>Another reply to be sure that no WINDOWS user missed it!!!! >The first thing that a windows user should install to gain a LOT of time installing and updating software: >http://chocolatey.org/
Give duckduckgo.com a try. It gives good results and you can always add !g to route your search back to Google. They also have great privacy protections.
Bingo! I'm also from SLC and have turned down offers to relocate to Washington and New York because I know I'll have a better quality of life even if my salary is 10-20% lower. There was a great 2013 salary guide created by Robert Half that show the different rates for technology talent across the nation.
I've used Virtual Private Servers (VPS) before, and agree that they are the way to get started. You get full access to the server, and so long as you buy a mid range package you should have ample power for a startup project. If your website traffic explodes then you can look at moving to a large dedicated server or to a cloud provider, but unless for the majority of websites those would be overkill.
I've written a blog post about VPS/VM vs Dedicated vs Cloud hosting providers before, coming mainly from an ASP.NET point of view. The bottom line is that you have to find something that fits your budget. And don't even think about hosting it yourself. If you really need to be able to scale quickly then Rackspace Cloud, Windows Azure, or AppHarbor are all viable options, but with the exception of AppHarbor they also all have a big up front price tag.
EBS is basically like iSCSI, but far more complex. There's a lot of proprietary stuff they're doing with it.
Anyone know how it compares in speed to iSCSI or a SAN? From reading the report it sounds like there is A LOT more going on, and I have even heard of people using multiple EBS volumes in a "RAID" like array for faster IO speed. Sounds like way too complex of a system.
Windows Azure Drives are like EBS but they are simply VHD files stored in Page Blobs (Azure's version of cloud storage, similar to Amazon S3) with local caching on each VM instance. I assume they have slower read/write speeds then EBS but seem like they would be much less complex to manage/maintain then a completely separate proprietary storage cluster. Does Amazon have anything similar using S3 or RRS for backing virtual hard drives instead of EBS?
iTunes on Windows can be very difficult to use. Some people find it easier to use C# to fix issues with their music library then work directly in iTunes.
Then look for routines that perform encryption and decryption. If there’s some code to handle error while decrypting, and/or no sign of MAC usage, then it’s high probability you have found a target for the Padding Oracle attack. Regardless of which method one uses, the most important thing is to analyse and understand the meaning of error messages returned by the target upon receiving mangled ciphertexts. In short, you need to know when the padding is VALID, and when it’s INVALID.
While Microsoft isn't making headlines in the consumer market, over the last decade they have pretty much caught up with or surpassed the competition in the business space (ex: Java, Oracle, PHP, Amazon EC2...). They have however recently started focusing on consumers again with Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7.
And while Apple's per quarter revenue is catching up with Microsoft, in terms of gross profit Microsoft still has about twice the margins that Apple does, which makes sense because software is cheap to produce and distribute. The research and development numbers show that Microsoft spends twice as much of their profits (8 times the total amount) that Apple does, which also makes sense because all Apple really does is find new suppliers with smaller/cheaper/better parts.
The new Intel Sandy Bridge architecture is hoping to change people's opinions of integrated graphics. Anandtech got a hold of a sample chip that is expected to be released early next year, and they show that not only does it offer CPU performance comparable to older Extreme i7 chips, the new Integrated GPU performs on par with ATI Radeon HD 5450 which is a low to mid-range graphics card often used for home theater PCs.
Also the notebook/netbook models will have an integrated GPU that is twice the power of the desktop model that Anandtech tested, so they should allow you to play many 3D games at decent frame rates using their low to medium settings.
Apple does not pay a dividend, so an increase in their stock price and related market cap is the only value that investors can benefit from. Microsoft does pay a dividend, and is willing to give a percentage of their profits back to shareholders (sometimes in large chunks). While Apple has done well as a growth stock over the last 5 years they may eventually need to pay a dividend if they want to keep investors happy.
Apple's big run started with the iPod on October 23, 2001, about the same time that Microsoft released Windows XP. Since then Apple has release a bunch of iDevices, upgrades to their core line of computers, and a handful of other products many of which have been very successful in the consumer market. Microsoft however operates in both the business and consumer market, and saying that they have been sitting and twiddling their thumbs on their Windows and Office empire for the last 10 years would be incorrect. In the same amount of time Microsoft has released:
Not to mention large investments in online search, software as a service, and cloud computing. With the exception of their Online Services Division (MSN, Bing, Hotmail, advertising) Microsoft makes significant income from each of their product divisions and has more than twice the income that Apple does. Many of their business products are doing very well, and Sharepoint recently became their latest billion dollar sales product.
I will admit that Apple's products are more popular than Microsofts, but that is because they are tailored to the consumer market. Most business uses Microsoft because it costs less and makes users more productive. I personally think that the Zune HD and Windows 7 are great consumer products, and the Windows Phone 7 is designed to compete with the iPhone as opposed to the Palm OS for Windows Mobile, so it will be interesting to see how the next 10 years progresses.
The Google Docs page with the Gemini.zip file is not allowing any more downloads right now.
Here is another link with more info about Gemini and an alternate download hosted on drop.io. Follow the instructions on page 2 of the original article to set it up.
It reported there had been an internet image showing a gun-toting man with a hand-written message reading: "Tomorrow last day of school. We gonna fuck up the bullies and leave this world 11/06/2010."
Another message said: "Tested it at firing range, we have two shotguns as well, it's locked in but tomorrow I have a key. St Aelred's Catholic Technology College, England, watch BBC."
If anything like that is posted publicly I would hope more than just the FBI would report it to the authorities.
While they are targeting IIS and MSSQL the real issue is developers that don't sanitize the parameters that get sent to the database. The SQL is encoded in at least 2 different layers, so the only keywords that appear in the URL are;dEcLaRe%20@s%20vArChAr(8000) and;EXEC%20(@S); and It would be pretty difficult for Microsoft to block those without affecting legitimate usage. If you are using LINQ, Stored Procedures, or Parameterized Queries based on SqlCommand then this wouldn't work against your site or library. Mainly queries created as raw text strings have this vulnerability, and in this case it appears that some library or module used by a number of sites used raw SQL strings instead of the best practices recommended by Microsoft and every other SQL and web server vendor.
Jailbreaking an iPhone constitutes copyright infringement and a DMCA violation, says Apple in comments filed with the Copyright Office as part of the 2009 DMCA triennial rulemaking. This marks the first formal public statement by Apple about its legal stance on iPhone jailbreaking.
I hope this means there will be an HTML5 video option for Ted.com. Their flash player is horrendous! I had to make a Ted.com userscript for full-screen video just be able to view videos full screen without it closing when using multiple monitors.
I just saw a video on Channel 9 showing that the Hard Rock Cafe is using Microsoft Surface and other touchscreen devices in a few of their restaurants. Considering the device was only release about 2 years ago and has such a large price tag I am still impressed with what they have done. Check it out:
Wikipedia mentions AT&T, Harrah’s, Disneyland, Sheraton Hotels and MSNBC as users of the Microsoft Surface too. I have yet to see one, but it still is making it's way into the market.
I use VirtualBox for building a test environment and it works very well. Also the graphics acceleration worked fine for the games that I tested with.
Parallels Workstation 4.0 Extreme looks interesting, but the only "Certified hardware platform" is a HP Z800 Workstation, which costs $2000 to $5000. Add in $400 for the Parallels license and that gets to be a bit steep. Plus the announcer on the video sounds like he is trying to sell you a used car.
There was a video showing the features of Excel Web App, Powerpoint Web App, and Word Web App here on channel 9:
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/dtzar/Office-Live-Applications-First-Look/
They look a little slow and not as responsive as Google Docs, but they do have more feature. Interesting to see the final product.
When Resolver Systems started their $25,000 competition for the best spreadsheet examples for Resolver One, I saw it as a great opportunity to learn IronPython and play around with a new program that looked interesting. I spent some free time having fun coding in a new language, and the Texas Holdem Monte Carlo Hand Evaluator worksheet that I made ended up being pretty useful. Oh... and it won one of the rounds, so I see it as time very well spent:-P
Now this competition is a bit more structured and has much less of a "fun" factor, but it still is a good incentive to look at the data that is available and try and think of new ways to visualize or use it.
I recently got a Logitech MX Revolution mouse, which has made it much easier to open and close a large number of webpages. It has a total of 11 buttons, and the SetPoint software lets you add customized keystrokes for different applications. My current setup is:
=Middle Click (Scroll Wheel) - force opening links in a new window in IE or Chrome
=Scroll Wheel Sweep Left - switch tabs (move left one tab)
=Scroll Wheel Sweep Right - switch tabs (move right one tab)
=Jog Dial Back - go back (same as browser back button)
=Jog Dial Forward - go forward (same as browser forward button)
=Jog Dial Click - close the current tab or active window (ctrl+w or alt+F4 depending on active program)
=Touch to Search button - re-open the last closed tab in Chrome using Ctrl+Shift+T (I LOVE THIS FEATURE!!!)
This makes it a breeze to open a bunch of new tabs and then flip through and close the ones you don't care about.
Slashdot Mirror
>Another reply to be sure that no WINDOWS user missed it!!!!
/install /Products:WDeployNoSMO /AcceptEULA #For Web Deploy
>The first thing that a windows user should install to gain a LOT of time installing and updating software:
>http://chocolatey.org/
Yep... here is my Chocolaty setup script:
cinst binroot #Sets installs to c:\chocolatey\bin and c:\chocolatey\lib
cinst notepadplusplus.install
cinst 7zip.install
cinst GoogleChrome-AllUsers
cinst GoogleChrome.Canary
cinst putty
cinst winscp
cinst sysinternals
cinst fiddler4
cinst paint.net
cinst dropbox
cinst SkyDrive
cinst resharper
cinst tortoisesvn
cinst linqpad4
cinst wireshark
cinst evernote
cinst nmap
cinst Cygwin
cinst PowerGUI
cinst trillian
cinst rdcman
cinst imgburn
cinst diffmerge
cinst aspnetmvc
cinst treesizefree
cinst tomboy
cinst cpu-z
cinst curl
cinst baretail
cinst reflector
cinst grepwin
cinst tfpt #TFS 2010 power tools
cinst stylecop
cinst githubforwindows
cinst MicrosoftSecurityEssentials
cinst ultravnc
cinst Gallio
cinst CutePDF
cinst daemontoolslite
cinst smplayer2
cinst skifree
cinst webpicmd
#the last one gives access to anything in web platform installer, like:
webpicmd
Give duckduckgo.com a try. It gives good results and you can always add !g to route your search back to Google. They also have great privacy protections.
Bingo! I'm also from SLC and have turned down offers to relocate to Washington and New York because I know I'll have a better quality of life even if my salary is 10-20% lower. There was a great 2013 salary guide created by Robert Half that show the different rates for technology talent across the nation.
Dexpot gets the most votes on AlternativeTo.net, and they list a few other options.
I've used Virtual Private Servers (VPS) before, and agree that they are the way to get started. You get full access to the server, and so long as you buy a mid range package you should have ample power for a startup project. If your website traffic explodes then you can look at moving to a large dedicated server or to a cloud provider, but unless for the majority of websites those would be overkill.
I've written a blog post about VPS/VM vs Dedicated vs Cloud hosting providers before, coming mainly from an ASP.NET point of view. The bottom line is that you have to find something that fits your budget. And don't even think about hosting it yourself. If you really need to be able to scale quickly then Rackspace Cloud, Windows Azure, or AppHarbor are all viable options, but with the exception of AppHarbor they also all have a big up front price tag.
EBS is basically like iSCSI, but far more complex. There's a lot of proprietary stuff they're doing with it.
Anyone know how it compares in speed to iSCSI or a SAN? From reading the report it sounds like there is A LOT more going on, and I have even heard of people using multiple EBS volumes in a "RAID" like array for faster IO speed. Sounds like way too complex of a system.
Windows Azure Drives are like EBS but they are simply VHD files stored in Page Blobs (Azure's version of cloud storage, similar to Amazon S3) with local caching on each VM instance. I assume they have slower read/write speeds then EBS but seem like they would be much less complex to manage/maintain then a completely separate proprietary storage cluster. Does Amazon have anything similar using S3 or RRS for backing virtual hard drives instead of EBS?
iTunes on Windows can be very difficult to use. Some people find it easier to use C# to fix issues with their music library then work directly in iTunes.
Here is a Technet video describing EMET and here is the download url.
Another way is to look for known source code keywords. You can start by looking for code that imports low level cryptography libraries such as:
.NET: .NET Cryptography, Microsoft CryptoAPI
C/C++: OpenSSL, Crypto++
Python: PyCrypto, M2Crypto
Java: Java Crypto Extension, BouncyCastle
Then look for routines that perform encryption and decryption. If there’s some code to handle error while decrypting, and/or no sign of MAC usage, then it’s high probability you have found a target for the Padding Oracle attack. Regardless of which method one uses, the most important thing is to analyse and understand the meaning of error messages returned by the target upon receiving mangled ciphertexts. In short, you need to know when the padding is VALID, and when it’s INVALID.
While Microsoft isn't making headlines in the consumer market, over the last decade they have pretty much caught up with or surpassed the competition in the business space (ex: Java, Oracle, PHP, Amazon EC2...). They have however recently started focusing on consumers again with Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7.
And while Apple's per quarter revenue is catching up with Microsoft, in terms of gross profit Microsoft still has about twice the margins that Apple does, which makes sense because software is cheap to produce and distribute. The research and development numbers show that Microsoft spends twice as much of their profits (8 times the total amount) that Apple does, which also makes sense because all Apple really does is find new suppliers with smaller/cheaper/better parts.
The new Intel Sandy Bridge architecture is hoping to change people's opinions of integrated graphics. Anandtech got a hold of a sample chip that is expected to be released early next year, and they show that not only does it offer CPU performance comparable to older Extreme i7 chips, the new Integrated GPU performs on par with ATI Radeon HD 5450 which is a low to mid-range graphics card often used for home theater PCs.
Also the notebook/netbook models will have an integrated GPU that is twice the power of the desktop model that Anandtech tested, so they should allow you to play many 3D games at decent frame rates using their low to medium settings.
Chris Pearson wants some real solutions!
Apple's big run started with the iPod on October 23, 2001, about the same time that Microsoft released Windows XP. Since then Apple has release a bunch of iDevices, upgrades to their core line of computers, and a handful of other products many of which have been very successful in the consumer market. Microsoft however operates in both the business and consumer market, and saying that they have been sitting and twiddling their thumbs on their Windows and Office empire for the last 10 years would be incorrect. In the same amount of time Microsoft has released:
Not to mention large investments in online search, software as a service, and cloud computing. With the exception of their Online Services Division (MSN, Bing, Hotmail, advertising) Microsoft makes significant income from each of their product divisions and has more than twice the income that Apple does. Many of their business products are doing very well, and Sharepoint recently became their latest billion dollar sales product.
I will admit that Apple's products are more popular than Microsofts, but that is because they are tailored to the consumer market. Most business uses Microsoft because it costs less and makes users more productive. I personally think that the Zune HD and Windows 7 are great consumer products, and the Windows Phone 7 is designed to compete with the iPhone as opposed to the Palm OS for Windows Mobile, so it will be interesting to see how the next 10 years progresses.
The Google Docs page with the Gemini.zip file is not allowing any more downloads right now. Here is another link with more info about Gemini and an alternate download hosted on drop.io. Follow the instructions on page 2 of the original article to set it up.
It reported there had been an internet image showing a gun-toting man with a hand-written message reading: "Tomorrow last day of school. We gonna fuck up the bullies and leave this world 11/06/2010."
Another message said: "Tested it at firing range, we have two shotguns as well, it's locked in but tomorrow I have a key. St Aelred's Catholic Technology College, England, watch BBC."
If anything like that is posted publicly I would hope more than just the FBI would report it to the authorities.
Here is a great overview of the technique that was used:
http://www.virusbtn.com/pdf/conference_slides/2009/Maciejak-Lovet-VB2009.pdf
While they are targeting IIS and MSSQL the real issue is developers that don't sanitize the parameters that get sent to the database. The SQL is encoded in at least 2 different layers, so the only keywords that appear in the URL are ;dEcLaRe%20@s%20vArChAr(8000) and ;EXEC%20(@S); and It would be pretty difficult for Microsoft to block those without affecting legitimate usage. If you are using LINQ, Stored Procedures, or Parameterized Queries based on SqlCommand then this wouldn't work against your site or library. Mainly queries created as raw text strings have this vulnerability, and in this case it appears that some library or module used by a number of sites used raw SQL strings instead of the best practices recommended by Microsoft and every other SQL and web server vendor.
Link to full article on EFF
You should record the presentations and put them up on youtube...
I hope this means there will be an HTML5 video option for Ted.com. Their flash player is horrendous! I had to make a Ted.com userscript for full-screen video just be able to view videos full screen without it closing when using multiple monitors.
I just saw a video on Channel 9 showing that the Hard Rock Cafe is using Microsoft Surface and other touchscreen devices in a few of their restaurants. Considering the device was only release about 2 years ago and has such a large price tag I am still impressed with what they have done. Check it out:
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/LarryLarsen/The-Tech-Behind-The-Hard-Rock-Cafe/Default.aspx
Wikipedia mentions AT&T, Harrah’s, Disneyland, Sheraton Hotels and MSNBC as users of the Microsoft Surface too. I have yet to see one, but it still is making it's way into the market.
I use VirtualBox for building a test environment and it works very well. Also the graphics acceleration worked fine for the games that I tested with. Parallels Workstation 4.0 Extreme looks interesting, but the only "Certified hardware platform" is a HP Z800 Workstation, which costs $2000 to $5000. Add in $400 for the Parallels license and that gets to be a bit steep. Plus the announcer on the video sounds like he is trying to sell you a used car.
There was a video showing the features of Excel Web App, Powerpoint Web App, and Word Web App here on channel 9: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/dtzar/Office-Live-Applications-First-Look/ They look a little slow and not as responsive as Google Docs, but they do have more feature. Interesting to see the final product.
I have a Hauppauge WINTV HVR 1600 digital TV tuner card running on a Windows 7 RC x64 box with 6 GB of memory. Works fine in GBPVR. I did however have issues getting the onboard RAID controller working, but thats another story.
When Resolver Systems started their $25,000 competition for the best spreadsheet examples for Resolver One, I saw it as a great opportunity to learn IronPython and play around with a new program that looked interesting. I spent some free time having fun coding in a new language, and the Texas Holdem Monte Carlo Hand Evaluator worksheet that I made ended up being pretty useful. Oh... and it won one of the rounds, so I see it as time very well spent :-P
Now this competition is a bit more structured and has much less of a "fun" factor, but it still is a good incentive to look at the data that is available and try and think of new ways to visualize or use it.
I recently got a Logitech MX Revolution mouse, which has made it much easier to open and close a large number of webpages. It has a total of 11 buttons, and the SetPoint software lets you add customized keystrokes for different applications. My current setup is:
=Middle Click (Scroll Wheel) - force opening links in a new window in IE or Chrome
=Scroll Wheel Sweep Left - switch tabs (move left one tab)
=Scroll Wheel Sweep Right - switch tabs (move right one tab)
=Jog Dial Back - go back (same as browser back button)
=Jog Dial Forward - go forward (same as browser forward button)
=Jog Dial Click - close the current tab or active window (ctrl+w or alt+F4 depending on active program)
=Touch to Search button - re-open the last closed tab in Chrome using Ctrl+Shift+T (I LOVE THIS FEATURE!!!)
This makes it a breeze to open a bunch of new tabs and then flip through and close the ones you don't care about.