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• How can I estimate the entropy of a password?

  - by Wug

  Having read various resources about password strength I'm trying to create an algorithm that will provide a rough estimation of how much entropy a password has. I'm trying to create an algorithm that's as comprehensive as possible. At this point I only have pseudocode, but the algorithm covers the following: password length repeated characters patterns (logical) different character spaces (LC, UC, Numeric, Special, Extended) dictionary attacks It does NOT cover the following, and SHOULD cover it WELL (though not perfectly): ordering (passwords can be strictly ordered by output of this algorithm) patterns (spatial) Can anyone provide some insight on what this algorithm might be weak to? Specifically, can anyone think of situations where feeding a password to the algorithm would OVERESTIMATE its strength? Underestimations are less of an issue. The algorithm: // the password to test password = ? length = length(password) // unique character counts from password (duplicates discarded) uqlca = number of unique lowercase alphabetic characters in password uquca = number of uppercase alphabetic characters uqd = number of unique digits uqsp = number of unique special characters (anything with a key on the keyboard) uqxc = number of unique special special characters (alt codes, extended-ascii stuff) // algorithm parameters, total sizes of alphabet spaces Nlca = total possible number of lowercase letters (26) Nuca = total uppercase letters (26) Nd = total digits (10) Nsp = total special characters (32 or something) Nxc = total extended ascii characters that dont fit into other categorys (idk, 50?) // algorithm parameters, pw strength growth rates as percentages (per character) flca = entropy growth factor for lowercase letters (.25 is probably a good value) fuca = EGF for uppercase letters (.4 is probably good) fd = EGF for digits (.4 is probably good) fsp = EGF for special chars (.5 is probably good) fxc = EGF for extended ascii chars (.75 is probably good) // repetition factors. few unique letters == low factor, many unique == high rflca = (1 - (1 - flca) ^ uqlca) rfuca = (1 - (1 - fuca) ^ uquca) rfd = (1 - (1 - fd ) ^ uqd ) rfsp = (1 - (1 - fsp ) ^ uqsp ) rfxc = (1 - (1 - fxc ) ^ uqxc ) // digit strengths strength = ( rflca * Nlca + rfuca * Nuca + rfd * Nd + rfsp * Nsp + rfxc * Nxc ) ^ length entropybits = log_base_2(strength) A few inputs and their desired and actual entropy_bits outputs: INPUT DESIRED ACTUAL aaa very pathetic 8.1 aaaaaaaaa pathetic 24.7 abcdefghi weak 31.2 H0ley$Mol3y_ strong 72.2 s^fU¬5ü;y34G< wtf 88.9 [a^36]* pathetic 97.2 [a^20]A[a^15]* strong 146.8 xkcd1** medium 79.3 xkcd2** wtf 160.5 * these 2 passwords use shortened notation, where [a^N] expands to N a's. ** xkcd1 = "Tr0ub4dor&3", xkcd2 = "correct horse battery staple" The algorithm does realize (correctly) that increasing the alphabet size (even by one digit) vastly strengthens long passwords, as shown by the difference in entropy_bits for the 6th and 7th passwords, which both consist of 36 a's, but the second's 21st a is capitalized. However, they do not account for the fact that having a password of 36 a's is not a good idea, it's easily broken with a weak password cracker (and anyone who watches you type it will see it) and the algorithm doesn't reflect that. It does, however, reflect the fact that xkcd1 is a weak password compared to xkcd2, despite having greater complexity density (is this even a thing?). How can I improve this algorithm? Addendum 1 Dictionary attacks and pattern based attacks seem to be the big thing, so I'll take a stab at addressing those. I could perform a comprehensive search through the password for words from a word list and replace words with tokens unique to the words they represent. Word-tokens would then be treated as characters and have their own weight system, and would add their own weights to the password. I'd need a few new algorithm parameters (I'll call them lw, Nw ~= 2^11, fw ~= .5, and rfw) and I'd factor the weight into the password as I would any of the other weights. This word search could be specially modified to match both lowercase and uppercase letters as well as common character substitutions, like that of E with 3. If I didn't add extra weight to such matched words, the algorithm would underestimate their strength by a bit or two per word, which is OK. Otherwise, a general rule would be, for each non-perfect character match, give the word a bonus bit. I could then perform simple pattern checks, such as searches for runs of repeated characters and derivative tests (take the difference between each character), which would identify patterns such as 'aaaaa' and '12345', and replace each detected pattern with a pattern token, unique to the pattern and length. The algorithmic parameters (specifically, entropy per pattern) could be generated on the fly based on the pattern. At this point, I'd take the length of the password. Each word token and pattern token would count as one character; each token would replace the characters they symbolically represented. I made up some sort of pattern notation, but it includes the pattern length l, the pattern order o, and the base element b. This information could be used to compute some arbitrary weight for each pattern. I'd do something better in actual code. Modified Example: Password: 1234kitty$$$$$herpderp Tokenized: 1 2 3 4 k i t t y $ $ $ $ $ h e r p d e r p Words Filtered: 1 2 3 4 @W5783 $ $ $ $ $ @W9001 @W9002 Patterns Filtered: @P[l=4,o=1,b='1'] @W5783 @P[l=5,o=0,b='$'] @W9001 @W9002 Breakdown: 3 small, unique words and 2 patterns Entropy: about 45 bits, as per modified algorithm Password: correcthorsebatterystaple Tokenized: c o r r e c t h o r s e b a t t e r y s t a p l e Words Filtered: @W6783 @W7923 @W1535 @W2285 Breakdown: 4 small, unique words and no patterns Entropy: 43 bits, as per modified algorithm The exact semantics of how entropy is calculated from patterns is up for discussion. I was thinking something like: entropy(b) * l * (o + 1) // o will be either zero or one The modified algorithm would find flaws with and reduce the strength of each password in the original table, with the exception of s^fU¬5ü;y34G<, which contains no words or patterns.

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• Setting up and using Bing Translate API Service for Machine Translation

  - by Rick Strahl

  Last week I spent quite a bit of time trying to set up the Bing Translate API service. I can honestly say this was one of the most screwed up developer experiences I've had in a long while - specifically related to the byzantine sign up process that Microsoft has in place. Not only is it nearly impossible to find decent documentation on the required signup process, some of the links in the docs are just plain wrong, and some of the account pages you need to access the actual account information once signed up are not linked anywhere from the administration UI. To make things even harder is the fact that the APIs changed a while back, with a completely new authentication scheme that's described and not directly linked documentation topic also made for a very frustrating search experience. It's a bummer that this is the case too, because the actual API itself is easy to use and works very well - fast and reasonably accurate (as accurate as you can expect machine translation to be). But the sign up process is a pain in the ass doubtlessly leaving many people giving up in frustration. In this post I'll try to hit all the points needed to set up to use the Bing Translate API in one place since such a document seems to be missing from Microsoft. Hopefully the API folks at Microsoft will get their shit together and actually provide this sort of info on their site… Signing Up The first step required is to create a Windows Azure MarketPlace account. Go to: https://datamarket.azure.com/ Sign in with your Windows Live Id If you don't have an account you will be taken to a registration page which you have to fill out. Follow the links and complete the registration. Once you're signed in you can start adding services. Click on the Data Link on the main page Select Microsoft Translator from the list This adds the Microsoft Bing Translator to your services. Pricing The page shows the pricing matrix and the free service which provides 2 megabytes for translations a month for free. Prices go up steeply from there. Pricing is determined by actual bytes of the result translations used. Max translations are 1000 characters so at minimum this means you get around 2000 translations a month for free. However most translations are probable much less so you can expect larger number of translations to go through. For testing or low volume translations this should be just fine. Once signed up there are no further instructions and you're left in limbo on the MS site. Register your Application Once you've created the Data association with Translator the next step is registering your application. To do this you need to access your developer account. Go to https://datamarket.azure.com/developer/applications/register Provide a ClientId, which is effectively the unique string identifier for your application (not your customer id!) Provide your name The client secret was auto-created and this becomes your 'password' For the redirect url provide any https url: https://microsoft.com works Give this application a description of your choice so you can identify it in the list of apps Now, once you've registered your application, keep track of the ClientId and ClientSecret - those are the two keys you need to authenticate before you can call the Translate API. Oddly the applications page is hidden from the Azure Portal UI. I couldn't find a direct link from anywhere on the site back to this page where I can examine my developer application keys. To find them you can go to: https://datamarket.azure.com/developer/applications You can come back here to look at your registered applications and pick up the ClientID and ClientSecret. Fun eh? But we're now ready to actually call the API and do some translating. Using the Bing Translate API The good news is that after this signup hell, using the API is pretty straightforward. To use the translation API you'll need to actually use two services: You need to call an authentication API service first, before you can call the actual translator API. These two APIs live on different domains, and the authentication API returns JSON data while the translator service returns XML. So much for consistency. Authentication The first step is authentication. The service uses oAuth authentication with a  bearer token that has to be passed to the translator API. The authentication call retrieves the oAuth token that you can then use with the translate API call. The bearer token has a short 10 minute life time, so while you can cache it for successive calls, the token can't be cached for long periods. This means for Web backend requests you typically will have to authenticate each time unless you build a more elaborate caching scheme that takes the timeout into account (perhaps using the ASP.NET Cache object). For low volume operations you can probably get away with simply calling the auth API for every translation you do. To call the Authentication API use code like this:/// /// Retrieves an oAuth authentication token to be used on the translate /// API request. The result string needs to be passed as a bearer token /// to the translate API. /// /// You can find client ID and Secret (or register a new one) at: /// https://datamarket.azure.com/developer/applications/ /// /// The client ID of your application /// The client secret or password /// public string GetBingAuthToken(string clientId = null, string clientSecret = null) { string authBaseUrl = https://datamarket.accesscontrol.windows.net/v2/OAuth2-13; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(clientId) || string.IsNullOrEmpty(clientSecret)) { ErrorMessage = Resources.Resources.Client_Id_and_Client_Secret_must_be_provided; return null; } var postData = string.Format("grant_type=client_credentials&client_id={0}" + "&client_secret={1}" + "&scope=http://api.microsofttranslator.com", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(clientId), HttpUtility.UrlEncode(clientSecret)); // POST Auth data to the oauth API string res, token; try { var web = new WebClient(); web.Encoding = Encoding.UTF8; res = web.UploadString(authBaseUrl, postData); } catch (Exception ex) { ErrorMessage = ex.GetBaseException().Message; return null; } var ser = new JavaScriptSerializer(); var auth = ser.Deserialize<BingAuth>(res); if (auth == null) return null; token = auth.access_token; return token; } private class BingAuth { public string token_type { get; set; } public string access_token { get; set; } } This code basically takes the client id and secret and posts it at the oAuth endpoint which returns a JSON string. Here I use the JavaScript serializer to deserialize the JSON into a custom object I created just for deserialization. You can also use JSON.NET and dynamic deserialization if you are already using JSON.NET in your app in which case you don't need the extra type. In my library that houses this component I don't, so I just rely on the built in serializer. The auth method returns a long base64 encoded string which can be used as a bearer token in the translate API call. Translation Once you have the authentication token you can use it to pass to the translate API. The auth token is passed as an Authorization header and the value is prefixed with a 'Bearer ' prefix for the string. Here's what the simple Translate API call looks like:/// /// Uses the Bing API service to perform translation /// Bing can translate up to 1000 characters. /// /// Requires that you provide a CLientId and ClientSecret /// or set the configuration values for these two. /// /// More info on setup: /// http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/ /// /// Text to translate /// Two letter culture name /// Two letter culture name /// Pass an access token retrieved with GetBingAuthToken. /// If not passed the default keys from .config file are used if any /// public string TranslateBing(string text, string fromCulture, string toCulture, string accessToken = null) { string serviceUrl = "http://api.microsofttranslator.com/V2/Http.svc/Translate"; if (accessToken == null) { accessToken = GetBingAuthToken(); if (accessToken == null) return null; } string res; try { var web = new WebClient(); web.Headers.Add("Authorization", "Bearer " + accessToken); string ct = "text/plain"; string postData = string.Format("?text={0}&from={1}&to={2}&contentType={3}", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(text), fromCulture, toCulture, HttpUtility.UrlEncode(ct)); web.Encoding = Encoding.UTF8; res = web.DownloadString(serviceUrl + postData); } catch (Exception e) { ErrorMessage = e.GetBaseException().Message; return null; } // result is a single XML Element fragment var doc = new XmlDocument(); doc.LoadXml(res); return doc.DocumentElement.InnerText; } The first of this code deals with ensuring the auth token exists. You can either pass the token into the method manually or let the method automatically retrieve the auth code on its own. In my case I'm using this inside of a Web application and in that situation I simply need to re-authenticate every time as there's no convenient way to manage the lifetime of the auth cookie. The auth token is added as an Authorization HTTP header prefixed with 'Bearer ' and attached to the request. The text to translate, the from and to language codes and a result format are passed on the query string of this HTTP GET request against the Translate API. The translate API returns an XML string which contains a single element with the translated string. Using the Wrapper Methods It should be pretty obvious how to use these two methods but here are a couple of test methods that demonstrate the two usage scenarios:[TestMethod] public void TranslateBingWithAuthTest() { var translate = new TranslationServices(); string clientId = DbResourceConfiguration.Current.BingClientId; string clientSecret = DbResourceConfiguration.Current.BingClientSecret; string auth = translate.GetBingAuthToken(clientId, clientSecret); Assert.IsNotNull(auth); string text = translate.TranslateBing("Hello World we're back home!", "en", "de",auth); Assert.IsNotNull(text, translate.ErrorMessage); Console.WriteLine(text); } [TestMethod] public void TranslateBingIntegratedTest() { var translate = new TranslationServices(); string text = translate.TranslateBing("Hello World we're back home!","en","de"); Assert.IsNotNull(text, translate.ErrorMessage); Console.WriteLine(text); } Other API Methods The Translate API has a number of methods available and this one is the simplest one but probably also the most common one that translates a single string. You can find additional methods for this API here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff512419.aspx Soap and AJAX APIs are also available and documented on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd576287.aspx These links will be your starting points for calling other methods in this API. Dual Interface I've talked about my database driven localization provider here in the past, and it's for this tool that I added the Bing localization support. Basically I have a localization administration form that allows me to translate individual strings right out of the UI, using both Google and Bing APIs: As you can see in this example, the results from Google and Bing can vary quite a bit - in this case Google is stumped while Bing actually generated a valid translation. At other times it's the other way around - it's pretty useful to see multiple translations at the same time. Here I can choose from one of the values and driectly embed them into the translated text field. Lost in Translation There you have it. As I mentioned using the API once you have all the bureaucratic crap out of the way calling the APIs is fairly straight forward and reasonably fast, even if you have to call the Auth API for every call. Hopefully this post will help out a few of you trying to navigate the Microsoft bureaucracy, at least until next time Microsoft upends everything and introduces new ways to sign up again. Until then - happy translating… Related Posts Translation method Source on Github Translating with Google Translate without Google API Keys Creating a data-driven ASP.NET Resource Provider© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in Localization  ASP.NET  .NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• 10 Essential Tools for building ASP.NET Websites

  - by Stephen Walther

  I recently put together a simple public website created with ASP.NET for my company at Superexpert.com. I was surprised by the number of free tools that I ended up using to put together the website. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to create a list of essential tools for building ASP.NET websites. These tools work equally well with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. Performance Tools After reading Steve Souders two (very excellent) books on front-end website performance High Performance Web Sites and Even Faster Web Sites, I have been super sensitive to front-end website performance. According to Souders’ Performance Golden Rule: “Optimize front-end performance first, that's where 80% or more of the end-user response time is spent” You can use the tools below to reduce the size of the images, JavaScript files, and CSS files used by an ASP.NET application. 1. Sprite and Image Optimization Framework CSS sprites were first described in an article written for A List Apart entitled CSS sprites: Image Slicing’s Kiss of Death. When you use sprites, you combine multiple images used by a website into a single image. Next, you use CSS trickery to display particular sub-images from the combined image in a webpage. The primary advantage of sprites is that they reduce the number of requests required to display a webpage. Requesting a single large image is faster than requesting multiple small images. In general, the more resources – images, JavaScript files, CSS files – that must be moved across the wire, the slower your website. However, most people avoid using sprites because they require a lot of work. You need to combine all of the images and write just the right CSS rules to display the sub-images. The Microsoft Sprite and Image Optimization Framework enables you to avoid all of this work. The framework combines the images for you automatically. Furthermore, the framework includes an ASP.NET Web Forms control and an ASP.NET MVC helper that makes it easy to display the sub-images. You can download the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework from CodePlex at http://aspnet.codeplex.com/releases/view/50869. The Sprite and Image Optimization Framework was written by Morgan McClean who worked in the office next to mine at Microsoft. Morgan was a scary smart Intern from Canada and we discussed the Framework while he was building it (I was really excited to learn that he was working on it). Morgan added some great advanced features to this framework. For example, the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework supports something called image inlining. When you use image inlining, the actual image is stored in the CSS file. Here’s an example of what image inlining looks like: .Home_StephenWalther_small-jpg { width:75px; height:100px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAEsAAABkCAIAAABB1lpeAAAAB GdBTUEAALGOfPtRkwAAACBjSFJNAACHDwAAjA8AAP1SAACBQAAAfXkAAOmLAAA85QAAGcxzPIV3AAAKL s+zNfREAAAAASUVORK5CYII=) no-repeat 0% 0%; } The actual image (in this case a picture of me that is displayed on the home page of the Superexpert.com website) is stored in the CSS file. If you visit the Superexpert.com website then very few separate images are downloaded. For example, all of the images with a red border in the screenshot below take advantage of CSS sprites: Unfortunately, there are some significant Gotchas that you need to be aware of when using the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework. There are workarounds for these Gotchas. I plan to write about these Gotchas and workarounds in a future blog entry. 2. Microsoft Ajax Minifier Whenever possible you should combine, minify, compress, and cache with a far future header all of your JavaScript and CSS files. The Microsoft Ajax Minifier makes it easy to minify JavaScript and CSS files. Don’t confuse minification and compression. You need to do both. According to Souders, you can reduce the size of a JavaScript file by an additional 20% (on average) by minifying a JavaScript file after you compress the file. When you minify a JavaScript or CSS file, you use various tricks to reduce the size of the file before you compress the file. For example, you can minify a JavaScript file by replacing long JavaScript variables names with short variables names and removing unnecessary white space and comments. You can minify a CSS file by doing such things as replacing long color names such as #ffffff with shorter equivalents such as #fff. The Microsoft Ajax Minifier was created by Microsoft employee Ron Logan. Internally, this tool was being used by several large Microsoft websites. We also used the tool heavily on the ASP.NET team. I convinced Ron to publish the tool on CodePlex so that everyone in the world could take advantage of it. You can download the tool from the ASP.NET Ajax website and read documentation for the tool here. I created the installer for the Microsoft Ajax Minifier. When creating the installer, I also created a Visual Studio build task to make it easy to minify all of your JavaScript and CSS files whenever you do a build within Visual Studio automatically. Read the Ajax Minifier Quick Start to learn how to configure the build task. 3. ySlow The ySlow tool is a free add-on for Firefox created by Yahoo that enables you to test the front-end of your website. For example, here are the current test results for the Superexpert.com website: The Superexpert.com website has an overall score of B (not perfect but not bad). The ySlow tool is not perfect. For example, the Superexpert.com website received a failing grade of F for not using a Content Delivery Network even though the website using the Microsoft Ajax Content Delivery Network for JavaScript files such as jQuery. Uptime After publishing a website live to the world, you want to ensure that the website does not encounter any issues and that it stays live. I use the following tools to monitor the Superexpert.com website now that it is live. 4. ELMAH ELMAH stands for Error Logging Modules and Handlers for ASP.NET. ELMAH enables you to record any errors that happen at your website so you can review them in the future. You can download ELMAH for free from the ELMAH project website. ELMAH works great with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. You can configure ELMAH to store errors in a number of different stores including XML files, the Event Log, an Access database, a SQL database, an Oracle database, or in computer RAM. You also can configure ELMAH to email error messages to you when they happen. By default, you can access ELMAH by requesting the elmah.axd page from a website with ELMAH installed. Here’s what the elmah page looks like from the Superexpert.com website (this page is password-protected because secret information can be revealed in an error message): If you click on a particular error message, you can view the original Yellow Screen ASP.NET error message (even when the error message was never displayed to the actual user). I installed ELMAH by taking advantage of the new package manager for ASP.NET named NuGet (originally named NuPack). You can read the details about NuGet in the following blog entry by Scott Guthrie. You can download NuGet from CodePlex. 5. Pingdom I use Pingdom to verify that the Superexpert.com website is always up. You can sign up for Pingdom by visiting Pingdom.com. You can use Pingdom to monitor a single website for free. At the Pingdom website, you configure the frequency that your website gets pinged. I verify that the Superexpert.com website is up every 5 minutes. I have the Pingdom service verify that it can retrieve the string “Contact Us” from the website homepage. If your website goes down, you can configure Pingdom so that it sends an email, Twitter, SMS, or iPhone alert. I use the Pingdom iPhone app which looks like this: 6. Host Tracker If your website does go down then you need some way of determining whether it is a problem with your local network or if your website is down for everyone. I use a website named Host-Tracker.com to check how badly a website is down. Here’s what the Host-Tracker website displays for the Superexpert.com website when the website can be successfully pinged from everywhere in the world: Notice that Host-Tracker pinged the Superexpert.com website from 68 locations including Roubaix, France and Scranton, PA. Debugging I mean debugging in the broadest possible sense. I use the following tools when building a website to verify that I have not made a mistake. 7. HTML Spell Checker Why doesn’t Visual Studio have a built-in spell checker? Don’t know – I’ve always found this mysterious. Fortunately, however, a former member of the ASP.NET team wrote a free spell checker that you can use with your ASP.NET pages. I find a spell checker indispensible. It is easy to delude yourself that you are capable of perfect spelling. I’m always super embarrassed when I actually run the spell checking tool and discover all of my spelling mistakes. The fastest way to add the HTML Spell Checker extension to Visual Studio is to select the menu option Tools, Extension Manager within Visual Studio. Click on Online Gallery and search for HTML Spell Checker: 8. IIS SEO Toolkit If people cannot find your website through Google then you should not even bother to create it. Microsoft has a great extension for IIS named the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit that you can use to identify issue with your website that would hurt its page rank. You also can use this tool to quickly create a sitemap for your website that you can submit to Google or Bing. You can even generate the sitemap for an ASP.NET MVC website. Here’s what the report overview for the Superexpert.com website looks like: Notice that the Sueprexpert.com website had plenty of violations. For example, there are 65 cases in which a page has a broken hyperlink. You can drill into these violations to identity the exact page and location where these violations occur. 9. LinqPad If your ASP.NET website accesses a database then you should be using LINQ to Entities with the Entity Framework. Using LINQ involves some magic. LINQ queries written in C# get converted into SQL queries for you. If you are not careful about how you write your LINQ queries, you could unintentionally build a really badly performing website. LinqPad is a free tool that enables you to experiment with your LINQ queries. It even works with Microsoft SQL CE 4 and Azure. You can use LinqPad to execute a LINQ to Entities query and see the results. You also can use it to see the resulting SQL that gets executed against the database: 10. .NET Reflector I use .NET Reflector daily. The .NET Reflector tool enables you to take any assembly and disassemble the assembly into C# or VB.NET code. You can use .NET Reflector to see the “Source Code” of an assembly even when you do not have the actual source code. You can download a free version of .NET Reflector from the Redgate website. I use .NET Reflector primarily to help me understand what code is doing internally. For example, I used .NET Reflector with the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework to better understand how the MVC Image helper works. Here’s part of the disassembled code from the Image helper class: Summary In this blog entry, I’ve discussed several of the tools that I used to create the Superexpert.com website. These are tools that I use to improve the performance, improve the SEO, verify the uptime, or debug the Superexpert.com website. All of the tools discussed in this blog entry are free. Furthermore, all of these tools work with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. Let me know if there are any tools that you use daily when building ASP.NET websites.

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• How to Run Low-Cost Minecraft on a Raspberry Pi for Block Building on the Cheap

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  We’ve shown you how to run your own blocktastic personal Minecraft server on a Windows/OSX box, but what if you crave something lighter weight, more energy efficient, and always ready for your friends? Read on as we turn a tiny Raspberry Pi machine into a low-cost Minecraft server you can leave on 24/7 for around a penny a day. Why Do I Want to Do This? There’s two aspects to this tutorial, running your own Minecraft server and specifically running that Minecraft server on a Raspberry Pi. Why would you want to run your own Minecraft server? It’s a really great way to extend and build upon the Minecraft play experience. You can leave the server running when you’re not playing so friends and family can join and continue building your world. You can mess around with game variables and introduce mods in a way that isn’t possible when you’re playing the stand-alone game. It also gives you the kind of control over your multiplayer experience that using public servers doesn’t, without incurring the cost of hosting a private server on a remote host. While running a Minecraft server on its own is appealing enough to a dedicated Minecraft fan, running it on the Raspberry Pi is even more appealing. The tiny little Pi uses so little resources that you can leave your Minecraft server running 24/7 for a couple bucks a year. Aside from the initial cost outlay of the Pi, an SD card, and a little bit of time setting it up, you’ll have an always-on Minecraft server at a monthly cost of around one gumball. What Do I Need? For this tutorial you’ll need a mix of hardware and software tools; aside from the actual Raspberry Pi and SD card, everything is free. 1 Raspberry Pi (preferably a 512MB model) 1 4GB+ SD card This tutorial assumes that you have already familiarized yourself with the Raspberry Pi and have installed a copy of the Debian-derivative Raspbian on the device. If you have not got your Pi up and running yet, don’t worry! Check out our guide, The HTG Guide to Getting Started with Raspberry Pi, to get up to speed. Optimizing Raspbian for the Minecraft Server Unlike other builds we’ve shared where you can layer multiple projects over one another (e.g. the Pi is more than powerful enough to serve as a weather/email indicator and a Google Cloud Print server at the same time) running a Minecraft server is a pretty intense operation for the little Pi and we’d strongly recommend dedicating the entire Pi to the process. Minecraft seems like a simple game, with all its blocky-ness and what not, but it’s actually a pretty complex game beneath the simple skin and required a lot of processing power. As such, we’re going to tweak the configuration file and other settings to optimize Rasbian for the job. The first thing you’ll need to do is dig into the Raspi-Config application to make a few minor changes. If you’re installing Raspbian fresh, wait for the last step (which is the Raspi-Config), if you already installed it, head to the terminal and type in “sudo raspi-config” to launch it again. One of the first and most important things we need to attend to is cranking up the overclock setting. We need all the power we can get to make our Minecraft experience enjoyable. In Raspi-Config, select option number 7 “Overclock”. Be prepared for some stern warnings about overclocking, but rest easy knowing that overclocking is directly supported by the Raspberry Pi foundation and has been included in the configuration options since late 2012. Once you’re in the actual selection screen, select “Turbo 1000MhHz”. Again, you’ll be warned that the degree of overclocking you’ve selected carries risks (specifically, potential corruption of the SD card, but no risk of actual hardware damage). Click OK and wait for the device to reset. Next, make sure you’re set to boot to the command prompt, not the desktop. Select number 3 “Enable Boot to Desktop/Scratch”  and make sure “Console Text console” is selected. Back at the Raspi-Config menu, select number 8 “Advanced Options’. There are two critical changes we need to make in here and one option change. First, the critical changes. Select A3 “Memory Split”: Change the amount of memory available to the GPU to 16MB (down from the default 64MB). Our Minecraft server is going to ruin in a GUI-less environment; there’s no reason to allocate any more than the bare minimum to the GPU. After selecting the GPU memory, you’ll be returned to the main menu. Select “Advanced Options” again and then select A4 “SSH”. Within the sub-menu, enable SSH. There is very little reason to keep this Pi connected to a monitor and keyboard, by enabling SSH we can remotely access the machine from anywhere on the network. Finally (and optionally) return again to the “Advanced Options” menu and select A2 “Hostname”. Here you can change your hostname from “raspberrypi” to a more fitting Minecraft name. We opted for the highly creative hostname “minecraft”, but feel free to spice it up a bit with whatever you feel like: creepertown, minecraft4life, or miner-box are all great minecraft server names. That’s it for the Raspbian configuration tab down to the bottom of the main screen and select “Finish” to reboot. After rebooting you can now SSH into your terminal, or continue working from the keyboard hooked up to your Pi (we strongly recommend switching over to SSH as it allows you to easily cut and paste the commands). If you’ve never used SSH before, check out how to use PuTTY with your Pi here. Installing Java on the Pi The Minecraft server runs on Java, so the first thing we need to do on our freshly configured Pi is install it. Log into your Pi via SSH and then, at the command prompt, enter the following command to make a directory for the installation: sudo mkdir /java/ Now we need to download the newest version of Java. At the time of this publication the newest release is the OCT 2013 update and the link/filename we use will reflect that. Please check for a more current version of the Linux ARMv6/7 Java release on the Java download page and update the link/filename accordingly when following our instructions. At the command prompt, enter the following command: sudo wget --no-check-certificate http://www.java.net/download/jdk8/archive/b111/binaries/jdk-8-ea-b111-linux-arm-vfp-hflt-09_oct_2013.tar.gz Once the download has finished successfully, enter the following command: sudo tar zxvf jdk-8-ea-b111-linux-arm-vfp-hflt-09_oct_2013.tar.gz -C /opt/ Fun fact: the /opt/ directory name scheme is a remnant of early Unix design wherein the /opt/ directory was for “optional” software installed after the main operating system; it was the /Program Files/ of the Unix world. After the file has finished extracting, enter: sudo /opt/jdk1.8.0/bin/java -version This command will return the version number of your new Java installation like so: java version "1.8.0-ea" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0-ea-b111) Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 25.0-b53, mixed mode) If you don’t see the above printout (or a variation thereof if you’re using a newer version of Java), try to extract the archive again. If you do see the readout, enter the following command to tidy up after yourself: sudo rm jdk-8-ea-b111-linux-arm-vfp-hflt-09_oct_2013.tar.gz At this point Java is installed and we’re ready to move onto installing our Minecraft server! Installing and Configuring the Minecraft Server Now that we have a foundation for our Minecraft server, it’s time to install the part that matter. We’ll be using SpigotMC a lightweight and stable Minecraft server build that works wonderfully on the Pi. First, grab a copy of the the code with the following command: sudo wget http://ci.md-5.net/job/Spigot/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/Spigot-Server/target/spigot.jar This link should remain stable over time, as it points directly to the most current stable release of Spigot, but if you have any issues you can always reference the SpigotMC download page here. After the download finishes successfully, enter the following command: sudo /opt/jdk1.8.0/bin/java -Xms256M -Xmx496M -jar /home/pi/spigot.jar nogui Note: if you’re running the command on a 256MB Pi change the 256 and 496 in the above command to 128 and 256, respectively. Your server will launch and a flurry of on-screen activity will follow. Be prepared to wait around 3-6 minutes or so for the process of setting up the server and generating the map to finish. Future startups will take much less time, around 20-30 seconds. Note: If at any point during the configuration or play process things get really weird (e.g. your new Minecraft server freaks out and starts spawning you in the Nether and killing you instantly), use the “stop” command at the command prompt to gracefully shutdown the server and let you restart and troubleshoot it. After the process has finished, head over to the computer you normally play Minecraft on, fire it up, and click on Multiplayer. You should see your server: If your world doesn’t popup immediately during the network scan, hit the Add button and manually enter the address of your Pi. Once you connect to the server, you’ll see the status change in the server status window: According to the server, we’re in game. According to the actual Minecraft app, we’re also in game but it’s the middle of the night in survival mode: Boo! Spawning in the dead of night, weaponless and without shelter is no way to start things. No worries though, we need to do some more configuration; no time to sit around and get shot at by skeletons. Besides, if you try and play it without some configuration tweaks first, you’ll likely find it quite unstable. We’re just here to confirm the server is up, running, and accepting incoming connections. Once we’ve confirmed the server is running and connectable (albeit not very playable yet), it’s time to shut down the server. Via the server console, enter the command “stop” to shut everything down. When you’re returned to the command prompt, enter the following command: sudo nano server.properties When the configuration file opens up, make the following changes (or just cut and paste our config file minus the first two lines with the name and date stamp): #Minecraft server properties #Thu Oct 17 22:53:51 UTC 2013 generator-settings= #Default is true, toggle to false allow-nether=false level-name=world enable-query=false allow-flight=false server-port=25565 level-type=DEFAULT enable-rcon=false force-gamemode=false level-seed= server-ip= max-build-height=256 spawn-npcs=true white-list=false spawn-animals=true texture-pack= snooper-enabled=true hardcore=false online-mode=true pvp=true difficulty=1 player-idle-timeout=0 gamemode=0 #Default 20; you only need to lower this if you're running #a public server and worried about loads. max-players=20 spawn-monsters=true #Default is 10, 3-5 ideal for Pi view-distance=5 generate-structures=true spawn-protection=16 motd=A Minecraft Server In the server status window, seen through your SSH connection to the pi, enter the following command to give yourself operator status on your Minecraft server (so that you can use more powerful commands in game, without always returning to the server status window). op [your minecraft nickname] At this point things are looking better but we still have a little tweaking to do before the server is really enjoyable. To that end, let’s install some plugins. The first plugin, and the one you should install above all others, is NoSpawnChunks. To install the plugin, first visit the NoSpawnChunks webpage and grab the download link for the most current version. As of this writing the current release is v0.3. Back at the command prompt (the command prompt of your Pi, not the server console–if your server is still active shut it down) enter the following commands: cd /home/pi/plugins sudo wget http://dev.bukkit.org/media/files/586/974/NoSpawnChunks.jar Next, visit the ClearLag plugin page, and grab the latest link (as of this tutorial, it’s v2.6.0). Enter the following at the command prompt: sudo wget http://dev.bukkit.org/media/files/743/213/Clearlag.jar Because the files aren’t compressed in a .ZIP or similar container, that’s all there is to it: the plugins are parked in the plugin directory. (Remember this for future plugin downloads, the file needs to be whateverplugin.jar, so if it’s compressed you need to uncompress it in the plugin directory.) Resart the server: sudo /opt/jdk1.8.0/bin/java -Xms256M -Xmx496M -jar /home/pi/spigot.jar nogui Be prepared for a slightly longer startup time (closer to the 3-6 minutes and much longer than the 30 seconds you just experienced) as the plugins affect the world map and need a minute to massage everything. After the spawn process finishes, type the following at the server console: plugins This lists all the plugins currently active on the server. You should see something like this: If the plugins aren’t loaded, you may need to stop and restart the server. After confirming your plugins are loaded, go ahead and join the game. You should notice significantly snappier play. In addition, you’ll get occasional messages from the plugins indicating they are active, as seen below: At this point Java is installed, the server is installed, and we’ve tweaked our settings for for the Pi.  It’s time to start building with friends!     

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• PASS: Bylaw Changes

  - by Bill Graziano

  While you’re reading this, a post should be going up on the PASS blog on the plans to change our bylaws.  You should be able to find our old bylaws, our proposed bylaws and a red-lined version of the changes.  We plan to listen to feedback until March 31st.  At that point we’ll decide whether to vote on these changes or take other action. The executive summary is that we’re adding a restriction to prevent more than two people from the same company on the Board and eliminating the Board’s Officer Appointment Committee to have Officers directly elected by the Board.  This second change better matches how officer elections have been conducted in the past. The Gritty Details Our scope was to change bylaws to match how PASS actually works and tackle a limited set of issues.  Changing the bylaws is hard.  We’ve been working on these changes since the March board meeting last year.  At that meeting we met and talked through the issues we wanted to address.  In years past the Board has tried to come up with language and then we’ve discussed and negotiated to get to the result.  In March, we gave HQ guidance on what we wanted and asked them to come up with a starting point.  Hannes worked on building us an initial set of changes that we could work our way through.  Discussing changes like this over email is difficult wasn’t very productive.  We do a much better job on this at the in-person Board meetings.  Unfortunately there are only 2 or 3 of those a year. In August we met in Nashville and spent time discussing the changes.  That was also the day after we released the slate for the 2010 election. The discussion around that colored what we talked about in terms of these changes.  We talked very briefly at the Summit and again reviewed and revised the changes at the Board meeting in January.  This is the result of those changes and discussions. We made numerous small changes to clean up language and make wording more clear.  We also made two big changes. Director Employment Restrictions The first is that only two people from the same company can serve on the Board at the same time.  The actual language in section VI.3 reads: A maximum of two (2) Directors who are employed by, or who are joint owners or partners in, the same for-profit venture, company, organization, or other legal entity, may concurrently serve on the PASS Board of Directors at any time. The definition of “employed” is at the sole discretion of the Board. And what a mess this turns out to be in practice.  Our membership is a hodgepodge of interlocking relationships.  Let’s say three Board members get together and start a blog service for SQL Server bloggers.  It’s technically for-profit.  Let’s assume it makes $8 in the first year.  Does that trigger this clause?  (Technically yes.)  We had a horrible time trying to write language that covered everything.  All the sample bylaws that we found were just as vague as this. That led to the third clause in this section.  The first sentence reads: The Board of Directors reserves the right, strictly on a case-by-case basis, to overrule the requirements of Section VI.3 by majority decision for any single Director’s conflict of employment. We needed some way to handle the trivial issues and exercise some judgment.  It seems like a public vote is the best way.  This discloses the relationship and gets each Board member on record on the issue.   In practice I think this clause will rarely be used.  I think this entire section will only be invoked for actual employment issues and not for small side projects.  In either case we have the mechanisms in place to handle it in a public, transparent way. That’s the first and third clauses.  The second clause says that if your situation changes and you fall afoul of this restriction you need to notify the Board.  The clause further states that if this new job means a Board members violates the “two-per-company” rule the Board may request their resignation.  The Board can also  allow the person to continue serving with a majority vote.  I think this will also take some judgment.  Consider a person switching jobs that leads to three people from the same company.  I’m very likely to ask for someone to resign if all three are two weeks into a two year term.  I’m unlikely to ask anyone to resign if one is two weeks away from ending their term.  In either case, the decision will be a public vote that we can be held accountable for. One concern that was raised was whether this would affect someone choosing to accept a job.  I think that’s a choice for them to make.  PASS is clearly stating its intent that only two directors from any one organization should serve at any time.  Once these bylaws are approved, this policy should not come as a surprise to any potential or current Board members considering a job change.  This clause isn’t perfect.  The biggest hole is business relationships that aren’t defined above.  Let’s say that two employees from company “X” serve on the Board.  What happens if I accept a full-time consulting contract with that company?  Let’s assume I’m working directly for one of the two existing Board members.  That doesn’t violate section VI.3.  But I think it’s clearly the kind of relationship we’d like to prevent.  Unfortunately that was even harder to write than what we have now.  I fully expect that in the next revision of the bylaws we’ll address this.  It just didn’t make it into this one. Officer Elections The officer election process received a slightly different rewrite.  Our goal was to codify in the bylaws the actual process we used to elect the officers.  The officers are the President, Executive Vice-President (EVP) and Vice-President of Marketing.  The Immediate Past President (IPP) is also an officer but isn’t elected.  The IPP serves in that role for two years after completing their term as President.  We do that for continuity’s sake.  Some organizations have a President-elect that serves for one or two years.  The group that founded PASS chose to have an IPP. When I started on the Board, the Nominating Committee (NomCom) selected the slate for the at-large directors and the slate for the officers.  There was always one candidate for each officer position.  It wasn’t really an election so much as the NomCom decided who the next person would be for each officer position.  Behind the scenes the Board worked to select the best people for the role. In June 2009 that process was changed to bring it line with what actually happens.  An Officer Appointment Committee was created that was a subset of the Board.  That committee would take time to interview the candidates and present a slate to the Board for approval.  The majority vote of the Board would determine the officers for the next two years.  In practice the Board itself interviewed the candidates and conducted the elections.  That means it was time to change the bylaws again. Section VII.2 and VII.3 spell out the process used to select the officers.  We use the phrase “Officer Appointment” to separate it from the Director election but the end result is that the Board elects the officers.  Section VII.3 starts: Officers shall be appointed bi-annually by a majority of all the voting members of the Board of Directors. Everything else revolves around that sentence.  We use the word appoint but they truly are elected.  There are details in the bylaws for term limits, minimum requirements for President (1 prior term as an officer), tie breakers and filling vacancies. In practice we will have an election for President, then an election for EVP and then an election for VP Marketing.  That means that losing candidates will be able to fall down the ladder and run for the next open position.  Another point to note is that officers aren’t at-large directors.  That means if a current sitting officer loses all three elections they are off the Board.  Having Board member votes public will help with the transparency of this approach. This process has a number of positive and negatives.  The biggest concern I expect to hear is that our members don’t directly choose the officers.  I’m going to try and list all the positives and negatives of this approach. Many non-profits value continuity and are slower to change than a business.  On the plus side this promotes that.  On the negative side this promotes that.  If we change too slowly the members complain that we aren’t responsive.  If we change too quickly we make mistakes and fail at various things.  We’ve been criticized for both of those lately so I’m not entirely sure where to draw the line.  My rough assumption to this point is that we’re going too slow on governance and too quickly on becoming “more than a Summit.”  This approach creates competition in the officer elections.  If you are an at-large director there is no consequence to losing an election.  If you are an officer the only way to stay on the Board is to win an officer election or an at-large election.  If you are an officer and lose an election you can always run for the next office down.  This makes it very easy for multiple people to contest an election. There is value in a person moving through the officer positions up to the Presidency.  Having the Board select the officers promotes this.  The down side is that it takes a LOT of time to get to the Presidency.  We’ve had good people struggle with burnout.  We’ve had lots of discussion around this.  The process as we’ve described it here makes it possible for someone to move quickly through the ranks but doesn’t prevent people from working their way up through each role. We talked long and hard about having the officers elected by the members.  We had a self-imposed deadline to complete these changes prior to elections this summer. The other challenge was that our original goal was to make the bylaws reflect our actual process rather than create a new one.  I believe we accomplished this goal. We ran out of time to consider this option in the detail it needs.  Having member elections for officers needs a number of problems solved.  We would need a way for candidates to fall through the election.  This is what promotes competition.  Without this few people would risk an election and we’ll be back to one candidate per slot.  We need to do this without having multiple elections.  We may be able to copy what other organizations are doing but I was surprised at how little I could find on other organizations.  We also need a way for people that lose an officer election to win an at-large election.  Otherwise we’ll have very little competition for officers. This brings me to an area that I think we as a Board haven’t done a good job.  We haven’t built a strong process to tell you who is doing a good job and who isn’t.  This is a double-edged sword.  I don’t want to highlight Board members that are failing.  That’s not a good way to get people to volunteer and run for the Board.  But I also need a way let the members make an informed choice about who is doing a good job and would make a good officer.  Encouraging Board members to blog, publishing minutes and making votes public helps in that regard but isn’t the final answer.  I don’t know what the final answer is yet.  I do know that the Board members themselves are uniquely positioned to know which other Board members are doing good work.  They know who speaks up in meetings, who works to build consensus, who has good ideas and who works with the members.  What I Could Do Better I’ve learned a lot writing this about how we communicated with our members.  The next time we revise the bylaws I’d do a few things differently.  The biggest change would be to provide better documentation.  The March 2009 minutes provide a very detailed look into what changes we wanted to make to the bylaws.  Looking back, I’m a little surprised at how closely they matched our final changes and covered the various arguments.  If you just read those you’d get 90% of what we eventually changed.  Nearly everything else was just details around implementation.  I’d also consider publishing a scope document defining exactly what we were doing any why.  I think it really helped that we had a limited, defined goal in mind.  I don’t think we did a good job communicating that goal outside the meeting minutes though. That said, I wish I’d blogged more after the August and January meeting.  I think it would have helped more people to know that this change was coming and to be ready for it. Conclusion These changes address two big concerns that the Board had.  First, it prevents a single organization from dominating the Board.  Second, it codifies and clearly spells out how officers are elected.  This is the process that was previously followed but it was somewhat murky.  These changes bring clarity to this and clearly explain the process the Board will follow. We’re going to listen to feedback until March 31st.  At that time we’ll decide whether to approve these changes.  I’m also assuming that we’ll start another round of changes in the next year or two.  Are there other issues in the bylaws that we should tackle in the future?

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• Configure a WinHTTP application to use Fiddler.

  - by ajit goel

  I need to see the actual requests being made from a asp page to the webservice(which calls another webservice). All these requests happen on the same local box. I ran the "proxycfg -p http=127.0.0.1:8888;https=127.0.0.1:8888" on the command prompt based on http://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler/help/hookup.asp#Q-WinHTTP: How can I configure a WinHTTP application to use Fiddler? I now see the webservice wsdl requests in Fiddler but not the actual requests. Would someone know why??

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• PHP invalid image's and error handling

  - by Emdiesse

  Using PHP's Image and GD functions you can use the following method to finally output the php image imagepng($image); Sometimes, for whatever reason the image may not be displayed typically the error is not with the image but with the actual php functions not executing successfully. However this causes a blank image to be returned which doesn't help me. What I want to know is, is there a way to detect a blank or an invalid image and create a new image, write the errors to the new image using imagestring() and then display this new (debug) image instead. for example, a successfully displayed image with no errors: $image = imagecreate(256, 256); //create image imagecolortransparent($image, $BLUE); //set transparent imagefilledrectangle($image, 0, 0, 256, 256, $BLUE); //fill with 'transparent colour' //Draw a border round the image imageline($image, 0, 0, 0, 255, $Black); imageline($image, 0, 0, 255, 0, $Black); imageline($image, 255, 0, 255, 255, $Black); imageline($image, 0, 255, 255, 255, $Black); imagestring($image, 1, 10, 10, "I am an image!", $Black); imagepng($image); imagedestroy($image); but if I then introduce some errors in the php script that may or may not be to do with the actual image creation then the php script fails and the image will not be visible... $image = imagecreate(256, 256); //create image imagecolortransparent($image, $BLUE); //set transparent imagefilledrectangle($image, 0, 0, 256, 256, $BLUE); //fill with 'transparent colour' //Draw a border round the image imageline($image, 0, 0, 0, 255, $Black); imageline($image, 0, 0, 255, 0, $Black); imageline($image, 255, 0, 255, 255, $Black); imageline($image, 0, 255, 255, 255, $Black); imagestring($image, 1, 10, 10, "I am an image!", $Black); /* I am here to cause problems with the php script ** and cause the execution to fail, I am a function ** that does't exist... ** ** and I am missing a semi colon! ;)*/ non_existant_function() imagepng($image); imagedestroy($image); At this point I want to create a new image like above but in replacement of the I am an image! text I would put the actual error that has occured.

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• Positioning an image inside an ImageView width max height and max width set

  - by andern

  I have an ImageView with max height and max width both set to 100. The figure below is clearly not a square, but you can use your imagination ;) Figure 1: +----------------------------------------------+ ¦ ImageView +--------------+ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ Actual image ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ +--------------+ ¦ +----------------------------------------------+ Anyway, If I try to set a BitMap to the ImageView that does not have a ratio of 1:1, the image is positioned like pictured in Figure 1. What I want is for the picture to be placed to the left inside the ImageView like pictured in Figure 2 below. Figure 2: +----------------------------------------------+ ¦--------------+ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ Actual image ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦--------------+ ¦ +----------------------------------------------+ You can see my ImageView in XML below. maxHeight, maxWidth and adjustViewBounds are set during runtime. <ImageView android:id="@+id/someImage" android:layout_alignParentLeft="true" android:layout_below="@+id/textName" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:paddingRight="4dp" /> This is in a RelativeLayout if it makes any difference.

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• How to handle Append Only text fields in a Sharepoint DataSheet view?

  - by Telos

  We've created a Sharepoint site to track a process. Eventually we're going to make a workflow out of it, but in the meantime there's a list we all have to look at which lists the various dates each piece is supposed to be finished. So basically My group needs to see and update columns X, Y, Z and Comments while ignoring the other 30 billion or so columns. Which is great in datasheet view because we can easily view our columns, and update them right there without drilling into the item and browsing through all the other crap we don't need. The problem is the Comments field, in which we really need to see the last actual comment made. Unfortunately whenever anyone saves the record the field is updated with a blank value (unless they entered a comment) and the last actual comment is lost unless you drill into the item. Is there some way to get the Datasheet view to show all the entries? I should also note that I know very little about Sharepoint 2007... so detailed answers would be nice!

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• m2eclipse - after pom and dependencies definition - no libraries on classpath / Maven Dependencies

  - by lisak

  Hi, I've been doing just simple archetype projects until now, and always after dependencies definition and saving pom.xml, immediately after that the Maven Dependencies library was full of libraries. But now I declared: parent(pom packaging, scm, repository management) parent(pom packaging, shared dependencies) actual project (jar packaging, few more dependencies) actual project (jar packaging, few more dependencies) I created them from the upper one by "Create module" ... Problem is, that I can't make it automatically fill the Maven Dependencies library In .classpath file there is this line <classpathentry kind="con" path="org.maven.ide.eclipse.MAVEN2_CLASSPATH_CONTAINER"/> as in other "working" projects, but there is nothing on the classpath. Any suggestions please ?

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• TFS 2010 RC does not run Visual Studio 2008 MSTest unit tests

  - by Bernard Vander Beken

  Steps: Run the build including unit tests. Expected result: the unit tests are executed and succeed. Actual result: the unit tests are built by the build, but this is the result: 1 test run(s) completed - 0% average pass rate (0% total pass rate) 0/4 test(s) passed, 0 failed, 4 inconclusive, View Test Results Other Errors and Warnings 1 error(s), 0 warning(s) TF270015: 'MSTest.exe' returned an unexpected exit code. Expected '0'; actual '1'. All the tests are enumerated (four), but the result for each test is "Not Executed". Context: Team Foundation Server 2010 release candidate A build definition that runs projects using the Visual Studio 2008 project format and .NET 3.5 SP1. The unit tests run on a development machine, within Visual Studio. The unit tests project references C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies\Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.UnitTestFramework.dll Typical test class [TestClass] public class DemoTest { [TestMethod] public void DemoTestName() { } // etc }

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• jQuery - datepicker - onblur

  - by d3020

  I'm using the jQuery datepicker where I have two textboxes (start date / end date). The user clicks in a respective textbox and the calendar shows up. That is OK. What I need to do is when the user say, clicks in the start date textbox and picks a date. I need an onblur event to be triggered then. Where do I set that onblur event for the calendar control after a date has been selected? I tried in the actual textbox but that's not right because that happens before an actual date is picked from the calendar control.

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• Importing a large dataset into a database

  - by peaceful

  I'm a beginning programmer in the relevant areas to this question, so if possible, it'd be helpful to avoid assuming I know a lot already. I'm trying to import the OpenLibrary dataset into a local Postgres database. After it's imported, I plan to use it as a starting seed for a Ruby on Rails application that will include information on books. The OpenLibrary datasets are available here, in a modified JSON format: http://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/jsondump I only need very basic information for my application, much less than what is provided in the dumps. I'm only trying to get out book titles, author names, and relationships between books and authors. Below are two typical entries from their dataset, the first for an author, and the second for a book (they seem to have an entry for each edition of a book). The entries seem to lead off with a primary key, and then with a type, before including the actual JSON database dump. /a/OL2A /type/author {"name": "U. Venkatakrishna Rao", "personal_name": "U. Venkatakrishna Rao", "last_modified": {"type": "/type/datetime", "value": "2008-09-10 08:44:01.978456"}, "key": "/a/OL2A", "birth_date": "1904", "type": {"key": "/type/author"}, "id": 99, "revision": 3} /b/OL345M /type/edition {"publishers": ["Social Science Research Project, Dept. of Geography, University of Dacca"], "pagination": "ii, 54 p.", "title": "Land use in Fayadabad area", "lccn": ["sa 65000491"], "subject_place": ["East Pakistan", "Dacca region."], "number_of_pages": 54, "languages": [{"comment": "initial import", "code": "eng", "name": "English", "key": "/l/eng"}], "lc_classifications": ["S471.P162 E23"], "publish_date": "1963", "publish_country": "pk ", "key": "/b/OL345M", "authors": [{"birth_date": "1911", "name": "Nafis Ahmad", "key": "/a/OL302A", "personal_name": "Nafis Ahmad"}], "publish_places": ["Dacca, East Pakistan"], "by_statement": "[by] Nafis Ahmad and F. Karim Khan.", "oclc_numbers": ["4671066"], "contributions": ["Khan, Fazle Karim, joint author."], "subjects": ["Land use -- East Pakistan -- Dacca region."]} The size of the uncompressed dumps are enormous, about 2GB for the authors list, and 18GB for the book editions list. OpenLibrary does not provide any tools for this themselves, they provide a simple unoptimized Python script for reading in sample data (which unlike the actual dumps comes in pure JSON format), but they estimate if that was modified for use on their actual data it would take 2 months (!) to finish loading the data. How can I read this into the database? I assume I'll need to write a program to do this. What language and any guidance on how I should do it to finish in a reasonable amount of time? The only scripting language I have any experience with is Ruby.

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• What does double? mean in C# ?

  - by Nikhil

  Hi, While reading the code of the NUnit project's assert class, I came across this particular construct - public static void AreEqual(double expected, double? actual, double delta) { AssertDoublesAreEqual(expected, (double)actual, delta ,null, null); } In this function the second input parameter is entered as "double?". The interesting thing is that this code compiles without issue in VS2010 (c# 4.0). Anyone know why this is NOT throwing an error ? Why is "double?" considered a valid keyword and is there any special significance to the "?".

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• Remove characters after specific character in string, then remove substring?

  - by sah302

  I feel kind of dumb posting this when this seems kind of simple and there are tons of questions on strings/characters/regex, but I couldn't find quite what I needed (except in another language: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2176544/remove-all-text-after-certain-point). I've got the following code: [Test] public void stringManipulation() { String filename = "testpage.aspx"; String currentFullUrl = "http://localhost:2000/somefolder/myrep/test.aspx?q=qvalue"; String fullUrlWithoutQueryString = currentFullUrl.Replace("?.*", ""); String urlWithoutPageName = fullUrlWithoutQueryString.Remove(fullUrlWithoutQueryString.Length - filename.Length); String expected = "http://localhost:2000/somefolder/myrep/"; String actual = urlWithoutPageName; Assert.AreEqual(expected, actual); } I tried the solution in the question above (hoping the syntax would be the same!) but nope. I want to first remove the queryString which could be any variable length, then remove the page name, which again could be any length. How can I get the remove the query string from the full URL such that this test passes?

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• Positioning an image inside an ImageView with max height and max width set

  - by andern

  I have an ImageView with max height and max width both set to 100. The figure below is clearly not a square, but you can use your imagination ;) Figure 1: +----------------------------------------------+ ¦ ImageView +--------------+ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ Actual image ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ +--------------+ ¦ +----------------------------------------------+ Anyway, If I try to set a BitMap to the ImageView that does not have a ratio of 1:1, the image is positioned like pictured in Figure 1. What I want is for the picture to be placed to the left inside the ImageView like pictured in Figure 2 below. Figure 2: +----------------------------------------------+ ¦--------------+ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ Actual image ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦--------------+ ¦ +----------------------------------------------+ You can see my ImageView in XML below. maxHeight, maxWidth and adjustViewBounds are set during runtime. <ImageView android:id="@+id/someImage" android:layout_alignParentLeft="true" android:layout_below="@+id/textName" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:paddingRight="4dp" /> This is in a RelativeLayout if it makes any difference.

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• Problem with animating the deletion of table rows in jQuery

  - by Victor

  Hey guys, I have written some jQuery code to use the "slideUp" animation when deleting rows from a table. In order for the animation to appear smooth, I wrapped the contents of each TD in the row with DIV tags, and called the slideUp function on the DIVs, removing the actual TDs upon completion of the animation. The code for that is as follows: $("tr[id$=" + rowID + "]").children("td").each(function() { $(this).children("div").slideUp(function() { $(this).parent().remove(); }); }); So far, so good. However, I noticed that this code does not remove the actual TR, only its contents, so I added the following line to remove the TR: $("tr[id$=" + rowID + "]").remove(); The problem is that after I added the line above, the animation quit working. In other words, the row simply disappears without the nice sliding effect. Does anybody know why this is so and how to get around it? Thanks in advance for your insights! Victor

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• Override HTML Anchor Link Target inside iFrame

  - by wag2639

  We're calling an ad from an ad network to dynamically load an add using JavaScript. It makes an iFrame with the actual ad in it, a picture wrapped in an anchor tag with the target=_top. Is there a way from our page to change its target and capture the attempt to change our page. Also, our page is loaded in a C#.net program using a WebControl (I forget the actual control being used since it was a while ago). We can change the C# code but we really prefer not to because then we'd have to test it and everything. Is there a way to do this with JavaScript or JQuery?

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• How to set the image into fit screen in the image view

  - by Pugal Devan

  Hi, I am new to iphone development. I want to display the actual size of the image in image view. I have created image view by using Interface builder and set the properties. Now the problem is, I have set into "Scale to Fill", then the image will be stretched in the full screen. Now i want to display the actual size of the image will be displayed in image view. For example 52X52 size image should be displayed with the same size in the image view.The 1200X1020 size image should be fit to the size of the image view .So according the size of the image it should fit to image view and i want the image smaller than image view should retain its original size(It should not stretch to fit the image view). Is it any possible solution to achieve it, please guide me. Thanks.

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• SQL Query problem: How to merge two lists.

  - by ProfK

  I have a base table of Participants and Answers, with the following structure: ParticipantId, BusUnitId, QuestionNum, Answer. In this table, QuestionNum ranges, say, from 1 to 6. I also have two other tables that sort of link QuestionNum to the actual question table, BusUnitQuestions, and ParticipantQuestions. For each QuestionNum, I must get the actual question text, based on QuestionId. BusUnitId, QuestionId ParticipantId, QuestionId Now assuming records with QuestionNum from 1 to 6. BusUnitQuestions has 3 records, so QuestionNum 1 to 3 must join to Question on the QuestionId's from BusUnitQuestions, and QuestionNum 4 to 6 must join to Question on the QuestionId's from ParticipantQuestions. I assume I need to use ROW_NUMBER() in the subquery from BusUnitQuestions to join to my answer table, but I'm lost after that. If anyone at all understands me, do you have any suggestions?

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• Runtime error of TASM language help!

  - by dominoos

  .model small .stack 400h .data message db "hello. ", 0ah, 0dh, "$" firstdigit db ? seconddigit db ? thirddigit db ? number dw ? newnumber db ? anumber dw 0d bnumber dw 0d Firstn db 0ah, 0dh, "Enter first 3 digit number: ","$" secondn db 0ah, 0dh, "Enter second 3 digit number: ","$" messageB db 0ah, 0dh, "HCF of two number is: ","$" linebreaker db 0ah, 0dh, ' ', 0ah, 0dh, '$' .code Start: mov ax, @data ; establish access to the data segment mov ds, ax ; mov number, 0d mov dx, offset message ; print the string "yob choi 0648293" mov ah, 9h int 21h num: mov dx, offset Firstn ; print the string "put 1st 3 digit" mov ah, 9h int 21h ;run JMP FirstFirst ; jump to FirstFirst FirstFirst: ;first digit mov ah, 1d ;bios code for read a keystroke int 21h ;call bios, it is understood that the ascii code will be returned in al mov firstdigit, al ;may as well save a copy sub al, 30h ;Convert code to an actual integer cbw ;CONVERT BYTE TO WORD. This takes whatever number is in al and ;extends it to ax, doubling its size from 8 bits to 16 bits ;The first digit now occupies all of ax as an integer mov cx, 100d ;This is so we can calculate 100*1st digit +10*2nd digit + 3rd digit mul cx ;start to accumulate the 3 digit number in the variable imul cx ;it is understood that the other operand is ax ; the result will use both dx::ax ;dx will contain only leading zeros add anumber, ax ;save ;Second Digit mov ah, 1d ;bios code for read a keystroke int 21h ;call bios, it is understood that the ascii code will be returned in al mov seconddigit, al ;may as well save a copy sub al, 30h ;Convert code to an actual integer cbw ;CONVERT BYTE TO WORD. This takes whatever number is in al and ;extends it to ax, boubling its size from 8 bits to 16 bits ;The first digit now occupies all of ax as an integer mov cx, 10d ;continue to accumulate the 3 digit number in the variable mul cx ;it is understood that the other operand is ax, containing first digit ;the result will use both dx::ax ;dx will contain only leading zeros. add anumber, ax ;save ;third Digit mov ah, 1d ;samething as above int 21h ; mov thirddigit, al ; sub al, 30h ; cbw ; add anumber, ax ; jmp num2 ;go to checks Num2: mov dx, offset secondn ; print the string "put 2nd 3 digits" mov ah, 9h int 21h ;run JMP SecondSecond SecondSecond: ;first digit mov ah, 1d ;bios code for read a keystroke int 21h ;call bios, it is understood that the ascii code will be returned in al mov firstdigit, al ;may as well save a copy sub al, 30h ;Convert code to an actual integer cbw ;CONVERT BYTE TO WORD. This takes whatever number is in al and ;extends it to ax, doubling its size from 8 bits to 16 bits ;The first digit now occupies all of ax as an integer mov cx, 100d ;This is so we can calculate 100*1st digit +10*2nd digit + 3rd digit mul cx ;start to accumulate the 3 digit number in the variable imul cx ;it is understood that the other operand is ax ; the result will use both dx::ax ;dx will contain only leading zeros add bnumber, ax ;save ;Second Digit mov ah, 1d ;bios code for read a keystroke int 21h ;call bios, it is understood that the ascii code will be returned in al mov seconddigit, al ;may as well save a copy sub al, 30h ;Convert code to an actual integer cbw ;CONVERT BYTE TO WORD. This takes whatever number is in al and ;extends it to ax, boubling its size from 8 bits to 16 bits ;The first digit now occupies all of ax as an integer mov cx, 10d ;continue to accumulate the 3 digit number in the variable mul cx ;it is understood that the other operand is ax, containing first digit ;the result will use both dx::ax ;dx will contain only leading zeros. add bnumber, ax ;save ;third Digit mov ah, 1d ;samething as above int 21h ; mov thirddigit, al ; sub al, 30h ; cbw ; add bnumber, ax ; jmp compare ;go to compare compare: CMP ax, anumber ;comparing numbB and Number JA comp1 ;go to comp1 if anumber is bigger CMP ax, anumber ; JB comp2 ;go to comp2 if anumber is smaller CMP ax, anumber ; JE equal ;go to equal if two numbers are the same JMP compare ;go to compare (avioding error) comp1: SUB ax, anumber; subtract smaller number from bigger number JMP compare ; comp2: SUB anumber, ax; subtract smaller number from bigger number JMP compare ; equal: mov ah, 9d ;make linkbreak after the 2nd 3 digit number mov dx, offset linebreaker int 21h mov ah, 9d ;print "HCF of two number is:" mov dx, offset messageB int 21h mov ax,anumber ;copying 2nd number into ax add al,30h ; converting to ascii mov newnumber,al ; copying from low part of register into newnumb mov ah, 2d ;bios code for print a character mov dl, newnumber ;we had saved the ascii code here int 21h ;call to bios JMP exit; exit: mov ah, 4ch int 21h ;exit the program End hi, this is a program that finds highest common factor of 2 different 3digit number. if i put 200, 235,312 (low numbers) it works fine. but if i put 500, 550, 654(bigger number) the program crashes after the 2nd 3digit number is entered. can you help me to find out what problem is?

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• Difference between weblogic and websphere?

  - by Abhishek Jain

  I do not find actual difference between these two J2EE server. From my past experience, I found out following: WL is evolving more faster than WAS. WL is more user friendly than WAS. To simply deploy a application in WAS, we need to go in deep and its difficult to find if u are new to it. I found out that WAS is slower in some machine than WL. I found out that Classloading is easier to understand and effective in WL than WAS Above all are my experiences but not actual facts. I want to know more in this respect. Please clear my doubts. If possible please provide each J2EE server's pros and cons. -Abhishek

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• How do I make matlab legends match the colour of the graphs?

  - by Alex Gosselin

  Here is the code I used: x = linspace(0,2); e = exp(1); lin = e; quad = e-e.*x.*x/2; cub = e-e.*x.*x/2; quart = e-e.*x.*x/2+e.*x.*x.*x.*x/24; act = e.^cos(x); mplot = plot(x,act,x,lin,x,quad,x,cub,x,quart); legend('actual','linear','quadratic','cubic','quartic') This produces a legend matching the right colors to actual and linear, then after that it seems to skip over red on the graph, but not on the legend, i.e. the legend says quadratic should be red, but the graph shows it as green, the legend says cubic should be green, but the graph shows it as purple etc. Any help is appreciated.

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• Unable to load DLL 'foo.dll', but only when running through vhost

  - by biozinc

  This is a variation on the old System.DllNotFoundException: Unable to load DLL 'foo.dll': The specified module could not be found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007007E). problem (where, of course, foo.dll is the name of an actual DLL). The strange part is that I only get this error when I "Run" in VS (2008 if that's relevant). That sits in the MyApp.vhost.exe processes. If I run the actual app in a command line (MyApp.exe) I encounter no errors. The problem extends to unit tests with MSTest. A check on the DLL with DependencyWalker on Foo.dll doesn't show any issues. Any ideas?

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• sql server 2008 notifications

  - by Alexander Stalt

  C#, VS 2005, Sql Server 2008 I have a database on a remote server. It has a table table1. Several clients works with it. Every(each?) client can change content of table1. Every(each?) client must represent actual content of this table. So I need some algorythm (pattern) to keep clients represent actual content of table1. I know that sql server 2008 supports notification mechanism (reporting services). How can I use it for my task ?

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