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• Add Free Windows Live Apps to Your Website or Blog

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like to use Hotmail, Office Web Apps, Messenger, and more on your website domain?  Here’s how you can add Windows Live to your website for free. Microsoft offers a popular suite of online communications products including Hotmail and Messenger.  Although Hotmail hasn’t been as popular in recent years as Gmail, it is getting a refresh this summer that might make it an even better email solution.  Additionally, the new Office Web Apps offer great compatibility with Office documents. While Skydrive offers 25Gb of free online file storage for all users, so Windows Live can make a great communications solution for your domain. Note: To signup for Windows Live for your domain, you will need to be able to add info to your WordPress.com blog or change Domain settings manually. Getting Started Open the Windows Live Custom Domains page (Link below) to get started adding Windows Live to your domain.  Your free Windows Live account will let you create up to 500 accounts, so it’s great for teams and groups that want to have customized email addresses in addition to those who just want an email account for their website. Enter your domain or subdomain you want to add to Windows Live in the box, and then select whether you want to setup Hotmail with this or now.  We want to add email to our domain, so select Set up Windows Live Hotmail for my domain and click Continue. You’ll need to sign in with a Windows Live ID to create the account, or choose to create a new Windows Live account associated with your domain.   Sign in with your Windows Live ID…this can be a Hotmail, Live Messenger, XBOX Live, Zune ID, or Microsoft.com account. Or, enter your information to create a new Windows Live ID if you selected the second option. Now, review your settings and make sure everything looks correct.  Click the I Accept button to setup your account.   Your account is now fully setup, but you’ll need to add or edit DNS information on your site.  The steps are slightly different depending if your site is hosted on WordPress.com, on your own server, or hosting service. We’ll show you how to do it on either one. First, though, note the information below this box.  You’ll see settings for your Mail setup…   Security settings…   And Messenger integration.  Make note of the settings, especially the circled ones, as we’ll need them in the next step. Integrate Windows Live with Your WordPress Blog If the domain you added to Windows Live is for your WordPress blog, login to your WordPress dashboard in a separate browser window or tab.  Click the arrow beside Upgrades, and select Domains from the menu. Click the Edit DNS link beside the domain name you’re adding to Windows Live. In the text box on this page, enter the following, replacing Your_info with your code from the Mail Setup box in your Windows Live Dashboard.  Note that this is the blurred section in our screenshots.  It should be a numerical code like 1234567890.pamx1.hotmail.com. MX 10 Your_info.pamx1.hotmail.com. TXT v=spf1 include:hotmail.com ~all CNAME Your_info domains.live.com. Click Save DNS records, and your settings are saved to WordPress.  Note that this will only integrate email with your WordPress account; you cannot integrate Messenger with a domain hosted on WordPress.com. Finally, return to your Windows Live Settings page and click Refresh.  If your settings are correct, you’ll now be ready to use Windows Live on your WordPress.com domain. Integrate Windows Live with Your Own Server If your website is hosted on your own server or hosting account, you’ll need to take a few more steps to add Windows Live to your domain.  This is fairly easy, but the steps may be different depending on your hosting company or registrar.  With some hosts, you may have to contact support to have them add the MX records for you.  Our site’s host uses the popular cPanel for website administration, so here’s how we added the MX Entries through cPanel. Login to your website’s cPanel, and select MX Entry under the Mail section. In the text box on this page, enter the following, replacing Your_info with your code from the Mail Setup box in your Windows Live Dashboard.  Note that this is the blurred section in our screenshots.  It should be a numerical code like 1234567890.pamx1.hotmail.com. MX 10 Your_info.pamx1.hotmail.com. Now, go back to your cPanel home, and select Advanced DNS Zone Editor under Domains. Here, add a TXT record with the following info: Name: yoursite.com. TTL: 3600 TXT Data: v=spf1 include:hotmail.com ~all Click Add Record and your Mail integration data is all configured. To integrate Messenger with your own domain, you’ll have to add an SRV entry to your DNS settings.  cPanel doesn’t have an option for this, so we had to contact our site’s hosting company and they added the entry for us.  Copy all of the information in the Messenger box and send it to your domain support, and they should be able to add this for you.  Alternately, if you don’t want or need Messenger, then you can simply skip this step. Once all of your settings are in place, return to your Windows Live Settings page and click Refresh.  If your settings are correct, you’ll now be ready to use Windows Live on your WordPress.com domain. Create a New Email Account On Your Domain Welcome to your new Windows Live admin page!  Now you can add email accounts so you and anyone else you want can access Hotmail and the other Windows Live apps with your domain.  Click Add to add an account. Enter an account name, which will be the email address of the account, e.g. [email protected].  Then enter the user’s name and a password for the account.  By default this will be a temporary password, and the user will have to change it on first log-in, but if you’re setting up this account for yourself, you can uncheck the box and keep this as your standard password. Now, go to www.mail.live.com, and sign in with your new email address and password.  Remember, your email address is your username previously entered followed by @yourdomain.com. To finish setting up the email account, enter your password, secret question and answer, alternate email, and location information.  Click I accept to finish setting up your new email account. Enter the characters in the Captcha to confirm you’re a human, and click Continue. Your new Hotmail inbox will now load, and you’ll have a welcome email in your inbox.  This works the same as normal Hotmail, except this time, your email address is with your own domain. You can now access any of the Windows Live services from the top-level menu. Here’s an Excel Spreadsheet open in the new Office Web Apps via SkyDrive on our new Windows Live account. If you setup Messenger access previously, you can now sign in to Windows Live Messenger using your new @yourdomain.com account as well. Important Links Accessing your Windows Live accounts is easy.  Simply go to any Windows Live site, such as www.hotmail.com or www.skydrive.com, and sign in with your new Windows Live ID from your domain as normal.  You don’t need a special address to access your account; it works just like the standard public Hotmail accounts. To administer your Windows Live for your domain, go to https://domains.live.com/ and sign in with the Windows Live ID you used to create the account.  Here you can add more users, change settings, and view usage details for the Windows Live accounts on your domain. Conclusion Windows Live is easy to add to your domain, and lets you create up to 500 email address for it.  With the upcoming updates to Hotmail and Office Web Apps coming this summer, this can be a nice way to make your domain even more useful.  And with 500 email accounts, you can easily let your team take advantage of your unique address as well. If you’d rather use Google’s online applications with your domain, check out our article on how to add free Google apps to your website or blog. Link Signup for Windows Live for Your Domain Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Tools to Help Post Content On Your WordPress BlogBackup Your Windows Live Writer SettingsInstall Windows Live Essentials In Windows 7Add Your Gmail To Windows Live MailMysticgeek Blog: A Look at Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 on Windows XP 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 HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Backup Drivers With Driver Magician TubeSort: YouTube Playlist Organizer XPS file format & XPS Viewer Explained Microsoft Office Web Apps Guide Know if Someone Accessed Your Facebook Account Shop for Music with Windows Media Player 12

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• Data Profiling without SSIS

  Strangely enough for a predominantly SSIS blog, this post is all about how to perform data profiling without using SSIS. Whilst the Data Profiling Task is a worthy addition, there are a couple of limitations I’ve encountered of late. The first is that it requires SQL Server 2008, and not everyone is there yet. The second is that it can only target SQL Server 2005 and above. What about older systems, which are the ones that we probably need to investigate the most, or other vendor databases such as Oracle? With these limitations in mind I did some searching to find a quick and easy alternative to help me perform some data profiling for a project I was working on recently. I only had SQL Server 2005 available, and anyway most of my target source systems were Oracle, and of course I had short timescales. I looked at several options. Some never got beyond the download stage, they failed to install or just did not run, and others provided less than I could have produced myself by spending 2 minutes writing some basic SQL queries. In the end I settled on an open source product called DataCleaner. To quote from their website: DataCleaner is an Open Source application for profiling, validating and comparing data. These activities help you administer and monitor your data quality in order to ensure that your data is useful and applicable to your business situation. DataCleaner is the free alternative to software for master data management (MDM) methodologies, data warehousing (DW) projects, statistical research, preparation for extract-transform-load (ETL) activities and more. DataCleaner is developed in Java and licensed under LGPL. As quoted above it claims to support profiling, validating and comparing data, but I didn’t really get past the profiling functions, so won’t comment on the other two. The profiling whilst not prefect certainly saved some time compared to the limited alternatives. The ability to profile heterogeneous data sources is a big advantage over the SSIS option, and I found it overall quite easy to use and performance was good. I could see it struggling at times, but actually for what it does I was impressed. It had some data type niggles with Oracle, and some metrics seem a little strange, although thankfully they were easy to augment with some SQL queries to ensure a consistent picture. The report export options didn’t do it for me, but copy and paste with a bit of Excel magic was sufficient. One initial point for me personally is that I have had limited exposure to things of the Java persuasion and whilst I normally get by fine, sometimes the simplest things can throw me. For example installing a JDBC driver, why do I have to copy files to make it all work, has nobody ever heard of an MSI? In case there are other people out there like me who have become totally indoctrinated with the Microsoft software paradigm, I’ve written a quick start guide that details every step required. Steps 1- 5 are the key ones, the rest is really an excuse for some screenshots to show you the tool. Quick Start Guide Step 1  - Download Data Cleaner. The Microsoft Windows zipped exe option, and I chose the latest stable build, currently DataCleaner 1.5.3 (final). Extract the files to a suitable location. Step 2 - Download Java. If you try and run datacleaner.exe without Java it will warn you, and then open your default browser and take you to the Java download site. Follow the installation instructions from there, normally just click Download Java a couple of times and you’re done. Step 3 - Download Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver. You may have SQL Server installed, but you won’t have a JDBC driver. Version 3.0 is the latest as of April 2010. There is no real installer, we are in the Java world here, but run the exe you downloaded to extract the files. The default Unzip to folder is not much help, so try a fully qualified path such as C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver 3.0\ to ensure you can find the files afterwards. Step 4 - If you wish to use Windows Authentication to connect to your SQL Server then first we need to copy a file so that Data Cleaner can find it. Browse to the JDBC extract location from Step 3 and drill down to the file sqljdbc_auth.dll. You will have to choose the correct directory for your processor architecture. e.g. C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver 3.0\sqljdbc_3.0\enu\auth\x86\sqljdbc_auth.dll. Now copy this file to the Data Cleaner extract folder you chose in Step 1. An alternative method is to edit datacleaner.cmd in the data cleaner extract folder as detailed in this data cleaner wiki topic, but I find copying the file simpler. Step 5 – Now lets run Data Cleaner, just run datacleaner.exe from the extract folder you chose in Step 1. Step 6 – Complete or skip the registration screen, and ignore the task window for now. In the main window click settings. Step 7 – In the Settings dialog, select the Database drivers tab, then click Register database driver and select the Local JAR file option. Step 8 – Browse to the JDBC driver extract location from Step 3 and drill down to select sqljdbc4.jar. e.g. C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver 3.0\sqljdbc_3.0\enu\sqljdbc4.jar Step 9 – Select the Database driver class as com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver, and then click the Test and Save database driver button. Step 10 - You should be back at the Settings dialog with a the list of drivers that includes SQL Server. Just click Save Settings to persist all your hard work. Step 11 – Now we can start to profile some data. In the main Data Cleaner window click New Task, and then Profile from the task window. Step 12 – In the Profile window click Open Database Step 13 – Now choose the SQL Server connection string option. Selecting a connection string gives us a template like jdbc:sqlserver://<hostname>:1433;databaseName=<database>, but obviously it requires some details to be entered for example  jdbc:sqlserver://localhost:1433;databaseName=SQLBits. This will connect to the database called SQLBits on my local machine. The port may also have to be changed if using such as when you have a multiple instances of SQL Server running. If using SQL Server Authentication enter a username and password as required and then click Connect to database. You can use Window Authentication, just add integratedSecurity=true to the end of your connection string. e.g jdbc:sqlserver://localhost:1433;databaseName=SQLBits;integratedSecurity=true.  If you didn’t complete Step 4 above you will need to do so now and restart Data Cleaner before it will work. Manually setting the connection string is fine, but creating a named connection makes more sense if you will be spending any length of time profiling a specific database. As highlighted in the left-hand screen-shot, at the bottom of the dialog it includes partial instructions on how to create named connections. In the folder shown C:\Users\<Username>\.datacleaner\1.5.3, open the datacleaner-config.xml file in your editor of choice add your own details. You’ll see a sample connection in the file already, just add yours following the same pattern. e.g. <!-- Darren's Named Connections --> <bean class="dk.eobjects.datacleaner.gui.model.NamedConnection"> <property name="name" value="SQLBits Local Connection" /> <property name="driverClass" value="com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver" /> <property name="connectionString" value="jdbc:sqlserver://localhost:1433;databaseName=SQLBits;integratedSecurity=true" /> <property name="tableTypes"> <list> <value>TABLE</value> <value>VIEW</value> </list> </property> </bean> Step 14 – Once back at the Profile window, you should now see your schemas, tables and/or views listed down the left hand side. Browse this tree and double-click a table to select it for profiling. You can then click Add profile, and choose some profiling options, before finally clicking Run profiling. You can see below a sample output for three of the most common profiles, click the image for full size.   I hope this has given you a taster for DataCleaner, and should help you get up and running pretty quickly.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, February 18, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, February 18, 2010New ProjectsASP .NET MVC CMS (Content Management System): Open source Content management system based on ASP.NET MVC platform.AutoFolders: AutoFolders package for Umbraco CMS This package auto creates folder structures for new and existing pages. The folders structures can be date bas...AutoPex: This project combines CCI with Pex by allowing the developer to run Pex on methods based on differences between two assemblies. Canvas VSDOC Intellisense: JavaScript VSDOC documentation for HTML5 Canvas element and 2d Context interface.CSUDH: California State University, Domguiez Hills Game projectsD-AMPS: System for Analysis of Microelectronic and Photonic StructuresDispX: Disease PredictorEmployee Info Starter Kit: This is a starter kit, which includes very simple user requirements, where we can create, read, update and delete (crud) the employee info of a com...Enhanced Discussion Board for SharePoint: Provide later... publishing project to share with Malaysians firstFlowPad: Flowpad is a light, fast and easy to use flow diagram editor. It helps you quickly pour your algorithms from your mind to 'paper'. It is written us...Henge3D Physics Library for XNA: Henge3D is a 3D physics library written in C# for XNA. It is implemented entirely in managed code and is compatible with the XBOX 360.Hybrid Windows Service: Abstracted design pattern for running a windows service interactively. Implemented as a base class to replace ServiceBase it will automatically pro...Image Cropper datatype for Umbraco: Stand alone version of the Image Cropper datatype in Umbraco. Listinator: A social wishlist application done in asp.net MVCMicrosoft Dynamics Ax User Group (AXUG) Code Repository: The goal of this project is to make it easier for customers of Microsoft Dynamics Ax to be able to share relevant source code. Code base should inc...Mobil Trials: Sebuah game sederhana yang dibuat di atas Silverlight 3.0 dengan bantuan Physics Helper 3.0 Demo : http://gameagam.co.cc/default.html Mirror link...NavigateTo Providers: This project is a collection of NavigateTo providers for Visual Studio 2010. NExtLib: NExtLib is a general-purpose extension library for .NET, which adds some useful features and addresses some alleged omissions.Nom - .NET object-mapper: Nom is a light-weight, storage-type agnostic persistence framework which is intended to provide an abstraction over both relational and non-relatio...Numerical Methods on Silverlight: Numerical Methods, Silverlight, Math Parser, Simple, EulerOpenGLViewController for Visual Basic .NET 2008: A single class in pure VB.NET code to create and control an OpenGL window by calling opengl32.dll directly without use of additional wrapper librar...RestaurantMIS: RestaurantMIS is a simple Restaurant management system developed in Visual C# 2008 with Chinese language.SmartKonnect: <project name>A WPF application for windows with shoutcast, twitter, facebook and etc.SSRS Excel file Sheet rename: SSRS wont support renaming excel reports sheet rename. This program support to generate the report and change the excel sheet nameSWENTRIZ.NET: SWENTRIZ.NET allows to build graphics of implicit functions via .NET functionality.TFT: Tropical forecast tracker is a web application. It will measure the error of the National Hurricane Center's forecast as compared to the actual tr...WCF Dynamic Client Proxy: A WCF Dynamic Client Proxy so you don't have to inherit from ClientBase all the time. The proxy also has fault tolerance so you don't have to dispo...Web.Config Role Provider: Stores ASP.NET Roles in web.config. Easy to set up and deploy. Works great for simple websites with authentication. The projects includes support ...WPF Line of Business App: Example WPF patterns for line of business applications. Includes navigation, animation, and visualization.YuBiS Framework: Silverlight and WF based a workflow RAD framework. New ReleasesASP .NET MVC CMS (Content Management System): AtomicCms 1.0: This is the first public release of AtomicCms. To get more information about this content management system, visit website http://atomiccms.com/Blogsprajeesh.Blogspot samples: Designing Modular Smart Clients using CAL: This whitepaper provides architectural guidance for designing and implementing enterprise WPF/ silverlight client applications based on the Composi...DB Ghost Build Tools: 1.0.2: Made a change to the datetime format per dewee.DotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.02.03: Major HighlightsFixed the issue where LinkClick.aspx links were incorrect for child portals Fixed the issue with the PayPal URL settings. Fixed...Employee Directory webpart for sharepoint 2007 user profiles: Employee Directory Source V2.0: Features: 1. Displays a complete list of all Active Directory profiles imported by the SSP into SharePoint 2007. 2. Displays the following fields ...Enhanced Discussion Board for SharePoint: Alpha Release: Meant for those who attended my presentation. Not cleaned upESPEHA: Espeha 9 PFR: Some small issues fixedFlowPad: FlowPad 0.1: FlowPad 0.1 build. Run it to get fammiliar with major concepts of easy diagramming :)Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite BETA2: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite BETA2 Includes: - Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) - Demo Application - Samples - Foundation (Tabs, Groups, Contextu...Henge3D Physics Library for XNA: Henge3D Source (2010-02): This is the initial 2010-02 release.Highlight: Highlight 2.5: This release is primarily a maintenance release of the library and is functionally equivalent to version 2.3 that was released in 2004.Magiq: Magiq 0.3.0: Magiq 0.3.0 contains: Magiq-to-objects: Full support to Linq-to-objects Magiq-to-sql: Full support to Linq-to-sql New features: Plugin model Bu...Microsoft Points Converter: Pre-Alpha ClickOnce Installer v0.03: This release builds on the 0.02 release by adding more thorough validation checks for the amount to convert from as well as adding several currency...Mobil Trials: Mobil Trials Source Code: Sebuah game sederhana yang dibuat di atas Silverlight 3.0 dengan bantuan Physics Helper 3.0 Game ini masih perlu dikembangkan lebih jauh lagi! Si...Numerical Methods on Silverlight: Numerical Methods on Silverlight 1.00: This a new version of Numerical Methods on Silverlight.OAuthLib: OAuthLib (1.5.0.0): Changed point is as next. 7037 Fix spell miss of RequestFactoryMedthodSharePoint Outlook Connector: Version 1.0.1.0: Now it supports simply attaching SharePoint documents feature.Sharpy: Sharpy 1.1 Alpha: This is the second Sharpy release. Only a single change has been made - the foreach function now uses IEnumerable as a source instead of IList. Th...SkinDroidCreator: SkinDroidCreator ALPHA 1: Primera releaseTan solo carga mapas, ya sea de un zip o de un directorio. Para probarlo se pueden cargar temas Metamorph o temas flasheables, ya se...SkyDrive .Net API Client: SkyDrive .Net API Client 0.8.9: SkyDrive .Net API Client assembly version 0.8.9. Changes/improvements: - Added Web Proxy support - Introduced WebDriveInfo - Introduced DownloadUrl...spikes: Salient.Web.Administration 1.0: WebAdmin is simply the built in ASP.NetWebAdministrationFiles application cleaned up with codebehinds to make customization and refactoring possibl...SSRS Excel file Sheet rename: Change SSRS excel file sheet name: Create stored procedure from the attached file in sql server 2005/2008SWENTRIZ.NET: Approach 1: First approachTortoiseSVN Addin for Visual Studio: TortoiseSVN Addin 1.0.4: Visual Studio 2005 support Custom working root bug fixingTotal Commander SkyDrive File System Plugin (.wfx): Total Commander SkyDrive File System Plugin 0.8.4: Total Commander SkyDrive File System Plugin version 0.8.4. Bug fixes: - Upgraded SkyDriveWebClient to version 0.8.9 Please do not forget to expres...UnOfficial AW Wrapper dot Net: UAWW.Net 0.1.5.85 Béta 2: Fixed and Added SomethingVr30 OS: Space Brick Break 1.1: A brick breaker. ADD Level 3, 4, 5Web.Config Role Provider: First release: Three downloads are available: A compiled dll ready to use. The schema to enable intellisense The complete source (zipped)WI Assistant: WI Assistant 2.1: This release improves the work item selection functionality. These selection methods are now supported (some require at least one item selected): ...WI Assistant: WI Assistant 2.2: Improved error handling and fix for linking several times in a row. DISCLAIMER: While I have tested this app on my TFS Server, by downloading and...ZipStorer - A Pure C# Class to Store Files in Zip: ZipStorer 2.30: Added stream-oriented methods Improved support for ePUB & Open Container Format specification (OCF) Automatic switch from Deflate to Store algo...Most Popular ProjectsRawrDotNetNuke® Community EditionASP.NET Ajax LibraryFacebook Developer ToolkitWindows 7 USB/DVD Download ToolWSPBuilder (SharePoint WSP tool)Virtual Router - Wifi Hot Spot for Windows 7 / 2008 R2Json.NETPerformance Analysis of Logs (PAL) ToolQuickGraph, Graph Data Structures And Algorithms for .NetMost Active ProjectsDinnerNow.netRawrSharpyBlogEngine.NETSimple SavantjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Modulepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryPHPExcelFacebook Developer Toolkit

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• Getting Started with ASP.NET Membership, Profile and RoleManager

  - by Ben Griswold

  A new ASP.NET MVC project includes preconfigured Membership, Profile and RoleManager providers right out of the box.  Try it yourself – create a ASP.NET MVC application, crack open the web.config file and have a look.  First, you’ll find the ApplicationServices database connection: <connectionStrings>   <add name="ApplicationServices"        connectionString="data source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|aspnetdb.mdf;User Instance=true"        providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/> </connectionStrings>   Notice the connection string is referencing the aspnetdb.mdf database hosted by SQL Express and it’s using integrated security so it’ll just work for you without having to call out a specific database login or anything. Scroll down the file a bit and you’ll find each of the three noted sections: <membership>   <providers>     <clear/>     <add name="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider"          type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"          connectionStringName="ApplicationServices"          enablePasswordRetrieval="false"          enablePasswordReset="true"          requiresQuestionAndAnswer="false"          requiresUniqueEmail="false"          passwordFormat="Hashed"          maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="5"          minRequiredPasswordLength="6"          minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0"          passwordAttemptWindow="10"          passwordStrengthRegularExpression=""          applicationName="/"             />   </providers> </membership>   <profile>   <providers>     <clear/>     <add name="AspNetSqlProfileProvider"          type="System.Web.Profile.SqlProfileProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"          connectionStringName="ApplicationServices"          applicationName="/"             />   </providers> </profile>   <roleManager enabled="false">   <providers>     <clear />     <add connectionStringName="ApplicationServices" applicationName="/" name="AspNetSqlRoleProvider" type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />     <add applicationName="/" name="AspNetWindowsTokenRoleProvider" type="System.Web.Security.WindowsTokenRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />   </providers> </roleManager> Really. It’s all there. Still don’t believe me.  Run the application, walk through the registration process and finally login and logout.  Completely functional – and you didn’t have to do a thing! What else?  Well, you can manage your users via the Configuration Manager which is hiding in Visual Studio behind Projects > ASP.NET Configuration. The ASP.NET Web Site Administration Tool isn’t MVC-specific (neither is the Membership, Profile or RoleManager stuff) but it’s neat and I hardly ever see anyone using it.  Here you can set up and edit users, roles, and set access permissions for your site. You can manage application settings, establish your SMTP settings, configure debugging and tracing, define default error page and even take your application offline.  The UI is rather plain-Jane but it works great. And here’s the best of all.  Let’s say you, like most of us, don’t want to run your application on top of the aspnetdb.mdf database.  Let’s suppose you want to use your own database and you’d like to add the membership stuff to it.  Well, that’s easy enough. Take a look inside your [drive:]\%windir%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v2.0.50727\ folder.  Here you’ll find a bunch of files.  If you were to run the InstallCommon.sql, InstallMembership.sql, InstallRoles.sql and InstallProfile.sql files against the database of your choices, you’d be installing the same membership, profile and role artifacts which are found in the aspnet.db to your own database.  Too much trouble?  Okay. Run [drive:]\%windir%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regsql.exe from the command line instead.  This will launch the ASP.NET SQL Server Setup Wizard which walks you through the installation of those same database objects into the new or existing database of your choice. You may not always have the luxury of using this tool on your destination server, but you should use it whenever you can.  Last tip: don’t forget to update the ApplicationServices connectionstring to point to your custom database after the setup is complete. At the risk of sounding like a smarty, everything I’ve mentioned in this post has been around for quite a while. The thing is that not everyone has had the opportunity to use it.  And it makes sense. I know I’ve worked on projects which used custom membership services.  Why bother with the out-of-the-box stuff, right?   And the .NET framework is so massive, who can know it all. Well, eventually you might have a chance to architect your own solution using any implementation you’d like or you will have the time to play around with another aspect of the framework.  When you do, think back to this post.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, November 15, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, November 15, 2011Popular ReleasesTHE NVL Maker: The NVL Maker Ver 3.10: 3.10 ??? ???： ·????????? ·????????? ·???“TJS”?“??”“EXP”?????“???”,???????? ·???“????”???，???????@if~@elsif~@else~@endif????? ·TJS????????? ·???????????else?endif??? ??： ·???FantasyDR?????????Wizard.exe（?????：http://code.google.com/p/nvlmaker-wizard/） ·KAGConfigEx2.exe??（?????：http://kcddp.keyfc.net/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=1374&extra=page%3D1） ·??????????skin??? ????： ·mapbutton????EXP??（??macro_map.ks） ·??????????AnimPlayer.ks?system????（??????AnimPlayer.ks???macro.ks） ·??????????????，?????...CreateHandouts: Latest Version: Latest VersionSQL Monitor - tracking sql server activities: SQLMon 4.1 alpha2: 1. improved object search, escape special characters, support search histories, and remember search option. 2. allow user to set connection time out. 3. allow user to drag & drop sql text or file to editors.SCCM Client Actions Tool: SCCM Client Actions Tool v0.8: SCCM Client Actions Tool v0.8 is currently the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Added "Wake On LAN" action. WOL.EXE is now included. Added new action "Get all active advertisements" to list all machine based advertisements on remote computers. Added new action "Get all active user advertisements" to list all user based advertisements for logged on users on remote computers. Added config.ini setting "enablePingTest" to control whether ping test is ru...Windows Azure SDK for PHP: Windows Azure SDK for PHP v4.0.4: INSTALLATION Windows Azure SDK for PHP requires no special installation steps. Simply download the SDK, extract it to the folder you would like to keep it in, and add the library directory to your PHP include_path. INSTALLATION VIA PEAR Maarten Balliauw provides an unofficial PEAR channel via http://www.pearplex.net. Here's how to use it: New installation: pear channel-discover pear.pearplex.net pear install pearplex/PHPAzure Or if you've already installed PHPAzure before: pear upgrade p...QuickGraph, Graph Data Structures And Algorithms for .Net: 3.6.61116.0: Portable library build that allows to use QuickGraph in any .NET environment: .net 4.0, silverlight 4.0, WP7, Win8 Metro apps.Devpad: 4.7: Whats new for Devpad 4.7: New export to Rich Text New export to FlowDocument Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsWeapsy: 0.4.1 Alpha: Edit Text bug fixedDesktop Google Reader: 1.4.2: This release remove the like and the broadcast buttons as Google Reader stopped supporting them (no, we don't like this decission...) Additionally and to have at least a small plus: the login window now automaitcally logs you in if you stored username and passwort (no more extra click needed) Finally added WebKit .NET to the about window and removed Awesomium MD5-Hash: 5fccf25a2fb4fecc1dc77ebabc8d3897 SHA-Hash: d44ff788b123bd33596ad1a75f3b9fa74a862fdbFluent Validation for .NET: 3.2: Changes since 3.1: Fixed issue #7084 (NotEmptyValidator does not work with EntityCollection<T>) Fixed issue #7087 (AbstractValidator.Custom ignores RuleSets and always runs) Removed support for WP7 for now as it doesn't support co/contravariance without crashing.RDRemote: Remote Desktop remote configurator V 1.0.0: Remote Desktop remote configurator V 1.0.0Rawr: Rawr 4.2.7: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr AddonWe now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including bag and bank items) like Char...VidCoder: 1.2.2: Updated Handbrake core to svn 4344. Fixed the 6-channel discrete mixdown option not appearing for AAC encoders. Added handling for possible exceptions when copying to the clipboard, added retries and message when it fails. Fixed issue with audio bitrate UI not appearing sometimes when switching audio encoders. Added extra checks to protect against reported crashes. Added code to upgrade encoding profiles on old queued items.Media Companion: MC 3.422b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) TV Show Resolutions... Made the TV Shows folder list sorted. Re-visibled 'Manually Add Path' in Root Folders. Sorted list to process during new tv episode search Rebuild Movies now processes thru folders alphabetically Fix for issue #208 - Display Missing Episodes is not popu...DotSpatial: DotSpatial Release Candidate 1 (1.0.823): Supports loading extensions using System.ComponentModel.Composition. DemoMap compiled as x86 so that GDAL runs on x64 machines. How to: Use an Assembly from the WebBe aware that your browser may add an identifier to downloaded files which results in "blocked" dll files. You can follow the following link to learn how to "Unblock" files. Right click on the zip file before unzipping, choose properties, go to the general tab and click the unblock button. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library...XPath Visualizer: XPathVisualizer v1.3 Latest: This is v1.3.0.6 of XpathVisualizer. This is an update release for v1.3. These workitems have been fixed since v1.3.0.5: 7429 7432 7427MSBuild Extension Pack: November 2011: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack November 2011 release provides a collection of over 415 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GU...Extensions for Reactive Extensions (Rxx): Rxx 1.2: What's NewRelated Work Items Please read the latest release notes for details about what's new. Content SummaryRxx provides the following features. See the Documentation for details. Many IObservable<T> extension methods and IEnumerable<T> extension methods. Many useful types such as ViewModel, CommandSubject, ListSubject, DictionarySubject, ObservableDynamicObject, Either<TLeft, TRight>, Maybe<T> and others. Various interactive labs that illustrate the runtime behavior of the extensio...Facebook C# SDK: v5.3.2: This is a RTW release which adds new features and bug fixes to v5.2.1. Query/QueryAsync methods uses graph api instead of legacy rest api. removed dependency from Code Contracts enabled Task Parallel Support in .NET 4.0+ (experimental) added support for early preview for .NET 4.5 (binaries not distributed in codeplex nor nuget.org, will need to manually build from Facebook-Net45.sln) added additional method overloads for .NET 4.5 to support IProgress<T> for upload progress added ne...Delete Inactive TS Ports: List and delete the Inactive TS Ports: UPDATEAdded support for windows 2003 servers and removed some null reference errors when the registry key was not present List and delete the Inactive TS Ports - The InactiveTSPortList.EXE accepts command line arguments The InactiveTSPortList.Standalone.WithoutPrompt.exe runs as a standalone exe without the need for any command line arguments.New ProjectsAFNC: testArithmetics: arithmetics for silverlight use note pattern by time streamAzon.Library: A collection of extensions, static helpers, AOP attributes. More will added as the project will go on.Chat TextBlock Control: A windows phone 7.1 control Resemble those chat balloon textblocks in the SMS appDiamond Framework: Diamond Framework an Common framework for Diamond Group.DNN Social Helpers: DNN Social HelpersDragon: DragonEasy Video Cropper: A simple application to make cropping videos easy for anyone. - Automatically detects black lines - Uses FFMPEGFluent Resource Mapper: This project aims to develop a framework to assist the internationalization of software using the paradigm Convetion over Configuration.Fully Observable: This project is to create an improved set of observable collections. It provides notifications for when items inside the collection change as well as when the collection itself changes.grpcmnq: no summary at allMathTool: Math tool for silverlight we plan will heve three point .matrix .differential equation .equation of locusnopCommerce Buckaroo payment provider plugin: This is a payment provider plugin for the dutch payment provider BUCKAROO. This plugin is developed and tested for nopCommerce version 2+ Phoenix MVVM+C Framework: Phoenix MVVM+C Framework PowerLib: PowerLib extends system .net library.RDRemote: This utility allows to enable the Remote Desktop connections from a remote computer using WMI.Sencha Touch Mini Workflow Framework: A workflow framework for Sencha Touch mobile apps including automatic component management ShWP: helper library for Windows PhoneTimer, Cronômetro e Despertador: Projeto desenvolvido no curso de extensão de C# da UFSCar SorocabaUtilityLibrary.Ajax: AjaxUtilityLibrary.Email: emailUtilityLibrary.FormBase: UtilityLibrary.FormBaseUtilityLibrary.Http: UtilityLibrary for HttpWebRequestUtilityLibrary.Ormapping: ormappingVoiceModel: VoiceModel is a project which make it easier to develop VoiceXML applications using ASP.Net MVC with Razor. It uses the MVVM (Model-View-VoiceModel) design pattern to abstract the voice application to a higher level. It is developed in C# and Razor.WebSite.Request: WebSite.Request launch web request (via XMLHTTP) on website. Use, for example, to make initial request to sharepoint URL and escape "slow first request" problem.Where's my lei, man?: Where's my lei, man?Zombsquare: Aplicación de ejemplo para Windows Phone utilizada en el Windows Phone Roadshow realizado en España en 2011, en esta solución podras encontra ejemplos de: -Diseño en Blend -BingMaps -GeoLocalizacion -Realidad Aumentada -Converters -Mini-trivial -Serialización de objetos ... resistir un apocalipsis Zombie...

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• The HTG Guide to Using a Bluetooth Keyboard with Your Android Device

  - by Matt Klein

  Android devices aren’t usually associated with physical keyboards. But, since Google is now bundling their QuickOffice app with the newly-released Kit-Kat, it appears inevitable that at least some Android tablets (particularly 10-inch models) will take on more productivity roles. In recent years, physical keyboards have been rendered obsolete by swipe style input methods such as Swype and Google Keyboard. Physical keyboards tend to make phones thick and plump, and that won’t fly today when thin (and even flexible and curved) is in vogue. So, you’ll be hard-pressed to find smartphone manufacturers launching new models with physical keyboards, thus rendering sliders to a past chapter in mobile phone evolution. It makes sense to ditch the clunky keyboard phone in favor of a lighter, thinner model. You’re going to carry around in your pocket or purse all day, why have that extra bulk and weight? That said, there is sound logic behind pairing tablets with keyboards. Microsoft continues to plod forward with its Surface models, and while critics continue to lavish praise on the iPad, its functionality is obviously enhanced and extended when you add a physical keyboard. Apple even has an entire page devoted specifically to iPad-compatible keyboards. But an Android tablet and a keyboard? Does such a thing even exist? They do actually. There are docking keyboards and keyboard/case combinations, there’s the Asus Transformer family, Logitech markets a Windows 8 keyboard that speaks “Android”, and these are just to name a few. So we know that keyboard products that are designed to work with Android exist, but what about an everyday Bluetooth keyboard you might use with Windows or OS X? How-To Geek wanted look at how viable it is to use such a keyboard with Android. We conducted some research and examined some lists of Android keyboard shortcuts. Most of what we found was long outdated. Many of the shortcuts don’t even apply anymore, while others just didn’t work. Regardless, after a little experimentation and a dash of customization, it turns out using a keyboard with Android is kind of fun, and who knows, maybe it will catch on. Setting things up Setting up a Bluetooth keyboard with Android is very easy. First, you’ll need a Bluetooth keyboard and of course an Android device, preferably running version 4.1 (Jelly Bean) or higher. For our test, we paired a second-generation Google Nexus 7 running Android 4.3 with a Samsung Series 7 keyboard. In Android, enable Bluetooth if it isn’t already on. We’d like to note that if you don’t normally use Bluetooth accessories and peripherals with your Android device (or any device really), it’s best practice to leave Bluetooth off because, like GPS, it drains the device’s battery more quickly. To enable Bluetooth, simply go to “Settings” -> “Bluetooth” and tap the slider button to “On”. To set up the keyboard, make sure it is on and then tap “Bluetooth” in the Android settings. On the resulting screen, your Android device should automatically search for and hopefully find your keyboard. If you don’t get it right the first time, simply turn the keyboard on again and then tap “Search for Devices” to try again. If it still doesn’t work, make sure you have fresh batteries and the keyboard isn’t paired to another device. If it is, you will need to unpair it before it will work with your Android device (consult your keyboard manufacturer’s documentation or Google if you don’t know how to do this). When Android finds your keyboard, select it under “Available Devices” … … and you should be prompted to type in a code: If successful, you will see that device is now “Connected” and you’re ready to go. If you want to test things out, try pressing the “Windows” key (“Apple” or “Command”) + ESC, and you will be whisked to your Home screen. So, what can you do? Traditional Mac and Windows users know there’s usually a keyboard shortcut for just about everything (and if there isn’t, there’s all kinds of ways to remap keys to do a variety of commands, tasks, and functions). So where does Android fall in terms of baked-in keyboard commands? There answer to that is kind of enough, but not too much. There are definitely established combos you can use to get around, but they aren’t clear and there doesn’t appear to be any one authority on what they are. Still, there is enough keyboard functionality in Android to make it a viable option, if only for those times when you need to get something done (long e-mail or important document) and an on-screen keyboard simply won’t do. It’s important to remember that Android is, and likely always will be a touch-first interface. That said, it does make some concessions to physical keyboards. In other words, you can get around Android fairly well without having to lift your hands off the keys, but you will still have to tap the screen regularly, unless you add a mouse. For example, you can wake your device by tapping a key rather than pressing its power button. However, if your device is slide or pattern-locked, then you’ll have to use the touchscreen to unlock it – a password or PIN however, works seamlessly with a keyboard – other things like widgets and app controls and features, have to be tapped. You get the idea. Keyboard shortcuts and navigation As we said, baked-in keyboard shortcut combos aren’t necessarily abundant nor apparent. The one thing you can always do is search. Any time you want to Google something, start typing from the Home screen and the search screen will automatically open and begin displaying results. Other than that, here is what we were able to figure out: ESC = go back CTRL + ESC = menu CTRL + ALT + DEL = restart (no questions asked) ALT + SPACE = search page (say “OK Google” to voice search) ALT + TAB (ALT + SHIFT + TAB) = switch tasks Also, if you have designated volume function keys, those will probably work too. There’s also some dedicated app shortcuts like calculator, Gmail, and a few others: CMD + A = calculator CMD + C = contacts CMD + E = e-mail CMD + G = Gmail CMD + L = Calendar CMD + P = Play Music CMD + Y = YouTube Overall, it’s not a long comprehensive list and there’s no dedicated keyboard combos for the full array of Google’s products. Granted, it’s hard to imagine getting a lot of mileage out of a keyboard with Maps but with something like Keep, you could type out long, detailed lists on your tablet, and then view them on your smartphone when you go out shopping. You can also use the arrow keys to navigate your Home screen over shortcuts and open the app drawer. When something on the screen is selected, it will be highlighted in blue. Press “Enter” to open your selection. Additionally, if an app has its own set of shortcuts, e.g. Gmail has quite a few unique shortcuts to it, as does Chrome, some – though not many – will work in Android (not for YouTube though). Also, many “universal” shortcuts such as Copy (CTRL + C), Cut (CTRL + X), Paste (CTRL + V), and Select All (CTRL + A) work where needed – such as in instant messaging, e-mail, social media apps, etc. Creating custom application shortcuts What about custom shortcuts? When we were researching this article, we were under the impression that it was possible to assign keyboard combinations to specific apps, such as you could do on older Android versions such as Gingerbread. This no long seems to be the case and nowhere in “Settings” could we find a way to assign hotkey combos to any of our favorite, oft-used apps or functions. If you do want custom keyboard shortcuts, what can you do? Luckily, there’s an app on Google Play that allows you to, among other things, create custom app shortcuts. It is called External Keyboard Helper (EKH) and while there is a free demo version, the pay version is only a few bucks. We decided to give EKH a whirl and through a little experimentation and finally reading the developer’s how-to, we found we could map custom keyboard combos to just about anything. To do this, first open the application and you’ll see the main app screen. Don’t worry about choosing a custom layout or anything like that, you want to go straight to the “Advanced settings”: In the “Advanced settings” select “Application shortcuts” to continue: You can have up to 16 custom application shortcuts. We are going to create a custom shortcut to the Facebook app. We choose “A0”, and from the resulting list, Facebook. You can do this for any number of apps, services, and settings. As you can now see, the Facebook app has now been linked to application-zero (A0): Go back to the “Advanced settings” and choose “Customize keyboard mappings”: You will be prompted to create a custom keyboard layout so we choose “Custom 1”: When you choose to create a custom layout, you can do a great many more things with your keyboard. For example, many keyboards have predefined function (Fn) keys, which you can map to your tablet’s brightness controls, toggle WiFi on/off, and much more. A word of advice, the application automatically remaps certain keys when you create a custom layout. This might mess up some existing keyboard combos. If you simply want to add some functionality to your keyboard, you can go ahead and delete EKH’s default changes and start your custom layout from scratch. To create a new combo, select “Add new key mapping”: For our new shortcut, we are going to assign the Facebook app to open when we key in “ALT + F”. To do this, we press the “F” key while in the “Scancode” field and we see it returns a value of “33”. If we wanted to use a different key, we can press “Change” and scan another key’s numerical value. We now want to assign the “ALT” key to application “A0”, previously designated as the Facebook app. In the “AltGr” field, we enter “A0” and then “Save” our custom combo. And now we see our new application shortcut. Now, as long as we’re using our custom layout, every time we press “ALT + F”, the Facebook app will launch: External Keyboard Helper extends far beyond simple application shortcuts and if you are looking for deeper keyboard customization options, you should definitely check it out. Among other things, EKH also supports dozens of languages, allows you to quickly switch between layouts using a key or combo, add up to 16 custom text shortcuts, and much more! It can be had on Google Play for $2.53 for the full version, but you can try the demo version for free. More extensive documentation on how to use the app is also available. Android? Keyboard? Sure, why not? Unlike traditional desktop operating systems, you don’t need a physical keyboard and mouse to use a mobile operating system. You can buy an iPad or Nexus 10 or Galaxy Note, and never need another accessory or peripheral – they work as intended right out of the box. It’s even possible you can write the next great American novel on one these devices, though that might require a lot of practice and patience. That said, using a keyboard with Android is kind of fun. It’s not revelatory but it does elevate the experience. You don’t even need to add customizations (though they are nice) because there are enough existing keyboard shortcuts in Android to make it usable. Plus, when it comes to inputting text such as in an editor or terminal application, we fully advocate big, physical keyboards. Bottom line, if you’re looking for a way to enhance your Android tablet, give a keyboard a chance. Do you use your Android device for productivity? Is a physical keyboard an important part of your setup? Do you have any shortcuts that we missed? Sound off in the comments and let us know what you think.     

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• Thursday Community Keynote: "By the Community, For the Community"

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Sharat Chander, JavaOne Community Chairperson, began Thursday's Community Keynote. As part of the morning’s theme of "By the Community, For the Community," Chander noted that 60% of the material at the 2012 JavaOne conference was presented by Java Community members. "So next year, when the call for papers starts, put-in your submissions," he urged.From there, Gary Frost, Principal Member of Technical Staff, AMD, expanded upon Sunday's Strategy Keynote exploration of Project Sumatra, an OpenJDK project targeted at bringing Java to heterogeneous computing platforms (which combine the CPU and the parallel processor of the GPU into a single piece of silicon). Sumatra entails enhancing the JVM to make maximum use of these advanced platforms. Within this development space, AMD created the Aparapi API, which converts Java bytecode into OpenCL for execution on such GPU devices. The Aparapi API was open sourced in September 2011.Whether it was zooming-in on a Mandelbrot set, "the game of life," or a swarm of 10,000 Dukes in a space-bound gravitational dance, Frost's demos, using an Aparapi/OpenCL implementation, produced stunningly faster display results. He indicated that the Java 9 timeframe is where they see Project Sumatra coming to ultimate fruition, employing the Lamdas of Java 8.Returning to the theme of the keynote, Donald Smith, Director, Java Product Management, Oracle, explored a mind map graphic demonstrating the importance of Community in terms of fostering innovation. "It's the sharing and mixing of culture, the diversity, and the rapid prototyping," he said. Within this topic, Smith, brought up a panel of representatives from Cloudera, Eclipse, Eucalyptus, Perrone Robotics, and Twitter--ideal manifestations of community and innovation in the world of Java.Marten Mickos, CEO, Eucalyptus Systems, explored his company's open source cloud software platform, written in Java, and used by gaming companies, technology companies, media companies, and more. Chris Aniszczyk, Operations Engineering,Twitter, noted the importance of the JVM in terms of their multiple-language development environment. Mike Olson, CEO, Cloudera, described his company's Apache Hadoop-based software, support, and training. Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director, Eclipse Foundation, noted that they have about 270 tools projects at Eclipse, with 267 of them written in Java. Milinkovich added that Eclipse will even be going into space in 2013, as part of the control software on various experiments aboard the International Space Station. Lastly, Paul Perrone, CEO, Perrone Robotics, detailed his company's robotics and automation software platform built 100% on Java, including Java SE and Java ME--"on rat, to cat, to elephant-sized systems." Milinkovic noted that communities are by nature so good at innovation because of their very openness--"The more open you make your innovation process, the more ideas are challenged, and the more developers are focused on justifying their choices all the way through the process."From there, Georges Saab, VP Development Java SE OpenJDK, continued the topic of innovation and helping the Java Community to "Make the Future Java." Martijn Verburg, representing the London Java Community (winner of a Duke's Choice Award 2012 for their activity in OpenJDK and JCP), soon joined Saab onstage. Verburg detailed the LJC's "Adopt a JSR" program--"to get day-to-day developers more involved in the innovation that's happening around them."  From its London launching pad, the innovative program has spread to Brazil, Morocco, Latvia, India, and more.Other active participants in the program joined Verburg onstage--Ben Evans, London Java Community; James Gough, Stackthread; Bruno Souza, SOUJava; Richard Warburton, jClarity; and Cecelia Borg, Oracle--OpenJDK Onboarding. Together, the group explored the goals and tasks inherent in the Adopt a JSR program--from organizing hack days (testing prototype implementations), to managing mailing lists and forums, to triaging issues, to evangelism—all with the goal of fostering greater community/developer involvement, but equally importantly, building better open standards. “Come join us, and make your ecosystem better!" urged Verburg.Paul Perrone returned to profile the latest in his company's robotics work around Java--including the AARDBOTS family of smaller robotic vehicles, running the Perrone MAX platform on top of the Java JVM. Perrone took his "Rumbles" four-wheeled robot out for a spin onstage--a roaming, ARM-based security-bot vehicle, complete with IR, ultrasonic, and "cliff" sensors (the latter, for the raised stage at JavaOne). As an ultimate window into the future of robotics, Perrone displayed a "head-set" controller--a sensor directed at the forehead to monitor brainwaves, for the someday-implementation of brain-to-robot control.Then, just when it seemed this might be the end of the day's futuristic offerings, a mystery voice from offstage pronounced "I've got some toys"--proving to be guest-visitor James Gosling, there to explore his cutting-edge work with Liquid Robotics. While most think of robots as something with wheels or arms or lasers, Gosling explained, the Liquid Robotics vehicle is an entirely new and innovative ocean-going 'bot. Looking like a floating surfboard, with an attached set of underwater wings, the autonomous devices roam the oceans using only the energy of ocean waves to propel them, and a single actuated rudder to steer. "We have to accomplish all guidance just by wiggling the rudder," Gosling said. The devices offer applications from self-installing weather buoy, to pollution monitoring station, to marine mammal monitoring device, to climate change data gathering, to even ocean life genomic sampling. The early versions of the vehicle used C code on very tiny industrial micro controllers, where they had to "count the bytes one at a time."  But the latest generation vehicles, which just hit the water a week or so ago, employ an ARM processor running Linux and the ARM version of JDK 7. Gosling explained that vehicle communication from remote locations is achieved via the Iridium satellite network. But because of the costs of this communication path, the data must be sent in very small bursts--using SBD short burst data. "It costs $1/kb, so that rules everything in the software design,” said Gosling. “If you were trying to stream a Netflix video over this, it would cost a million dollars a movie. …We don't have a 'big data' problem," he quipped. There are currently about 150 Liquid Robotics vehicles out traversing the oceans. Gosling demonstrated real time satellite tracking of several vehicles currently at sea, noting that Java is actually particularly good at AI applications--due to the language having garbage collection, which facilitates complex data structures. To close-out his time onstage, Gosling of course participated in the ceremonial Java tee-shirt toss out to the audience…In parting, Chander passed the JavaOne Community Chairperson baton to Stephen Chin, Java Technology Evangelist, Oracle. Onstage in full motorcycle gear, Chin noted that he'll soon be touring Europe by motorcycle, meeting Java Community Members and streaming live via UStream--the ultimate manifestation of community and technology!  He also reminded attendees of the upcoming JavaOne Latin America 2012, São Paulo, Brazil (December 4-6, 2012), and stated that the CFP (call for papers) at the conference has been extended for one more week. "Remember, December is summer in Brazil!" Chin said.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 11, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 11, 2010New ProjectsArkzia: This Silverlight game.CodePlex Wiki Editor: CodePlex Wiki Editor makes it easier for CodePlex users to create their wiki documentations. This project offer a rich interface for the edition...Evaluate: Evaluate & Comet DWR like .NET library with powerfull Evaluate and Ajax Comet support. Also, you may use Evaluate library in your own .Net applicat...FamAccountor: 家庭记账薄Horadric: This is common tools freamwork!K8061.Managed: This is a solution to use the Velleman Extended K8061 USB Interface board with .net and to have a nice wrapper handling most of the overhead for us...Latent semantic analysis: all you need is to use!: Baggr is feed aggregator with web interface, user rating and LSA filter. Enjoy it!LIF7 ==> RISK : TOWER DEFENSE: Université Lyon 1, L2 MATH-INFO 2009-2010 Semestre de printemps Projet RISK : TOWER DEFENSE Membres : Jessica El Melhem, Vincent Sébille, et Jonat...Managed ESL Suite: Managed ESL Suite using C# for FreeSWITCH Omni-Tool - A program version concept of the tool used in Mass Effect.: A program version concept of the tool used in Mass Effect. It will support little apps (plugins) that run inside the UI. Its talor mainly at develo...PdxCodeCamp: Web application for Portland Code CampProjeto Vírus: Desenvolvimento do Jogo Virus em XNAsilverlight control - stars with rounded corners: Draw stars and cogs including rounded cornersSilverlight MathParser: Implementation of mathematical expressions parser to compute and functions.turing machine simulator: Project for JCE in course SW engeenering. Turing Machine simulator with GUI.WpD - Wallpapers Downloader: You can easy download wallpapers to your computer without any advertising or registration. On 5 minutes you can download so many wallpapers!New ReleasesAJAX Control Framework: v1.0.0.0: New AJAX project that helps you create AJAX enabled controls. Make use of control level AJAX methods, a Script Manager that works like you'd expect...AutoFixture: Version 1.1: This is version 1.1 of AutoFixture. This release contains no known bugs. Compared to Release Candidate 1 for version 1.1, there are no changes. Ho...AutoPoco: AutoPoco 0.3: Method Invocation in configuration Custom type providers during configuration Method invocation for generationBacicworx (Basic Services Framework): 3.0.10.410 (Beta): Major update, winnowing, and recode of the library. Removed redundant classses and methods which have similar functionality to those available in ...Bluetooth Radar: Version 1.5: Mostly UI and Animation Changes.BUtil: BUtil 4.9: 1. Icons of kneo are almost removed 2. Deployment was moved to codeplex.com 3. Adding of storages was unavailable when any of storages are used FIXEDcrudwork library: crudwork 2.2.0.3: few bug fixes new object viewer - allow the user to view and change an object through the property grid and/or the simple XML editor pivot table ...EnhSim: Release v1.9.8.5: Release v1.9.8.5Removed the debugging output from the Armor Penetration change.EnhSim: Release v1.9.8.6: Release v1.9.8.6Updated release to include the correct version of EnhSimGUIEvaluate: Evaluate Library: This file contains Evaluate library source code under Visual Studio project. Also, there is a sample project to see the use.ExcelDna: ExcelDna Version 0.25: This is an important bugfix release, with the following changes: Fix case where unpacked .config temp file might not be deleted. Fix compiler pro...FamAccountor: 家庭账薄 预览版v0.0.1: 家庭账薄 预览版v0.0.1 该版本提供基本功能，还有待扩展! Feature: 实现基本添加、编辑、删除功能。FamAccountor: 家庭账薄 预览版v0.0.2: 家庭账薄 预览版v0.0.2 该版本提供基本功能，还有待扩展! 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Open Source online shop e-commerce solution.AutoPocopatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryShweet: SharePoint 2010 Team Messaging built with PexFarseer Physics EngineNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterBlogEngine.NETBeanProxy

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• Adventures in MVVM &ndash; My ViewModel Base

  - by Brian Genisio's House Of Bilz

  More Adventures in MVVM First, I’d like to say: THIS IS NOT A NEW MVVM FRAMEWORK. I tend to believe that MVVM support code should be specific to the system you are building and the developers working on it.  I have yet to find an MVVM framework that does everything I want it to without doing too much.  Don’t get me wrong… there are some good frameworks out there.  I just like to pick and choose things that make sense for me.  I’d also like to add that some of these features only work in WPF.  As of Silveright 4, they don’t support binding to dynamic properties, so some of the capabilities are lost. That being said, I want to share my ViewModel base class with the world.  I have had several conversations with people about the problems I have solved using this ViewModel base.  A while back, I posted an article about some experiments with a “Rails Inspired ViewModel”.  What followed from those ideas was a ViewModel base class that I take with me and use in my projects.  It has a lot of features, all designed to reduce the friction in writing view models. I have put the code out on Codeplex under the project: ViewModelSupport. Finally, this article focuses on the ViewModel and only glosses over the View and the Model.  Without all three, you don’t have MVVM.  But this base class is for the ViewModel, so that is what I am focusing on. Features: Automatic Command Plumbing Property Change Notification Strongly Typed Property Getter/Setters Dynamic Properties Default Property values Derived Properties Automatic Method Execution Command CanExecute Change Notification Design-Time Detection What about Silverlight? Automatic Command Plumbing This feature takes the plumbing out of creating commands.  The common pattern for commands in a ViewModel is to have an Execute method as well as an optional CanExecute method.  To plumb that together, you create an ICommand Property, and set it in the constructor like so: Before public class AutomaticCommandViewModel { public AutomaticCommandViewModel() { MyCommand = new DelegateCommand(Execute_MyCommand, CanExecute_MyCommand); } public void Execute_MyCommand() { // Do something } public bool CanExecute_MyCommand() { // Are we in a state to do something? return true; } public DelegateCommand MyCommand { get; private set; } } With the base class, this plumbing is automatic and the property (MyCommand of type ICommand) is created for you.  The base class uses the convention that methods be prefixed with Execute_ and CanExecute_ in order to be plumbed into commands with the property name after the prefix.  You are left to be expressive with your behavior without the plumbing.  If you are wondering how CanExecuteChanged is raised, see the later section “Command CanExecute Change Notification”. After public class AutomaticCommandViewModel : ViewModelBase { public void Execute_MyCommand() { // Do something } public bool CanExecute_MyCommand() { // Are we in a state to do something? return true; } }   Property Change Notification One thing that always kills me when implementing ViewModels is how to make properties that notify when they change (via the INotifyPropertyChanged interface).  There have been many attempts to make this more automatic.  My base class includes one option.  There are others, but I feel like this works best for me. The common pattern (without my base class) is to create a private backing store for the variable and specify a getter that returns the private field.  The setter will set the private field and fire an event that notifies the change, only if the value has changed. Before public class PropertyHelpersViewModel : INotifyPropertyChanged { private string text; public string Text { get { return text; } set { if(text != value) { text = value; RaisePropertyChanged("Text"); } } } protected void RaisePropertyChanged(string propertyName) { var handlers = PropertyChanged; if(handlers != null) handlers(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName)); } public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; } This way of defining properties is error-prone and tedious.  Too much plumbing.  My base class eliminates much of that plumbing with the same functionality: After public class PropertyHelpersViewModel : ViewModelBase { public string Text { get { return Get<string>("Text"); } set { Set("Text", value);} } }   Strongly Typed Property Getters/Setters It turns out that we can do better than that.  We are using a strongly typed language where the use of “Magic Strings” is often frowned upon.  Lets make the names in the getters and setters strongly typed: A refinement public class PropertyHelpersViewModel : ViewModelBase { public string Text { get { return Get(() => Text); } set { Set(() => Text, value); } } }   Dynamic Properties In C# 4.0, we have the ability to program statically OR dynamically.  This base class lets us leverage the powerful dynamic capabilities in our ecosystem. (This is how the automatic commands are implemented, BTW)  By calling Set(“Foo”, 1), you have now created a dynamic property called Foo.  It can be bound against like any static property.  The opportunities are endless.  One great way to exploit this behavior is if you have a customizable view engine with templates that bind to properties defined by the user.  The base class just needs to create the dynamic properties at runtime from information in the model, and the custom template can bind even though the static properties do not exist. All dynamic properties still benefit from the notifiable capabilities that static properties do. For any nay-sayers out there that don’t like using the dynamic features of C#, just remember this: the act of binding the View to a ViewModel is dynamic already.  Why not exploit it?  Get over it :) Just declare the property dynamically public class DynamicPropertyViewModel : ViewModelBase { public DynamicPropertyViewModel() { Set("Foo", "Bar"); } } Then reference it normally <TextBlock Text="{Binding Foo}" />   Default Property Values The Get() method also allows for default properties to be set.  Don’t set them in the constructor.  Set them in the property and keep the related code together: public string Text { get { return Get(() => Text, "This is the default value"); } set { Set(() => Text, value);} }   Derived Properties This is something I blogged about a while back in more detail.  This feature came from the chaining of property notifications when one property affects the results of another, like this: Before public class DependantPropertiesViewModel : ViewModelBase { public double Score { get { return Get(() => Score); } set { Set(() => Score, value); RaisePropertyChanged("Percentage"); RaisePropertyChanged("Output"); } } public int Percentage { get { return (int)(100 * Score); } } public string Output { get { return "You scored " + Percentage + "%."; } } } The problem is: The setter for Score has to be responsible for notifying the world that Percentage and Output have also changed.  This, to me, is backwards.    It certainly violates the “Single Responsibility Principle.” I have been bitten in the rear more than once by problems created from code like this.  What we really want to do is invert the dependency.  Let the Percentage property declare that it changes when the Score Property changes. After public class DependantPropertiesViewModel : ViewModelBase { public double Score { get { return Get(() => Score); } set { Set(() => Score, value); } } [DependsUpon("Score")] public int Percentage { get { return (int)(100 * Score); } } [DependsUpon("Percentage")] public string Output { get { return "You scored " + Percentage + "%."; } } }   Automatic Method Execution This one is extremely similar to the previous, but it deals with method execution as opposed to property.  When you want to execute a method triggered by property changes, let the method declare the dependency instead of the other way around. Before public class DependantMethodsViewModel : ViewModelBase { public double Score { get { return Get(() => Score); } set { Set(() => Score, value); WhenScoreChanges(); } } public void WhenScoreChanges() { // Handle this case } } After public class DependantMethodsViewModel : ViewModelBase { public double Score { get { return Get(() => Score); } set { Set(() => Score, value); } } [DependsUpon("Score")] public void WhenScoreChanges() { // Handle this case } }   Command CanExecute Change Notification Back to Commands.  One of the responsibilities of commands that implement ICommand – it must fire an event declaring that CanExecute() needs to be re-evaluated.  I wanted to wait until we got past a few concepts before explaining this behavior.  You can use the same mechanism here to fire off the change.  In the CanExecute_ method, declare the property that it depends upon.  When that property changes, the command will fire a CanExecuteChanged event, telling the View to re-evaluate the state of the command.  The View will make appropriate adjustments, like disabling the button. DependsUpon works on CanExecute methods as well public class CanExecuteViewModel : ViewModelBase { public void Execute_MakeLower() { Output = Input.ToLower(); } [DependsUpon("Input")] public bool CanExecute_MakeLower() { return !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Input); } public string Input { get { return Get(() => Input); } set { Set(() => Input, value);} } public string Output { get { return Get(() => Output); } set { Set(() => Output, value); } } }   Design-Time Detection If you want to add design-time data to your ViewModel, the base class has a property that lets you ask if you are in the designer.  You can then set some default values that let your designer see what things might look like in runtime. Use the IsInDesignMode property public DependantPropertiesViewModel() { if(IsInDesignMode) { Score = .5; } }   What About Silverlight? Some of the features in this base class only work in WPF.  As of version 4, Silverlight does not support binding to dynamic properties.  This, in my opinion, is a HUGE limitation.  Not only does it keep you from using many of the features in this ViewModel, it also keeps you from binding to ViewModels designed in IronRuby.  Does this mean that the base class will not work in Silverlight?  No.  Many of the features outlined in this article WILL work.  All of the property abstractions are functional, as long as you refer to them statically in the View.  This, of course, means that the automatic command hook-up doesn’t work in Silverlight.  You need to plumb it to a static property in order for the Silverlight View to bind to it.  Can I has a dynamic property in SL5?     Good to go? So, that concludes the feature explanation of my ViewModel base class.  Feel free to take it, fork it, whatever.  It is hosted on CodePlex.  When I find other useful additions, I will add them to the public repository.  I use this base class every day.  It is mature, and well tested.  If, however, you find any problems with it, please let me know!  Also, feel free to suggest patches to me via the CodePlex site.  :)

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• Using Unity – Part 2

  - by nmarun

  In the first part of this series, we created a simple project and learned how to implement IoC pattern using Unity. In this one, I’ll show how you can instantiate other types that implement our IProduct interface. One place where this one would want to use this feature is to create mock types for testing purposes. Alright, let’s dig in. I added another class – Product2.cs  to the ProductModel project. 1: public class Product2 : IProduct 2: { 3: public string Name { get; set;} 4: public Category Category { get; set; } 5: public DateTime MfgDate { get;set; } 6:  7: public Product2() 8: { 9: Name = "Canon Digital Rebel XTi"; 10: Category = new Category {Name = "Electronics", SubCategoryName = "Digital Cameras"}; 11: MfgDate = DateTime.Now; 12: } 13:  14: public string WriteProductDetails() 15: { 16: return string.Format("Name: {0}<br/>Category: {1}<br/>Mfg Date: {2}", 17: Name, Category, MfgDate.ToShortDateString()); 18: } 19: } Highlights of this class are that it implements IProduct interface and it has some different properties than the Product class. The Category class looks like below: 1: public class Category 2: { 3: public string Name { get; set; } 4: public string SubCategoryName { get; set; } 5:  6: public override string ToString() 7: { 8: return string.Format("{0} - {1}", Name, SubCategoryName); 9: } 10: } We’ll go to our web.config file to add the configuration information about this new class – Product2 that we created. Let’s first add a typeAlias element. 1: <typeAlias alias="Product2" type="ProductModel.Product2, ProductModel"/> That’s all that is needed for us to get an instance of Product2 in our application. I have a new button added to the .aspx page and the click event of this button is where all the magic happens: 1: private IUnityContainer unityContainer; 2: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) 3: { 4: unityContainer = Application["UnityContainer"] as IUnityContainer; 5: 6: if (unityContainer == null) 7: { 8: productDetailsLabel.Text = "ERROR: Unity Container not populated in Global.asax.<p />"; 9: } 10: else 11: { 12: if (!IsPostBack) 13: { 14: IProduct productInstance = unityContainer.Resolve<IProduct>(); 15: productDetailsLabel.Text = productInstance.WriteProductDetails(); 16: } 17: } 18: } 19:  20: protected void Product2Button_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 21: { 22: unityContainer.RegisterType<IProduct, Product2>(); 23: IProduct product2Instance = unityContainer.Resolve<IProduct>(); 24: productDetailsLabel.Text = product2Instance.WriteProductDetails(); 25: } The unityContainer instance is set in the Page_Load event. Line 22 in the click event of the Product2Button registers a type mapping in the container. In English, this means that when unityContainer tries to resolve for IProduct, it gets an instance of Product2. Once this code runs, following output is rendered: There’s another way of doing this. You can resolve an instance of the requested type with a name from the container. We’ll have to update the container element of our web.config file to include the following: 1: <container name="unityContainer"> 2: <types> 3: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product"/> 4: <!-- Named mapping for IProduct to Product --> 5: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product" name="LegacyProduct" /> 6: <!-- Named mapping for IProduct to Product2 --> 7: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product2" name="NewProduct" /> 8: </types> 9: </container> I’ve added a Dropdownlist and a button to the design page: 1: <asp:DropDownList ID="ModelTypesList" runat="server"> 2: <asp:ListItem Text="Legacy Product" Value="LegacyProduct" /> 3: <asp:ListItem Text="New Product" Value="NewProduct" /> 4: </asp:DropDownList> 5: <br /> 6: <asp:Button ID="SelectedModelButton" Text="Get Selected Instance" runat="server" 7: onclick="SelectedModelButton_Click" /> 1: protected void SelectedModelButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 2: { 3: // get the selected value: LegacyProduct or NewProduct 4: string modelType = ModelTypesList.SelectedValue; 5: // pass the modelType to the Resolve method 6: IProduct customModel = unityContainer.Resolve<IProduct>(modelType); 7: productDetailsLabel.Text = customModel.WriteProductDetails(); 8: } Pretty straight forward right? The only thing to note here is that the values in the dropdownlist item need to match the name attribute of the type. Depending on what you select, you’ll get an instance of either the Product class or the Product2 class and the corresponding WriteProductDetails() method is called. Now you see, how either of these methods can be used to create mock objects your the test project. See the code here. I’ll continue to share more of Unity in the next blog.

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• Connecting Linux to WatchGuard Firebox SSL (OpenVPN client)

  Recently, I got a new project assignment that requires to connect permanently to the customer's network through VPN. They are using a so-called SSL VPN. As I am using OpenVPN since more than 5 years within my company's network I was quite curious about their solution and how it would actually be different from OpenVPN. Well, short version: It is a disguised version of OpenVPN. Unfortunately, the company only offers a client for Windows and Mac OS which shouldn't bother any Linux user after all. OpenVPN is part of every recent distribution and can be activated in a couple of minutes - both client as well as server (if necessary). WatchGuard Firebox SSL - About dialog Borrowing some files from a Windows client installation Initially, I didn't know about the product, so therefore I went through the installation on Windows 8. No obstacles (and no restart despite installation of TAP device drivers!) here and the secured VPN channel was up and running in less than 2 minutes or so. Much appreciated from both parties - customer and me. Of course, this whole client package and my long year approved and stable installation ignited my interest to have a closer look at the WatchGuard client. Compared to the original OpenVPN client (okay, I have to admit this is years ago) this commercial product is smarter in terms of file locations during installation. You'll be able to access the configuration and key files below your roaming application data folder. To get there, simply enter '%AppData%\WatchGuard\Mobile VPN' in your Windows/File Explorer and confirm with Enter/Return. This will display the following files: Application folder below user profile with configuration and certificate files From there we are going to borrow four files, namely: ca.crt client.crt client.ovpn client.pem and transfer them to the Linux system. You might also be able to isolate those four files from a Mac OS client. Frankly, I'm just too lazy to run the WatchGuard client installation on a Mac mini only to find the folder location, and I'm going to describe why a little bit further down this article. I know that you can do that! Feedback in the comment section is appreciated. Configuration of OpenVPN (console) Depending on your distribution the following steps might be a little different but in general you should be able to get the important information from it. I'm going to describe the steps in Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail). As usual, there are two possibilities to achieve your goal: console and UI. Let's what it is necessary to be done. First of all, you should ensure that you have OpenVPN installed on your system. Open your favourite terminal application and run the following statement: $ sudo apt-get install openvpn network-manager-openvpn network-manager-openvpn-gnome Just to be on the safe side. The four above mentioned files from your Windows machine could be copied anywhere but either you place them below your own user directory or you put them (as root) below the default directory: /etc/openvpn At this stage you would be able to do a test run already. Just in case, run the following command and check the output (it's the similar information you would get from the 'View Logs...' context menu entry in Windows: $ sudo openvpn --config client.ovpn Pay attention to the correct path to your configuration and certificate files. OpenVPN will ask you to enter your Auth Username and Auth Password in order to establish the VPN connection, same as the Windows client. Remote server and user authentication to establish the VPN Please complete the test run and see whether all went well. You can disconnect pressing Ctrl+C. Simplifying your life - authentication file In my case, I actually set up the OpenVPN client on my gateway/router. This establishes a VPN channel between my network and my client's network and allows me to switch machines easily without having the necessity to install the WatchGuard client on each and every machine. That's also very handy for my various virtualised Windows machines. Anyway, as the client configuration, key and certificate files are located on a headless system somewhere under the roof, it is mandatory to have an automatic connection to the remote site. For that you should first change the file extension '.ovpn' to '.conf' which is the default extension on Linux systems for OpenVPN, and then open the client configuration file in order to extend an existing line. $ sudo mv client.ovpn client.conf $ sudo nano client.conf You should have a similar content to this one here: dev tunclientproto tcp-clientca ca.crtcert client.crtkey client.pemtls-remote "/O=WatchGuard_Technologies/OU=Fireware/CN=Fireware_SSLVPN_Server"remote-cert-eku "TLS Web Server Authentication"remote 1.2.3.4 443persist-keypersist-tunverb 3mute 20keepalive 10 60cipher AES-256-CBCauth SHA1float 1reneg-sec 3660nobindmute-replay-warningsauth-user-pass auth.txt Note: I changed the IP address of the remote directive above (which should be obvious, right?). Anyway, the required change is marked in red and we have to create a new authentication file 'auth.txt'. You can give the directive 'auth-user-pass' any file name you'd like to. Due to my existing OpenVPN infrastructure my setup differs completely from the above written content but for sake of simplicity I just keep it 'as-is'. Okay, let's create this file 'auth.txt' $ sudo nano auth.txt and just put two lines of information in it - username on the first, and password on the second line, like so: myvpnusernameverysecretpassword Store the file, change permissions, and call openvpn with your configuration file again: $ sudo chmod 0600 auth.txt $ sudo openvpn --config client.conf This should now work without being prompted to enter username and password. In case that you placed your files below the system-wide location /etc/openvpn you can operate your VPNs also via service command like so: $ sudo service openvpn start client $ sudo service openvpn stop client Using Network Manager For newer Linux users or the ones with 'console-phobia' I'm going to describe now how to use Network Manager to setup the OpenVPN client. For this move your mouse to the systray area and click on Network Connections => VPN Connections => Configure VPNs... which opens your Network Connections dialog. Alternatively, use the HUD and enter 'Network Connections'. Network connections overview in Ubuntu Click on 'Add' button. On the next dialog select 'Import a saved VPN configuration...' from the dropdown list and click on 'Create...' Choose connection type to import VPN configuration Now you navigate to your folder where you put the client files from the Windows system and you open the 'client.ovpn' file. Next, on the tab 'VPN' proceed with the following steps (directives from the configuration file are referred): General Check the IP address of Gateway ('remote' - we used 1.2.3.4 in this setup) Authentication Change Type to 'Password with Certificates (TLS)' ('auth-pass-user') Enter User name to access your client keys (Auth Name: myvpnusername) Enter Password (Auth Password: verysecretpassword) and choose your password handling Browse for your User Certificate ('cert' - should be pre-selected with client.crt) Browse for your CA Certificate ('ca' - should be filled as ca.crt) Specify your Private Key ('key' - here: client.pem) Then click on the 'Advanced...' button and check the following values: Use custom gateway port: 443 (second value of 'remote' directive) Check the selected value of Cipher ('cipher') Check HMAC Authentication ('auth') Enter the Subject Match: /O=WatchGuard_Technologies/OU=Fireware/CN=Fireware_SSLVPN_Server ('tls-remote') Finally, you have to confirm and close all dialogs. You should be able to establish your OpenVPN-WatchGuard connection via Network Manager. For that, click on the 'VPN Connections => client' entry on your Network Manager in the systray. It is advised that you keep an eye on the syslog to see whether there are any problematic issues that would require some additional attention. Advanced topic: routing As stated above, I'm running the 'WatchGuard client for Linux' on my head-less server, and since then I'm actually establishing a secure communication channel between two networks. In order to enable your network clients to get access to machines on the remote side there are two possibilities to enable that: Proper routing on both sides of the connection which enables both-direction access, or Network masquerading on the 'client side' of the connection Following, I'm going to describe the second option a little bit more in detail. The Linux system that I'm using is already configured as a gateway to the internet. I won't explain the necessary steps to do that, and will only focus on the additional tweaks I had to do. You can find tons of very good instructions and tutorials on 'How to setup a Linux gateway/router' - just use Google. OK, back to the actual modifications. First, we need to have some information about the network topology and IP address range used on the 'other' side. We can get this very easily from /var/log/syslog after we established the OpenVPN channel, like so: $ sudo tail -n20 /var/log/syslog Or if your system is quite busy with logging, like so: $ sudo less /var/log/syslog | grep ovpn The output should contain PUSH received message similar to the following one: Jul 23 23:13:28 ios1 ovpn-client[789]: PUSH: Received control message: 'PUSH_REPLY,topology subnet,route 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0,dhcp-option DOMAIN ,route-gateway 192.168.6.1,topology subnet,ping 10,ping-restart 60,ifconfig 192.168.6.2 255.255.255.0' The interesting part for us is the route command which I highlighted already in the sample PUSH_REPLY. Depending on your remote server there might be multiple networks defined (172.16.x.x and/or 10.x.x.x). Important: The IP address range on both sides of the connection has to be different, otherwise you will have to shuffle IPs or increase your the netmask. {loadposition content_adsense} After the VPN connection is established, we have to extend the rules for iptables in order to route and masquerade IP packets properly. I created a shell script to take care of those steps: #!/bin/sh -eIPTABLES=/sbin/iptablesDEV_LAN=eth0DEV_VPNS=tun+VPN=192.168.1.0/24 $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -i $DEV_LAN -o $DEV_VPNS -d $VPN -j ACCEPT$IPTABLES -A FORWARD -i $DEV_VPNS -o $DEV_LAN -s $VPN -j ACCEPT$IPTABLES -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o $DEV_VPNS -d $VPN -j MASQUERADE I'm using the wildcard interface 'tun+' because I have multiple client configurations for OpenVPN on my server. In your case, it might be sufficient to specify device 'tun0' only. Simplifying your life - automatic connect on boot Now, that the client connection works flawless, configuration of routing and iptables is okay, we might consider to add another 'laziness' factor into our setup. Due to kernel updates or other circumstances it might be necessary to reboot your system. Wouldn't it be nice that the VPN connections are established during the boot procedure? Yes, of course it would be. To achieve this, we have to configure OpenVPN to automatically start our VPNs via init script. Let's have a look at the responsible 'default' file and adjust the settings accordingly. $ sudo nano /etc/default/openvpn Which should have a similar content to this: # This is the configuration file for /etc/init.d/openvpn## Start only these VPNs automatically via init script.# Allowed values are "all", "none" or space separated list of# names of the VPNs. If empty, "all" is assumed.# The VPN name refers to the VPN configutation file name.# i.e. "home" would be /etc/openvpn/home.conf#AUTOSTART="all"#AUTOSTART="none"#AUTOSTART="home office"## ... more information which remains unmodified ... With the OpenVPN client configuration as described above you would either set AUTOSTART to "all" or to "client" to enable automatic start of your VPN(s) during boot. You should also take care that your iptables commands are executed after the link has been established, too. You can easily test this configuration without reboot, like so: $ sudo service openvpn restart Enjoy stable VPN connections between your Linux system(s) and a WatchGuard Firebox SSL remote server. Cheers, JoKi

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• Customize the Windows Media Center Start Menu with Media Center Studio

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Do you ever wish you could change the WMC start menu? Maybe move some of the tiles and strips around to different locations, add new ones, or eliminate some altogether? Today we look at how to do it using Media Center Studio. Download and install Media Center Studio. (Download link below) You’ll also want to make sure you have Windows Media Center closed before running Media Center Studio. Many of the actions cannot be performed with Media Center open. Once installed, you can open Media Center Studio from the Windows Start Menu. When you first open Media Center Studio you’ll be on the Themes tab. Click on the Start Menu tab. It should be noted that Media Center Studio is a Beta application, and it did crash on us a few times, so it’s a good idea to save your work frequently. You can save your changes by selecting Save on the Home tab, or by clicking the small disk icon at the top left. We also found that that trying to launch Media Center from the Start Media Center button on the application ribbon typically didn’t work. Opening Windows Media Center from the Windows Start Menu is preferred.   When you’re on the Start Menu tab you will see the Windows Media Center menu strips and tiles. Click the arrows located at the right, left, top, and bottom of the screen to scroll through the various menu strips.   Hiding and Removing Tiles and Menu Strips. If there is an entire menu strip that you never use and would like to remove from Media Center, simply uncheck the box to the left of the the title above that menu strip. If you’d like to hide individual tiles, uncheck the box next to the name of the individual tile. Renaming Tiles and Strips To rename a tile or menu strip, click on the small notepad icon next to the title. Note: If you do not see a small notepad icon next to the title, then the title is not editable. This applies to many of the “Promo” tiles. The title will turn into a text input box so that you can edit the name. Click away from the text box when finished. Here we will change the title of the default Movie strip to “Flicks.” Change the Default Tile and Menu Strip The Default menu strip is the strip that is highlighted, or on focus, when you open Media Center.   To change the default strip, simply click once on another strip to highlight it, and then save your work. In our example, I’m going to make our newly renamed “Flicks” strip the default.   Each menu strip has a default tile. This is the tile that is active, or on focus, when you select the menu strip. To change the default tile on a strip, click once on the tile. You will see it outlined in light blue. Now just simply save your changes. In our example below, we’ve changed the default tile on the TV strip to “guide.”   Moving Tiles and Menu Strips You can move an entire Menu Strip up or down on the screen. When you hover your mouse over the a menu strip, you will see up and down arrows appear to the right and left of the title. Click on the arrows to move the strip up or down.   You will see the menu strip appear in it’s new position.   To move a tile to a new menu strip, click and drag the tile you’d like to move. When you begin to drag the tile, green plus (+) signs will appear in between the tiles. Drag and drop the tile onto to any of these green plus signs to move it to that location. When you’ve dragged the tile over an acceptable position, you’ll see the  red “Move” label next to your cursor turn to a blue “Move to” label. Now you can drop the tile into position. You’ll see the tile located in it’s new position.   Adding a New Custom Menu Strip Click on the Start Menu tab and then select the Menu Strip button.   You will see a new Custom Menu strip appear on your Start Menu with the default name of Custom menu. You can change the name by clicking on the notepad icon just as we did earlier. For our example, we’ll change the name of the new strip to Add-ins. To add a new tile, click on Entry Points at the lower left of the application window. This will reveal all of your available Entry Points that can be added to the Media Center Menu. You should see the built-in Media Center Games and any Media Center Plug-ins you have added to your system. You can then drag and drop any of the Entry Points onto any of the Menu Strips. Below we’ve added Media Browser to our custom Add-ins menu strip. You can also add additional applications to launch directly from Media Center. Click on the Application button on the Start Menu tab. Note: Many applications may not work with your remote, but with keyboard and mouse only.    Type in a title which will appear under the tile in Media Center, and then type the path to the application. In our example, we will add Internet Explorer 8. Note: Be sure to add the actual path to the application and not just a link on the desktop. Click any of the check boxes to select any options under Required Capabilities. You can also browse to choose an image if you don’t care for the image that appears automatically.   Next, you can select keyboard strokes to press to exit the application and return to Media Center. Click the green plus (+) button. When prompted, press a key you’ll use to close the program. Repeat the process if you’d also like to select a keystroke to kill the program.   You’ll see your button programs listed below. When you’re finished, save your work and close out of Media Center Studio.   Now your new program entry point will appear in the Entry Points section. Drag the icon to the desired position on the Start Menu and save again before exiting Media Center Studio. When you open Media Center you will see your new application on the start menu. Click the tile to open the application just as you would any other tile. The application will open and minimize Media Center. When you press the key you choose to close the program, Windows Media Center will automatically be restored. Note: You can also exit the application through normal methods by clicking the red “X” or File > Exit. Conclusion Media Center Studio is a Beta application which the developer freely admits still has some bugs. Despite it’s flaws Media Center Studio is a powerful tool, and when it comes to customizing your Media Center start menu, it’s pretty much the only game in town. It works with both Vista and Windows 7, and according to the developer, has not been officially tested with extenders. Media Center Studio can also be used to add custom themes to Windows 7 Media Center and we’ll be covering that in a future article. Looking for more ways to customize your Media Center experience? Be sure to check out our earlier posts on Media Browser, as well as how to add Hulu, Boxee, and weather conditions your Windows 7 Media Center. Download Media Center Studio Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)How To Rip a Music CD in Windows 7 Media CenterSchedule Updates for Windows Media CenterStartup Customizations for Media Center in Windows 7Automatically Start Windows 7 Media Center in Live TV Mode 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 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Video Toolbox is a Superb Online Video Editor Fun with 47 charts and graphs Tomorrow is Mother’s Day Check the Average Speed of YouTube Videos You’ve Watched OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall

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• Openswan + xl2tpd connections time out after a while

  - by Halfgaar

  I have a non-NATed Openswan+xl2tpd server (Ubuntu 12.04), to which I connect with a Windows 8 behind NAT. The client loses its connection after a while of doing nothing (between 30 and 60 minutes, but I didn't time it). The client doesn't have enabled that it should kill inactive connections. Nor does it ever go into sleep mode. I also tried setting the kill-after-time to 24 hours, but that didn't help. The NAT router behind which the client located is Debian Linux, and its router is a Cisco which connects us directly to the data center where the server is. None of our other connections, like SSH, get dropped with inactivity (because of cheap routers). I did however try turning on the keepalives in /etc/ipsec.conf: config setup (...snip...) nat_traversal=yes force_keepalive=yes keep_alive=10 but that didn't help. As you can see in the config later, dead peer detection's action is clear. That would be a first suggestion to fix, but I need clear, because people will be connecting from everwhere but the kitchen sink. Besides, as I said, in the test setup I have now, I can't see any device killing its connection. (edit: 'restart' also has the same effect) These are of one time it happened: Jul 18 16:18:06 host xl2tpd[1918]: Maximum retries exceeded for tunnel 49070. Closing. Jul 18 16:18:06 host xl2tpd[1918]: Terminating pppd: sending TERM signal to pid 18359 Jul 18 16:18:06 host xl2tpd[1918]: Connection 4 closed to 89.188.x.y, port 1701 (Timeout) Jul 18 16:18:11 host xl2tpd[1918]: Unable to deliver closing message for tunnel 49070. Destroying anyway. and these on another: Jul 18 17:44:39 host xl2tpd[1918]: udp_xmit failed to 89.188.x.y:1701 with err=-1:Operation not permitted Jul 18 17:44:43 xl2tpd[1918]: last message repeated 4 times Jul 18 17:44:43 host xl2tpd[1918]: Maximum retries exceeded for tunnel 10918. Closing. Jul 18 17:44:43 host xl2tpd[1918]: udp_xmit failed to 89.188.x.y:1701 with err=-1:Operation not permitted Jul 18 17:44:43 host xl2tpd[1918]: Terminating pppd: sending TERM signal to pid 26338 Jul 18 17:44:43 host xl2tpd[1918]: Connection 6 closed to 89.188.x.y, port 1701 (Timeout) Jul 18 17:44:44 host xl2tpd[1918]: udp_xmit failed to 89.188.x.y:1701 with err=-1:Operation not permitted Jul 18 17:44:48 xl2tpd[1918]: last message repeated 3 times Jul 18 17:44:48 host xl2tpd[1918]: Unable to deliver closing message for tunnel 10918. Destroying anyway. Jul 18 17:44:59 host xl2tpd[1918]: Can not find tunnel 10918 (refhim=0) Jul 18 17:44:59 host xl2tpd[1918]: network_thread: unable to find call or tunnel to handle packet. call = 0, tunnel = 10918 Dumping. Jul 18 17:45:09 host xl2tpd[1918]: Can not find tunnel 10918 (refhim=0) Jul 18 17:45:09 host xl2tpd[1918]: network_thread: unable to find call or tunnel to handle packet. call = 0, tunnel = 10918 Dumping. Jul 18 17:45:19 host xl2tpd[1918]: Can not find tunnel 10918 (refhim=0) Jul 18 17:45:19 host xl2tpd[1918]: network_thread: unable to find call or tunnel to handle packet. call = 0, tunnel = 10918 Dumping. Jul 18 17:45:29 host xl2tpd[1918]: Can not find tunnel 10918 (refhim=0) Jul 18 17:45:29 host xl2tpd[1918]: network_thread: unable to find call or tunnel to handle packet. call = 0, tunnel = 10918 Dumping. Jul 18 17:45:39 host xl2tpd[1918]: Can not find tunnel 10918 (refhim=0) Jul 18 17:45:39 host xl2tpd[1918]: network_thread: unable to find call or tunnel to handle packet. call = 0, tunnel = 10918 Dumping. Jul 18 17:45:49 host xl2tpd[1918]: Can not find tunnel 10918 (refhim=0) Jul 18 17:45:49 host xl2tpd[1918]: network_thread: unable to find call or tunnel to handle packet. call = 0, tunnel = 10918 Dumping. Versions: Ubuntu 12.04 Openswan: 2.6.37-1 xl2tpd: 3.1+dfsg-1 kernel: 3.2.0-49-generic configs: /etc/ipsec.conf: version 2.0 # conforms to second version of ipsec.conf specification config setup nat_traversal=yes virtual_private=%v4:10.0.0.0/8,%v4:192.168.0.0/16,%v4:172.16.0.0/12,%v4:!10.152.2.0/24 oe=off protostack=netkey force_keepalive=yes keep_alive=10 conn L2TP-PSK-NAT rightsubnet=vhost:%priv also=L2TP-PSK-noNAT conn L2TP-PSK-noNAT authby=secret pfs=no auto=add keyingtries=2 rekey=no dpddelay=30 dpdtimeout=120 dpdaction=clear ikelifetime=8h keylife=1h type=transport left=%defaultroute leftprotoport=17/1701 right=%any rightprotoport=17/%any /etc/xl2tpd/xl2tpd.conf [global] ipsec saref = no [lns default] ip range = 10.152.2.2-10.152.2.254 local ip = 10.152.2.1 refuse chap = yes refuse pap = yes require authentication = yes ppp debug = no pppoptfile = /etc/ppp/options.xl2tpd length bit = yes /etc/ppp/options.xl2tpd: require-mschap-v2 refuse-mschap ms-dns 10.152.2.1 asyncmap 0 auth crtscts idle 1800 mtu 1200 mru 1200 lock hide-password local #debug name l2tpd proxyarp lcp-echo-interval 30 lcp-echo-failure 4

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• How to Reuse Your Old Wi-Fi Router as a Network Switch

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Just because your old Wi-Fi router has been replaced by a newer model doesn’t mean it needs to gather dust in the closet. Read on as we show you how to take an old and underpowered Wi-Fi router and turn it into a respectable network switch (saving your $20 in the process). Image by mmgallan. Why Do I Want To Do This? Wi-Fi technology has changed significantly in the last ten years but Ethernet-based networking has changed very little. As such, a Wi-Fi router with 2006-era guts is lagging significantly behind current Wi-Fi router technology, but the Ethernet networking component of the device is just as useful as ever; aside from potentially being only 100Mbs instead of 1000Mbs capable (which for 99% of home applications is irrelevant) Ethernet is Ethernet. What does this matter to you, the consumer? It means that even though your old router doesn’t hack it for your Wi-Fi needs any longer the device is still a perfectly serviceable (and high quality) network switch. When do you need a network switch? Any time you want to share an Ethernet cable among multiple devices, you need a switch. For example, let’s say you have a single Ethernet wall jack behind your entertainment center. Unfortunately you have four devices that you want to link to your local network via hardline including your smart HDTV, DVR, Xbox, and a little Raspberry Pi running XBMC. Instead of spending $20-30 to purchase a brand new switch of comparable build quality to your old Wi-Fi router it makes financial sense (and is environmentally friendly) to invest five minutes of your time tweaking the settings on the old router to turn it from a Wi-Fi access point and routing tool into a network switch–perfect for dropping behind your entertainment center so that your DVR, Xbox, and media center computer can all share an Ethernet connection. What Do I Need? For this tutorial you’ll need a few things, all of which you likely have readily on hand or are free for download. To follow the basic portion of the tutorial, you’ll need the following: 1 Wi-Fi router with Ethernet ports 1 Computer with Ethernet jack 1 Ethernet cable For the advanced tutorial you’ll need all of those things, plus: 1 copy of DD-WRT firmware for your Wi-Fi router We’re conducting the experiment with a Linksys WRT54GL Wi-Fi router. The WRT54 series is one of the best selling Wi-Fi router series of all time and there’s a good chance a significant number of readers have one (or more) of them stuffed in an office closet. Even if you don’t have one of the WRT54 series routers, however, the principles we’re outlining here apply to all Wi-Fi routers; as long as your router administration panel allows the necessary changes you can follow right along with us. A quick note on the difference between the basic and advanced versions of this tutorial before we proceed. Your typical Wi-Fi router has 5 Ethernet ports on the back: 1 labeled “Internet”, “WAN”, or a variation thereof and intended to be connected to your DSL/Cable modem, and 4 labeled 1-4 intended to connect Ethernet devices like computers, printers, and game consoles directly to the Wi-Fi router. When you convert a Wi-Fi router to a switch, in most situations, you’ll lose two port as the “Internet” port cannot be used as a normal switch port and one of the switch ports becomes the input port for the Ethernet cable linking the switch to the main network. This means, referencing the diagram above, you’d lose the WAN port and LAN port 1, but retain LAN ports 2, 3, and 4 for use. If you only need to switch for 2-3 devices this may be satisfactory. However, for those of you that would prefer a more traditional switch setup where there is a dedicated WAN port and the rest of the ports are accessible, you’ll need to flash a third-party router firmware like the powerful DD-WRT onto your device. Doing so opens up the router to a greater degree of modification and allows you to assign the previously reserved WAN port to the switch, thus opening up LAN ports 1-4. Even if you don’t intend to use that extra port, DD-WRT offers you so many more options that it’s worth the extra few steps. Preparing Your Router for Life as a Switch Before we jump right in to shutting down the Wi-Fi functionality and repurposing your device as a network switch, there are a few important prep steps to attend to. First, you want to reset the router (if you just flashed a new firmware to your router, skip this step). Following the reset procedures for your particular router or go with what is known as the “Peacock Method” wherein you hold down the reset button for thirty seconds, unplug the router and wait (while still holding the reset button) for thirty seconds, and then plug it in while, again, continuing to hold down the rest button. Over the life of a router there are a variety of changes made, big and small, so it’s best to wipe them all back to the factory default before repurposing the router as a switch. Second, after resetting, we need to change the IP address of the device on the local network to an address which does not directly conflict with the new router. The typical default IP address for a home router is 192.168.1.1; if you ever need to get back into the administration panel of the router-turned-switch to check on things or make changes it will be a real hassle if the IP address of the device conflicts with the new home router. The simplest way to deal with this is to assign an address close to the actual router address but outside the range of addresses that your router will assign via the DHCP client; a good pick then is 192.168.1.2. Once the router is reset (or re-flashed) and has been assigned a new IP address, it’s time to configure it as a switch. Basic Router to Switch Configuration If you don’t want to (or need to) flash new firmware onto your device to open up that extra port, this is the section of the tutorial for you: we’ll cover how to take a stock router, our previously mentioned WRT54 series Linksys, and convert it to a switch. Hook the Wi-Fi router up to the network via one of the LAN ports (consider the WAN port as good as dead from this point forward, unless you start using the router in its traditional function again or later flash a more advanced firmware to the device, the port is officially retired at this point). Open the administration control panel via  web browser on a connected computer. Before we get started two things: first,  anything we don’t explicitly instruct you to change should be left in the default factory-reset setting as you find it, and two, change the settings in the order we list them as some settings can’t be changed after certain features are disabled. To start, let’s navigate to Setup ->Basic Setup. Here you need to change the following things: Local IP Address: [different than the primary router, e.g. 192.168.1.2] Subnet Mask: [same as the primary router, e.g. 255.255.255.0] DHCP Server: Disable Save with the “Save Settings” button and then navigate to Setup -> Advanced Routing: Operating Mode: Router This particular setting is very counterintuitive. The “Operating Mode” toggle tells the device whether or not it should enable the Network Address Translation (NAT)  feature. Because we’re turning a smart piece of networking hardware into a relatively dumb one, we don’t need this feature so we switch from Gateway mode (NAT on) to Router mode (NAT off). Our next stop is Wireless -> Basic Wireless Settings: Wireless SSID Broadcast: Disable Wireless Network Mode: Disabled After disabling the wireless we’re going to, again, do something counterintuitive. Navigate to Wireless -> Wireless Security and set the following parameters: Security Mode: WPA2 Personal WPA Algorithms: TKIP+AES WPA Shared Key: [select some random string of letters, numbers, and symbols like JF#d$di!Hdgio890] Now you may be asking yourself, why on Earth are we setting a rather secure Wi-Fi configuration on a Wi-Fi router we’re not going to use as a Wi-Fi node? On the off chance that something strange happens after, say, a power outage when your router-turned-switch cycles on and off a bunch of times and the Wi-Fi functionality is activated we don’t want to be running the Wi-Fi node wide open and granting unfettered access to your network. While the chances of this are next-to-nonexistent, it takes only a few seconds to apply the security measure so there’s little reason not to. Save your changes and navigate to Security ->Firewall. Uncheck everything but Filter Multicast Firewall Protect: Disable At this point you can save your changes again, review the changes you’ve made to ensure they all stuck, and then deploy your “new” switch wherever it is needed. Advanced Router to Switch Configuration For the advanced configuration, you’ll need a copy of DD-WRT installed on your router. Although doing so is an extra few steps, it gives you a lot more control over the process and liberates an extra port on the device. Hook the Wi-Fi router up to the network via one of the LAN ports (later you can switch the cable to the WAN port). Open the administration control panel via web browser on the connected computer. Navigate to the Setup -> Basic Setup tab to get started. In the Basic Setup tab, ensure the following settings are adjusted. The setting changes are not optional and are required to turn the Wi-Fi router into a switch. WAN Connection Type: Disabled Local IP Address: [different than the primary router, e.g. 192.168.1.2] Subnet Mask: [same as the primary router, e.g. 255.255.255.0] DHCP Server: Disable In addition to disabling the DHCP server, also uncheck all the DNSMasq boxes as the bottom of the DHCP sub-menu. If you want to activate the extra port (and why wouldn’t you), in the WAN port section: Assign WAN Port to Switch [X] At this point the router has become a switch and you have access to the WAN port so the LAN ports are all free. Since we’re already in the control panel, however, we might as well flip a few optional toggles that further lock down the switch and prevent something odd from happening. The optional settings are arranged via the menu you find them in. Remember to save your settings with the save button before moving onto a new tab. While still in the Setup -> Basic Setup menu, change the following: Gateway/Local DNS : [IP address of primary router, e.g. 192.168.1.1] NTP Client : Disable The next step is to turn off the radio completely (which not only kills the Wi-Fi but actually powers the physical radio chip off). Navigate to Wireless -> Advanced Settings -> Radio Time Restrictions: Radio Scheduling: Enable Select “Always Off” There’s no need to create a potential security problem by leaving the Wi-Fi radio on, the above toggle turns it completely off. Under Services -> Services: DNSMasq : Disable ttraff Daemon : Disable Under the Security -> Firewall tab, uncheck every box except “Filter Multicast”, as seen in the screenshot above, and then disable SPI Firewall. Once you’re done here save and move on to the Administration tab. Under Administration -> Management:  Info Site Password Protection : Enable Info Site MAC Masking : Disable CRON : Disable 802.1x : Disable Routing : Disable After this final round of tweaks, save and then apply your settings. Your router has now been, strategically, dumbed down enough to plod along as a very dependable little switch. Time to stuff it behind your desk or entertainment center and streamline your cabling.     

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• Ops Center Solaris 11 IPS Repository Management: Using ISO Images

  - by S Stelting

  Please join us for a live WebEx presentation of this topic on Tuesday, November 20th at 9am MDT. Details for the call are provided below: https://oracleconferencing.webex.com/oracleconferencing/j.php?ED=209834017&UID=1512096072&PW=NYTVlZTYxMzdm&RT=MiMxMQ%3D%3D Meeting password: oracle123 Call-in toll-free number: 1-866-682-4770 International numbers: http://www.intercall.com/oracle/access_numbers.htm Conference Code: 762 9343 # Security Code: 7777 # With Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c, you can provision, patch, monitor and manage Oracle Solaris 11 instances. To do this, Ops Center creates and maintains a Solaris 11 Image Packaging System (IPS) repository on the Enterprise Controller. During the Enterprise Controller configuration, you can load repository content directly from Oracle's Support Web site and subsequently synchronize the repository as new content becomes available. Of course, you can also use Solaris 11 ISO images to create and update your Ops Center repository. There are a few excellent reasons for doing this: You're running Ops Center in disconnected mode, and don't have Internet access on your Enterprise Controller You'd rather avoid the bandwidth associated with live synchronization of a Solaris 11 package repository This demo will show you how to use Solaris 11 ISO images to set up and update your Ops Center repository. Prerequisites This tip assumes that you've already installed the Enterprise Controller on a Solaris 11 OS instance and that you're ready for post-install configuration. In addition, there are specific Ops Center and OS version requirements depending on which version of Solaris 11 you plan to install.You can get full details about the requirements in the Release Notes for Ops Center 12c update 2. Additional information is available in the Ops Center update 2 Readme document. Part 1: Using a Solaris 11 ISO Image to Create an Ops Center Repository Step 1 – Download the Solaris 11 Repository Image The Oracle Web site provides a number of download links for official Solaris 11 images. Among those links is a two-part downloadable repository image, which provides repository content for Solaris 11 SPARC and X86 architectures. In this case, I used the Solaris 11 11/11 image. First, navigate to the Oracle Web site and accept the OTN License agreement: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/downloads/index.html Next, download both parts of the Solaris 11 repository image. I recommend using the Solaris 11 11/11 image, and have provided the URLs here: http://download.oracle.com/otn/solaris/11/sol-11-1111-repo-full.iso-ahttp://download.oracle.com/otn/solaris/11/sol-11-1111-repo-full.iso-b Finally, use the cat command to generate an ISO image you can use to create your repository: # cat sol-11-1111-repo-full.iso-a sol-11-1111-repo-full.iso-b > sol-11-1111-repo-full.iso The process is very similar if you plan to set up a Solaris 11.1 release in Ops Center. In that case, navigate to the Solaris 11 download page, accept the license agreement and download both parts of the Solaris 11.1 repository image. Use the cat command to create a single ISO image for Solaris 11.1 Step 2 – Mount the Solaris 11 ISO Image in your Local Filesystem Once you have created the Solaris 11 ISO file, use the mount command to attach it to your local filesystem. After the image has been mounted, you can browse the repository from the ./repo subdirectory, and use the pkgrepo command to verify that Solaris 11 recognizes the content: Step 3 – Use the Image to Create your Ops Center Repository When you have confirmed the repository is available, you can use the image to create the Enterprise Controller repository. The operation will be slightly different depending on whether you configure Ops Center for Connected or Disconnected Mode operation.For connected mode operation, specify the mounted ./repo directory in step 4.1 of the configuration wizard, replacing the default Web-based URL. Since you're synchronizing from an OS repository image, you don't need to specify a key or certificate for the operation. For disconnected mode configuration, specify the Solaris 11 directory along with the path to the disconnected mode bundle downloaded by running the Ops Center harvester script: Ops Center will run a job to import package content from the mounted ISO image. A synchronization job can take several hours to run – in my case, the job ran for 3 hours, 22 minutes on a SunFire X4200 M2 server. During the job, Ops Center performs three important tasks: Synchronizes all content from the image and refreshes the repository Updates the IPS publisher information Creates OS Provisioning profiles and policies based on the content When the job is complete, you can unmount the ISO image from your Enterprise Controller. At that time, you can view the repository contents in your Ops Center Solaris 11 library. For the Solaris 11 11/11 release, you should see 8,668 packages and patches in the contents. You should also see default deployment plans for Solaris 11 provisioning. As part of the repository import, Ops Center generates plans and profiles for desktop, small and large servers for the SPARC and X86 architecture. Part 2: Using a Solaris 11 SRU to update an Ops Center Repository It's possible to use the same approach to upgrade your Ops Center repository to a Solaris 11 Support Repository Update, or SRU. Each SRU provides packages and updates to Solaris 11 - for example, SRU 8.5 provided the packaged for Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.2 SRUs are available for download as ISO images from My Oracle Support, under document ID 1372094.1. The document provides download links for all SRUs which have been released by Oracle for Solaris 11. SRUs are cumulative, so later versions include the packages from earlier SRUs. After downloading an ISO image for an SRU, you can mount it to your local filesystem using a mount command similar to the one shown for Solaris 11 11/11. When the ISO image is mounted to the file system, you can perform the Add Content action from the Solaris 11 Library to synchronize packages and patches from the mounted image. I used the same mount point, so the repository URL was file://mnt/repo once again: After the synchronization of an SRU is complete, you can verify its content in the Solaris 11 library using the search function. The version pattern is 0.175.0.#, where the # is the same value as the SRU. In this example, I upgraded to SRU 1. The update job ran in just under 8 minutes, and a quick search shows that 22 software components were added to the repository: It's also possible to search for "Support Repository Update" to confirm the SRU was successfully added to the repository. Details on any of the update content are available by clicking the "View Details" button under the Packages/Patches entry.

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• SQLAuthority News – Pluralsight Course Review – Practices for Software Startups – Part 2 of 2

  - by pinaldave

  This is the second part of the two part series of Practices for Software Startup Pluralsight Course. Please read the first part of this series over here. The course is written by Stephen Forte (Blog | Twitter). Stephen Forte is the Chief Strategy Officer of the venture backed company, Telerik. Personal Learning Schedule After these three sessions it was 6:30 am and time to do my own blog.  But for the rest of the day, I kept thinking about the course, and wanted to go back and finish.  I was wishing that I had woken up at 3 am so I could finish all at one go.  All day long I was digesting what I had learned.  At 10 pm, after my daughter had gone to bed, I sighed on again.  I was not disappointed by the long wait.  As I mentioned before, Stephen has started four to six companies, and all of them are very successful today. Here is the video I promised yesterday – it discusses the importance of Right Sizing Your Startup. The Heartbeat of Startup – Technology Stephen has combined all technology knowledge into one 30 minute session.  He discussed  how to start your project, how to deal with opinions, and how to deal with multiple ideas – every start up has multiple directions it can go. He spent a lot of time emphasized deciding which direction to go and how to decide which will be the best for you.  He called it a continuous development cycle. One of the biggest hazards for a start-up company is one person deciding the direction the company will go, until down the road another team member announces that there is a glitch in their part of the work and that everyone will have to start over.  Even though a team of two or five people can move quickly, often the decision has gone too long and cannot be easily fixed.   Stephen used an example from his own life:  he was biased for one type of technology, and his teammate for another.  In the end they opted for his teammate’s  choice , and in the end it was a good decision, even though he was unfamiliar with that particular program.  He argues that technology should not be a barrier to progress, that you cannot rely on your experience only.  This really spoke to me because I am a big fan of SQL, but I know there is more out there, and I should be more open to it.  I give my thanks to Stephen, I learned something in this module besides startups. Money, Success and Epic Win! The longest, but most interesting, the module was funding your start-up.  You need to fund the start-up right at the very beginning, if not done right you will run into trouble.  The good news is that a few years ago start-ups required a lot more money – think millions of dollars – but now start-ups can get off the ground for thousands.  Stephen used an example of a company that years ago would have needed a million dollars, but today could be started for $600.  It is true that things have changed, but you still need money.  For $600 you can start small and add dynamically, as needed.  But the truth is that if you have $600, $6000, or $6 million, it will be spent.  Don’t think of it as trying to save money, think of it as investing in your future.   You will need money, and you will need to (quickly) decide what you do with the money: shares, stakeholders, investing in a team, hiring a CEO.  This is so important because once you have money and start the company, the company IS your money.  It is your biggest currency – having a percentage of ownership in the company.  Investors will want percentages as repayment for their investment, and they will want a say in the business as well.  You will have to decide how far you will dilute your shares, and how the company will be divided, if at all.  If you don’t plan in advance, you will find that after gaining three or four investors, suddenly you are the minority owner in your own dream.  You need to understand funding carefully.  This single module is worth all the money you would have spent on the whole course alone.  I encourage everyone to listen to this single module even if they don’t watch any of the others.     Press End to Start the Game – Exists! The final module is exit strategies.  You did all this work, dealt with all political and legal issues.  What are you going to get out of it? The answer is simple: money.  Maybe you want your company to be bought out, for you talent to bring you a profit.  You can sell the company to someone and still head it.  Many options are available.  You could sell and still work as an employee but no longer own the company.  There are many exit strategies.  This is where all your hard work comes into play.  It is important not to feel fooled at any step.  There are so many good ideas that end up in the garbage because of poor planning, so that if you find yourself successful, you don’t want to blow it at this step!  The exit is important.  I thought that this aspect of the course was completely unique, and I loved Stephen’s point of view.  I was lost deep in thought after this module ended.  I actually took two hours worth of notes on this section alone – and it was only a three hour course.  I am planning on attending this course one more time next week, just to catch up on all the small bits of wisdom I’m sure I missed. Thank you Stephen for bringing your real world experience with us!  I recommend that everyone attends this course, even if they don’t want to begin their own start-up company. It was indeed a long day for me. Do not forget to read part 1 of this story and attend course Practices for Software Startup Pluralsight Course. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Best Practices, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL Server and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Part 3

  - by SQLOS Team

  In parts 1 and 2 of this series we looked at the basics of Hyper-V Dynamic Memory and SQL Server memory management. In this part Serdar looks at configuration guidelines for SQL Server memory management. Part 3: Configuration Guidelines for Hyper-V Dynamic Memory and SQL Server Now that we understand SQL Server Memory Management and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory basics, let’s take a look at general configuration guidelines in order to utilize benefits of Hyper-V Dynamic Memory in your SQL Server VMs. Requirements Host Operating System Requirements Hyper-V Dynamic Memory feature is introduced with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. Therefore in order to use Dynamic Memory for your virtual machines, you need to have Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1 in your Hyper-V host. Guest Operating System Requirements In addition to this Dynamic Memory is only supported in Standard, Web, Enterprise and Datacenter editions of windows running inside VMs. Make sure that your VM is running one of these editions. For additional requirements on each operating system see “Dynamic Memory Configuration Guidelines” here. SQL Server Requirements All versions of SQL Server support Hyper-V Dynamic Memory. However, only certain editions of SQL Server are aware of dynamically changing system memory. To have a truly dynamic environment for your SQL Server VMs make sure that you are running one of the SQL Server editions listed below: ·         SQL Server 2005 Enterprise ·         SQL Server 2008 Enterprise / Datacenter Editions ·         SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise / Datacenter Editions Configuration guidelines for other versions of SQL Server are covered below in the FAQ section. Guidelines for configuring Dynamic Memory Parameters Here is how to configure Dynamic Memory for your SQL VMs in a nutshell: Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Parameter Recommendation Startup RAM 1 GB + SQL Min Server Memory Maximum RAM > SQL Max Server Memory Memory Buffer % 5 Memory Weight Based on performance needs   Startup RAM In order to ensure that your SQL Server VMs can start correctly, ensure that Startup RAM is higher than configured SQL Min Server Memory for your VMs. Otherwise SQL Server service will need to do paging in order to start since it will not be able to see enough memory during startup. Also note that Startup Memory will always be reserved for your VMs. This will guarantee a certain level of performance for your SQL Servers, however setting this too high will limit the consolidation benefits you’ll get out of your virtualization environment. Maximum RAM This one is obvious. If you’ve configured SQL Max Server Memory for your SQL Server, make sure that Dynamic Memory Maximum RAM configuration is higher than this value. Otherwise your SQL Server will not grow to memory values higher than the value configured for Dynamic Memory. Memory Buffer % Memory buffer configuration is used to provision file cache to virtual machines in order to improve performance. Due to the fact that SQL Server is managing its own buffer pool, Memory Buffer setting should be configured to the lowest value possible, 5%. Configuring a higher memory buffer will prevent low resource notifications from Windows Memory Manager and it will prevent reclaiming memory from SQL Server VMs. Memory Weight Memory weight configuration defines the importance of memory to a VM. Configure higher values for the VMs that have higher performance requirements. VMs with higher memory weight will have more memory under high memory pressure conditions on your host. Questions and Answers Q1 – Which SQL Server memory model is best for Dynamic Memory? The best SQL Server model for Dynamic Memory is “Locked Page Memory Model”. This memory model ensures that SQL Server memory is never paged out and it’s also adaptive to dynamically changing memory in the system. This will be extremely useful when Dynamic Memory is attempting to remove memory from SQL Server VMs ensuring no SQL Server memory is paged out. You can find instructions on configuring “Locked Page Memory Model” for your SQL Servers here. Q2 – What about other SQL Server Editions, how should I configure Dynamic Memory for them? Other editions of SQL Server do not adapt to dynamically changing environments. They will determine how much memory they should allocate during startup and don’t change this value afterwards. Therefore make sure that you configure a higher startup memory for your VM because that will be all the memory that SQL Server utilize Tune Maximum Memory and Memory Buffer based on the other workloads running on the system. If there are no other workloads consider using Static Memory for these editions. Q3 – What if I have multiple SQL Server instances in a VM? Having multiple SQL Server instances in a VM is not a general recommendation for predictable performance, manageability and isolation. In order to achieve a predictable behavior make sure that you configure SQL Min Server Memory and SQL Max Server Memory for each instance in the VM. And make sure that: ·         Dynamic Memory Startup Memory is greater than the sum of SQL Min Server Memory values for the instances in the VM ·         Dynamic Memory Maximum Memory is greater than the sum of SQL Max Server Memory values for the instances in the VM Q4 – I’m using Large Page Memory Model for my SQL Server. Can I still use Dynamic Memory? The short answer is no. SQL Server does not dynamically change its memory size when configured with Large Page Memory Model. In virtualized environments Hyper-V provides large page support by default. Most of the time, Large Page Memory Model doesn’t bring any benefits to a SQL Server if it’s running in virtualized environments. Q5 – How do I monitor SQL performance when I’m trying Dynamic Memory on my VMs? Use the performance counters below to monitor memory performance for SQL Server: Process - Working Set: This counter is available in the VM via process performance counters. It represents the actual amount of physical memory being used by SQL Server process in the VM. SQL Server – Buffer Cache Hit Ratio: This counter is available in the VM via SQL Server counters. This represents the paging being done by SQL Server. A rate of 90% or higher is desirable. Conclusion These blog posts are a quick start to a story that will be developing more in the near future. We’re still continuing our testing and investigations to provide more detailed configuration guidelines with example performance numbers with a white paper in the upcoming months. Now it’s time to give SQL Server and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory a try. Use this guidelines to kick-start your environment. See what you think about it and let us know of your experiences. - Serdar Sutay Originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlosteam/

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 30, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 30, 2012Popular ReleasesCAPTCHA Solver: Initial Release: This is the initial Release :) Still very much a WIP.MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.2.17: Reccomended update to 2.2.16 Changelog for 2.2.17 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Fixed bugs around thread synchronization with new remote model (fixes cause the app to crash or hang) 2. Updated UPnP code base, faster and more reliable now 3. Now you can get audio/video properties for multiple files on main page. Selected multiple files and right click, all selected files properties will be shown. 4. Fix a bug, not able to enter a conversion task name in the GUIAggravation: Version 1.0: This version 1.0 release is pretty stable. You need the Silverlight 4 runtime, developer tools, and Experssion Blend 4 installed.Readable Passphrase Generator: KeePass Plugin 0.7.1: See the KeePass Plugin Step By Step Guide for instructions on how to install the plugin. Changes Built against KeePass 2.20Windows 8 Toolkit - Charts and More: Beta 1.0: The First Compiled Version of my LibraryPDF.NET: PDF.NET.Ver4.5-OpenSourceCode: PDF.NET Ver4.5 ????，????Web??????。 PDF.NET Ver4.5 Open Source Code,include a sample Web application project.D3 Loot Tracker: 1.4: Session name is displayed in the UI. Changes data directory for clickonce deployment so that sessions files are persisted between versions. Added a delete button in the sessions list window. Allow opening of the sessions local folder from the session list widow. Display the session name in the main window Ability to select which diablo process to hook up to when pressing new () function BUT only if multi-process support is selected in the generals settings tab menu. Session picker...CRM 2011 Visual Ribbon Editor: Visual Ribbon Editor 1.1 Beta: Visual Ribbon Editor 1.1 Beta What's New: Fixed scrolling issue in UnHide dialog Added support for connecting via ADFS / IFD Added support for more than one action for a button Added support for empty StringParameter for Javascript functions Fixed bug in rule CrmClientTypeRule when selecting Outlook option Extended Prefix field in New Button dialogVisual Studio Icon Patcher: Version 1.5.2: This version contains no new images from v1.5.1 Contains the following improvements: Better support for detecting the installed languages The extract & inject commands won’t run if Visual Studio is running You may now run in extract or inject mode The p/invoke code was cleaned up based on Code Analysis recommendations When a p/invoke method fails the Win32 error message is now displayed Error messages use red text Status messages use green textZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.9.0.0: On the way to a release 1.0 the API should be stable now with this version. sync with rev. 2393 of the java version improved api better Unity support Windows RT binaries Windows CE binaries new Windows Service demo new WPF demo WindowsCE Hotfix: Fixes an error with ISO8859-1 encoding and scannning of QR-Codes. The hotfix is only needed for the WindowsCE platform.C.B.R. : Comic Book Reader: CBR 0.7: Synthesis since 0.6 : ePUB : Complete refactoring Add a new dedicated feed viewer for opds stream PDF conversion : improved with image merge Make all backstage panel scrollable Integrate the new AvalonDock 2 library. Support multi-document. Library explorer and Table of content are now toolboxes Designer for dynamic books is now mvvm and much better New BrowserForControl Customized xps viewer to suppress toolbars and bind it to cbr commands Add quick start manual and button ...menu4web: menu4web 1.0 - free javascript menu for web sites: menu4web 1.0 has been tested with all major browsers: Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera and Safari. Minified m4w.js library is less than 9K. Includes 21 menu examples of different styles. Can be freely distributed under The MIT License (MIT).Rawr: Rawr 5.0.0: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.26: The zh-CN issue has been solved. We also add a project management module.VidCoder: 1.4.1 Beta: Updated to HandBrake 4971. This should fix some issues with stuck PGS subtitles. Fixed build break which prevented pre-compiled XML serializers from showing up. Fixed problem where a preset would get errantly marked as modified when re-opening the encode settings window or importing a new preset.Snake!: Snake 1.0: Version 1 StablePaging SharePoint ListItems using listitems position: Paginglistitems V1.0: This is a console application which has two methods both on CSOM and SOM to display the listitems in a paged manner.SharePoint Move Discussion Threads: SharePoint Move Discussion Threads ver 0.1: ver 0.1NTCPMSG: V1.1.1.0: increase the performance. Support .net framework 4.0.BlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.2: 2012.09.23 Ver5.7.2 (1)InetTest?? (2)HTTP?????????????????100???????????New Projects2D Sprite Editor: This is a 2d sprite editor. Import your sprite sheet, trace your animations frame and export the coordinates points in a simple txt file, ready to import.caifenweb1: test project.CatchThatException: This is a small logging library We created at developerpath.com to help us log exceptions. It write it to a text file and you can easilay open that txt.FsxWs - WebServices for Microsoft FSX: WebServices for MS Flight Simulator. Get flights data as JSON, KML. !! Still in SetUp phase - be patient !!GetTPB: Some training in downloading and parsing web pages, with multithreading too.JSON-RPC Client Generator (for XBMC): The goal of this project is to provide a .Net client for the XBMC JSONRPC API. The main part is not XBMC dependent and may be used for any JSON-RPC client.matlab-silhouette-pose-wtf: Whatevermfp: this is random codeMVC Grid: MVC Grid ExampleMyWebSocketTry: sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssNetduino Console: Netduino Console is an interface with built in messaging layers that allows you as a developer to dynamically create plugins following a provided interface to iSharePoint ASP.NET Verifier: Project will allow to verify SharePoint 2010 components using ASP.NET web applicationSharepoint Custom Upload: This is a SharePoint solution that allows an administrator to customize the upload page individually for each document library in a site.. It allows you to makeWinWeb Browser Deluxe: WinWeb Browser Deluxe es un navegador web de código abierto basado en Internet Explorer hecho en Visual Basic .NET. Descargalo ya!writethatoutput: This is the official release page for WriteThatOutPut from developerpath.com

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• Change or Reset Windows Password from a Ubuntu Live CD

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  If you can’t log in even after trying your twelve passwords, or you’ve inherited a computer complete with password-protected profiles, worry not – you don’t have to do a fresh install of Windows. We’ll show you how to change or reset your Windows password from a Ubuntu Live CD. This method works for all of the NT-based version of Windows – anything from Windows 2000 and later, basically. And yes, that includes Windows 7. You’ll need a Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD, or a bootable Ubuntu 9.10 Flash Drive. If you don’t have one, or have forgotten how to boot from the flash drive, check out our article on creating a bootable Ubuntu 9.10 flash drive. The program that lets us manipulate Windows passwords is called chntpw. The steps to install it are different in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Ubuntu. Installation: 32-bit Open up Synaptic Package Manager by clicking on System at the top of the screen, expanding the Administration section, and clicking on Synaptic Package Manager. chntpw is found in the universe repository. Repositories are a way for Ubuntu to group software together so that users are able to choose if they want to use only completely open source software maintained by Ubuntu developers, or branch out and use software with different licenses and maintainers. To enable software from the universe repository, click on Settings > Repositories in the Synaptic window. Add a checkmark beside the box labeled “Community-maintained Open Source software (universe)” and then click close. When you change the repositories you are selecting software from, you have to reload the list of available software. In the main Synaptic window, click on the Reload button. The software lists will be downloaded. Once downloaded, Synaptic must rebuild its search index. The label over the text field by the Search button will read “Rebuilding search index.” When it reads “Quick search,” type chntpw in the text field. The package will show up in the list. Click on the checkbox near the chntpw name. Click on Mark for Installation. chntpw won’t actually be installed until you apply the changes you’ve made, so click on the Apply button in the Synaptic window now. You will be prompted to accept the changes. Click Apply. The changes should be applied quickly. When they’re done, click Close. chntpw is now installed! You can close Synaptic Package Manager. Skip to the section titled Using chntpw to reset your password. Installation: 64-bit The version of chntpw available in Ubuntu’s universe repository will not work properly on a 64-bit machine. Fortunately, a patched version exists in Debian’s Unstable branch, so let’s download it from there and install it manually. Open Firefox. Whether it’s your preferred browser or not, it’s very readily accessible in the Ubuntu Live CD environment, so it will be the easiest to use. There’s a shortcut to Firefox in the top panel. Navigate to http://packages.debian.org/sid/amd64/chntpw/download and download the latest version of chntpw for 64-bit machines. Note: In most cases it would be best to add the Debian Unstable branch to a package manager, but since the Live CD environment will revert to its original state once you reboot, it’ll be faster to just download the .deb file. Save the .deb file to the default location. You can close Firefox if desired. Open a terminal window by clicking on Applications at the top-left of the screen, expanding the Accessories folder, and clicking on Terminal. In the terminal window, enter the following text, hitting enter after each line: cd Downloadssudo dpkg –i chntpw* chntpw will now be installed. Using chntpw to reset your password Before running chntpw, you will have to mount the hard drive that contains your Windows installation. In most cases, Ubuntu 9.10 makes this simple. Click on Places at the top-left of the screen. If your Windows drive is easily identifiable – usually by its size – then left click on it. If it is not obvious, then click on Computer and check out each hard drive until you find the correct one. The correct hard drive will have the WINDOWS folder in it. When you find it, make a note of the drive’s label that appears in the menu bar of the file browser. If you don’t already have one open, start a terminal window by going to Applications > Accessories > Terminal. In the terminal window, enter the commands cd /medials pressing enter after each line. You should see one or more strings of text appear; one of those strings should correspond with the string that appeared in the title bar of the file browser earlier. Change to that directory by entering the command cd <hard drive label> Since the hard drive label will be very annoying to type in, you can use a shortcut by typing in the first few letters or numbers of the drive label (capitalization matters) and pressing the Tab key. It will automatically complete the rest of the string (if those first few letters or numbers are unique). We want to switch to a certain Windows directory. Enter the command: cd WINDOWS/system32/config/ Again, you can use tab-completion to speed up entering this command. To change or reset the administrator password, enter: sudo chntpw SAM SAM is the file that contains your Windows registry. You will see some text appear, including a list of all of the users on your system. At the bottom of the terminal window, you should see a prompt that begins with “User Edit Menu:” and offers four choices. We recommend that you clear the password to blank (you can always set a new password in Windows once you log in). To do this, enter “1” and then “y” to confirm. If you would like to change the password instead, enter “2”, then your desired password, and finally “y” to confirm. If you would like to reset or change the password of a user other than the administrator, enter: sudo chntpw –u <username> SAM From here, you can follow the same steps as before: enter “1” to reset the password to blank, or “2” to change it to a value you provide. And that’s it! Conclusion chntpw is a very useful utility provided for free by the open source community. It may make you think twice about how secure the Windows login system is, but knowing how to use chntpw can save your tail if your memory fails you two or eight times! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Reset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CDChange Your Forgotten Windows Password with the Linux System Rescue CDHow to Create and Use a Password Reset Disk in Windows Vista & Windows 7Reset Your Forgotten Password the Easy Way Using the Ultimate Boot CD for WindowsHow to install Spotify in Ubuntu 9.10 using Wine 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 Add a Custom Title in IE using Spybot or Spyware Blaster When You Need to Hail a Taxi in NYC Live Map of Marine Traffic NoSquint Remembers Site Specific Zoom Levels (Firefox) New Firefox release 3.6.3 fixes 1 Critical bug Dark Side of the Moon (8-bit)

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, January 12, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, January 12, 2011Popular ReleasesGoogle URL Shortener API for .NET: Google URL Shortener API v1: According follow specification: http://code.google.com/apis/urlshortener/v1/reference.htmljGestures: a jQuery plugin for gesture events: 0.81: added event substitution for IE updated index.htmlStyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.14986.000: A considerable amount of work has gone into this release: Features: 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 ...SQL Monitor - tracking sql server activities: SQL Monitor 3.1 beta 1: 1. support alert message template 2. dynamic toolbar commands depending on functionality 3. fixed some bugs 4. refactored part of the code, now more stable and more clean upFacebook C# SDK: 4.2.1: - Authentication bug fixes - Updated Json.Net to version 4.0.0 - BREAKING CHANGE: Removed cookieSupport config setting, now automatic. This download is also availible on NuGet: Facebook FacebookWeb FacebookWebMvcUmbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.6: The Umbraco 4.6 (codename JUNO) release contains many new features focusing on an improved installation experience, a number of robust developer features, and contains nearly 200 bug fixes since the 4.5.2 release. Improved installer experience Updated Starter Kits (Simple, Blog, Personal, Business) Beautiful, free, customizable skins included Skinning engine and Skin customization (see Skinning Documentation Kit) Default dashboards on install with hide option Updated Login timeout ...ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap: ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap 1.1 beta2: This is the beta2 release for the ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap version 1.1. Changes from version 1.0: Multi-part geometries are now supported. Homogeneous relations (consisting of only lines or only polygons) are converted into the appropriate multi-part geometry. Mixed relations and super relations are maintained and tracked in a stand-alone relation table. The underlying editing logic has changed. As opposed to tracking the editing changes upon "Save edit" or "Stop edit" the changes a...Hawkeye - The .Net Runtime Object Editor: Hawkeye 1.2.5: In the case you are running an x86 Windows and you installed Release 1.2.4, you should consider upgrading to this release (1.2.5) as it appears Hawkeye is broken on x86 OS. I apologize for the inconvenience, but it appears Hawkeye 1.2.4 (and probably previous versions) doesn't run on x86 Windows (See issue http://hawkeye.codeplex.com/workitem/7791). This maintenance release fixes this broken behavior. This release comes in two flavors: Hawkeye.125.N2 is the standard .NET 2 build, was compile...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.0 (January 2011): Another release build for daily use; it contains many new features, enhanced compatibility with latest PHP opensource applications and several issue fixes. To improve the performance of your application using MySQL, please use Managed MySQL Extension for Phalanger. Changes made within this release include following: New features available only in Phalanger. Full support of Multi-Script-Assemblies was implemented; you can build your application into several DLLs now. Deploy them separately t...EnhSim: EnhSim 2.3.0: 2.3.0This 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 - Changed how flame shoc...AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.3: A message will be displayed when there's an update available Shows a list of recent mastery files in the Editor Tab (requested by quite a few people) Updater: Update information is now scrollable Added a buton to launch AutoLoL after updating is finished Updated the UI to match that of AutoLoL Fix: Detects and resolves 'Read Only' state on Version.xmlTweetSharp: TweetSharp v2.0.0.0 - Preview 7: Documentation for this release may be found at http://tweetsharp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=UserGuide&referringTitle=Documentation. Note: This code is currently preview quality. Preview 7 ChangesFixes the regression issue in OAuth from Preview 6 Preview 6 ChangesMaintenance release with user reported fixes Preview 5 ChangesMaintenance release with user reported fixes Third Party Library VersionsHammock v1.0.6: http://hammock.codeplex.com Json.NET 3.5 Release 8: http://json.codeplex.comExtended WPF Toolkit: Extended WPF Toolkit - 1.3.0: What's in the 1.3.0 Release?BusyIndicator ButtonSpinner ChildWindow ColorPicker - Updated (Breaking Changes) DateTimeUpDown - New Control Magnifier - New Control MaskedTextBox - New Control MessageBox NumericUpDown RichTextBox RichTextBoxFormatBar - Updated .NET 3.5 binaries and SourcePlease note: The Extended WPF Toolkit 3.5 is dependent on .NET Framework 3.5 and the WPFToolkit. You must install .NET Framework 3.5 and the WPFToolkit in order to use any features in the To...sNPCedit: sNPCedit v0.9d: added elementclient coordinate catcher to catch coordinates select a target (ingame) i.e. your char, npc or monster than click the button and coordinates+direction will be transfered to the selected row in the table corrected labels from Rot to Direction (because it is a vector)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.VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.1: New release with bug fixes and updates for performance.UltimateJB: Ultimate JB 2.03 PL3 KAKAROTO + HERMES + Spoof 3.5: Voici une version attendu avec impatience pour beaucoup : - La version PL3 KAKAROTO intégre ses dernières modification et intégre maintenant le firmware 2.43 !!! Conclusion : - UltimateJB203PSXXXDEFAULTKAKAROTO=> Pas de spoof mais disponible pour les PS3 suivantes : 3.41_kiosk 3.41 3.40 3.30 3.21 3.15 3.10 3.01 2.76 2.70 2.60 2.53 2.43 - UltimateJB203PS341_HERMES => Pas de spoof mais version hermes 4b - UltimateJB203PS341HERMESSPOOF35X => hermes 4b + spoof des firmwares 3.50 et 3.55 au li....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...EFMVC - ASP.NET MVC 3 and EF Code First: EFMVC 0.5- ASP.NET MVC 3 and EF Code First: Demo web app ASP.NET MVC 3, Razor and EF Code FirstVidCoder: 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...New ProjectsASP.NET MVC Scaffolding: Scaffolding package for ASP.NETAstor: OData Explorer: OData ExplorerBasic Users Community: A simple user community with threads and posts.Bukkit Server Manager: BSM makes server managing easy we have multiple type and database support including: MySql, SQLite types: VPS, Dedicated, Home PCCh4CP: Chamber 4 control programDotNetNuke Telerik Library: A set of Telerik wrappers for DotNetNuke module developers to utilize which aren't yet included as of 5.6.1. Eventually this will be offloaded to the core. Enjoy Life: our fypFolderSizeChecker: It suppose to check the size of big folders in specific partition and help user to find the most disk usage location. (It's simple project so please don't expect big and complex algorithms)HomeTeamOnline: This is project of HomeTeamOnlineICSWorld: This is project of ICSWorldIMAP Client for .NET 4.0 using LumiSoft: Develop an IMAP client using this sample project based on the LumiSoft .NET open source project. This project compiles in .NET 4.0 and demonstrates how to pull email using IMAP. The purpose of the project is for email auto processing.MUIExt (Multilingual User Interface Extender): MUIExt makes it easier for SharePoint 2010 users to create multilingual sites. You'll no longer have to live with the MUI limitations or have to manage variations. It's developed in csharp.Phoenix Service Bus: The goal of this pServiceBus is to provide an API and Service Components that would make implementing an ESB Infrastructure in your environment. It's developed in C#, and also have API written for Javascript Clients PhotoSnapper: Home project just to rename photos or .mov files in a folder starting from from a user defined number.redditfier: A windows application to notify redditors with new posts.SharePoint Field Updater: Automatically update sub fields according to a lookup field. For example: Updating field "Contact" will automatically put "Contact Email" and "Address" in the appropriate text fields.TXLCMS: emptyUmbraco Spark engine: Spark macro engine for UmbracoUrdu Translation: Urdu Translation Project WFTestDesign: BizUnit WF is based on BizUnit solution that allows user to define a test using WorkFlow UI, custom activities designed in this extension and general Workflow activities.It's enable also to use breakpoint in test. It's developed in C#.WPF Date Range Slider: A WPF Date Range Slider user control written with C# to allow your users to choose a range of dates using a double thumbed slider control.WPMind Framework for WP7: This project is used to provide some Windows Phone 7 controls for Windows Phone 7 Silverlight developer. Please join us if you are interested in this project.

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• ASP.NET Controls – CommunityServer Captcha ControlAdapter, a practical case

  - by nmgomes

  The ControlAdapter is available since .NET framework version 2.0 and his main goal is to adapt and customize a control render in order to achieve a specific behavior or layout. This customization is done without changing the base control. A ControlAdapter is commonly used to custom render for specific platforms like Mobile. In this particular case the ControlAdapter was used to add a specific behavior to a Control. In this  post I will use one adapter to add a Captcha to all WeblogPostCommentForm controls within pontonetpt.com CommunityServer instance. The Challenge The ControlAdapter complexity is usually associated with the complexity/structure of is base control. This case is precisely one of those since base control dynamically load his content (controls) thru several ITemplate. Those of you who already played with ITemplate knows that while it is an excellent option for control composition it also brings to the table a big issue: “Controls defined within a template are not available for manipulation until they are instantiated inside another control.” While analyzing the WeblogPostCommentForm control I found that he uses the ITemplate technique to compose it’s layout and unfortunately I also found that the template content vary from theme to theme. This could have been a problem but luckily WeblogPostCommentForm control template content always contains a submit button with a well known ID (at least I can assume that there are a well known set of IDs). Using this submit button as anchor it’s possible to add the Captcha controls in the correct place. Another important finding was that WeblogPostCommentForm control inherits from the WrappedFormBase control which is the base control for all CommunityServer input forms. Knowing this inheritance link the main goal has changed to became the creation of a base ControlAdapter that  could be extended and customized to allow adding Captcha to: post comments form contact form user creation form. And, with this mind set, I decided to used the following ControlAdapter base class signature :public abstract class WrappedFormBaseCaptchaAdapter<T> : ControlAdapter where T : WrappedFormBase { }Great, but there are still many to do … Captcha The Captcha will be assembled with: A dynamically generated image with a set of random numbers A TextBox control where the image number will be inserted A Validator control to validate whether TextBox numbers match the image numbers This is a common Captcha implementation, is not rocket science and don’t bring any additional problem. The main problem, as told before, is to find the correct anchor control to ensure a correct Captcha control injection. The anchor control can vary by: target control  theme Implementation To support this dynamic scenario I choose to use the following implementation:private List<string> _validAnchorIds = null; protected virtual List<string> ValidAnchorIds { get { if (this._validAnchorIds == null) { this._validAnchorIds = new List<string>(); this._validAnchorIds.Add("btnSubmit"); } return this._validAnchorIds; } } private Control GetAnchorControl(T wrapper) { if (this.ValidAnchorIds == null || this.ValidAnchorIds.Count == 0) { throw new ArgumentException("Cannot be null or empty", "validAnchorNames"); } var q = from anchorId in this.ValidAnchorIds let anchorControl = CSControlUtility.Instance().FindControl(wrapper, anchorId) where anchorControl != null select anchorControl; return q.FirstOrDefault(); } I can now, using the ValidAnchorIds property, configure a set of valid anchor control  Ids. The GetAnchorControl method searches for a valid anchor control within the set of valid control Ids. Here, some of you may question why to use a LINQ To Objects expression, but the important here is to notice the usage of CSControlUtility.Instance().FindControl CommunityServer method. I want to build on top of CommunityServer not to reinvent the wheel. Assuming that an anchor control was found, it’s now possible to inject the Captcha at the correct place. This not something new, we do this all the time when creating server controls or adding dynamic controls:protected sealed override void CreateChildControls() { base.CreateChildControls(); if (this.IsCaptchaRequired) { T wrapper = base.Control as T; if (wrapper != null) { Control anchorControl = GetAnchorControl(wrapper); if (anchorControl != null) { Panel phCaptcha = new Panel {CssClass = "CommonFormField", ID = "Captcha"}; int index = anchorControl.Parent.Controls.IndexOf(anchorControl); anchorControl.Parent.Controls.AddAt(index, phCaptcha); CaptchaConfiguration.DefaultProvider.AddCaptchaControls( phCaptcha, GetValidationGroup(wrapper, anchorControl)); } } } } Here you can see a new entity in action: a provider. This is a CaptchaProvider class instance and is only goal is to create the Captcha itself and do everything else is needed to ensure is correct operation.public abstract class CaptchaProvider : ProviderBase { public abstract void AddCaptchaControls(Panel captchaPanel, string validationGroup); } You can create your own specific CaptchaProvider class to use different Captcha strategies including the use of existing Captcha services  like ReCaptcha. Once the generic ControlAdapter was created became extremely easy to created a specific one. Here is the specific ControlAdapter for the WeblogPostCommentForm control:public class WeblogPostCommentFormCaptchaAdapter : WrappedFormBaseCaptchaAdapter<WrappedFormBase> { #region Overriden Methods protected override List<string> ValidAnchorIds { get { List<string> validAnchorNames = base.ValidAnchorIds; validAnchorNames.Add("CommentSubmit"); return validAnchorNames; } } protected override string DefaultValidationGroup { get { return "CreateCommentForm"; } } #endregion Overriden Methods } Configuration This is the magic step. Without changing the original pages and keeping the application original assemblies untouched we are going to add a new behavior to the CommunityServer application. To glue everything together you must follow this steps: Add the following configuration to default.browser file:<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?> <browsers> <browser refID="Default"> <controlAdapters> <!-- Adapter for the WeblogPostCommentForm control in order to add the Captcha and prevent SPAM comments --> <adapter controlType="CommunityServer.Blogs.Controls.WeblogPostCommentForm" adapterType="NunoGomes.CommunityServer.Components.WeblogPostCommentFormCaptchaAdapter, NunoGomes.CommunityServer" /> </controlAdapters> </browser> </browsers> Add the following configuration to web.config file:<configuration> <configSections> <!-- New section for Captcha providers configuration --> <section name="communityServer.Captcha" type="NunoGomes.CommunityServer.Captcha.Configuration.CaptchaSection" /> </configSections> <!-- Configuring a simple Captcha provider --> <communityServer.Captcha defaultProvider="simpleCaptcha"> <providers> <add name="simpleCaptcha" type="NunoGomes.CommunityServer.Captcha.Providers.SimpleCaptchaProvider, NunoGomes.CommunityServer" imageUrl="~/captcha.ashx" enabled="true" passPhrase="_YourPassPhrase_" saltValue="_YourSaltValue_" hashAlgorithm="SHA1" passwordIterations="3" keySize="256" initVector="_YourInitVectorWithExactly_16_Bytes_" /> </providers> </communityServer.Captcha> <system.web> <httpHandlers> <!-- The Captcha Image handler used by the simple Captcha provider --> <add verb="GET" path="captcha.ashx" type="NunoGomes.CommunityServer.Captcha.Providers.SimpleCaptchaProviderImageHandler, NunoGomes.CommunityServer" /> </httpHandlers> </system.web> <system.webServer> <handlers accessPolicy="Read, Write, Script, Execute"> <!-- The Captcha Image handler used by the simple Captcha provider --> <add verb="GET" name="captcha" path="captcha.ashx" type="NunoGomes.CommunityServer.Captcha.Providers.SimpleCaptchaProviderImageHandler, NunoGomes.CommunityServer" /> </handlers> </system.webServer> </configuration> Conclusion Building a ControlAdapter can be complex but the reward is his ability to allows us, thru configuration changes, to modify an application render and/or behavior. You can see this ControlAdapter in action here and here (anonymous required). A complete solution is available in “CommunityServer Extensions” Codeplex project.

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• SSIS - XML Source Script

  - by simonsabin

  The XML Source in SSIS is great if you have a 1 to 1 mapping between entity and table. You can do more complex mapping but it becomes very messy and won't perform. What other options do you have? The challenge with XML processing is to not need a huge amount of memory. I remember using the early versions of Biztalk with loaded the whole document into memory to map from one document type to another. This was fine for small documents but was an absolute killer for large documents. You therefore need a streaming approach. For flexibility however you want to be able to generate your rows easily, and if you've ever used the XmlReader you will know its ugly code to write. That brings me on to LINQ. The is an implementation of LINQ over XML which is really nice. You can write nice LINQ queries instead of the XMLReader stuff. The downside is that by default LINQ to XML requires a whole XML document to work with. No streaming. Your code would look like this. We create an XDocument and then enumerate over a set of annoymous types we generate from our LINQ statement XDocument x = XDocument.Load("C:\\TEMP\\CustomerOrders-Attribute.xml");   foreach (var xdata in (from customer in x.Elements("OrderInterface").Elements("Customer")                        from order in customer.Elements("Orders").Elements("Order")                        select new { Account = customer.Attribute("AccountNumber").Value                                   , OrderDate = order.Attribute("OrderDate").Value }                        )) {     Output0Buffer.AddRow();     Output0Buffer.AccountNumber = xdata.Account;     Output0Buffer.OrderDate = Convert.ToDateTime(xdata.OrderDate); } As I said the downside to this is that you are loading the whole document into memory. I did some googling and came across some helpful videos from a nice UK DPE Mike Taulty http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/screencasts/screencast/289/LINQ-to-XML-Streaming-In-Large-Documents.aspx. Which show you how you can combine LINQ and the XmlReader to get a semi streaming approach. I took what he did and implemented it in SSIS. What I found odd was that when I ran it I got different numbers between using the streamed and non streamed versions. I found the cause was a little bug in Mikes code that causes the pointer in the XmlReader to progress past the start of the element and thus foreach (var xdata in (from customer in StreamReader("C:\\TEMP\\CustomerOrders-Attribute.xml","Customer")                                from order in customer.Elements("Orders").Elements("Order")                                select new { Account = customer.Attribute("AccountNumber").Value                                           , OrderDate = order.Attribute("OrderDate").Value }                                ))         {             Output0Buffer.AddRow();             Output0Buffer.AccountNumber = xdata.Account;             Output0Buffer.OrderDate = Convert.ToDateTime(xdata.OrderDate);         } These look very similiar and they are the key element is the method we are calling, StreamReader. This method is what gives us streaming, what it does is return a enumerable list of elements, because of the way that LINQ works this results in the data being streamed in. static IEnumerable<XElement> StreamReader(String filename, string elementName) {     using (XmlReader xr = XmlReader.Create(filename))     {         xr.MoveToContent();         while (xr.Read()) //Reads the first element         {             while (xr.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Element && xr.Name == elementName)             {                 XElement node = (XElement)XElement.ReadFrom(xr);                   yield return node;             }         }         xr.Close();     } } This code is specifically designed to return a list of the elements with a specific name. The first Read reads the root element and then the inner while loop checks to see if the current element is the type we want. If not we do the xr.Read() again until we find the element type we want. We then use the neat function XElement.ReadFrom to read an element and all its sub elements into an XElement. This is what is returned and can be consumed by the LINQ statement. Essentially once one element has been read we need to check if we are still on the same element type and name (the inner loop) This was Mikes mistake, if we called .Read again we would advance the XmlReader beyond the start of the Element and so the ReadFrom method wouldn't work. So with the code above you can use what ever LINQ statement you like to flatten your XML into the rowsets you want. You could even have multiple outputs and generate your own surrogate keys.        

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• jQuery Treeview – Expand and Collapse All Without the TreeControl

  - by Ben Griswold

  The jQuery Treeview Plugin provides collapse all, expand all and toggle all support with very little effort on your part. Simply add a treecontrol with three links, and the treeview, to your page…   <div id="treecontrol">     <a title="Collapse the entire tree below" href="#"><img src="../images/minus.gif" /> Collapse All</a>     <a title="Expand the entire tree below" href="#"><img src="../images/plus.gif" /> Expand All</a>     <a title="Toggle the tree below, opening closed branches, closing open branches" href="#">Toggle All</a> </div> <ul id="treeview" class="treeview-black">     <li>Item 1</li>     <li>         <span>Item 2</span>         <ul>             <li>                 <span>Item 2.1</span>                   <ul>                     <li>Item 2.1.1</li>                     <li>Item 2.1.2</li>                 </ul>             </li>             <li>Item 2.2</li>             <li class="closed">                   <span>Item 2.3 (closed at start)</span>                 <ul>                     <li>Item 2.3.1</li>                     <li>Item 2.3.2</li>                 </ul>             </li>         </ul>     </li> </ul> …and then associate the control to the treeview when defining the treeview settings. $("#treeview").treeview({     control: "#treecontrol",     persist: "cookie",     cookieId: "treeview-black" }); It really couldn’t be easier and it works great! But the plugin doesn’t offer a lot of flexibility when it comes to layout.  For example, the plugin assumes your treecontrol will include links.  If you want buttons or images or whatever, you are out of luck.  The plugin also assumes a set number of links and the collapse all handler is associated with the first link inside of the treecontrol, a:eq(0), the expand all handler is associated with the second link and so on.  So you really can’t incorporate the toggle all link by itself unless you manually hide the other options. Which brings me to the point of this post – making the collapse/expand/toggle layout more flexible without modifying the plugin’s source code. We will continue to use the treecontrol actions but we’re not going to use them directly. In fact, our custom collapse, expand and toggle links will trigger the actions for us.  So, hide the treecontrol links and associate the treecontrol click events with the click events of other controls.  Finally, render the treeview with the same setting definitions as usual. $(document).ready(function() {     // The plugin shows the treecontrol after the     // collapse, expand and toggle events are hooked up     // Just hide the links.     $('#treecontrol a').hide();       // On click of your custom links, button, etc     // Trigger the appropriate treecontrol click     $('#expandAll').click(function() {                 $('#treecontrol a:eq(1)').click();         });          $('#collapseAll').click(function() {         $('#treecontrol a:eq(0)').click();             });       // Render the treeview per usual.         $("#treeview").treeview({         control: "#treecontrol",         persist: "cookie",         cookieId: "treeview-black"     }); }); Since I’m not using the treecontrol directly, I move it to the bottom of the page but it doesn’t really matter where the treecontrol goes. <div>     <a id="collapseAll" href="#">Collapse All Outside of TreeControl</a> </div>   <ul id="treeview" class="treeview-black">     <li>Item 1</li>     <li>         <span>Item 2</span>         <ul>             <li>                 <span>Item 2.1</span>                 <ul>                     <li>Item 2.1.1</li>                     <li>Item 2.1.2</li>                 </ul>             </li>             <li>Item 2.2</li>             <li class="closed">                 <span>Item 2.3 (closed at start)</span>                 <ul>                     <li>Item 2.3.1</li>                     <li>Item 2.3.2</li>                 </ul>             </li>         </ul>     </li> </ul>   <div>     <input type="button" id="expandAll" value="Expand All Outside of TreeControl"/> </div>   <div id="treecontrol">     <a href="#"></a><a href="#"></a><a href="#"></a> </div> The above jQuery and Html snippets generate the following ugly output which shows the separated collapse/expand elements. If you want the toggle all option, I bet you can figure out how to put it in place.  I’ve made the source available below if you’re interested. Download jQuery Treeview Expand and Collapse Super Code

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• .NET 4.5 is an in-place replacement for .NET 4.0

  - by Rick Strahl

  With the betas for .NET 4.5 and Visual Studio 11 and Windows 8 shipping many people will be installing .NET 4.5 and hacking away on it. There are a number of great enhancements that are fairly transparent, but it's important to understand what .NET 4.5 actually is in terms of the CLR running on your machine. When .NET 4.5 is installed it effectively replaces .NET 4.0 on the machine. .NET 4.0 gets overwritten by a new version of .NET 4.5 which - according to Microsoft - is supposed to be 100% backwards compatible. While 100% backwards compatible sounds great, we all know that 100% is a hard number to hit, and even the aforementioned blog post at the Microsoft site acknowledges this. But there's so much more than backwards compatibility that makes this awkward at best and confusing at worst. What does ‘Replacement’ mean? When you install .NET 4.5 your .NET 4.0 assemblies in the \Windows\.NET Framework\V4.0.30319 are overwritten with a new set of assemblies. You end up with overwritten assemblies as well as a bunch of new ones (like the new System.Net.Http assemblies for example). The following screen shot demonstrates system.dll on my test machine (left) running .NET 4.5 on the right and my production laptop running stock .NET 4.0 (right):   Clearly they are different files with a difference in file sizes (interesting that the 4.5 version is actually smaller). That’s not all. If you actually query the runtime version when .NET 4.5 is installed with with Environment.Version you still get: 4.0.30319 If you open the properties of System.dll assembly in .NET 4.5 you'll also see: Notice that the file version is also left at 4.0.xxx. There are differences in build numbers: .NET 4.0 shows 261 and the current .NET 4.5 beta build is 17379. I suppose you can use assume a build number greater than 17000 is .NET 4.5, but that's pretty hokey to say the least. There’s no easy or obvious way to tell whether you are running on 4.0 or 4.5 – to the application they appear to be the same runtime version. And that is what Microsoft intends here. .NET 4.5 is intended as an in-place upgrade. Compile to 4.5 run on 4.0 – not quite! You can compile an application for .NET 4.5 and run it on the 4.0 runtime – that is until you hit a new feature that doesn’t exist on 4.0. At which point the app bombs at runtime. Say you write some code that is mostly .NET 4.0, but only has a few of the new features of .NET 4.5 like aync/await buried deep in the bowels of the application where it only fires occasionally. .NET will happily start your application and run everything 4.0 fine, until it hits that 4.5 code – and then crash unceremoniously at runtime. Oh joy! You can .NET 4.0 applications on .NET 4.5 of course and that should work without much fanfare. Different than .NET 3.0/3.5 Note that this in-place replacement is very different from the side by side installs of .NET 2.0 and 3.0/3.5 which all ran on the 2.0 version of the CLR. The two 3.x versions were basically library enhancements on top of the core .NET 2.0 runtime. Both versions ran under the .NET 2.0 runtime which wasn’t changed (other than for security patches and bug fixes) for the whole 3.x cycle. The 4.5 update instead completely replaces the .NET 4.0 runtime and leaves the actual version number set at v4.0.30319. When you build a new project with Visual Studio 2011, you can still target .NET 4.0 or you can target .NET 4.5. But you are in effect referencing the same set of assemblies for both regardless which version you use. What's different is the compiler used to compile and link your code so compiling with .NET 4.0 gives you just the subset of the functionality that is available in .NET 4.0, but when you use the 4.5 compiler you get the full functionality of what’s actually available in the assemblies and extra libraries. It doesn’t look like you will be able to use Visual Studio 2010 to develop .NET 4.5 applications. Good news – Bad news Microsoft is trying hard to experiment with every possible permutation of releasing new versions of the .NET framework apparently. No two updates have been the same. Clearly updating to a full new version of .NET (ie. .NET 2.0, 4.0 and at some point 5.0 runtimes) has its own set of challenges, but doing an in-place update of the runtime and then not even providing a good way to tell which version is installed is pretty whacky even by Microsoft’s standards. Especially given that .NET 4.5 includes a fairly significant update with all the aysnc functionality baked into the runtime. Most of the IO APIs have been updated to support task based async operation which significantly affects many existing APIs. To make things worse .NET 4.5 will be the initial version of .NET that ships with Windows 8 so it will be with us for a long time to come unless Microsoft finally decides to push .NET versions onto Windows machines as part of system upgrades (which currently doesn’t happen). This is the same story we had when Vista launched with .NET 3.0 which was a minor version that quickly was replaced by 3.5 which was more long lived and practical. People had enough problems dealing with the confusing versioning of the 3.x versions which ran on .NET 2.0. I can’t count the amount support calls and questions I’ve fielded because people couldn’t find a .NET 3.5 entry in the IIS version dialog. The same is likely to happen with .NET 4.5. It’s all well and good when we know that .NET 4.5 is an in-place replacement, but administrators and IT folks not intimately familiar with .NET are unlikely to understand this nuance and end up thoroughly confused which version is installed. It’s hard for me to see any upside to an in-place update and I haven’t really seen a good explanation of why this approach was decided on. Sure if the version stays the same existing assembly bindings don’t break so applications can stay running through an update. I suppose this is useful for some component vendors and strongly signed assemblies in corporate environments. But seriously, if you are going to throw .NET 4.5 into the mix, who won’t be recompiling all code and thoroughly test that code to work on .NET 4.5? A recompile requirement doesn’t seem that serious in light of a major version upgrade.  Resources http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2011/09/26/compatibility-of-net-framework-4-5.aspx http://www.devproconnections.com/article/net-framework/net-framework-45-versioning-faces-problems-141160© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in .NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Adding Volcanos and Options - Earthquake Locator, part 2

  - by Bobby Diaz

  Since volcanos are often associated with earthquakes, and vice versa, I decided to show recent volcanic activity on the Earthquake Locator map.  I am pulling the data from a website created for a joint project between the Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Program and the US Geological Survey's Volcano Hazards Program, found here.  They provide a Weekly Volcanic Activity Report as an RSS feed.   I started implementing this new functionality by creating a new Volcano entity in the domain model and adding the following to the EarthquakeService class (I also factored out the common reading/parsing helper methods to a separate FeedReader class that can be used by multiple domain service classes):           private static readonly string VolcanoFeedUrl =             ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["VolcanoFeedUrl"];           /// <summary>         /// Gets the volcano data for the previous week.         /// </summary>         /// <returns>A queryable collection of <see cref="Volcano"/> objects.</returns>         public IQueryable<Volcano> GetVolcanos()         {             var feed = FeedReader.Load(VolcanoFeedUrl);             var list = new List<Volcano>();               if ( feed != null )             {                 foreach ( var item in feed.Items )                 {                     var quake = CreateVolcano(item);                     if ( quake != null )                     {                         list.Add(quake);                     }                 }             }               return list.AsQueryable();         }           /// <summary>         /// Creates a <see cref="Volcano"/> object for each item in the RSS feed.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="item">The RSS item.</param>         /// <returns></returns>         private Volcano CreateVolcano(SyndicationItem item)         {             Volcano volcano = null;             string title = item.Title.Text;             string desc = item.Summary.Text;             double? latitude = null;             double? longitude = null;               FeedReader.GetGeoRssPoint(item, out latitude, out longitude);               if ( !String.IsNullOrEmpty(title) )             {                 title = title.Substring(0, title.IndexOf('-'));             }             if ( !String.IsNullOrEmpty(desc) )             {                 desc = String.Join("\n\n", desc                         .Replace("<p>", "")                         .Split(                             new string[] { "</p>" },                             StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries)                         .Select(s => s.Trim())                         .ToArray())                         .Trim();             }               if ( latitude != null && longitude != null )             {                 volcano = new Volcano()                 {                     Id = item.Id,                     Title = title,                     Description = desc,                     Url = item.Links.Select(l => l.Uri.OriginalString).FirstOrDefault(),                     Latitude = latitude.GetValueOrDefault(),                     Longitude = longitude.GetValueOrDefault()                 };             }               return volcano;         } I then added the corresponding LoadVolcanos() method and Volcanos collection to the EarthquakeViewModel class in much the same way I did with the Earthquakes in my previous article in this series. Now that I am starting to add more information to the map, I wanted to give the user some options as to what is displayed and allowing them to choose what gets turned off.  I have updated the MainPage.xaml to look like this:   <UserControl x:Class="EarthquakeLocator.MainPage"     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"     xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"     xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"     xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"     xmlns:basic="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls;assembly=System.Windows.Controls"     xmlns:bing="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Maps.MapControl;assembly=Microsoft.Maps.MapControl"     xmlns:vm="clr-namespace:EarthquakeLocator.ViewModel"     mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignWidth="640" d:DesignHeight="480" >     <UserControl.Resources>         <DataTemplate x:Key="EarthquakeTemplate">             <Ellipse Fill="Red" Stroke="Black" StrokeThickness="1"                      Width="{Binding Size}" Height="{Binding Size}"                      bing:MapLayer.Position="{Binding Location}"                      bing:MapLayer.PositionOrigin="Center">                 <ToolTipService.ToolTip>                     <StackPanel>                         <TextBlock Text="{Binding Title}" FontSize="14" FontWeight="Bold" />                         <TextBlock Text="{Binding UtcTime}" />                         <TextBlock Text="{Binding LocalTime}" />                         <TextBlock Text="{Binding DepthDesc}" />                     </StackPanel>                 </ToolTipService.ToolTip>             </Ellipse>         </DataTemplate>           <DataTemplate x:Key="VolcanoTemplate">             <Polygon Fill="Gold" Stroke="Black" StrokeThickness="1" Points="0,10 5,0 10,10"                      bing:MapLayer.Position="{Binding Location}"                      bing:MapLayer.PositionOrigin="Center"                      MouseLeftButtonUp="Volcano_MouseLeftButtonUp">                 <ToolTipService.ToolTip>                     <StackPanel>                         <TextBlock Text="{Binding Title}" FontSize="14" FontWeight="Bold" />                         <TextBlock Text="Click icon for more information..." />                     </StackPanel>                 </ToolTipService.ToolTip>             </Polygon>         </DataTemplate>     </UserControl.Resources>       <UserControl.DataContext>         <vm:EarthquakeViewModel AutoLoadData="True" />     </UserControl.DataContext>       <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">           <bing:Map x:Name="map" CredentialsProvider="--Your-Bing-Maps-Key--"                   Center="{Binding MapCenter, Mode=TwoWay}"                   ZoomLevel="{Binding ZoomLevel, Mode=TwoWay}">               <bing:MapItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding Earthquakes}"                                   ItemTemplate="{StaticResource EarthquakeTemplate}" />               <bing:MapItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding Volcanos}"                                   ItemTemplate="{StaticResource VolcanoTemplate}" />         </bing:Map>           <basic:TabControl x:Name="tabs" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" MaxHeight="25" Opacity="0.7">             <basic:TabItem Margin="90,0,-90,0" MouseLeftButtonUp="TabItem_MouseLeftButtonUp">                 <basic:TabItem.Header>                     <TextBlock x:Name="txtHeader" Text="Options"                                FontSize="13" FontWeight="Bold" />                 </basic:TabItem.Header>                   <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">                     <TextBlock Text="Earthquakes:" FontWeight="Bold" Margin="3" />                     <StackPanel Margin="3">                         <CheckBox Content=" &lt; 4.0"                                   IsChecked="{Binding ShowLt4, Mode=TwoWay}" />                         <CheckBox Content="4.0 - 4.9"                                   IsChecked="{Binding Show4s, Mode=TwoWay}" />                         <CheckBox Content="5.0 - 5.9"                                   IsChecked="{Binding Show5s, Mode=TwoWay}" />                     </StackPanel>                       <StackPanel Margin="10,3,3,3">                         <CheckBox Content="6.0 - 6.9"                                   IsChecked="{Binding Show6s, Mode=TwoWay}" />                         <CheckBox Content="7.0 - 7.9"                                   IsChecked="{Binding Show7s, Mode=TwoWay}" />                         <CheckBox Content="8.0 +"                                   IsChecked="{Binding ShowGe8, Mode=TwoWay}" />                     </StackPanel>                       <TextBlock Text="Other:" FontWeight="Bold" Margin="50,3,3,3" />                     <StackPanel Margin="3">                         <CheckBox Content="Volcanos"                                   IsChecked="{Binding ShowVolcanos, Mode=TwoWay}" />                     </StackPanel>                 </StackPanel>               </basic:TabItem>         </basic:TabControl>       </Grid> </UserControl> Notice that I added a VolcanoTemplate that uses a triangle-shaped Polygon to represent the Volcano locations, and I also added a second <bing:MapItemsControl /> tag to the map to bind to the Volcanos collection.  The TabControl found below the map houses the options panel that will present the user with several checkboxes so they can filter the different points based on type and other properties (i.e. Magnitude).  Initially, the TabItem is collapsed to reduce it's footprint, but the screen shot below shows the options panel expanded to reveal the available settings:     I have updated the Source Code and Live Demo to include these new features.   Happy Mapping!

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