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• Windows cannot find the host name "download.microsoft.com" using DNS

  - by joedotnot

  When trying to download a file found on the Microsoft downloads center that starts with, for example, http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/8/7/(some_GUID)/(some_file_name.ext) i get a timeout with "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage". More information says: Internet connectivity has been lost. The website is temporarily unavailable. The Domain Name Server (DNS) is not reachable. The Domain Name Server (DNS) does not have a listing for the website's domain. If this is an HTTPS (secure) address, click Tools, click Internet Options, click Advanced, and check to be sure the SSL and TLS protocols are enabled under the security section. Diagnose Connection problems says: Windows cannot find the host name "download.microsoft.com" using DNS Bear with me while i expand on the problem: It all started when i tried to download Windows XP mode for my Windows 7 machine. I went to the virtual PC site, then thru the motions of Windows Genuine Advantage which validated ok, but when it redirects to grab the file just times out with above error. (NB: i also tried with the latest Chrome and Firefox but no use due to the Genuine Advantage stuff, so i decided to stick with IE). I am behind an ADSL2+ modem router connecting via wireless (Win 7 Pro laptop); so i hop over to the desktop connected via ethernet (Vista Business), and same result; begin to think site download.microsoft.com site is down. So i give it a break an read up on EDNS, flushing the cache, hosts file, etc... Try again an hour later on the Win 7 machine, still no go; so i turn off the Win 7 (software) firewall, and lo and behold, i can connect and grab any files from download.microsoft.com; (...nice, so we have a Micro$0ft firewall preventing access to a Micro$0ft website, no wonder my auto-updates kept failing but that's another story). But i still am not happy that the desktop connected via ethernet still cannot get to download.microsoft.com, even though i turned off all firewalls, defenders, anti-virus, etc. What is so special / specific about the url download.microsoft.com, any other site is ok, including www.microsoft.com. Any networking guru know what's REALLY going on, and how can i get the desktop to connect? Ping download.microsoft.com - Ping request could not find host download.microsoft.com. Please check the name and try again. Ping google.com or even www.microsoft.com works gives me an IP address. NB: On the wireless laptop ping download.microsoft.com works, i get xxxx.ms.akamai.net [202.7.177.33].

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• Certain Programs cannot access internet

  - by Cindy

  Operating System: Windows 7 (x64) Problem: Certain Programs are unable to access the internet. They claim that there is no connection when you already are connected. Hello, before we start. Just letting you know I'm new here, and I'm very new to Windows 7. I installed it two days ago. I just installed Windows 7 on my laptop and I have a few problems. I play World of Warcraft, as well as a variety of games. And when I first attempt to log into the game, I get a windows error message, but it doesn't stop there. I thought World of Warcraft got corrupted during the upgrade. It seems that I am unable to access the internet from other online games as well. Most say in along the lines of "Cannot connect to patch server, try again later." I cannot use a downloader Also, I have internet explorer. The x32 version of the browser cannot connect to the internet, and when I try to enter "google.com", it says the same thing. I'm only accessing this site through Internet Explorer x64, which I would have been fine with is it's compatible with Adobe Flash. The only thing that seems to connect to the internet are Internet Explorer x64 and Windows Live Messenger. Here are the steps I have taken, but none worked. 1.) Disable Windows Firewall 2.) Have Windows Firewall Enabled, but allow the specific programs to access internet. And allowed all incoming access. 3.) Disabled UAC, Ran the programs as an admin, and set compatibility to Vista. 4.) Uninstalled an anti-virus program. (McAffee Security Suite 2010) 5.) Reinstalled the programs 6.) Reinstalled Windows 7 7.) Retaken the steps on the Administrator account. Please assist me in this problem. I need to get back into the game. Thanks so much in advance.

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• Fix/Bypass "Cannot connect to the real website-blocked" error in Google Chrome with OpenDNS blocking

  - by George H

  I have a large problem with Chrome in my organisation. I use DNS to manage web site blocking, for sites which are not appropriate and are potentially a risk to the organisation where I do this. I only want to use Chrome over the network, as Internet Explorer has compatibility problems with some sites that we use (We cannot change this either or use different sites). Therefore using internet explorer is not a solution. I do not want to install a different browser, for multiple reasons. Mainly because of the difficulty of rewriting the customised add-ons that we use. However, recently, I have had lots of problems with Chrome SSL Errors. I cannot use my custom OpenDNS block pages, which uses the contact form to request an unblocking. Chrome often blocks OpenDNS for sites (a good example is Facebook) that request HTTPS. Some sites like https://internetbadguys.com (OpenDNS example) This means that chrome refuses to load the blocking page, explaining that the site is blocked. Instead they often call IT support, but they want a solution, as they are sick of getting lots of SSL errors. I have tried looking into ways to turning this off. I have tried: Typing "proceed". That didn't work. Typing "proceed", pressing enter. Didn't work I cannot find phishing and anti-malware any more in Chrome, from the internet guides. Not using HTTPS. However there is an automatic redirect to HTTPS on most sites. Therefore the error keeps coming up. Checking my clocks. They were correct. Does anyone have an idea on how to disabling, bypassing or working around this "feature"? EDIT: This is an example what I am talking about - I found that on google images. I do not block google. EDIT 2: My clocks are correct. I cannot stop using OpenDNS either. EDIT 3: My question is: How do I stop chrome from refusing to load pages that are blocked by OpenDNS, where the server has explicitly requested HTTPS.

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• IE8 Refuses to run Javascript from Local Hard Drive

  - by Josh Stodola

  I have a problem that just started at work recently and the network manager is certain he did not change anything with the group policy. Anyways, here is a detailed description of the problem. My machine is Windows XP SP3, and I use IE8 to browse. We have McAffee anti-virus software that I am unable to configure. I use the following file to test... <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Javascript Test</title> </head> <body> <script type="text/javascript"> document.write("<h1>PASS</h1>"); </script> <noscript> <h1>FAIL</h1> </noscript> </body> </html> When I open this file from the C: drive, it fails every time. If I execute it anywhere else (local/remote web server or on a mapped network drive), it works just fine. When I am simply browsing the Internet, Javascript on web sites works just fine. It is only failing on files running from my C: drive. Additionally, I have had a couple other programmers in the department try this file on their C: drive, and it works fine for them. So I don't believe it is a group policy thing. I need to fix this because I do extensive testing from my C: drive, and I am accustomed to doing so. I don't want to get into the habit of moving files to a different drive just to test. Things I have tried: Enabled "Allow Active Content to Run Files on My Computer" in Options | Advanced | Security Enabled "Allow Active Scripting" in Options | Security | Custom Level Verified that "Script" was not checked as disabled in Developer Toolbar Added localhost to Trusted Sites in Options Disabled McAffee completely (momentarily, with help from network admin) Used an older DOCTYPE in my test HTML page Re-installed IE8 completely Ran regsvr32 on the JScript.dll Slammed keyboard I am sure that there is a setting somewhere that will fix this problem, possibly in the registry. I would not be surprised if it was related to the developer toolbar. At this point I do not know where else to look. Can anyone help me resolve this problem? EDIT: Regardless of the bounty, this issue is still ongoing.

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• Internet Working, Browsing Not.

  - by jeffreypriebe

  I have a very odd problem that I can't resolve. I am connected to the internet, but my browsing doesn't work. I don't mean a web browser - I mean browsing. Firefox, Chrome, Curl all fail to successfully connect to an HTTP address. However existing connections, e.g. to mail in Outlook (Exchange Server and also IMAP server) continue to work. Also, the internet is on, I can confirm both from my machine (other ports / connections) as well as from any other computer connected to the same network. Additionally, it appears to be HTTP, not simple a port issue as HTTP over port 8443 (Tortoise SVN if you must know - running over HTTP not over SVN) also fails. I am using Windows Vista SP2 (build 6002). It seems to "creep up" in that after running the computer for a few hours it will fail. (No found way to systematically reproduce the problem.) Additionally, it seems to be more prone on days where the internet connection is flaky already (not sure why the internet is flaky, just is, lot's of failed browsing requests and have to retry/reload often). What I have tried (when the problem arises) - none have yielded any resolution: Resetting the network connection (dis-connect, re-connect) Disable/re-enable the network adapter Double-checked the ip settings Double-checked the HOSTS file. Note: DNS continues to work (both new and cached responses to DNS queries). (Thanks for the suggestion Daniel and antenore.) Checked the routing tables (ip4 only as ipv6 is beyond my understanding) resetting all involved hardware (routers and modems) Close and reopen browsers Looked for malware interference: Run HijackThis Looked for suspicious processes using SysInternals procexp. Looked for explorer hijacks, lsa provider interference, winsock provider interference using SysInternals Autoruns. Run a complete anti-virus scan. Reviewed the output of a netstat -onab to see if there were stuck ports open or unusual processes running somewhere The only thing that works is to do a full reboot. That works 100% of the time to restore browsing. What else can I try to nail down the problem?

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• Why might one host be unable to access the Internet, when it can ping the router and when all other hosts can?

  - by user1444233

  I have a Draytek Vigor 2830n. It's kicking out a 192.168.3.0 LAN. It performs load-balancing across dual-WAN ports, although I've turned off the second WAN to simplify testing. There are many hosts on the LAN. All IPs are allocated through DHCP, most freely allocated from the pool, but one or two are bound to NIC MAC addresses. All hosts can access the Internet, save one. That host (192.168.3.100 or 'dot100' for short) gets allocated an IP address (and the right gateway address, DNS server addresses, subnet etc.) dot100 can ping itself. It can ping the gateway, and access the latter's web interface via port 80. It's responsive and loss-free (sustained ping over a couple of minutes reports no data loss). Yet, for some reason that evades me, dot100 can't ping an external IP address or domain name. I suspect it's never been able to, because it was getting some Internet access from a second adaptor (different subnet), but that's now been turned off, which exposed the problem. In dot100, I've tried: two operating systems (Windows 8 and Knoppix), to rule out anti-virus programs etc. two physical adaptors two cables, on each adaptor two IPs (e.g. .100 and .103 assigned by Mac and .26 from the pool) both dynamic and assigned (MAC-bound) DHCP-allocated IPs but none of this experiments yielded any variation in the result. dot100 is a crucial host. It's a file server for the network, so I need it to be reliably allocated a consistent IP. Can anyone offer a potential solution or a way forward with the analysis please? My guess My analysis so far leads me to believe it's a router issue. I've checked the web interface very carefully. There are no filters setup in Firewall - General Setup or Filter Setup. I suspect it's a corrupted internal routing table, but the web UI shows this as the Routing table: Key: C - connected, S - static, R - RIP, * - default, ~ - private * 0.0.0.0/ 0.0.0.0 via 62.XX.XX.X WAN1 * 62.XX.XX.X/ 255.255.255.255 via 62.XX.XX.X WAN1 S 82.YY.YYY.YYY/ 255.255.255.255 via 82.YY.YYY.YYY WAN1 C 192.168.1.0/ 255.255.255.0 directly connected WAN2 C~ 192.168.3.0/ 255.255.255.0 directly connected LAN2

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• Windows 7, weird/annoying explorer problem

  - by Shiki

  First of all, I'm asking the moderators if you could summarize my problem in the Title and modify it according to that. Thanks in advance and sorry, my english is not that good. The problem. It happened on two of my machines already. Once it happens there are many problems with explorer. I'll try to describe at precisely I just can. So. Basically when you create a new folder, you have to hit the enter key TWICE because first it'll throw an error that "there is no such file..". Okay. Then if you try to delete some, this happens also. Renaming is the same. Here is an example. I tried adding a "2" to the end of the folder name, hit enter and got this. Here I can press cancel, nothing happens. If I press retry, the popup disappears and it'll finally change the folder name. I can't come up with anything for this. Using BitDefender (registered, full protection), Windows 7 x86 Ultimate retail (boxed, english version). The other PC had the same anti-virus protection , but it have a Windows 7 x64. Both systems are activated, updated totally. I don't remember installing any new stuff on the PCs. All the stuff on the PCs are legal, no cracked / any other software present. It just happened, so to say. Already reinstalled the other PC because I thought * I * messed up something and its just something FUBAR. However, I dont want to reinstall my laptop also. Any ideas are welcome. (Today I had a strange bug. Windows Explorer had 1.0+gb memory usage with 100% cpu. Killed it, launched a new explorer.exe and thats all. Nothing changed, but it may worth a try. The other PC did NOT have this problem, ever.) Isn't there a registry fix for this or something? :/

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• Web browsing is fast, but downloads are slow

  - by Ricket

  I work for a company on my university's campus, helping with general IT problems and some web development. But lately there has been a problem that has me and my boss completely stumped. We, plus one contractor, make up the entire IT department, so I'm reaching out to you for help. All around the office, we have wall jacks. These collect in a closet down the hall and all plug into a switch. This switch, along with our individual server jacks, plugs into another switch, and that switch plugs into our firewall hardware. Then the firewall is connected out to our campus network. Our campus internet is, well, very fast. I don't know exactly the terms, tiers, etc., but we have thousands of students and downloads can run as fast as 10 MB/s at night; uploads are sometimes even faster. I think we're practically ISP level. In short, I have a lot of faith that it is not the campus side of things that is causing a problem, combined with other evidence I'll mention in a moment. So our symptoms: web browsing is fast. Web pages, images, etc. load instantly. No problems there. But then when I go to download something, the download starts fast but very quickly (a matter of seconds) drops to nearly 0. Often it will actually drop to 0 and time out. This happens with even very small files, 1 MB or less. It smells to me like a QoS sort of thing. I'm not entirely sure, and I wanted to get your opinions first. My boss is hesitant to touch our firewall, much less let me touch it, and it was set up and is managed by a consultant remotely. These problems don't seem tied to a time of the day. I've tried downloads after 5:00 and still the same thing happens. From my desk, I can turn on my wireless adapter and pick up the campus wireless access point. If I unplug ethernet and connect to it, downloads are fast. This adds to my suspicion that it's limited to our company network. Also, a number of weeks ago the consultant upgraded our firewall firmware. Suddenly everything was very fast. I tested with downloads from Sun and speedtest.net and things were blazing fast, as they should be with our campus internet! It was wonderful, and I figured the slow speeds were an old firmware bug. In a matter of days, things steadily declined until they were back to the old symptoms. Oh, and we have antivirus installed on every computer, and we keep it up to date. Though I suppose the possibility is still there that someone could have spyware which is bogging down our internet, in which case what is the easiest/best way to find this out? (maybe this should go in a separate question) Thank you for your patience in reading all of this. Do you have any ideas as to what I can try? Is this something that you've experienced before? What sort of tools or methods can I use to try and diagnose the problem? P.S. everything here is Windows. Windows Server 2003 and 2008 on our servers, and Windows XP on employees' machines. Update: We are submitting a ticket to the university to just take a look and see if they see anything unusual and/or can suggestion methods for us to try and pinpoint our problem. Hopefully they'll be helpful! I'll update this to let you know what goes on. Update again: We found a hub (yes, a HUB) right between our campus connection and our firewall. It had only those two ethernet cables plugged into it, nothing else. After removing the hub, our speeds have jumped up to several mbps. However in talking with the campus, we got them to run a gigabit line to our firewall in place of the 100mbps line. As of friday, we are at about 65 mbps up and down (according to speedtest.net at 8am)!! Go NC State!!

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• Need help identiying a nasty rootkit in Windows

  - by goofrider

  I have a nasty rootkit that not tools seem to be able to idenity. I know for sure it's a rootkit, but I can figure out which rootkit it is. Here's what I gathered so far: It creates multiple copies of itself in %HOME%\Local Settings\Temp with names like Q.EXE, IAJARZ.exe, etc., and install them as hidden services. These EXE have SysInternals identifiers in them so they're definitely rootkits. It hooked very deep in the system, including file read/write, security policies, registry read/write, and possibly WinSock/TCP/IP. When going to Sophos.com to download their software, the rootkit inject something called Microsoft Ajax Tootkit into the page, which injects code into the email submission form in order to redirect it. (EDIT: I might have panicked. Looks like Sophos does use an AJAZ email form, their form is just broken on Chrome so it looked like a mail form injection attack, the link is http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/virus-removal-tool/download.aspx ) Super-Antispyware found a lot of spyware cookies, in the name of .kaspersky.2o7.net, etc. (just chedk 2o7.net, looks like it's a legit ad company) I tried comparing DNS lookup from the infected systems and from system in other physical locations, no DNS redirections it seems. I used dd to copy the MBR and compared it with the MBR provided by ms-sys package, no differences so it's not infecting MBR. No antivirus or rootkit scanner be able to identify it. Most of them can't even find it. I tried scanning, in-situ (normal mode), in safe mode, and boot to linux live CD. Scanners used: Avast, Sophos anti rootkit, Kasersky TDSSKiller, GMER, RootkitRevealer, and many others. Kaspersky reported some unsigned system files that ought to be signed (e.g. tcpip.sys), and reported a number of MD5 mismatches. But otherwise couldn't identify anything based on signature. When running Sysinternal RootkitRevealer and Sophos AntiRootkit, CPU usage goes up to 100% and gets stucked. The Rootkit is blocking them. When trying running/installing HiJackThis, RootkitRevealer and some other scanners, it tells me system security policy prevent running/installing it. The list of malicious acitivities go on and on. here's a sample of logs from all my scans. In particular, aswSnx.SYS, apnenfno.sys and PROCMON20.SYS has a huge number of hooks. It's hard to tell if the rootkit replaced legit program files like aswSnx.SYS (from Avast) and PROCMON20.SYS (from Sysinternal Process Monitor). I can't find whether apnenfno.sys is from a legit program. Help to identify it is appreciated. Trend Micro RootkitBuster ------ [HIDDEN_REGISTRY][Hidden Reg Value]: KeyPath : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\sptd\Cfg Root : 586bfc0 SubKey : Cfg ValueName : g0 Data : 38 23 E8 D0 BF F2 2D 6F ... ValueType : 3 AccessType: 0 FullLength: 61 DataSize : 32 [HOOKED_SERVICE_API]: Service API : ZwCreateMutant Image Path : C:\WINDOWS\System32\Drivers\aswSnx.SYS OriginalHandler : 0x8061758e CurrentHandler : 0xaa66cce8 ServiceNumber : 0x2b ModuleName : aswSnx.SYS SDTType : 0x0 [HOOKED_SERVICE_API]: Service API : ZwCreateThread Image Path : c:\windows\system32\drivers\apnenfno.sys OriginalHandler : 0x805d1038 CurrentHandler : 0xaa5f118c ServiceNumber : 0x35 ModuleName : apnenfno.sys SDTType : 0x0 [HOOKED_SERVICE_API]: Service API : ZwDeleteKey Image Path : C:\WINDOWS\system32\Drivers\PROCMON20.SYS OriginalHandler : 0x80624472 CurrentHandler : 0xa709b0f8 ServiceNumber : 0x3f ModuleName : PROCMON20.SYS SDTType : 0x0 HiJackThis ------ O23 - Service: JWAHQAGZ - Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com - C:\DOCUME~1\jeff\LOCALS~1\Temp\JWAHQAGZ.exe O23 - Service: LHIJ - Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com - C:\DOCUME~1\jeff\LOCALS~1\Temp\LHIJ.exe Kaspersky TDSSKiller ------ 21:05:58.0375 3936 C:\WINDOWS\system32\ati2sgag.exe - copied to quarantine 21:05:59.0217 3936 ATI Smart ( UnsignedFile.Multi.Generic ) - User select action: Quarantine 21:05:59.0342 3936 C:\WINDOWS\system32\BUFADPT.SYS - copied to quarantine 21:05:59.0856 3936 BUFADPT ( UnsignedFile.Multi.Generic ) - User select action: Quarantine 21:05:59.0965 3936 C:\Program Files\CrashPlan\CrashPlanService.exe - copied to quarantine 21:06:00.0152 3936 CrashPlanService ( UnsignedFile.Multi.Generic ) - User select action: Quarantine 21:06:00.0246 3936 C:\WINDOWS\system32\epmntdrv.sys - copied to quarantine 21:06:00.0433 3936 epmntdrv ( UnsignedFile.Multi.Generic ) - User select action: Quarantine 21:06:00.0464 3936 C:\WINDOWS\system32\EuGdiDrv.sys - copied to quarantine 21:06:00.0526 3936 EuGdiDrv ( UnsignedFile.Multi.Generic ) - User select action: Quarantine 21:06:00.0604 3936 C:\Program Files\Common Files\Macrovision Shared\FLEXnet Publisher\FNPLicensingService.exe - copied to quarantine 21:06:01.0181 3936 FLEXnet Licensing Service ( UnsignedFile.Multi.Generic ) - User select action: Quarantine 21:06:01.0321 3936 C:\Program Files\AddinForUNCFAT\UNCFATDMS.exe - copied to quarantine 21:06:01.0430 3936 OTFSDMS ( UnsignedFile.Multi.Generic ) - User select action: Quarantine 21:06:01.0492 3936 C:\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\tcpip.sys - copied to quarantine 21:06:01.0539 3936 Tcpip ( UnsignedFile.Multi.Generic ) - User select action: Quarantine 21:06:01.0601 3936 C:\DOCUME~1\jeff\LOCALS~1\Temp\TULPUWOX.exe - copied to quarantine 21:06:01.0664 3936 HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet003\services\TULPUWOX - will be deleted on reboot 21:06:01.0664 3936 C:\DOCUME~1\jeff\LOCALS~1\Temp\TULPUWOX.exe - will be deleted on reboot 21:06:01.0664 3936 TULPUWOX ( UnsignedFile.Multi.Generic ) - User select action: Delete 21:06:01.0757 3936 C:\WINDOWS\system32\Drivers\usbaapl.sys - copied to quarantine 21:06:01.0866 3936 USBAAPL ( UnsignedFile.Multi.Generic ) - User select action: Quarantine 21:06:01.0913 3936 C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Player\vmware-authd.exe - copied to quarantine 21:06:02.0443 3936 VMAuthdService ( UnsignedFile.Multi.Generic ) - User select action: Quarantine 21:06:02.0443 3936 vmount2 ( UnsignedFile.Multi.Generic ) - skipped by user 21:06:02.0443 3936 vmount2 ( UnsignedFile.Multi.Generic ) - User select action: Skip 21:06:02.0459 3936 vstor2 ( UnsignedFile.Multi.Generic ) - skipped by user 21:06:02.0459 3936 vstor2 ( UnsignedFile.Multi.Generic ) - User select action: Skip

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• Wireless Network Performance Issues

  - by colithium

  My brand new Dell XPS system has been running flawlessly except its abysmal download speeds. I have tried isolating every variable I could possibly think of but I can't figure out the problem. I've talked to Dell and Belkin without making progress (thought I'd try). Here are the speeds: Note that most of the time, upload speeds are actually much faster than download speeds (around 4.0 Mb/s which is better than most other devices on the network) It's not the ISP. The slowdown happens even when transferring files inside the network. Plus every other wireless device gets approximately this: It's not the wireless router. It's a Lynksis WRT160N v1 with the latest firmware (1.02.2). Plus everything else connected to it has normal speeds. It's not the browser. Speeds are the same in IE, FF, and when transferring files with Windows between computers. It's not the wireless adapter. I've tried a Belkin N Wireless USB Adapter (which works fine on another computer) and a Dell Wireless Draft 802.11n WLAN Mini-Card. They have the same slow speeds when connected to the problem computer. It's not the adapter connection. One adapter used USB and the other is a Mini-Card. It's not antenna placement. With the same antenna position and the same device, I get different speeds when connected to the problem computer vs a good computer. Plus everything reports the connection speed as at least 11Mbps and good signal strength. I've tried disabling IPv6 since it sometimes causes weird problems. I've tried disabling Windows Firewall/anti-virus. I've ensured the computer has updated drivers for both adapters. I've ensured that Windows is up to date and so is the BIOS. For the USB adapter I ensured that that USB port functioned at normal speeds with other USB devices. What else could it possibly be? I finally received my copy of Windows 7 and will be trying that. I'd rather not install Windows 7 because of a particular program that will stop working so a solution besides that is welcome. Specs: Vista x64 Core i7 920 6GB RAM 500GB HD GTX 260

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• Monitoring the status of accounts with IT Service providers (ISP, Domain Registrar etc.)

  - by Sholom

  Hi All, Short version: You have software that tells you when your servers power-outlet is down. It monitors multiple servers from one management console, alerts you when something is wrong etc. Does anyone know of software that will let me take the same approach to monitor if the money-outlet (the bill!) is down (not paid) to my IT Services providers (ISP, Domain Registrar, MX Backup service etc). I need a top down, centrally managed service that is capable of sending out alerts. Just like the one that monitors my own exchange server etc. I don't mind if i have to manually enter every payment. Long version: Our very likable but absent minded bookkeeper keeps neglecting to pay our IT vendors on time. Just this past week our internet service was disconnected. Same could happen to many other mission critical accounts (domain registrar, backup MX, anti-virus license, HackerSafe (McAfee secure) service and even an 800 number to name a few). As the sysadmin, i monitor my severs to make sure they are plugged into the power-outlet. I believe i should also monitor my services to make sure they are plugged in to their money-outlet. To compound the problem, when the power goes out someone else will likely notice and notify me. But if a bill is not payed, no one will ever notice until service is lost. Lost as in losing our domain name which would cause a lot more damage then the power failing on our server. [Solution] = [Doesn't work because]: Retrain the bookkeeper = Wishful thinking. Notify my manager = Already have (via email). Protects me, does not solve problem. Fire bookkeeper = What makes you so sure the next one will never forget? Bottom line: Humans are humans and sooner or later something critical will be royally messed up. We need to partner with a machine to help us out here. Anybody have the same problem? What software/solution do you use? I would like software that emails me when a bill is passed due just like i get an email when the power outlet fails. Anyone hear of anything like that? Thanks

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• Force caching of handler output which actively resists caching

  - by deceze

  I'm trying to force caching of a very obnoxious piece of PHP script which actively tries to resist caching for no good reason by actively setting all the anti-cache headers: Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Date: Thu, 22 May 2014 08:43:53 GMT Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT Last-Modified: Pragma: no-cache Set-Cookie: ECSESSID=...; path=/ Vary: User-Agent,Accept-Encoding Server: Apache/2.4.6 (Ubuntu) X-Powered-By: PHP/5.5.3-1ubuntu2.3 If at all avoidable I do not want to have to modify this 3rd party piece of code at all and instead just get Apache to cache the page for a while. I'm doing this very selectively to only very specific pages which have no real impact on session cookies or the like, i.e. which do not contain any personalised information. CacheDefaultExpire 600 CacheMinExpire 600 CacheMaxExpire 1800 CacheHeader On CacheDetailHeader On CacheIgnoreHeaders Set-Cookie CacheIgnoreCacheControl On CacheIgnoreNoLastMod On CacheStoreExpired On CacheStoreNoStore On CacheLock On CacheEnable disk /the/script.php Apache is caching the page alright: [cache:debug] AH00698: cache: Key for entity /the/script.php?(null) is http://example.com:80/the/script.php? [cache_disk:debug] AH00709: Recalled cached URL info header http://example.com:80/the/script.php? [cache_disk:debug] AH00720: Recalled headers for URL http://example.com:80/the/script.php? [cache:debug] AH00695: Cached response for /the/script.php isn't fresh. Adding conditional request headers. [cache:debug] AH00750: Adding CACHE_SAVE filter for /the/script.php [cache:debug] AH00751: Adding CACHE_REMOVE_URL filter for /the/script.php [cache:debug] AH00769: cache: Caching url: /the/script.php [cache:debug] AH00770: cache: Removing CACHE_REMOVE_URL filter. [cache_disk:debug] AH00737: commit_entity: Headers and body for URL http://example.com:80/the/script.php? cached. However, it is always insisting that the "cached response isn't fresh" and is never serving the cached version. I guess this has to do with the Expires header, which marks the document as expired (but I don't know whether that's the correct assumption). I've tried to overwrite and unset headers using mod_headers, but this doesn't help; whatever combination I try the cache is not impressed at all. I'm guessing that the order of operation is wrong, and headers are being rewritten after the cache sees them. early header processing doesn't help either. I've experimented with CacheQuickHandler Off and trying to set explicit filter chains, but nothing is helping. But I'm really mostly poking in the dark, as I do not have a lot of experience with configuring Apache filter chains. Is there a straight forward solution for how to cache this obnoxious piece of code?

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• Plesk Postfix Mail Server 9.5.4 very heavy load, 1000s of processes

  - by Eugene van der Merwe

  Our Plesk Linux Ubuntu 64-bit mail server has extremely high load and we don't know how to isolate it. The load was okay will two weeks ago but in the last two weeks it's seriously deteriorated. The mail server has been running for years and we have had sporadic performance issues. Normally we reduce the load by turning off all SPAM checks until the problem is sorted (which sometimes resolves itself). Currently we have turned of real time block lists, SPF checking and we have attempted to turn off SpamAssassin. No matter what we do the SpamAssassin check box stays ticked in the GUI. Out of desperation we have done /etc/init.d/psa-spamassassin stop. For years we haven't been able to do SpamAssassin because it kills the server. We would like to use it but performance is more important for now. We cannot turn off Greylisting. The moment we turn off Greylisting our help desk is inandated with calls. Out of desperation we investigated truncating the Greylisting database which is now 2.5 GB big but we abandoned this after noticing turning of Greylisting doesn't improve the performance at all. We have no anti-virus. It's just more load and Dr. Web never really worked that well for us. But we'll try that if it will make a difference. We have implemented Postfix Anvil. This seems to have made the situation worse so we disabled it. We’re not sure if this is the case. Our current mail server is configured to forward all SMTP to a relay server. We did so to reduce the load. This helped a lot because outgoing queues are generally empty. We are running in an Expand configuration. The mail server has about 12 000 accounts of which maybe half are active. We have read through this document: http://www.postfix.org/STRESS_README.html but there are too many settings and we don’t know which ones to choose. Please assist urgently. We need advice on how to fix this problem before all our clients abandon is. The only clue we have is that there are 100s of these processes: 30 13205 1 0 13:18 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/plesk-9.0/postfix-queue 127.0.0.1 10027 before-queue 30 13207 1 0 11:38 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/plesk-9.0/postfix-queue 127.0.0.1 10027 before-queue 30 13208 1 0 13:18 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/plesk-9.0/postfix-queue 127.0.0.1 10026 before-remote 30 13209 1 0 11:38 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/plesk-9.0/postfix-queue 127.0.0.1 10026 before-remote 30 13213 1 0 13:18 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/plesk-9.0/postfix-queue 127.0.0.1 10027 before-queue

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• How to Upgrade Your Netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like more features and flash in Windows on your netbook?  Here’s how you can easily upgrade your netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium the easy way. Most new netbooks today ship with Windows 7 Starter, which is the cheapest edition of Windows 7.  It is fine for many computing tasks, and will run all your favorite programs great, but it lacks many customization, multimedia, and business features found in higher editions.  Here we’ll show you how you can quickly upgrade your netbook to more full-featured edition of Windows 7 using Windows Anytime Upgrade.  Also, if you want to upgrade your laptop or desktop to another edition of Windows 7, say Professional, you can follow these same steps to upgrade it, too. Please note: This is only for computers already running Windows 7.  If your netbook is running XP or Vista, you will have to run a traditional upgrade to install Windows 7. Upgrade Advisor First, let’s make sure your netbook can support the extra features, such as Aero Glass, in Windows 7 Home Premium.  Most modern netbooks that ship with Windows 7 Starter can run the advanced features in Windows 7 Home Premium, but let’s check just in case.  Download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor (link below), and install as normal. Once it’s installed, run it and click Start Check.   Make sure you’re connected to the internet before you run the check, or otherwise you may see this error message.  If you see it, click Ok and then connect to the internet and start the check again. It will now scan all of your programs and hardware to make sure they’re compatible with Windows 7.  Since you’re already running Windows 7 Starter, it will also tell you if your computer will support the features in other editions of Windows 7. After a few moments, the Upgrade Advisor will show you want it found.  Here we see that our netbook, a Samsung N150, can be upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate. We also see that we had one issue, but this was because a driver we had installed was not recognized.  Click “See all system requirements” to see what your netbook can do with the new edition. This shows you which of the requirements, including support for Windows Aero, your netbook meets.  Here our netbook supports Aero, so we’re ready to go upgrade. For more, check out our article on how to make sure your computer can run Windows 7 with Upgrade Advisor. Upgrade with Anytime Upgrade Now, we’re ready to upgrade our netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium.  Enter “Anytime Upgrade” in the Start menu search,and select Windows Anytime Upgrade. Windows Anytime Upgrade lets you upgrade using product key you already have or one you purchase during the upgrade process.  And, it installs without any downloads or Windows disks, so it works great even for netbooks without DVD drives. Anytime Upgrades are cheaper than a standard upgrade, and for a limited time, select retailers in the US are offering Anytime Upgrades to Windows 7 Home Premium for only $49.99 if purchased with a new netbook.  If you already have a netbook running Windows 7 Starter, you can either purchase an Anytime Upgrade package at a retail store or purchase a key online during the upgrade process for $79.95.  Or, if you have a standard Windows 7 product key (full or upgrade), you can use it in Anytime upgrade.  This is especially nice if you can purchase Windows 7 cheaper through your school, university, or office. Purchase an upgrade online To purchase an upgrade online, click “Go online to choose the edition of Windows 7 that’s best for you”.   Here you can see a comparison of the features of each edition of Windows 7.  Note that you can upgrade to either Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate.  We chose home Premium because it has most of the features that home users want, including Media Center and Aero Glass effects.  Also note that the price of each upgrade is cheaper than the respective upgrade from Windows XP or Vista.  Click buy under the edition you want.   Enter your billing information, then your payment information.  Once you confirm your purchase, you will directly be taken to the Upgrade screen.  Make sure to save your receipt, as you will need the product key if you ever need to reinstall Windows on your computer. Upgrade with an existing product key If you purchased an Anytime Upgrade kit from a retailer, or already have a Full or Upgrade key for another edition of Windows 7, choose “Enter an upgrade key”. Enter your product key, and click Next.  If you purchased an Anytime Upgrade kit, the product key will be located on the inside of the case on a yellow sticker. The key will be verified as a valid key, and Anytime Upgrade will automatically choose the correct edition of Windows 7 based on your product key.  Click Next when this is finished. Continuing the Upgrade process Whether you entered a key or purchased a key online, the process is the same from here on.  Click “I accept” to accept the license agreement. Now, you’re ready to install your upgrade.  Make sure to save all open files and close any programs, and then click Upgrade. The upgrade only takes about 10 minutes in our experience but your mileage may vary.  Any available Microsoft updates, including ones for Office, Security Essentials, and other products, will be installed before the upgrade takes place. After a couple minutes, your computer will automatically reboot and finish the installation.  It will then reboot once more, and your computer will be ready to use!  Welcome to your new edition of Windows 7! Here’s a before and after shot of our desktop.  When you do an Anytime Upgrade, all of your programs, files, and settings will be just as they were before you upgraded.  The only change we noticed was that our pinned taskbar icons were slightly rearranged to the default order of Internet Explorer, Explorer, and Media Player.  Here’s a shot of our desktop before the upgrade.  Notice that all of our pinned programs and desktop icons are still there, as well as our taskbar customization (we are using small icons on the taskbar instead of the default large icons). Before, with the Windows 7 Starter background and the Aero Basic theme: And after, with Aero Glass and the more colorful default Windows 7 background.   All of the features of Windows 7 Home Premium are now ready to use.  The Aero theme was activate by default, but you can now customize your netbook theme, background, and more with the Personalization pane.  To open it, right-click on your desktop and select Personalize. You can also now use Windows Media Center, and can play-back DVD movies using an external drive. One of our favorite tools, the Snipping Tool, is also now available for easy screenshots and clips. Activating you new edition of Windows 7 You will still need to activate your new edition of Windows 7.  To do this right away, open the start menu, right-click on Computer, and select Properties.   Scroll to the bottom, and click “Activate Windows Now”. Make sure you’re connected to the internet, and then select “Activate Windows online now”. Activation may take a few minutes, depending on your internet connection speed. When it is done, the Activation wizard will let you know that Windows is activated and genuine.  Your upgrade is all finished! Conclusion Windows Anytime Upgrade makes it easy, and somewhat cheaper, to upgrade to another edition of Windows 7.  It’s useful for desktop and laptop owners who want to upgrade to Professional or Ultimate, but many more netbook owners will want to upgrade from Starter to Home Premium or another edition.  Links Download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Windows Team Blog: Anytime Upgrade Special with new PC purchase Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 Home Premium EditionAnother Blog You Should Subscribe ToMysticgeek Blog: Turn Vista Home Premium Into Ultimate (Part 3) – Shadow CopyUpgrade Ubuntu from Breezy to DapperHow to Upgrade the Windows 7 RC to RTM (Final Release) TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Get Your Delicious Bookmarks In Firefox’s Awesome Bar Manage Photos Across Different Social Sites With Dropico Test Drive Windows 7 Online Download Wallpapers From National Geographic Site Spyware Blaster v4.3 Yes, it’s Patch Tuesday

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• Experience your music in a whole new way with Zune for PC

  - by Matthew Guay

  Tired of the standard Media Player look and feel, and want something new and innovative?  Zune offers a fresh, new way to enjoy your music, videos, pictures, and podcasts, whether or not you own a Zune device. Microsoft started out on a new multimedia experience for PCs and mobile devices with the launch of the Zune several years ago.  The Zune devices have been well received and noted for their innovative UI, and the Zune HD’s fluid interface is the foundation for the widely anticipated Windows Phone 7.  But regardless of whether or not you have a Zune Device, you can still use the exciting new UI and services directly from your PC.  Zune for Windows is a very nice media player that offers a music and video store and wide support for multimedia formats including those used in Apple products.  And if you enjoy listening to a wide variety of music, it also offers the Zune Pass which lets you stream an unlimited number of songs to your computer and download 10 songs for keeps per month for $14.99/month. Or you can do a pre-paid music card as well.  It does all this using the new Metro UI which beautifully shows information using text in a whole new way.  Here’s a quick look at setting up and using Zune on your PC. Getting Started Download the installer (link below), and run it to begin setup.  Please note that Zune offers a separate version for computers running the 64 bit version of Windows Vista or 7, so choose it if your computer is running these. Once your download is finished, run the installer to setup Zune on your computer.  Accept the EULA when prompted. If there are any updates available, they will automatically download and install during the setup.  So, if you’re installing Zune from a disk (for example, one packaged with a Zune device), you don’t have to worry if you have the latest version.  Zune will proceed to install on your computer.   It may prompt you to restart your computer after installation; click Restart Now so you can proceed with your Zune setup.  The reboot appears to be for Zune device support, and the program ran fine otherwise without rebooting, so you could possibly skip this step if you’re not using a Zune device.  However, to be on the safe side, go ahead and reboot. After rebooting, launch Zune.  It will play a cute introduction video on first launch; press skip if you don’t want to watch it. Zune will now ask you if you want to keep the default settings or change them.  Choose Start to keep the defaults, or Settings to customize to your wishes.  Do note that the default settings will set Zune as your default media player, so click Settings if you wish to change this. If you choose to change the default settings, you can change how Zune finds and stores media on your computer.  In Windows 7, Zune will by default use your Windows 7 Libraries to manage your media, and will in fact add a new Podcasts library to Windows 7. If your media is stored on another location, such as on a server, then you can add this to the Library.  Please note that this adds the location to your system-wide library, not just the Zune player. There’s one last step.  Enter three of your favorite artists, and Zune will add Smart DJ mixes to your Quickplay list based on these.  Some less famous or popular artists may not be recognized, so you may have to try another if your choice isn’t available.  Or, you can click Skip if you don’t want to do this right now. Welcome to Zune!  This is the default first page, QuickPlay, where you can easily access your pinned and new items.   If you have a Zune account, or would like to create a new one, click Sign In on the top. Creating a new account is quick and simple, and if you’re new to Zune, you can try out a 14 day trial of Zune Pass for free if you want. Zune allows you to share your listening habits and favorites with friends or the world, but you can turn this off or change it if you like. Using Zune for Windows To access your media, click the Collection link on the top left.  Zune will show all the media you already have stored on your computer, organized by artist and album. Right-click on any album, and you choose to have Zune find album art or do a variety of other tasks with the media.   When playing media, you can view it in several unique ways.  First, the default Mix view will show related tracks to the music you’re playing from Smart DJ.  You can either play these fully if you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, or otherwise you can play 30 second previews. Then, for many popular artists, Zune will change the player background to show pictures and information in a unique way while the music is playing.  The information may range from history about the artist to the popularity of the song being played.   Zune also works as a nice viewer for the pictures on your computer. Start a slideshow, and Zune will play your pictures with nice transition effects and music from your library. Zune Store The Zune Store offers a wide variety of music, TV shows, and videos for purchase.  If you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, you can listen to or download any song without purchasing it; otherwise, you can preview a 30 second clip first. Zune also offers a wide selection of Podcasts you can subscribe to for free. Using Zune for PC with a Zune Device If you have a Zune device attached to your computer, you can easily add media files to it by simply dragging them to the Zune device icon in the left corner.  In the future, this will also work with Windows Phone 7 devices. If you have a Zune HD, you can also download and add apps to your device. Here’s the detailed information window for the weather app.  Click Download to add it to your device.   Mini Mode The Zune player generally takes up a large portion of your screen, and is actually most impressive when run maximized.  However, if you’re simply wanting to enjoy your tunes while you’re using your computer, you can use the Mini mode to still view music info and control Zune in a smaller mode.  Click the Mini Player button near the window control buttons in the top right to activate it. Now Zune will take up much less of your desktop.  This window will stay on top of other windows so you can still easily view and control it. Zune will display an image of the artist if one is available, and this shows up in Mini mode more often than it does in the full mode. And, in Windows 7, you could simply minimize Zune as you can control it directly from the taskbar thumbnail preview.   Even more controls are available from Zune’s jumplist in Windows 7.  You can directly access your Quickplay links or choose to shuffle all music without leaving the taskbar. Settings Although Zune is designed to be used without confusing menus and settings, you can tweak the program to your liking from the settings panel.  Click Settings near the top left of the window. Here you can change file storage, types, burn, metadata, and many more settings.  You can also setup Zune to stream media to your XBOX 360 if you have one.   You can also customize Zune’s look with a variety of modern backgrounds and gradients. Conclusion If you’re ready for a fresh way to enjoy your media, Zune is designed for you.  It’s innovative UI definitely sets it apart from standard media players, and is very pleasing to use.  Zune is especially nice if your computer is using XP, Vista Home Basic, or 7 Starter as these versions of Windows don’t include Media Center.  Additionally, the mini player mode is a nice touch that brings a feature of Windows 7’s Media Player to XP and Vista.  Zune is definitely one of our favorite music apps.  Try it out, and get a fresh view of your music today! Link Download Zune for Windows Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Redeem Pre-paid Zune Card Points for Zune Marketplace MediaUpdate Your Zune Player SoftwaredoubleTwist is an iTunes Alternative that Supports Several DevicesFind Free or Cheap Indie Music at Amie StreetAmie Street Downloader Makes Purchasing Music Easier TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 The Ultimate Guide For YouTube Lovers Will it Blend? iPad Edition Penolo Lets You Share Sketches On Twitter Visit Woolyss.com for Old School Games, Music and Videos Add a Custom Title in IE using Spybot or Spyware Blaster When You Need to Hail a Taxi in NYC

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• AGENT: The World's Smartest Watch

  - by Rob Chartier

  AGENT: The World's Smartest Watch by Secret Labs + House of Horology Disclaimer: Most if not all of this content has been gleaned from the comments on the Kickstarter project page and comments section. Any discrepancies between this post and any documentation on agentwatches.com, kickstarter.com, etc.., those official sites take precedence. Overview The next generation smartwatch with brand-new technology. World-class developer tools, unparalleled battery life, Qi wireless charging. Kickstarter Page, Comments Funding period : May 21, 2013 - Jun 20, 2013 MSRP : $249 Other Urls http://www.agentwatches.com/ https://www.facebook.com/agentwatches http://twitter.com/agentwatches http://pinterest.com/agentwatches/ http://paper.li/robchartier/1371234640 Developer Story The first official launch of the preview SDK and emulator will happen on 20-Jun-2013.  All development will be done in Visual Studio 2012, using the .NET Micro Framework SDK 2.3.  The SDK will ship with the first round of the expected API for developers along with an emulator. With that said, there is no need to wait for the SDK.  You can download the tooling now and get started with Apps and Faces immediately.  The only thing that you will not be able to work with is the API; but for example, watch faces, you can start building the basic face rendering with the Bitmap graphics drawing in the .NET Micro Framework.   Does it look good? Before we dig into any more of the gory details, here are a few photos of the current available prototype models.   The watch on the tiny QI Charter   If you wander too far away from your phone, your watch will let you know with a vibration and a message, all but one button will dismiss the message.   An app showing the premium weather data!   Nice stitching on the straps, leather and silicon will be available, along with a few lengths to choose from (short, regular, long lengths). On to those gory details…. Hardware Specs Processor 120MHz ARM Cortex-M4 processor (ATSAM4SD32) with secondary AVR co-processor Flash & RAM 2MB of onboard flash and 160KB of RAM 1/4 of the onboard flash will be used by the OS The flash is permanent (non-volatile) storage. Bluetooth Bluetooth 4.0 BD/EDR + LE Bluetooth 4.0 is backwards compatible with Bluetooth 2.1, so classic Bluetooth functions (BD/EDR, SPP/AVRCP/PBAP/etc.) will work fine. Sensors 3D Accelerometer (Motion) ST LSM303DLHC Ambient Light Sensor Hardware power metering Vibration Motor (You can pulse it to create vibration patterns, not sure about the vibration strength - driven with PWM) No piezo/speaker or microphone. Other QI Wireless Charging, no NFC, no wall adapter included Custom LED Backlight No GPS in the watch. It uses the GPS in your phone. AGENT watch apps are deployed and debugged wirelessly from your PC via Bluetooth. RoHS, Pb-free Battery Expected to use a CR2430-sized rechargeable battery – replaceable (Mouser, Amazon) Estimated charging time from empty is 2 hours with provided charger 7 Days typical with Bluetooth on, 30 days with Bluetooth off (watch-face only mode) The battery should last at least 2 years, with 100s of charge cycles. Physical dimensions Roughly 38mm top-to-bottom on the front face 35mm left-to-right on the front face and around 12mm in depth 22mm strap Two ~1/16" hex screws to attach the watch pin The top watchcase material candidates are PVD stainless steel, brushed matte ceramic, and high-quality polycarbonate (TBD). The glass lens is mineral glass, Anti-glare glass lens Strap options Leather and silicon straps will be available Expected to have three sizes Display 1.28" Sharp Memory Display The display stays on 100% of the time. Dimensions: 128x128 pixels Buttons Custom "Pusher" buttons, they will not make noise like a mouse click, and are very durable. The top-left button activates the backlight; bottom-left changes apps; three buttons on the right are up/select/down and can be used for custom purposes by apps. Backup reset procedure is currently activated by holding the home/menu button and the top-right user button for about ten seconds Device Support Android 2.3 or newer iPhone 4S or newer Windows Phone 8 or newer Heart Rate monitors - Bluetooth SPP or Bluetooth LE (GATT) is what you'll want the heart monitor to support. Almost limitless Bluetooth device support! Internationalization & Localization Full UTF8 Support from the ground up. AGENT's user interface is in English. Your content (caller ID, music tracks, notifications) will be in your native language. We have a plan to cover most major character sets, with Latin characters pre-loaded on the watch. Simplified Chinese will be available Feature overview Phone lost alert Caller ID Music Control (possible volume control) Wireless Charging Timer Stopwatch Vibrating Alarm (possibly custom vibrations for caller id) A few default watch faces Airplane mode (by demand or low power) Can be turned off completely Customizable 3rd party watch faces, applications which can be loaded over bluetooth. Sample apps that maybe installed Weather Sample Apps not installed Exercise App Other Possible Skype integration over Bluetooth. They will provide an AGENT app for your smartphone (iPhone, Android, Windows Phone). You'll be able to use it to load apps onto the watch.. You will be able to cancel phone calls. With compatible phones you can also answer, end, etc. They are adopting the standard hands-free profile to provide these features and caller ID.

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• WCF REST on .Net 4.0

  - by AngelEyes

  A simple and straight forward article taken from: http://christopherdeweese.com/blog2/post/drop-the-soap-wcf-rest-and-pretty-uris-in-net-4 Drop the Soap: WCF, REST, and Pretty URIs in .NET 4 Years ago I was working in libraries when the Web 2.0 revolution began.  One of the things that caught my attention about early start-ups using the AJAX/REST/Web 2.0 model was how nice the URIs were for their applications.  Those were my first impressions of REST; pretty URIs.  Turns out there is a little more to it than that. REST is an architectural style that focuses on resources and structured ways to access those resources via the web.  REST evolved as an “anti-SOAP” movement, driven by developers who did not want to deal with all the complexity SOAP introduces (which is al lot when you don’t have frameworks hiding it all).  One of the biggest benefits to REST is that browsers can talk to rest services directly because REST works using URIs, QueryStrings, Cookies, SSL, and all those HTTP verbs that we don’t have to think about anymore. If you are familiar with ASP.NET MVC then you have been exposed to rest at some level.  MVC is relies heavily on routing to generate consistent and clean URIs.  REST for WCF gives you the same type of feel for your services.  Let’s dive in. WCF REST in .NET 3.5 SP1 and .NET 4 This post will cover WCF REST in .NET 4 which drew heavily from the REST Starter Kit and community feedback.  There is basic REST support in .NET 3.5 SP1 and you can also grab the REST Starter Kit to enable some of the features you’ll find in .NET 4. This post will cover REST in .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010. Getting Started To get started we’ll create a basic WCF Rest Service Application using the new on-line templates option in VS 2010: When you first install a template you are prompted with this dialog: Dude Where’s my .Svc File? The WCF REST template shows us the new way we can simply build services.  Before we talk about what’s there, let’s look at what is not there: The .Svc File An Interface Contract Dozens of lines of configuration that you have to change to make your service work REST in .NET 4 is greatly simplified and leverages the Web Routing capabilities used in ASP.NET MVC and other parts of the web frameworks.  With REST in .NET 4 you use a global.asax to set the route to your service using the new ServiceRoute class.  From there, the WCF runtime handles dispatching service calls to the methods based on the Uri Templates. global.asax using System; using System.ServiceModel.Activation; using System.Web; using System.Web.Routing; namespace Blog.WcfRest.TimeService {     public class Global : HttpApplication     {         void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             RegisterRoutes();         }         private static void RegisterRoutes()         {             RouteTable.Routes.Add(new ServiceRoute("TimeService",                 new WebServiceHostFactory(), typeof(TimeService)));         }     } } The web.config contains some new structures to support a configuration free deployment.  Note that this is the default config generated with the template.  I did not make any changes to web.config. web.config <?xml version="1.0"?> <configuration>   <system.web>     <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0" />   </system.web>   <system.webServer>     <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true">       <add name="UrlRoutingModule" type="System.Web.Routing.UrlRoutingModule,            System.Web, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />     </modules>   </system.webServer>   <system.serviceModel>     <serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="true"/>     <standardEndpoints>       <webHttpEndpoint>         <!--             Configure the WCF REST service base address via the global.asax.cs file and the default endpoint             via the attributes on the <standardEndpoint> element below         -->         <standardEndpoint name="" helpEnabled="true" automaticFormatSelectionEnabled="true"/>       </webHttpEndpoint>     </standardEndpoints>   </system.serviceModel> </configuration> Building the Time Service We’ll create a simple “TimeService” that will return the current time.  Let’s start with the following code: using System; using System.ServiceModel; using System.ServiceModel.Activation; using System.ServiceModel.Web; namespace Blog.WcfRest.TimeService {     [ServiceContract]     [AspNetCompatibilityRequirements(RequirementsMode = AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsMode.Allowed)]     [ServiceBehavior(InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.PerCall)]     public class TimeService     {         [WebGet(UriTemplate = "CurrentTime")]         public string CurrentTime()         {             return DateTime.Now.ToString();         }     } } The endpoint for this service will be http://[machinename]:[port]/TimeService.  To get the current time http://[machinename]:[port]/TimeService/CurrentTime will do the trick. The Results Are In Remember That Route In global.asax? Turns out it is pretty important.  When you set the route name, that defines the resource name starting after the host portion of the Uri. Help Pages in WCF 4 Another feature that came from the starter kit are the help pages.  To access the help pages simply append Help to the end of the service’s base Uri. Dropping the Soap Having dabbled with REST in the past and after using Soap for the last few years, the WCF 4 REST support is certainly refreshing.  I’m currently working on some REST implementations in .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 and am looking forward to working on REST in .NET 4 and VS 2010.

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• Ask How-To Geek: Dropbox in the Start Menu, Understanding Symlinks, and Ripping TV Series DVDs

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  This week we take a look at how to incorporate Dropbox into your Windows Start Menu, understanding and using symbolic links, and how to rip your TV series DVDs right to unique and high-quality episode files. Once a week we dip into our reader mailbag and help readers solve their problems, sharing the useful solutions with you in the process. Read on to see our fixes for this week’s reader dilemmas. Add Drobox to Your Start Menu Dear How-To Geek, I use Dropbox all the time and would like to add it right onto my start menu along side the other major shortcuts like Documents, Pictures, etc. It seems like adding Dropbox into the menu should be part of the Dropbox installation package! Sincerely, Dropboxing in Des Moines Dear Dropboxing, We agree, it would be a nice installation option. As it stands you’re going to have to do a little simple hacking to get Dropbox nestled neatly into your start menu. The hack isn’t super elegant but when you’re done you’ll have the link you want and it’ll look like it was there all along. Check out this step-by-step guide here in order to take an existing Library shortcut and rework it to be a Dropbox link. Understanding and Using Symbolic Links Dear How-To Geek, I was talking to a coworker the other day about an issue I’d been having with a media center application I’m running. He suggested using symbolic links to better organize my media and make it easier for the application to access my collection. I had no idea what he was talking about and never got a chance to bug him about it later. Can you clear up this whole symbolic links business for me? I’ve been using computers for years and I’ve never even heard of it! Sincerely, Symbolic Who? Dear Symbolic, Symbolic links aren’t commonly used by many Windows users which is why you likely haven’t run into the concept. Symbolic links are essentially supercharged shortcuts—the newly introduced Windows library system is really just a type of symbolic link system. You can use symbolic links to do all sorts of neat stuff like link folders to your Dropbox folder, organize media, and more. The concept of symbolic links is pretty simple but the execution can be really tricky. We’d suggest reading over our guide to creating symbolic links in Windows 7, Windows XP, and Ubunutu to get a clearer idea what you’re getting into. Rip Your TV DVDs into Handy Episode Files Dear How-To Geek, My wife got me an iPod for Christmas and I still haven’t got around to filling it up. I have tons of entire TV show seasons on DVD and would like to get them on the iPod but I have absolutely no idea where to start. How do I get the shows off the discs? I thought it would be as easy to import the TV shows into iTunes as it is to import tracks off a CD but I was totally wrong. I tried downloading some applications to rip them but those didn’t work at all. Very frustrating! Surely there is an easy and/or automated way to do this, right? Sincerely, Free My DVDs Dear DVDs, Oh man is this a frustration we can relate to. It’s inordinately difficult to get movies and TV shows off physical media and into digital (and portable media player-friendly) formats. There are a multitude of ways to rip DVDs and quite a few applications out there (some good, some mediocre, and some outright malware). We’d recommend a two-part punch to solve your ripping woes. You’ll need a copy of DVDFab to strip away the protections on the discs and rip the disc and Handbrake to load the disc image and convert the files. It’s not quite as smooth as the CD-to-iTunes workflow but it’s still pretty easy. Check out all the steps and settings you’ll want to toggle here. Have a question you want to put before the How-To Geek staff? Shoot us an email at [email protected] and then keep an eye out for a solution in the Ask How-To Geek column. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines Google’s New Personal Blocklist Extension Kills Search Engine Spam KeyCounter Tracks Your Keystrokes and Mouse Clicks Add Custom LED Ambient Lighting to Your PC or Media Center The Trackor Monitors Amazon Prices; Integrates with Chrome, Firefox, and Safari Four Awesome TRON Legacy Themes for Chrome and Iron Anger is Illogical – Old School Style Instructional Video [Star Trek Mashup]

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• 8 Things You Can Do In Android’s Developer Options

  - by Chris Hoffman

  The Developer Options menu in Android is a hidden menu with a variety of advanced options. These options are intended for developers, but many of them will be interesting to geeks. You’ll have to perform a secret handshake to enable the Developer Options menu in the Settings screen, as it’s hidden from Android users by default. Follow the simple steps to quickly enable Developer Options. Enable USB Debugging “USB debugging” sounds like an option only an Android developer would need, but it’s probably the most widely used hidden option in Android. USB debugging allows applications on your computer to interface with your Android phone over the USB connection. This is required for a variety of advanced tricks, including rooting an Android phone, unlocking it, installing a custom ROM, or even using a desktop program that captures screenshots of your Android device’s screen. You can also use ADB commands to push and pull files between your device and your computer or create and restore complete local backups of your Android device without rooting. USB debugging can be a security concern, as it gives computers you plug your device into access to your phone. You could plug your device into a malicious USB charging port, which would try to compromise you. That’s why Android forces you to agree to a prompt every time you plug your device into a new computer with USB debugging enabled. Set a Desktop Backup Password If you use the above ADB trick to create local backups of your Android device over USB, you can protect them with a password with the Set a desktop backup password option here. This password encrypts your backups to secure them, so you won’t be able to access them if you forget the password. Disable or Speed Up Animations When you move between apps and screens in Android, you’re spending some of that time looking at animations and waiting for them to go away. You can disable these animations entirely by changing the Window animation scale, Transition animation scale, and Animator duration scale options here. If you like animations but just wish they were faster, you can speed them up. On a fast phone or tablet, this can make switching between apps nearly instant. If you thought your Android phone was speedy before, just try disabling animations and you’ll be surprised how much faster it can seem. Force-Enable FXAA For OpenGL Games If you have a high-end phone or tablet with great graphics performance and you play 3D games on it, there’s a way to make those games look even better. Just go to the Developer Options screen and enable the Force 4x MSAA option. This will force Android to use 4x multisample anti-aliasing in OpenGL ES 2.0 games and other apps. This requires more graphics power and will probably drain your battery a bit faster, but it will improve image quality in some games. This is a bit like force-enabling antialiasing using the NVIDIA Control Panel on a Windows gaming PC. See How Bad Task Killers Are We’ve written before about how task killers are worse than useless on Android. If you use a task killer, you’re just slowing down your system by throwing out cached data and forcing Android to load apps from system storage whenever you open them again. Don’t believe us? Enable the Don’t keep activities option on the Developer options screen and Android will force-close every app you use as soon as you exit it. Enable this app and use your phone normally for a few minutes — you’ll see just how harmful throwing out all that cached data is and how much it will slow down your phone. Don’t actually use this option unless you want to see how bad it is! It will make your phone perform much more slowly — there’s a reason Google has hidden these options away from average users who might accidentally change them. Fake Your GPS Location The Allow mock locations option allows you to set fake GPS locations, tricking Android into thinking you’re at a location where you actually aren’t. Use this option along with an app like Fake GPS location and you can trick your Android device and the apps running on it into thinking you’re at locations where you actually aren’t. How would this be useful? Well, you could fake a GPS check-in at a location without actually going there or confuse your friends in a location-tracking app by seemingly teleporting around the world. Stay Awake While Charging You can use Android’s Daydream Mode to display certain apps while charging your device. If you want to force Android to display a standard Android app that hasn’t been designed for Daydream Mode, you can enable the Stay awake option here. Android will keep your device’s screen on while charging and won’t turn it off. It’s like Daydream Mode, but can support any app and allows users to interact with them. Show Always-On-Top CPU Usage You can view CPU usage data by toggling the Show CPU usage option to On. This information will appear on top of whatever app you’re using. If you’re a Linux user, the three numbers on top probably look familiar — they represent the system load average. From left to right, the numbers represent your system load over the last one, five, and fifteen minutes. This isn’t the kind of thing you’d want enabled most of the time, but it can save you from having to install third-party floating CPU apps if you want to see CPU usage information for some reason. Most of the other options here will only be useful to developers debugging their Android apps. You shouldn’t start changing options you don’t understand. If you want to undo any of these changes, you can quickly erase all your custom options by sliding the switch at the top of the screen to Off.     

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• Aamir Khan’s Satyamev Jayate stirs a movement

  - by Gopinath

  Bollywood actor Aamir Khan is known for his dedication and hard work in inspiring millions of viewers though movies by discussing social problems and motivating people to solve them. His movie Rang De Basanthi seeded Indian anti-corruption movement, Tare Zameen Par touched the problems faced by few challenged kids and the latest movie 3 idiots exposed how education institutions in India are producing lakhs of Donkeys out of colleges every year. He extended his dedication of serving the society to small screen with the launch of reality TV show Satyamev Jayate. Before you start misjudging it as one of those non sense drama / entertaining reality shows, let me tell you that it is not a typical music, games, fight or dance reality show. Satyamev Jayate is all about the real people of India, their problems and how to tackle them.  This is not just a reality show, its movement to educate people about the social evils. Its been many years since I spent couple of hours  in front of TV as most of the programs are too cynical or does not add much value.  In my childhood I use to anxiously wait for Mahabarath or He-Man TV shows to start but after a two decades I waited anxiously for the start of Satyamev Jayate. The wait was worth and the 1 hours 30 minutes spent watching it meaningful. When was the last time you were so satisfied after watching a TV show and inspired to do something? I don’t remember. Today, the show focused on female foeticide and its impact. It showed women who were tortured and forced to abort female foetuses. On the show few brave women shared their experiences of giving birth to girl babies and rough times they are going through with their in-laws & husbands. The show not only focused on the problem but also on the root cause of the evil,  inspiring people working to tackle it and what every individual can do his part to solve it.  The best part of the show is,  its not a blame game. When there is a problem most of the people quickly get into identifying who is wrong and start blaming them instead of solve the actual problem.  Aamir did not blame anyone for female foeticide – neither the government who don’t impose strict rules, nor the doctors who abort girl babies to make money or the mother-in-laws & husbands who torcher girl baby mothers are blamed. He careful highlighted the problem, showed horrifying statistics and their impact on the future society and few inspiring people working to tackle the problem.  He touched heart and stirred a movement against the issue. First time ever I voted for a reality show through SMS and it’s for Satyamev Jayate. I’m proud to do so. Here are the few reactions of popular people, activists & media about the program @aamir_khan absolutely the best program I have seen on TV in recent past. Thanku for converting an idiot box into an inspirationsl medium — Kiran Bedi (@thekiranbedi) May 6, 2012 Satyamev Jayate proves tht TV 2 can b a tool of social change. — Shekhar Kapur (@shekharkapur) May 6, 2012 i absolutely loved #satyamevjayate. at least aamir is doing what all of us only talk about. — Harsha Bhogle (@bhogleharsha) May 6, 2012 Now Television will no longer be called an idiot box,the VISION of Television broadens up with#SatyamevJayate !!! — Madhur Bhandarkar (@mbhandarkar268) May 6, 2012 The Sunday 11am slot seems to have come back with a bang… #SatyamevJayate — atul kasbekar (@atulkasbekar) May 6, 2012   I was spellbound, says Prasoon Joshi – It’s a unique show. I was completely bowled over by it. It’s a never-done before concept Aamir Khan strikes the right chord with Satyamev Jayate – The format is quite crisp. Talking about the emotional connect, there are moments when your eyes well up with tears, but the various segments ensure there’s more content than emotional drama ‘Satyamev Jayate’ gutsy, sensible show: Viewers – From filmmakers to clinical psychologists to professors – everyone has given the thumbs up to Aamir Khan’s television show ‘Satyamev Jayate’, saying it is a gutsy, hard-hitting and sensible programme that strikes an emotional chord with the audiences. Aamir Khan’s TV debut ‘Satyamev Jayate’ takes Twitter by storm – The roads of the capital sported a deserted look around 11 am on Sunday morning, as everyone was hooked on to their TV sets. Did you watch the program? What is your opinion? I’m waiting for next 11 AM of next Sunday. Are you?

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• How to Customize Fonts and Colors for Gnome Panels in Ubuntu Linux

  - by The Geek

  Earlier this week we showed you how to make the Gnome Panels totally transparent, but you really need some customized fonts and colors to make the effect work better. Here’s how to do it. This article is the first part of a multi-part series on how to customize the Ubuntu desktop, written by How-To Geek reader and ubergeek, Omar Hafiz. Changing the Gnome Colors the Easy Way You’ll first need to install Gnome Color Chooser which is available in the default repositories (the package name is gnome-color-chooser). Then go to System > Preferences > Gnome Color Chooser to launch the program. When you see all these tabs you immediately know that Gnome Color Chooser does not only change the font color of the panel, but also the color of the fonts all over Ubuntu, desktop icons, and many other things as well. Now switch to the panel tab, here you can control every thing about your panels. You can change font, font color, background and background color of the panels and start menus. Tick the “Normal” option and choose the color you want for the panel font. If you want you can change the hover color of the buttons on the panel by too. A little below the color option is the font options, this includes the font, font size, and the X and Y positioning of the font. The first two options are pretty straight forward, they change the typeface and the size. The X-Padding and Y-Padding may confuse you but they are interesting, they may give a nice look for your panels by increasing the space between items on your panel like this: X-Padding:   Y-Padding:   The bottom half of the window controls the look of your start menus which is the Applications, Places, and Systems menus. You can customize them just the way you did with the panel.   Alright, this was the easy way to change the font of your panels. Changing the Gnome Theme Colors the Command-Line Way The other hard (not so hard really) way will be changing the configuration files that tell your panel how it should look like. In your Home Folder, press Ctrl+H to show the hidden files, now find the file “.gtkrc-2.0”, open it and insert this line in it. If there are any other lines in the file leave them intact. include “/home/<username>/.gnome2/panel-fontrc” Don’t forget to replace the <user_name> with you user account name. When done close and save the file. Now navigate the folder “.gnome2” from your Home Folder and create a new file and name it “panel-fontrc”. Open the file you just created with a text editor and paste the following in it: style “my_color”{fg[NORMAL] = “#FF0000”}widget “*PanelWidget*” style “my_color”widget “*PanelApplet*” style “my_color” This text will make the font red. If you want other colors you’ll need to replace the Hex value/HTML Notation (in this case #FF0000) with the value of the color you want. To get the hex value you can use GIMP, Gcolor2 witch is available in the default repositories or you can right-click on your panel > Properties > Background tab then click to choose the color you want and copy the Hex value. Don’t change any other thing in the text. When done, save and close. Now press Alt+F2 and enter “killall gnome-panel” to force it to restart or you can log out and login again. Most of you will prefer the first way of changing the font and color for it’s ease of applying and because it gives you much more options but, some may not have the ability/will to download and install a new program on their machine or have reasons of their own for not to using it, that’s why we provided the two way. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Splendiferous Array of Culinary Tools [Infographic] Add a Real-Time Earth Wallpaper App to Ubuntu with xplanetFX The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker

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• Myths about Coding Craftsmanship part 2

  - by tom

  Myth 3: The source of all bad code is inept developers and stupid people When you review code is this what you assume?  Shame on you.  You are probably making assumptions in your code if you are assuming so much already.  Bad code can be the result of any number of causes including but not limited to using dated techniques (like boxing when generics are available), not following standards (“look how he does the spacing between arguments!” or “did he really just name that variable ‘bln_Hello_Cats’?”), being redundant, using properties, methods, or objects in a novel way (like switching on button.Text between “Hello World” and “Hello World “ //clever use of space character… sigh), not following the SOLID principals, hacking around assumptions made in earlier iterations / hacking in features that should be worked into the overall design.  The first two issues, while annoying are pretty easy to spot and can be fixed so easily.  If your coding team is made up of experienced professionals who are passionate about staying current then these shouldn’t be happening.  If you work with a variety of skills, backgrounds, and experience then there will be some of this stuff going on.  If you have an opportunity to mentor such a developer who is receptive to constructive criticism don’t be a jerk; help them and the codebase will improve.  A little patience can improve the codebase, your work environment, and even your perspective. The novelty and redundancy I have encountered has often been the use of creativity when language knowledge was perceived as unavailable or too time consuming.  When developers learn on the job you get a lot of this.  Rather than going to MSDN developers will use what they know.  Depending on the constraints of their assignment hacking together what they know may seem quite practical.  This was not stupid though I often wonder how much time is actually “saved” by hacking.  These issues are often harder to untangle if we ever do.  They can also grow out of control as we write hack after hack to make it work and get back to some development that is satisfying. Hacking upon an existing hack is what I call “feeding the monster”.  Code monsters are anti-patterns and hacks gone wild.  The reason code monsters continue to get bigger is that they keep growing in scope, touching more and more of the application.  This is not the result of dumb developers. It is probably the result of avoiding design, not taking the time to understand the problems or anticipate or communicate the vision of the product.  If our developers don’t understand the purpose of a feature or product how do we expect potential customers to do so? Forethought and organization are often what is missing from bad code.  Developers who do not use the SOLID principals should be encouraged to learn these principals and be given guidance on how to apply them.  The time “saved” by giving hackers room to hack will be made up for and then some. Not as technical debt but as shoddy work that if not replaced will be struggled with again and again.  Bad code is not the result of dumb developers (usually) it is the result of trying to do too much without the proper resources and neglecting the right thing that needs doing with the first thoughtless thing that comes into our heads. Object oriented code is all about relationships between objects.  Coders who believe their coworkers are all fools tend to write objects that are difficult to work with, not eager to explain themselves, and perform erratically and irrationally.  If you constantly find you are surrounded by idiots you may want to ask yourself if you are being unreasonable, if you are being closed minded, of if you have chosen the right profession.  Opening your mind up to the idea that you probably work with rational, well-intentioned people will probably make you a better coder and it might even make you less grumpy.  If you are surrounded by jerks who do not engage in the exchange of ideas who do not care about their customers or the durability of the code you are building together then I suggest you find a new place to work.  Myth 4: Customers don’t care about “beautiful” code Craftsmanship is customer focused because it means that the job was done right, the product will withstand the abuse, modifications, and scrutiny of our customers.  Users can appreciate a predictable timeline for a release, a product delivered on time and on budget, a feature set that does not interfere with the task(s) it is supporting, quick turnarounds on exception messages, self healing issues, and less issues.  These are all hindered by skimping on craftsmanship.  When we write data access and when we write reusable code.   What do you think?  Does bad code come primarily from low IQ individuals?  Do customers care about beautiful code?

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• Very slow compile times on Visual Studio

  - by johnc

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

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• WCF Duplex net.tcp issues on win7

  - by Tom

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

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• Singleton: How should it be used

  - by Loki Astari

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

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