet, do it right. Eric wouldn't usually bother, but do it correctly if at all, to not create a false impression of security. Adventures with weird machines thirty years after "Reflections on Trusting Trust" Sergey Bratus Sergey Bratus, Dartmouth College (and Julian Bangert and Rebecca Shapiro, not present) "Reflections on Trusting Trust" refers to Ken Thompson's classic 1984 paper. "You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself." There's invisible links in the chain-of-trust, such as "well-installed microcode bugs" or in the compiler, and other planted bugs. Thompson showed how a compiler can introduce and propagate bugs in unmodified source. But suppose if there's no bugs and you trust the author, can you trust the code? Hell No! There's too many factors—it's Babylonian in nature. Why not? Well, Input is not well-defined/recognized (code's assumptions about "checked" input will be violated (bug/vunerabiliy). For example, HTML is recursive, but Regex checking is not recursive. Input well-formed but so complex there's no telling what it does For example, ELF file parsing is complex and has multiple ways of parsing. Input is seen differently by different pieces of program or toolchain Any Input is a program input executes on input handlers (drives state changes & transitions) only a well-defined execution model can be trusted (regex/DFA, PDA, CFG) Input handler either is a "recognizer" for the inputs as a well-defined language (see langsec.org) or it's a "virtual machine" for inputs to drive into pwn-age ELF ABI (UNIX/Linux executible file format) case study. Problems can arise from these steps (without planting bugs): compiler linker loader ld.so/rtld relocator DWARF (debugger info) exceptions The problem is you can't really automatically analyze code (it's the "halting problem" and undecidable). Only solution is to freeze code and sign it. But you can't freeze everything! Can't freeze ASLR or loading—must have tables and metadata. Any sufficiently complex input data is the same as VM byte code Example, ELF relocation entries + dynamic symbols == a Turing Complete Machine (TM). @bxsays created a Turing machine in Linux from relocation data (not code) in an ELF file. For more information, see Rebecca "bx" Shapiro's presentation from last year's Toorcon, "Programming Weird Machines with ELF Metadata" @bxsays did same thing with Mach-O bytecode Or a DWARF exception handling data .eh_frame + glibc == Turning Machine X86 MMU (IDT, GDT, TSS): used address translation to create a Turning Machine. Page handler reads and writes (on page fault) memory. Uses a page table, which can be used as Turning Machine byte code. Example on Github using this TM that will fly a glider across the screen Next Sergey talked about "Parser Differentials". That having one input format, but two parsers, will create confusion and opportunity for exploitation. For example, CSRs are parsed during creation by cert requestor and again by another parser at the CA. Another example is ELF—several parsers in OS tool chain, which are all different. Can have two different Program Headers (PHDRs) because ld.so parses multiple PHDRs. The second PHDR can completely transform the executable. This is described in paper in the first issue of International Journal of PoC. Conclusions trusting computers not only about bugs! Bugs are part of a problem, but no by far all of it complex data formats means bugs no "chain of trust" in Babylon! (that is, with parser differentials) we need to squeeze complexity out of data until data stops being "code equivalent" Further information See and langsec.org. USENIX WOOT 2013 (Workshop on Offensive Technologies) for "weird machines" papers and videos.

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• Watch Netflix Instant Movies in Boxee

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Boxee is multi-platform Media PC application with a host of media applications. One of which is the popular Movie service, Netflix. Today we’ll show you how to get setup to watch Netflix Instant streaming video in Boxee. Note: Nexflix requires Microsoft Silverlight which unfortunately means Boxee users running Linux out of luck. What You’ll Need A Netflix account Authorize your Netflix account with Boxee Install Microsoft Silverlight Authorize Your Netflix Account First, we need to authorize our Netflix account with Boxee. (See link below). Type in your Boxee username and password and click “Login.”  When prompted, click “Authorize.”   Click “Yes, Link This Account.”    Install Silverlight If you don’t already have Silverlight installed, you’ll need to do so. See the download link at the end of the article.   Log into Boxee Now we’re ready to log into Boxee. Once logged in, click on “Apps” on the Home screen.   From the My Apps screen click on Netflix. Then click “Start.” Click “Yes” to enable the cookie.   Now you’ll enter the Netflix App. From here, you can browse your Instant Queue, Recommendations, New Arrivals, Browse Genre, or Search for available titles.   Click on a selection you’d like to watch. From here, you can Play, Rate, or even add the title to your regular Netflix Queue.   With a remote or the on-screen controls you can pause, stop, play, and skip forward or back through the video.   Now you’re all set to enjoy the Netflix Instant library with Boxee. Netflix Instant is one of many great Apps included with Boxee. While the current available selection isn’t exactly overwhelming, most subscribers will likely find enough to keep themselves entertained in between DVD deliveries. Haven’t tried Boxee yet? Check out our article on getting started with Boxee. Links Authorize your Netflix account with Boxee Install Microsoft Silverlight Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Find Movies and TV Based on your Mood with JinniGetting Started with BoxeeQuickly Find Movies to Watch at Hello MoviesIntegrate Boxee with Media Center in Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Change DNS servers on the fly with DNS Jumper Live PDF Searches PDF Files and Ebooks Converting Mp4 to Mp3 Easily Use Quick Translator to Translate Text in 50 Languages (Firefox) Get Better Windows Search With UltraSearch Scan News With NY Times Article Skimmer

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• Unreal Tournament 3 vs UDK: What Should I Choose?

  - by Matt Christian

  Many people in the mod community were very excited to see the release of the Unreal Developer Kit (UDK) a few months ago.  Along with generating excitement into a very dedicated community, it also introduced many new modders into a flourishing area of indie-development.  However, since UDK is free, most beginners jump right into UDK, which is OK though you might just benefit more from purchasing a shelf-copy of Unreal Tournament 3. UDK UDK is a free full version of UnrealEd (the editor environment used to create games like Gears of War 1/2, Bioshock 1/2, and of course Unreal Tournament 3).  The editor gives you all the features of the editor from the shelf-copy of the game plus some refinements in many of the tools.  (One of the first things you'll find about UnrealEd is that it's a collection of tools grouped into the same editor so it really isn't a single 'tool') Interestingly enough, Epic is allowing you to sell any game made in UDK with a few catches.  First off, you must purchase a liscense for your game (which, I THINK is aproximately $99 starting).  Secondly, you must pay 25% of all profits for the first $5,000 of your game revenue to them (about $1250).  Finally, you cannot use any of the 'media' provided in UDK for your game.  UDK provides sample meshes, textures, materials, sounds, and other sample pieces of media pulled (mostly) from Unreal Tournament 3. The final point here will really determine whether you should use UDK.  There is a very small amount of media provided in UDK for someone to go in and begin creating levels without first developing your own meshes, textures, and other media.  Sure, you can slap together a few unique levels, though you will end up finding yourself restriced to the same items over and over and over.  This is absolutely how professional game development is; you are 'given' (typically liscensed or built in-house) an engine/editor and you begin creating all the content for the game and placing it.  UDK is aimed toward those who really want to build their game content from scratch with a currently existing engine.  It is not suited for someone who would like to simply build levels and quick mods without learning external 3D programs and image editing software. Unreal Tournament 3 Unless you have a serious grudge against FPS's, Epic, or your computer sucks, there really is no reason not to own this game for PC.  You can pick it up on Steam or Amazon for around $20 brand new.  Not only are you provided with a full single-player and multiplayer game, but you are given the entire UnrealEd 3.0 including all of the content used to build UT3.  If you want to start building levels and mods quickly for UT3, you should absolutely pick up a shelf-copy. However, as off-the-shelf UT3 is a few years old now, the tools have not been updated for quite a while.  Compared to UDK, the menus are more difficult to navigate through and take more time getting used to.  Since UDK is updated almost every month, there are new inclusions to the editor that may not be in UT3 (including the future addition of 3D!).  I haven't worked enough with shelf UT3 to see if there are more features in UDK or if they both feature the same stuff in different forms, however you should remember that the Unreal Engine 3.0 has undergone numerous upgrades between it's launch and Gears of War 2 (in fact, Epic had a conference to show off what changed just between the Gears of Wars games). Since UT3 has much more core content, someone who wants to focus on level editing or modding the core UT3 game may find their needs better suited with an off-the-shelf copy of UT3.  If that level designer has a team that is generating custom assets, they may be better off with UDK. The choice is now yours...

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• MEB Support to NetBackup MMS

  - by Hema Sridharan

  In MySQL Enterprise Backup 3.6, new option was introduced to support backup to tapes via SBT interface. SBT stands for System Backup to Tape, an Oracle API that helps to perform backup and restore jobs via media management software such as Oracle's Secure Backup (OSB). There are other storage managers like IBM's Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) and Symantec's Netbackup (NB) which are also supported by MEB but we don't guarantee that it will function as expected for every release. MEB supports SBT API version 2.0 In this blog, I am primarily going to focus the interface of MEB and Symantec's NB. If we are using tapes for backup, ensure that tape library and tape drives are compatible. Test Setup 1. Install NB 7.5 master and media servers in Linux OS. ( NB 7.1 can also be used but for testing purpose I used NB 7.5)2. Install MEB 3.8 also in Linux OS.3. Install NB admin console in your windows desktop and configure the NB master server from there. Note: Ensure that you have root user permission to install NetBackup. Configuration Steps for MEB and NB Once MEB and NB are installed, Ensure that NB is linked to MEB by specifying the library /usr/openv/netbackup/bin/libobk.so64 in the mysqlbackup command line using --sbt-lib-path. Configure the NB master server from windows console. That is configure the storage units by specifying the Storage unit name, Disk type, Media Server name etc.  Create NetBackup policies that are user selectable. But please make sure that policy type is "Oracle".  Define the clients where MEB will be executed. Some times this will be different host where MEB is run or some times in same Media server where NB and tapes are attached. Now once the installation and configuration steps are performed for MEB and NB, the next part is the actual execution.MEB should be run as single file backup using --backup-image option with prefix sbt:(it is a tag which tells MEB that it should stream the backup image through the SBT interface) which is sent to NB client via SBT interface . The resulting backup image is stored where NB stores the images that it backs up. The following diagram shows how MEB interacts with MMS through SBT interface. Backup The following parameters should also be ready for the execution,    --sbt-lib-path : Path to SBT library specific to NetBackup MMS. SBT lib for NetBackup  is in /usr/openv/netbackup/bin/libobk.so64    --sbt-environment: Environment variables must be defined specific to NetBackup. In our example below, we use     NB_ORA_SERV=myserver.com,    NB_ORA_CLIENT=myserver.com,    NB_ORA_POLICY=NBU-MEB    ORACLE_HOME = /export/home2/tmp/hema/mysql-server/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ./mysqlbackup --port=13000 --protocol=tcp --user=root --backup-image=sbt:bkpsbtNB --sbt-lib-path=/usr/openv/netbackup/bin/libobk.so64 --sbt-environment="NB_ORA_SERV=myserver.com, NB_ORA_CLIENT=myserver.com, NB_ORA_POLICY=NBU-MEB, ORACLE_HOME=/export/home2/tmp/hema/mysql-server/” --backup-dir=/export/home2/tmp/hema/MEB_bkdir/ backup-to-image ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Once backup is completed successfully, this should appear in Activity Monitor in NetBackup Console.For restore,  image contents has to be extracted using image-to-backup-dir command and then apply-log and copy-back steps are applied. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ./mysqlbackup --sbt-lib-path=/usr/openv/netbackup/bin/libobk.so64  --backup-dir=/export/home2/tmp/hema/NBMEB/ --backup-image=sbt:bkpsbtNB image-to-backup-dir-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Now apply logs as usual, shutdown the server and perform restore, restart the server and check the data contents. ./mysqlbackup   ---backup-dir=/export/home2/tmp/hema/NBMEB/  apply-log ./mysqlbackup --datadir=/export/home2/tmp/hema/mysql-server/mysql-5.5-meb-repo/mysql-test/var/mysqld.1/data/  --backup-dir=/export/home2/tmp/hema/MEB_bkpdir/ innodb_log_files_in_group=2 --innodb_log_file_size=5M --user=root --port=13000 --protocol=tcp copy-back The NB console should show 'Restore" job as done. If you don't see that there is something wrong with MEB or NetBackup.You can also refer to more detailed steps of MEB and NB integration in whitepaper here

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• Is my hard drive about to die?

  - by Hristo Deshev

  I have two hard drives set up as a RAID 1 array on my server (Linux, software RAID using mdadm) and one of them just got me this "present" in syslog: Nov 23 02:05:29 h2 kernel: [7305215.338153] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 Nov 23 02:05:29 h2 kernel: [7305215.338178] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x40000008 Nov 23 02:05:29 h2 kernel: [7305215.338197] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED Nov 23 02:05:29 h2 kernel: [7305215.338220] ata1.00: cmd 60/08:00:d8:df:da/00:00:3a:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 4096 in Nov 23 02:05:29 h2 kernel: [7305215.338221] res 41/40:08:d8:df:da/00:00:3a:00:00/00 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F> Nov 23 02:05:29 h2 kernel: [7305215.338287] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR } Nov 23 02:05:29 h2 kernel: [7305215.338305] ata1.00: error: { UNC } Nov 23 02:05:29 h2 kernel: [7305215.358901] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 Nov 23 02:05:32 h2 kernel: [7305218.269054] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 Nov 23 02:05:32 h2 kernel: [7305218.269081] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x40000008 Nov 23 02:05:32 h2 kernel: [7305218.269101] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED Nov 23 02:05:32 h2 kernel: [7305218.269125] ata1.00: cmd 60/08:00:d8:df:da/00:00:3a:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 4096 in Nov 23 02:05:32 h2 kernel: [7305218.269126] res 41/40:08:d8:df:da/00:00:3a:00:00/00 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F> Nov 23 02:05:32 h2 kernel: [7305218.269196] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR } Nov 23 02:05:32 h2 kernel: [7305218.269215] ata1.00: error: { UNC } Nov 23 02:05:32 h2 kernel: [7305218.341565] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 Nov 23 02:05:35 h2 kernel: [7305221.193342] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 Nov 23 02:05:35 h2 kernel: [7305221.193368] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x40000008 Nov 23 02:05:35 h2 kernel: [7305221.193386] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED Nov 23 02:05:35 h2 kernel: [7305221.193408] ata1.00: cmd 60/08:00:d8:df:da/00:00:3a:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 4096 in Nov 23 02:05:35 h2 kernel: [7305221.193409] res 41/40:08:d8:df:da/00:00:3a:00:00/00 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F> Nov 23 02:05:35 h2 kernel: [7305221.193474] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR } Nov 23 02:05:35 h2 kernel: [7305221.193491] ata1.00: error: { UNC } Nov 23 02:05:35 h2 kernel: [7305221.388404] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 Nov 23 02:05:38 h2 kernel: [7305224.426316] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 Nov 23 02:05:38 h2 kernel: [7305224.426343] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x40000008 Nov 23 02:05:38 h2 kernel: [7305224.426363] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED Nov 23 02:05:38 h2 kernel: [7305224.426387] ata1.00: cmd 60/08:00:d8:df:da/00:00:3a:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 4096 in Nov 23 02:05:38 h2 kernel: [7305224.426388] res 41/40:08:d8:df:da/00:00:3a:00:00/00 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F> Nov 23 02:05:38 h2 kernel: [7305224.426459] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR } Nov 23 02:05:38 h2 kernel: [7305224.426478] ata1.00: error: { UNC } Nov 23 02:05:38 h2 kernel: [7305224.498133] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 Nov 23 02:05:41 h2 kernel: [7305227.400583] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x1 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 Nov 23 02:05:41 h2 kernel: [7305227.400608] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x40000008 Nov 23 02:05:41 h2 kernel: [7305227.400627] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED Nov 23 02:05:41 h2 kernel: [7305227.400649] ata1.00: cmd 60/08:00:d8:df:da/00:00:3a:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 4096 in Nov 23 02:05:41 h2 kernel: [7305227.400650] res 41/40:08:d8:df:da/00:00:3a:00:00/00 Emask 0x409 (media error) <F> Nov 23 02:05:41 h2 kernel: [7305227.400716] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR } Nov 23 02:05:41 h2 kernel: [7305227.400734] ata1.00: error: { UNC } Nov 23 02:05:41 h2 kernel: [7305227.472432] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 From what I read so far, I am not sure if read errors mean that a hard drive is dying on me (no write errors so far). I've had hard drive errors in the past and those always had errors about failing to write to specific sectors in the logs. Not this time. Should I be replacing the drive? Could something else be causing the problem? I've scheduled a smartctl -t long test that will finish in a couple of hours. I hope this will give me some more info.

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• Blueprints for Oracle NoSQL Database

  - by dan.mcclary

  I think that some of the most interesting analytic problems are graph problems.  I'm always interested in new ways to store and access graphs.  As such, I really like the work being done by Tinkerpop to create Open Source Software to make property graphs more accessible over a wide variety of datastores.  Since key-value stores like Oracle NoSQL Database are well-suited to storing property graphs, I decided to extend the Blueprints API to work with it.  Below I'll discuss some of the implementation details, but you can check out the finished product here: http://github.com/dwmclary/blueprints-oracle-nosqldb.  What's in a Property Graph?  In the most general sense, a graph is just a collection of vertices and edges.  Vertices and edges can have properties: weights, names, or any number of other traits.  In an undirected graph, edges connect vertices without direction.  A directed graph specifies that all edges have a head and a tail --- a direction.  A multi-graph allows multiple edges to connect two vertices.  A "property graph" encompasses all of these traits. Key-Value Stores for Property Graphs Key-Value stores like Oracle NoSQL Database tend to be ideal for implementing property graphs.  First, if any vertex or edge can have any number of traits, we can treat it as a hash map.  For example: Vertex["name"] = "Mary" Vertex["age"] = 28 Vertex["ID"] = 12345  and so on.  This is a natural key-value relationship: the key "name" maps to the value "Mary."  Moreover if we maintain two hash maps, one for vertex objects and one for edge objects, we've essentially captured the graph.  As such, any scalable key-value store is fertile ground for planting graphs. Oracle NoSQL Database as a Scalable Graph Database While Oracle NoSQL Database offers useful features like tunable consistency, what lends it to storing property graphs is the storage guarantees around its key structure.  Keys in Oracle NoSQL Database are divided into two parts: a major key and a minor key.  The storage guarantee is simple.  Major keys will be distributed across storage nodes, which could encompass a large number of servers.  However, all minor keys which are children of a given major key are guaranteed to be stored on the same storage node.  For example, the vertices: /Personnel/Vertex/1  and /Personnel/Vertex/2 May be stored on different servers, but /Personnel/Vertex/1-/name and  /Personnel/Vertex/1-/age will always be on the same server.  This means that we can structure our graph database such that retrieving all the properties for a vertex or edge requires I/O from only a single storage node.  Moreover, Oracle NoSQL Database provides a storeIterator which allows us to store a huge number of vertices and edges in a scalable fashion.  By storing the vertices and edges as major keys, we guarantee that they are distributed evenly across all storage nodes.  At the same time we can use a partial major key to iterate over all the vertices or edges (e.g. we search over /Personnel/Vertex to iterate over all vertices). Fork It! The Blueprints API and Oracle NoSQL Database present a great way to get started using a scalable key-value database to store and access graph data.  However, a graph store isn't useful without a good graph to work on.  I encourage you to fork or pull the repository, store some data, and try using Gremlin or any other language to explore.

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• 2D Tile Based Collision Detection

  - by MrPlosion1243

  There are a lot of topics about this and it seems each one addresses a different problem, this topic does the same. I was looking into tile collision detection and found this where David Gouveia explains a great way to get around the person's problem by separating the two axis. So I implemented the solution and it all worked perfectly from all the testes I through at it. Then I implemented more advanced platforming physics and the collision detection broke down. Unfortunately I have not been able to get it to work again which is where you guys come in :)! I will present the code first: public void Update(GameTime gameTime) { if(Input.GetKeyDown(Keys.A)) { velocity.X -= moveAcceleration; } else if(Input.GetKeyDown(Keys.D)) { velocity.X += moveAcceleration; } if(Input.GetKeyDown(Keys.Space)) { if((onGround && isPressable) || (!onGround && airTime <= maxAirTime && isPressable)) { onGround = false; airTime += (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; velocity.Y = initialJumpVelocity * (1.0f - (float)Math.Pow(airTime / maxAirTime, Math.PI)); } } else if(Input.GetKeyReleased(Keys.Space)) { isPressable = false; } if(onGround) { velocity.X *= groundDrag; velocity.Y = 0.0f; } else { velocity.X *= airDrag; velocity.Y += gravityAcceleration; } velocity.Y = MathHelper.Clamp(velocity.Y, -maxFallSpeed, maxFallSpeed); velocity.X = MathHelper.Clamp(velocity.X, -maxMoveSpeed, maxMoveSpeed); position += velocity * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; position = new Vector2((float)Math.Round(position.X), (float)Math.Round(position.Y)); if(Math.Round(velocity.X) != 0.0f) { HandleCollisions2(Direction.Horizontal); } if(Math.Round(velocity.Y) != 0.0f) { HandleCollisions2(Direction.Vertical); } } private void HandleCollisions2(Direction direction) { int topTile = (int)Math.Floor((float)Bounds.Top / Tile.PixelTileSize); int bottomTile = (int)Math.Ceiling((float)Bounds.Bottom / Tile.PixelTileSize) - 1; int leftTile = (int)Math.Floor((float)Bounds.Left / Tile.PixelTileSize); int rightTile = (int)Math.Ceiling((float)Bounds.Right / Tile.PixelTileSize) - 1; for(int x = leftTile; x <= rightTile; x++) { for(int y = topTile; y <= bottomTile; y++) { Rectangle tileBounds = new Rectangle(x * Tile.PixelTileSize, y * Tile.PixelTileSize, Tile.PixelTileSize, Tile.PixelTileSize); Vector2 depth; if(Tile.IsSolid(x, y) && Intersects(tileBounds, direction, out depth)) { if(direction == Direction.Horizontal) { position.X += depth.X; } else { onGround = true; isPressable = true; airTime = 0.0f; position.Y += depth.Y; } } } } } From the code you can see when velocity.X is not equal to zero the HandleCollisions() Method is called along the horizontal axis and likewise for the vertical axis. When velocity.X is not equal to zero and velocity.Y is equal to zero it works fine. When velocity.Y is not equal to zero and velocity.X is equal to zero everything also works fine. However when both axis are not equal to zero that's when it doesn't work and I don't know why. I basically teleport to the left side of a tile when both axis are not equal to zero and there is a air block next to me. Hopefully someone can see the problem with this because I sure don't as far as I'm aware nothing has even changed from what I'm doing to what the linked post's solution is doing. Thanks.

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• Oracle GoldenGate Active-Active Part 1

  - by Nick_W

  My name is Nick Wagner, and I'm a recent addition to the Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) product management team.  I've spent the last 15+ years working on database replication products, and I've spent the last 10 years working on the Oracle GoldenGate product.  So most of my posting will probably be focused on OGG.  One question that comes up all the time is around active-active replication with Oracle GoldenGate.  How do I know if my application is a good fit for active-active replication with GoldenGate?   To answer that, it really comes down to how you plan on handling conflict resolution.  I will delve into topology and deployment in a later blog, but here is a simple architecture: The two most common resolution routines are host based resolution and timestamp based resolution. Host based resolution is used less often, but works with the fewest application changes.  Think of it like this: any transactions from SystemA always take precedence over any transactions from SystemB.  If there is a conflict on SystemB, then the record from SystemA will overwrite it.  If there is a conflict on SystemA, then it will be ignored.  It is quite a bit less restrictive, and in most cases, as long as all the tables have primary keys, host based resolution will work just fine.  Timestamp based resolution, on the other hand, is a little trickier. In this case, you can decide which record is overwritten based on timestamps. For example, does the older record get overwritten with the newer record?  Or vice-versa?  This method not only requires primary keys on every table, but it also requires every table to have a timestamp/date column that is updated each time a record is inserted or updated on the table.  Most homegrown applications can always be customized to include these requirements, but it's a little more difficult with 3rd party applications, and might even be impossible for large ERP type applications.  If your database has these features - whether it’s primary keys for host based resolution, or primary keys and timestamp columns for timestamp based resolution - then your application could be a great candidate for active-active replication.  But table structure is not the only requirement.  The other consideration applies when there is a conflict; i.e., do I need to perform any notification or track down the user that had their data overwritten?  In most cases, I don't think it's necessary, but if it is required, OGG can always create an exceptions table that contains all of the overwritten transactions so that people can be notified. It's a bit of extra work to implement this type of option, but if the business requires it, then it can be done. Unless someone is constantly monitoring this exception table or has an automated process in dealing with exceptions, there will be a delay in getting a response back to the end user. Ideally, when setting up active-active resolution we can include some simple procedural steps or configuration options that can reduce, or in some cases eliminate the potential for conflicts.  This makes the whole implementation that much easier and foolproof.  And I'll cover these in my next blog. 

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• Vertical Scrolling In Tile Based XNA Platformer

  - by alec100_94

  I'm making a 2D platformer in XNA 4.0. I have created a working tile engine, which works well for my purposes, and Horizontal Scrolling works flawlessly, however I am having great trouble with Vertical scrolling. I Basically want the camera to scroll up (world to scroll down) when the player reaches a certain Y co-ordinate, and I would also like to automatically scroll back down if coming down, and that co-ordinate is passed. My biggest problem is I have no real way of detecting the direction the player is moving in using only the Y Co-ord. Here Is My Code Code For The Camera Class (which appears to be a very different approach to most camera classes I have seen). using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; namespace Marvin { class Camera : TileEngine { public static bool startReached; public static bool endReached; public static void MoveRight(float speed = 2) { //Moves The Position of Each Tile Right foreach (Tile t in tiles) { if(t!=null) { t.position.X -= speed; } } } public static void MoveLeft(float speed = 2) { //Moves The Position of Each Tile Right foreach (Tile t in tiles) { if(t!=null) { t.position.X += speed; } } } public static void MoveUp(float speed = 2) { foreach (Tile t in tiles) { if(t!=null) { t.position.Y += speed; } } } public static void MoveDown(float speed = 2) { foreach (Tile t in tiles) { if(t!=null) { t.position.Y -= speed; } } } public static void Restrain() { if(tiles.Last().position.X<Main.graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth-tiles.Last().size.X) { MoveLeft(); endReached = true; } else { endReached = false; } if(tiles[1].position.X>0) { MoveRight(); startReached = true;} else { startReached = false; } } } } Here is My Player Code for Left and Right Scrolling/Moving if (Main.currentKeyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Right)) { Camera.MoveRight(); if(Camera.endReached) { MoveRight(2); } else { if(marvin.GetRectangle().X!=Main.graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth-(marvin.GetRectangle().X+marvin.GetRectangle().Width)) { MoveRight(2); Camera.MoveLeft(); } } } if(Main.currentKeyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left)) { Camera.MoveLeft(); if(Camera.startReached) { MoveLeft(2); } else { if(marvin.GetRectangle().X!=Main.graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth-(marvin.GetRectangle().X+marvin.GetRectangle().Width)) { MoveLeft(2); Camera.MoveRight(); } } } Camera.Restrain(); if(marvin.GetRectangle().X>Main.graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth-marvin.GetRectangle().Width) { MoveLeft(2); } if(marvin.GetRectangle().X<0) { MoveRight(2); } And Here Is My Player Jumping/Falling Code which may cause some conflicts with the vertical camera movement. if (!jumping) { if(!TileEngine.TopOfTileCollidingWith(footBounds)) { MoveDown(5); } else { if(marvin.GetRectangle().Y != TileEngine.LastPlatformStoodOnTop()-marvin.GetRectangle().Height) { float difference = (TileEngine.LastPlatformStoodOnTop()-marvin.GetRectangle().Height) - (marvin.GetRectangle().Y); marvin.SetRectangle(marvin.GetRectangle().X,(int)(marvin.GetRectangle().Y+difference)); armR.SetRectangle(armR.GetRectangle().X,(int)(armR.GetRectangle().Y+difference)); armL.SetRectangle(armL.GetRectangle().X,(int)(armL.GetRectangle().Y+difference)); eyeL.SetRectangle(eyeL.GetRectangle().X,(int)(eyeL.GetRectangle().Y+difference)); eyeR.SetRectangle(eyeR.GetRectangle().X,(int)(eyeR.GetRectangle().Y+difference)); } } } if (Main.currentKeyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Up) && Main.previousKeyState.IsKeyUp(Keys.Up) && TileEngine.TopOfTileCollidingWith(footBounds)) { jumping = true; } if(jumping) { if(TileEngine.LastPlatformStoodOnTop()>0 && (TileEngine.LastPlatformStoodOnTop() - footBounds.Bottom)<120) { MoveUp(5); } else { jumping = false; } } All player code I have tried for vertical movements has failed, or caused weird results (like falling through platforms), and most have been a variation on the method I described above, hence I have not included it. I would really appreciate some help implementing a simple vertical scrolling into this game, Thanks.

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• Ubuntu 12.04 host – Virtualbox 4.1.12 Guest=Windows 7 – Network will not connect

  - by user287529

  Ubuntu 12.04 host – Virtualbox 4.1.12 Guest=Windows 7 – Network will not connect. I'm using Ubuntu 12.04 on an Acer Aspire 5742-7645 laptop with 4GB memory, Intel Core i3 processor, Intel HD Graphics, DVD drive, 802.1 b/g/n, and 500 GB HD. I connect to my router via a wireless connection. I have installed Virutalbox 4.1.12 from the Ubuntu Software Center and installed Guest additions 4.1.12 in the Windows 7 guest session. I have Windows XP and Windows 7 installed as guests in Virtual box The network settings are different for XP and 7 – see below. Network Settings XP guest = Adapter 1: PCnet-FAST III (NAT) - Network works perfectly and has worked well for several years. Network Settings Win 7 = Adapter 1: Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop (Bridged adapter, eth1) Promiscuous Mode = allow all Cable connected = checked When I originally installed Windows 7, I tried NAT and the guest network would not connect. Once I changed the setting to the above (Bridged) the Network worked perfectly. However, what I believe is after updates (not sure if it was an Ubuntu or Windows update) the guest network stopped working and I can not get it to connect. Interfaces file content auto lo iface lo inet loopback Ifconfig yields lou@lou-Aspire-5742:~$ ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 1c:75:08:09:f6:5c UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B) Interrupt:16 eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 4c:0f:6e:7c:9f:01 inet addr:192.168.1.104 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::4e0f:6eff:fe7c:9f01/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:18095 errors:2 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:24344 TX packets:9281 errors:47 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:5301926 (5.3 MB) TX bytes:1441885 (1.4 MB) Interrupt:17 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:3208 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:3208 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:294088 (294.0 KB) TX bytes:294088 (294.0 KB) Ipconfig yields the following: Windows IP Configuration Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::38ba:dbca:a21d:c3d1%13 Autoconfiguration IPv4 Address. . : 169.254.195.209 Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.0.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : Tunnel adapter isatap.{B292E440-679D-4FC5-8E34-77D6804669C8}: Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Tunnel adapter Local Area Connection* 11: Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : I'm not sure what else to do. Can someone provide the troubleshooting steps to determine what the problem is and possible solution?

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• Finalists for Community Manager of the Year Announced

  - by Mike Stiles

  For as long as brand social has been around, there’s still an amazing disparity from company to company on the role of Community Manager. At some brands, they are the lead social innovators. At others, the task has been relegated to interns who are at the company temporarily. Some have total autonomy and trust. Others must get chain-of-command permission each time they engage. So what does a premiere “worth their weight in gold” Community Manager look like? More than anyone else in the building, they have the most intimate knowledge of who the customer is. They live on the front lines and are the first to detect problems and opportunities. They are sincere, raving fans of the brand themselves and are trusted advocates for the others. They’re fun to be around. They aren’t salespeople. Give me one Community Manager who’s been at the job 6 months over 5 focus groups any day. Because not unlike in speed dating, they must immediately learn how to make a positive, lasting impression on fans so they’ll want to return and keep the relationship going. They’re informers and entertainers, with a true belief in the value of the brand’s proposition. Internally, they live at the mercy of the resources allocated toward social. Many, whose managers don’t understand the time involved in properly curating a community, are tasked with 2 or 3 too many of them. 63% of CM’s will spend over 30 hours a week on one community. They come to intuitively know the value of the relationships they’re building, even if they can’t always be shown in a bar graph to the C-suite. Many must communicate how the customer feels to executives that simply don’t seem to want to hear it. Some can get the answers fans want quickly, others are frustrated in their ability to respond within an impressive timeframe. In short, in a corporate world coping with sweeping technological changes, amidst business school doublespeak, pie charts, decks, strat sessions and data points, the role of the Community Manager is the most…human. They are the true emotional connection to the real life customer. Which is why we sought to find a way to recognize and honor who they are, what they do, and how well they have defined the position as social grows and integrates into the larger organization. Meet our 3 finalists for Community Manager of the Year. Jeff Esposito with VistaprintJeff manages and heads up content strategy for all social networks and blogs. He also crafts company-wide policies surrounding the social space. Vistaprint won the NEDMA Gold Award for Twitter Strategy in 2010 and 2011, and a Bronze in 2011 for Social Media Strategy. Prior to Vistaprint, Jeff was Media Relations Manager with the Long Island Ducks. He graduated from Seton Hall University with a BA in English and a minor in Classical Studies. Stacey Acevero with Vocus In addition to social management, Stacey blogs at Vocus on influential marketing and social media, and blogs at PRWeb on public relations and SEO. She’s been named one of the #Nifty50 Women in Tech on Twitter 2 years in a row, as well as included in the 15 up-and-coming PR pros to watch in 2012. Carly Severn with the San Francisco BalletCarly drives engagement, widens the fanbase and generates digital content for America’s oldest professional ballet company. Managed properties include Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube and G+. Prior to joining the SF Ballet, Carly was Marketing & Press Coordinator at The Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, where she graduated with a degree in English. We invite you to join us at the first annual Oracle Social Media Summit November 14 and 15 at the Wynn in Las Vegas where our finalists will be featured. Over 300 top brand marketers, agency executives, and social leaders & innovators will be exploring how social is transforming business. Space is limited and the information valuable, so get more info and get registered as soon as possible at the event site.

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