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• interfacing: simplified

  - by code wombat

  i've been doing some research on interfaces and a simple layman's explanation for what it truly is. For some reason people love using overly complex explanations and jargon to explain truly simple concepts (guess it makes them feel big) and i have a gut feeling it's the same in this case. so from what i could grasp, it seems like interfaces are nothing more than a way to reserve method names, their return type if any, and the type and amount of arguments they accept. so when a class implements an interface (or interfaces) it is forced to define the body of each method from the interface(s). Am i on the nose with this one or do i need to keep digging? p.s. i know javascript doesn't have support for interfaces, but i still need to understand the concept because there are quite a few places where it's shown how to emulate to an extent.

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• jQuery, ASP.NET, and Browser History

  - by Latest Microsoft Blogs

  One objection that people always raise against Ajax applications concerns browser history. Because an Ajax application updates its content by performing sneaky Ajax postbacks, the browser backwards and forwards buttons don’t work as you would normally Read More......(read more)

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• NUnit Random Module

  - by Tra5is

  I've noticed something curious. When I attach the VS2010 debugger to the nunit.exe running process I see a loaded module with no path and a randomly generated filename. I tried attaching WinDBG to the exact same instance of NUnit.exe and the module is NOT listed in the module list. I also can't find anything with Google so I'm hoping someone here could help out. Is this normal NUnit behavior or is something sneaky going on? Some examples of the module name: 1xmsg0gj x4max0ed koh9hmef

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• Problems migrating an EBS backed instance over AWS Regions

  - by gshankar

  Note: I asked this question on the EC2 forums too but haven't received any love there. Hopefully the ServerFault community will be more awesome. The new AWS Sydney region opening up is something that we've been waiting for for a long time but I'm having a lot of trouble migrating our instances over from N. California. I managed to migrate 1 instance over using CloudyScripts to move a snapshot and then firing up a new instance in the Sydney region. This was a very new instance so both the source and destination were running on a Ubuntu 12.04 LTS server and I had no issues there. However, the rest of our instances are all Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and with these, I'm having a lot of problems. I've tried following: 1- following the AWS whitepaper on moving instances which was given to us at the recent Customer Appreciation Day in Sydney where the new region was launched. The problem with this approach was with the last step (Step 19) here you register the image: ec2-register -s snap-0f62ec3f -n "Wombat" -d "migrated Wombat" --region ap-southeast-2 -a x86_64 --kernel aki-937e2ed6 --block-device-mapping "/dev/sdk=ephemeral0" I keep getting this error: Client.InvalidAMIID.NotFound: The AMI ID 'ami-937e2ed6' does not exist which I think is due to the kernel_id not existing in the Sydney region? 2- Using CloudyScripts to move a snapshot and then creating a new volume and attaching to a new instance in Sydney This results in the instance just hanging on boot and failing the status checks. I can't SSH in or look at the server log I suspect that my issue is with finding the right kernel_id for the volume in the new region. However I can't seem to work out how to go about finding this kernel_id, the ones I've tried (from the original instance) don't result in the Client.InvalidAMIID.NotFound: The AMI ID 'ami-937e2ed6' error and any other kernel_id just won't boot. I've tried both 12.04 and 10.04 versions of Ubuntu. Nothing seems to work, I've been banging my head against a wall for a while now, please help! New (broken) instance i-a1acda9b ami-9b8611a1 aki-31990e0b Source instance i-08a6664e ami-b37e2ef6 aki-937e2ed6 p.s. I also tried following this guide on updating my Ubuntu LTS version to 12.04 before doing the migration but it didn't seem to work either, still getting stuck on updating the kernel_id http://ubuntu-smoser.blogspot.com.au/2010/04/upgrading-ebs-instance.html

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• Color Schemes don't look right in CLI vim

  - by person

  I was having a bit of trouble reading the dark red strings of Vim's default color scheme, so I decided to switch to a different one. http://code.google.com/p/vimcolorsch...kboard.vim?r=2 http://files.werx.dk/wombat.vim However, when I set my color schemes to these, not only do they not come out correctly (for example, comments are bright blue), but these 2 somehow come out looking exactly the same! Am I doing something wrong, or are these colors restricted in the terminal so default colors are being chosen?

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• Does anyone know a light Vim scheme which makes coding more readable and pleasant?

  - by janoChen

  I know a lot of nice dark schemes for Vim which makes coding more readable and pleasant such as ir_black, wombat, zenburn. Its weird but I haven't seen so many popular light themes (white background). Does anyone knows a light Vim scheme which makes code more readable and pleasant to see? (that makes code less confusing to distinguish, something like Visual studio's default scheme?)

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• Wondering about the Windows 7 serial number my laptop has, and its uses.

  - by overmann

  So that's the serial number of my pre-installed windows copy, I take it. But am I allowed to use it again when, say, I don't know, my system gets crippled by a sneaky virus? If I format my computer and install windows starter again from a USB drive (speculating. I've never format before, I suppose is completely possible) Is that serial number still valid? I'm talking about the number printed on the back of my laptop.

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• Search Engine Query Word Order

  - by EoghanM

  I've pages with titles like 'Alpha with Beta'. For every such page, there is an inverse page 'Beta with Alpha'. Both pages link to each other. When someone on Google searches for 'Beta with Alpha', I'd like them to land on the correct page, but sometimes 'Alpha with Beta' ranks higher (or vice versa). I was thinking of inspecting the referral link when a visitor arrives on my site, and silently redirecting them to the correct page based on what they actually searched for. Just wondering if this could be penalized by Google as 'cloaking/sneaky redirects'? Or is there a better way to ensure that the correct page on my site ranks higher for the matching query?

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• Why use a whitelist for HTML sanitizing?

  - by Carson Myers

  I've often wondered -- why use a whitelist as opposed to a blacklist when sanitizing HTML input? How many sneaky HTML tricks are there to open XSS vulnerabilities? Obviously script tags and frames are not allowed, and a whitelist would be used on the fields in HTML elements, but why disallow most of everything?

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• [C++] Is it possible to roll a significantly faster version of sqrt

  - by John

  In an app I'm profiling, I found that in some scenarios this functions are able to take over 10% of total execution time. I've seen discussion over the years of faster sqrt implementations using sneaky floating-point trickery, but I don't know if such things are outdated on modern CPUs. MSVC++ 2008 compiler is being used, for reference... though I'd assume sqrt is not going to add much overhead though.

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• excel is there a way to delete everything EXCEPT what is selected?

  - by yesmaybe

  I have an excel template with 20 tabs (worksheets) and plenty of data in each sheet. When a user opens a copy of the template, he will only need to use one tab. Is there a sneaky way to select that tab, or part of the contents of that tab and then 'delete all except selected'. That way the used file size will be much reduced of the excess clutter. There will be basic excel users adjusting this file so the smaller and easier to manage the better. Thanks, Andy

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• Find & Replace in blogger

  - by Benjol

  (I just learnt that Yahoo are shutting down Geocities, this is a bummer as I used my account there to host two icons, in the days when Blogger didn't upload gifs. Now those two icons are referenced in every one of my 600+ posts). Blogger doesn't have a "Find & Replace in all posts" function. I'm wondering about using the API to hack something together, and wondered if anyone has already tried playing with the API, if there are any tips or things to avoid. Also if there isn't a sneaky shortcut (like switching to ftp, doing the replace locally then switching back?). Not 100% programming related, please be lenient, or at least answer my question before closing it!

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• Suspicious activity in access logs - someone trying to find phpmyadmin dir - should I worry?

  - by undefined

  I was looking over the access logs for a server that we are running on Amazon Web Services. I noticed that someone was obviously trying to find the phpmyadmin directory - they (or a bot) were trying different paths eg - admin/phpmyadmin/, db_admin, ... and the list goes on. Actually there isnt a database on this server and so this was not a problem, they were never going to find it, but should I be worried about such snooping? Is this just a really basic attempt at getting in to our system? Actually our database is held on another managed server which I assume is protected from such intrusions. What are your views on such sneaky activity?

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• Code Behaviour via Unit Tests

  - by Dewald Galjaard

  Normal 0 false false false EN-ZA X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Some four months ago my car started acting up. Symptoms included a sputtering as my car’s computer switched between gears intermittently. Imagine building up speed, then when you reach 80km/h the car magically and mysteriously decide to switch back to third or even second gear. Clearly it was confused! I managed to track down a technician, an expert in his field to help me out. As he fitted his handheld computer to some hidden port under the dash, he started to explain “These cars are quite intelligent, you know. When they sense something is wrong they run in a restrictive program which probably account for how you managed to drive here in the first place...”  I was surprised and thought this was certainly going to be an interesting test drive. The car ran smoothly down the first couple of stretches as the technician ran through routine checks. Then he said “Ok, all looking good. We need to start testing aspects of the gearbox. Inside the gearbox there are a couple of sensors. One of them is a speed sensor which talks to the computer, which in turn will decide which gear to switch to. The restrictive program avoid these sensors altogether and allow the computer to obtain its input from other [non-affected] sources”. Then, as soon as he forced the speed sensor to come back online the symptoms and ill behaviour re-emerged... What an incredible analogy for getting into a discussion on unit testing software? Besides I should probably put my ill fortune to some good use, right? This example provide a lot of insight into how and why we should conduct unit tests when writing code. More importantly, it captures what is easily and unfortunately often the most overlooked goal of writing unit tests by those new to the art and those who oppose it alike - The goal of writing unit tests is to test the behaviour of our code under predefined conditions. Although it is very possible to test the intrinsic workings of each and every component in your code, writing several tests for each method in practise will soon prove to be an exhausting and ultimately fruitless exercise given the certain and ever changing nature of business requirements. Consequently it is true and quite possible whilst conducting proper unit tests, to call any single method several times as you examine and contemplate different scenarios. Let’s write some code to demonstrate what I mean. In my example I make use of the Moq framework and NUnit to create my tests. Truly you can use whatever you’re comfortable with. First we’ll create an ISpeedSensor interface. This is to represent the speed sensor located in the gearbox.  Then we’ll create a Gearbox class which we’ll pass to a constructor when we instantiate an object of type Computer. All three are described below.   ISpeedSensor.cs namespace AutomaticVehicle {     public interface ISpeedSensor     {         int ReportCurrentSpeed();     } }   Gearbox.cs namespace AutomaticVehicle {      public class Gearbox     {         private ISpeedSensor _speedSensor;           public Gearbox( ISpeedSensor gearboxSpeedSensor )         {             _speedSensor = gearboxSpeedSensor;         }         /// <summary>         /// This method obtain it's reading from the speed sensor.         /// </summary>         /// <returns></returns>         public int ReportCurrentSpeed()         {             return _speedSensor.ReportCurrentSpeed();         }     } } Computer.cs namespace AutomaticVehicle {     public class Computer     {         private Gearbox _gearbox;         public Computer( Gearbox gearbox )         {                     }          public int GetCurrentSpeed()         {             return _gearbox.ReportCurrentSpeed( );         }     } } Since this post is about Unit testing, that is exactly what we’ll create next. Create a second project in your solution. I called mine AutomaticVehicleTests and I immediately referenced the respective nunit, moq and AutomaticVehicle dll’s. We’re going to write a test to examine what happens inside the Computer class. ComputerTests.cs namespace AutomaticVehicleTests {     [TestFixture]     public class ComputerTests     {         [Test]         public void Computer_Gearbox_SpeedSensor_DoesThrow()         {             // Mock ISpeedSensor in gearbox             Mock< ISpeedSensor > speedSensor = new Mock< ISpeedSensor >( );             speedSensor.Setup( n => n.ReportCurrentSpeed() ).Throws<Exception>();             Gearbox gearbox = new Gearbox( speedSensor.Object );               // Create Computer instance to test it's behaviour  towards an exception in gearbox             Computer carComputer = new Computer( gearbox );             // For simplicity let’s assume for now the car only travels at 60 km/h.             Assert.AreEqual( 60, carComputer.GetCurrentSpeed( ) );          }     } }   What is happening in this test? We have created a mocked object using the ISpeedsensor interface which we've passed to our Gearbox object. Notice that I created the mocked object using an interface, not the implementation. I’ll talk more about this in future posts but in short I do this to accentuate the fact that I'm not not really concerned with how SpeedSensor work internally at this particular point in time. Next I’ve gone ahead and created a scenario where I’ve declared the speed sensor in Gearbox to be faulty by forcing it to throw an exception should we ask Gearbox to report on its current speed. Sneaky, sneaky. This test is a simulation of how things may behave in the real world. Inevitability things break, whether it’s caused by mechanical failure, some logical error on your part or a fellow developer which didn’t consult the documentation (or the lack thereof ) - whether you’re calling a speed sensor, making a call to a database, calling a web service or just trying to write a file to disk. It’s a scenario I’ve created and this test is about how the code within the Computer instance will behave towards any such error as I’ve depicted. Now, if you’ve followed closely in my final assert method you would have noticed I did something quite unexpected. I might be getting ahead of myself now but I’m testing to see if the value returned is equal to what I expect it to be under perfect conditions – I’m not testing to see if an error has been thrown! Why is that? Well, in short this is TDD. Test Driven Development is about first writing your test to define the result we want, then to go back and change the implementation within your class to obtain the desired output (I need to make sure I can drive back to the repair shop. Remember? ) So let’s go ahead and run our test as is. It’s fails miserably... Good! Let’s go back to our Computer class and make a small change to the GetCurrentSpeed method.   Computer.cs public int GetCurrentSpeed() {   try   {     return _gearbox.ReportCurrentSpeed( );   }   catch   {     RunRestrictiveProgram( );   } }     This is a simple solution, I know, but it does provide a way to allow for different behaviour. You’re more than welcome to provide an implementation for RunRestrictiveProgram should you feel the need to. It's not within the scope of this post or related to the point I'm trying to make. What is important is to notice how the focus has shifted in our approach from how things can break - to how things behave when broken.   Happy coding!

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• Flash/Flex: play embedded AAC audio?

  - by aaaidan

  I'm pretty sure of the answer, but just wanted to check with you all. Is it possible to play an embedded AAC file in Flash/Flex somehow? I know you can playback embedded MP3 files, but I hear that you can't do that with AAC. Anyone know any sneaky ways to get around this? By way of illustration, here's come code. [Embed(source='../../audio/music02.m4a', mimeType="audio/aac")] private static const __ExampleMp4File:Class; public var myMp4Sound:Sound = new __ExampleMp4File(); public function EmbeddedAudioTest() { myMp4Sound.play(); }

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• How can something like BOSH be implemented using Java Servlets

  - by John

  BOSH (Bidirectional-streams Over Synchronous HTTP) is a sneaky way of implementing 2-way client-server communication in situations where true server-push is not allowed, most obviously to let a server push data to a browser client without having to use client polling. It works by the client sending a request to the server, and the server doesn't respond immediately... rather it remembers the request but only responds when it has some data to send. When this happens the client immediately sends another request so there is virtually always a 'stored request' sitting on the server ready to push data to the client. At least, that's how I think it works! My question is how you can do this using a Java EE stack i.e standard servlets. I'm rusty with them, is it allowed to send no response and cache the request somehow? If anyone could share (pseudo) code what a servlet class for handling BOSH might look like, I'd be real grateful.

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• how can I override an anonymous javascript function attached to an eventlistener?

  - by Sid

  I found that a website does somewhat sneaky things. When you hover over a link, it shows you the real URL. WHen you click on it, it uses the click/mousedown event to rewrite the URL. I want to override that behaviour in firefox, So I fired up firebug to see what it does. On a mouse click, it executes a function called window.tgs. Easy, I thought. I can override this function. My first attempt was to do get the element via getELementsByTagName(), and then element.removeEventListener("click",window.tgs, false); To my surprise, this did nothing. I tried redefining window.tgs window.tgs = function() { return true; }; that did not do anything either. I am not a JS expert. Your insights appreciated thanks Sid

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• SQL Server (2008) Creating link tables with unique rows

  - by peteski22

  Hi guys, I'm having trouble getting in touch with SQL Server Managemen Studio 2008! I want to create a link-table that will link an Event to many Audiences (EventAudience). An example of the data that could be contained: EventId | AudienceId 4 1 5 1 4 2 However, I don't want this: EventId | AudienceId 4 1 4 1 I've been looking at relationships and constraints.. but no joy so far! As a sneaky second part to the question, I would like to set up the Audience table such that if a row is deleted from Audience, it will clear down the EventAudience link table in a cascading manner. As always, ANY help/advice appreciated! Thanks Pete

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• Best practices about creating a generic object dictionary in C#? Is this bad?

  - by JimDaniel

  For clarity I am using C# 3.5/Asp.Net MVC 2 Here is what I have done: I wanted the ability to add/remove functionality to an object at run-time. So I simply added a generic object dictionary to my class like this: public Dictionary<int, object> Components { get; set; } Then I can add/remove any kind of .Net object into this dictionary at run-time. To insert an object I do something like this: var tag = new Tag(); myObject.Components.Add((int)Types.Components.Tag, tag); Then to retrieve I just do this: if(myObject.Components.ContainsKey((int)Types.Components.Tag)) { var tag = myObject.Components[(int)Types.Components.Tag] as Tag; if(tag != null) { //do stuff } } Somehow I feel sneaky doing this. It works okay, but I am wondering what you guys think about it as a best practice. Thanks for your input, Daniel

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• Tiny C Compiler and Virus warnings...

  - by NoMoreZealots

  I wanted to try out the TCC and got the Win32 Binary zip file from the website. upon decompressing it I tried to compile the "hello_win.c" source from the example directory. As soon as the compiler tried to write to the disk McAfee Popped up a dialog box and identified a Trojan named "Generic.dx." Has anyone else experience this? Dropping a virus into a compiler would be a sneaky, but brilliant, delivery mechanizism. I just want to know if this is a legit threat.

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• Why isn't the eigenclass equivalent to self.class, when it looks so similar?

  - by The Wicked Flea

  I've missed the memo somewhere, and I hope you'll explain this to me. Why is the eigenclass of an object different from self.class? class Foo def initialize(symbol) eigenclass = class << self self end eigenclass.class_eval do attr_accessor symbol end end end My train of logic that equates the eigenclass with class.self is rather simple: class << self is a way of declaring class methods, rather than instance methods. It's a shortcut to def Foo.bar. So within the reference to the class object, returning self should be identical to self.class. This is because class << self would set self to Foo.class for definition of class methods/attributes. Am I just confused? Or, is this a sneaky trick of Ruby meta-programming?

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• Opening cursor files in a graphics editor?

  - by sdaau

  I'm looking at /usr/share/icons/DMZ-White/cursors, and there is: $ tree -s /usr/share/icons/DMZ-White/ /usr/share/icons/DMZ-White/ +-- [ 4096] cursors ¦   +-- [ 14] 00008160000006810000408080010102 -> v_double_arrow ... ¦   +-- [ 5] 9d800788f1b08800ae810202380a0822 -> hand2 ¦   +-- [ 8] arrow -> left_ptr ¦   +-- [ 15776] bd_double_arrow ¦   +-- [ 15776] bottom_left_corner ¦   +-- [ 15776] bottom_right_corner ¦   +-- [ 15776] bottom_side ... ... a bunch of files without extension, that GIMP cannot open. Is there an editor where these files can be opened - or at least a converter to something like .png? I can note that ImageMagick display also failed to open these files... Found also Gursor Maker - Cursor Editor for X11/GTK+; got the CVS code from SourceForge - it still uses Numeric (the old name of numpy), so to run it, you'll have to do: #from Numeric import * from numpy import * ... in xcurio.py, curxp.py, gimp.py, colorfunc.py - and comment the #from xml.dom.ext.reader import Sax2 in lsproj.py. With that, I got it running 11.04: ... but cannot get any files to open? So I thought I should grep for paths, nothing much came up - and when I looked into cursordefs.py, I simply had to paste this: CURSOR_ICON = gtk.gdk.pixbuf_new_from_xpm_data([ "10 16 3 1", " c None", ". c #000000", "+ c #FFFFFF", ".. ", ".+. ", ".++. ", ".+++. ", ".++++. ", ".+++++. ", ".++++++. ", ".+++++++. ", ".++++++++.", ".+++++....", ".++.++. ", ".+. .++. ", ".. .++. ", " .++. ", " .++. ", " .. "]) Heh :) In any case, doesn't look like it will be much usable on newer Ubuntus, unfortunately... Just tested XMC plugin as well - on 11.04, has to be built from source (from the link in the accepted answer); the requirements on my system resolved to: sudo apt-get install libgimp2.0-dev libglib2.0-0-dbg libglib2.0-0-refdbg libglib2.0-cil-dev libgtk2.0-0-dbg libgtk2.0-cil-dev ... after that, the configure/make procedure in the INSTALL file works. Note that this plugin is a bit "sneaky": ... that is, you should use "All files" (as there are no extensions); cursor previews at first will not be rendered. Then open one cursor file; after it has been opened, then there is a preview in the File/Open dialog; but other than that, it works fine...

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• How can I safely close this window and forever avoid seeing similar pop-ups from Mackeeper Zeobit's malware and spyware?

  - by Michael Prescott

  The attached image shows a window that just popped up and the only button available is the OK button. I could Force quit Safari, but I've got several sites open right now and don't want to try and find my place again. Besides, I've seen similar hacks in the past and I'd like to learn how to handle them in a way better than just a brute force-quit. I've never heard of MacKeeper or Zeobit, so I opened Firefox and did a few searches while Safari is obviously still stuck, waiting for me to click the sneaky OK button in the dialog window. Anyhow, at least the first few pages of most search results contain lots of blabbering from questionable witnesses about how MacKeeper saved them from some malware or spyware. However, any company that is hacking the browser to maliciously install their product is itself the criminal and not providing a true security application. So, there are three questions here: How can I close this window? Can I do something to Safari to avoid these hacks in the future? (Just curious) Is MacKeeper or Zeobit somehow loading the search results so that no information about their application being malware or spyware is listed (I can't be the only person in the world that is offended by their tactics, even though it appears I am)?

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• How can I safely close this window and forever avoid seeing similar pop-ups from Mackeeper Zeobit's malware and spyware?

  - by Michael Prescott

  The attached image shows a window that just popped up and the only button available is the OK button. I could Force quit Safari, but I've got several sites open right now and don't want to try and find my place again. Besides, I've seen similar hacks in the past and I'd like to learn how to handle them in a way better than just a brute force-quit. I've never heard of MacKeeper or Zeobit, so I opened Firefox and did a few searches while Safari is obviously still stuck, waiting for me to click the sneaky OK button in the dialog window. Anyhow, at least the first few pages of most search results contain lots of blabbering from questionable witnesses about how MacKeeper saved them from some malware or spyware. However, any company that is hacking the browser to maliciously install their product is itself the criminal and not providing a true security application. So, there are three questions here: How can I close this window? Can I do something to Safari to avoid these hacks in the future? (Just curious) Is MacKeeper or Zeobit somehow loading the search results so that no information about their application being malware or spyware is listed (I can't be the only person in the world that is offended by their tactics, even though it appears I am)?

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• Entity System with C++ templates

  - by tommaisey

  I've been getting interested in the Entity/Component style of game programming, and I've come up with a design in C++ which I'd like a critique of. I decided to go with a fairly pure Entity system, where entities are simply an ID number. Components are stored in a series of vectors - one for each Component type. However, I didn't want to have to add boilerplate code for every new Component type I added to the game. Nor did I want to use macros to do this, which frankly scare me. So I've come up with a system based on templates and type hinting. But there are some potential issues I'd like to check before I spend ages writing this (I'm a slow coder!) All Components derive from a Component base class. This base class has a protected constructor, that takes a string parameter. When you write a new derived Component class, you must initialise the base with the name of your new class in a string. When you first instantiate a new DerivedComponent, it adds the string to a static hashmap inside Component mapped to a unique integer id. When you subsequently instantiate more Components of the same type, no action is taken. The result (I think) should be a static hashmap with the name of each class derived from Component that you instantiate at least once, mapped to a unique id, which can by obtained with the static method Component::getTypeId ("DerivedComponent"). Phew. The next important part is TypedComponentList<typename PropertyType>. This is basically just a wrapper to an std::vector<typename PropertyType> with some useful methods. It also contains a hashmap of entity ID numbers to slots in the array so we can find Components by their entity owner. Crucially TypedComponentList<> is derived from the non-template class ComponentList. This allows me to maintain a list of pointers to ComponentList in my main ComponentManager, which actually point to TypedComponentLists with different template parameters (sneaky). The Component manager has template functions such as: template <typename ComponentType> void addProperty (ComponentType& component, int componentTypeId, int entityId) and: template <typename ComponentType> TypedComponentList<ComponentType>* getComponentList (int componentTypeId) which deal with casting from ComponentList to the correct TypedComponentList for you. So to get a list of a particular type of Component you call: TypedComponentList<MyComponent>* list = componentManager.getComponentList<MyComponent> (Component::getTypeId("MyComponent")); Which I'll admit looks pretty ugly. Bad points of the design: If a user of the code writes a new Component class but supplies the wrong string to the base constructor, the whole system will fail. Each time a new Component is instantiated, we must check a hashed string to see if that component type has bee instantiated before. Will probably generate a lot of assembly because of the extensive use of templates. I don't know how well the compiler will be able to minimise this. You could consider the whole system a bit complex - perhaps premature optimisation? But I want to use this code again and again, so I want it to be performant. Good points of the design: Components are stored in typed vectors but they can also be found by using their entity owner id as a hash. This means we can iterate them fast, and minimise cache misses, but also skip straight to the component we need if necessary. We can freely add Components of different types to the system without having to add and manage new Component vectors by hand. What do you think? Do the good points outweigh the bad?

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