Search Results

Search found 1781 results on 72 pages for 'anti virus'.

Page 68/72 | < Previous Page | 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72  | Next Page >

• Cloud to On-Premise Connectivity Patterns

  - by Rajesh Raheja

  Do you have a requirement to convert an Opportunity in Salesforce.com to an Order/Quote in Oracle E-Business Suite? Or maybe you want the creation of an Oracle RightNow Incident to trigger an on-premise Oracle E-Business Suite Service Request creation for RMA and Field Scheduling? If so, read on. In a previous blog post, I discussed integrating TO cloud applications, however the use cases above are the reverse i.e. receiving data FROM cloud applications (SaaS) TO on-premise applications/databases that sit behind a firewall. Oracle SOA Suite is assumed to be on-premise with with Oracle Service Bus as the mediation and virtualization layer. The main considerations for the patterns are are security i.e. shielding enterprise resources; and scalability i.e. minimizing firewall latency. Let me use an analogy to help visualize the patterns: the on-premise system is your home - with your most valuable possessions - and the SaaS app is your favorite on-line store which regularly ships (inbound calls) various types of parcels/items (message types/service operations). You need the items at home (on-premise) but want to safe guard against misguided elements of society (internet threats) who may masquerade as postal workers and vandalize property (denial of service?). Let's look at the patterns. Pattern: Pull from Cloud The on-premise system polls from the SaaS apps and picks up the message instead of having it delivered. This may be done using Oracle RightNow Object Query Language or SOAP APIs. This is particularly suited for certain integration approaches wherein messages are trickling in, can be centralized and batched e.g. retrieving event notifications on an hourly schedule from the Oracle Messaging Service. To compare this pattern with the home analogy, you are avoiding any deliveries to your home and instead go to the post office/UPS/Fedex store to pick up your parcel. Every time. Pros: On-premise assets not exposed to the Internet, firewall issues avoided by only initiating outbound connections Cons: Polling mechanisms may affect performance, may not satisfy near real-time requirements Pattern: Open Firewall Ports The on-premise system exposes the web services that needs to be invoked by the cloud application. This requires opening up firewall ports, routing calls to the appropriate internal services behind the firewall. Fusion Applications uses this pattern, and auto-provisions the services on the various virtual hosts to secure the topology. This works well for service integration, but may not suffice for large volume data integration. Using the home analogy, you have now decided to receive parcels instead of going to the post office every time. A door mail slot cut out allows the postman can drop small parcels, but there is still concern about cutting new holes for larger packages. Pros: optimal pattern for near real-time needs, simpler administration once the service is provisioned Cons: Needs firewall ports to be opened up for new services, may not suffice for batch integration requiring direct database access Pattern: Virtual Private Networking The on-premise network is "extended" to the cloud (or an intermediary on-demand / managed service offering) using Virtual Private Networking (VPN) so that messages are delivered to the on-premise system in a trusted channel. Using the home analogy, you entrust a set of keys with a neighbor or property manager who receives the packages, and then drops it inside your home. Pros: Individual firewall ports don't need to be opened, more suited for high scalability needs, can support large volume data integration, easier management of one connection vs a multitude of open ports Cons: VPN setup, specific hardware support, requires cloud provider to support virtual private computing Pattern: Reverse Proxy / API Gateway The on-premise system uses a reverse proxy "API gateway" software on the DMZ to receive messages. The reverse proxy can be implemented using various mechanisms e.g. Oracle API Gateway provides firewall and proxy services along with comprehensive security, auditing, throttling benefits. If a firewall already exists, then Oracle Service Bus or Oracle HTTP Server virtual hosts can provide reverse proxy implementations on the DMZ. Custom built implementations are also possible if specific functionality (such as message store-n-forward) is needed. In the home analogy, this pattern sits in between cutting mail slots and handing over keys. Instead, you install (and maintain) a mailbox in your home premises outside your door. The post office delivers the parcels in your mailbox, from where you can securely retrieve it. Pros: Very secure, very flexible Cons: Introduces a new software component, needs DMZ deployment and management Pattern: On-Premise Agent (Tunneling) A light weight "agent" software sits behind the firewall and initiates the communication with the cloud, thereby avoiding firewall issues. It then maintains a bi-directional connection either with pull or push based approaches using (or abusing, depending on your viewpoint) the HTTP protocol. Programming protocols such as Comet, WebSockets, HTTP CONNECT, HTTP SSH Tunneling etc. are possible implementation options. In the home analogy, a resident receives the parcel from the postal worker by opening the door, however you still take precautions with chain locks and package inspections. Pros: Light weight software, IT doesn't need to setup anything Cons: May bypass critical firewall checks e.g. virus scans, separate software download, proliferation of non-IT managed software Conclusion The patterns above are some of the most commonly encountered ones for cloud to on-premise integration. Selecting the right pattern for your project involves looking at your scalability needs, security restrictions, sync vs asynchronous implementation, near real-time vs batch expectations, cloud provider capabilities, budget, and more. In some cases, the basic "Pull from Cloud" may be acceptable, whereas in others, an extensive VPN topology may be well justified. For more details on the Oracle cloud integration strategy, download this white paper.

  Read the article

• Cloud to On-Premise Connectivity Patterns

  - by Rajesh Raheja

  Do you have a requirement to convert an Opportunity in Salesforce.com to an Order/Quote in Oracle E-Business Suite? Or maybe you want the creation of an Oracle RightNow Incident to trigger an on-premise Oracle E-Business Suite Service Request creation for RMA and Field Scheduling? If so, read on. In a previous blog post, I discussed integrating TO cloud applications, however the use cases above are the reverse i.e. receiving data FROM cloud applications (SaaS) TO on-premise applications/databases that sit behind a firewall. Oracle SOA Suite is assumed to be on-premise with with Oracle Service Bus as the mediation and virtualization layer. The main considerations for the patterns are are security i.e. shielding enterprise resources; and scalability i.e. minimizing firewall latency. Let me use an analogy to help visualize the patterns: the on-premise system is your home - with your most valuable possessions - and the SaaS app is your favorite on-line store which regularly ships (inbound calls) various types of parcels/items (message types/service operations). You need the items at home (on-premise) but want to safe guard against misguided elements of society (internet threats) who may masquerade as postal workers and vandalize property (denial of service?). Let's look at the patterns. Pattern: Pull from Cloud The on-premise system polls from the SaaS apps and picks up the message instead of having it delivered. This may be done using Oracle RightNow Object Query Language or SOAP APIs. This is particularly suited for certain integration approaches wherein messages are trickling in, can be centralized and batched e.g. retrieving event notifications on an hourly schedule from the Oracle Messaging Service. To compare this pattern with the home analogy, you are avoiding any deliveries to your home and instead go to the post office/UPS/Fedex store to pick up your parcel. Every time. Pros: On-premise assets not exposed to the Internet, firewall issues avoided by only initiating outbound connections Cons: Polling mechanisms may affect performance, may not satisfy near real-time requirements Pattern: Open Firewall Ports The on-premise system exposes the web services that needs to be invoked by the cloud application. This requires opening up firewall ports, routing calls to the appropriate internal services behind the firewall. Fusion Applications uses this pattern, and auto-provisions the services on the various virtual hosts to secure the topology. This works well for service integration, but may not suffice for large volume data integration. Using the home analogy, you have now decided to receive parcels instead of going to the post office every time. A door mail slot cut out allows the postman can drop small parcels, but there is still concern about cutting new holes for larger packages. Pros: optimal pattern for near real-time needs, simpler administration once the service is provisioned Cons: Needs firewall ports to be opened up for new services, may not suffice for batch integration requiring direct database access Pattern: Virtual Private Networking The on-premise network is "extended" to the cloud (or an intermediary on-demand / managed service offering) using Virtual Private Networking (VPN) so that messages are delivered to the on-premise system in a trusted channel. Using the home analogy, you entrust a set of keys with a neighbor or property manager who receives the packages, and then drops it inside your home. Pros: Individual firewall ports don't need to be opened, more suited for high scalability needs, can support large volume data integration, easier management of one connection vs a multitude of open ports Cons: VPN setup, specific hardware support, requires cloud provider to support virtual private computing Pattern: Reverse Proxy / API Gateway The on-premise system uses a reverse proxy "API gateway" software on the DMZ to receive messages. The reverse proxy can be implemented using various mechanisms e.g. Oracle API Gateway provides firewall and proxy services along with comprehensive security, auditing, throttling benefits. If a firewall already exists, then Oracle Service Bus or Oracle HTTP Server virtual hosts can provide reverse proxy implementations on the DMZ. Custom built implementations are also possible if specific functionality (such as message store-n-forward) is needed. In the home analogy, this pattern sits in between cutting mail slots and handing over keys. Instead, you install (and maintain) a mailbox in your home premises outside your door. The post office delivers the parcels in your mailbox, from where you can securely retrieve it. Pros: Very secure, very flexible Cons: Introduces a new software component, needs DMZ deployment and management Pattern: On-Premise Agent (Tunneling) A light weight "agent" software sits behind the firewall and initiates the communication with the cloud, thereby avoiding firewall issues. It then maintains a bi-directional connection either with pull or push based approaches using (or abusing, depending on your viewpoint) the HTTP protocol. Programming protocols such as Comet, WebSockets, HTTP CONNECT, HTTP SSH Tunneling etc. are possible implementation options. In the home analogy, a resident receives the parcel from the postal worker by opening the door, however you still take precautions with chain locks and package inspections. Pros: Light weight software, IT doesn't need to setup anything Cons: May bypass critical firewall checks e.g. virus scans, separate software download, proliferation of non-IT managed software Conclusion The patterns above are some of the most commonly encountered ones for cloud to on-premise integration. Selecting the right pattern for your project involves looking at your scalability needs, security restrictions, sync vs asynchronous implementation, near real-time vs batch expectations, cloud provider capabilities, budget, and more. In some cases, the basic "Pull from Cloud" may be acceptable, whereas in others, an extensive VPN topology may be well justified. For more details on the Oracle cloud integration strategy, download this white paper.

  Read the article

• Very slow compile times on Visual Studio

  - by johnc

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

  Read the article

• WCF Duplex net.tcp issues on win7

  - by Tom

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

  Read the article

• Singleton: How should it be used

  - by Loki Astari

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

  Read the article

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

  - by Colin Newell

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

  Read the article

• How to interpolate hue values in HSV colour space?

  - by nick

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

  Read the article

• Controling virtualbox internet access?

  - by HandyGandy

  I am finally going through the process of moving my XP into a vbox (host linux). The thing is that I am migrating a virtually clean install. So aside from the occasional antivirus scan, I want to make sure that my XP is not sending malware data (keystoke.logs, spam etc. ) out silently ( and thus having picked up some virus ). To that end I want to limit XP to contacting my LAN and a few internet sites. ( mainly sites that require proprietary windows only software to access, AV sites and Windows update ). I want XP to only access preapproved addresses. If it is trying to contact a nonapproved address, I want it somehow logged and access restricted until I allow access. I also don't want to have to decide whether to allow access to a site at my leisure. To keeps things clear let me give an example: I start my vbox/XP ( which I call MYXP) running on my linux box ( called MYLINUX connecting to the net through a linksys wrt54g ) and connects via samba to my LAN ( since my LAN seems to be possessed of every evil thing, it's address is 192.168.666. ). At the moment my configuration is set so that I allow MYXP to access 192.168.666 and www.MYANTIVIRUS_UPDATES.com and www.MS_UPDATES.com. Then on the VM I start a program which tries to make a connection to www.playmygame.com . www.playmygame.com is on my preapproved list so the connection goes through. Later I check attempted accesses and discover that it also tried to connect to www.mygame_high_scores.com I figure this is OK so I add www.mygame_high_scores.com to my approved list. Later, I again check address and discover that my VM/XP tried to access www.mygame_steals_your_identity.com. I do some checking and discover the address is registered to someone in Kiev, Nigeria. Since this doesn't sound kosher to me, I replace the MYXP VM with one that was backed up before I installed mygame. I remove www.playmygame.com and www.mygame_high_scores.com from my access list for MYXP. It should acomplish this with little overheard. When I am not running the VM ideally it should not have any overhead. Suggestions?

  Read the article

• MVC 2 AntiForgeryToken - Why symmetric encryption + IPrinciple?

  - by Brad R

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

  Read the article

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

  - by Greg Beech

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

  Read the article

• Constructor Injection and when to use a Service Locator

  - by Simon

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

  Read the article

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

  - by java.is.for.desktop

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

  Read the article

• measure rendered html in javascript without affecting the measurement

  - by drawnonward

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

  Read the article

• Mercurial local repository backup

  - by Ricket

  I'm a big fan of backing things up. I keep my important school essays and such in a folder of my Dropbox. I make sure that all of my photos are duplicated to an external drive. I have a home server where I keep important files mirrored across two drives inside the server (like a software RAID 1). So for my code, I have always used Subversion to back it up. I keep the trunk folder with a stable copy of my application, but then I create a branch named with my username, and inside there is my working copy. I make very few changes between commits to that branch, with the understanding that the code in there is my backup. Now I'm looking into Mercurial, and I must admit I haven't truly used it yet so I may have this all wrong. But it seems to me that you have a server-side repository, and then you clone it to a working directory in the form of a local repository. Then as you work on something, you make commits to that local repository, and when things are in a state to be shared with others, you hg push to the parent repository on the server. Between pushes of stable, tested, bug-free code, where is the backup? After doing some thinking, I've come to the conclusion that it is not meant for backup purposes and it assumes you've handled that on your own. I guess I need to keep my Mercurial local repositories in my dropbox or some other backed-up location, since my in-progress code is not pushed to the server. Is this pretty much it, or have I missed something? If you use Mercurial, how do you backup your local repositories? If you had turned on your computer this morning and your hard drive went up in flames (or, more likely, the read head went bad, or the OS corrupted itself, ...), what would be lost? If you spent the past week developing a module, writing test cases for it, documenting and commenting it, and then a virus wipes your local repository away, isn't that the only copy? So then on the flip side, do you create a remote repository for every local repository and push to it all the time? How do you find a balance? How do you ensure your code is backed up? Where is the line between using Mercurial as backup, and using a local filesystem backup utility to keep your local repositories safe?

  Read the article

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

  - by Mo J. Mughrabi

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

  Read the article

• Please Describe Your Struggles with Minimizing Use of Global Variables

  - by MetaHyperBolic

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

  Read the article

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

  - by Asian Angel

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

  Read the article

• Week in Geek: LastPass Rescues Xmarks Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to breathe new life into an aging Windows Mobile 6.x device, use filters in Photoshop, backup and move VirtualBox machines, use the BitDefender Rescue CD to clean an infected PC, and had fun setting up a pirates theme on our computers. Photo by _nash. Weekly Feature Do you love using the Faenza icon set on your Ubuntu system but feel that there are a few much needed icons missing (or you desire a different version of a particular icon)? Then you may want to take a look at the Faenza Variants icon pack. The icons are available in the following sizes: 16px, 22px, 32px, 48px and scalable sizes. Photo by Asian Angel. Faenza Variants Random Geek Links Another week with extra link goodness to help keep you on top of the news. Photo by Asian Angel. LastPass acquires Xmarks, premium service announced Xmarks announced that it has been acquired by LastPass, a cross-platform password management service. This also means that Xmarks is now in transition from a “free” to a “freemium” business model. WikiLeaks reappears on European Net domains WikiLeaks has re-emerged on a Swiss Internet domain followed by domains in Germany, Finland, and the Netherlands, sidestepping a move that had in effect taken the controversial site off the Internet. Iran: Yes, Stuxnet hurt our nuclear program The Stuxnet worm got some big play from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who acknowledged that the malware dinged his nuclear program. More Windows Rogues than Just AV – Fake Defragmenter Check Disk Don’t think for a second that rogues are limited to scareware, because as so-called products such as “System Defragmenter”, “Scan Disk” “Check Disk” prove, they’re not. Internet Explorer’s Protected Mode can be bypassed Researchers from Verizon Business have now described a way of bypassing Protected Mode in IE 7 and 8 in order to gain access to user accounts. Can you really see who viewed your Facebook profile? Rogue application spreads virally Once again, a rogue application is spreading virally between Facebook users pretending to offer you a way of seeing who has viewed your profile. More holes in Palm’s WebOS Researchers Orlando Barrera and Daniel Herrera, who both work for security firm SecTheory, have discovered a gaping security hole in Palm’s WebOS smartphone operating system. Next-gen banking Trojans hit APAC With the proliferation of banking Trojans, Web and smartphone users of online banking services have to be on constant alert to avoid falling prey to fraud schemes, warned Etay Maor, project manager for RSA Fraud Action. AVG update cripples 64-bit computers A signature update automatically deployed by the AVG virus scanner Thursday has crippled numerous computers. Article includes link to forums to fix computers affected after a restart. Congress moves to outlaw ‘mystery charges’ for Web shoppers Legislation that makes it illegal for Web merchants and so-called post-transaction marketers to charge credit cards without the card owners’ say-so came closer to becoming law this week. Ballmer Set to “Look Into” Windows Home Server Drive Extender Fiasco Tuesday’s announcement from Microsoft regarding the removal of Drive Extender from Windows Home Server has sent shock waves across the web. Google tweaks search recipe to ding scam artists Google has changed its search algorithm to penalize sites deemed to provide an “extremely poor user experience” following a New York Times story on a merchant who justified abusive behavior towards customers as a search-engine optimization tactic. Geek Video of the Week Watch as our two friends debate back and forth about the early adoption of new technology through multiple time periods (Stone Age to the far future). Will our reluctant friend finally succumb to the temptation? Photo by CollegeHumor. Early Adopters Through History Random TinyHacker Links Fix Issues in Windows 7 Using Reliability Monitor Learn how to analyze Windows 7 errors and then fix them using the built-in reliability monitor. Learn About IE Tab Groups Tab groups is a useful feature in IE 8. Here’s a detailed guide to what it is all about. Google’s Book Helps You Learn About Browsers and Web A cool new online book by the Google Chrome team on browsers and the web. TrustPort Internet Security 2011 – Good Security from a Less Known Provider TrustPort is not exactly a well-known provider of security solutions. At least not in the consumer space. This review tests in detail their latest offering. How the World is Using Cell phones An infographic showing the shocking demographics of cell phone use. Super User Questions See the great answers to these questions from Super User. I am unable to access my C drive. It says it is unable to display current owner. List of Windows special directories/shortcuts like ‘%TEMP%’ Is using multiple passes for wiping a disk really necessary? How can I view two files side by side in Notepad++ Is there any tool that automatically puts screenshots to my Dropbox? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Look through our hottest articles from this past week at How-To Geek. How to Create a Software RAID Array in Windows 7 9 Alternatives for Windows Home Server’s Drive Extender Why Doesn’t Disk Cleanup Delete Everything from the Temp Folder? Ask the Readers: How Much Do You Customize Your Operating System? How to Upload Really Large Files to SkyDrive, Dropbox, or Email One Year Ago on How-To Geek Enjoy reading through these awesome articles from one year ago. How To Upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 Home Premium Edition How To Fix No Aero Transparency in Windows 7 Troubleshoot Startup Problems with Startup Repair Tool in Windows 7 & Vista Rename the Guest Account in Windows 7 for Enhanced Security Disable Error Reporting in XP, Vista, and Windows 7 The Geek Note That wraps things up here for this week. Regardless of the weather wherever you may be, we hope that you have an opportunity to get outside and have some fun! Remember to keep sending those great tips in to us at [email protected]. Photo by Tony the Misfit. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Get the Complete Android Guide eBook for Only 99 Cents [Update: Expired] Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 7: Design and Typography How to Choose What to Back Up on Your Linux Home Server How To Harmonize Your Dual-Boot Setup for Windows and Ubuntu Hang in There Scrat! – Ice Age Wallpaper How Do You Know When You’ve Passed Geek and Headed to Nerd? On The Tip – A Lamborghini Theme for Chrome and Iron What if Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner were Human? [Video] Peaceful Winter Cabin Wallpaper Store Tabs for Later Viewing in Opera with Tab Vault

  Read the article

• Week in Geek: FBI Back Door in OpenBSD Edition

  - by Asian Angel

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

  Read the article

• Basics of Join Predicate Pushdown in Oracle

  - by Maria Colgan

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

  Read the article

• TFS, G.I. Joe and Under-doing

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

  Read the article

• Long pause when accessing DFS namespace

  - by Matt

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

  Read the article

• The hidden cost of interrupting knowledge workers

  - by Piet

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

  Read the article

• Kernel Mode Rootkit

  - by Pajarito

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

  Read the article

• disk-to-disk backup without costly backup redundancy?

  - by AaronLS

  A good backup strategy involves a combination of 1) disconnected backups/snapshots that will not be affected by bugs, viruses, and/or security breaches 2) geographically distributed backups to protect against local disasters 3) testing backups to ensure that they can be restored as needed Generally I take an onsite backup daily, and an offsite backup weekly, and do test restores periodically. In the rare circumstance that I need to restore files, I do some from the local backup. Should a catastrophic event destroy the servers and local backups, then the offsite weekly tape backup would be used to restore the files. I don't need multiple offsite backups with redundancy. I ALREADY HAVE REDUNDANCY THROUGH THE USE OF BOTH LOCAL AND REMOTE BACKUPS. I have recovery blocks and par files with the backups, so I already have protection against a small percentage of corrupt bits. I perform test restores to ensure the backups function properly. Should the remote backups experience a dataloss, I can replace them with one of the local backups. There are historical offsite backups as well, so if a dataloss was not noticed for a few weeks(such as a bug/security breach/virus), the data could be restored from an older backup. By doing this, the only scenario that poses a risk to complete data loss would be one where both the local, remote, and servers all experienced a data loss in the same time period. I'm willing to risk that happening since the odds of that trifecta negligibly small, and the data isn't THAT valuable to me. So I hope I have emphasized that I don't need redundancy in my offsite backups because I have covered all the bases. I know this exact technique is employed by numerous businesses. Of course there are some that take multiple offsite backups, because the data is so incredibly valuable that they don't even want to risk that trifecta disaster, but in the majority of cases the trifecta disaster is an accepted risk. I HAD TO COVER ALL THIS BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE DON'T READ!!! I think I have justified my backup strategy and the majority of businesses who use offsite tape backups do not have any additional redundancy beyond what is mentioned above(recovery blocks, par files, historical snapshots). Now I would like to eliminate the use of tapes for offsite backups, and instead use a backup service. Most however are extremely costly for $/gb/month storage. I don't mind paying for transfer bandwidth, but the cost of storage is way to high. All of them advertise that they maintain backups of the data, and I imagine they use RAID as well. Obviously if you were using them to host servers this would all be necessary, but for my scenario, I am simply replacing my offsite backups with such a service. So there is no need for RAID, and absolutely no value in another layer of backups of backups. My one and only question: "Are there online data-storage/backup services that do not use redundancy or offer backups(backups of my backups) as part of their packages, and thus are more reasonably priced?" NOT my question: "Is this a flawed strategy?" I don't care if you think this is a good strategy or not. I know it pretty standard. Very few people make an extra copy of their offsite backups. They already have local backups that they can use to replace the remote backups if something catastrophic happens at the remote site. Please limit your responses to the question posed. Sorry if I seem a little abrasive, but I had some trolls in my last post who didn't read my requirements nor my question, and were trying to go off answering a totally different question. I made it pretty clear, but didn't try to justify my strategy, because I didn't ask about whether my strategy was justifyable. So I apologize if this was lengthy, as it really didn't need to be, but since there are so many trolls here who try to sidetrack questions by responding without addressing the question at hand.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72  | Next Page >