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  • Creating a Anti-Virus softwre for URL Checking in my Website and also checking the data in the URL...

    - by Rezu
    If we give the anti-virus a URL it should be able to scan it and give us a report, Else, it should be able to scan the folder that we put all the links into... i.e. if we download the entire content of the webpage from the 10 Child links... and 1 parent webpage... and put them into a folder, the anti-virus solution should be able to scan all the 10 CHild and 1 Parent data.. and give us a report, Else, the anti-virus solution should be able to scan any incoming virus in any file or entity that is coming into our server and generate the report for that file, Please help me thanks in advance...

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  • PPTP server stuck at "GRE: Bad checksum from pppd"

    - by user92516
    I am a network engineer having quite limited experience with Ubuntu. I have been following up these online instructions to set up a pptp server but without much luck to get it to work. My server is a vm running an Apple Xserve behind a Cisco firewall. I made sure tcp 1723 and GRE are opened for the box. Below is the syslog output, looks like I always got stuck at GRE: Bad checksum from pppd. I'm running Ubuntu 10.04. Sep 24 13:21:53 ubuntu pptpd[1231]: CTRL: PTY read or GRE write failed (pty,gre)=(6,7) Sep 24 13:21:53 ubuntu pptpd[1231]: CTRL: Reaping child PPP[1232] Sep 24 13:21:53 ubuntu pptpd[1231]: CTRL: Client 166.137.85.165 control connection finished Sep 24 13:22:41 ubuntu pptpd[1276]: MGR: connections limit (100) reached, extra IP addresses ignored Sep 24 13:22:41 ubuntu pptpd[1277]: MGR: Manager process started Sep 24 13:22:41 ubuntu pptpd[1277]: MGR: Maximum of 100 connections available Sep 24 13:22:50 ubuntu pptpd[1278]: CTRL: Client 166.137.85.165 control connection started Sep 24 13:22:51 ubuntu pptpd[1278]: CTRL: Starting call (launching pppd, opening GRE) Sep 24 13:22:51 ubuntu pppd[1279]: Plugin /usr/lib/pptpd/pptpd-logwtmp.so loaded. Sep 24 13:22:51 ubuntu pppd[1279]: pppd 2.4.5 started by root, uid 0 Sep 24 13:22:51 ubuntu pppd[1279]: Using interface ppp0 Sep 24 13:22:51 ubuntu pppd[1279]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/pts/1 Sep 24 13:22:51 ubuntu pptpd[1278]: GRE: Bad checksum from pppd. Sep 24 13:23:21 ubuntu pppd[1279]: LCP: timeout sending Config-Requests Sep 24 13:23:21 ubuntu pppd[1279]: Connection terminated. Sep 24 13:23:21 ubuntu pppd[1279]: Modem hangup Sep 24 13:23:21 ubuntu pppd[1279]: Exit. Sep 24 13:23:21 ubuntu pptpd[1278]: GRE: read(fd=6,buffer=805a540,len=8196) from PTY failed: status = -1 error = Input/output error, usually caused by unexpected termination of pppd, check option syntax and pppd logs Sep 24 13:23:21 ubuntu pptpd[1278]: CTRL: PTY read or GRE write failed (pty,gre)=(6,7) Sep 24 13:23:21 ubuntu pptpd[1278]: CTRL: Reaping child PPP[1279] Sep 24 13:23:21 ubuntu pptpd[1278]: CTRL: Client 166.137.85.165 control connection finished

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  • Replace Javascript click event with timed event?

    - by Rik
    Hi, I've found some javascript code that layers photos on top of each other when you click on them. Rather than having to click I'd like the function to automatically run every 5 seconds. How can I change this event to a timed one: $('a#nextImage, #image img').click(function(event){ Full code below. Thanks <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function(){ $('#description').css({'display':'block'}); $('#image img').hover(function() { $(this).addClass('hover'); }, function() { $(this).removeClass('hover'); }); $('a#nextImage, #image img').click(function(event){ event.preventDefault(); $('#description p:first-child').css({'visibility':'hidden'}); if($('#image img.current').next().length){ $('#image img.current').removeClass('current').next().fadeIn('normal').addClass('current').css({'position':'absolute'}); }else{ $('#image img').removeClass('current').css({'display':'none'}); $('#image img:first-child').fadeIn('normal').addClass('current').css({'position':'absolute'}); } if($('#image img.current').width()>=($('#page').width()-100)){ xPos=170; }else{ do{ xPos = 120 + (Math.floor(Math.random()*($('#page').width()-100))); }while(xPos+$('#image img.current').width()>$('#page').width()); } if($('#image img.current').height()>=300){ yPos=0; }else{ do{ yPos = Math.floor(Math.random()*300); }while(yPos+$('#image img.current').height()>300); } $('#image img.current').css({'left':xPos,'top':yPos}); }); });

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  • unable to install anything that depends upon spamassassin. Cant even install spamassasin

    - by Harbhag
    I am trying to install mailscanner using apt-get install mailscanner and I got the following error Setting up spamassassin (3.3.1-1) ... Starting SpamAssassin Mail Filter Daemon: child process [21344] exited or timed out without signaling production of a PID file: exit 255 at /usr/sbin/spamd line 2588. invoke-rc.d: initscript spamassassin, action "start" failed. dpkg: error processing spamassassin (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 255 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mailscanner: mailscanner depends on spamassassin (>= 3.1); however: Package spamassassin is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing mailscanner (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure. Errors were encountered while processing: spamassassin mailscanner E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) and when I tried to install spamassassin I got the following error : Setting up spamassassin (3.3.1-1) ... Starting SpamAssassin Mail Filter Daemon: child process [21389] exited or timed out without signaling production of a PID file: exit 255 at /usr/sbin/spamd line 2588. invoke-rc.d: initscript spamassassin, action "start" failed. dpkg: error processing spamassassin (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 255 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mailscanner: mailscanner depends on spamassassin (>= 3.1); however: Package spamassassin is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing mailscanner (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure. Errors were encountered while processing: spamassassin mailscanner E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) I am using Ubuntu Server 10.04

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  • Paper Gold Rush

    - by Chris G. Williams
    The last few days at the shop have been reminiscent of a marathon of Pawn Stars. Quite a few people have come in wanting to trade for store credit. Most of them have left disappointed. We did pick up a few things here and there (which hopefully I can sell.) The problem, in a nutshell, is that people get it in their head that a (YuGiOh) card is worth X amount because they looked it up 2-3 years a...go, or someone told them it was valuable... then they play it in their deck for a year without sleeves, and cram it in a binder covered in duct tape. By the time they bring the cards in to me, new sets have come out which often de-value the tournament usefulness of the card from $20 to *maybe* 50 cents, in mint condition. Which means I can offer them about 10-15 cents... only they are almost never in mint condition, which means I usually offer them nothing at all. Most of the time, you can watch their smile fade as I start going through their cards. It's kinda sad, really, since I know they think they've spent the last two years walking around with the keys to their own personal gold mine. I don't really enjoy seeing that look on a child's face. I like kids and I remember those moments when perception and reality crashed headlong into each other. It was seldom pretty. So, when I'm talking to a child, I try to take it easy on them and give them some suggestions on how to better preserve their cards. Sometimes though, it's an adult. Depending on the situation, my response to them varies pretty broadly. Most of the time though, I still feel pretty bad when it doesn't go their way.

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  • Breadcrumbs RDFA

    - by Saahil Sinha
    Have implemented Breadcrumb RDFA http://www.mycarhelpline.com/index.php?option=com_forms&view=pages&layout=sellcar&Itemid=4 While checking the page , the RDFA Data shows property: title: Home https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mycarhelpline.com%2Findex.php%3Foption%3Dcom_forms%26view%3Dpages%26layout%3Dsellcar%26Itemid%3D4 However, when i compare ours with others http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=http%3A%2F%2Froyalenfield.com%2Fmotorcycles%2Fthunderbird-500%2F The Title and Description of the current page is shown in every RDFA Data, which is not shown in ours If someone could suggest - how to get the page title and description show up in RDFA Data, below is our breadcrumb code <p><span class="breadcrumbs pathway"> <span typeof="v:Breadcrumb"> <a href="" rel="v:url" property="v:title">Home</a> &raquo; <span rel="v:child"> <span typeof="v:Breadcrumb"> <a href="index.php?option=com_forms&view=pages&layout=selloldcarindelhi&Itemid=4" rel="v:url" property="v:title">Sell Car</a> &raquo; <span rel="v:child"> <span typeof="v:Breadcrumb"> <a property="v:title" >Sell Used Car</a> </span> </span> </span> </span> </span>

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  • How to build MVC Views that work with polymorphic domain model design?

    - by Johann de Swardt
    This is more of a "how would you do it" type of question. The application I'm working on is an ASP.NET MVC4 app using Razor syntax. I've got a nice domain model which has a few polymorphic classes, awesome to work with in the code, but I have a few questions regarding the MVC front-end. Views are easy to build for normal classes, but when it comes to the polymorphic ones I'm stuck on deciding how to implement them. The one (ugly) option is to build a page which handles the base type (eg. IContract) and has a bunch of if statements to check if we passed in a IServiceContract or ISupplyContract instance. Not pretty and very nasty to maintain. The other option is to build a view for each of these IContract child classes, breaking DRY principles completely. Don't like doing this for obvious reasons. Another option (also not great) is to split the view into chunks with partials and build partial views for each of the child types that are loaded into the main view for the base type, then deciding to show or hide the partial in a single if statement in the partial. Also messy. I've also been thinking about building a master page with sections for the fields that only occur in subclasses and to build views for each subclass referencing the master page. This looks like the least problematic solution? It will allow for fairly simple maintenance and it doesn't involve code duplication. What are your thoughts? Am I missing something obvious that will make our lives easier? Suggestions?

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  • Clipping polygons in XNA with stencil (not using spritebatch)

    - by Blau
    The problem... i'm drawing polygons, in this case boxes, and i want clip children polygons with its parent's client area. // Class Region public void Render(GraphicsDevice Device, Camera Camera) { int StencilLevel = 0; Device.Clear( ClearOptions.Stencil, Vector4.Zero, 0, StencilLevel ); Render( Device, Camera, StencilLevel ); } private void Render(GraphicsDevice Device, Camera Camera, int StencilLevel) { Device.SamplerStates[0] = this.SamplerState; Device.Textures[0] = this.Texture; Device.RasterizerState = RasterizerState.CullNone; Device.BlendState = BlendState.AlphaBlend; Device.DepthStencilState = DepthStencilState.Default; Effect.Prepare(this, Camera ); Device.DepthStencilState = GlobalContext.GraphicsStates.IncMask; Device.ReferenceStencil = StencilLevel; foreach ( EffectPass pass in Effect.Techniques[Technique].Passes ) { pass.Apply( ); Device.DrawUserIndexedPrimitives<VertexPositionColorTexture>( PrimitiveType.TriangleList, VertexData, 0, VertexData.Length, IndexData, 0, PrimitiveCount ); } foreach ( Region child in ChildrenRegions ) { child.Render( Device, Camera, StencilLevel + 1 ); } Effect.Prepare( this, Camera ); // This does not works Device.BlendState = GlobalContext.GraphicsStates.NoWriteColor; Device.DepthStencilState = GlobalContext.GraphicsStates.DecMask; Device.ReferenceStencil = StencilLevel; // This should be +1, but in that case the last drrawed is blue and overlap all foreach ( EffectPass pass in Effect.Techniques[Technique].Passes ) { pass.Apply( ); Device.DrawUserIndexedPrimitives<VertexPositionColorTexture>( PrimitiveType.TriangleList, VertexData, 0, VertexData.Length, IndexData, 0, PrimitiveCount ); } } public static class GraphicsStates { public static BlendState NoWriteColor = new BlendState( ) { ColorSourceBlend = Blend.One, AlphaSourceBlend = Blend.One, ColorDestinationBlend = Blend.InverseSourceAlpha, AlphaDestinationBlend = Blend.InverseSourceAlpha, ColorWriteChannels1 = ColorWriteChannels.None }; public static DepthStencilState IncMask = new DepthStencilState( ) { StencilEnable = true, StencilFunction = CompareFunction.Equal, StencilPass = StencilOperation.IncrementSaturation, }; public static DepthStencilState DecMask = new DepthStencilState( ) { StencilEnable = true, StencilFunction = CompareFunction.Equal, StencilPass = StencilOperation.DecrementSaturation, }; } How can achieve this? EDIT: I've just relized that the NoWriteColors.ColorWriteChannels1 should be NoWriteColors.ColorWriteChannels. :) Now it's clipping right. Any other approach?

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  • SharePoint Content Type Cheat Sheet

    - by Bil Simser
    PrincipleAny application or solution built in SharePoint must use a custom content type over adding columns to lists. The only exception to this is one-off solutions that have no life-cycle, proof-of-concepts, etc.Creating Content TypesWeb UI. Not portable, POC onlyC# or Declarative (XML). Must deploy these as FeaturesRuleDo not chagne the base XML for a Content Type after deploying. The only exception to this rule is that you can re-deploy a modified Content Type definition only after completely removing it from the environment (either programatically or by hand).Updating Content TypesUpdate and push down to child typesWeb UI. Manual for each environment. Document steps required for repeatability.Feature Upgrade. Preferred solution.C#. If you created the content type through code you might want to go this route. Create new modified Content Types and hide the old one. Not recommended but useful for legacy.ReferencesCreate Custom Content  Types in SharePoint 2010 (C#)Content Type Definitions  (XML)Creating Content Types (XML  and C#)Updating ApproachesUpdating Child Content TypesAgree or disagree?

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  • Using Groovy Aggregate Functions in ADF BC

    - by Sireesha Pinninti
    This article explains how groovy aggregate functions(sum, count, min, max and avg) can be used in ADF Business components and demonstrates how these can be used at entity and view level Let's consider EMP and DEPT tables and an usecase to track number of employees in each department   Entity-Level To use aggregate functions at entity level, we need to have association between entities representing master and child relationship and the destination accessor name is what we are going to use in our groovy Syntax: <Accessor>.count(Groovyexpression) - Note down the destination accessor name(EMP) in the association or AccessorAttribute name in source entity - Add a transient attribute in source entity with persistent property set to false and provide the groovy expression in the syntax provided above - Finally, Add newly added attribute to view object View-Level To use aggregate functions at view level, we need to have a view link between viewobjects representing master and child relationship and the destination accessor name is what we are going to use in our groovy Syntax: <ViewLinkAccessor>.count(Groovyexpression) - Note down the destination accessor name(EmpView) in the view link or viewLinkAccessor name in source view - Add a transient attribute in view object and provide a groovy aggregate function count as a value to it in the syntax provided above Now, If you run application module tester and execute DeptView / ViewLink, you should see employee count in EmpCount field  In similar way, one can use other groovy aggregate functions sum, avg, min and max.

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  • vector rotations for branches of a 3d tree

    - by freefallr
    I'm attempting to create a 3d tree procedurally. I'm hoping that someone can check my vector rotation maths, as I'm a bit confused. I'm using an l-system (a recursive algorithm for generating branches). The trunk of the tree is the root node. It's orientation is aligned to the y axis. In the next iteration of the tree (e.g. the first branches), I might create a branch that is oriented say by +10 degrees in the X axis and a similar amount in the Z axis, relative to the trunk. I know that I should keep a rotation matrix at each branch, so that it can be applied to child branches, along with any modifications to the child branch. My questions then: for the trunk, the rotation matrix - is that just the identity matrix * initial orientation vector ? for the first branch (and subsequent branches) - I'll "inherit" the rotation matrix of the parent branch, and apply x and z rotations to that also. e.g. using glm::normalize; using glm::rotateX; using glm::vec4; using glm::mat4; using glm::rotate; vec4 vYAxis = vec4(0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f); vec4 vInitial = normalize( rotateX( vYAxis, 10.0f ) ); mat4 mRotation = mat4(1.0); // trunk rotation matrix = identity * initial orientation vector mRotation *= vInitial; // first branch = parent rotation matrix * this branches rotations mRotation *= rotate( 10.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f ); // x rotation mRotation *= rotate( 10.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f ); // z rotation Are my maths and approach correct, or am I completely wrong? Finally, I'm using the glm library with OpenGL / C++ for this. Is the order of x rotation and z rotation important?

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  • Create MSDB Folders Through Code

    You can create package folders through SSMS, but you may also wish to do this as part of a deployment process or installation. In this case you will want programmatic method for managing folders, so how can this be done? The short answer is, go and look at the table msdb.dbo. sysdtspackagefolders90. This where folder information is stored, using a simple parent and child hierarchy format. To add new folder directly we just insert into the table - INSERT INTO dbo.sysdtspackagefolders90 ( folderid ,parentfolderid ,foldername) VALUES ( NEWID() -- New GUID for our new folder ,<<Parent Folder GUID>> -- Lookup the parent folder GUID if a child or another folder, or use the root GUID 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 ,<<Folder Name>>) -- New folder name There are also some stored procedures - sp_dts_addfolder sp_dts_deletefolder sp_dts_getfolder sp_dts_listfolders sp_dts_renamefolder To add a new folder to the root we could call the sp_dts_addfolder to stored procedure - EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_dts_addfolder @parentfolderid = '00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000' -- Root GUID ,@name = 'New Folder Name The stored procedures wrap very simple SQL statements, but provide a level of security, as they check the role membership of the user, and do not require permissions to perform direct table modifications.

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  • Why create a Huffman tree per character instead of a Node?

    - by Omega
    For a school assignment we're supposed to make a Java implementation of a compressor/decompresser using Huffman's algorithm. I've been reading a bit about it, specially this C++ tutorial: http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/computersciencetheory/huffman.html In my program, I've been thinking about having Nodes that have the following properties: Total Frequency Character (if a leaf) Right child (if any) Left child (if any) Parent (if any) So when building the Huffman tree, it is just a matter of linking a node to others, etc. However, I'm a bit confused with the following quote (emphasis mine): First, every letter starts off as part of its own tree and the trees are ordered by the frequency of the letters in the original string. Then the two least-frequently used letters are combined into a single tree, and the frequency of that tree is set to be the combined frequency of the two trees that it links together. My question: why should I create a tree per letter, instead of just a node per letter and then do the linking later? I have not begun coding, I'm just studying the algorithm first, so I guess I'm missing an important detail. What is it?

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  • what's the difference between Routed Events and Attached Events?

    - by vverma01
    I tried to find through various sources but still unable to understand difference between routed events and attached events in WPF. Most of the places of reference for attached event following example is used: <StackPanel Button.Click="StackPanel_Click"> <Button Content="Click Me!" Height="35" Width="150" Margin="5" /> </StackPanel> Explained as: stack panel do not contain Click event and hence Button.Click event is attached to Stack Panel. Where as msdn says: You can also name any event from any object that is accessible through the default namespace by using a typename.event partially qualified name; this syntax supports attaching handlers for routed events where the handler is intended to handle events routing from child elements, but the parent element does not also have that event in its members table. This syntax resembles an attached event syntax, but the event here is not a true attached event. Instead, you are referencing an event with a qualified name. According to MSDN information as pasted above, the above example of Buttons and StackPanel is actually a routed event example and not true attached event example. In case if above example is truly about usage of attached event (Button.Click="StackPanel_Click") then it's in contradiction to the information as provided at MSDN which says Another syntax usage that resembles typename.eventname attached event syntax but is not strictly speaking an attached event usage is when you attach handlers for routed events that are raised by child elements. You attach the handlers to a common parent, to take advantage of event routing, even though the common parent might not have the relevant routed event as a member. A similar question was raised in this Stack Overflow post, but unfortunately this question was closed before it could collect any response. Please help me to understand how attached events are different from routed events and also clarify the ambiguity as pointed above.

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  • Web Crawler for Learnign Topics on Wikipedia

    - by Chris Okyen
    When I want to learn a vast topic on wikipedia, I don't know where to start. For instance say I want to learn about Binary Stars, I then have to know other things linked on that pages and linked pages on all the linked pages and so on for the specified number of levels. I want to write a web crawler like HTTracker or something similiar, that will display a heiarchy of the links on a certain page and the links on those linked pages.I wish to use as much prewritten code as possible. Here is an example: Pretending we are bending the rules by grabing links from only the first sentence of each pages The example archives and "processes" two levels deep The page is Ternary operation The First Level In mathematics a ternary operation is an N-ary operation The Second Level Under Mathmatics: Mathematics (from Greek µ???µa máthema, “knowledge, study, learning”) is the abstract study of topics encompassing quantity, structure, space, change and others; it has no generally accepted definition. Under N-ary In logic,mathematics, and computer science, the arity i/'ær?ti/ of a function or operation is the number of arguments or operands that the function takes Under Operation In its simplest meaning in mathematics and logic, an operation is an action or procedure which produces a new value from one or more input values ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I need some way to determine what oder to approach all these wiki pages to learn the concept ( in this case ternary operations )... Following along with this exmpakle, one way to show the path to read would a printout flowout like so: This shows that the first sentence of the Mathematics page doesn't link to the first sentence of pages linked on ternary page two levels deep. (Please tell me how I should explain this ) --- In otherwords, the child node of the top pages first sentence, ternary_operation, does not have any child nodes that reference the children of the top pages other children nodes- N-ary and operation. Thus it is safe to read this first. Since N-ary has a link to operations we shoudl read the operation page second and finally read the N-ary page last. Again, I wish to use as much prewritten code as possible, and was wondering what language to use and what would be the simpliest way to go about doing this if there isn't already somethign out there? Thank You!

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  • Korea&rsquo;s Anti Abortion / Pro Life Movement

    - by Randy Walker
    The South Korean government is in dire straits.  The national birth rate continues to decline and as the population grows older, there aren’t enough children being born to support the country long term.  The social issues of post Korean War are coming back to haunt the empowered nation.  Being torn apart by the Korean War (nicknamed the forgotten war in America) and with a nation facing starvation, South Korea allowed hundreds of thousands of their children to be adopted abroad.  This has created a problem of epidemic proportions, essentially devaluing life in Korea and child rearing. In an effort to encourage birth rates, the government encouraged their workers to go home early and procreate by turning off the lights in buildings.  Something unknown to me, was the illegalization of abortion except in special cases. According to the this article, http://joongangdaily.joins.com it’s working.  Abortions are down and women are being encouraged to give birth.  However the flip side is illegal risky abortions are on the rise, with potential back alley abortions looming.  But with a nation facing it’s potential implosion, it has to continue it’s efforts to encourage mothers to give birth. Many of the issues that America has faced is in stark contrast to South Korea.  Abortion has been a generally accepted procedure for some time.  If you’ll recall, I mentioned South Korea devalued their children.  But the nation’s problems lie so much deeper.  Being an Asian nation, saving “face” is an important aspect of life.  And being an unwed mother disgraces the family.  Living as a single mother in South Korea is a difficult life.  Most married mothers stay at home to take care of the children.  Being a shunned single mother that has a hard time getting a job (because you are a single mother) and affording child care isn’t like life in America. If we in the states suddenly faced a birthrate crisis, what would the U.S. government do?

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  • Using Queries with Coherence Write-Behind Caches

    - by jpurdy
    Applications that use write-behind caching and wish to query the logical entity set have the option of querying the NamedCache itself or querying the database. In the former case, no particular restrictions exist beyond the limitations intrinsic to the Coherence query engine itself. In the latter case, queries may see partially committed transactions (e.g. with a parent-child relationship, the version of the parent may be different than the version of the child objects) and/or significant version skew (the query may see the current version of one object and a far older version of another object). This is consistent with "read committed" semantics, but the read skew may be far greater than would ever occur in a non-cached environment. As is usually the case, the application developer may choose to accept these limitations (with the hope that they are sufficiently infrequent), or they may choose to validate the reads (perhaps via a version flag on the objects). This also applies to situations where a third party application (such as a reporting tool) is querying the database. In many cases, the database may only be in a consistent state after the Coherence cluster has been halted.

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  • Structuring Access Control In Hierarchical Object Graph

    - by SB2055
    I have a Folder entity that can be Moderated by users. Folders can contain other folders. So I may have a structure like this: Folder 1 Folder 2 Folder 3 Folder 4 I have to decide how to implement Moderation for this entity. I've come up with two options: Option 1 When the user is given moderation privileges to Folder 1, define a moderator relationship between Folder 1 and User 1. No other relationships are added to the db. To determine if the user can moderate Folder 3, I check and see if User 1 is the moderator of any parent folders. This seems to alleviate some of the complexity of handling updates / moved entities / additions under Folder 1 after the relationship has been defined, and reverting the relationship means I only have to deal with one entity. Option 2 When the user is given moderation privileges to Folder 1, define a new relationship between User 1 and Folder 1, and all child entities down to the grandest of grandchildren when the relationship is created, and if it's ever removed, iterate back down the graph to remove the relationship. If I add something under Folder 2 after this relationship has been made, I just copy all Moderators into the new Entity. But when I need to show only the top-level Folders that a user is Moderating, I need to query all folders that have a parent folder that the user does not moderate, as opposed to option 1, where I just query any items that the user is moderating. Thoughts I think it comes down to determining if users will be querying for all parent items more than they'll be querying child items... if so, then option 1 seems better. But I'm not sure. Is either approach better than the other? Why? Or is there another approach that's better than both? I'm using Entity Framework in case it matters.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, May 14, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, May 14, 2010New ProjectsCampfire#: Campfire# is a campfire client written in .NET 4.0 using WPF, which uses the Campfire API.CHESS: Systematic Concurrency Testing: CHESS is a tool for systematic and disciplined concurrency testing. Given a concurrent test, CHESS systematically enumerates the possible thread sc...cmpp: cmppcycloid: Arcanoid gameDotNetNuke® C#: The DotNetNuke® project is developed and maintained on a Visual Basic codebase, however a C# version has always been a popular request. This is a ...EasyBuildingCMS.NET: EasyBuildingCMS is an easy use content management system.fluidCMS: Provide for flexible management of web content that is not tightly integrated with the layout and rendering of sites that consume the content.Golem: An automation tool oriented to localization engineering environmentHB Batch Encoder Mk 2: HandBrake Batch Encoder Mk II This Program was adapted from an original project downloaded from codeplex by the name of "Handbrake Batch Encoder"...Integrating Social Media Networks: This is part of my pos graduation project.Ketonic: The Ketonic project aims to improve development of websites based on the Kentico CMS. LinkSharp: LinkSharp is a short-URL provider that can be used to generate short static non changing URL's. The web interface allows you to easily add / edit /...PUC NET (C++ Network Library - PUC Minas): This is an Academic Library for an Easy Development of Applications and Games based on Network Communication.Regular Expression Tester: Small utility for testing regular expressionsSharePoint User Management WebPart: SharePoint User Management WebPartSharpBox: SharpBox makes it easier for .NET developers to interact with existing cloud storage service, e.g. DropBox or Amazon S3Snipivit: Snipivit is a snippet manager service and VS2010 plugin that allows small development teams to store all their code snippets on a central database,...Software Factories Applied: Software Factories Applied is a project collecting the companion bits for the eponymous book to be published by Wiley & Sons in 2011. The authors ...The Ping Master: A service that periodically pings network addresses and allows the running of command line type utilities in response to success or failure.Title Safe Region Checker: A simple utility for XNA developers to check screenshots from games intended for release on the LIVE Marketplace for "title safe" region compliance...Trial project: sky is blueUyghur Named Date: Generate Uyghur named date string. ئۇيغۇرچە ئاي ناملىق چىسلا ھاسىل قىلىشWildcard Search Web Part for SharePoint 2010: The Wildcard Search web part for MOSS 2007 was wildly successful. Although, SharePoint 2010 has built-in wildcard searching functionality, the out...在线Office控件 Online Offical Control: 在线Office控件软件作品发布平台: SoftwarePublishPlatform 软件作品发布平台New ReleasesDemina: Demina Binaries version 0.1: Demina binaries are now available. This release (version 0.1) is an alpha version. Please report any bugs for extermination.EasyTFS: EasyTfs 1.0 Beta 2: Added cache refreshing when contents are updated rather than just every 10 minutes. Added window title based on currently-open case. Added attachme...Extending C# editor - Outlining, classification: Initial release: Initial releaseHB Batch Encoder Mk 2: HB Batch Encoder Mk2 v1.01: Binary release files.HB Batch Encoder Mk 2: Source Code: Source CodeHobbyBrew Mobile: Beta 2: Corretti numerosi bug, data un implementazione "approssimativa" del riscaldamento per Infusione. Aggiornamento consigliato!HouseFly controls: HouseFly controls beta 1.0.2.0: HouseFly controls relase 1.0.2.0 betaHtml Reader: Beta 2: I fixed a bug in HtmlElementCollection, Which exposed an integer enumerator, instead of enumerating through HtmlElements. I added a WPF Window tha...Html to OpenXml: HtmlToOpenXml 1.2: Fix some reported bug. See change set for description. The dll library to include in your project. The dll is signed for GAC support. Compiled wi...Infection Protection: Infection Protection 0.1: This is the final version of Infection Protection that was entered into the 2010 OGPC game competition.Jobping Url Shortener: Deploy Code 0.5.1: Deployment code for Version 0.5 This version includes our Jobping style.Jobping Url Shortener: Source Code 0.5.1: Source code for the 0.5 release. This release includes our Jobping style skin.Kooboo HTML form: Kooboo HTML form module 2.1.0.1: HTML form module contributed by member aledelgo. Add SMTP user and password authentication.KooBoo Image Galery: Beta 2: This new version corrects some issues pointed by Guoqi Zheng Some schema and folders were renamed, so it's better to uninstall the module and remo...MFCMAPI: May 2010 Release: If you just want to run the tool, get the executable. If you want to debug it, get the symbol file and the source. Build: 6.0.0.1020 The 64 bit bu...MVC Turbine: Release 2.1 for MVC2: This RTM contains the same features as v2.0 RTM plus these features: Instance Registration to IServiceLocator You can now add an instance of a typ...NazTek.Extension.Clr4: NazTek.Extension.Clr4 Binary: Binary releaseNazTek.Extension.Clr4: NazTek.Extension.Clr4 Source: Cab with source codeNSIS Autorun: NSIS Autorun 0.1.8: This release includes source code, executable binaries and example materials.Ottawa IT Day: 2010 Source Code and Presentations: During the Ottawa IT Day 2010, some of the presenters shared their code (and some presentations). This release is the culmination of all those effo...PHPWord: PHPWord 0.6.1 Beta: Changelog: Fixed Error when adding a JPEG image and opening in office 2007 Issue #1 Fixed Already defined constant PHPWORD_BASE_PATH Issue #2 F...Rapid Dictionary: Rapid Dictionary Alpha 2.0: Release Notes * Try auto updatable version: http://install.rapiddict.com/index.html Rapid Dictionary Alpha 2.0 includes such functionality: ...Shake - C# Make: Shake v0.1.18: Core changes. Process wrapper class, console logger, etc.SharpBox: SharpBox-Trunk: This is the SharpBox build from the trunk source branch!SharpBox: SharpBox-Trunk-Initial-Source: The initial source code, will be updated from time to timeSpackle.NET: 4.0.0.0 Release: This new drop contains the following A CreateBigInteger() method on SecureRandom to create random BigInteger values. An extension method to prop...StreamInsight example queries, input adapters and output adapters: StreamInsight Examples for V1.0 RTM: Zipped source code.The Ping Master: v0.1.0.0: Early release of The Ping Master for test purposes. Configuration tool is unfinished and does not include an installer.Title Safe Region Checker: Title Safe Region Checker v1.0.0.1: Release 1.0 of Title Safe Region Checker. No known bugs or problems. File is a zipped directory containing the necessary installation files.TortoiseHg: TortoiseHg 1.0.3: This is a bug fix release, we recommend all users upgrade to 1.0.3Usa*Usa Libraly: Smart.Windows.Navigation 0.4: Smart.Windows.Navigation simple navigation library ver 0.4.0. Include Windows Forms & Compact Framework samples. Information - Smart.Windows.Mvc ...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30513.0: Automatic drop of latest buildWabbitStudio Z80 Software Tools: Wabbitcode: Wabbitcode is an Z80 Assembly IDE for Windows, OS X, and Linux. Built to take full advantage of the features of SPASM and Wabbitemu, Wabbitcode has...white: Release 0.20: Source Code: https://white-project.googlecode.com/svn/tags/0.20 Add few more keyboard keys like windows button and F13-F24. Fixed bugs for keyboar...Wildcard Search Web Part for SharePoint 2010: Version 1.0 Release 1: This is the initial release of the Wildcard Search Web Part for SharePoint 2010. All queries will be issued as wildcards unless disabled with the ...Windows Azure Command-line Tools for PHP Developers: Windows Azure Command-line Tools May 2010 Update: May 2010 Update – May 13, 2010 We are pleased to announced the May 2010 update of Windows Azure Command-Line Tools. In addition to bug fixes and i...WinXmlCook: WinXmlCook 2.1: Version 2.1 released!Xrns2XMod: Xrns2XMod 1.1: some source code optimization在线Office控件 Online Offical Control: SPOffice2.0Release: 该版本在MS Office2003/2007,WPS2009,WPS2010下测试通过Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesPHPExcelASP.NETMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMirror Testing SystemRawrBlogEngine.NETPHPExcelMicrosoft Biology FoundationwhiteWindows Azure Command-line Tools for PHP DevelopersStyleCopShake - C# Make

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  • What&rsquo;s New in ASP.NET 4.0 Part Two: WebForms and Visual Studio Enhancements

    - by Rick Strahl
    In the last installment I talked about the core changes in the ASP.NET runtime that I’ve been taking advantage of. In this column, I’ll cover the changes to the Web Forms engine and some of the cool improvements in Visual Studio that make Web and general development easier. WebForms The WebForms engine is the area that has received most significant changes in ASP.NET 4.0. Probably the most widely anticipated features are related to managing page client ids and of ViewState on WebForm pages. Take Control of Your ClientIDs Unique ClientID generation in ASP.NET has been one of the most complained about “features” in ASP.NET. Although there’s a very good technical reason for these unique generated ids - they guarantee unique ids for each and every server control on a page - these unique and generated ids often get in the way of client-side JavaScript development and CSS styling as it’s often inconvenient and fragile to work with the long, generated ClientIDs. In ASP.NET 4.0 you can now specify an explicit client id mode on each control or each naming container parent control to control how client ids are generated. By default, ASP.NET generates mangled client ids for any control contained in a naming container (like a Master Page, or a User Control for example). The key to ClientID management in ASP.NET 4.0 are the new ClientIDMode and ClientIDRowSuffix properties. ClientIDMode supports four different ClientID generation settings shown below. For the following examples, imagine that you have a Textbox control named txtName inside of a master page control container on a WebForms page. <%@Page Language="C#"      MasterPageFile="~/Site.Master"     CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="WebApplication1.WebForm2"  %> <asp:Content ID="content"  ContentPlaceHolderID="content"               runat="server"               ClientIDMode="Static" >       <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName" /> </asp:Content> The four available ClientIDMode values are: AutoID This is the existing behavior in ASP.NET 1.x-3.x where full naming container munging takes place. <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"        id="ctl00_content_txtName" /> This should be familiar to any ASP.NET developer and results in fairly unpredictable client ids that can easily change if the containership hierarchy changes. For example, removing the master page changes the name in this case, so if you were to move a block of script code that works against the control to a non-Master page, the script code immediately breaks. Static This option is the most deterministic setting that forces the control’s ClientID to use its ID value directly. No naming container naming at all is applied and you end up with clean client ids: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName"         type="text" id="txtName" /> Note that the name property which is used for postback variables to the server still is munged, but the ClientID property is displayed simply as the ID value that you have assigned to the control. This option is what most of us want to use, but you have to be clear on that because it can potentially cause conflicts with other controls on the page. If there are several instances of the same naming container (several instances of the same user control for example) there can easily be a client id naming conflict. Note that if you assign Static to a data-bound control, like a list child control in templates, you do not get unique ids either, so for list controls where you rely on unique id for child controls, you’ll probably want to use Predictable rather than Static. I’ll write more on this a little later when I discuss ClientIDRowSuffix. Predictable The previous two values are pretty self-explanatory. Predictable however, requires some explanation. To me at least it’s not in the least bit predictable. MSDN defines this value as follows: This algorithm is used for controls that are in data-bound controls. The ClientID value is generated by concatenating the ClientID value of the parent naming container with the ID value of the control. If the control is a data-bound control that generates multiple rows, the value of the data field specified in the ClientIDRowSuffix property is added at the end. For the GridView control, multiple data fields can be specified. If the ClientIDRowSuffix property is blank, a sequential number is added at the end instead of a data-field value. Each segment is separated by an underscore character (_). The key that makes this value a bit confusing is that it relies on the parent NamingContainer’s ClientID to build its own ClientID value. This effectively means that the value is not predictable at all but rather very tightly coupled to the parent naming container’s ClientIDMode setting. For my simple textbox example, if the ClientIDMode property of the parent naming container (Page in this case) is set to “Predictable” you’ll get this: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"         id="content_txtName" /> which gives an id that based on walking up to the currently active naming container (the MasterPage content container) and starting the id formatting from there downward. Think of this as a semi unique name that’s guaranteed unique only for the naming container. If, on the other hand, the Page is set to “AutoID” you get the following with Predictable on txtName: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"         id="ctl00_content_txtName" /> The latter is effectively the same as if you specified AutoID because it inherits the AutoID naming from the Page and Content Master Page control of the page. But again - predictable behavior always depends on the parent naming container and how it generates its id, so the id may not always be exactly the same as the AutoID generated value because somewhere in the NamingContainer chain the ClientIDMode setting may be set to a different value. For example, if you had another naming container in the middle that was set to Static you’d end up effectively with an id that starts with the NamingContainers id rather than the whole ctl000_content munging. The most common use for Predictable is likely to be for data-bound controls, which results in each data bound item getting a unique ClientID. Unfortunately, even here the behavior can be very unpredictable depending on which data-bound control you use - I found significant differences in how template controls in a GridView behave from those that are used in a ListView control. For example, GridView creates clean child ClientIDs, while ListView still has a naming container in the ClientID, presumably because of the template container on which you can’t set ClientIDMode. Predictable is useful, but only if all naming containers down the chain use this setting. Otherwise you’re right back to the munged ids that are pretty unpredictable. Another property, ClientIDRowSuffix, can be used in combination with ClientIDMode of Predictable to force a suffix onto list client controls. For example: <asp:GridView runat="server" ID="gvItems"              AutoGenerateColumns="false"             ClientIDMode="Static"              ClientIDRowSuffix="Id">     <Columns>     <asp:TemplateField>         <ItemTemplate>             <asp:Label runat="server" id="txtName"                        Text='<%# Eval("Name") %>'                   ClientIDMode="Predictable"/>         </ItemTemplate>     </asp:TemplateField>     <asp:TemplateField>         <ItemTemplate>         <asp:Label runat="server" id="txtId"                     Text='<%# Eval("Id") %>'                     ClientIDMode="Predictable" />         </ItemTemplate>     </asp:TemplateField>     </Columns>  </asp:GridView> generates client Ids inside of a column in the master page described earlier: <td>     <span id="txtName_0">Rick</span> </td> where the value after the underscore is the ClientIDRowSuffix field - in this case “Id” of the item data bound to the control. Note that all of the child controls require ClientIDMode=”Predictable” in order for the ClientIDRowSuffix to be applied, and the parent GridView controls need to be set to Static either explicitly or via Naming Container inheritance to give these simple names. It’s a bummer that ClientIDRowSuffix doesn’t work with Static to produce this automatically. Another real problem is that other controls process the ClientIDMode differently. For example, a ListView control processes the Predictable ClientIDMode differently and produces the following with the Static ListView and Predictable child controls: <span id="ctrl0_txtName_0">Rick</span> I couldn’t even figure out a way using ClientIDMode to get a simple ID that also uses a suffix short of falling back to manually generated ids using <%= %> expressions instead. Given the inconsistencies inside of list controls using <%= %>, ids for the ListView might not be a bad idea anyway. Inherit The final setting is Inherit, which is the default for all controls except Page. This means that controls by default inherit the parent naming container’s ClientIDMode setting. For more detailed information on ClientID behavior and different scenarios you can check out a blog post of mine on this subject: http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/54760.aspx. ClientID Enhancements Summary The ClientIDMode property is a welcome addition to ASP.NET 4.0. To me this is probably the most useful WebForms feature as it allows me to generate clean IDs simply by setting ClientIDMode="Static" on either the page or inside of Web.config (in the Pages section) which applies the setting down to the entire page which is my 95% scenario. For the few cases when it matters - for list controls and inside of multi-use user controls or custom server controls) - I can use Predictable or even AutoID to force controls to unique names. For application-level page development, this is easy to accomplish and provides maximum usability for working with client script code against page controls. ViewStateMode Another area of large criticism for WebForms is ViewState. ViewState is used internally by ASP.NET to persist page-level changes to non-postback properties on controls as pages post back to the server. It’s a useful mechanism that works great for the overall mechanics of WebForms, but it can also cause all sorts of overhead for page operation as ViewState can very quickly get out of control and consume huge amounts of bandwidth in your page content. ViewState can also wreak havoc with client-side scripting applications that modify control properties that are tracked by ViewState, which can produce very unpredictable results on a Postback after client-side updates. Over the years in my own development, I’ve often turned off ViewState on pages to reduce overhead. Yes, you lose some functionality, but you can easily implement most of the common functionality in non-ViewState workarounds. Relying less on heavy ViewState controls and sticking with simpler controls or raw HTML constructs avoids getting around ViewState problems. In ASP.NET 3.x and prior, it wasn’t easy to control ViewState - you could turn it on or off and if you turned it off at the page or web.config level, you couldn’t turn it back on for specific controls. In short, it was an all or nothing approach. With ASP.NET 4.0, the new ViewStateMode property gives you more control. It allows you to disable ViewState globally either on the page or web.config level and then turn it back on for specific controls that might need it. ViewStateMode only works when EnableViewState="true" on the page or web.config level (which is the default). You can then use ViewStateMode of Disabled, Enabled or Inherit to control the ViewState settings on the page. If you’re shooting for minimal ViewState usage, the ideal situation is to set ViewStateMode to disabled on the Page or web.config level and only turn it back on particular controls: <%@Page Language="C#"      CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="Westwind.WebStore.WebForm2"        ClientIDMode="Static"                ViewStateMode="Disabled"     EnableViewState="true"  %> <!-- this control has viewstate  --> <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName"  ViewStateMode="Enabled" />       <!-- this control has no viewstate - it inherits  from parent container --> <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtAddress" /> Note that the EnableViewState="true" at the Page level isn’t required since it’s the default, but it’s important that the value is true. ViewStateMode has no effect if EnableViewState="false" at the page level. The main benefit of ViewStateMode is that it allows you to more easily turn off ViewState for most of the page and enable only a few key controls that might need it. For me personally, this is a perfect combination as most of my WebForm apps can get away without any ViewState at all. But some controls - especially third party controls - often don’t work well without ViewState enabled, and now it’s much easier to selectively enable controls rather than the old way, which required you to pretty much turn off ViewState for all controls that you didn’t want ViewState on. Inline HTML Encoding HTML encoding is an important feature to prevent cross-site scripting attacks in data entered by users on your site. In order to make it easier to create HTML encoded content, ASP.NET 4.0 introduces a new Expression syntax using <%: %> to encode string values. The encoding expression syntax looks like this: <%: "<script type='text/javascript'>" +     "alert('Really?');</script>" %> which produces properly encoded HTML: &lt;script type=&#39;text/javascript&#39; &gt;alert(&#39;Really?&#39;);&lt;/script&gt; Effectively this is a shortcut to: <%= HttpUtility.HtmlEncode( "<script type='text/javascript'>" + "alert('Really?');</script>") %> Of course the <%: %> syntax can also evaluate expressions just like <%= %> so the more common scenario applies this expression syntax against data your application is displaying. Here’s an example displaying some data model values: <%: Model.Address.Street %> This snippet shows displaying data from your application’s data store or more importantly, from data entered by users. Anything that makes it easier and less verbose to HtmlEncode text is a welcome addition to avoid potential cross-site scripting attacks. Although I listed Inline HTML Encoding here under WebForms, anything that uses the WebForms rendering engine including ASP.NET MVC, benefits from this feature. ScriptManager Enhancements The ASP.NET ScriptManager control in the past has introduced some nice ways to take programmatic and markup control over script loading, but there were a number of shortcomings in this control. The ASP.NET 4.0 ScriptManager has a number of improvements that make it easier to control script loading and addresses a few of the shortcomings that have often kept me from using the control in favor of manual script loading. The first is the AjaxFrameworkMode property which finally lets you suppress loading the ASP.NET AJAX runtime. Disabled doesn’t load any ASP.NET AJAX libraries, but there’s also an Explicit mode that lets you pick and choose the library pieces individually and reduce the footprint of ASP.NET AJAX script included if you are using the library. There’s also a new EnableCdn property that forces any script that has a new WebResource attribute CdnPath property set to a CDN supplied URL. If the script has this Attribute property set to a non-null/empty value and EnableCdn is enabled on the ScriptManager, that script will be served from the specified CdnPath. [assembly: WebResource(    "Westwind.Web.Resources.ww.jquery.js",    "application/x-javascript",    CdnPath =  "http://mysite.com/scripts/ww.jquery.min.js")] Cool, but a little too static for my taste since this value can’t be changed at runtime to point at a debug script as needed, for example. Assembly names for loading scripts from resources can now be simple names rather than fully qualified assembly names, which make it less verbose to reference scripts from assemblies loaded from your bin folder or the assembly reference area in web.config: <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" id="Id"          EnableCdn="true"         AjaxFrameworkMode="disabled">     <Scripts>         <asp:ScriptReference          Name="Westwind.Web.Resources.ww.jquery.js"         Assembly="Westwind.Web" />     </Scripts>        </asp:ScriptManager> The ScriptManager in 4.0 also supports script combining via the CompositeScript tag, which allows you to very easily combine scripts into a single script resource served via ASP.NET. Even nicer: You can specify the URL that the combined script is served with. Check out the following script manager markup that combines several static file scripts and a script resource into a single ASP.NET served resource from a static URL (allscripts.js): <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" id="Id"          EnableCdn="true"         AjaxFrameworkMode="disabled">     <CompositeScript          Path="~/scripts/allscripts.js">         <Scripts>             <asp:ScriptReference                    Path="~/scripts/jquery.js" />             <asp:ScriptReference                    Path="~/scripts/ww.jquery.js" />             <asp:ScriptReference            Name="Westwind.Web.Resources.editors.js"                 Assembly="Westwind.Web" />         </Scripts>     </CompositeScript> </asp:ScriptManager> When you render this into HTML, you’ll see a single script reference in the page: <script src="scripts/allscripts.debug.js"          type="text/javascript"></script> All you need to do to make this work is ensure that allscripts.js and allscripts.debug.js exist in the scripts folder of your application - they can be empty but the file has to be there. This is pretty cool, but you want to be real careful that you use unique URLs for each combination of scripts you combine or else browser and server caching will easily screw you up royally. The script manager also allows you to override native ASP.NET AJAX scripts now as any script references defined in the Scripts section of the ScriptManager trump internal references. So if you want custom behavior or you want to fix a possible bug in the core libraries that normally are loaded from resources, you can now do this simply by referencing the script resource name in the Name property and pointing at System.Web for the assembly. Not a common scenario, but when you need it, it can come in real handy. Still, there are a number of shortcomings in this control. For one, the ScriptManager and ClientScript APIs still have no common entry point so control developers are still faced with having to check and support both APIs to load scripts so that controls can work on pages that do or don’t have a ScriptManager on the page. The CdnUrl is static and compiled in, which is very restrictive. And finally, there’s still no control over where scripts get loaded on the page - ScriptManager still injects scripts into the middle of the HTML markup rather than in the header or optionally the footer. This, in turn, means there is little control over script loading order, which can be problematic for control developers. MetaDescription, MetaKeywords Page Properties There are also a number of additional Page properties that correspond to some of the other features discussed in this column: ClientIDMode, ClientTarget and ViewStateMode. Another minor but useful feature is that you can now directly access the MetaDescription and MetaKeywords properties on the Page object to set the corresponding meta tags programmatically. Updating these values programmatically previously required either <%= %> expressions in the page markup or dynamic insertion of literal controls into the page. You can now just set these properties programmatically on the Page object in any Control derived class on the page or the Page itself: Page.MetaKeywords = "ASP.NET,4.0,New Features"; Page.MetaDescription = "This article discusses the new features in ASP.NET 4.0"; Note, that there’s no corresponding ASP.NET tag for the HTML Meta element, so the only way to specify these values in markup and access them is via the @Page tag: <%@Page Language="C#"      CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="Westwind.WebStore.WebForm2"      ClientIDMode="Static"                MetaDescription="Article that discusses what's                      new in ASP.NET 4.0"     MetaKeywords="ASP.NET,4.0,New Features" %> Nothing earth shattering but quite convenient. Visual Studio 2010 Enhancements for Web Development For Web development there are also a host of editor enhancements in Visual Studio 2010. Some of these are not Web specific but they are useful for Web developers in general. Text Editors Throughout Visual Studio 2010, the text editors have all been updated to a new core engine based on WPF which provides some interesting new features for various code editors including the nice ability to zoom in and out with Ctrl-MouseWheel to quickly change the size of text. There are many more API options to control the editor and although Visual Studio 2010 doesn’t yet use many of these features, we can look forward to enhancements in add-ins and future editor updates from the various language teams that take advantage of the visual richness that WPF provides to editing. On the negative side, I’ve noticed that occasionally the code editor and especially the HTML and JavaScript editors will lose the ability to use various navigation keys like arrows, back and delete keys, which requires closing and reopening the documents at times. This issue seems to be well documented so I suspect this will be addressed soon with a hotfix or within the first service pack. Overall though, the code editors work very well, especially given that they were re-written completely using WPF, which was one of my big worries when I first heard about the complete redesign of the editors. Multi-Targeting Visual Studio now targets all versions of the .NET framework from 2.0 forward. You can use Visual Studio 2010 to work on your ASP.NET 2, 3.0 and 3.5 applications which is a nice way to get your feet wet with the new development environment without having to make changes to existing applications. It’s nice to have one tool to work in for all the different versions. Multi-Monitor Support One cool feature of Visual Studio 2010 is the ability to drag windows out of the Visual Studio environment and out onto the desktop including onto another monitor easily. Since Web development often involves working with a host of designers at the same time - visual designer, HTML markup window, code behind and JavaScript editor - it’s really nice to be able to have a little more screen real estate to work on each of these editors. Microsoft made a welcome change in the environment. IntelliSense Snippets for HTML and JavaScript Editors The HTML and JavaScript editors now finally support IntelliSense scripts to create macro-based template expansions that have been in the core C# and Visual Basic code editors since Visual Studio 2005. Snippets allow you to create short XML-based template definitions that can act as static macros or real templates that can have replaceable values that can be embedded into the expanded text. The XML syntax for these snippets is straight forward and it’s pretty easy to create custom snippets manually. You can easily create snippets using XML and store them in your custom snippets folder (C:\Users\rstrahl\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Code Snippets\Visual Web Developer\My HTML Snippets and My JScript Snippets), but it helps to use one of the third-party tools that exist to simplify the process for you. I use SnippetEditor, by Bill McCarthy, which makes short work of creating snippets interactively (http://snippeteditor.codeplex.com/). Note: You may have to manually add the Visual Studio 2010 User specific Snippet folders to this tool to see existing ones you’ve created. Code snippets are some of the biggest time savers and HTML editing more than anything deals with lots of repetitive tasks that lend themselves to text expansion. Visual Studio 2010 includes a slew of built-in snippets (that you can also customize!) and you can create your own very easily. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to spend a little time examining your coding patterns and find the repetitive code that you write and convert it into snippets. I’ve been using CodeRush for this for years, but now you can do much of the basic expansion natively for HTML and JavaScript snippets. jQuery Integration Is Now Native jQuery is a popular JavaScript library and recently Microsoft has recently stated that it will become the primary client-side scripting technology to drive higher level script functionality in various ASP.NET Web projects that Microsoft provides. In Visual Studio 2010, the default full project template includes jQuery as part of a new project including the support files that provide IntelliSense (-vsdoc files). IntelliSense support for jQuery is now also baked into Visual Studio 2010, so unlike Visual Studio 2008 which required a separate download, no further installs are required for a rich IntelliSense experience with jQuery. Summary ASP.NET 4.0 brings many useful improvements to the platform, but thankfully most of the changes are incremental changes that don’t compromise backwards compatibility and they allow developers to ease into the new features one feature at a time. None of the changes in ASP.NET 4.0 or Visual Studio 2010 are monumental or game changers. The bigger features are language and .NET Framework changes that are also optional. This ASP.NET and tools release feels more like fine tuning and getting some long-standing kinks worked out of the platform. It shows that the ASP.NET team is dedicated to paying attention to community feedback and responding with changes to the platform and development environment based on this feedback. If you haven’t gotten your feet wet with ASP.NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010, there’s no reason not to give it a shot now - the ASP.NET 4.0 platform is solid and Visual Studio 2010 works very well for a brand new release. Check it out. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

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  • Advantages of SQL Backup Pro

    - by Grant Fritchey
    Getting backups of your databases in place is a fundamental issue for protection of the business. Yes, I said business, not data, not databases, but business. Because of a lack of good, tested, backups, companies have gone completely out of business or suffered traumatic financial loss. That’s just a simple fact (outlined with a few examples here). So you want to get backups right. That’s a big part of why we make Red Gate SQL Backup Pro work the way it does. Yes, you could just use native backups, but you’ll be missing a few advantages that we provide over and above what you get out of the box from Microsoft. Let’s talk about them. Guidance If you’re a hard-core DBA with 20+ years of experience on every version of SQL Server and several other data platforms besides, you may already know what you need in order to get a set of tested backups in place. But, if you’re not, maybe a little help would be a good thing. To set up backups for your servers, we supply a wizard that will step you through the entire process. It will also act to guide you down good paths. For example, if your databases are in Full Recovery, you should set up transaction log backups to run on a regular basis. When you choose a transaction log backup from the Backup Type you’ll see that only those databases that are in Full Recovery will be listed: This makes it very easy to be sure you have a log backup set up for all the databases you should and none of the databases where you won’t be able to. There are other examples of guidance throughout the product. If you have the responsibility of managing backups but very little knowledge or time, we can help you out. Throughout the software you’ll notice little green question marks. You can see two in the screen above and more in each of the screens in other topics below this one. Clicking on these will open a window with additional information about the topic in question which should help to guide you through some of the tougher decisions you may have to make while setting up your backup jobs. Here’s an example: Backup Copies As a part of the wizard you can choose to make a copy of your backup on your network. This process runs as part of the Red Gate SQL Backup engine. It will copy your backup, after completing the backup so it doesn’t cause any additional blocking or resource use within the backup process, to the network location you define. Creating a copy acts as a mechanism of protection for your backups. You can then backup that copy or do other things with it, all without affecting the original backup file. This requires either an additional backup or additional scripting to get it done within the native Microsoft backup engine. Offsite Storage Red Gate offers you the ability to immediately copy your backup to the cloud as a further, off-site, protection of your backups. It’s a service we provide and expose through the Backup wizard. Your backup will complete first, just like with the network backup copy, then an asynchronous process will copy that backup to cloud storage. Again, this is built right into the wizard or even the command line calls to SQL Backup, so it’s part a single process within your system. With native backup you would need to write additional scripts, possibly outside of T-SQL, to make this happen. Before you can use this with your backups you’ll need to do a little setup, but it’s built right into the product to get this done. You’ll be directed to the web site for our hosted storage where you can set up an account. Compression If you have SQL Server 2008 Enterprise, or you’re on SQL Server 2008R2 or greater and you have a Standard or Enterprise license, then you have backup compression. It’s built right in and works well. But, if you need even more compression then you might want to consider Red Gate SQL Backup Pro. We offer four levels of compression within the product. This means you can get a little compression faster, or you can just sacrifice some CPU time and get even more compression. You decide. For just a simple example I backed up AdventureWorks2012 using both methods of compression. The resulting file from native was 53mb. Our file was 33mb. That’s a file that is smaller by 38%, not a small number when we start talking gigabytes. We even provide guidance here to help you determine which level of compression would be right for you and your system: So for this test, if you wanted maximum compression with minimum CPU use you’d probably want to go with Level 2 which gets you almost as much compression as Level 3 but will use fewer resources. And that compression is still better than the native one by 10%. Restore Testing Backups are vital. But, a backup is just a file until you restore it. How do you know that you can restore that backup? Of course, you’ll use CHECKSUM to validate that what was read from disk during the backup process is what gets written to the backup file. You’ll also use VERIFYONLY to check that the backup header and the checksums on the backup file are valid. But, this doesn’t do a complete test of the backup. The only complete test is a restore. So, what you really need is a process that tests your backups. This is something you’ll have to schedule separately from your backups, but we provide a couple of mechanisms to help you out here. First, when you create a backup schedule, all done through our wizard which gives you as much guidance as you get when running backups, you get the option of creating a reminder to create a job to test your restores. You can enable this or disable it as you choose when creating your scheduled backups. Once you’re ready to schedule test restores for your databases, we have a wizard for this as well. After you choose the databases and restores you want to test, all configurable for automation, you get to decide if you’re going to restore to a specified copy or to the original database: If you’re doing your tests on a new server (probably the best choice) you can just overwrite the original database if it’s there. If not, you may want to create a new database each time you test your restores. Another part of validating your backups is ensuring that they can pass consistency checks. So we have DBCC built right into the process. You can even decide how you want DBCC run, which error messages to include, limit or add to the checks being run. With this you could offload some DBCC checks from your production system so that you only run the physical checks on your production box, but run the full check on this backup. That makes backup testing not just a general safety process, but a performance enhancer as well: Finally, assuming the tests pass, you can delete the database, leave it in place, or delete it regardless of the tests passing. All this is automated and scheduled through the SQL Agent job on your servers. Running your databases through this process will ensure that you don’t just have backups, but that you have tested backups. Single Point of Management If you have more than one server to maintain, getting backups setup could be a tedious process. But, with Red Gate SQL Backup Pro you can connect to multiple servers and then manage all your databases and all your servers backups from a single location. You’ll be able to see what is scheduled, what has run successfully and what has failed, all from a single interface without having to connect to different servers. Log Shipping Wizard If you want to set up log shipping as part of a disaster recovery process, it can frequently be a pain to get configured correctly. We supply a wizard that will walk you through every step of the process including setting up alerts so you’ll know should your log shipping fail. Summary You want to get your backups right. As outlined above, Red Gate SQL Backup Pro will absolutely help you there. We supply a number of processes and functionalities above and beyond what you get with SQL Server native. Plus, with our guidance, hints and reminders, you will get your backups set up in a way that protects your business.

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  • Announcing ASP.NET MVC 3 (Release Candidate 2)

    - by ScottGu
    Earlier today the ASP.NET team shipped the final release candidate (RC2) for ASP.NET MVC 3.  You can download and install it here. Almost there… Today’s RC2 release is the near-final release of ASP.NET MVC 3, and is a true “release candidate” in that we are hoping to not make any more code changes with it.  We are publishing it today so that people can do final testing with it, let us know if they find any last minute “showstoppers”, and start updating their apps to use it.  We will officially ship the final ASP.NET MVC 3 “RTM” build in January. Works with both VS 2010 and VS 2010 SP1 Beta Today’s ASP.NET MVC 3 RC2 release works with both the shipping version of Visual Studio 2010 / Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, as well as the newly released VS 2010 SP1 Beta.  This means that you do not need to install VS 2010 SP1 (or the SP1 beta) in order to use ASP.NET MVC 3.  It works just fine with the shipping Visual Studio 2010.  I’ll do a blog post next week, though, about some of the nice additional feature goodies that come with VS 2010 SP1 (including IIS Express and SQL CE support within VS) which make the dev experience for both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC even better. Bugs and Perf Fixes Today’s ASP.NET MVC 3 RC2 build contains many bug fixes and performance optimizations.  Our latest performance tests indicate that ASP.NET MVC 3 is now faster than ASP.NET MVC 2, and that existing ASP.NET MVC applications will experience a slight performance increase when updated to run using ASP.NET MVC 3. Final Tweaks and Fit-N-Finish In addition to bug fixes and performance optimizations, today’s RC2 build contains a number of last-minute feature tweaks and “fit-n-finish” changes for the new ASP.NET MVC 3 features.  The feedback and suggestions we’ve received during the public previews has been invaluable in guiding these final tweaks, and we really appreciate people’s support in sending this feedback our way.  Below is a short-list of some of the feature changes/tweaks made between last month’s ASP.NET MVC 3 RC release and today’s ASP.NET MVC 3 RC2 release: jQuery updates and addition of jQuery UI The default ASP.NET MVC 3 project templates have been updated to include jQuery 1.4.4 and jQuery Validation 1.7.  We are also excited to announce today that we are including jQuery UI within our default ASP.NET project templates going forward.  jQuery UI provides a powerful set of additional UI widgets and capabilities.  It will be added by default to your project’s \scripts folder when you create new ASP.NET MVC 3 projects. Improved View Scaffolding The T4 templates used for scaffolding views with the Add-View dialog now generates views that use Html.EditorFor instead of helpers such as Html.TextBoxFor. This change enables you to optionally annotate models with metadata (using data annotation attributes) to better customize the output of your UI at runtime. The Add View scaffolding also supports improved detection and usage of primary key information on models (including support for naming conventions like ID, ProductID, etc).  For example: the Add View dialog box uses this information to ensure that the primary key value is not scaffold as an editable form field, and that links between views are auto-generated correctly with primary key information. The default Edit and Create templates also now include references to the jQuery scripts needed for client validation.  Scaffold form views now support client-side validation by default (no extra steps required).  Client-side validation with ASP.NET MVC 3 is also done using an unobtrusive javascript approach – making pages fast and clean. [ControllerSessionState] –> [SessionState] ASP.NET MVC 3 adds support for session-less controllers.  With the initial RC you used a [ControllerSessionState] attribute to specify this.  We shortened this in RC2 to just be [SessionState]: Note that in addition to turning off session state, you can also set it to be read-only (which is useful for webfarm scenarios where you are reading but not updating session state on a particular request). [SkipRequestValidation] –> [AllowHtml] ASP.NET MVC includes built-in support to protect against HTML and Cross-Site Script Injection Attacks, and will throw an error by default if someone tries to post HTML content as input.  Developers need to explicitly indicate that this is allowed (and that they’ve hopefully built their app to securely support it) in order to enable it. With ASP.NET MVC 3, we are also now supporting a new attribute that you can apply to properties of models/viewmodels to indicate that HTML input is enabled, which enables much more granular protection in a DRY way.  In last month’s RC release this attribute was named [SkipRequestValidation].  With RC2 we renamed it to [AllowHtml] to make it more intuitive: Setting the above [AllowHtml] attribute on a model/viewmodel will cause ASP.NET MVC 3 to turn off HTML injection protection when model binding just that property. Html.Raw() helper method The new Razor view engine introduced with ASP.NET MVC 3 automatically HTML encodes output by default.  This helps provide an additional level of protection against HTML and Script injection attacks. With RC2 we are adding a Html.Raw() helper method that you can use to explicitly indicate that you do not want to HTML encode your output, and instead want to render the content “as-is”: ViewModel/View –> ViewBag ASP.NET MVC has (since V1) supported a ViewData[] dictionary within Controllers and Views that enables developers to pass information from a Controller to a View in a late-bound way.  This approach can be used instead of, or in combination with, a strongly-typed model class.  The below code demonstrates a common use case – where a strongly typed Product model is passed to the view in addition to two late-bound variables via the ViewData[] dictionary: With ASP.NET MVC 3 we are introducing a new API that takes advantage of the dynamic type support within .NET 4 to set/retrieve these values.  It allows you to use standard “dot” notation to specify any number of additional variables to be passed, and does not require that you create a strongly-typed class to do so.  With earlier previews of ASP.NET MVC 3 we exposed this API using a dynamic property called “ViewModel” on the Controller base class, and with a dynamic property called “View” within view templates.  A lot of people found the fact that there were two different names confusing, and several also said that using the name ViewModel was confusing in this context – since often you create strongly-typed ViewModel classes in ASP.NET MVC, and they do not use this API.  With RC2 we are exposing a dynamic property that has the same name – ViewBag – within both Controllers and Views.  It is a dynamic collection that allows you to pass additional bits of data from your controller to your view template to help generate a response.  Below is an example of how we could use it to pass a time-stamp message as well as a list of all categories to our view template: Below is an example of how our view template (which is strongly-typed to expect a Product class as its model) can use the two extra bits of information we passed in our ViewBag to generate the response.  In particular, notice how we are using the list of categories passed in the dynamic ViewBag collection to generate a dropdownlist of friendly category names to help set the CategoryID property of our Product object.  The above Controller/View combination will then generate an HTML response like below.    Output Caching Improvements ASP.NET MVC 3’s output caching system no longer requires you to specify a VaryByParam property when declaring an [OutputCache] attribute on a Controller action method.  MVC3 now automatically varies the output cached entries when you have explicit parameters on your action method – allowing you to cleanly enable output caching on actions using code like below: In addition to supporting full page output caching, ASP.NET MVC 3 also supports partial-page caching – which allows you to cache a region of output and re-use it across multiple requests or controllers.  The [OutputCache] behavior for partial-page caching was updated with RC2 so that sub-content cached entries are varied based on input parameters as opposed to the URL structure of the top-level request – which makes caching scenarios both easier and more powerful than the behavior in the previous RC. @model declaration does not add whitespace In earlier previews, the strongly-typed @model declaration at the top of a Razor view added a blank line to the rendered HTML output. This has been fixed so that the declaration does not introduce whitespace. Changed "Html.ValidationMessage" Method to Display the First Useful Error Message The behavior of the Html.ValidationMessage() helper was updated to show the first useful error message instead of simply displaying the first error. During model binding, the ModelState dictionary can be populated from multiple sources with error messages about the property, including from the model itself (if it implements IValidatableObject), from validation attributes applied to the property, and from exceptions thrown while the property is being accessed. When the Html.ValidationMessage() method displays a validation message, it now skips model-state entries that include an exception, because these are generally not intended for the end user. Instead, the method looks for the first validation message that is not associated with an exception and displays that message. If no such message is found, it defaults to a generic error message that is associated with the first exception. RemoteAttribute “Fields” -> “AdditionalFields” ASP.NET MVC 3 includes built-in remote validation support with its validation infrastructure.  This means that the client-side validation script library used by ASP.NET MVC 3 can automatically call back to controllers you expose on the server to determine whether an input element is indeed valid as the user is editing the form (allowing you to provide real-time validation updates). You can accomplish this by decorating a model/viewmodel property with a [Remote] attribute that specifies the controller/action that should be invoked to remotely validate it.  With the RC this attribute had a “Fields” property that could be used to specify additional input elements that should be sent from the client to the server to help with the validation logic.  To improve the clarity of what this property does we have renamed it to “AdditionalFields” with today’s RC2 release. ViewResult.Model and ViewResult.ViewBag Properties The ViewResult class now exposes both a “Model” and “ViewBag” property off of it.  This makes it easier to unit test Controllers that return views, and avoids you having to access the Model via the ViewResult.ViewData.Model property. Installation Notes You can download and install the ASP.NET MVC 3 RC2 build here.  It can be installed on top of the previous ASP.NET MVC 3 RC release (it should just replace the bits as part of its setup). The one component that will not be updated by the above setup (if you already have it installed) is the NuGet Package Manager.  If you already have NuGet installed, please go to the Visual Studio Extensions Manager (via the Tools –> Extensions menu option) and click on the “Updates” tab.  You should see NuGet listed there – please click the “Update” button next to it to have VS update the extension to today’s release. If you do not have NuGet installed (and did not install the ASP.NET MVC RC build), then NuGet will be installed as part of your ASP.NET MVC 3 setup, and you do not need to take any additional steps to make it work. Summary We are really close to the final ASP.NET MVC 3 release, and will deliver the final “RTM” build of it next month.  It has been only a little over 7 months since ASP.NET MVC 2 shipped, and I’m pretty amazed by the huge number of new features, improvements, and refinements that the team has been able to add with this release (Razor, Unobtrusive JavaScript, NuGet, Dependency Injection, Output Caching, and a lot, lot more).  I’ll be doing a number of blog posts over the next few weeks talking about many of them in more depth. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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  • HTG Explains: Do Non-Windows Platforms Like Mac, Android, iOS, and Linux Get Viruses?

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Viruses and other types of malware seem largely confined to Windows in the real world. Even on a Windows 8 PC, you can still get infected with malware. But how vulnerable are other operating systems to malware? When we say “viruses,” we’re actually talking about malware in general. There’s more to malware than just viruses, although the word virus is often used to talk about malware in general. Why Are All the Viruses For Windows? Not all of the malware out there is for Windows, but most of it is. We’ve tried to cover why Windows has the most viruses in the past. Windows’ popularity is definitely a big factor, but there are other reasons, too. Historically, Windows was never designed for security in the way that UNIX-like platforms were — and every popular operating system that’s not Windows is based on UNIX. Windows also has a culture of installing software by searching the web and downloading it from websites, whereas other platforms have app stores and Linux has centralized software installation from a secure source in the form of its package managers. Do Macs Get Viruses? The vast majority of malware is designed for Windows systems and Macs don’t get Windows malware. While Mac malware is much more rare, Macs are definitely not immune to malware. They can be infected by malware written specifically for Macs, and such malware does exist. At one point, over 650,000 Macs were infected with the Flashback Trojan. [Source] It infected Macs through the Java browser plugin, which is a security nightmare on every platform. Macs no longer include Java by default. Apple also has locked down Macs in other ways. Three things in particular help: Mac App Store: Rather than getting desktop programs from the web and possibly downloading malware, as inexperienced users might on Windows, they can get their applications from a secure place. It’s similar to a smartphone app store or even a Linux package manager. Gatekeeper: Current releases of Mac OS X use Gatekeeper, which only allows programs to run if they’re signed by an approved developer or if they’re from the Mac App Store. This can be disabled by geeks who need to run unsigned software, but it acts as additional protection for typical users. XProtect: Macs also have a built-in technology known as XProtect, or File Quarantine. This feature acts as a blacklist, preventing known-malicious programs from running. It functions similarly to Windows antivirus programs, but works in the background and checks applications you download. Mac malware isn’t coming out nearly as quick as Windows malware, so it’s easier for Apple to keep up. Macs are certainly not immune to all malware, and someone going out of their way to download pirated applications and disable security features may find themselves infected. But Macs are much less at risk of malware in the real world. Android is Vulnerable to Malware, Right? Android malware does exist and companies that produce Android security software would love to sell you their Android antivirus apps. But that isn’t the full picture. By default, Android devices are configured to only install apps from Google Play. They also benefit from antimalware scanning — Google Play itself scans apps for malware. You could disable this protection and go outside Google Play, getting apps from elsewhere (“sideloading”). Google will still help you if you do this, asking if you want to scan your sideloaded apps for malware when you try to install them. In China, where many, many Android devices are in use, there is no Google Play Store. Chinese Android users don’t benefit from Google’s antimalware scanning and have to get their apps from third-party app stores, which may contain infected copies of apps. The majority of Android malware comes from outside Google Play. The scary malware statistics you see primarily include users who get apps from outside Google Play, whether it’s pirating infected apps or acquiring them from untrustworthy app stores. As long as you get your apps from Google Play — or even another secure source, like the Amazon App Store — your Android phone or tablet should be secure. What About iPads and iPhones? Apple’s iOS operating system, used on its iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches, is more locked down than even Macs and Android devices. iPad and iPhone users are forced to get their apps from Apple’s App Store. Apple is more demanding of developers than Google is — while anyone can upload an app to Google Play and have it available instantly while Google does some automated scanning, getting an app onto Apple’s App Store involves a manual review of that app by an Apple employee. The locked-down environment makes it much more difficult for malware to exist. Even if a malicious application could be installed, it wouldn’t be able to monitor what you typed into your browser and capture your online-banking information without exploiting a deeper system vulnerability. Of course, iOS devices aren’t perfect either. Researchers have proven it’s possible to create malicious apps and sneak them past the app store review process. [Source] However, if a malicious app was discovered, Apple could pull it from the store and immediately uninstall it from all devices. Google and Microsoft have this same ability with Android’s Google Play and Windows Store for new Windows 8-style apps. Does Linux Get Viruses? Malware authors don’t tend to target Linux desktops, as so few average users use them. Linux desktop users are more likely to be geeks that won’t fall for obvious tricks. As with Macs, Linux users get most of their programs from a single place — the package manager — rather than downloading them from websites. Linux also can’t run Windows software natively, so Windows viruses just can’t run. Linux desktop malware is extremely rare, but it does exist. The recent “Hand of Thief” Trojan supports a variety of Linux distributions and desktop environments, running in the background and stealing online banking information. It doesn’t have a good way if infecting Linux systems, though — you’d have to download it from a website or receive it as an email attachment and run the Trojan. [Source] This just confirms how important it is to only run trusted software on any platform, even supposedly secure ones. What About Chromebooks? Chromebooks are locked down laptops that only run the Chrome web browser and some bits around it. We’re not really aware of any form of Chrome OS malware. A Chromebook’s sandbox helps protect it against malware, but it also helps that Chromebooks aren’t very common yet. It would still be possible to infect a Chromebook, if only by tricking a user into installing a malicious browser extension from outside the Chrome web store. The malicious browser extension could run in the background, steal your passwords and online banking credentials, and send it over the web. Such malware could even run on Windows, Mac, and Linux versions of Chrome, but it would appear in the Extensions list, would require the appropriate permissions, and you’d have to agree to install it manually. And Windows RT? Microsoft’s Windows RT only runs desktop programs written by Microsoft. Users can only install “Windows 8-style apps” from the Windows Store. This means that Windows RT devices are as locked down as an iPad — an attacker would have to get a malicious app into the store and trick users into installing it or possibly find a security vulnerability that allowed them to bypass the protection. Malware is definitely at its worst on Windows. This would probably be true even if Windows had a shining security record and a history of being as secure as other operating systems, but you can definitely avoid a lot of malware just by not using Windows. Of course, no platform is a perfect malware-free environment. You should exercise some basic precautions everywhere. Even if malware was eliminated, we’d have to deal with social-engineering attacks like phishing emails asking for credit card numbers. Image Credit: stuartpilbrow on Flickr, Kansir on Flickr     

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  • Liskov Substitution Principle and the Oft Forgot Third Wheel

    - by Stacy Vicknair
    Liskov Substitution Principle (LSP) is a principle of object oriented programming that many might be familiar with from the SOLID principles mnemonic from Uncle Bob Martin. The principle highlights the relationship between a type and its subtypes, and, according to Wikipedia, is defined by Barbara Liskov and Jeanette Wing as the following principle:   Let be a property provable about objects of type . Then should be provable for objects of type where is a subtype of .   Rectangles gonna rectangulate The iconic example of this principle is illustrated with the relationship between a rectangle and a square. Let’s say we have a class named Rectangle that had a property to set width and a property to set its height. 1: Public Class Rectangle 2: Overridable Property Width As Integer 3: Overridable Property Height As Integer 4: End Class   We all at some point here that inheritance mocks an “IS A” relationship, and by gosh we all know square IS A rectangle. So let’s make a square class that inherits from rectangle. However, squares do maintain the same length on every side, so let’s override and add that behavior. 1: Public Class Square 2: Inherits Rectangle 3:  4: Private _sideLength As Integer 5:  6: Public Overrides Property Width As Integer 7: Get 8: Return _sideLength 9: End Get 10: Set(value As Integer) 11: _sideLength = value 12: End Set 13: End Property 14:  15: Public Overrides Property Height As Integer 16: Get 17: Return _sideLength 18: End Get 19: Set(value As Integer) 20: _sideLength = value 21: End Set 22: End Property 23: End Class   Now, say we had the following test: 1: Public Sub SetHeight_DoesNotAffectWidth(rectangle As Rectangle) 2: 'arrange 3: Dim expectedWidth = 4 4: rectangle.Width = 4 5:  6: 'act 7: rectangle.Height = 7 8:  9: 'assert 10: Assert.AreEqual(expectedWidth, rectangle.Width) 11: End Sub   If we pass in a rectangle, this test passes just fine. What if we pass in a square?   This is where we see the violation of Liskov’s Principle! A square might "IS A” to a rectangle, but we have differing expectations on how a rectangle should function than how a square should! Great expectations Here’s where we pat ourselves on the back and take a victory lap around the office and tell everyone about how we understand LSP like a boss. And all is good… until we start trying to apply it to our work. If I can’t even change functionality on a simple setter without breaking the expectations on a parent class, what can I do with subtyping? Did Liskov just tell me to never touch subtyping again? The short answer: NO, SHE DIDN’T. When I first learned LSP, and from those I’ve talked with as well, I overlooked a very important but not appropriately stressed quality of the principle: our expectations. Our inclination is to want a logical catch-all, where we can easily apply this principle and wipe our hands, drop the mic and exit stage left. That’s not the case because in every different programming scenario, our expectations of the parent class or type will be different. We have to set reasonable expectations on the behaviors that we expect out of the parent, then make sure that those expectations are met by the child. Any expectations not explicitly expected of the parent aren’t expected of the child either, and don’t register as a violation of LSP that prevents implementation. You can see the flexibility mentioned in the Wikipedia article itself: A typical example that violates LSP is a Square class that derives from a Rectangle class, assuming getter and setter methods exist for both width and height. The Square class always assumes that the width is equal with the height. If a Square object is used in a context where a Rectangle is expected, unexpected behavior may occur because the dimensions of a Square cannot (or rather should not) be modified independently. This problem cannot be easily fixed: if we can modify the setter methods in the Square class so that they preserve the Square invariant (i.e., keep the dimensions equal), then these methods will weaken (violate) the postconditions for the Rectangle setters, which state that dimensions can be modified independently. Violations of LSP, like this one, may or may not be a problem in practice, depending on the postconditions or invariants that are actually expected by the code that uses classes violating LSP. Mutability is a key issue here. If Square and Rectangle had only getter methods (i.e., they were immutable objects), then no violation of LSP could occur. What this means is that the above situation with a rectangle and a square can be acceptable if we do not have the expectation for width to leave height unaffected, or vice-versa, in our application. Conclusion – the oft forgot third wheel Liskov Substitution Principle is meant to act as a guidance and warn us against unexpected behaviors. Objects can be stateful and as a result we can end up with unexpected situations if we don’t code carefully. Specifically when subclassing, make sure that the subclass meets the expectations held to its parent. Don’t let LSP think you cannot deviate from the behaviors of the parent, but understand that LSP is meant to highlight the importance of not only the parent and the child class, but also of the expectations WE set for the parent class and the necessity of meeting those expectations in order to help prevent sticky situations.   Code examples, in both VB and C# Technorati Tags: LSV,Liskov Substitution Principle,Uncle Bob,Robert Martin,Barbara Liskov,Liskov

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  • Branching and Merging Improvements in TFS2010

    - by jehan
    Introducing the concept of “first class branches” is a significant improvement as part of the 2010 release with respect to version control.  Not only does it help to distinguish between folders and branches, but it enables branch visualizations. Let us see improvements in detail. ·         In TFS2008, you don’t know which of the folders are Branches: All folders looks the same, all have the folder icon. Now, In TFS 2010 there is a new icon that shows which of the folder is a Branch.       ·      There is no visual means to manage branches in TFS2008:   You dont have any means to identify which branches are related and the relation type. Now, In TFS 2010 you have visual tools to see the Branches Hierarchy. In order to see a Branch Hierarchy just Right Click the Branch and choose: Branching and Merging –> View Hierarchy     ·         In TFS2008, there is no option to track changes path between the Branches:  If you have made a merge in a Branch you can’t track from which Branch this Merge came from. Now, you have the tools that shows the path of change between the Branches, you can also see where change was added on a timeline.  In order to track a change do the following: Step1: Right click the Branch and click View History   Step 2: Choose a changeset to track and click the “Track Changeset” button.     Step 3: Choose the branches that will be in the view and click “Visualize”. In above visual, you can see that Changesets 108,109,110 and 119 where merged from Main to Release1.0 Branch and then “Release_1.0” Branched to “Dev1.0. Step4: You can also see the Merges on a Timeline by clicking on the “Timeline Tracking” button.   Creating New Branches: In TFS 2010, the creation of branches has been streamlined a bit from the process in 2008.  In 2008, creating a new branch was like every other action in the system – changes were pended on the client, and then checked in to the server. Because of this creating new branch in TFS2008 was time-consuming process.  In TFS2010, the step where changes are pended has been bypassed and now performing the branch creation is entirely on the server.  With this approach, the round trip time for downloading a copy of each file on the branch and then uploading each file again has been eliminated.  Note: In TFS2010, the new branch will be created and committed as a single operation on the server. Pending changes will not be created, it doesn’t require a check-in as it will be carried out as a single operation and it’s not possible to cancel.     Manage Branch Permissions: The properties view for branches is also different than that of ordinary folders or file, containing some metadata for the branch, relationship information, and permissions for the branch. In TFS2008, the users who have checkout and Check-in permissions can create a branch. But, In TFS2010 you can control the permissions for Branches using Manage Branch permissions.   Reparent option in TFS2010: In TFS2008, if we have two branches which don’t have parent-child relation and we want perform merge between these two branches then we have to perform baseless merge using tf.exe command line. I have two branches Release_1.0 and Dev1.0_F2 which don’t have any relation between them, that’s why when I click on merge option in Release_1.0, in Target Branch it’s not showing Dev1.0_F2 branch to perform the merges.     Let us see what can we do for this in TFS2010, first perform a TFS baseless merge to establish a relationship between the parent branch and the child branches.  It will only merge the folder, not its contents. TFS baseless merges are performed via the command line using VS2010 command prompt and do the following:   tf merge /baseless <ParentBranch> <childBranch> Check in your pending changes. It will create the link between the branches but the relationships are still not completed.  Now, select the child branch in Source Control Explorer and from the File menu choose Source Control –> Branching and Merging –> Reparent.      In the dialog box,  choose the appropriate branch as the new parent.   Click Reparent and then go to parent branch and click merge. Now, will see that in Target Branch option Dev1.0_F2 branch is added.         Converting Folders to Branches and Branches to Folders: You can convert any Folder as Branch from Context Menu by performing right click on the folderàBranching and MergingàConvert to Branch. In similar way, you can convert the Branches to Folder using Convert to Folder option available in File Menu (FileàSource ControlàBranching and MergingàConvert to Branch). This option is not available in context menu.

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