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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, January 07, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, January 07, 2011Popular ReleasesAutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.2: Implemented the Auto Updater Fix: Your settings will no longer be cleared with new releases of AutoLoL The mastery Editor and Browser now have their own tabs instead of nested tabs The Browser tab will only show the masteries matching ALL filters instead of just one Added a 'Browse' button in the Mastery Editor tab to open the Masteries Directory The Browser tab now shows a message when there are no mastery files in the Masteries Directory Fix: Fixed the Save As dialog again, for ...Ionics Isapi Rewrite Filter: 2.1 latest stable: V2.1 is stable, and is in maintenance mode. This is v2.1.1.25. It is a bug-fix release. There are no new features. 28629 29172 28722 27626 28074 29164 27659 27900 many documentation updates and fixes proper x64 build environment. This release includes x64 binaries in zip form, but no x64 MSI file. You'll have to manually install x64 servers, following the instructions in the documentation.StyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.14980.000: A considerable amount of work has gone into this release: Huge focus on performance around the violation scanning subsystem: - caching added to reduce IO operations around reading and merging of settings files - caching added to reduce creation of expensive objects Users should notice condsiderable perf boost and a decrease in memory usage. Bug Fixes: - StyleCop's new ObjectBasedEnvironment object does not resolve the StyleCop installation path, thus it does not return the correct path ...VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.1: New release with bug fixes and updates for performance.SSH.NET Library: 2011.1.6: Fixes CommandTimeout default value is fixed to infinite. Port Forwarding feature improvements Memory leaks fixes New Features Add ErrorOccurred event to handle errors that occurred on different thread New and improve SFTP features SftpFile now has more attributes and some operations Most standard operations now available Allow specify encoding for command execution KeyboardInteractiveConnectionInfo class added for "keyboard-interactive" authentication. Add ability to specify bo....NET Extensions - Extension Methods Library for C# and VB.NET: Release 2011.03: Added lot's of new extensions and new projects for MVC and Entity Framework. object.FindTypeByRecursion Int32.InRange String.RemoveAllSpecialCharacters String.IsEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.IsNotEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.IfEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.ToUpperFirstLetter String.GetBytes String.ToTitleCase String.ToPlural DateTime.GetDaysInYear DateTime.GetPeriodOfDay IEnumberable.RemoveAll IEnumberable.Distinct ICollection.RemoveAll IList.Join IList.Match IList.Cast Array.IsNullOrEmpty Array.W...VidCoder: 0.8.0: Added x64 version. Made the audio output preview more detailed and accurate. If the chosen encoder or mixdown is incompatible with the source, the fallback that will be used is displayed. Added "Auto" to the audio mixdown choices. Reworked non-anamorphic size calculation to work better with non-standard pixel aspect ratios and cropping. Reworked Custom anamorphic to be more intuitive and allow display width to be set automatically (Thanks, Statick). Allowing higher bitrates for 6-ch....NET Voice Recorder: Auto-Tune Release: This is the source code and binaries to accompany the article on the Coding 4 Fun website. It is the Auto Tuner release of the .NET Voice Recorder application.BloodSim: BloodSim - 1.3.2.0: - Simulation Log is now automatically disabled and hidden when running 10 or more iterations - Hit and Expertise are now entered by Rating, and include option for a Racial Expertise bonus - Added option for boss to use a periodic magic ability (Dragon Breath) - Added option for boss to periodically Enrage, gaining a Damage/Attack Speed buffASP.NET MVC CMS ( Using CommonLibrary.NET ): CommonLibrary.NET CMS 0.9.5 Alpha: CommonLibrary CMSA simple yet powerful CMS system in ASP.NET MVC 2 using C# 4.0. ActiveRecord based components for Blogs, Widgets, Pages, Parts, Events, Feedback, BlogRolls, Links Includes several widgets ( tag cloud, archives, recent, user cloud, links twitter, blog roll and more ) Built using the http://commonlibrarynet.codeplex.com framework. ( Uses TDD, DDD, Models/Entities, Code Generation ) Can run w/ In-Memory Repositories or Sql Server Database See Documentation tab for Ins...AllNewsManager.NET: AllNewsManager.NET 1.2.1: AllNewsManager.NET 1.2.1 It is a minor update from version 1.2EnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.9 BETA: 2.2.9 BETAThis release supports WoW patch 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added in the Gobl...xUnit.net - Unit Testing for .NET: xUnit.net 1.7 Beta: xUnit.net release 1.7 betaBuild #1533 Important notes for Resharper users: Resharper support has been moved to the xUnit.net Contrib project. Important note for TestDriven.net users: If you are having issues running xUnit.net tests in TestDriven.net, especially on 64-bit Windows, we strongly recommend you upgrade to TD.NET version 3.0 or later. This release adds the following new features: Added support for ASP.NET MVC 3 Added Assert.Equal(double expected, double actual, int precision)...Json.NET: Json.NET 4.0 Release 1: New feature - Added Windows Phone 7 project New feature - Added dynamic support to LINQ to JSON New feature - Added dynamic support to serializer New feature - Added INotifyCollectionChanged to JContainer in .NET 4 build New feature - Added ReadAsDateTimeOffset to JsonReader New feature - Added ReadAsDecimal to JsonReader New feature - Added covariance to IJEnumerable type parameter New feature - Added XmlSerializer style Specified property support New feature - Added ...DbDocument: DbDoc Initial Version: DbDoc Initial versionASP .NET MVC CMS (Content Management System): Atomic CMS 2.1.2: Atomic CMS 2.1.2 release notes Atomic CMS installation guide N2 CMS: 2.1: N2 is a lightweight CMS framework for ASP.NET. It helps you build great web sites that anyone can update. Major Changes Support for auto-implemented properties ({get;set;}, based on contribution by And Poulsen) All-round improvements and bugfixes File manager improvements (multiple file upload, resize images to fit) New image gallery Infinite scroll paging on news Content templates First time with N2? Try the demo site Download one of the template packs (above) and open the proj...Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 0.1.11.10: IMPORTANT CHANGESThis release changes the way some WURFL capabilities and attributes are exposed to .NET developers. If you cast MobileCapabilities to return some values then please read the Release Note before implementing this release. The following code snippet can be used to access any WURFL capability. For instance, if the device is a tablet: string capability = Request.Browser["is_tablet"]; SummaryNew attributes have been added to the redirect section: originalUrlAsQueryString If se...Wii Backup Fusion: Wii Backup Fusion 1.0: - Norwegian translation - French translation - German translation - WBFS dump for analysis - Scalable full HQ cover - Support for log file - Load game images improved - Support for image splitting - Diff for images after transfer - Support for scrubbing modes - Search functionality for log - Recurse depth for Files/Load - Show progress while downloading game cover - Supports more databases for cover download - Game cover loading routines improvedBlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.0: Get DotNetBlogEngine for 3 Months Free! Click Here for More Info 3 Months FREE – BlogEngine.NET Hosting – Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.0 instructions. To get started, be sure to check out our installatio...New Projects9192631770: This project is created for learning .net 3.5 personally. However it may not suffice for anyone to give a start point. (9192631770) is equivalent to 1 sec in atomic clock.AGS: AGSAll-In-One Code Framework Prerelease: All-In-One Code Framework PrereleaseAwait Events with "yield": This is a library that allows you to stop running the code wherever you want in order to await an event using the functionality of "yield" sentence. It's useful when you want to await asynchronous events or when you have to deal with many events in a sequential way.Battle.net SDK: This is a SDK that retrieves it's information from the Battle.Net community site. At the moment blizzard only supports this for World of Warcraft, so that's what our main aim is at the momeen.t C++ Hash Container Benchmark: C++ Hash Container Benchmark for STL map, C++0x unordered map, Boost unordered map, ATL map and ATL hash map for STL wide string and ATL CString.Colour Lovers .NET: A .NET library for the Colour Lovers API.DatingGame: Course to teach high-school aged girls basic T-SQL using a fun scenario - querying to find the hottest boys! Used at Microsoft DigiGirlz and TKP events. Included DDL script, CSV for bcp with data, PPTX, T-SQL Cheat Sheet and teaching tips. Enjoy!do-Dots open .NET SDK: The do-Dots open SDK brings developers a full set of classes that allow to build applications based on do-Dots, a framework for M2M communication. It's developed in C#. EFMVC - ASP.NET MVC 3 and EF Code First: Demo web app using ASP.NET MVC 3 and EF Code FirstGS1: D is a 2D game demo written in C++ and using an API : HAPI for the graphic part and the audio part. All the xml files are handled with tinyXML. It is a vertical scrolling shoot'em up where the player controls a dragon flying in Central Park.GS2: In Zombies, you are a wizard, the most powerful wizard in the world, and two days ago, the Devil forces began to attack our world. The only person capable of stopping them is you, this is why the Devil himself came to you and took your powers. You're now alone, without any weaponIPProvider: DFGiwtfly: ????iwtfly26050: iwtfly2Knowledge Exchange .Net: This is my learning experience with creating an enterprise scale .NET application with tools such as Tortoise SVN, NANT, and Linq to SQLLinqPad Data Context Driver for SharePoint: The SharePoint Data Context Driver for LinqPad makes it easer for SharePoint 2010 Developers to develop, maintain and just play around with Linq To SharePoint statements via LinqPad. It is developed in C# and enables SharePoint 2010 Support to LinqPad.MaxLeafWebSiteK3: MaxLeafWebSiteK3Open ASP.NET CMS: Open ASP.NET 3.5 CMS Plug 'N Play Settings Manager: Plug 'N Play Settings Manager will be an application to configure settings on a windows computer by waiting for a usb thumbstick with a configuration file to be inserted, the application would then read and apply those settings. The early focus will be applying network settings.project windy: Windy - enhanced window manager. windy does window management a breeze. It started as a windows alternative to divvy, but now it has evolved with into its own. Thanks to the generous feedback from you folks. whats different from divvy? - first - its free. - has divvy likeRiaMVVM : MVVM Friendly WCF Ria Services: Simple, light-weight, MVVM friendly access to WCF Ria Services. Written in C# for use with Silverlight 4.SharePoint Designer 2007 Policy: Enable or Disable SharePoint Designer 2007 per site web application and per site colleciton. Spruckus - SharePoint ReUsable Content Keystamp Usage Search: Adds a keystamp to all html type items in the SharePoint Reusable Content list and adds a context item to the reusable content list that will find usages of that reusable content in your site using search.Student Insiders: Student InsidersTea: Tea Web Operator SystemVegas.NET: Projeto teste de TransportadoraXNA 4 Game state management system: XNA 4 Game State Management??????: aa

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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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• Please Describe Your Struggles with Minimizing Use of Global Variables

  - by MetaHyperBolic

  Most of the programs I write are relatively flowchartable processes, with a defined start and hoped-for end. The problems themselves can be complex but do not readily lean towards central use of objects and event-driven programming. Often, I am simply churning through great varied batches of text data to produce different text data. Only occasionally do I need to create a class: As an example, to track warnings, errors, and debugging message, I created a class (Problems) with one instantiation (myErr), which I believe to be an example of the Singleton design pattern. As a further factor, my colleagues are more old school (procedural) than I and are unacquainted with object-oriented programming, so I am loath to create things they could not puzzle through. And yet I hear, again and again, how even the Singleton design pattern is really an anti-pattern and ought to be avoided because Global Variables Are Bad. Minor functions need few arguments passed to them and have no need to know of configuration (unchanging) or program state (changing) -- I agree. However, the functions in the middle of the chain, which primarily control program flow, have a need for a large number of configuration variables and some program state variables. I believe passing a dozen or more arguments along to a function is a "solution," but hardly an attractive one. I could, of course, cram variables into a single hash/dict/associative array, but that seems like cheating. For instance, connecting to the Active Directory to make a new account, I need such configuration variables as an administrative username, password, a target OU, some default groups, a domain, etc. I would have to pass those arguments down through a variety of functions which would not even use them, merely shuffle them off down through a chain which would eventually lead to the function that actually needs them. I would at least declare the configuration variables to be constant, to protect them, but my language of choice these days (Python) provides no simple manner to do this, though recipes do exist as workarounds. Numerous Stack Overflow questions have hit on the why? of the badness and the requisite shunning, but do not often mention tips on living with this quasi-religious restriction. How have you resolved, or at least made peace with, the issue of global variables and program state? Where have you made compromises? What have your tricks been, aside from shoving around flocks of arguments to functions?

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• Scan a Windows PC for Viruses from a Ubuntu Live CD

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  Getting a virus is bad. Getting a virus that causes your computer to crash when you reboot is even worse. We’ll show you how to clean viruses from your computer even if you can’t boot into Windows by using a virus scanner in a Ubuntu Live CD. There are a number of virus scanners available for Ubuntu, but we’ve found that avast! is the best choice, with great detection rates and usability. Unfortunately, avast! does not have a proper 64-bit version, and forcing the install does not work properly. If you want to use avast! to scan for viruses, then ensure that you have a 32-bit Ubuntu Live CD. If you currently have a 64-bit Ubuntu Live CD on a bootable flash drive, it does not take long to wipe your flash drive and go through our guide again and select normal (32-bit) Ubuntu 9.10 instead of the x64 edition. For the purposes of fixing your Windows installation, the 64-bit Live CD will not provide any benefits. Once Ubuntu 9.10 boots up, open up Firefox by clicking on its icon in the top panel. Navigate to http://www.avast.com/linux-home-edition. Click on the Download tab, and then click on the link to download the DEB package. Save it to the default location. While avast! is downloading, click on the link to the registration form on the download page. Fill in the registration form if you do not already have a trial license for avast!. By the time you’ve filled out the registration form, avast! will hopefully be finished downloading. Open a terminal window by clicking on Applications in the top-left corner of the screen, then expanding the Accessories menu and clicking on Terminal. In the terminal window, type in the following commands, pressing enter after each line. cd Downloadssudo dpkg –i avast* This will install avast! on the live Ubuntu environment. To ensure that you can use the latest virus database, while still in the terminal window, type in the following command: sudo sysctl –w kernel.shmmax=128000000 Now we’re ready to open avast!. Click on Applications on the top-left corner of the screen, expand the Accessories folder, and click on the new avast! Antivirus item. You will first be greeted with a window that asks for your license key. Hopefully you’ve received it in your email by now; open the email that avast! sends you, copy the license key, and paste it in the Registration window. avast! Antivirus will open. You’ll notice that the virus database is outdated. Click on the Update database button and avast! will start downloading the latest virus database. To scan your Windows hard drive, you will need to “mount” it. While the virus database is downloading, click on Places on the top-left of your screen, and click on your Windows hard drive, if you can tell which one it is by its size. If you can’t tell which is the correct hard drive, then click on Computer and check out each hard drive until you find the right one. When you find it, make a note of the drive’s label, which appears in the menu bar of the file browser. Also note that your hard drive will now appear on your desktop. By now, your virus database should be updated. At the time this article was written, the most recent version was 100404-0. In the main avast! window, click on the radio button next to Selected folders and then click on the “+” button to the right of the list box. It will open up a dialog box to browse to a location. To find your Windows hard drive, click on the “>” next to the computer icon. In the expanded list, find the folder labelled “media” and click on the “>” next to it to expand it. In this list, you should be able to find the label that corresponds to your Windows hard drive. If you want to scan a certain folder, then you can go further into this hierarchy and select that folder. However, we will scan the entire hard drive, so we’ll just press OK. Click on Start scan and avast! will start scanning your hard drive. If a virus is found, you’ll be prompted to select an action. If you know that the file is a virus, then you can Delete it, but there is the possibility of false positives, so you can also choose Move to chest to quarantine it. When avast! is done scanning, it will summarize what it found on your hard drive. You can take different actions on those files at this time by right-clicking on them and selecting the appropriate action. When you’re done, click Close. Your Windows PC is now free of viruses, in the eyes of avast!. Reboot your computer and with any luck it will now boot up! Alternatives to avast! If avast! and a liberal amount of Googling doesn’t fix your problem, it’s possible that a different virus scanner will fix your obscure issue. Here are a list of other virus scanners available for Ubuntu that are either free or offer free trials. See their support forums for help on installing these virus scanners. Avira AntiVir Personal for Linux / Solaris Panda Antivirus for Linux Installation and usage guide from Ubuntu F-PROT Antivirus for Linux ClamAV installation and usage guide from Ubuntu NOD32 Antivirus for Linux Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010 Bitdefender Antivirus for Unices Conclusion Running avast! from a Ubuntu Live CD can clean the vast majority of viruses from your Windows PC. This is another reason to always have a Ubuntu Live CD ready just in case something happens to your Windows installation! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Secure Computing: Windows Live OneCareHow To Remove Antivirus Live and Other Rogue/Fake Antivirus MalwareUse the Windows Key for the "Start" Menu in Ubuntu LinuxScan Files for Viruses Before You Download With Dr.WebAsk the Readers: Share Your Tips for Defeating Viruses and Malware TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 The Ultimate Guide For YouTube Lovers Will it Blend? iPad Edition Penolo Lets You Share Sketches On Twitter Visit Woolyss.com for Old School Games, Music and Videos Add a Custom Title in IE using Spybot or Spyware Blaster When You Need to Hail a Taxi in NYC

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• Week in Geek: USDA Chooses Microsoft for Cloud Services Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to create geeky LED holiday lights with old bottles, dig deeper in Windows Defrag via the command prompt, use Google Chrome’s drag/drop feature to upload files easier, find great gift recommendations by looking through the How-To Geek holiday gift guide, and have fun adding Merry Christmas fonts to our computers. Photo by ntr23. Random Geek Links It has been a busy week, so we have extra news link goodness with information that is good for you to know. USDA making the move to Microsoft The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced that it has chosen Microsoft to host things like e-mail, instant messaging, and collaboration through the software giant’s Business Productivity Online Suite. Google says it was cut off from USDA project bid Google is claiming that it was not given a chance to bid on a cloud-computing project for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for which the contract was awarded to rival Microsoft. Apache is being forced into a Java Fork When Oracle rolled over Apache and Google’s objections to its Java plans in December, the scene was set for Apache to leave and, eventually, force a Java code fork. Tumblr explains daylong outage After experiencing an outage that started on Sunday afternoon and stretched through most of the day yesterday, Tumblr has explained what happened. Google demos Chrome OS, launches pilot program During a press briefing this week in San Francisco, Google launched the Chrome application store and demonstrated Chrome OS, its browser-centric netbook operating system. Don’t expect Spotify in U.S. this holiday season As of last week, Spotify had yet to sign a single licensing deal with a major label, after spending more than a year negotiating, multiple music sources told CNET. December 2010 Patch Tuesday will come with most bulletins ever According to the Microsoft Security Response Center, Microsoft will issue 17 Security Bulletins addressing 40 vulnerabilities on Tuesday, December 14. It will also host a webcast to address customer questions the following day. Hacker plants back door in Symbian firmware Indian hacker Atul Alex has had a look at the firmware for Symbian S60 smartphones and come up with a back door for it. PC quarantines raise tough complexities The concept of quarantining PCs to prevent widespread infection is “interesting, but difficult to implement, with far too many problems”, said security experts. Symantec: DDoS attacks hard to defend It has surfaced that the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on Visa and MasterCard Web sites on Wednesday were carried out by a toolkit known as low orbit ion cannon (LOIC). Web Sockets and the risks of unfinished standards Enthusiasm for a promising new standard called Web Sockets has quickly cooled in some quarters as a potential security problem led some browser makers to hastily postpone support. Internet Explorer 9 to get tracking protection Microsoft is making changes to Internet Explorer 9’s security features that will better enable users to keep sites from tracking their activity across browsing sessions. NASA sold PCs with sensitive data NASA failed to remove sensitive data from computers that it sold, according to an audit report released this week. Cybercrooks create fake Amazon receipts The bad guys have created yet another online scam, this one involving fake Amazon receipts. World of Warcraft character move fees waived Until December 22, Blizzard will allow free realm transfers from 25 highly populated servers to alleviate log-in queues or performance issues. (The free transfers are one-way and one-time only.) SpaceX Dragon reaches orbit atop a Falcon with a fiery tail The Space Exploration Technologies corporation has become the first nongovernmental entity to put a vehicle into low Earth orbit. Geek Video of the Week If birds have wings, then why are the Angry Birds using slingshots? Photo by Dorkly Bits. Wait… Birds have Wings, Why are the Angry Ones Using Slingshots? Sysadmin Geek Tips How To Setup Email Alerts on Linux Using Gmail or SMTP Linux machines may require administrative intervention in countless ways, but without manually logging into them how would you know about it? Here’s how to setup emails to get notified when your machines want some tender love and attention. Random TinyHacker Links Red Panda Webcam Support Firefox and the Knoxville Zoo’s Red Panda program. Christmas Icons (Icons we like) Superb set of holiday icons by lgp85 at deviantArt. Download the .zip and use as .png or convert to .ico at Convertico.com or with tiny app Imagicon. Super User Questions Enjoy reading the great answers to this week’s popular questions from Super User Useful USB boot disks? DVD/CD burning .zip: is it more reliable, faster, longer lasting to burn a zip of files rather than the files as a folder? What are other ways to backup my files if I do not have an external drive? Anti virus what is the difference between these all? How can I block all Facebook elements/content? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Have you had a busy week between work and preparing for the holidays? Get caught up on your HTG reading with our hottest articles of the week. 20 Windows Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? How to Use and Customize Google Chrome Web Apps One Year Ago on How-To Geek This week’s batch of retro geeky goodness is all about customizing Windows 7. ClassicShell Adds Classic Start Menu and Explorer Features to Windows 7 Get an Aero-Styled Classic Start Menu in Windows 7 Customize the Windows 7 Logon Screen Get the Classic Style Network Activity Indicator Back in Windows 7 How To Enable Check Boxes for Items In Windows 7 The Geek Note We would like you to join us in welcoming Jason Fitzpatrick to the writing staff here at How-To Geek. He started with us this past week, so take some time to read through his articles about the Wii, Kindle, & PlayStation 2 Peripherals and leave a friendly comment to say “Hi”! Got a great tip to share? Make sure to send it in to us at [email protected]. Photo by real00. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Our Favorite Tech: What We’re Thankful For at How-To Geek Settle into Orbit with the Voyage Theme for Chrome and Iron Awesome Safari Compass Icons Set Escape from the Exploding Planet Wallpaper Move Your Tumblr Blog to WordPress Pytask is an Easy to Use To-Do List Manager for Your Ubuntu System Snowy Christmas House Personas Theme for Firefox

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• Week in Geek: FBI Back Door in OpenBSD Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to migrate bookmarks from Delicious to Diigo, fix annoying arrows, play old-school DOS games, schedule smart computer shutdowns, use breaks in Microsoft Word to better format documents, check the condition of hard-disks using Linux disk utilities, & what the Linux fstab is and how it works. Photo by Jameson42. Random Geek Links Another week with extra news link goodness to help keep you up to date. Photo by justmakeit. Report of FBI back door roils OpenBSD community Allegations that the FBI surreptitiously placed a back door into the OpenBSD operating system have alarmed the computer security community, prompting calls for an audit of the source code and claims that the charges must be a hoax. Fortinet: Job outlook improving for cybercrooks In an ironic twist in the job market, more positions will open up for developers who can write customized malware packers, people who can break CAPTCHA codes, and distributors who can spread malicious code, according to Fortinet. Enisa: Malware for smartphones is a ’serious risk’ Businesses and consumers are at risk of data breaches through smartphone use, according to the European Network and Information Security Agency. The trick with the f: Google and Microsoft web sites distribute malware Last week, Google’s DoubleClick advertising platform and Microsoft’s rad.msn.com online ad network briefly distributed malware to other web sites in the form of advertising banners. New scam tactic: Fake disk defraggers It would appear that scammers are trying out new programs to see which might best confuse potential victims and evade detection by legitimate antivirus software. Microsoft closes IE and Stuxnet holes As previously announced, Microsoft has released 17 security updates to close 40 security holes. All four Windows holes so far disclosed in connection with Stuxnet have now been closed. Microsoft Offers H.264 Support to Firefox on Windows via Add-On The new HTML5 Extension for Windows Media Player Firefox Plug-in add-on from Microsoft offers users that are running Firefox on Windows 7 H.264 support for HTML5 video playback. Google proclaims Chrome business-ready Google has announced that Chrome is ready for corporate use. Microsoft Tells Exchange Customers to Think Twice Before Opting for Google Message Continuity This week, Microsoft is telling companies still running Exchange 2010’s precursors that they should carefully consider the implications of embracing Google Message Continuity. Who Google has in mind for its Chrome OS users Steven Vaughan-Nichols explains why he feels that Chrome OS will be ideal for either office-workers or people who need a computer, but do not know the first thing about how to use one safely. Oracle takes office suite to the cloud Oracle has introduced Cloud Office 1.0, a cloud-based version of its office suite, which is aimed at web and mobile users. Mozilla pays premiums for reports of vulnerabilities The Mozilla Foundation has followed Google’s example by expanding its rewards program for reports of vulnerabilities in its Web applications. Who bought those 882 Novell patents? Not just Microsoft The mysterious CPTN Holdings — the organization that bought the 882 Novell patents as part of the terms of the Attachmate acquisition of Novell – has been unmasked (Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Oracle). Appeals court: Feds need warrants for e-mail Police must obtain search warrants before perusing Internet users’ e-mail records, a federal appeals court ruled today in a landmark decision that struck down part of a 1986 law allowing warrantless access. Geek Video of the Week What happens when someone plays a wicked prank by shoveling crazy snow paths that lead to dead ends or turn back on themselves? Watch to find out! Photo by CollegeHumor. Janitor Snow Shoveling Prank Random TinyHacker Links The Oatmeal on Cat vs Internet What lengths will our poor neglected kitty hero have to go to in order to get some attention? Guide On Using JoliCloud With Windows JoliCloud is a nifty operating system that’s made for people who need a light-weight OS that’s mostly cloud based. Check this guide on using it with Windows. Use Cameyo to Easily Create Portable Programs Here’s a nifty tool to make portable apps out of programs in Windows. Check out the guide to do it. Better Family Tech Support A nice new site by Google to help members of family understand how computers work. Track Your Stolen Mobile Phone With F-Secure A useful anti-theft tool for your mobile phone. Super User Questions Another week with great answers to popular questions from Super User. What Chrome password manager fits my requirements? What’s the best way to be able to reimage windows computers? Could you suggest feature-rich disk-based personal backup program for linux (and I’ve seen a few)? What is IPv6 and why should I care? Is there any way to find out what programs are trying to connect to Internet on windows? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Here are our hottest articles full of geeky goodness from this past week at HTG. 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 Kills Viruses Dead. Download It Now. Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? Ask the Readers: Would You Be Willing to Give Windows Up and Use a Different O.S.? The Twelve Days of Geekmas One Year Ago on How-To Geek Enjoy reading through our latest batch of retro-geek goodness from one year ago. Macrium Reflect is a Free and Easy To Use Backup Utility How To Turn a Physical Computer Into A Virtual Machine with Disk2vhd How To Restore Windows 7 from a System Image How To Manage Hard Drive Space Used by Windows 7 Backup and Restore How To Manage Hibernate Mode in Windows 7 The Geek Note That is all we have for you this week, so see you back here again after the holidays! Got a great tip? Send it in to us at [email protected]. Photo by mitjamavsar. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor Deathwing the Destroyer – WoW Cataclysm Dragon Wallpaper Drag2Up Lets You Drag and Drop Files to the Web With Ease The Spam Police Parts 1 and 2 – Goodbye Spammers [Videos] Snow Angels Theme for Windows 7 Exploring the Jungle Ruins Wallpaper Protect Your Privacy When Browsing with Chrome and Iron Browser

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• Basics of Join Predicate Pushdown in Oracle

  - by Maria Colgan

  Happy New Year to all of our readers! We hope you all had a great holiday season. We start the new year by continuing our series on Optimizer transformations. This time it is the turn of Predicate Pushdown. I would like to thank Rafi Ahmed for the content of this blog.Normally, a view cannot be joined with an index-based nested loop (i.e., index access) join, since a view, in contrast with a base table, does not have an index defined on it. A view can only be joined with other tables using three methods: hash, nested loop, and sort-merge joins. Introduction The join predicate pushdown (JPPD) transformation allows a view to be joined with index-based nested-loop join method, which may provide a more optimal alternative. In the join predicate pushdown transformation, the view remains a separate query block, but it contains the join predicate, which is pushed down from its containing query block into the view. The view thus becomes correlated and must be evaluated for each row of the outer query block. These pushed-down join predicates, once inside the view, open up new index access paths on the base tables inside the view; this allows the view to be joined with index-based nested-loop join method, thereby enabling the optimizer to select an efficient execution plan. The join predicate pushdown transformation is not always optimal. The join predicate pushed-down view becomes correlated and it must be evaluated for each outer row; if there is a large number of outer rows, the cost of evaluating the view multiple times may make the nested-loop join suboptimal, and therefore joining the view with hash or sort-merge join method may be more efficient. The decision whether to push down join predicates into a view is determined by evaluating the costs of the outer query with and without the join predicate pushdown transformation under Oracle's cost-based query transformation framework. The join predicate pushdown transformation applies to both non-mergeable views and mergeable views and to pre-defined and inline views as well as to views generated internally by the optimizer during various transformations. The following shows the types of views on which join predicate pushdown is currently supported. UNION ALL/UNION view Outer-joined view Anti-joined view Semi-joined view DISTINCT view GROUP-BY view Examples Consider query A, which has an outer-joined view V. The view cannot be merged, as it contains two tables, and the join between these two tables must be performed before the join between the view and the outer table T4. A: SELECT T4.unique1, V.unique3 FROM T_4K T4,            (SELECT T10.unique3, T10.hundred, T10.ten             FROM T_5K T5, T_10K T10             WHERE T5.unique3 = T10.unique3) VWHERE T4.unique3 = V.hundred(+) AND       T4.ten = V.ten(+) AND       T4.thousand = 5; The following shows the non-default plan for query A generated by disabling join predicate pushdown. When query A undergoes join predicate pushdown, it yields query B. Note that query B is expressed in a non-standard SQL and shows an internal representation of the query. B: SELECT T4.unique1, V.unique3 FROM T_4K T4,           (SELECT T10.unique3, T10.hundred, T10.ten             FROM T_5K T5, T_10K T10             WHERE T5.unique3 = T10.unique3             AND T4.unique3 = V.hundred(+)             AND T4.ten = V.ten(+)) V WHERE T4.thousand = 5; The execution plan for query B is shown below. In the execution plan BX, note the keyword 'VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE' indicates that the view has undergone the join predicate pushdown transformation. The join predicates (shown here in red) have been moved into the view V; these join predicates open up index access paths thereby enabling index-based nested-loop join of the view. With join predicate pushdown, the cost of query A has come down from 62 to 32.  As mentioned earlier, the join predicate pushdown transformation is cost-based, and a join predicate pushed-down plan is selected only when it reduces the overall cost. Consider another example of a query C, which contains a view with the UNION ALL set operator.C: SELECT R.unique1, V.unique3 FROM T_5K R,            (SELECT T1.unique3, T2.unique1+T1.unique1             FROM T_5K T1, T_10K T2             WHERE T1.unique1 = T2.unique1             UNION ALL             SELECT T1.unique3, T2.unique2             FROM G_4K T1, T_10K T2             WHERE T1.unique1 = T2.unique1) V WHERE R.unique3 = V.unique3 and R.thousand < 1; The execution plan of query C is shown below. In the above, 'VIEW UNION ALL PUSHED PREDICATE' indicates that the UNION ALL view has undergone the join predicate pushdown transformation. As can be seen, here the join predicate has been replicated and pushed inside every branch of the UNION ALL view. The join predicates (shown here in red) open up index access paths thereby enabling index-based nested loop join of the view. Consider query D as an example of join predicate pushdown into a distinct view. We have the following cardinalities of the tables involved in query D: Sales (1,016,271), Customers (50,000), and Costs (787,766).  D: SELECT C.cust_last_name, C.cust_city FROM customers C,            (SELECT DISTINCT S.cust_id             FROM sales S, costs CT             WHERE S.prod_id = CT.prod_id and CT.unit_price > 70) V WHERE C.cust_state_province = 'CA' and C.cust_id = V.cust_id; The execution plan of query D is shown below. As shown in XD, when query D undergoes join predicate pushdown transformation, the expensive DISTINCT operator is removed and the join is converted into a semi-join; this is possible, since all the SELECT list items of the view participate in an equi-join with the outer tables. Under similar conditions, when a group-by view undergoes join predicate pushdown transformation, the expensive group-by operator can also be removed. With the join predicate pushdown transformation, the elapsed time of query D came down from 63 seconds to 5 seconds. Since distinct and group-by views are mergeable views, the cost-based transformation framework also compares the cost of merging the view with that of join predicate pushdown in selecting the most optimal execution plan. Summary We have tried to illustrate the basic ideas behind join predicate pushdown on different types of views by showing example queries that are quite simple. Oracle can handle far more complex queries and other types of views not shown here in the examples. Again many thanks to Rafi Ahmed for the content of this blog post.

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• TFS, G.I. Joe and Under-doing

  If I were to rank the most consistently irritating parts of my work day, using TFS would come in first by a wide margin. Even repeated network outages this week seem like a pleasant reprieve from this monolithic beast. This is not a reflexive anti-Microsoft feeling, that attitude just wouldnt work for a consultant who does .NET development. It is also not an utter dismissal of TFS as worthless; Ive seen people use it effectively on several projects. So why? Ill start with a laundry list of shortcomings. An out of the box UI for work items that is insultingly bad, a source control system that is confoundingly fragile when handling merges, folder renames and long file names, the arcane XML wizardry necessary to customize a template and a build system that adds an extra layer of oddness on top of msbuild. Im sure my legion of readers will soon point out to me how I can work around all these issues, how this is fixed in TFS 2010 or with this add-in, and how once you have everything set up, youre fine. And theyd be right, any one of these problems could be worked around. If not dirty laundry, what else? I thought about it for a while, and came to the conclusion that TFS is so irritating to me because it represents a vision of software development that I find unappealing. To expand upon this, lets start with some wisdom from those great PSAs at the end of the G.I. Joe cartoons of the 80s: Now you know, and knowing is half the battle. In software development, Id go further and say knowing is more than half the battle. Understanding the dimensions of the problem you are trying to solve, the needs of the users, the value that your software can provide are more than half the battle. Implementation of this understanding is not easy, but it is not even possible without this knowledge. Assuming we have a fixed amount of time and mental energy for any project, why does this spell trouble for TFS? If you think about what TFS is doing, its offering you a huge array of options to track the day to day implementation of your project. From tasks, to code churn, to test coverage. All valuable metrics, but only in exchange for valuable time to get it all working. In addition, when you have a shiny toy like TFS, the temptation is to feel obligated to use it. So the push from TFS is to encourage a project manager and team to focus on process and metrics around process. You can get great visibility, and graphs to show your project stakeholders, but none of that is important if you are not implementing the right product. Not just unimportant, these activities can be harmful as they drain your time and sap your creativity away from the rest of the project. To be more concrete, lets suppose your organization has invested the time to create a template for your projects and trained people in how to use it, so there is no longer a big investment of time for each project to get up and running. First, Id challenge if that template could be specific enough to be full featured and still applicable for any project. Second, the very existence of this template would be a indication to a project manager that the success of their project was somehow directly related to fitting management of that project into this format. Again, while the capabilities are wonderful, the mirage is there; just get everything into TFS and your project will run smoothly. Ill close the loop on this first topic by proposing a thought experiment. Think of the projects youve worked on. How many times have you been chagrined to discover youve implemented the wrong feature, misunderstood how a feature should work or just plain spent too much time on a screen that nobody uses? That sounds like a really worthwhile area to invest time in improving. How about going back to these projects and thinking about how many times you wished you had optimized the state change flow of your tasks or been embarrassed to not have a code churn report linked back to the latest changeset? With thanks to the Real American Heroes, Ill move on to a more current influence, that of the developers at 37signals, and their philosophy towards software development. This philosophy, fully detailed in the books Getting Real and Rework, is a vision of software that under does the competition. This is software that is deliberately limited in functionality in order to concentrate fully on making sure ever feature that is there is awesome and needed. Why is this relevant? Well, in one of those fun seeming paradoxes in life, constraints can be a spark for creativity. Think Twitter, the small screen of an iPhone, the limitations of HTML for applications, the low memory limits of older or embedded system. As long as there is some freedom within those constraints, amazing things emerge. For project management, some of the most respected people in the industry recommend using just index cards, pens and tape. They argue that with change the constant in software development, your process should be as limited (yet rigorous) as possible. Looking at TFS, this is not a system designed to under do anybody. It is a big jumble of components and options, with every feature you could think of. Predictably this means many basic functions are hard to use. For task management, many people just use an Excel spreadsheet linked up to TFS. Not a stirring endorsement of the tooling there. TFS as a whole would be far more appealing to me if there was less of it, but better. Id cut 50% of the features to make the other half really amaze and inspire me. And thats really the heart of the matter. TFS has great promise and I want to believe it can work better. But ultimately it focuses your attention on a lot of stuff that doesnt really matter and then clamps down your creativity in a mess of forms and dialogs obscuring what does.   --- Relevant Links --- All those great G.I. Joe PSAs are on YouTube, including lots of mashed up versions. A simple Google search will get you on the right track.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Long pause when accessing DFS namespace

  - by Matt

  We've recently migrated our Windows network to use DFS for shared files. DFS is working well, except for one annoying problem: users experience a significant delay when they try to access a DFS namespace that they have not accessed for some time. I have tried to troubleshoot the issue but have not had any success so far, and I was hoping someone here may have some pointers to help resolve the problem. Firstly, some background on our network: The network uses a Windows 2008 functional level Active Directory domain with two Windows 2008 DCs and two DNS servers (one on each of the DCs). The network is DNS only - no WINS. All computers are located at the same site and connected by Gigabit Ethernet. We have approximately 20 Domain-based DFS namespaces in Windows 2008 mode, and each DFS namespace has two Windows 2008 DFS namespace servers (the same two servers for all namespaces). All namespace servers are in FQDN mode and all folder targets are specified using their FQDN. All computers are up-to-date with Service Packs and patches. The actual folder targets (i.e. the SMB shares our DFS folders point to) are scattered across several file and application servers, all running Windows 2008 bar two application servers which run Windows 2003 R2, with no replication setup at all (e.g. all DFS folders currently only have one folder target). Some more detail on the problem: The namespace access delay is generally 1 - 10 seconds long and seems to occur when a particular computer has not accessed the requested namespace for approximately five minutes or more. For example, if the user has not accessed \\domain.name\namespace1\ for more than five minutes and attempts to access \\domain.name\namespace1\ via Windows Explorer, the Explorer window will freeze for 1 - 10 seconds before finally resuming and displaying the folders that exist in \\domain.name\namespace1. If they then close the Explorer window and attempt to access \\domain.name\namespace1\ again within five minutes the contents will be displayed almost instantly - if they wait longer than five minutes it will go through the 1 - 10 second pause again. Once "inside" the namespace everything is nice and snappy, it's just the initial connection to the namespace that is slow. The browsing delays seem to affect all variants of Windows that we use (Windows 2008 x64 SP2, Windows 2003 R2 x86 SP2, Windows XP Pro x86 SP3) - it is possibly a bit worse in Windows XP / 2003 than in Windows 2008, but I'm not sure if the difference isn't just psychological. Accessing the underlying folder targets directly exhibits no delay at all - i.e. if the SMB shares pointed to by DFS are accessed directly (bypassing DFS) then there is no pause. During trouble-shooting I noticed that the "Cache duration" for all of our DFS roots is set to 300 seconds - 5 minutes. Given that this is the same amount of time required to trigger the pause I assume that this caching is somehow related, although I am unsure exactly what is cached on the client and hence what needs to be looked up again after 5 minutes have elapsed. In trying to resolve the problem I have already tried / checked the following (without success): Run dcdiag on both Domain Controllers - no problems found Done some basic DNS server checks without finding any problems - I don't know how to check the DNS servers in detail, but I would add that the network is not exhibiting any other strange behavior that may point to a DNS problem Disabled Anti-virus on clients and servers Removing one of the namespace servers from a couple of namespaces - no difference So that's where I'm up to - and I'm out of ideas. Can anyone suggest what may be causing the delays and/or what I should be trying next?

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• The hidden cost of interrupting knowledge workers

  - by Piet

  The November issue of pragpub has an interesting article on interruptions. The article is written by Brian Tarbox, who also mentions the article on his blog. I like the subtitle: ‘Simple Strategies for Avoiding Dumping Your Mental Stack’. Brian talks about the effective cost of interrupting a ‘knowledge worker’, often with trivial questions or distractions. In the eyes of the interruptor, the interruption only costs the time the interrupted had to listen to the question and give an answer. However, depending on what the interrupted was doing at the time, getting fully immersed in their task again might take up to 15-20 minutes. Enough interruptions might even cause a knowledge worker to mentally call it a day. According to this article interruptions can consume about 28% of a knowledge worker’s time, translating in a $588 billion loss for US companies each year. Looking for a new developer to join your team? Ever thought about optimizing your team’s environment and the way they work instead? Making non knowledge workers aware You can’t. Well, I haven’t succeeded yet. And believe me: I’ve tried. When you’ve got a simple way to really increase your productivity (’give me 2 hours of uninterrupted time a day’) it wouldn’t be right not to tell your boss or team-leader about it. The problem is: only productive knowledge workers seem to understand this. People who don’t fall into this category just seem to think you’re joking, being arrogant or anti-social when you tell them the interruptions can really have an impact on your productivity. Also, knowledge workers often work in a very concentrated mental state which is described here as: It is the same mindfulness as ecstatic lovemaking, the merging of two into a fluidly harmonious one. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task. Yes, coding can be addictive and if you’re interrupting a programmer at the wrong moment, you’re effectively bringing down a junkie from his high in just a few seconds. This can result in seemingly arrogant, almost aggressive reactions. How to make people aware of the production-cost they’re inflicting: I’ve been often pondering that question myself. The article suggests that solutions based on that question never seem to work. To be honest: I’ve never even been able to find a half decent solution for this question. People who are not in this situations just don’t understand the issue, no matter how you try to explain it. Fun (?) thing I’ve noticed: Programmers or IT people in general who don’t get this are often the kind of people who just don’t get anything done. Interrupt handling (interruption management?) IRL Have non-urgent questions handled in a non-interruptive way It helps a bit to educate people into using non-interruptive ways to ask questions: “duh, I have no idea, but I’m a bit busy here now could you put it in an email so I don’t forget?”. Eventually, a considerable amount of people will skip interrupting you and just send an email right away. Some stubborn-headed people however will continue to just interrupt you, saying “you’re 10 meters from my desk, why can’t we just talk?”. Just remember to disable your email notifications, it can be hard to resist opening your email client when you know a new email just arrived. Use Do Not Disturb signals When working in a group of programmers, often the unofficial sign you can only be interrupted for something important is to put on headphones. And when the environment is quiet enough, often people aren’t even listening to music. Otherwise music can help to block the indirect distractions (someone else talking on the phone or tapping their feet). You might get a “they’re all just surfing and listening to music”-reaction from outsiders though. Peopleware talks about a team where the no-interruption sign was placing a shawl on the desk. If I remember correctly, I am unable to locate my copy of this really excellent must-read book. If you have all standardized on the same IM tool, maybe that tool has a ‘do not disturb’ setting. Also some phone-systems have a ‘DND’ (do not disturb) setting. Hide Brian offers a number of good suggestions, some obvious like: hide away somewhere they can’t find you. Not sure how long it’ll be till someone thinks you’re just taking a nap somewhere though. Also, this often isn’t possible or your boss might not understand this. And if you really get caught taking a nap, make sure to explain that your were powernapping. Counter-act interruptions Another suggestion he offers is when you’re being interrupted to just hold up your hand, blocking the interruption, and at least giving you time to finish your sentence or your block/line of code. The last suggestion works more as a way to make it obvious to the interruptor that they really are interrupting your work and to offload some of the cost on the interruptor. In practice, this can also helps you cool down a bit so you don’t start saying nasty things to the interruptor. Unfortunately I’ve sometimes been confronted with people who just ignore this signal and keep talking, as if they’re sure that whatever they’ve got to say is really worth listening to and without a doubt more important than anything you might be doing. This behaviour usually leaves me speechless (not good when someone just asked a question). I’ve noticed that these people are usually also the first to complain when being interrupted themselves. They’re generally not very liked as colleagues, so try not to imitate their behaviour. TDD as a way to minimize recovery time I don’t like Test Driven Development. Mainly for only one reason: It interrupts flow. At least, that’s what it does for me, but maybe I’m just not grown used to TDD yet. BUT a positive effect TDD has on me when I have to work in an interruptive environment and can’t really get into the ‘flow’ (also supposedly called ‘the zone’ by software developers, although I’ve never heard it 1st hand), TDD helps me to concentrate on the tasks at hand and helps me to get back at work after an interruption. I feel when using TDD, I can get by without the need for being totally ‘in’ the project and I can be reasonably productive without obtaining ‘flow’. Do you have a suggestion on how to make people aware of the concept of ‘flow’ and the cost of interruptions? (without looking like an arrogant ass or a weirdo)

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• Advanced TSQL Tuning: Why Internals Knowledge Matters

  - by Paul White

  There is much more to query tuning than reducing logical reads and adding covering nonclustered indexes.  Query tuning is not complete as soon as the query returns results quickly in the development or test environments.  In production, your query will compete for memory, CPU, locks, I/O and other resources on the server.  Today’s entry looks at some tuning considerations that are often overlooked, and shows how deep internals knowledge can help you write better TSQL. As always, we’ll need some example data.  In fact, we are going to use three tables today, each of which is structured like this: Each table has 50,000 rows made up of an INTEGER id column and a padding column containing 3,999 characters in every row.  The only difference between the three tables is in the type of the padding column: the first table uses CHAR(3999), the second uses VARCHAR(MAX), and the third uses the deprecated TEXT type.  A script to create a database with the three tables and load the sample data follows: USE master; GO IF DB_ID('SortTest') IS NOT NULL DROP DATABASE SortTest; GO CREATE DATABASE SortTest COLLATE LATIN1_GENERAL_BIN; GO ALTER DATABASE SortTest MODIFY FILE ( NAME = 'SortTest', SIZE = 3GB, MAXSIZE = 3GB ); GO ALTER DATABASE SortTest MODIFY FILE ( NAME = 'SortTest_log', SIZE = 256MB, MAXSIZE = 1GB, FILEGROWTH = 128MB ); GO ALTER DATABASE SortTest SET ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION OFF ; ALTER DATABASE SortTest SET AUTO_CLOSE OFF ; ALTER DATABASE SortTest SET AUTO_CREATE_STATISTICS ON ; ALTER DATABASE SortTest SET AUTO_SHRINK OFF ; ALTER DATABASE SortTest SET AUTO_UPDATE_STATISTICS ON ; ALTER DATABASE SortTest SET AUTO_UPDATE_STATISTICS_ASYNC ON ; ALTER DATABASE SortTest SET PARAMETERIZATION SIMPLE ; ALTER DATABASE SortTest SET READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT OFF ; ALTER DATABASE SortTest SET MULTI_USER ; ALTER DATABASE SortTest SET RECOVERY SIMPLE ; USE SortTest; GO CREATE TABLE dbo.TestCHAR ( id INTEGER IDENTITY (1,1) NOT NULL, padding CHAR(3999) NOT NULL,   CONSTRAINT [PK dbo.TestCHAR (id)] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (id), ) ; CREATE TABLE dbo.TestMAX ( id INTEGER IDENTITY (1,1) NOT NULL, padding VARCHAR(MAX) NOT NULL,   CONSTRAINT [PK dbo.TestMAX (id)] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (id), ) ; CREATE TABLE dbo.TestTEXT ( id INTEGER IDENTITY (1,1) NOT NULL, padding TEXT NOT NULL,   CONSTRAINT [PK dbo.TestTEXT (id)] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (id), ) ; -- ============= -- Load TestCHAR (about 3s) -- ============= INSERT INTO dbo.TestCHAR WITH (TABLOCKX) ( padding ) SELECT padding = REPLICATE(CHAR(65 + (Data.n % 26)), 3999) FROM ( SELECT TOP (50000) n = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT 0)) - 1 FROM master.sys.columns C1, master.sys.columns C2, master.sys.columns C3 ORDER BY n ASC ) AS Data ORDER BY Data.n ASC ; -- ============ -- Load TestMAX (about 3s) -- ============ INSERT INTO dbo.TestMAX WITH (TABLOCKX) ( padding ) SELECT CONVERT(VARCHAR(MAX), padding) FROM dbo.TestCHAR ORDER BY id ; -- ============= -- Load TestTEXT (about 5s) -- ============= INSERT INTO dbo.TestTEXT WITH (TABLOCKX) ( padding ) SELECT CONVERT(TEXT, padding) FROM dbo.TestCHAR ORDER BY id ; -- ========== -- Space used -- ========== -- EXECUTE sys.sp_spaceused @objname = 'dbo.TestCHAR'; EXECUTE sys.sp_spaceused @objname = 'dbo.TestMAX'; EXECUTE sys.sp_spaceused @objname = 'dbo.TestTEXT'; ; CHECKPOINT ; That takes around 15 seconds to run, and shows the space allocated to each table in its output: To illustrate the points I want to make today, the example task we are going to set ourselves is to return a random set of 150 rows from each table.  The basic shape of the test query is the same for each of the three test tables: SELECT TOP (150) T.id, T.padding FROM dbo.Test AS T ORDER BY NEWID() OPTION (MAXDOP 1) ; Test 1 – CHAR(3999) Running the template query shown above using the TestCHAR table as the target, we find that the query takes around 5 seconds to return its results.  This seems slow, considering that the table only has 50,000 rows.  Working on the assumption that generating a GUID for each row is a CPU-intensive operation, we might try enabling parallelism to see if that speeds up the response time.  Running the query again (but without the MAXDOP 1 hint) on a machine with eight logical processors, the query now takes 10 seconds to execute – twice as long as when run serially. Rather than attempting further guesses at the cause of the slowness, let’s go back to serial execution and add some monitoring.  The script below monitors STATISTICS IO output and the amount of tempdb used by the test query.  We will also run a Profiler trace to capture any warnings generated during query execution. DECLARE @read BIGINT, @write BIGINT ; SELECT @read = SUM(num_of_bytes_read), @write = SUM(num_of_bytes_written) FROM tempdb.sys.database_files AS DBF JOIN sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats(2, NULL) AS FS ON FS.file_id = DBF.file_id WHERE DBF.type_desc = 'ROWS' ; SET STATISTICS IO ON ; SELECT TOP (150) TC.id, TC.padding FROM dbo.TestCHAR AS TC ORDER BY NEWID() OPTION (MAXDOP 1) ; SET STATISTICS IO OFF ; SELECT tempdb_read_MB = (SUM(num_of_bytes_read) - @read) / 1024. / 1024., tempdb_write_MB = (SUM(num_of_bytes_written) - @write) / 1024. / 1024., internal_use_MB = ( SELECT internal_objects_alloc_page_count / 128.0 FROM sys.dm_db_task_space_usage WHERE session_id = @@SPID ) FROM tempdb.sys.database_files AS DBF JOIN sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats(2, NULL) AS FS ON FS.file_id = DBF.file_id WHERE DBF.type_desc = 'ROWS' ; Let’s take a closer look at the statistics and query plan generated from this: Following the flow of the data from right to left, we see the expected 50,000 rows emerging from the Clustered Index Scan, with a total estimated size of around 191MB.  The Compute Scalar adds a column containing a random GUID (generated from the NEWID() function call) for each row.  With this extra column in place, the size of the data arriving at the Sort operator is estimated to be 192MB. Sort is a blocking operator – it has to examine all of the rows on its input before it can produce its first row of output (the last row received might sort first).  This characteristic means that Sort requires a memory grant – memory allocated for the query’s use by SQL Server just before execution starts.  In this case, the Sort is the only memory-consuming operator in the plan, so it has access to the full 243MB (248,696KB) of memory reserved by SQL Server for this query execution. Notice that the memory grant is significantly larger than the expected size of the data to be sorted.  SQL Server uses a number of techniques to speed up sorting, some of which sacrifice size for comparison speed.  Sorts typically require a very large number of comparisons, so this is usually a very effective optimization.  One of the drawbacks is that it is not possible to exactly predict the sort space needed, as it depends on the data itself.  SQL Server takes an educated guess based on data types, sizes, and the number of rows expected, but the algorithm is not perfect. In spite of the large memory grant, the Profiler trace shows a Sort Warning event (indicating that the sort ran out of memory), and the tempdb usage monitor shows that 195MB of tempdb space was used – all of that for system use.  The 195MB represents physical write activity on tempdb, because SQL Server strictly enforces memory grants – a query cannot ‘cheat’ and effectively gain extra memory by spilling to tempdb pages that reside in memory.  Anyway, the key point here is that it takes a while to write 195MB to disk, and this is the main reason that the query takes 5 seconds overall. If you are wondering why using parallelism made the problem worse, consider that eight threads of execution result in eight concurrent partial sorts, each receiving one eighth of the memory grant.  The eight sorts all spilled to tempdb, resulting in inefficiencies as the spilled sorts competed for disk resources.  More importantly, there are specific problems at the point where the eight partial results are combined, but I’ll cover that in a future post. CHAR(3999) Performance Summary: 5 seconds elapsed time 243MB memory grant 195MB tempdb usage 192MB estimated sort set 25,043 logical reads Sort Warning Test 2 – VARCHAR(MAX) We’ll now run exactly the same test (with the additional monitoring) on the table using a VARCHAR(MAX) padding column: DECLARE @read BIGINT, @write BIGINT ; SELECT @read = SUM(num_of_bytes_read), @write = SUM(num_of_bytes_written) FROM tempdb.sys.database_files AS DBF JOIN sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats(2, NULL) AS FS ON FS.file_id = DBF.file_id WHERE DBF.type_desc = 'ROWS' ; SET STATISTICS IO ON ; SELECT TOP (150) TM.id, TM.padding FROM dbo.TestMAX AS TM ORDER BY NEWID() OPTION (MAXDOP 1) ; SET STATISTICS IO OFF ; SELECT tempdb_read_MB = (SUM(num_of_bytes_read) - @read) / 1024. / 1024., tempdb_write_MB = (SUM(num_of_bytes_written) - @write) / 1024. / 1024., internal_use_MB = ( SELECT internal_objects_alloc_page_count / 128.0 FROM sys.dm_db_task_space_usage WHERE session_id = @@SPID ) FROM tempdb.sys.database_files AS DBF JOIN sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats(2, NULL) AS FS ON FS.file_id = DBF.file_id WHERE DBF.type_desc = 'ROWS' ; This time the query takes around 8 seconds to complete (3 seconds longer than Test 1).  Notice that the estimated row and data sizes are very slightly larger, and the overall memory grant has also increased very slightly to 245MB.  The most marked difference is in the amount of tempdb space used – this query wrote almost 391MB of sort run data to the physical tempdb file.  Don’t draw any general conclusions about VARCHAR(MAX) versus CHAR from this – I chose the length of the data specifically to expose this edge case.  In most cases, VARCHAR(MAX) performs very similarly to CHAR – I just wanted to make test 2 a bit more exciting. MAX Performance Summary: 8 seconds elapsed time 245MB memory grant 391MB tempdb usage 193MB estimated sort set 25,043 logical reads Sort warning Test 3 – TEXT The same test again, but using the deprecated TEXT data type for the padding column: DECLARE @read BIGINT, @write BIGINT ; SELECT @read = SUM(num_of_bytes_read), @write = SUM(num_of_bytes_written) FROM tempdb.sys.database_files AS DBF JOIN sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats(2, NULL) AS FS ON FS.file_id = DBF.file_id WHERE DBF.type_desc = 'ROWS' ; SET STATISTICS IO ON ; SELECT TOP (150) TT.id, TT.padding FROM dbo.TestTEXT AS TT ORDER BY NEWID() OPTION (MAXDOP 1, RECOMPILE) ; SET STATISTICS IO OFF ; SELECT tempdb_read_MB = (SUM(num_of_bytes_read) - @read) / 1024. / 1024., tempdb_write_MB = (SUM(num_of_bytes_written) - @write) / 1024. / 1024., internal_use_MB = ( SELECT internal_objects_alloc_page_count / 128.0 FROM sys.dm_db_task_space_usage WHERE session_id = @@SPID ) FROM tempdb.sys.database_files AS DBF JOIN sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats(2, NULL) AS FS ON FS.file_id = DBF.file_id WHERE DBF.type_desc = 'ROWS' ; This time the query runs in 500ms.  If you look at the metrics we have been checking so far, it’s not hard to understand why: TEXT Performance Summary: 0.5 seconds elapsed time 9MB memory grant 5MB tempdb usage 5MB estimated sort set 207 logical reads 596 LOB logical reads Sort warning SQL Server’s memory grant algorithm still underestimates the memory needed to perform the sorting operation, but the size of the data to sort is so much smaller (5MB versus 193MB previously) that the spilled sort doesn’t matter very much.  Why is the data size so much smaller?  The query still produces the correct results – including the large amount of data held in the padding column – so what magic is being performed here? TEXT versus MAX Storage The answer lies in how columns of the TEXT data type are stored.  By default, TEXT data is stored off-row in separate LOB pages – which explains why this is the first query we have seen that records LOB logical reads in its STATISTICS IO output.  You may recall from my last post that LOB data leaves an in-row pointer to the separate storage structure holding the LOB data. SQL Server can see that the full LOB value is not required by the query plan until results are returned, so instead of passing the full LOB value down the plan from the Clustered Index Scan, it passes the small in-row structure instead.  SQL Server estimates that each row coming from the scan will be 79 bytes long – 11 bytes for row overhead, 4 bytes for the integer id column, and 64 bytes for the LOB pointer (in fact the pointer is rather smaller – usually 16 bytes – but the details of that don’t really matter right now). OK, so this query is much more efficient because it is sorting a very much smaller data set – SQL Server delays retrieving the LOB data itself until after the Sort starts producing its 150 rows.  The question that normally arises at this point is: Why doesn’t SQL Server use the same trick when the padding column is defined as VARCHAR(MAX)? The answer is connected with the fact that if the actual size of the VARCHAR(MAX) data is 8000 bytes or less, it is usually stored in-row in exactly the same way as for a VARCHAR(8000) column – MAX data only moves off-row into LOB storage when it exceeds 8000 bytes.  The default behaviour of the TEXT type is to be stored off-row by default, unless the ‘text in row’ table option is set suitably and there is room on the page.  There is an analogous (but opposite) setting to control the storage of MAX data – the ‘large value types out of row’ table option.  By enabling this option for a table, MAX data will be stored off-row (in a LOB structure) instead of in-row.  SQL Server Books Online has good coverage of both options in the topic In Row Data. The MAXOOR Table The essential difference, then, is that MAX defaults to in-row storage, and TEXT defaults to off-row (LOB) storage.  You might be thinking that we could get the same benefits seen for the TEXT data type by storing the VARCHAR(MAX) values off row – so let’s look at that option now.  This script creates a fourth table, with the VARCHAR(MAX) data stored off-row in LOB pages: CREATE TABLE dbo.TestMAXOOR ( id INTEGER IDENTITY (1,1) NOT NULL, padding VARCHAR(MAX) NOT NULL,   CONSTRAINT [PK dbo.TestMAXOOR (id)] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (id), ) ; EXECUTE sys.sp_tableoption @TableNamePattern = N'dbo.TestMAXOOR', @OptionName = 'large value types out of row', @OptionValue = 'true' ; SELECT large_value_types_out_of_row FROM sys.tables WHERE [schema_id] = SCHEMA_ID(N'dbo') AND name = N'TestMAXOOR' ; INSERT INTO dbo.TestMAXOOR WITH (TABLOCKX) ( padding ) SELECT SPACE(0) FROM dbo.TestCHAR ORDER BY id ; UPDATE TM WITH (TABLOCK) SET padding.WRITE (TC.padding, NULL, NULL) FROM dbo.TestMAXOOR AS TM JOIN dbo.TestCHAR AS TC ON TC.id = TM.id ; EXECUTE sys.sp_spaceused @objname = 'dbo.TestMAXOOR' ; CHECKPOINT ; Test 4 – MAXOOR We can now re-run our test on the MAXOOR (MAX out of row) table: DECLARE @read BIGINT, @write BIGINT ; SELECT @read = SUM(num_of_bytes_read), @write = SUM(num_of_bytes_written) FROM tempdb.sys.database_files AS DBF JOIN sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats(2, NULL) AS FS ON FS.file_id = DBF.file_id WHERE DBF.type_desc = 'ROWS' ; SET STATISTICS IO ON ; SELECT TOP (150) MO.id, MO.padding FROM dbo.TestMAXOOR AS MO ORDER BY NEWID() OPTION (MAXDOP 1, RECOMPILE) ; SET STATISTICS IO OFF ; SELECT tempdb_read_MB = (SUM(num_of_bytes_read) - @read) / 1024. / 1024., tempdb_write_MB = (SUM(num_of_bytes_written) - @write) / 1024. / 1024., internal_use_MB = ( SELECT internal_objects_alloc_page_count / 128.0 FROM sys.dm_db_task_space_usage WHERE session_id = @@SPID ) FROM tempdb.sys.database_files AS DBF JOIN sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats(2, NULL) AS FS ON FS.file_id = DBF.file_id WHERE DBF.type_desc = 'ROWS' ; TEXT Performance Summary: 0.3 seconds elapsed time 245MB memory grant 0MB tempdb usage 193MB estimated sort set 207 logical reads 446 LOB logical reads No sort warning The query runs very quickly – slightly faster than Test 3, and without spilling the sort to tempdb (there is no sort warning in the trace, and the monitoring query shows zero tempdb usage by this query).  SQL Server is passing the in-row pointer structure down the plan and only looking up the LOB value on the output side of the sort. The Hidden Problem There is still a huge problem with this query though – it requires a 245MB memory grant.  No wonder the sort doesn’t spill to tempdb now – 245MB is about 20 times more memory than this query actually requires to sort 50,000 records containing LOB data pointers.  Notice that the estimated row and data sizes in the plan are the same as in test 2 (where the MAX data was stored in-row). The optimizer assumes that MAX data is stored in-row, regardless of the sp_tableoption setting ‘large value types out of row’.  Why?  Because this option is dynamic – changing it does not immediately force all MAX data in the table in-row or off-row, only when data is added or actually changed.  SQL Server does not keep statistics to show how much MAX or TEXT data is currently in-row, and how much is stored in LOB pages.  This is an annoying limitation, and one which I hope will be addressed in a future version of the product. So why should we worry about this?  Excessive memory grants reduce concurrency and may result in queries waiting on the RESOURCE_SEMAPHORE wait type while they wait for memory they do not need.  245MB is an awful lot of memory, especially on 32-bit versions where memory grants cannot use AWE-mapped memory.  Even on a 64-bit server with plenty of memory, do you really want a single query to consume 0.25GB of memory unnecessarily?  That’s 32,000 8KB pages that might be put to much better use. The Solution The answer is not to use the TEXT data type for the padding column.  That solution happens to have better performance characteristics for this specific query, but it still results in a spilled sort, and it is hard to recommend the use of a data type which is scheduled for removal.  I hope it is clear to you that the fundamental problem here is that SQL Server sorts the whole set arriving at a Sort operator.  Clearly, it is not efficient to sort the whole table in memory just to return 150 rows in a random order. The TEXT example was more efficient because it dramatically reduced the size of the set that needed to be sorted.  We can do the same thing by selecting 150 unique keys from the table at random (sorting by NEWID() for example) and only then retrieving the large padding column values for just the 150 rows we need.  The following script implements that idea for all four tables: SET STATISTICS IO ON ; WITH TestTable AS ( SELECT * FROM dbo.TestCHAR ), TopKeys AS ( SELECT TOP (150) id FROM TestTable ORDER BY NEWID() ) SELECT T1.id, T1.padding FROM TestTable AS T1 WHERE T1.id = ANY (SELECT id FROM TopKeys) OPTION (MAXDOP 1) ; WITH TestTable AS ( SELECT * FROM dbo.TestMAX ), TopKeys AS ( SELECT TOP (150) id FROM TestTable ORDER BY NEWID() ) SELECT T1.id, T1.padding FROM TestTable AS T1 WHERE T1.id IN (SELECT id FROM TopKeys) OPTION (MAXDOP 1) ; WITH TestTable AS ( SELECT * FROM dbo.TestTEXT ), TopKeys AS ( SELECT TOP (150) id FROM TestTable ORDER BY NEWID() ) SELECT T1.id, T1.padding FROM TestTable AS T1 WHERE T1.id IN (SELECT id FROM TopKeys) OPTION (MAXDOP 1) ; WITH TestTable AS ( SELECT * FROM dbo.TestMAXOOR ), TopKeys AS ( SELECT TOP (150) id FROM TestTable ORDER BY NEWID() ) SELECT T1.id, T1.padding FROM TestTable AS T1 WHERE T1.id IN (SELECT id FROM TopKeys) OPTION (MAXDOP 1) ; SET STATISTICS IO OFF ; All four queries now return results in much less than a second, with memory grants between 6 and 12MB, and without spilling to tempdb.  The small remaining inefficiency is in reading the id column values from the clustered primary key index.  As a clustered index, it contains all the in-row data at its leaf.  The CHAR and VARCHAR(MAX) tables store the padding column in-row, so id values are separated by a 3999-character column, plus row overhead.  The TEXT and MAXOOR tables store the padding values off-row, so id values in the clustered index leaf are separated by the much-smaller off-row pointer structure.  This difference is reflected in the number of logical page reads performed by the four queries: Table 'TestCHAR' logical reads 25511 lob logical reads 000 Table 'TestMAX'. logical reads 25511 lob logical reads 000 Table 'TestTEXT' logical reads 00412 lob logical reads 597 Table 'TestMAXOOR' logical reads 00413 lob logical reads 446 We can increase the density of the id values by creating a separate nonclustered index on the id column only.  This is the same key as the clustered index, of course, but the nonclustered index will not include the rest of the in-row column data. CREATE UNIQUE NONCLUSTERED INDEX uq1 ON dbo.TestCHAR (id); CREATE UNIQUE NONCLUSTERED INDEX uq1 ON dbo.TestMAX (id); CREATE UNIQUE NONCLUSTERED INDEX uq1 ON dbo.TestTEXT (id); CREATE UNIQUE NONCLUSTERED INDEX uq1 ON dbo.TestMAXOOR (id); The four queries can now use the very dense nonclustered index to quickly scan the id values, sort them by NEWID(), select the 150 ids we want, and then look up the padding data.  The logical reads with the new indexes in place are: Table 'TestCHAR' logical reads 835 lob logical reads 0 Table 'TestMAX' logical reads 835 lob logical reads 0 Table 'TestTEXT' logical reads 686 lob logical reads 597 Table 'TestMAXOOR' logical reads 686 lob logical reads 448 With the new index, all four queries use the same query plan (click to enlarge): Performance Summary: 0.3 seconds elapsed time 6MB memory grant 0MB tempdb usage 1MB sort set 835 logical reads (CHAR, MAX) 686 logical reads (TEXT, MAXOOR) 597 LOB logical reads (TEXT) 448 LOB logical reads (MAXOOR) No sort warning I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to work out why trying to eliminate the Key Lookup by adding the padding column to the new nonclustered indexes would be a daft idea Conclusion This post is not about tuning queries that access columns containing big strings.  It isn’t about the internal differences between TEXT and MAX data types either.  It isn’t even about the cool use of UPDATE .WRITE used in the MAXOOR table load.  No, this post is about something else: Many developers might not have tuned our starting example query at all – 5 seconds isn’t that bad, and the original query plan looks reasonable at first glance.  Perhaps the NEWID() function would have been blamed for ‘just being slow’ – who knows.  5 seconds isn’t awful – unless your users expect sub-second responses – but using 250MB of memory and writing 200MB to tempdb certainly is!  If ten sessions ran that query at the same time in production that’s 2.5GB of memory usage and 2GB hitting tempdb.  Of course, not all queries can be rewritten to avoid large memory grants and sort spills using the key-lookup technique in this post, but that’s not the point either. The point of this post is that a basic understanding of execution plans is not enough.  Tuning for logical reads and adding covering indexes is not enough.  If you want to produce high-quality, scalable TSQL that won’t get you paged as soon as it hits production, you need a deep understanding of execution plans, and as much accurate, deep knowledge about SQL Server as you can lay your hands on.  The advanced database developer has a wide range of tools to use in writing queries that perform well in a range of circumstances. By the way, the examples in this post were written for SQL Server 2008.  They will run on 2005 and demonstrate the same principles, but you won’t get the same figures I did because 2005 had a rather nasty bug in the Top N Sort operator.  Fair warning: if you do decide to run the scripts on a 2005 instance (particularly the parallel query) do it before you head out for lunch… This post is dedicated to the people of Christchurch, New Zealand. © 2011 Paul White email: @[email protected] twitter: @SQL_Kiwi

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• Kernel Mode Rootkit

  - by Pajarito

  On the other 3 computers in my family, I believe that we have a kernel-mode rootkit for windows. It appears that the same rootkit is on all of them. We think. We changed all the important passwords from my computer, running linux right now. On all of the infected computers is Symantic Endpoint Protection, because it's free from the university where my mom and dad work. In my opinion symantec is a piece of crap, seeing as it didn't even manager to delete the tracking cookies it found when I tried it on my own computer. The Computers and their set-ups: Computer A: Vista Business; symantec antivirus. runs it as admin, no password. IE8. no other security software other than what comes with windows. IE8 security settings the default Computer B: XP Home Premium; symantec antivirus. runs as normal user, no password, admin account with weak password, spybot, uses IE8 with default settings, sometimes Firefox Computer C: XP Home Premium; symantec antivirus. runs as normal user, no password, admin account with weak password, uses IE8 with default settings, no other security programs except what came with windows This is what's happening. Cut and pasted from my dad's forum post. -- When I scanned my laptop (Dell XPS M1330 with Windows Vista Small Business), Symantec Endpoint Protection hangs for a while, perhaps 10 seconds or so, on some of the following files 9129837.exe, hide_evr2.sys, VirusRemoval.vbs, NewVirusRemoval.vbs, dll.dll, alsmt.ext, and _epnt.sys. It does this if a run a scan that I set up to run on a new thumbnail drive and it does this even if the thumbnail is not plugged in. It doesn't seem to do this if I scan only the C: drive. I've check for problems with symantec endpoint protection and also with Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. They found nothing and I can't find anything by searching for hidden files. Next I tried microsoft's rootkitrevealer. It (rootkitrevealer) finds 279660 (or so) discrepancies and the interface is so glitchy after that I can't really figure out what is going on. The screen is squirrely. The rootkitrevealer pulls up many files in the folder \programdata\applicationdata and there are numberous appended \applicationdata on the end of that as well. -- As you can see, what we did was install MSE and MBAM and scan with both of them. Nothing but a tracking cookie. Then I took over and ran rootkitrevealer.exe from MicroSoft from a flash drive. It found a bunch of discrepancies, but only about 20 or so where security related, the rest being files that you just couldn't see from Windows Explorer. I couldn't see whether of not the files list above, the ones that the scan was hanging on, where in the list. The other thing is, I have no idea what to do about the things the scan comes up with. Then we checked the other computers and they do the same thing when you scan with Symantec. The people at the university seen to think that dad might not have a virus, but 2 of the computers slowed down noticably AND IE8 started acting all funny. None of my family is very computer oriented, and 2 of the possible causes for the rootkit are: -My dad bought a new flash drive, which shipped with a data security executable on it -My dad has to download lots of articles for his work Those are the only things that stand out, but it could have been anything. We are currently backing up our data, and I'll post again after trying IceSword 1.22. I just looked at my dad's forum topic, and someone recommended GMER. I'll try that too.

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• Time Tracking on an Agile Team

  - by Stephen.Walther

  What’s the best way to handle time-tracking on an Agile team? Your gut reaction to this question might be to resist any type of time-tracking at all. After all, one of the principles of the Agile Manifesto is “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”.  Forcing the developers on your team to track the amount of time that they devote to completing stories or tasks might seem like useless bureaucratic red tape: an impediment to getting real work done. I completely understand this reaction. I’ve been required to use time-tracking software in the past to account for each hour of my workday. It made me feel like Fred Flintstone punching in at the quarry mine and not like a professional. Why You Really Do Need Time-Tracking There are, however, legitimate reasons to track time spent on stories even when you are a member of an Agile team.  First, if you are working with an outside client, you might need to track the number of hours spent on different stories for the purposes of billing. There might be no way to avoid time-tracking if you want to get paid. Second, the Product Owner needs to know when the work on a story has gone over the original time estimated for the story. The Product Owner is concerned with Return On Investment. If the team has gone massively overtime on a story, then the Product Owner has a legitimate reason to halt work on the story and reconsider the story’s business value. Finally, you might want to track how much time your team spends on different types of stories or tasks. For example, if your team is spending 75% of their time doing testing then you might need to bring in more testers. Or, if 10% of your team’s time is expended performing a software build at the end of each iteration then it is time to consider better ways of automating the build process. Time-Tracking in SonicAgile For these reasons, we added time-tracking as a feature to SonicAgile which is our free Agile Project Management tool. We were heavily influenced by Jeff Sutherland (one of the founders of Scrum) in the way that we implemented time-tracking (see his article http://scrum.jeffsutherland.com/2007/03/time-tracking-is-anti-scrum-what-do-you.html). In SonicAgile, time-tracking is disabled by default. If you want to use this feature then the project owner must enable time-tracking in Project Settings. You can choose to estimate using either days or hours. If you are estimating at the level of stories then it makes more sense to choose days. Otherwise, if you are estimating at the level of tasks then it makes more sense to use hours. After you enable time-tracking then you can assign three estimates to a story: Original Estimate – This is the estimate that you enter when you first create a story. You don’t change this estimate. Time Spent – This is the amount of time that you have already devoted to the story. You update the time spent on each story during your daily standup meeting. Time Left – This is the amount of time remaining to complete the story. Again, you update the time left during your daily standup meeting. So when you first create a story, you enter an original estimate that becomes the time left. During each daily standup meeting, you update the time spent and time left for each story on the Kanban. If you had perfect predicative power, then the original estimate would always be the same as the sum of the time spent and the time left. For example, if you predict that a story will take 5 days to complete then on day 3, the story should have 3 days spent and 2 days left. Unfortunately, never in the history of mankind has anyone accurately predicted the exact amount of time that it takes to complete a story. For this reason, SonicAgile does not update the time spent and time left automatically. Each day, during the daily standup, your team should update the time spent and time left for each story. For example, the following table shows the history of the time estimates for a story that was originally estimated to take 3 days but, eventually, takes 5 days to complete: Day Original Estimate Time Spent Time Left Day 1 3 days 0 days 3 days Day 2 3 days 1 day 2 days Day 3 3 days 2 days 2 days Day 4 3 days 3 days 2 days Day 5 3 days 4 days 0 days In the table above, everything goes as predicted until you reach day 3. On day 3, the team realizes that the work will require an additional two days. The situation does not improve on day 4. All of the sudden, on day 5, all of the remaining work gets done. Real work often follows this pattern. There are long periods when nothing gets done punctuated by occasional and unpredictable bursts of progress. We designed SonicAgile to make it as easy as possible to track the time spent and time left on a story. Detecting when a Story Goes Over the Original Estimate Sometimes, stories take much longer than originally estimated. There’s a surprise. For example, you discover that a new software component is incompatible with existing software components. Or, you discover that you have to go through a month-long certification process to finish a story. In those cases, the Product Owner has a legitimate reason to halt work on a story and re-evaluate the business value of the story. For example, the Product Owner discovers that a story will require weeks to implement instead of days, then the story might not be worth the expense. SonicAgile displays a warning on both the Backlog and the Kanban when the time spent on a story goes over the original estimate. An icon of a clock is displayed. Time-Tracking and Tasks Another optional feature of SonicAgile is tasks. If you enable Tasks in Project Settings then you can break stories into one or more tasks. You can perform time-tracking at the level of a story or at the level of a task. If you don’t break a story into tasks then you can enter the time left and time spent for the story. As soon as you break a story into tasks, then you can no longer enter the time left and time spent at the level of the story. Instead, the time left and time spent for a story is rolled up from its tasks. On the Kanban, you can see how the time left and time spent for each task gets rolled up into each story. The progress bar for the story is rolled up from the progress bars for each task. The original estimate is never rolled up – even when you break a story into tasks. A story’s original estimate is entered separately from the original estimates of each of the story’s tasks. Summary Not every Agile team can avoid time-tracking. You might be forced to track time to get paid, to detect when you are spending too much time on a particular story, or to track the amount of time that you are devoting to different types of tasks. We designed time-tracking in SonicAgile to require the least amount of work to track the information that you need. Time-tracking is an optional feature. If you enable time-tracking then you can track the original estimate, time left, and time spent for each story and task. You can use time-tracking with SonicAgile for free. Register at http://SonicAgile.com.

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• How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop

  - by Eric Z Goodnight

  You might think that it’s a complicated process to remove objects from photographs. But really Photoshop makes it quite simple, even when removing all traces of a person from digital photographs. Read on to see just how easy it is. Photoshop was originally created to be an image editing program, and it excels at it. With hardly any Photoshop experience, any beginner can begin removing objects or people from their photos. Have some friends that photobombed an otherwise great pic? Tell them to say their farewells, because here’s how to get rid of them with Photoshop! Tools for Removing Objects Removing an object is not really “magical” work. Your goal is basically to cover up the information you don’t want in an image with information you do want. In this sample image, we want to remove the cigar smoking man, and leave the geisha. Here’s a couple of the tools that can be useful to work with when attempting this kind of task. Clone Stamp and Pattern Stamp Tool: Samples parts of your image from your background, and allows you to paint into your image with your mouse or stylus. Eraser and Brush Tools: Paint flat colors and shapes, and erase cloned layers of image information. Basic, down and dirty photo editing tools. Pen, Quick Selection, Lasso, and Crop tools: Select, isolate, and remove parts of your image with these selection tools. All useful in their own way. Some, like the pen tool, are nightmarishly tough on beginners. Remove a Person with the Clone Stamp Tool (Video) The video above uses the Clone Stamp tool to sample and paint with the background texture. It’s a simple tool to use, although it can be confusing, possibly counter-intuitive. Here’s some pointers, in addition to the video above. Select shortcut key to choose the Clone tool stamp from the Tools Panel. Always create a copy of your background layer before doing heavy edits by right clicking on the background in your Layers Panel and selecting “Duplicate.” Hold with the Clone Tool selected, and click anywhere in your image to sample that area. When you’re sampling an area, your cursor is “Aligned” with your sample area. When you paint, your sample area moves. You can turn the “Aligned” setting off by clicking the in the Options Panel at the top of your screen if you want. Change your brush size and hardness as shown in the video by right-clicking in your image. Use your lasso to copy and paste pieces of your image in order to cover up any parts that seem appropriate. Photoshop Magic with the “Content-Aware Fill” One of the hallmark features of CS5 is the “Content-Aware Fill.” Content aware fill can be an excellent shortcut to removing objects and even people in Photoshop, but it is somewhat limited, and can get confused. Here’s a basic rundown on how it works. Select an object using your Lasso tool, shortcut key . The Lasso works fine as this selection can be rough. Navigate to Edit > Fill, and select “Content-Aware,” as illustrated above, from the pull-down menu. It’s surprisingly simple. After some processing, Photoshop has done the work of removing the object for you. It takes a few moments, and it is not perfect, so be prepared to touch it up with some Copy-Paste, or some Clone stamp action. Content Aware Fill Has Its Limits Keep in mind that the Content Aware Fill is meant to be used with other techniques in mind. It doesn’t always perform perfectly, but can give you a great starting point. Take this image for instance. It is actually plausible to hide this figure and make this image look like he was never there at all. With a selection made with the Lasso tool, navigate to Edit > Fill and select “Content Aware” again. The result is surprisingly good, but as you can see, worthy of some touch up. With a result like this one, you’ll have to get your hands dirty with copy-paste to create believable lines in the background. With many photographs, Content Aware Fill will simply get confused and give you results you won’t be happy with. Additional Touch Up for Bad Background Textures with the Pattern Stamp Tool For the perfectionist, cleaning up the lumpy looking textures that the Clone Stamp can leave is fairly simple using the Pattern Stamp Tool. Sample an piece of your image with your Marquee Tool, shortcut key . Navigate to Edit > Define Pattern to create a new Pattern from your selection. Click OK to continue. Click and hold down on the Clone Stamp tool in your Tools Panel until you can select the Pattern Stamp Tool. Pick your new pattern from the Options at the top of your screen, in the Options Panel. Then simply right click in your image in order to pick as soft a brush as possible to paint with. Paint into your image until your background is as smooth as you want it to be, making your painted out object more and more invisible. If you get lines from your repeated texture, experiment turning the on and off and paint over them. In addition to this, simple use of the Crop Tool, shortcut , can recompose an image, making it look as if it never had another object in it at all. Combine these techniques to find a method that works best for your images. Have questions or comments concerning Graphics, Photos, Filetypes, or Photoshop? Send your questions to [email protected], and they may be featured in a future How-To Geek Graphics article. Image Credits: Geisha Kyoto Gion by Todd Laracuenta via Wikipedia, used under Creative Commons. Moai Rano raraku by Aurbina, in Public Domain. Chris Young visits Wrigley by TonyTheTiger, via Wikipedia, used under Creative Commons. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? 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• Windows 7 BSOD - ntoskrnl?

  - by Ken Mason

  2 new HP Pavilion notebooks with 7 Home Premium pre-loaded with Norton. My first act was to use the Norton Removal Tool and load ZoneAlarm free and AVG Free. Frequent random BSOD's ever since...I found my way into Debug and have had various reports regarding ntoskrnl, depending on the status of symbols. It's been many years since I played with (DOS 3.x) debug, so this has been a considerable fumble. Excerpts follow and any insights would be greatly appreciated, as I am not a developer: ADDITIONAL_DEBUG_TEXT: Use '!findthebuild' command to search for the target build information. If the build information is available, run '!findthebuild -s ; .reload' to set symbol path and load symbols. MODULE_NAME: nt FAULTING_MODULE: fffff8000305d000 nt DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 4b88cfeb BUGCHECK_STR: 0x7f_8 CUSTOMER_CRASH_COUNT: 1 DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: VISTA_DRIVER_FAULT CURRENT_IRQL: 0 LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER: from fffff800030ccb69 to fffff800030cd600 STACK_TEXT: fffff80004d6fd28 fffff800030ccb69 : 000000000000007f 0000000000000008 0000000080050033 00000000000006f8 : nt+0x70600 fffff80004d6fd30 000000000000007f : 0000000000000008 0000000080050033 00000000000006f8 fffff80003095e58 : nt+0x6fb69 fffff80004d6fd38 0000000000000008 : 0000000080050033 00000000000006f8 fffff80003095e58 0000000000000000 : 0x7f fffff80004d6fd40 0000000080050033 : 00000000000006f8 fffff80003095e58 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : 0x8 fffff80004d6fd48 00000000000006f8 : fffff80003095e58 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : 0x80050033 fffff80004d6fd50 fffff80003095e58 : 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : 0x6f8 fffff80004d6fd58 0000000000000000 : 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : nt+0x38e58 STACK_COMMAND: kb FOLLOWUP_IP: nt+70600 fffff800`030cd600 48894c2408 mov qword ptr [rsp+8],rcx SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX: 0 SYMBOL_NAME: nt+70600 FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner IMAGE_NAME: ntoskrnl.exe BUCKET_ID: WRONG_SYMBOLS Followup: MachineOwner ...................................................................... 0: kd !lmi nt Loaded Module Info: [nt] Module: ntkrnlmp Base Address: fffff8000305d000 Image Name: ntkrnlmp.exe Machine Type: 34404 (X64) Time Stamp: 4b88cfeb Sat Feb 27 00:55:23 2010 Size: 5dc000 CheckSum: 545094 Characteristics: 22 perf Debug Data Dirs: Type Size VA Pointer CODEVIEW 25, 19c65c, 19bc5c RSDS - GUID: {7E9A3CAB-6268-45DE-8E10-816E3080A3B7} Age: 2, Pdb: ntkrnlmp.pdb CLSID 4, 19c658, 19bc58 [Data not mapped] Image Type: FILE - Image read successfully from debugger. ntkrnlmp.exe Symbol Type: PDB - Symbols loaded successfully from symbol server. d:\debugsymbols\ntkrnlmp.pdb\7E9A3CAB626845DE8E10816E3080A3B72\ntkrnlmp.pdb Load Report: public symbols , not source indexed d:\debugsymbols\ntkrnlmp.pdb\7E9A3CAB626845DE8E10816E3080A3B72\ntkrnlmp.pdb 0: kd !analyze -v * Bugcheck Analysis * * UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP (7f) This means a trap occurred in kernel mode, and it's a trap of a kind that the kernel isn't allowed to have/catch (bound trap) or that is always instant death (double fault). The first number in the bugcheck params is the number of the trap (8 = double fault, etc) Consult an Intel x86 family manual to learn more about what these traps are. Here is a portion of those codes: If kv shows a taskGate use .tss on the part before the colon, then kv. Else if kv shows a trapframe use .trap on that value Else .trap on the appropriate frame will show where the trap was taken (on x86, this will be the ebp that goes with the procedure KiTrap) Endif kb will then show the corrected stack. Arguments: Arg1: 0000000000000008, EXCEPTION_DOUBLE_FAULT Arg2: 0000000080050033 Arg3: 00000000000006f8 Arg4: fffff80003095e58 Debugging Details: BUGCHECK_STR: 0x7f_8 CUSTOMER_CRASH_COUNT: 1 DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: VISTA_DRIVER_FAULT PROCESS_NAME: System CURRENT_IRQL: 2 LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER: from fffff800030ccb69 to fffff800030cd600 STACK_TEXT: fffff80004d6fd28 fffff800030ccb69 : 000000000000007f 0000000000000008 0000000080050033 00000000000006f8 : nt!KeBugCheckEx fffff80004d6fd30 fffff800030cb032 : 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : nt!KiBugCheckDispatch+0x69 fffff80004d6fe70 fffff80003095e58 : 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : nt!KiDoubleFaultAbort+0xb2 fffff880089efc60 0000000000000000 : 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : nt!SeAccessCheckFromState+0x58 STACK_COMMAND: kb FOLLOWUP_IP: nt!KiDoubleFaultAbort+b2 fffff800`030cb032 90 nop SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX: 2 SYMBOL_NAME: nt!KiDoubleFaultAbort+b2 FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner MODULE_NAME: nt IMAGE_NAME: ntkrnlmp.exe DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 4b88cfeb FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: X64_0x7f_8_nt!KiDoubleFaultAbort+b2 BUCKET_ID: X64_0x7f_8_nt!KiDoubleFaultAbort+b2 Followup: MachineOwner I tried running Rootkit Revealer but I don't think it works on x64 systems. Similarly Blacklight seems to have aged off. I'm running Sophos Anti-Rootkit now. So far so good...

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