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• Internet Working, Browsing Not.

  - by jeffreypriebe

  I have a very odd problem that I can't resolve. I am connected to the internet, but my browsing doesn't work. I don't mean a web browser - I mean browsing. Firefox, Chrome, Curl all fail to successfully connect to an HTTP address. However existing connections, e.g. to mail in Outlook (Exchange Server and also IMAP server) continue to work. Also, the internet is on, I can confirm both from my machine (other ports / connections) as well as from any other computer connected to the same network. Additionally, it appears to be HTTP, not simple a port issue as HTTP over port 8443 (Tortoise SVN if you must know - running over HTTP not over SVN) also fails. I am using Windows Vista SP2 (build 6002). It seems to "creep up" in that after running the computer for a few hours it will fail. (No found way to systematically reproduce the problem.) Additionally, it seems to be more prone on days where the internet connection is flaky already (not sure why the internet is flaky, just is, lot's of failed browsing requests and have to retry/reload often). What I have tried (when the problem arises) - none have yielded any resolution: Resetting the network connection (dis-connect, re-connect) Disable/re-enable the network adapter Double-checked the ip settings Double-checked the HOSTS file. Note: DNS continues to work (both new and cached responses to DNS queries). (Thanks for the suggestion Daniel and antenore.) Checked the routing tables (ip4 only as ipv6 is beyond my understanding) resetting all involved hardware (routers and modems) Close and reopen browsers Looked for malware interference: Run HijackThis Looked for suspicious processes using SysInternals procexp. Looked for explorer hijacks, lsa provider interference, winsock provider interference using SysInternals Autoruns. Run a complete anti-virus scan. Reviewed the output of a netstat -onab to see if there were stuck ports open or unusual processes running somewhere The only thing that works is to do a full reboot. That works 100% of the time to restore browsing. What else can I try to nail down the problem?

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• Why might one host be unable to access the Internet, when it can ping the router and when all other hosts can?

  - by user1444233

  I have a Draytek Vigor 2830n. It's kicking out a 192.168.3.0 LAN. It performs load-balancing across dual-WAN ports, although I've turned off the second WAN to simplify testing. There are many hosts on the LAN. All IPs are allocated through DHCP, most freely allocated from the pool, but one or two are bound to NIC MAC addresses. All hosts can access the Internet, save one. That host (192.168.3.100 or 'dot100' for short) gets allocated an IP address (and the right gateway address, DNS server addresses, subnet etc.) dot100 can ping itself. It can ping the gateway, and access the latter's web interface via port 80. It's responsive and loss-free (sustained ping over a couple of minutes reports no data loss). Yet, for some reason that evades me, dot100 can't ping an external IP address or domain name. I suspect it's never been able to, because it was getting some Internet access from a second adaptor (different subnet), but that's now been turned off, which exposed the problem. In dot100, I've tried: two operating systems (Windows 8 and Knoppix), to rule out anti-virus programs etc. two physical adaptors two cables, on each adaptor two IPs (e.g. .100 and .103 assigned by Mac and .26 from the pool) both dynamic and assigned (MAC-bound) DHCP-allocated IPs but none of this experiments yielded any variation in the result. dot100 is a crucial host. It's a file server for the network, so I need it to be reliably allocated a consistent IP. Can anyone offer a potential solution or a way forward with the analysis please? My guess My analysis so far leads me to believe it's a router issue. I've checked the web interface very carefully. There are no filters setup in Firewall - General Setup or Filter Setup. I suspect it's a corrupted internal routing table, but the web UI shows this as the Routing table: Key: C - connected, S - static, R - RIP, * - default, ~ - private * 0.0.0.0/ 0.0.0.0 via 62.XX.XX.X WAN1 * 62.XX.XX.X/ 255.255.255.255 via 62.XX.XX.X WAN1 S 82.YY.YYY.YYY/ 255.255.255.255 via 82.YY.YYY.YYY WAN1 C 192.168.1.0/ 255.255.255.0 directly connected WAN2 C~ 192.168.3.0/ 255.255.255.0 directly connected LAN2

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• Windows 7, weird/annoying explorer problem

  - by Shiki

  First of all, I'm asking the moderators if you could summarize my problem in the Title and modify it according to that. Thanks in advance and sorry, my english is not that good. The problem. It happened on two of my machines already. Once it happens there are many problems with explorer. I'll try to describe at precisely I just can. So. Basically when you create a new folder, you have to hit the enter key TWICE because first it'll throw an error that "there is no such file..". Okay. Then if you try to delete some, this happens also. Renaming is the same. Here is an example. I tried adding a "2" to the end of the folder name, hit enter and got this. Here I can press cancel, nothing happens. If I press retry, the popup disappears and it'll finally change the folder name. I can't come up with anything for this. Using BitDefender (registered, full protection), Windows 7 x86 Ultimate retail (boxed, english version). The other PC had the same anti-virus protection , but it have a Windows 7 x64. Both systems are activated, updated totally. I don't remember installing any new stuff on the PCs. All the stuff on the PCs are legal, no cracked / any other software present. It just happened, so to say. Already reinstalled the other PC because I thought * I * messed up something and its just something FUBAR. However, I dont want to reinstall my laptop also. Any ideas are welcome. (Today I had a strange bug. Windows Explorer had 1.0+gb memory usage with 100% cpu. Killed it, launched a new explorer.exe and thats all. Nothing changed, but it may worth a try. The other PC did NOT have this problem, ever.) Isn't there a registry fix for this or something? :/

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• Wireless Network Performance Issues

  - by colithium

  My brand new Dell XPS system has been running flawlessly except its abysmal download speeds. I have tried isolating every variable I could possibly think of but I can't figure out the problem. I've talked to Dell and Belkin without making progress (thought I'd try). Here are the speeds: Note that most of the time, upload speeds are actually much faster than download speeds (around 4.0 Mb/s which is better than most other devices on the network) It's not the ISP. The slowdown happens even when transferring files inside the network. Plus every other wireless device gets approximately this: It's not the wireless router. It's a Lynksis WRT160N v1 with the latest firmware (1.02.2). Plus everything else connected to it has normal speeds. It's not the browser. Speeds are the same in IE, FF, and when transferring files with Windows between computers. It's not the wireless adapter. I've tried a Belkin N Wireless USB Adapter (which works fine on another computer) and a Dell Wireless Draft 802.11n WLAN Mini-Card. They have the same slow speeds when connected to the problem computer. It's not the adapter connection. One adapter used USB and the other is a Mini-Card. It's not antenna placement. With the same antenna position and the same device, I get different speeds when connected to the problem computer vs a good computer. Plus everything reports the connection speed as at least 11Mbps and good signal strength. I've tried disabling IPv6 since it sometimes causes weird problems. I've tried disabling Windows Firewall/anti-virus. I've ensured the computer has updated drivers for both adapters. I've ensured that Windows is up to date and so is the BIOS. For the USB adapter I ensured that that USB port functioned at normal speeds with other USB devices. What else could it possibly be? I finally received my copy of Windows 7 and will be trying that. I'd rather not install Windows 7 because of a particular program that will stop working so a solution besides that is welcome. Specs: Vista x64 Core i7 920 6GB RAM 500GB HD GTX 260

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• Monitoring the status of accounts with IT Service providers (ISP, Domain Registrar etc.)

  - by Sholom

  Hi All, Short version: You have software that tells you when your servers power-outlet is down. It monitors multiple servers from one management console, alerts you when something is wrong etc. Does anyone know of software that will let me take the same approach to monitor if the money-outlet (the bill!) is down (not paid) to my IT Services providers (ISP, Domain Registrar, MX Backup service etc). I need a top down, centrally managed service that is capable of sending out alerts. Just like the one that monitors my own exchange server etc. I don't mind if i have to manually enter every payment. Long version: Our very likable but absent minded bookkeeper keeps neglecting to pay our IT vendors on time. Just this past week our internet service was disconnected. Same could happen to many other mission critical accounts (domain registrar, backup MX, anti-virus license, HackerSafe (McAfee secure) service and even an 800 number to name a few). As the sysadmin, i monitor my severs to make sure they are plugged into the power-outlet. I believe i should also monitor my services to make sure they are plugged in to their money-outlet. To compound the problem, when the power goes out someone else will likely notice and notify me. But if a bill is not payed, no one will ever notice until service is lost. Lost as in losing our domain name which would cause a lot more damage then the power failing on our server. [Solution] = [Doesn't work because]: Retrain the bookkeeper = Wishful thinking. Notify my manager = Already have (via email). Protects me, does not solve problem. Fire bookkeeper = What makes you so sure the next one will never forget? Bottom line: Humans are humans and sooner or later something critical will be royally messed up. We need to partner with a machine to help us out here. Anybody have the same problem? What software/solution do you use? I would like software that emails me when a bill is passed due just like i get an email when the power outlet fails. Anyone hear of anything like that? Thanks

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• Plesk Postfix Mail Server 9.5.4 very heavy load, 1000s of processes

  - by Eugene van der Merwe

  Our Plesk Linux Ubuntu 64-bit mail server has extremely high load and we don't know how to isolate it. The load was okay will two weeks ago but in the last two weeks it's seriously deteriorated. The mail server has been running for years and we have had sporadic performance issues. Normally we reduce the load by turning off all SPAM checks until the problem is sorted (which sometimes resolves itself). Currently we have turned of real time block lists, SPF checking and we have attempted to turn off SpamAssassin. No matter what we do the SpamAssassin check box stays ticked in the GUI. Out of desperation we have done /etc/init.d/psa-spamassassin stop. For years we haven't been able to do SpamAssassin because it kills the server. We would like to use it but performance is more important for now. We cannot turn off Greylisting. The moment we turn off Greylisting our help desk is inandated with calls. Out of desperation we investigated truncating the Greylisting database which is now 2.5 GB big but we abandoned this after noticing turning of Greylisting doesn't improve the performance at all. We have no anti-virus. It's just more load and Dr. Web never really worked that well for us. But we'll try that if it will make a difference. We have implemented Postfix Anvil. This seems to have made the situation worse so we disabled it. We’re not sure if this is the case. Our current mail server is configured to forward all SMTP to a relay server. We did so to reduce the load. This helped a lot because outgoing queues are generally empty. We are running in an Expand configuration. The mail server has about 12 000 accounts of which maybe half are active. We have read through this document: http://www.postfix.org/STRESS_README.html but there are too many settings and we don’t know which ones to choose. Please assist urgently. We need advice on how to fix this problem before all our clients abandon is. The only clue we have is that there are 100s of these processes: 30 13205 1 0 13:18 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/plesk-9.0/postfix-queue 127.0.0.1 10027 before-queue 30 13207 1 0 11:38 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/plesk-9.0/postfix-queue 127.0.0.1 10027 before-queue 30 13208 1 0 13:18 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/plesk-9.0/postfix-queue 127.0.0.1 10026 before-remote 30 13209 1 0 11:38 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/plesk-9.0/postfix-queue 127.0.0.1 10026 before-remote 30 13213 1 0 13:18 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/plesk-9.0/postfix-queue 127.0.0.1 10027 before-queue

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• Force caching of handler output which actively resists caching

  - by deceze

  I'm trying to force caching of a very obnoxious piece of PHP script which actively tries to resist caching for no good reason by actively setting all the anti-cache headers: Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Date: Thu, 22 May 2014 08:43:53 GMT Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Last-Modified: Pragma: no-cache Set-Cookie: ECSESSID=...; path=/ Vary: User-Agent,Accept-Encoding Server: Apache/2.4.6 (Ubuntu) X-Powered-By: PHP/5.5.3-1ubuntu2.3 If at all avoidable I do not want to have to modify this 3rd party piece of code at all and instead just get Apache to cache the page for a while. I'm doing this very selectively to only very specific pages which have no real impact on session cookies or the like, i.e. which do not contain any personalised information. CacheDefaultExpire 600 CacheMinExpire 600 CacheMaxExpire 1800 CacheHeader On CacheDetailHeader On CacheIgnoreHeaders Set-Cookie CacheIgnoreCacheControl On CacheIgnoreNoLastMod On CacheStoreExpired On CacheStoreNoStore On CacheLock On CacheEnable disk /the/script.php Apache is caching the page alright: [cache:debug] AH00698: cache: Key for entity /the/script.php?(null) is http://example.com:80/the/script.php? [cache_disk:debug] AH00709: Recalled cached URL info header http://example.com:80/the/script.php? [cache_disk:debug] AH00720: Recalled headers for URL http://example.com:80/the/script.php? [cache:debug] AH00695: Cached response for /the/script.php isn't fresh. Adding conditional request headers. [cache:debug] AH00750: Adding CACHE_SAVE filter for /the/script.php [cache:debug] AH00751: Adding CACHE_REMOVE_URL filter for /the/script.php [cache:debug] AH00769: cache: Caching url: /the/script.php [cache:debug] AH00770: cache: Removing CACHE_REMOVE_URL filter. [cache_disk:debug] AH00737: commit_entity: Headers and body for URL http://example.com:80/the/script.php? cached. However, it is always insisting that the "cached response isn't fresh" and is never serving the cached version. I guess this has to do with the Expires header, which marks the document as expired (but I don't know whether that's the correct assumption). I've tried to overwrite and unset headers using mod_headers, but this doesn't help; whatever combination I try the cache is not impressed at all. I'm guessing that the order of operation is wrong, and headers are being rewritten after the cache sees them. early header processing doesn't help either. I've experimented with CacheQuickHandler Off and trying to set explicit filter chains, but nothing is helping. But I'm really mostly poking in the dark, as I do not have a lot of experience with configuring Apache filter chains. Is there a straight forward solution for how to cache this obnoxious piece of code?

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• WCF REST on .Net 4.0

  - by AngelEyes

  A simple and straight forward article taken from: http://christopherdeweese.com/blog2/post/drop-the-soap-wcf-rest-and-pretty-uris-in-net-4 Drop the Soap: WCF, REST, and Pretty URIs in .NET 4 Years ago I was working in libraries when the Web 2.0 revolution began.  One of the things that caught my attention about early start-ups using the AJAX/REST/Web 2.0 model was how nice the URIs were for their applications.  Those were my first impressions of REST; pretty URIs.  Turns out there is a little more to it than that. REST is an architectural style that focuses on resources and structured ways to access those resources via the web.  REST evolved as an “anti-SOAP” movement, driven by developers who did not want to deal with all the complexity SOAP introduces (which is al lot when you don’t have frameworks hiding it all).  One of the biggest benefits to REST is that browsers can talk to rest services directly because REST works using URIs, QueryStrings, Cookies, SSL, and all those HTTP verbs that we don’t have to think about anymore. If you are familiar with ASP.NET MVC then you have been exposed to rest at some level.  MVC is relies heavily on routing to generate consistent and clean URIs.  REST for WCF gives you the same type of feel for your services.  Let’s dive in. WCF REST in .NET 3.5 SP1 and .NET 4 This post will cover WCF REST in .NET 4 which drew heavily from the REST Starter Kit and community feedback.  There is basic REST support in .NET 3.5 SP1 and you can also grab the REST Starter Kit to enable some of the features you’ll find in .NET 4. This post will cover REST in .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010. Getting Started To get started we’ll create a basic WCF Rest Service Application using the new on-line templates option in VS 2010: When you first install a template you are prompted with this dialog: Dude Where’s my .Svc File? The WCF REST template shows us the new way we can simply build services.  Before we talk about what’s there, let’s look at what is not there: The .Svc File An Interface Contract Dozens of lines of configuration that you have to change to make your service work REST in .NET 4 is greatly simplified and leverages the Web Routing capabilities used in ASP.NET MVC and other parts of the web frameworks.  With REST in .NET 4 you use a global.asax to set the route to your service using the new ServiceRoute class.  From there, the WCF runtime handles dispatching service calls to the methods based on the Uri Templates. global.asax using System; using System.ServiceModel.Activation; using System.Web; using System.Web.Routing; namespace Blog.WcfRest.TimeService {     public class Global : HttpApplication     {         void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             RegisterRoutes();         }         private static void RegisterRoutes()         {             RouteTable.Routes.Add(new ServiceRoute("TimeService",                 new WebServiceHostFactory(), typeof(TimeService)));         }     } } The web.config contains some new structures to support a configuration free deployment.  Note that this is the default config generated with the template.  I did not make any changes to web.config. web.config <?xml version="1.0"?> <configuration>   <system.web>     <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0" />   </system.web>   <system.webServer>     <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true">       <add name="UrlRoutingModule" type="System.Web.Routing.UrlRoutingModule,            System.Web, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />     </modules>   </system.webServer>   <system.serviceModel>     <serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="true"/>     <standardEndpoints>       <webHttpEndpoint>         <!--             Configure the WCF REST service base address via the global.asax.cs file and the default endpoint             via the attributes on the <standardEndpoint> element below         -->         <standardEndpoint name="" helpEnabled="true" automaticFormatSelectionEnabled="true"/>       </webHttpEndpoint>     </standardEndpoints>   </system.serviceModel> </configuration> Building the Time Service We’ll create a simple “TimeService” that will return the current time.  Let’s start with the following code: using System; using System.ServiceModel; using System.ServiceModel.Activation; using System.ServiceModel.Web; namespace Blog.WcfRest.TimeService {     [ServiceContract]     [AspNetCompatibilityRequirements(RequirementsMode = AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsMode.Allowed)]     [ServiceBehavior(InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.PerCall)]     public class TimeService     {         [WebGet(UriTemplate = "CurrentTime")]         public string CurrentTime()         {             return DateTime.Now.ToString();         }     } } The endpoint for this service will be http://[machinename]:[port]/TimeService.  To get the current time http://[machinename]:[port]/TimeService/CurrentTime will do the trick. The Results Are In Remember That Route In global.asax? Turns out it is pretty important.  When you set the route name, that defines the resource name starting after the host portion of the Uri. Help Pages in WCF 4 Another feature that came from the starter kit are the help pages.  To access the help pages simply append Help to the end of the service’s base Uri. Dropping the Soap Having dabbled with REST in the past and after using Soap for the last few years, the WCF 4 REST support is certainly refreshing.  I’m currently working on some REST implementations in .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 and am looking forward to working on REST in .NET 4 and VS 2010.

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• Ask How-To Geek: Dropbox in the Start Menu, Understanding Symlinks, and Ripping TV Series DVDs

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  This week we take a look at how to incorporate Dropbox into your Windows Start Menu, understanding and using symbolic links, and how to rip your TV series DVDs right to unique and high-quality episode files. Once a week we dip into our reader mailbag and help readers solve their problems, sharing the useful solutions with you in the process. Read on to see our fixes for this week’s reader dilemmas. Add Drobox to Your Start Menu Dear How-To Geek, I use Dropbox all the time and would like to add it right onto my start menu along side the other major shortcuts like Documents, Pictures, etc. It seems like adding Dropbox into the menu should be part of the Dropbox installation package! Sincerely, Dropboxing in Des Moines Dear Dropboxing, We agree, it would be a nice installation option. As it stands you’re going to have to do a little simple hacking to get Dropbox nestled neatly into your start menu. The hack isn’t super elegant but when you’re done you’ll have the link you want and it’ll look like it was there all along. Check out this step-by-step guide here in order to take an existing Library shortcut and rework it to be a Dropbox link. Understanding and Using Symbolic Links Dear How-To Geek, I was talking to a coworker the other day about an issue I’d been having with a media center application I’m running. He suggested using symbolic links to better organize my media and make it easier for the application to access my collection. I had no idea what he was talking about and never got a chance to bug him about it later. Can you clear up this whole symbolic links business for me? I’ve been using computers for years and I’ve never even heard of it! Sincerely, Symbolic Who? Dear Symbolic, Symbolic links aren’t commonly used by many Windows users which is why you likely haven’t run into the concept. Symbolic links are essentially supercharged shortcuts—the newly introduced Windows library system is really just a type of symbolic link system. You can use symbolic links to do all sorts of neat stuff like link folders to your Dropbox folder, organize media, and more. The concept of symbolic links is pretty simple but the execution can be really tricky. We’d suggest reading over our guide to creating symbolic links in Windows 7, Windows XP, and Ubunutu to get a clearer idea what you’re getting into. Rip Your TV DVDs into Handy Episode Files Dear How-To Geek, My wife got me an iPod for Christmas and I still haven’t got around to filling it up. I have tons of entire TV show seasons on DVD and would like to get them on the iPod but I have absolutely no idea where to start. How do I get the shows off the discs? I thought it would be as easy to import the TV shows into iTunes as it is to import tracks off a CD but I was totally wrong. I tried downloading some applications to rip them but those didn’t work at all. Very frustrating! Surely there is an easy and/or automated way to do this, right? Sincerely, Free My DVDs Dear DVDs, Oh man is this a frustration we can relate to. It’s inordinately difficult to get movies and TV shows off physical media and into digital (and portable media player-friendly) formats. There are a multitude of ways to rip DVDs and quite a few applications out there (some good, some mediocre, and some outright malware). We’d recommend a two-part punch to solve your ripping woes. You’ll need a copy of DVDFab to strip away the protections on the discs and rip the disc and Handbrake to load the disc image and convert the files. It’s not quite as smooth as the CD-to-iTunes workflow but it’s still pretty easy. Check out all the steps and settings you’ll want to toggle here. Have a question you want to put before the How-To Geek staff? Shoot us an email at [email protected] and then keep an eye out for a solution in the Ask How-To Geek column. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines Google’s New Personal Blocklist Extension Kills Search Engine Spam KeyCounter Tracks Your Keystrokes and Mouse Clicks Add Custom LED Ambient Lighting to Your PC or Media Center The Trackor Monitors Amazon Prices; Integrates with Chrome, Firefox, and Safari Four Awesome TRON Legacy Themes for Chrome and Iron Anger is Illogical – Old School Style Instructional Video [Star Trek Mashup]

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• 8 Things You Can Do In Android’s Developer Options

  - by Chris Hoffman

  The Developer Options menu in Android is a hidden menu with a variety of advanced options. These options are intended for developers, but many of them will be interesting to geeks. You’ll have to perform a secret handshake to enable the Developer Options menu in the Settings screen, as it’s hidden from Android users by default. Follow the simple steps to quickly enable Developer Options. Enable USB Debugging “USB debugging” sounds like an option only an Android developer would need, but it’s probably the most widely used hidden option in Android. USB debugging allows applications on your computer to interface with your Android phone over the USB connection. This is required for a variety of advanced tricks, including rooting an Android phone, unlocking it, installing a custom ROM, or even using a desktop program that captures screenshots of your Android device’s screen. You can also use ADB commands to push and pull files between your device and your computer or create and restore complete local backups of your Android device without rooting. USB debugging can be a security concern, as it gives computers you plug your device into access to your phone. You could plug your device into a malicious USB charging port, which would try to compromise you. That’s why Android forces you to agree to a prompt every time you plug your device into a new computer with USB debugging enabled. Set a Desktop Backup Password If you use the above ADB trick to create local backups of your Android device over USB, you can protect them with a password with the Set a desktop backup password option here. This password encrypts your backups to secure them, so you won’t be able to access them if you forget the password. Disable or Speed Up Animations When you move between apps and screens in Android, you’re spending some of that time looking at animations and waiting for them to go away. You can disable these animations entirely by changing the Window animation scale, Transition animation scale, and Animator duration scale options here. If you like animations but just wish they were faster, you can speed them up. On a fast phone or tablet, this can make switching between apps nearly instant. If you thought your Android phone was speedy before, just try disabling animations and you’ll be surprised how much faster it can seem. Force-Enable FXAA For OpenGL Games If you have a high-end phone or tablet with great graphics performance and you play 3D games on it, there’s a way to make those games look even better. Just go to the Developer Options screen and enable the Force 4x MSAA option. This will force Android to use 4x multisample anti-aliasing in OpenGL ES 2.0 games and other apps. This requires more graphics power and will probably drain your battery a bit faster, but it will improve image quality in some games. This is a bit like force-enabling antialiasing using the NVIDIA Control Panel on a Windows gaming PC. See How Bad Task Killers Are We’ve written before about how task killers are worse than useless on Android. If you use a task killer, you’re just slowing down your system by throwing out cached data and forcing Android to load apps from system storage whenever you open them again. Don’t believe us? Enable the Don’t keep activities option on the Developer options screen and Android will force-close every app you use as soon as you exit it. Enable this app and use your phone normally for a few minutes — you’ll see just how harmful throwing out all that cached data is and how much it will slow down your phone. Don’t actually use this option unless you want to see how bad it is! It will make your phone perform much more slowly — there’s a reason Google has hidden these options away from average users who might accidentally change them. Fake Your GPS Location The Allow mock locations option allows you to set fake GPS locations, tricking Android into thinking you’re at a location where you actually aren’t. Use this option along with an app like Fake GPS location and you can trick your Android device and the apps running on it into thinking you’re at locations where you actually aren’t. How would this be useful? Well, you could fake a GPS check-in at a location without actually going there or confuse your friends in a location-tracking app by seemingly teleporting around the world. Stay Awake While Charging You can use Android’s Daydream Mode to display certain apps while charging your device. If you want to force Android to display a standard Android app that hasn’t been designed for Daydream Mode, you can enable the Stay awake option here. Android will keep your device’s screen on while charging and won’t turn it off. It’s like Daydream Mode, but can support any app and allows users to interact with them. Show Always-On-Top CPU Usage You can view CPU usage data by toggling the Show CPU usage option to On. This information will appear on top of whatever app you’re using. If you’re a Linux user, the three numbers on top probably look familiar — they represent the system load average. From left to right, the numbers represent your system load over the last one, five, and fifteen minutes. This isn’t the kind of thing you’d want enabled most of the time, but it can save you from having to install third-party floating CPU apps if you want to see CPU usage information for some reason. Most of the other options here will only be useful to developers debugging their Android apps. You shouldn’t start changing options you don’t understand. If you want to undo any of these changes, you can quickly erase all your custom options by sliding the switch at the top of the screen to Off.     

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• Aamir Khan’s Satyamev Jayate stirs a movement

  - by Gopinath

  Bollywood actor Aamir Khan is known for his dedication and hard work in inspiring millions of viewers though movies by discussing social problems and motivating people to solve them. His movie Rang De Basanthi seeded Indian anti-corruption movement, Tare Zameen Par touched the problems faced by few challenged kids and the latest movie 3 idiots exposed how education institutions in India are producing lakhs of Donkeys out of colleges every year. He extended his dedication of serving the society to small screen with the launch of reality TV show Satyamev Jayate. Before you start misjudging it as one of those non sense drama / entertaining reality shows, let me tell you that it is not a typical music, games, fight or dance reality show. Satyamev Jayate is all about the real people of India, their problems and how to tackle them.  This is not just a reality show, its movement to educate people about the social evils. Its been many years since I spent couple of hours  in front of TV as most of the programs are too cynical or does not add much value.  In my childhood I use to anxiously wait for Mahabarath or He-Man TV shows to start but after a two decades I waited anxiously for the start of Satyamev Jayate. The wait was worth and the 1 hours 30 minutes spent watching it meaningful. When was the last time you were so satisfied after watching a TV show and inspired to do something? I don’t remember. Today, the show focused on female foeticide and its impact. It showed women who were tortured and forced to abort female foetuses. On the show few brave women shared their experiences of giving birth to girl babies and rough times they are going through with their in-laws & husbands. The show not only focused on the problem but also on the root cause of the evil,  inspiring people working to tackle it and what every individual can do his part to solve it.  The best part of the show is,  its not a blame game. When there is a problem most of the people quickly get into identifying who is wrong and start blaming them instead of solve the actual problem.  Aamir did not blame anyone for female foeticide – neither the government who don’t impose strict rules, nor the doctors who abort girl babies to make money or the mother-in-laws & husbands who torcher girl baby mothers are blamed. He careful highlighted the problem, showed horrifying statistics and their impact on the future society and few inspiring people working to tackle the problem.  He touched heart and stirred a movement against the issue. First time ever I voted for a reality show through SMS and it’s for Satyamev Jayate. I’m proud to do so. Here are the few reactions of popular people, activists & media about the program @aamir_khan absolutely the best program I have seen on TV in recent past. Thanku for converting an idiot box into an inspirationsl medium — Kiran Bedi (@thekiranbedi) May 6, 2012 Satyamev Jayate proves tht TV 2 can b a tool of social change. — Shekhar Kapur (@shekharkapur) May 6, 2012 i absolutely loved #satyamevjayate. at least aamir is doing what all of us only talk about. — Harsha Bhogle (@bhogleharsha) May 6, 2012 Now Television will no longer be called an idiot box,the VISION of Television broadens up with#SatyamevJayate !!! — Madhur Bhandarkar (@mbhandarkar268) May 6, 2012 The Sunday 11am slot seems to have come back with a bang… #SatyamevJayate — atul kasbekar (@atulkasbekar) May 6, 2012   I was spellbound, says Prasoon Joshi – It’s a unique show. I was completely bowled over by it. It’s a never-done before concept Aamir Khan strikes the right chord with Satyamev Jayate – The format is quite crisp. Talking about the emotional connect, there are moments when your eyes well up with tears, but the various segments ensure there’s more content than emotional drama ‘Satyamev Jayate’ gutsy, sensible show: Viewers – From filmmakers to clinical psychologists to professors – everyone has given the thumbs up to Aamir Khan’s television show ‘Satyamev Jayate’, saying it is a gutsy, hard-hitting and sensible programme that strikes an emotional chord with the audiences. Aamir Khan’s TV debut ‘Satyamev Jayate’ takes Twitter by storm – The roads of the capital sported a deserted look around 11 am on Sunday morning, as everyone was hooked on to their TV sets. Did you watch the program? What is your opinion? I’m waiting for next 11 AM of next Sunday. Are you?

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• [GEEK SCHOOL] Network Security 3: Windows Defender and a Malware-Free System

  - by Ciprian Rusen

  In this second lesson we are going to talk about one of the most confusing security products that are bundled with Windows: Windows Defender. In the past, this product has had a bad reputation and for good reason – it was very limited in its capacity to protect your computer from real-world malware. However, the latest version included in Windows 8.x operating systems is much different than in the past and it provides real protection to its users. The nice thing about Windows Defender in its current incarnation, is that it protects your system from the start, so there are never gaps in coverage. We will start this lesson by explaining what Windows Defender is in Windows 7 and Vista versus what it is in Windows 8, and what product to use if you are using an earlier version. We next will explore how to use Windows Defender, how to improve its default settings, and how to deal with the alerts that it displays. As you will see, Windows Defender will have you using its list of quarantined items a lot more often than other security products. This is why we will explain in detail how to work with it and remove malware for good or restore those items that are only false alarms. Lastly, you will learn how to turn off Windows Defender if you no longer want to use it and you prefer a third-party security product in its place and then how to enable it back, if you have changed your mind about using it. Upon completion, you should have a thorough understanding of your system’s default anti-malware options, or how to protect your system expeditiously. What is Windows Defender? Unfortunately there is no one clear answer to this question because of the confusing way Microsoft has chosen to name its security products. Windows Defender is a different product, depending on the Windows operating system you are using. If you use Windows Vista or Windows 7, then Windows Defender is a security tool that protects your computer from spyware. This but one form of malware made out of tools and applications that monitor your movements on the Internet or the activities you make on your computer. Spyware tends to send the information that is collected to a remote server and it is later used in all kinds of malicious purposes, from displaying advertising you don’t want, to using your personal data, etc. However, there are many other types of malware on the Internet and this version of Windows Defender is not able to protect users from any of them. That’s why, if you are using Windows 7 or earlier, we strongly recommend that you disable Windows Defender and install a more complete security product like Microsoft Security Essentials, or third-party security products from specialized security vendors. If you use Windows 8.x operating systems, then Windows Defender is the same thing as Microsoft Security Essentials: a decent security product that protects your computer in-real time from viruses and spyware. The fact that this product protects your computer also from viruses, not just from spyware, makes a huge difference. If you don’t want to pay for security products, Windows Defender in Windows 8.x and Microsoft Security Essentials (in Windows 7 or earlier) are good alternatives. Windows Defender in Windows 8.x and Microsoft Security Essentials are the same product, only their name is different. In this lesson, we will use the Windows Defender version from Windows 8.x but our instructions apply also to Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) in Windows 7 and Windows Vista. If you want to download Microsoft Security Essentials and try it out, we recommend you to use this page: Download Microsoft Security Essentials. There you will find both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of this product as well versions in multiple languages. How to Use and Configure Windows Defender Using Windows Defender (MSE) is very easy to use. To start, search for “defender” on the Windows 8.x Start screen and click or tap the “Windows Defender” search result. In Windows 7, search for “security” in the Start Menu search box and click “Microsoft Security Essentials”. Windows Defender has four tabs which give you access to the following tools and options: Home – here you can view the security status of your system. If everything is alright, then it will be colored in green. If there are some warnings to consider, then it will be colored in yellow, and if there are threats that must be dealt with, everything will be colored in red. On the right side of the “Home” tab you will find options for scanning your computer for viruses and spyware. On the bottom of the tab you will find information about when the last scan was performed and what type of scan it was. Update – here you will find information on whether this product is up-to-date. You will learn when it was last updated and the versions of the definitions it is using. You can also trigger a manual update. History – here you can access quarantined items, see which items you’ve allowed to run on your PC even if they were identified as malware by Windows Defender, and view a complete list with all the malicious items Windows Defender has detected on your PC. In order to access all these lists and work with them, you need to be signed in as an administrator. Settings – this is the tab where you can turn on the real-time protection service, exclude files, file types, processes, and locations from its scans as well as access a couple of more advanced settings. The only difference between Windows Defender in Windows 8.x and Microsoft Security Essentials (in Windows 7 or earlier) is that, in the “Settings” tab, Microsoft Security Essentials allows you to set when to run scheduled scans while Windows Defender lacks this option.

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• How to Customize Fonts and Colors for Gnome Panels in Ubuntu Linux

  - by The Geek

  Earlier this week we showed you how to make the Gnome Panels totally transparent, but you really need some customized fonts and colors to make the effect work better. Here’s how to do it. This article is the first part of a multi-part series on how to customize the Ubuntu desktop, written by How-To Geek reader and ubergeek, Omar Hafiz. Changing the Gnome Colors the Easy Way You’ll first need to install Gnome Color Chooser which is available in the default repositories (the package name is gnome-color-chooser). Then go to System > Preferences > Gnome Color Chooser to launch the program. When you see all these tabs you immediately know that Gnome Color Chooser does not only change the font color of the panel, but also the color of the fonts all over Ubuntu, desktop icons, and many other things as well. Now switch to the panel tab, here you can control every thing about your panels. You can change font, font color, background and background color of the panels and start menus. Tick the “Normal” option and choose the color you want for the panel font. If you want you can change the hover color of the buttons on the panel by too. A little below the color option is the font options, this includes the font, font size, and the X and Y positioning of the font. The first two options are pretty straight forward, they change the typeface and the size. The X-Padding and Y-Padding may confuse you but they are interesting, they may give a nice look for your panels by increasing the space between items on your panel like this: X-Padding:   Y-Padding:   The bottom half of the window controls the look of your start menus which is the Applications, Places, and Systems menus. You can customize them just the way you did with the panel.   Alright, this was the easy way to change the font of your panels. Changing the Gnome Theme Colors the Command-Line Way The other hard (not so hard really) way will be changing the configuration files that tell your panel how it should look like. In your Home Folder, press Ctrl+H to show the hidden files, now find the file “.gtkrc-2.0”, open it and insert this line in it. If there are any other lines in the file leave them intact. include “/home/<username>/.gnome2/panel-fontrc” Don’t forget to replace the <user_name> with you user account name. When done close and save the file. Now navigate the folder “.gnome2” from your Home Folder and create a new file and name it “panel-fontrc”. Open the file you just created with a text editor and paste the following in it: style “my_color”{fg[NORMAL] = “#FF0000”}widget “*PanelWidget*” style “my_color”widget “*PanelApplet*” style “my_color” This text will make the font red. If you want other colors you’ll need to replace the Hex value/HTML Notation (in this case #FF0000) with the value of the color you want. To get the hex value you can use GIMP, Gcolor2 witch is available in the default repositories or you can right-click on your panel > Properties > Background tab then click to choose the color you want and copy the Hex value. Don’t change any other thing in the text. When done, save and close. Now press Alt+F2 and enter “killall gnome-panel” to force it to restart or you can log out and login again. Most of you will prefer the first way of changing the font and color for it’s ease of applying and because it gives you much more options but, some may not have the ability/will to download and install a new program on their machine or have reasons of their own for not to using it, that’s why we provided the two way. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Splendiferous Array of Culinary Tools [Infographic] Add a Real-Time Earth Wallpaper App to Ubuntu with xplanetFX The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker

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• Myths about Coding Craftsmanship part 2

  - by tom

  Myth 3: The source of all bad code is inept developers and stupid people When you review code is this what you assume?  Shame on you.  You are probably making assumptions in your code if you are assuming so much already.  Bad code can be the result of any number of causes including but not limited to using dated techniques (like boxing when generics are available), not following standards (“look how he does the spacing between arguments!” or “did he really just name that variable ‘bln_Hello_Cats’?”), being redundant, using properties, methods, or objects in a novel way (like switching on button.Text between “Hello World” and “Hello World “ //clever use of space character… sigh), not following the SOLID principals, hacking around assumptions made in earlier iterations / hacking in features that should be worked into the overall design.  The first two issues, while annoying are pretty easy to spot and can be fixed so easily.  If your coding team is made up of experienced professionals who are passionate about staying current then these shouldn’t be happening.  If you work with a variety of skills, backgrounds, and experience then there will be some of this stuff going on.  If you have an opportunity to mentor such a developer who is receptive to constructive criticism don’t be a jerk; help them and the codebase will improve.  A little patience can improve the codebase, your work environment, and even your perspective. The novelty and redundancy I have encountered has often been the use of creativity when language knowledge was perceived as unavailable or too time consuming.  When developers learn on the job you get a lot of this.  Rather than going to MSDN developers will use what they know.  Depending on the constraints of their assignment hacking together what they know may seem quite practical.  This was not stupid though I often wonder how much time is actually “saved” by hacking.  These issues are often harder to untangle if we ever do.  They can also grow out of control as we write hack after hack to make it work and get back to some development that is satisfying. Hacking upon an existing hack is what I call “feeding the monster”.  Code monsters are anti-patterns and hacks gone wild.  The reason code monsters continue to get bigger is that they keep growing in scope, touching more and more of the application.  This is not the result of dumb developers. It is probably the result of avoiding design, not taking the time to understand the problems or anticipate or communicate the vision of the product.  If our developers don’t understand the purpose of a feature or product how do we expect potential customers to do so? Forethought and organization are often what is missing from bad code.  Developers who do not use the SOLID principals should be encouraged to learn these principals and be given guidance on how to apply them.  The time “saved” by giving hackers room to hack will be made up for and then some. Not as technical debt but as shoddy work that if not replaced will be struggled with again and again.  Bad code is not the result of dumb developers (usually) it is the result of trying to do too much without the proper resources and neglecting the right thing that needs doing with the first thoughtless thing that comes into our heads. Object oriented code is all about relationships between objects.  Coders who believe their coworkers are all fools tend to write objects that are difficult to work with, not eager to explain themselves, and perform erratically and irrationally.  If you constantly find you are surrounded by idiots you may want to ask yourself if you are being unreasonable, if you are being closed minded, of if you have chosen the right profession.  Opening your mind up to the idea that you probably work with rational, well-intentioned people will probably make you a better coder and it might even make you less grumpy.  If you are surrounded by jerks who do not engage in the exchange of ideas who do not care about their customers or the durability of the code you are building together then I suggest you find a new place to work.  Myth 4: Customers don’t care about “beautiful” code Craftsmanship is customer focused because it means that the job was done right, the product will withstand the abuse, modifications, and scrutiny of our customers.  Users can appreciate a predictable timeline for a release, a product delivered on time and on budget, a feature set that does not interfere with the task(s) it is supporting, quick turnarounds on exception messages, self healing issues, and less issues.  These are all hindered by skimping on craftsmanship.  When we write data access and when we write reusable code.   What do you think?  Does bad code come primarily from low IQ individuals?  Do customers care about beautiful code?

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• Very slow compile times on Visual Studio

  - by johnc

  We are getting very slow compile times, which can take upwards of 20+ minutes on dual core 2GHz, 2G Ram machines. A lot of this is due to the size of our solution which has grown to 70+ projects, as well as VSS which is a bottle neck in itself when you have a lot of files. (swapping out VSS is not an option unfortunately, so I don't want this to descend into a VSS bash) We are looking at combing projects (not nice, as we like the separation of concerns, but is a good opportunity to refactor away some dead wood). We are also looking at having multiple solutions to achieve greater separation of concerns and quicker compile times for each element of the application. This I can see will become a dll hell as we try to keep things in synch. I am interested to know how other teams have dealt with this scaling issue, what do you do when your code base reaches a critical mass that you are wasting half the day watching the status bar deliver compile messages UPDATE Apologies, I neglected to mention this is a C# solution. Thanks for all the cpp suggestions, but it's been a few years since I've had to worry about headers. At a distance I say I miss C++, but I'm not sure I want to go back EDIT: Nice suggestions that have helped so far (not saying there aren't other nice suggestions below, just what has helped) New 3GHz laptop - the power of lost utilization works wonders when whinging to management Disable Anti Virus during compile 'Disconnecting' from VSS (actually the network) during compile - I may get us to remove VS-VSS integration altogether and stick to using the VSS UI Still not rip-snorting through a compile, but every bit helps. Orion did mention in a comment that generics may have a play also. From my tests there does appear to be a minimal performance hit, but not high enough to sure - compile times can be inconsistent due to disc activity. Due to time limitations, my tests didn't include as many Generics, or as much code, as would appear in live system, so that may accumulate. I wouldn't avoid using generics where they are supposed to be used, just for compile time performance WORKAROUND We are testing the practice of building new areas of the application in new solutions, importing in the latest dlls as required, them integrating them into the larger solution when we are happy with them. We may also do them same to existing code by creating temporary solutions that just encapsulate the areas we need to work on, and throwing them away after reintegrating the code. We need to weigh up the time it will take to reintegrate this code against the time we gain by not having Rip Van Winkle like experiences with rapid recompiling during development.

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• WCF Duplex net.tcp issues on win7

  - by Tom

  We have a WCF service with multiple clients to schedule operations amongst clients. It worked great on XP. Moving to win7, I can only connect a client to the server on the same machine. At this point, I'm thinking it's something to do with IPv6, but I'm stumped as to how to proceed. Client trying to connect to a remote server gives the following exception: System.ServiceModel.EndpointNotFoundException: Could not connect to net.tcp://10.7.11.14:18297/zetec/Service/SchedulerService/Scheduler. The connection attempt lasted for a time span of 00:00:21.0042014. TCP error code 10060: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond 10.7.11.14:18297. --- System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond 10.7.11.14:18297 The service is configured like so: <system.serviceModel> <services> <service name="SchedulerService" behaviorConfiguration="SchedulerServiceBehavior"> <host> <baseAddresses> <add baseAddress="net.tcp://localhost/zetec/Service/SchedulerService"/> </baseAddresses> </host> <endpoint address="net.tcp://localhost:18297/zetec/Service/SchedulerService/Scheduler" binding="netTcpBinding" bindingConfiguration = "ConfigBindingNetTcp" contract="IScheduler" /> <endpoint address="net.tcp://localhost:18297/zetec/Service/SchedulerService/Scheduler" binding="netTcpBinding" bindingConfiguration = "ConfigBindingNetTcp" contract="IProcessingNodeControl" /> </service> </services> <bindings> <netTcpBinding> <binding name = "ConfigBindingNetTcp" portSharingEnabled="True"> <security mode="None"/> </binding> </netTcpBinding > </bindings> <behaviors> <serviceBehaviors> <behavior name="SchedulerServiceBehavior"> <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true" /> <serviceThrottling maxConcurrentSessions="100"/> </behavior> </serviceBehaviors> </behaviors> </system.serviceModel> I've checked my firewall about a dozen times, but I guess there could be something I'm missing. Tried disabling windows firewall. I tried changing localhost to my ipv4 address to try to keep away from ipv6, I've tried removing any anti-ipv6 code.

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• Singleton: How should it be used

  - by Loki Astari

  Edit: From another question I provided an answer that has links to a lot of questions/answers about singeltons: More info about singletons here: So I have read the thread Singletons: good design or a crutch? And the argument still rages. I see Singletons as a Design Pattern (good and bad). The problem with Singleton is not the Pattern but rather the users (sorry everybody). Everybody and their father thinks they can implement one correctly (and from the many interviews I have done, most people can't). Also because everybody thinks they can implement a correct Singleton they abuse the Pattern and use it in situations that are not appropriate (replacing global variables with Singletons!). So the main questions that need to be answered are: When should you use a Singleton How do you implement a Singleton correctly My hope for this article is that we can collect together in a single place (rather than having to google and search multiple sites) an authoritative source of when (and then how) to use a Singleton correctly. Also appropriate would be a list of Anti-Usages and common bad implementations explaining why they fail to work and for good implementations their weaknesses. So get the ball rolling: I will hold my hand up and say this is what I use but probably has problems. I like "Scott Myers" handling of the subject in his books "Effective C++" Good Situations to use Singletons (not many): Logging frameworks Thread recycling pools /* * C++ Singleton * Limitation: Single Threaded Design * See: http://www.aristeia.com/Papers/DDJ_Jul_Aug_2004_revised.pdf * For problems associated with locking in multi threaded applications * * Limitation: * If you use this Singleton (A) within a destructor of another Singleton (B) * This Singleton (A) must be fully constructed before the constructor of (B) * is called. */ class MySingleton { private: // Private Constructor MySingleton(); // Stop the compiler generating methods of copy the object MySingleton(MySingleton const& copy); // Not Implemented MySingleton& operator=(MySingleton const& copy); // Not Implemented public: static MySingleton& getInstance() { // The only instance // Guaranteed to be lazy initialized // Guaranteed that it will be destroyed correctly static MySingleton instance; return instance; } }; OK. Lets get some criticism and other implementations together. :-)

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• How do I solve an AntiForgeryToken exception that occurs after an iisreset in my ASP.Net MVC app?

  - by Colin Newell

  I’m having problems with the AntiForgeryToken in ASP.Net MVC. If I do an iisreset on my web server and a user continues with their session they get bounced to a login page. Not terrible but then the AntiForgery token blows up and the only way to get going again is to blow away the cookie on the browser. With the beta version of version 1 it used to go wrong when reading the cookie back in for me so I used to scrub it before asking for a validation token but that was fixed when it was released. For now I think I’ll roll back to my code that fixed the beta problem but I can’t help but think I’m missing something. Is there a simpler solution, heck should I just drop their helper and create a new one from scratch? I get the feeling that a lot of the problem is the fact that it’s tied so deeply into the old ASP.Net pipeline and is trying to kludge it into doing something it wasn’t really designed to do. I had a look in the source code for the ASP.Net MVC 2 RC and it doesn't look like the code has changed much so while I haven't tried it, I don't think there are any answers there. Here is the relevant part of the stack trace of the exception. Edit: I just realised I didn't mention that this is just trying to insert the token on the GET request. This isn't the validation that occurs when you do a POST kicking off. System.Web.Mvc.HttpAntiForgeryException: A required anti-forgery token was not supplied or was invalid. ---> System.Web.HttpException: Validation of viewstate MAC failed. If this application is hosted by a Web Farm or cluster, ensure that <machineKey> configuration specifies the same validationKey and validation algorithm. AutoGenerate cannot be used in a cluster. ---> System.Web.UI.ViewStateException: Invalid viewstate. Client IP: 127.0.0.1 Port: 4991 User-Agent: scrubbed ViewState: scrubbed Referer: blah Path: /oursite/Account/Login ---> System.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicException: Padding is invalid and cannot be removed. at System.Security.Cryptography.RijndaelManagedTransform.DecryptData(Byte[] inputBuffer, Int32 inputOffset, Int32 inputCount, Byte[]& outputBuffer, Int32 outputOffset, PaddingMode paddingMode, Boolean fLast) at System.Security.Cryptography.RijndaelManagedTransform.TransformFinalBlock(Byte[] inputBuffer, Int32 inputOffset, Int32 inputCount) at System.Security.Cryptography.CryptoStream.FlushFinalBlock() at System.Web.Configuration.MachineKeySection.EncryptOrDecryptData(Boolean fEncrypt, Byte[] buf, Byte[] modifier, Int32 start, Int32 length, IVType ivType, Boolean useValidationSymAlgo) at System.Web.UI.ObjectStateFormatter.Deserialize(String inputString) --- End of inner exception stack trace --- --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at System.Web.UI.ViewStateException.ThrowError(Exception inner, String persistedState, String errorPageMessage, Boolean macValidationError) at System.Web.UI.ViewStateException.ThrowMacValidationError(Exception inner, String persistedState) at System.Web.UI.ObjectStateFormatter.Deserialize(String inputString) at System.Web.UI.ObjectStateFormatter.System.Web.UI.IStateFormatter.Deserialize(String serializedState) at System.Web.Mvc.AntiForgeryDataSerializer.Deserialize(String serializedToken) --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at System.Web.Mvc.AntiForgeryDataSerializer.Deserialize(String serializedToken) at System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper.GetAntiForgeryTokenAndSetCookie(String salt, String domain, String path) at System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper.AntiForgeryToken(String salt, String domain, String path)

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• How to interpolate hue values in HSV colour space?

  - by nick

  Hi, I'm trying to interpolate between two colours in HSV colour space to produce a smooth colour gradient. I'm using a linear interpolation, eg: h = (1 - p) * h1 + p * h2 s = (1 - p) * s1 + p * s2 v = (1 - p) * v1 + p * v2 (where p is the percentage, and h1, h2, s1, s2, v1, v2 are the hue, saturation and value components of the two colours) This produces a good result for s and v but not for h. As the hue component is an angle, the calculation needs to work out the shortest distance between h1 and h2 and then do the interpolation in the right direction (either clockwise or anti-clockwise). What formula or algorithm should I use? EDIT: By following Jack's suggestions I modified my JavaScript gradient function and it works well. For anyone interested, here's what I ended up with: // create gradient from yellow to red to black with 100 steps var gradient = hsbGradient(100, [{h:0.14, s:0.5, b:1}, {h:0, s:1, b:1}, {h:0, s:1, b:0}]); function hsbGradient(steps, colours) { var parts = colours.length - 1; var gradient = new Array(steps); var gradientIndex = 0; var partSteps = Math.floor(steps / parts); var remainder = steps - (partSteps * parts); for (var col = 0; col < parts; col++) { // get colours var c1 = colours[col], c2 = colours[col + 1]; // determine clockwise and counter-clockwise distance between hues var distCCW = (c1.h >= c2.h) ? c1.h - c2.h : 1 + c1.h - c2.h; distCW = (c1.h >= c2.h) ? 1 + c2.h - c1.h : c2.h - c1.h; // ensure we get the right number of steps by adding remainder to final part if (col == parts - 1) partSteps += remainder; // make gradient for this part for (var step = 0; step < partSteps; step ++) { var p = step / partSteps; // interpolate h var h = (distCW <= distCCW) ? c1.h + (distCW * p) : c1.h - (distCCW * p); if (h < 0) h = 1 + h; if (h > 1) h = h - 1; // interpolate s, b var s = (1 - p) * c1.s + p * c2.s; var b = (1 - p) * c1.b + p * c2.b; // add to gradient array gradient[gradientIndex] = {h:h, s:s, b:b}; gradientIndex ++; } } return gradient; }

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• MVC 2 AntiForgeryToken - Why symmetric encryption + IPrinciple?

  - by Brad R

  We recently updated our solution to MVC 2, and this has updated the way that the AntiForgeryToken works. Unfortunately this does not fit with our AJAX framework any more. The problem is that MVC 2 now uses symmetric encryption to encode some properties about the user, including the user's Name property (from IPrincipal). We are able to securely register a new user using AJAX, after which subsequent AJAX calls will be invalid as the anti forgery token will change when the user has been granted a new principal. There are also other cases when this may happen, such as a user updating their name etc. My main question is why does MVC 2 even bother using symmetric encryption? Any then why does it care about the user name property on the principal? If my understanding is correct then any random shared secret will do. The basic principle is that the user will be sent a cookie with some specific data (HttpOnly!). This cookie is then required to match a form variable sent back with each request that may have side effects (POST's usually). Since this is only meant to protect from cross site attacks it is easy to craft up a response that would easily pass the test, but only if you had full access to the cookie. Since a cross site attacker is not going to have access to your user cookies you are protected. By using symmetric encryption, what is the advantage in checking the contents of the cookie? That is, if I already have sent an HttpOnly cookie the attacker cannot override it (unless a browser has a major security issue), so why do I then need to check it again? After having a think about it it appears to be one of those 'added layer of security' cases - but if your first line of defence has fallen (HttpOnly) then the attacker is going to get past the second layer anyway as they have full access to the users cookie collection, and could just impersonate them directly, instead of using an indirect XSS/CSRF attack. Of course I could be missing a major issue, but I haven't found it yet. If there are some obvious or subtle issues at play here then I would like to be aware of them.

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• Logging raw HTTP request/response in ASP.NET MVC & IIS7

  - by Greg Beech

  I'm writing a web service (using ASP.NET MVC) and for support purposes we'd like to be able to log the requests and response in as close as possible to the raw, on-the-wire format (i.e including HTTP method, path, all headers, and the body) into a database. What I'm not sure of is how to get hold of this data in the least 'mangled' way. I can re-constitute what I believe the request looks like by inspecting all the properties of the HttpRequest object and building a string from them (and similarly for the response) but I'd really like to get hold of the actual request/response data that's sent on the wire. I'm happy to use any interception mechanism such as filters, modules, etc. and the solution can be specific to IIS7. However, I'd prefer to keep it in managed code only. Any recommendations? Edit: I note that HttpRequest has a SaveAs method which can save the request to disk but this reconstructs the request from the internal state using a load of internal helper methods that cannot be accessed publicly (quite why this doesn't allow saving to a user-provided stream I don't know). So it's starting to look like I'll have to do my best to reconstruct the request/response text from the objects... groan. Edit 2: Please note that I said the whole request including method, path, headers etc. The current responses only look at the body streams which does not include this information. Edit 3: Does nobody read questions around here? Five answers so far and yet not one even hints at a way to get the whole raw on-the-wire request. Yes, I know I can capture the output streams and the headers and the URL and all that stuff from the request object. I already said that in the question, see: I can re-constitute what I believe the request looks like by inspecting all the properties of the HttpRequest object and building a string from them (and similarly for the response) but I'd really like to get hold of the actual request/response data that's sent on the wire. If you know the complete raw data (including headers, url, http method, etc.) simply cannot be retrieved then that would be useful to know. Similarly if you know how to get it all in the raw format (yes, I still mean including headers, url, http method, etc.) without having to reconstruct it, which is what I asked, then that would be very useful. But telling me that I can reconstruct it from the HttpRequest/HttpResponse objects is not useful. I know that. I already said it. Please note: Before anybody starts saying this is a bad idea, or will limit scalability, etc., we'll also be implementing throttling, sequential delivery, and anti-replay mechanisms in a distributed environment, so database logging is required anyway. I'm not looking for a discussion of whether this is a good idea, I'm looking for how it can be done.

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• Constructor Injection and when to use a Service Locator

  - by Simon

  I'm struggling to understand parts of StructureMap's usage. In particular, in the documentation a statement is made regarding a common anti-pattern, the use of StructureMap as a Service Locator only instead of constructor injection (code samples straight from Structuremap documentation): public ShippingScreenPresenter() { _service = ObjectFactory.GetInstance<IShippingService>(); _repository = ObjectFactory.GetInstance<IRepository>(); } instead of: public ShippingScreenPresenter(IShippingService service, IRepository repository) { _service = service; _repository = repository; } This is fine for a very short object graph, but when dealing with objects many levels deep, does this imply that you should pass down all the dependencies required by the deeper objects right from the top? Surely this breaks encapsulation and exposes too much information about the implementation of deeper objects. Let's say I'm using the Active Record pattern, so my record needs access to a data repository to be able to save and load itself. If this record is loaded inside an object, does that object call ObjectFactory.CreateInstance() and pass it into the active record's constructor? What if that object is inside another object. Does it take the IRepository in as its own parameter from further up? That would expose to the parent object the fact that we're access the data repository at this point, something the outer object probably shouldn't know. public class OuterClass { public OuterClass(IRepository repository) { // Why should I know that ThingThatNeedsRecord needs a repository? // that smells like exposed implementation to me, especially since // ThingThatNeedsRecord doesn't use the repo itself, but passes it // to the record. // Also where do I create repository? Have to instantiate it somewhere // up the chain of objects ThingThatNeedsRecord thing = new ThingThatNeedsRecord(repository); thing.GetAnswer("question"); } } public class ThingThatNeedsRecord { public ThingThatNeedsRecord(IRepository repository) { this.repository = repository; } public string GetAnswer(string someParam) { // create activeRecord(s) and process, returning some result // part of which contains: ActiveRecord record = new ActiveRecord(repository, key); } private IRepository repository; } public class ActiveRecord { public ActiveRecord(IRepository repository) { this.repository = repository; } public ActiveRecord(IRepository repository, int primaryKey); { this.repositry = repository; Load(primaryKey); } public void Save(); private void Load(int primaryKey) { this.primaryKey = primaryKey; // access the database via the repository and set someData } private IRepository repository; private int primaryKey; private string someData; } Any thoughts would be appreciated. Simon

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• JavaCC: How can one exclude a string from a token? (A.k.a. understanding token ambiguity.)

  - by java.is.for.desktop

  Hello, everyone! I had already many problems with understanding, how ambiguous tokens can be handled elegantly (or somehow at all) in JavaCC. Let's take this example: I want to parse XML processing instruction. The format is: "<?" <target> <data> "?>": target is an XML name, data can be anything except ?>, because it's the closing tag. So, lets define this in JavaCC: (I use lexical states, in this case DEFAULT and PROC_INST) TOKEN : <#NAME : (very-long-definition-from-xml-1.1-goes-here) > TOKEN : <WSS : (" " | "\t")+ > // WSS = whitespaces <DEFAULT> TOKEN : {<PI_START : "<?" > : PROC_INST} <PROC_INST> TOKEN : {<PI_TARGET : <NAME> >} <PROC_INST> TOKEN : {<PI_DATA : ~[] >} // accept everything <PROC_INST> TOKEN : {<PI_END : "?>" > : DEFAULT} Now the part which recognizes processing instructions: void PROC_INSTR() : {} { ( <PI_START> (t=<PI_TARGET>){System.out.println("target: " + t.image);} <WSS> (t=<PI_DATA>){System.out.println("data: " + t.image);} <PI_END> ) {} } Let's test it with <?mytarget here-goes-some-data?>: The target is recognized: "target: mytarget". But now I get my favorite JavaCC parsing error: !! procinstparser.ParseException: Encountered "" at line 1, column 15. !! Was expecting one of: !! Encountered nothing? Was expecting nothing? Or what? Thank you, JavaCC! I know, that I could use the MORE keyword of JavaCC, but this would give me the whole processing instruction as one token, so I'd had to parse/tokenize it further by myself. Why should I do that? Am I writing a parser that does not parse? The problem is (i guess): hence <PI_DATA> recognizes "everything", my definition is wrong. I should tell JavaCC to recognize "everything except ?>" as processing instruction data. But how can it be done? NOTE: I can only exclude single characters using ~["a"|"b"|"c"], I can't exclude strings such as ~["abc"] or ~["?>"]. Another great anti-feature of JavaCC. Thank you.

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• measure rendered html in javascript without affecting the measurement

  - by drawnonward

  I am doing pagination in javascript. This is typographic pagination, not chopping up database results. For the most part it works, but I have run into a heisenberg issue where I cannot quite measure text without affecting it. I am not trying to measure text before it is rendered. I want the actual position it shows up at on screen, so I can paginate to where it is naturally wrapped. I am measuring the vertical position of characters, not the horizontal width of strings. The way I do this is similar to this answer in that I am applying a style to a block of text, then measuring the position of the newly created span. If the span does not reach the end of the page, I clear it and make a new span in a linear search. The problem is that the anti-aliased sub-pixel text layout is different when the span is applied. In rare cases, this causes the text to wrap differently when I measure it. I have only seen this when wrapping at a hyphen, and I assume it would not happen when wrapping at white space. As a concrete example, "prepared-he" is the string I am having trouble with. When I measure up to "prepare" it appears, as expected, to be within the current page. When I measure "prepared" the whole phrase wraps down to the next line, moving it to the next page, so it looks like the "d" is the character to break at. I break the text between "prepare" and "d-he" and that is wrong. Trying to evaluate individual characters opens a whole can of worms I would rather avoid. The wrapping changes because, with the new span, the line is 1 pixel wider. A solution to my problem could either be a better way to measure text using javascript, or a way to wrap text in a new element without affecting layout. I have tried setting margin-right:-1px for the class of the span being created to wrap the text. This had no noticeable effect. I am doing this in a UIWebView on the iPhone. There are some measurement related calls that are available in normal WebKit that are not available here. For example, Range does not have getBoundingClientRect or support setting an offset other than 0 in setStart or setEnd. Thank you

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• getting Cannot identify image file when trying to create thumbnail in django

  - by Mo J. Mughrabi

  Am trying to create a thumbnail in django, am trying to build a custom class specifically to be used for generating thumbnails. As following from StringIO import StringIO from PIL import Image class Thumbnail(object): source = '' size = (50, 50) output = '' def __init__(self): pass @staticmethod def load(src): self = Thumbnail() self.source = src return self def generate(self, size=(50, 50)): if not isinstance(size, tuple): raise Exception('Thumbnail class: The size parameter must be an instance of a tuple.') self.size = size # resize properties box = self.size factor = 1 fit = True image = Image.open(self.source) # Convert to RGB if necessary if image.mode not in ('L', 'RGB'): image = image.convert('RGB') while image.size[0]/factor > 2*box[0] and image.size[1]*2/factor > 2*box[1]: factor *=2 if factor > 1: image.thumbnail((image.size[0]/factor, image.size[1]/factor), Image.NEAREST) #calculate the cropping box and get the cropped part if fit: x1 = y1 = 0 x2, y2 = image.size wRatio = 1.0 * x2/box[0] hRatio = 1.0 * y2/box[1] if hRatio > wRatio: y1 = int(y2/2-box[1]*wRatio/2) y2 = int(y2/2+box[1]*wRatio/2) else: x1 = int(x2/2-box[0]*hRatio/2) x2 = int(x2/2+box[0]*hRatio/2) image = image.crop((x1,y1,x2,y2)) #Resize the image with best quality algorithm ANTI-ALIAS image.thumbnail(box, Image.ANTIALIAS) # save image to memory temp_handle = StringIO() image.save(temp_handle, 'png') temp_handle.seek(0) self.output = temp_handle return self def get_output(self): return self.output.read() the purpose of the class is so i can use it inside different locations to generate thumbnails on the fly. The class works perfectly, I've tested it directly under a view.. I've implemented the thumbnail class inside the save method of the forms to resize the original images on saving. in my design, I have two fields for thumbnails. I was able to generate one thumbnail, if I try to generate two it crashes and I've been stuck for hours not sure whats the problem. Here is my model class Image(models.Model): article = models.ForeignKey(Article) title = models.CharField(max_length=100, null=True, blank=True) src = models.ImageField(upload_to='publication/image/') r128 = models.ImageField(upload_to='publication/image/128/', blank=True, null=True) r200 = models.ImageField(upload_to='publication/image/200/', blank=True, null=True) uploaded_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True) Here is my forms class ImageForm(models.ModelForm): """ """ class Meta: model = Image fields = ('src',) def save(self, commit=True): instance = super(ImageForm, self).save(commit=True) file = Thumbnail.load(instance.src) instance.r128 = SimpleUploadedFile( instance.src.name, file.generate((128, 128)).get_output(), content_type='image/png' ) instance.r200 = SimpleUploadedFile( instance.src.name, file.generate((200, 200)).get_output(), content_type='image/png' ) if commit: instance.save() return instance the strange part is, when i remove the line which contains instance.r200 in the form save. It works fine, and it does the thumbnail and stores it successfully. Once I add the second thumbnail it fails.. Any ideas what am doing wrong here? Thanks Update: I tried earlier doing the following but I still got the same error class ImageForm(models.ModelForm): """ """ class Meta: model = Image fields = ('src',) def save(self, commit=True): instance = super(ImageForm, self).save(commit=True) instance.r128 = SimpleUploadedFile( instance.src.name, Thumbnail.load(instance.src).generate((128, 128)).get_output(), content_type='image/png' ) instance.r200 = SimpleUploadedFile( instance.src.name, Thumbnail.load(instance.src).generate((200, 200)).get_output(), content_type='image/png' ) if commit: instance.save() return instance

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