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  • Windows 7+ desktop apps - what's the best UI toolkit for a new project?

    - by Chris Adams
    I'm trying to make a decision for a new Windows desktop app: what to use for the UI. (This is a desktop app that needs to have compatibility with Windows 7. It won't be distributed on the Windows Store.) This application is going to be cross-platform. I intend on writing the core in C++, and using each platform's native UI toolkit. I feel this is preferable to using a cross-platform toolkit like Qt, as it allows me to keep the native look and feel of each platform. On the Windows side, the UI situation isn't exactly clear. I'm getting the feeling that Microsoft is slowly abandoning .NET, particularly as their preferred toolkit for desktop apps. Indeed, the Getting Started chapter for Windows 7, as well as the rest of Microsoft's documentation, seems to be more suited for C++. I have a few options here: C# with WPF - This sesms like this might be the best Microsoft has to offer for Windows 7 desktop apps, even if it isn't their "preferred" toolkit. I'd need to use P/Invoke to call my C++ code. C++ with Direct2D - This is what Microsoft used in one of their examples. This feels like it's too low-level. Part of the appeal of a higher-level UI toolkit is the consistency with the native look and feel of the platform, so doing this would just feel strange. C++ with a third-party UI toolkit, like Qt There might be some other options I'm missing, which I'd love to hear about. So, if you were starting a new Windows 7+ desktop app today, what would you use?

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  • Sending an Email from 2 Mail Servers

    - by Ted Smith
    We are currently attempting to move away from using a "local" mail(exchange) server to an cloud based offering for all our automated emails. The problem is that we send and receive thousands for emails a day and its uptime is quite critical so the business do not want to put all their eggs in one basket, so if we would like to use a cloud based offering(mailgun) they would like a backup if this goes down. So my question is: Would it be possible to set multpile A, TXT and CNAME records to multiple IP address so if one mail server goes down we can automatically start sending emails from the fallover(without them being blocked doing a reverse DNS lookup)? I know we will still need to adjust the MX record for incoming emails but that is acceptable to not receive emails for a short(1-2 hours) of time. Does this make sense?

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  • fedora13 mouse change -I Beam

    - by tom smith
    hi. sorry to have to ask such a basic question!! i've got fedora 13, trying to figure out how to change the "I Beam" pointer. earlier, i had a "thin" "I Beam" pointer in my gedit/term windows. now, I have a "thicker/shadow" kind of "I Beam" pointer when i move the mouse over the gedit/term windows. obviously, i've made some change, but i can't figure out what I changed, or where this attribute is set. i've checked google/irc, as well as looked through the "system-preferences-appearance" with no luck.. i saw the customize part of the gui, and could resize the "arrow" but nothing for the "I-Beam". this isn't critical, but it is anoying!! any thoughts/pointers would be helpful. thanks

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  • fedora13 mouse change -I Beam

    - by tom smith
    hi. sorry to have to ask such a basic question!! i've got fedora 13, trying to figure out how to change the "I Beam" pointer. earlier, i had a "thin" "I Beam" pointer in my gedit/term windows. now, I have a "thicker/shadow" kind of "I Beam" pointer when i move the mouse over the gedit/term windows. obviously, i've made some change, but i can't figure out what I changed, or where this attribute is set. i've checked google/irc, as well as looked through the "system-preferences-appearance" with no luck.. i saw the customize part of the gui, and could resize the "arrow" but nothing for the "I-Beam". this isn't critical, but it is anoying!! any thoughts/pointers would be helpful. thanks

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  • Per-pixel displacement mapping GLSL

    - by Chris
    Im trying to implement a per-pixel displacement shader in GLSL. I read through several papers and "tutorials" I found and ended up with trying to implement the approach NVIDIA used in their Cascade Demo (http://www.slideshare.net/icastano/cascades-demo-secrets) starting at Slide 82. At the moment I am completly stuck with following problem: When I am far away the displacement seems to work. But as more I move closer to my surface, the texture gets bent in x-axis and somehow it looks like there is a little bent in general in one direction. EDIT: I added a video: click I added some screen to illustrate the problem: Well I tried lots of things already and I am starting to get a bit frustrated as my ideas run out. I added my full VS and FS code: VS: #version 400 layout(location = 0) in vec3 IN_VS_Position; layout(location = 1) in vec3 IN_VS_Normal; layout(location = 2) in vec2 IN_VS_Texcoord; layout(location = 3) in vec3 IN_VS_Tangent; layout(location = 4) in vec3 IN_VS_BiTangent; uniform vec3 uLightPos; uniform vec3 uCameraDirection; uniform mat4 uViewProjection; uniform mat4 uModel; uniform mat4 uView; uniform mat3 uNormalMatrix; out vec2 IN_FS_Texcoord; out vec3 IN_FS_CameraDir_Tangent; out vec3 IN_FS_LightDir_Tangent; void main( void ) { IN_FS_Texcoord = IN_VS_Texcoord; vec4 posObject = uModel * vec4(IN_VS_Position, 1.0); vec3 normalObject = (uModel * vec4(IN_VS_Normal, 0.0)).xyz; vec3 tangentObject = (uModel * vec4(IN_VS_Tangent, 0.0)).xyz; //vec3 binormalObject = (uModel * vec4(IN_VS_BiTangent, 0.0)).xyz; vec3 binormalObject = normalize(cross(tangentObject, normalObject)); // uCameraDirection is the camera position, just bad named vec3 fvViewDirection = normalize( uCameraDirection - posObject.xyz); vec3 fvLightDirection = normalize( uLightPos.xyz - posObject.xyz ); IN_FS_CameraDir_Tangent.x = dot( tangentObject, fvViewDirection ); IN_FS_CameraDir_Tangent.y = dot( binormalObject, fvViewDirection ); IN_FS_CameraDir_Tangent.z = dot( normalObject, fvViewDirection ); IN_FS_LightDir_Tangent.x = dot( tangentObject, fvLightDirection ); IN_FS_LightDir_Tangent.y = dot( binormalObject, fvLightDirection ); IN_FS_LightDir_Tangent.z = dot( normalObject, fvLightDirection ); gl_Position = (uViewProjection*uModel) * vec4(IN_VS_Position, 1.0); } The VS just builds the TBN matrix, from incoming normal, tangent and binormal in world space. Calculates the light and eye direction in worldspace. And finally transforms the light and eye direction into tangent space. FS: #version 400 // uniforms uniform Light { vec4 fvDiffuse; vec4 fvAmbient; vec4 fvSpecular; }; uniform Material { vec4 diffuse; vec4 ambient; vec4 specular; vec4 emissive; float fSpecularPower; float shininessStrength; }; uniform sampler2D colorSampler; uniform sampler2D normalMapSampler; uniform sampler2D heightMapSampler; in vec2 IN_FS_Texcoord; in vec3 IN_FS_CameraDir_Tangent; in vec3 IN_FS_LightDir_Tangent; out vec4 color; vec2 TraceRay(in float height, in vec2 coords, in vec3 dir, in float mipmap){ vec2 NewCoords = coords; vec2 dUV = - dir.xy * height * 0.08; float SearchHeight = 1.0; float prev_hits = 0.0; float hit_h = 0.0; for(int i=0;i<10;i++){ SearchHeight -= 0.1; NewCoords += dUV; float CurrentHeight = textureLod(heightMapSampler,NewCoords.xy, mipmap).r; float first_hit = clamp((CurrentHeight - SearchHeight - prev_hits) * 499999.0,0.0,1.0); hit_h += first_hit * SearchHeight; prev_hits += first_hit; } NewCoords = coords + dUV * (1.0-hit_h) * 10.0f - dUV; vec2 Temp = NewCoords; SearchHeight = hit_h+0.1; float Start = SearchHeight; dUV *= 0.2; prev_hits = 0.0; hit_h = 0.0; for(int i=0;i<5;i++){ SearchHeight -= 0.02; NewCoords += dUV; float CurrentHeight = textureLod(heightMapSampler,NewCoords.xy, mipmap).r; float first_hit = clamp((CurrentHeight - SearchHeight - prev_hits) * 499999.0,0.0,1.0); hit_h += first_hit * SearchHeight; prev_hits += first_hit; } NewCoords = Temp + dUV * (Start - hit_h) * 50.0f; return NewCoords; } void main( void ) { vec3 fvLightDirection = normalize( IN_FS_LightDir_Tangent ); vec3 fvViewDirection = normalize( IN_FS_CameraDir_Tangent ); float mipmap = 0; vec2 NewCoord = TraceRay(0.1,IN_FS_Texcoord,fvViewDirection,mipmap); //vec2 ddx = dFdx(NewCoord); //vec2 ddy = dFdy(NewCoord); vec3 BumpMapNormal = textureLod(normalMapSampler, NewCoord.xy, mipmap).xyz; BumpMapNormal = normalize(2.0 * BumpMapNormal - vec3(1.0, 1.0, 1.0)); vec3 fvNormal = BumpMapNormal; float fNDotL = dot( fvNormal, fvLightDirection ); vec3 fvReflection = normalize( ( ( 2.0 * fvNormal ) * fNDotL ) - fvLightDirection ); float fRDotV = max( 0.0, dot( fvReflection, fvViewDirection ) ); vec4 fvBaseColor = textureLod( colorSampler, NewCoord.xy,mipmap); vec4 fvTotalAmbient = fvAmbient * fvBaseColor; vec4 fvTotalDiffuse = fvDiffuse * fNDotL * fvBaseColor; vec4 fvTotalSpecular = fvSpecular * ( pow( fRDotV, fSpecularPower ) ); color = ( fvTotalAmbient + (fvTotalDiffuse + fvTotalSpecular) ); } The FS implements the displacement technique in TraceRay method, while always using mipmap level 0. Most of the code is from NVIDIA sample and another paper I found on the web, so I guess there cannot be much wrong in here. At the end it uses the modified UV coords for getting the displaced normal from the normal map and the color from the color map. I looking forward for some ideas. Thanks in advance! Edit: Here is the code loading the heightmap: glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGBA, mWidth, mHeight, 0, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, mImageData); glGenerateMipmap(GL_TEXTURE_2D); //glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR); //glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR); //glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_REPEAT); //glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_REPEAT); Maybe something wrong in here?

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  • Issues configuring Exchange 2010 as well as SSL problems.

    - by Eric Smith
    Possibly-Relevant Background Info: I've recently moved up from icky shared hosting to a glorious, Remote Desktop-administrated VPS server running Windows Server 2008 R2. Even though I'm only 21 now and a computer science major, I've tried to play with every Windows Server release since '03, just to learn new things. What usually happens is inevitably I'll do something wrong and pretty much ruin the install. You're dealing with an amateur here :) Through the past few months of working with my new server, I've mastered DNS, IIS, got Team Foundation Server running (yay!), and can install all of the other basics like SQL Server and Active Directory. The Problem: Now, these last few weeks I've been trying to install Exchange Server 2010 (SP1). To make a long story short, it took me several attempts, and I even had to get my server wiped just so I could start fresh since Exchange decided uninstalling properly was for sissies (cost me $20, bah). Today, at long last, I got Exchange mostly working. There were two main problems left, however, that left me unsatisfied: Exchange installed itself and all of its child sites into Default Web Site. I wanted to access Exchange via mail.domain.com, but instead everything was configured to domain.com. My limited server admin knowledge was not enough to configure IIS or Exchange to move itself over to the website I had set up for it, appropriately titled 'mail.domain.com', which I had bound to a dedicated IP address (I was told this was necessary, but he may have been wrong). I have two SSL certificates: one for my main domain and one for my mail subdomain. For whatever reason, I had issues geting Exchange to use my mail certificate, even though I had assigned the proper roles in the MMC. I did, at one point, get it to work (or mostly work, anyways. Frankly, my memory of today is clouded by intense frustration). Additionally, I was confused which type of SSL certificate I should be using for Exchange. My SSL provider, GoDaddy, allows me to request a new certificate whenever, so I can use either the certificate request provided by IIS or the more complicated and specific request you can create with Exchange. Which type should I be using, the IIS or Exchange certificate? If I must use the Exchange certificate, will that 1) cause issues when I bind that certificate to my mail.domain.com subdomain or 2) is that an unnecessary step? The SSL Certificate Strikes Back When I thought I had the proper SSL certificate assigned for those brief, sweet moments, Google Chrome reported the correct mail.domain.com certificate when browsing https://mail.domain.com. However, Outlook 2010 threw up an error when trying to configure my email account claiming that the certificate didn't match the domain of "mail.domain.com". Is this an issue that will be resolved by problem #2 or is it a separate one entirely? Apologies for the massive wall of text, but I wanted to provide as much info as I possibly could. Exchange is the last thing I'd like installed on my server, and naturally it's turning out to be the hardest. Thanks for any info at all. Even a point in a vague direction would be a huge help at this point. Thanks! -Eric P.S.: The reason I keep ruining my install is that when I attempt to uninstall Exchange, something invariably goes wrong. The last time the uninstaller complained that there was still a mailbox active and it couldn't proceed until I deleted it. ... The only mailbox left was the Administrator account, the built-in one I couldn't delete. So I attempted to manually uninstall it following several guides online only to now be stuck unable to launch the installer and have to get my system wiped AGAIN for the second time today ($40 down the drain, bah!). I do not understand at all why "uninstall" just can't mean "hey, you, delete everything and go away". There's not even a force uninstall option, only a "recover system" option that just fails to fix anything and makes it so I can't even use the GUI uninstaller. </rant>

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  • Presario r3000 hangs on boot to Ubuntu 12.04

    - by Chris
    I have a Compaq Presario r3000 laptop with Ubuntu 12.04 32 bit. 1.2GB RAM, with a nvidia Gforce 420 Go with 32MB RAM. It hangs on bootup about 3 out of 4 times at either the purple screen, or with a cursor in the upper left corner. Booting without a splash screen shows it hanging after attempting to initialize the floppy controller. Unity has never booted to 3D either, only 2D, with the additional drivers always failing to install. I searched all over this board and found similar issues, and tried everything there. Extensive vid driver install and uninstalls. Network issues that I've since resolved. I even found a very similar topic with a fix that didn't work. I'll probably try a clean install today (given how much I've probably messed up), and I would really appreciate any ideas. I'm fairly new to Ubuntu, so if you would like to see any error logs or configs, please walk me through exactly how to get and post them here. Thanks.

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  • How to Speed Up Any Android Phone By Disabling Animations

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Android phones — and tablets, too — display animations when moving between apps and screens. These animations look very slick, but they waste time — especially on fast phones, which could switch between apps instantly if not for the animations. Disabling these animations will speed up navigating between different apps and interface screens on your phone, saving you time. You can also speed up the animations if you’d rather see them. Access the Developer Options Menu First, we’ll need to access the Developer Options menu. It’s hidden by default so Android users won’t stumble across it unless they’re actually looking for it. To access the Developer Options menu, open the Settings screen, scroll down to the bottom of the list, and tap the About phone or About tablet option. Scroll down to the Build number field and tap it repeatedly. Eventually, you’ll see a message appear saying “You are now a developer!”. The Developer options submenu now appears on the Settings screen. You’ll find it near the bottom of the list, just above the About phone or About tablet option. Disable Interface Animations Open the Developer Options screen and slide the switch at the top of the screen to On. This allows you to change the hidden options on this screen. If you ever want to re-enable the animations and revert your changes, all you have to do is slide the Developer Options switch back to Off. Scroll down to the Drawing section. You’ll find the three options we want here — Window animation scale, Transition animation scale, and Animator duration scale. Tap each option and set it to Animation off to disable the associated animations. If you’d like to speed up the animations without disabling them entirely, select the Animation .5x option instead. If you’re feeling really crazy, you can even select longer animation durations. You can make the animations take as much as ten times longer with the Animation 10x setting. The Animator duration scale option applies to the transition animation that appears when you tap the app drawer button on your home screen.  Your change here won’t take effect immediately — you’ll have to restart Android’s launcher after changing the Animator duration scale setting. To restart Android’s launcher, open the Settings screen, tap Apps, swipe over to the All category, scroll down, and tap the Launcher app. Tap the Force stop button to forcibly close the launcher, then tap your device’s home button to re-launch the launcher. Your app drawer will now open immediately, too. Now whenever you open an app or transition to a new screen, it will pop up as quickly as possible — no waiting for animations and wasting processing power rendering them. How much of a speed improvement you’ll see here depends on your Android device and how fast it is. On our Nexus 4, this change makes many apps appear and become usable instantly if they’re running in the background. If you have a slower device, you may have to wait a moment for apps to be usable. That’s one of the big reasons why Android and other operating systems use animations. Animations help paper over delays that can occur while the operating system loads the app.     

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  • 3D Camera Problem

    - by Chris
    I allow the user to look around the scene by holding down the left mouse button and moving the mouse. The problem that I have is I can be facing one direction, I move the mouse up and the view tilts up, I move down and the view titles down. If I spin around 180 my left and right still works fine, but when I move the mouse up the view tilts down, and when I move the mouse down the view titles up. This is the code I am using, can anyone see what the problem with the logic is? var viewDir = g_math.subVector(target, g_eye); var rotatedViewDir = []; rotatedViewDir[0] = (Math.cos(g_mouseXDelta * g_rotationDelta) * viewDir[0]) - (Math.sin(g_mouseXDelta * g_rotationDelta) * viewDir[2]); rotatedViewDir[1] = viewDir[1]; rotatedViewDir[2] = (Math.cos(g_mouseXDelta * g_rotationDelta) * viewDir[2]) + (Math.sin(g_mouseXDelta * g_rotationDelta) * viewDir[0]); viewDir = rotatedViewDir; rotatedViewDir[0] = viewDir[0]; rotatedViewDir[1] = (Math.cos(g_mouseYDelta * g_rotationDelta * -1) * viewDir[1]) - (Math.sin(g_mouseYDelta * g_rotationDelta * -1) * viewDir[2]); rotatedViewDir[2] = (Math.cos(g_mouseYDelta * g_rotationDelta * -1) * viewDir[2]) + (Math.sin(g_mouseYDelta * g_rotationDelta * -1) * viewDir[1]); g_lookingDir = rotatedViewDir; var newtarget = g_math.addVector(rotatedViewDir, g_eye);

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  • How to stop fan running always on Asus P8P67LE motherboard with ATI Radeon HD6900

    - by Chris Good
    I'm using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I'm not sure if it is the CPU (i7) fan or the video card fan. I've tried using lm-sensors & fancontrol sudo sensors-detect Now follows a summary of the probes I have just done. Just press ENTER to continue: Driver `w83627ehf': * ISA bus, address 0x290 Chip `Nuvoton NCT6776F Super IO Sensors' (confidence: 9) Driver `coretemp': * Chip `Intel digital thermal sensor' (confidence: 9) To load everything that is needed, add this to /etc/modules: # Chip drivers coretemp w83627ehf Like many people, I'm also getting error: /usr/sbin/pwmconfig: There are no pwm-capable sensor modules installed Here is the output of sensors: # sensors radeon-pci-0100 Adapter: PCI adapter temp1: +71.0°C coretemp-isa-0000 Adapter: ISA adapter Physical id 0: +44.0°C (high = +80.0°C, crit = +98.0°C) Core 0: +44.0°C (high = +80.0°C, crit = +98.0°C) Core 1: +40.0°C (high = +80.0°C, crit = +98.0°C) Core 2: +43.0°C (high = +80.0°C, crit = +98.0°C) Core 3: +42.0°C (high = +80.0°C, crit = +98.0°C) I'm hoping some-one has already solved this for my configuration because this seems to be a problem for many people and there are many different suggestions.

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  • How to Comment Out and Uncomment Lines in a Configuration File

    - by Chris Hoffman
    You may have seen instructions that tell you to “uncomment” or “comment out” lines in a configuration or source code file. This is a simple process, but may not be self-explanatory to people that don’t understand the file’s structure. The interpreter ignores lines marked as comments, which are only to aid humans in understanding the file. Because of this, comments can be used to disable or enable configuration options in configuration files. How to Use an Xbox 360 Controller On Your Windows PC Download the Official How-To Geek Trivia App for Windows 8 How to Banish Duplicate Photos with VisiPic

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  • Become a Vi Master by Learning These 30+ Key Bindings

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Vi is a powerful text editor included on most Linux systems. Many people swear by vi and find it faster than any other editor once they’ve learned its key bindings. You can even use vi key bindings in Bash. We’ve already covered getting started with vi for beginners. If you haven’t used vi in a while, you might want to give that post a look to get a refresher on the basics. How To Customize Your Wallpaper with Google Image Searches, RSS Feeds, and More 47 Keyboard Shortcuts That Work in All Web Browsers How To Hide Passwords in an Encrypted Drive Even the FBI Can’t Get Into

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  • Staggered Isometric Map: Calculate map coordinates for point on screen

    - by Chris
    I know there are already a lot of resources about this, but I haven't found one that matches my coordinate system and I'm having massive trouble adjusting any of those solutions to my needs. What I learned is that the best way to do this is to use a transformation matrix. Implementing that is no problem, but I don't know in which way I have to transform the coordinate space. Here's an image that shows my coordinate system: How do I transform a point on screen to this coordinate system?

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  • Embracing Community

    - by Chris Williams
    I just put the finishing touches on another article for my Code Magazine column: Embracing Community. You won't see this one until around July, but it focuses on a subject near and dear to my heart: Code Camps! At the end of the article, I mention that I'm interested in hearing some of your war stories about community and what you do to be a part of it. I'll be talking to people at Tech Ed 2010 and Codestock, but I would also like to hear from some of you that read this blog. If you have an interesting story to share, drop me a line (via this blog) and tell me about it. You never know, it just might end up in my column.

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  • windows service "soft link"

    - by fred smith
    I would like to be able to have a nice management tool to allow the rollout of different versions of a windows service over time. for example I would like to deploy my software (windows service) in version numbered folders, e.g. c:\wss\v1.0 c:\wss\v1.1 etc however I dont want to have to reinstall the windows service each time but rather would like to be able to easily point the windows service manager to the new folder. Are there tools to get this done? NB: I have used Windows Junctions before (from sysinternals) however I am wondering if there is a nice GUI tool to do this.

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  • Ransomware: Why This New Malware is So Dangerous and How to Protect Yourself

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Ransomware is a type of malware that tries to extort money from you. One of the nastiest examples, CryptoLocker, takes your files hostage and holds them for ransom, forcing you to pay hundreds of dollars to regain access. Most malware is no longer created by bored teenagers looking to cause some chaos. Much of the current malware is now produced by organized crime for profit and is becoming increasingly sophisticated. How Ransomware Works Not all ransomware is identical. The key thing that makes a piece of malware “ransomware” is that it attempts to extort a direct payment from you. Some ransomware may be disguised. It may function as “scareware,” displaying a pop-up that says something like “Your computer is infected, purchase this product to fix the infection” or “Your computer has been used to download illegal files, pay a fine to continue using your computer.” In other situations, ransomware may be more up-front. It may hook deep into your system, displaying a message saying that it will only go away when you pay money to the ransomware’s creators. This type of malware could be bypassed via malware removal tools or just by reinstalling Windows. Unfortunately, Ransomware is becoming more and more sophisticated. One of the latest examples, CryptoLocker, starts encrypting your personal files as soon as it gains access to your system, preventing access to the files without knowing the encryption key. CryptoLocker then displays a message informing you that your files have been locked with encryption and that you have just a few days to pay up. If you pay them $300, they’ll hand you the encryption key and you can recover your files. CryptoLocker helpfully walks you through choosing a payment method and, after paying, the criminals seem to actually give you a key that you can use to restore your files. You can never be sure that the criminals will keep their end of the deal, of course. It’s not a good idea to pay up when you’re extorted by criminals. On the other hand, businesses that lose their only copy of business-critical data may be tempted to take the risk — and it’s hard to blame them. Protecting Your Files From Ransomware This type of malware is another good example of why backups are essential. You should regularly back up files to an external hard drive or a remote file storage server. If all your copies of your files are on your computer, malware that infects your computer could encrypt them all and restrict access — or even delete them entirely. When backing up files, be sure to back up your personal files to a location where they can’t be written to or erased. For example, place them on a removable hard drive or upload them to a remote backup service like CrashPlan that would allow you to revert to previous versions of files. Don’t just store your backups on an internal hard drive or network share you have write access to. The ransomware could encrypt the files on your connected backup drive or on your network share if you have full write access. Frequent backups are also important. You wouldn’t want to lose a week’s worth of work because you only back up your files every week. This is part of the reason why automated back-up solutions are so convenient. If your files do become locked by ransomware and you don’t have the appropriate backups, you can try recovering them with ShadowExplorer. This tool accesses “Shadow Copies,” which Windows uses for System Restore — they will often contain some personal files. How to Avoid Ransomware Aside from using a proper backup strategy, you can avoid ransomware in the same way you avoid other forms of malware. CryptoLocker has been verified to arrive through email attachments, via the Java plug-in, and installed on computers that are part of the Zeus botnet. Use a good antivirus product that will attempt to stop ransomware in its tracks. Antivirus programs are never perfect and you could be infected even if you run one, but it’s an important layer of defense. Avoid running suspicious files. Ransomware can arrive in .exe files attached to emails, from illicit websites containing pirated software, or anywhere else that malware comes from. Be alert and exercise caution over the files you download and run. Keep your software updated. Using an old version of your web browser, operating system, or a browser plugin can allow malware in through open security holes. If you have Java installed, you should probably uninstall it. For more tips, read our list of important security practices you should be following. Ransomware — CryptoLocker in particular — is brutally efficient and smart. It just wants to get down to business and take your money. Holding your files hostage is an effective way to prevent removal by antivirus programs after it’s taken root, but CryptoLocker is much less scary if you have good backups. This sort of malware demonstrates the importance of backups as well as proper security practices. Unfortunately, CryptoLocker is probably a sign of things to come — it’s the kind of malware we’ll likely be seeing more of in the future.     

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  • HTG Explains: What is the Windows Page File and Should You Disable It?

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Windows uses a page file to store data that can’t be held by your computer’s random-access memory when it fills up. While you can tweak the page file settings, Windows can manage the page file fine on its own. The Windows page file is somewhat misunderstood. People see it as the cause of slowdowns because it’s slower to use the page file than your computer’s RAM, but having a page file is better than not having one. Image Credit: Blake Patterson on Flickr HTG Explains: What is the Windows Page File and Should You Disable It? How To Get a Better Wireless Signal and Reduce Wireless Network Interference How To Troubleshoot Internet Connection Problems

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  • Antenna Aligner Part 5: Devil is in the detail

    - by Chris George
    "The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time and the last 10% takes the another 200%"  (excerpt from onista) Now that I have a working app (more or less), it's time to make it pretty and slick. I can't stress enough how useful it is to get other people using your software, and my simple app is no exception. I handed my iPhone to a couple of my colleagues at Red Gate and asked them to use it and give me feedback. Immediately it became apparent that the delay between the list page being shown and the list being drawn was too long, and everyone who tried the app clicked on the "Recalculate" button before it had finished. Similarly, selecting a transmitter heralded a delay before the compass page appeared with similar consequences. All users expected there to be some sort of feedback/spinny etc. to show them it is actually doing something. In a similar vein although for opposite reasons, clicking the Recalculate button did indeed recalculate the available transmitters and redraw them, but it did this too fast! One or two users commented that they didn't know if it had done anything. All of these issues resulted in similar solutions; implement a waiting spinny. Thankfully, jquery mobile has one built in, primarily used for ajax operations. Not wishing to bore you with the many many iterations I went through trying to get this to work, I'll just give you my solution! (Seriously, I was working on this most evenings for at least a week!) The final solution for the recalculate problem came in the form of the code below. $(document).on("click", ".show-page-loading-msg", function () {            var $this = $(this),                theme = $this.jqmData("theme") ||                        $.mobile.loadingMessageTheme;            $.mobile.showPageLoadingMsg(theme, "recalculating", false);            setTimeout(function ()                           { $.mobile.hidePageLoadingMsg(); }, 2000);            getLocationData();        })        .on("click", ".hide-page-loading-msg", function () {              $.mobile.hidePageLoadingMsg();        }); The spinny is activated by setting the class of a button (for example) to the 'show-page-loading-msg' class. Recalculate This means the code above is fired, calling the showPageLoadingMsg on the document.mobile object. Then, after a 2 second timeout, it calls the hidePageLoadingMsg() function. Supposedly, it should show "recalculating" underneath the spinny, but I've not got that to work. I'm wondering if there is a problem with the jquery mobile implementation. Anyway, it doesn't really matter, it's the principle I'm after, and I now have spinnys!

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  • When using membership provider, do you use the user ID or the username?

    - by Chris
    I've come across this is in a couple of different applications that I've worked on. They all used the ASP.NET Membership Provider for user accounts and controlling access to certain areas, but when we've gotten down into the code I've noticed that in one we're passing around the string based user name, like "Ralph Waters", or we're passing around the Guid based user ID from the membership table. Now both seem to work. You can make methods which get by username, or get by user ID, but both have felt somewhat "funny". When you pass a string like "Ralph Waters" you're passing essentially two separate words that make up a unique identifier. And with a Guid, you're passing around a string/number combination which can be cast and made unique. So my question is this; when using Membership Provider, which do you use, the username or the user ID to get back to the user? Thanks all!

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  • How to price code reviews to encourage good behavior?

    - by Chris Clark
    I work for a company that has a hosted .net internet application with many clients. Those clients often want to write customizations for our application. We have APIs to hook into the app, but the customizations themselves are written in .net. This is a shared, secure hosting environment and we have to code review these customizations before we can deploy them in our datacenter to ensure that they don't degrade performance, crash our servers, or open any security vulnerabilities. We charge for these code reviews. The current pricing model is simply a function of the number of lines of code. I think this is a bad idea for a variety of reasons, but primarily because, if we are interested in verifying that the code works as expected, we should be incentivizing good, readable code, not compaction. I would like to propose a pricing model that incorporates some, or all of the following as inputs: Lines of code Cyclomatic complexity Avg function length # of functions Are there any other metrics I should incorporate, or other ideas for how we can reasonably create pricing for code reviews that encourages safe and understandable code?

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  • How to prevent WLAN connection from dropping permanently on a Fritz USB WLAN N stick?

    - by Chris
    I have a desktop with a Fritz USB WLAN N stick and tried Ubuntu 12.04. Installation went fine and WLAN is working. However, connection drops permanent. Reconnecting manually fixes it but after a few minutes it drops again. It's connected to a Vodafone 802 box with WLAN N fix set. It seems that it works when I switch off N mode. But I need to test. Can someone confirm this issue or is there another solution? I have another machine with 12.04 (HP 625 laptop) running where connection is stable.

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  • What languages are most commonly used in medical research?

    - by Chris Taylor
    For someone about to go into a career in medical research, what language would be the most useful to learn? From my limited experience (I have been a researcher in mathematics and in finance) I have been able to recommend looking at R (for statistics) Matlab (for general numeric processing) and Python (for general purpose programming with statistics/numerics as an add-on) but I don't know which of those (if any) are in common use -- or if there are other, more specialized languages that are used. To be clear, I'm not talking about a professional programmer working in a medical setting. I am talking about a medical or genetics researcher who uses programming to analyse data, or generally to help get their work done.

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  • Good library for search text tokenization

    - by Chris Dutrow
    Looking to tokenize some text in the same or similar way in which a search engine would do it. The reason we are doing this is so that we can run some statistical analysis on the tokens. The language we are using is python, so would prefer a library in that language, but could probably set something up to use another language if necessary. Example Original token: We have some great burritos! More simplified: (remove plurals and punctuation) We have some great burrito Even more simplified: (remove superfluous words) great burrito Best: (recognize positive and negative meaning): burrito -positive-

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  • Antenna Aligner part 2: Finding the right direction

    - by Chris George
    Last time I managed to get "my first app(tm)" built, published and running on my iPhone. This was really cool, a piece of my code running on my very own device. Ok, so I'm easily pleased! The next challenge was actually trying to determine what it was I wanted this app to do, and how to do it. Reverting back to good old paper and pen, I started sketching out designs for the app. I knew I wanted it to get a list of transmitters, then clicking on a transmitter would display a compass type view, with an arrow pointing the right way. I figured there would not be much point in continuing until I know I could do the graphical part of the project, i.e. the rotating compass, so armed with that reasoning (plus the fact I just wanted to get on and code!), I once again dived into visual studio. Using my friend (google) I found some example code for getting the compass data from the phone using the PhoneGap framework. // onSuccess: Get the current heading // function onSuccess(heading) {    alert('Heading: ' + heading); } navigator.compass.getCurrentHeading(onSuccess, onError); Using the ripple mobile emulator this showed that it was successfully getting the compass heading. But it didn't work when uploaded to my phone. It turns out that the examples I had been looking at were for PhoneGap 1.0, and Nomad uses PhoneGap 1.4.1. In 1.4.1, getCurrentHeading provides a compass object to onSuccess, not just a numeric value, so the code now looks like // onSuccess: Get the current magnetic heading // function onSuccess(heading) {    alert('Heading: ' + heading.magneticHeading); }; navigator.compass.getCurrentHeading(onSuccess, onError); So the lesson learnt from this... read the documentation for the version you are actually using! This does, however, lead to compatibility problems with ripple as it only supports 1.0 which is a real pain. I hope that the ripple system is updated sometime soon.

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  • Silverlight ProgressBar issues with Binding

    - by Chris Skardon
    The ProgressBar pretty much does what it says on the tin, displays progress, in a bar form (well, by default anyhow). It’s pretty simple to use: <ProgressBar Minimum="0" Maximum="100" Value="50"/> Gives you a progress bar with 50% of it filled: Easy! But of course, we’re wanting to use binding to change the value, again, pretty easy, have a ViewModel with a ‘Value’ in it, and bind: <ProgressBar Minimum="0" Maximum="100" Value="{Binding Value}"/> Spiffy, and whilst we’re at it, why not bind the Maximum value as well – after all, we can’t be sure of the size of the progress, and it’s a pain to have to work out the percentage (when the progress bar can do it for us): <ProgressBar Minimum="0" Maximum="MaximumValue" Value="{Binding Value}"/> Right, this will work absolutely fine. Or will it??? On the face of it, it looks good, and testing it shows no issues, until at one point we go from: Maximum = 100; Value = 90; to Maximum=60; Value=50; On the face of it not unreasonable. The problem is more obvious if we look at the states of the properties after each set (initially Maximum is set at 1, Value = 0): Code Maximum Value Value < Maximum Maximum = 100; 100 0 True Value = 90; 100 90 True Maximum = 60; 60 90 False Value = 50; 60 50 True Everything is good until the Value is less than the Maximum, at this point the Progress Bar breaks. That’s right, it no longer updates itself, it will always look 100% full. The simple solution – always ensuring you set Value before Maximum is fine unless you’re using a ProgressBar in a less controlled environment – where for example you’re setting a ‘container’ with both values at the same time. The example I have is in a DataTemplate, I have a DataTemplate for a BusyIndicator, (specifically the BusyContentTemplate). The binding works this way: <BusyIndicator BusyContent="{Binding BusyContent}" BusyContentTemplate="{Binding ProgressTemplate}"/> With the template as the ProgressBar defined above… I was setting my BusyContent like this: BusyContent = content; aaaaaand finally, ‘content’ is a class: public class ContentClass : INotifyPropertyChanged { //Obviously this is properly implemented… public double Maximum { get;set;} public double Value { get;set;} } Soooo… As I was replacing the BusyContent wholesale, the order of the binding being set was outside of my control, so – how to go about it? Basically? Fudge it. Modify the ContentClass to include a method: public void Update(double value, double max) { Value = value; Maximum = max; } and change where the setting is to be: BusyContent.Update(content.Value, content.Maximum); Thereby getting the order correct.. Obvious really. Meh :|

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