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• Recycle Old Hardware into a Showcase Table

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  If you have a plethora of old hardware laying around, especially motherboard and expansion cards, this obsolete-hardware-to-table hack is just the ticket for your office or geek cave. The table’s design is simple. They took a regular coffee table, affixed old mother boards to it and then, over the motherboards and elevated by acrylic standoffs, they put a heavy sheet of acrylic to serve as the table top. You could replicate the design with any sort of old hardware that is interesting to look at: memory modules your company is sending off to be recycled, old digital cameras, mechanisms from peripherals headed for the scrap heap, etc. Hit up the link below to see more photos of the table. Circuit Table [Chris Harrison] How to Make and Install an Electric Outlet in a Cabinet or DeskHow To Recover After Your Email Password Is CompromisedHow to Clean Your Filthy Keyboard in the Dishwasher (Without Ruining it)

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• Star Wars Roguelike Combines Star Wars and Old School ASCII Adventures

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Mashup ASCII-based adventuring, Star Wars, and some sweet light saber sound effects, and you’ve got this old-school in-browser adventure game: Star Wars Roguelike. Play a Jedi or Sith and move about the ASCII world with simple keyboard commands. You’re not going to be blow away by the photo-realistic graphics, but you are going to be able to play it on your aging work computer. Hit up the link below to take the game for a spin. Star Wars Roguelike [via Boing Boing] How To Boot Your Android Phone or Tablet Into Safe Mode HTG Explains: Does Your Android Phone Need an Antivirus? How To Use USB Drives With the Nexus 7 and Other Android Devices

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• Should I add old code into my repository?

  - by Ben Brocka

  I've got an SVN repository of a PHP site and the last programmer didn't use source control properly. As a result, only code since I started working here is in the Repo. I have a bunch of old copies of the full code base saved in files as "backups" but they're not in source control. I don't know why most of the copies were saved nor do I have any reasonable way to tag them to a version number. Due to upgrades to the frameworks and database drivers involved, the old code is quite defunct; it no longer works on the current server config. However, the previous programmers had some...unique...logic, so I hate to be completely without old copies to refer to what on earth they were doing. Should I keep this stuff in version control? How? Wall off the old code in separate Tags/branches?

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• Will search engines discover that our old pages have been 301 redirected if there are no more links to them in the old site?

  - by Obay

  We've moved our website to a new domain. Thousands of our pages come from one PHP file in the old site (e.g. oldsite.com/news.php?id=<id>). So we added some code in news.php file to do a 301 redirect to the specific corresponding news article in the new website (newsite.com/news/<id>). We have not yet done a 301 redirect for the root of the old site (so we could display a notice to our users that we've moved), but all links inside it are already 301 redirected. My concern is that, when Google crawls our old website, it will no longer be able to find the old news articles and discover that they have been 301 Redirected -- is this correct? If so, does that mean our PageRank won't be carried over to the new site? I've also read that we would need to create a sitemap for the new site. Is it possible to indicate in the sitemap the old and new locations of specific pages? Because if not, how will Google know? (I'm not sure change of address in Webmaster Tools would be specific enough).

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• About to graduate from good school without any progamming skills

  - by newprint

  Not sure if it is good place to ask this question, but found this section to be suitable. I am about to graduate from a good school (in the US) with Computer Science degree, having good grades and high GPA. I have no freaking clue how to write a good program, how to properly test it... nada, zero. We were never been taught how to write software. Ye, sure the Comp. Architecture class is important, and I can tell you a lot about how MIPS processor works, and I can tell you about Binary Trees and Red-Black Trees and running time of operations in Big Oh, but it has nothing to do with programming in "real" life. For god sake, none of my classmates know how to use STLs or write templated code! To be honest, I found that many of my classes to be waste of time. What should I do ? How to step into real life and learn how to program ?

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• Motivation Problems, Middle School Programmer [closed]

  - by Anonymous

  I'm in middle school at the moment and have been programming for about a year and a half. I mostly work with Python and Ruby, and am currently learning Rails. I know, you can never learn enough, it takes a looong time to master a subject, but I feel like I don't have much left to learn :(. I've learned many concepts in Python, learned basically the whole std lib and have written a ton of programs, same with Ruby. In Ruby I've also done a lot of metaprogramming. After I've learned all the concepts, and written a lot of programs, there is nothing really left for me to do! What can I do, now that I've learned all the concepts, and written some programs? I can't get a job working with real developers, and the programming camp I went to last year was far too easy.

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• Gnome 3 - Old fashioned buttons and menus

  - by vigs1990

  I've upgraded to Gnome 3 and the problem I'm facing is that when I restart, sometimes the menus and buttons look old-fashioned like this: whereas sometimes, it looks modern and neat like this: Notice the differences between the two: here are a few differences: The menu bar (notice the difference in fonts, dark grey color of Snapshot1 vs the light grey color in Snapshot2 in the background) The file navigation bar bellow the menu bar (notice the 'Home' button there and also the left arrow button) The left-hand side navigation bar (font, background color and color of selected folder) The old style look effects the GTK aspects of the interface, such as the menu, buttons, mouse pointer etc. Another observation is that changing the GTK themes does using gnome-tweak-tool when the old style look is loaded does NOT work. However, this works when the regular look is loaded. How can I ensure that the old-fashioned look does not load on boot?

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• Web Based School/College ERP

  - by Ashok

  We are planning to build a Web Based School/College ERP. The main problem we face is Hardware support. Since it is Web Based, it is not possible to implement Biometrics. But most of our clients do ask for Biometrics. I hope we need to use a desktop application to do that. Can you please give some suggestions for this? Another thing is, here we don't have stable internet connection. We frequently face disconnection. This is another problem for Web Based CRM. In HTML5 there is a feature called Offline storage. Is it possible to use this feature for such dynamic ERP? For example, let's say we need to enter marks for the students. Net got disconnected. Is it possible to use HTML5 offline feature to save the marks offline and upload them when we got connection back?

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• Hand writing software for tanking notes in school

  - by Henny Steinmetz

  I'm thinking of switching to Ubuntu and leaving Windows behind. But for school I was using OneNote to take notes... And it was so perfect... I know how many questions about onenote alternatives and I read through them but didn't find something fitting for me. So what am I looking for? Support for my Stylus / hand written notes Adding files/pictures to the notes some managing system to organize the notes / somewhat like OneNote? Maybe? someHopeStillLeft I hope someone has got an idea.. Henrik

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• Will keep google traffic on new site from old site when moving content from old site? [closed]

  - by user1324762

  Possible Duplicate: new domain, old links are 301’d from old domain to new, how will this affect my rankings? I have a site about bikers. Now I created a dating site for bikers. I don't need old site any more, I want to move all articles to this new dating site. So basically, this is not only moving content to new domain, but also to entire new site. What I am planning to do is to make 301 redirect for all 200 articles. For pages that are not articles, I will just put message that the site will be down soon. Do you think that I will get all google traffic from old site from those articles? Is there anything I should be aware and careful?

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• Verb+Noun Parsers and Old School Visual Novels [duplicate]

  - by user38943

  This question already has an answer here: How should I parse user input in a text adventure game? 6 answers Hi I'm working on a simple old school visual novel engine in Lua. Basically I have most of the code set up besides one important feature. The Text Parser. Lets get into how words are generally structured. In the screenshot I input the command "my wish is for you to die" --How would a human understand this? my = noun/object wish = verb is = connective_equator similar to = for = connective_object (for all objects of ..) you = noun/object to = connective_action similar to do die = verb --the computer can then parse this and understand it like this (pseudo example) my = user you = get_current_label() you = "Lost Coatl" wish = user_command user_command = for all_objects of "Lost Coatl" do die() end execute user_command() What other ways do videogames use text parsers, what would be the simplest way for a newbie coder such as myself?

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• About to graduage from good school without any progamming skills

  - by newprint

  Not sure if it is good place to ask this question, but found this section to be suitable. I am about to graduate from good school (in the US) with Computer Science degree, having good grades and high GPA. I have no freaking clue how to write a good program, how to properly test it... nada, zero. We were never been tough how to write software. Ye, sure the Comp. Architecture class is important, and I can tell you a lot about how MIPS processor works, and I can tell you about Binary Trees and Red-Black Trees and running time of operations in Big Oh, but it has nothing to do with programming in "real" life. For god sake, none of my classmates know how to use STLs or write templated code !!! To be honest, I found that many of my classes to be waste of time. What should I do ? How to step into real life and learn how to program ?

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• Use SQL Result to Query second time and grab more results via php

  - by maxwell

  I am grabbing a list of school names from a database. When the user clicks on the school name, i want the code to fetch 2-3 other attributes related to the school name that the user has clicked on. My code for the single school name list: $query = mysql_query("Select schoolname, product, username, password from credentials c join products p on p.productid = c.productid join schools s on s.schoolid = c.schoolid join icons i on i.productid = p.productid order by s.schoolname"); echo '<ul>'; while($row = mysql_fetch_array($query)) { echo "<li> <a href='#'>" . $row['schoolname'] . "</a> </li>"; } echo ''; Current Output: School A School A School B School B School B School C School C Expected Output: School name displayed only once (distinct won't work because each school name has 2-3 product credentials School A School B School C Ability for User to click on a school. then the school names underneath will move down (toggle effect) and user can see product, username and password displayed for the school clicked (for example: user clicked on School A) School A productname1, username, password productname2, username, password School B School C

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• Change desktop background at school

  - by Nano8Blazex

  On school computers, I can log in with a user account stored on the school network (something like that, I have no experience in networking and this sort of stuff). Everything is fine and dandy and totally works as it should, but there is one thing that I find annoying. Apparently for some reason I can't change my background to anything more than a couple of different solid colors with our school's logo still stuck in the middle. (the original background is a white logo on black background. If I change it to a different color, the central 6x6 inch black/white logo still remains, only the surrounding color is changed.) It may have been set by school administrators or something, I don't really know. I find this really ugly. Is there any way to change a setting so that I can set the background to any picture I wish? (like on a home pc...) Thanks.

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• Easy way to restrict permissions in an elementary school computer lab?

  - by Andrew

  I'm putting together an elementary school computer lab. I have nine winxp pro machines that are not networked and do not have internet access (no money to do either). I've created separate student and admin accounts, and have the students set as limited users. However, I'm interested in further restricting their permissions. I want to make it such that they cannot: -delete any files, even just from their own profile -rename any files -move around the icons on the desktop -change any display settings -access a usb device without a password (they bring in their own from home which are chock-full of viruses) Oh, one last thing, they still have to be able to save word documents. Is this even possible? I can download software, but, like I said: no internet, no server.

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• Replacing old server with new but different hostname & same IP

  - by MaxFr

  We have an old server 2000 and lots of users point to it by hostname and by its IP e.g \\server1, we have a new server 2008 R2 with new name serverlocation1 All folders and data have been sync'toy'd from the old server1 across to serverlocation1 each evening, the new server tree is exactly the same on the new server and all perms are correct. We need to make the new server the same IP as the old server1 as too many people access it directly via IP, and to ensure file and folder paths stay ok, anything \\server1\folder\file needs to go to \\newserverlocation1\folder\file etc I can change the old server1 name to server1-old & change IP and assign the old IP to the new server, but how do I force anything coming in for \\server1 to go to the new server and ensure anything referenced to the old server goes onto the new server ? I can CNAME but I need the new server to have the IP of the previous server so not sure if its straight forward etc..... point server1 to newserverlocation1 Then probably change DNS so that the OLD IP points to new hostname..... Any clarification appreciated.

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• Teaching high school kids ASP.NET programming

  - by dotneteer

  During the 2011 Microsoft MVP Global Summit, I have been talking to people about teaching kids ASP.NET programming. I want to work with volunteer organizations to provide kids volunteer opportunities while learning technical skills that can be applied elsewhere. The goal is to teach motivated kids enough skill to be productive with no more than 6 hours of instruction. Based on my prior teaching experience of college extension courses and involvement with high school math and science competitions, I think this is quite doable with classic ASP but a challenge with ASP.NET. I don’t want to use ASP because it does not provide a good path into the future. After some considerations, I think this is possible with ASP.NET and here are my thoughts: · Create a framework within ASP.NET for kids programming. · Use existing editor. No extra compiler and intelligence work needed. · Using a subset of C# like a scripting language. Teaches data type, expression, statements, if/for/while/switch blocks and functions. Use existing classes but no class creation and OOP. · Linear rendering model. No complicated life cycle. · Bare-metal html with some MVC style helpers for widget creation; ASP.NET control is optional. I want to teach kids to understand something and avoid black boxes as much as possible. · Use SQL for CRUD with a helper class. Again, I want to teach understanding rather than black boxes. · Provide a template to encourage clean separation of concern. · Provide a conversion utility to convert the code that uses template to ASP.NET MVC. This will allow kids with AP Computer Science knowledge to step up to ASP.NET MVC. Let me know if you have thoughts or can help.

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• Architecture advice for converting biz app from old school to new school?

  - by Aaron Anodide

  I've got a WinForms business application that evolved over the past few years. It's forms over data with a number custom UI experiences taylored to the business, so I don't think it's a candidate to port to something like SharePoint or re-write in LightSwitch (at least not without significant investment). When I started it in 2009 I was new to this type of development (coming from more low level programming and my RDBMS knowledge was just slightly greater than what I got from school). Thus, when I was confronted with a business model that operates on a strict monthly accounting cycle, I made the unfortunate decision to create a separate database for each accounting period. Also, when I started I knew DataSets, then I learned Linq2Sql, then I learned EntityFramework. The screens are a mix and match of those. Now, after a few years developing this thing by myself I've finally got a small team. Ultimately, I want a web front end (for remote access to more straight up screens with grids of data) and a thick client (for the highly customized interfaces). My question is: can you offer me some broad strokes architecture advice that will help me formulate a battle plan to convert over to a single database and lay the foundations for my future goals at the same time? Here's a screen shot showing how an older screen uses DataSets and a newer screen uses EF (I'm thinking this might make it more real for someone reading the question - I'm willing to add any amount of detail if someone is willing to help).

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• Object desing problem for simple school application

  - by Aragornx

  I want to create simple school application that provides grades,notes,presence,etc. for students,teachers and parents. I'm trying to design objects for this problem and I'm little bit confused - because I'm not very experienced in class designing. Some of my present objects are : class PersonalData() { private String name; private String surename; private Calendar dateOfBirth; [...] } class Person { private PersonalData personalData; } class User extends Person { private String login; private char[] password; } class Student extends Person { private ArrayList<Counselor> counselors = new ArrayList<>(); } class Counselor extends Person { private ArrayList<Student> children = new ArrayList<>(); } class Teacher extends Person { private ArrayList<ChoolClass> schoolClasses = new ArrayList<>(); private ArrayList<Subject> subjects = new ArrayList<>(); } This is of course a general idea. But I'm sure it's not the best way. For example I want that one person could be a Teacher and also a Parent(Counselor) and present approach makes me to have two Person objects. I want that user after successful logging in get all roles that it has (Student or Teacher or (Teacher & Parent) ). I think I should make and use some interfaces but I'm not sure how to do this right. Maybe like this: interface Role { } interface TeacherRole implements Role { void addGrade( Student student, Grade grade, [...] ); } class Teacher implements TeacherRole { private Person person; [...] } class User extends Person{ ArrayList<Role> roles = new ArrayList<>(); } Please if anyone could help me to make this right or maybe just point me to some literature/article that covers practical objects design.

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• Crappy school, what to do? [closed]

  - by zhenka

  I started programming fairly late. I am 24 years old and about to graduate from a local public university with a really poorly designed curriculum and teachers. Most of the work felt like busy work, and no matter how much I try, it all feels like a waste. I know what a good curriculum looks like. I know what books I should read, but alas it's not so in my university. There is no way at this point that I can catch up to those graduating from places like MIT. My question and this is a serious one: what do I do? Do I just postpone learning the theory I would have learned until later and focus on software engineering skills? How important is the theory in terms of landing a job in New York? Any particular things I should focus on to land a software engineer job? I am very motivated and I just wish someone would give me the time and a chance.

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• Oracle @Munich Business School

  - by Maria Sandu

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Last Wednesday, Lisa from the Graduate Recruitment team and her colleague Philipp from Sales visited the Munich Business School to talk about IT challenges, Sales and Career Opportunities at Oracle. Although the talk started at 6:30 pm, the audience of about 100 students was still attentive and curious. First they were provided with some facts about Oracle, then Philipp went into detail and took them through current IT challenges like ‘Social’, ‘Mobile’, ‘Information’ and ‘Cloud’ and how Oracle solutions can help facing these challenges. He also demonstrated what kind of prerequisites and qualifications are required to become a successful Sales person. When talking about his own career, the audience got even more anxious to hear what he would tell them. Finally, students asked questions on career opportunities across Europe or on other topics they were interested in. If you’re interested in talking to us in person, connect with us on Facebook to get the latest information about events we’re attending and schools we’re visiting. /* 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:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; 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;}

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• What was your most useful/inspiring computer science course?

  - by MPelletier

  I'm currently taking one course per semester, remotely, in a short 5 year program. My aim is to get better at my trade (programming and analysis, not surprisingly). However, I find that I'm not inspired by my choice of classes for next semester. Maybe I'm being too judgmental. I'd like to know what positive experience was gained from a course in particular. Have ou had a course that turned out to be an idea catalyst?

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• Business School graduate joins Oracle

  - by jessica.ebbelaar(at)oracle.com

  My name is Mathias, I work as an Applications Inside Sales Rep for the French market, and I’d like to give you a brief snapshot of my experience at Oracle. First things first, how did you hear about Oracle? Where have you seen the sharp and recognizable red logo? Was it in Charles de Gaulle Airport when your eyes crossed the 20-metre banner with a picture of a strange big machine in the middle? Was it through reading the Forbes 10 top IT companies worldwide ranking? Or is it because IT is your thing and you cannot but know one of the “big four”? Meeting with a Grenoble Alumnus My story is a little different. My plan was to work in sales, in the IT industry. I had heard about Oracle, but my opinion at the time was that this kind of multinational company was way out of reach for a young graduate, even with high enthusiasm and great excitement to be (finally) on the job market. So, I was really surprised when I had an interesting conversation with a top alumnus of my business school. We were at the Grenoble Ecole de Management graduation ceremony (our graduation!), and before the party got really started, I got to chat with her. She told me of the great experience she was getting by living and working in Dublin. She had already figured it all out: “you work with another 100 young people from 10 different nationalities across Europe, you can be based in Dublin, but then once you work really hard you can move to Malaga Spain or other BUs around the world, you can work with different lines of business and learn about new “techy” and business oriented products, move to the field in your home country or elsewhere, etc.” What, what, what? Moving around Europe, trained by the best sales coaches in the world, acquiring strong IT knowledge and getting on board with one of fastest-growing and most watched companies in the world? Well, I was in. The next day (OK, 3 days after, the time to recover), I sent her my CV, and 3 months later I started as a Business Development Consultant at Oracle in Dublin, representing the latest cloud based CRM across the French market. That was 15 months ago. Since then, I moved line of business twice, I’m always learning new things and working with different and senior stakeholders; I have attended hundreds of hours of sales and product training (priceless when you come from a business background); I passed the Dublin Institute of Technology Sales Certification through different trainings given onsite within Oracle; I’ve led projects based around social media and I’ve gotten involved within various sales deals going on my market. Despite all of these great things, two will remain in my spirit: the multiculturalism that I experience every day in the office, and the American style of management - more direct and open than what you can find in “regular French companies”. Sales Progression Board In May 2012, I passed what we call a ‘Sales Progression Board’ to be promoted to an Inside Sales position. I am now in charge of generating revenue through the sale of Oracle applications on my specific territory. Always keeping in my mind my personal ambition: going to the field one day. Interested to join Oracle in the same role as Mathias? Visit http://campus.oracle.com.

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• SQL ADO.NET shortcut extensions (old school!)

  - by Jeff

  As much as I love me some ORM's (I've used LINQ to SQL quite a bit, and for the MSDN/TechNet Profile and Forums we're using NHibernate more and more), there are times when it's appropriate, and in some ways more simple, to just throw up so old school ADO.NET connections, commands, readers and such. It still feels like a pain though to new up all the stuff, make sure it's closed, blah blah blah. It's pretty much the least favorite task of writing data access code. To minimize the pain, I have a set of extension methods that I like to use that drastically reduce the code you have to write. Here they are... public static void Using(this SqlConnection connection, Action<SqlConnection> action) {     connection.Open();     action(connection);     connection.Close(); } public static SqlCommand Command(this SqlConnection connection, string sql){    var command = new SqlCommand(sql, connection);    return command;}public static SqlCommand AddParameter(this SqlCommand command, string parameterName, object value){    command.Parameters.AddWithValue(parameterName, value);    return command;}public static object ExecuteAndReturnIdentity(this SqlCommand command){    if (command.Connection == null)        throw new Exception("SqlCommand has no connection.");    command.ExecuteNonQuery();    command.Parameters.Clear();    command.CommandText = "SELECT @@IDENTITY";    var result = command.ExecuteScalar();    return result;}public static SqlDataReader ReadOne(this SqlDataReader reader, Action<SqlDataReader> action){    if (reader.Read())        action(reader);    reader.Close();    return reader;}public static SqlDataReader ReadAll(this SqlDataReader reader, Action<SqlDataReader> action){    while (reader.Read())        action(reader);    reader.Close();    return reader;} It has been awhile since I've really revisited these, so you will likely find opportunity for further optimization. The bottom line here is that you can chain together a bunch of these methods to make a much more concise database call, in terms of the code on your screen, anyway. Here are some examples: public Dictionary<string, string> Get(){    var dictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>();    _sqlHelper.GetConnection().Using(connection =>        connection.Command("SELECT Setting, [Value] FROM Settings")            .ExecuteReader()            .ReadAll(r => dictionary.Add(r.GetString(0), r.GetString(1))));    return dictionary;} or... public void ChangeName(User user, string newName){    _sqlHelper.GetConnection().Using(connection =>         connection.Command("UPDATE Users SET Name = @Name WHERE UserID = @UserID")            .AddParameter("@Name", newName)            .AddParameter("@UserID", user.UserID)            .ExecuteNonQuery());} The _sqlHelper.GetConnection() is just some other code that gets a connection object for you. You might have an even cleaner way to take that step out entirely. This looks more fluent, and the real magic sauce for me is the reader bits where you can put any kind of arbitrary method in there to iterate over the results.

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• [GEEK SCHOOL] Network Security 4: Windows Firewall: Your System’s Best Defense

  - by Ciprian Rusen

  If you have your computer connected to a network, or directly to your Internet connection, then having a firewall is an absolute necessity. In this lesson we will discuss the Windows Firewall – one of the best security features available in Windows! The Windows Firewall made its debut in Windows XP. Prior to that, Windows system needed to rely on third-party solutions or dedicated hardware to protect them from network-based attacks. Over the years, Microsoft has done a great job with it and it is one of the best firewalls you will ever find for Windows operating systems. Seriously, it is so good that some commercial vendors have decided to piggyback on it! Let’s talk about what you will learn in this lesson. First, you will learn about what the Windows Firewall is, what it does, and how it works. Afterward, you will start to get your hands dirty and edit the list of apps, programs, and features that are allowed to communicate through the Windows Firewall depending on the type of network you are connected to. Moving on from there, you will learn how to add new apps or programs to the list of allowed items and how to remove the apps and programs that you want to block. Last but not least, you will learn how to enable or disable the Windows Firewall, for only one type of networks or for all network connections. By the end of this lesson, you should know enough about the Windows Firewall to use and manage it effectively. What is the Windows Firewall? Windows Firewall is an important security application that’s built into Windows. One of its roles is to block unauthorized access to your computer. The second role is to permit authorized data communications to and from your computer. Windows Firewall does these things with the help of rules and exceptions that are applied both to inbound and outbound traffic. They are applied depending on the type of network you are connected to and the location you have set for it in Windows, when connecting to the network. Based on your choice, the Windows Firewall automatically adjusts the rules and exceptions applied to that network. This makes the Windows Firewall a product that’s silent and easy to use. It bothers you only when it doesn’t have any rules and exceptions for what you are trying to do or what the programs running on your computer are trying to do. If you need a refresher on the concept of network locations, we recommend you to read our How-To Geek School class on Windows Networking. Another benefit of the Windows Firewall is that it is so tightly and nicely integrated into Windows and all its networking features, that some commercial vendors decided to piggyback onto it and use it in their security products. For example, products from companies like Trend Micro or F-Secure no longer provide their proprietary firewall modules but use the Windows Firewall instead. Except for a few wording differences, the Windows Firewall works the same in Windows 7 and Windows 8.x. The only notable difference is that in Windows 8.x you will see the word “app” being used instead of “program”. Where to Find the Windows Firewall By default, the Windows Firewall is turned on and you don’t need to do anything special in order for it work. You will see it displaying some prompts once in a while but they show up so rarely that you might forget that is even working. If you want to access it and configure the way it works, go to the Control Panel, then go to “System and Security” and select “Windows Firewall”. Now you will see the Windows Firewall window where you can get a quick glimpse on whether it is turned on and the type of network you are connected to: private networks or public network. For the network type that you are connected to, you will see additional information like: The state of the Windows Firewall How the Windows Firewall deals with incoming connections The active network When the Windows Firewall will notify you You can easily expand the other section and view the default settings that apply when connecting to networks of that type. If you have installed a third-party security application that also includes a firewall module, chances are that the Windows Firewall has been disabled, in order to avoid performance issues and conflicts between the two security products. If that is the case for your computer or device, you won’t be able to view any information in the Windows Firewall window and you won’t be able to configure the way it works. Instead, you will see a warning that says: “These settings are being managed by vendor application – Application Name”. In the screenshot below you can see an example of how this looks. How to Allow Desktop Applications Through the Windows Firewall Windows Firewall has a very comprehensive set of rules and most Windows programs that you install add their own exceptions to the Windows Firewall so that they receive network and Internet access. This means that you will see prompts from the Windows Firewall on occasion, generally when you install programs that do not add their own exceptions to the Windows Firewall’s list. In a Windows Firewall prompt, you are asked to select the network locations to which you allow access for that program: private networks or public networks. By default, Windows Firewall selects the checkbox that’s appropriate for the network you are currently using. You can decide to allow access for both types of network locations or just to one of them. To apply your setting press “Allow access”. If you want to block network access for that program, press “Cancel” and the program will be set as blocked for both network locations. At this step you should note that only administrators can set exceptions in the Windows Firewall. If you are using a standard account without administrator permissions, the programs that do not comply with the Windows Firewall rules and exceptions are automatically blocked, without any prompts being shown. You should note that in Windows 8.x you will never see any Windows Firewall prompts related to apps from the Windows Store. They are automatically given access to the network and the Internet based on the assumption that you are aware of the permissions they require based on the information displayed by the Windows Store. Windows Firewall rules and exceptions are automatically created for each app that you install from the Windows Store. However, you can easily block access to the network and the Internet for any app, using the instructions in the next section. How to Customize the Rules for Allowed Apps Windows Firewall allows any user with an administrator account to change the list of rules and exceptions applied for apps and desktop programs. In order to do this, first start the Windows Firewall. On the column on the left, click or tap “Allow an app or feature through Windows Firewall” (in Windows 8.x) or “Allow a program or feature through Windows Firewall” (in Windows 7). Now you see the list of apps and programs that are allowed to communicate through the Windows Firewall. At this point, the list is grayed out and you can only view which apps, features, and programs have rules that are enabled in the Windows Firewall.

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