How to make a Dummy VGA Dongle

I figured id make this guide to help people running more than 1 card. or dual GPU's. As without these niffty devices tri quad or even 6-8 GPU's will not run on the same machine. here is how it is done.

First get yourself a DVI to VGA adapter. Any will do.

Adapter

Next you will need resistors. The other guides on the net say to use between 68-70 ohm ones but any i find will do. The point of the resistor is to well...privide resistence so that Vista is fooled into thinking their is another monitor. Why do this? We are doing this because monitors are detected through current. when you plug a monitor in their is resistence on the line. if we mimic resistence we in essence mimic a monitor.

you can get resistors at your local radioshack or micro center. we will need 3 per dongle so if you plan to make more than one buy accordingly.

Resistor

Now that we have our parts we need a diagram. you in essance will be putting the resistors in the last 3 holes of the first and second line on the right side of the vga (blue) end. Sound difficult? Its not but here is a pic.

ok so now we start. Now some guides will make you take apart the connector etc. However this is unnessisary it fits fine you simply need to wiggle it if it gets caught. let us begin.

First you have a standard VGA adapter.

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Runtime Application Telemetry and Analytics... Don't leave your apps without it...

When developers know how their applications are really being used “in the wild,” they will build better software, more efficiently, and with greater confidence. It’s common sense. Historically though, it has been virtually impossible to get this kind of real-world – or runtime – intelligence into the hands of developers and architects when they need it most – when they are deciding what to do next.

The emerging application analytics market offers unprecedented insight into how software is being used in the real world and gives multiple stakeholders – from developers to CIOs to business owners – a reliable way to measure and manage development investments. Like web analytics, application analytics correlates behavior with business results. Unlike web analytics, application analytics extends beyond browser clicks on a web page to include mobile and traditional client experiences as well as the business and back office tiers that tie all of these together.

While software developers may or may not consider web developers to be “real” developers, we can learn quite a bit from them since they focus on, and demand, empirical evidence in support of how their applications are really being used. In fact, even the most remedial “drag and drop” website developers not only expect to gather real-world usage statistics, they also know this information will be a critical factor in future development iterations. They know only a fool would build something with no way to measure both adoption and the business impact of that adoption.

Capturing runtime data is only part of the solution. Runtime intelligence must be converted into action. Software development is often much more complex than a typical website project for two reasons: The diversity of applications makes “one-size-fits-all” reporting impractical and the complexity of the development process itself makes turning runtime data into “intelligent action” much more challenging. In order to be effective, application analytics must overcome both of these obstacles.

Website developers also understand analytics can have direct financial value – but for this to be true, the results must be verifiable and public. Knowing an app is popular makes it even more popular – driving adoption and sales. This holds true for website destinations and mobile apps – but also for office, productivity and even development tools. Users want to benchmark themselves against their peers (usage patterns) and their applications against alternatives (the best tool for the job).

Read more: Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day
Read more: The Rise of Application Analytics: A New Game Demands New Rules
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Building the one Install OS Flash Drive to rule them all...? (Windows 7 x86 & x64 and Live CDs and Rescue disks and...)

Super Users often find ourselves installing operating systems. Whether you run your own computer shop, manage an army of thousands of corporate workstations, or are just the tech-savvy friend everyone you know calls for help, you’ve probably had to install various flavors of Windows over and over again. Most of us have also spent a fair amount of time installing different Linux distros, running data recovery disks, and using various live CDs.

The problem that presents itself is managing all of the required disks. There are at least 6 common flavors of Windows 7 alone (Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate for both x86 and x64, plus Enterprise for you corporate types). Add in various distros of Linux and you start to see why some computer techs carry around whole folders of CDs.

I’ve been aware of Pendrive Linux for a while, which lets you setup a flash drive with multiboot Linux software, and can add a single Windows installation. But what if you wanted to have a single flash drive with all versions of Windows 7, as well as all the standard Linux boot disks? It took some work, but I decided to do this and the final result is impressive.

Read more: Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day
Read more: Making the Ultimate All-In-One Installation Flash Drive
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Silverlight security overview paper has been updated for Silverlight 5

The main difference from the Silverlight 4 version is I've added a section on trusted in browser apps (which in many ways aren't that different from trusted out of browser apps). I've also folded in a few corrections/improvements from customer feedback that apply equally to previous versions of Silverlight.

Read more: Nick on Silverlight and WPF
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Message Only Window in for .NET Application

Overview

.NET is great platform, it speeds up the development process, you deal with your application logic and in most cases you don't need to know that there is whole Windows operating system down there. However sometimes you do need to program against Windows without the .NET assistance. As a Windows developer, you need to keep all your weapons ready, be it .NET, COM or C++ with the native Win32 API. In this article I am going to show how to deal with Windows Message based communication protocol within .NET application.
Windows Messages

In traditional User32.dll based Windows application the Windows Messages mechanism serves as a communication channel among many parties. The Windows Operating System uses this mechanism to ask the Window to draw itself, to inform about environmental change or even to communicate a logoff event. The application itself uses this mechanism to create an event driven design model with a single thread or to communicate between threads. Other applications can use this mechanism with an application defined message (the WM_APP message range) to trigger a logical event, or even to pass memory buffer using the WM_COPYDATA.

Windows In Windows Are Based On An Object Oriented Mechanism

One of the impressive thing about the windows mechanism of Windows, considering its age and the fact that it was implemented with the C language in mind, is that is based on the Object Oriented paradigm. Each window is belong to a Window Class. The class is the factory of a window. The class defines the window's properties as well as the window's behavior. The properties are set using one of the predefined window class member such as the window's menu, or cursor. The behavior is defined by specifying the windows procedure address. The window procedure handles the incoming Windows Messages, which are in fact the methods of the window. Changing the Windows attributes can be made using the SetWindowLong/Ptr. Creating type fields (static) and instance fields can be made by allocating user-defined memory area for each Window class (static) and Window instance (dynamic) using the cbClsExtra and cbWndExtra fields of the WNDCLASS structure. Subclassing a Windows class can be achieved by changing the window procedure address to point to a custom function that handles the Windows Messages before it calls the original window procedure. You can subclass a Window instance or Window class (global subclassing).

Read more: public: class Alon : IArchitect, IAzure, ICPP, ISmartHome, IHomeServer
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How to build a 40TB file server

The one most valuable asset at Oyster.com is our photo collection. Take away the intellectual property and what’s left is, essentially, markup (with a bit of backend to snazz it up.) So we need a solid backup solution for the original high-res photos. The old servers were about to run out of capacity and their slightly outdated specs did not make transferring huge datasets any easier or faster. Thinking a few months ahead, we were looking at a 40TB data set. In strict accordance with KISS methodology, we opted against LTO and S3, and decided to build a big BOX. (For starters, 40TB on S3 costs around $60,000 annually. The components to build the Box — about 1/10th of that.)

Coincidentally, a great new product was just about to hit the market, reinforcing our decision with its timely relevance — the dual-core Areca ARC-1882ix RAID Host Bus Adapter, which comes with an on-board DDR3 SDRAM socket with up to 4GB chip support. Since we already opted for RAID Level 6 (striped, distributed parity–error checking, tolerates two disk failures) and dual-core RAID-On-Chip means it processes two streams of parity calculations simultaneously — it seemed ideal.

The first challenge in putting together the big box was getting internal SAS connectors properly seated into the backplane adaptor sockets, the bottom few being especially cumbersome to reach. Thankfully, our hardware technicians’ exceptional manual dexterity rendered having to disassemble the internal fan panel frame unnecessary.

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The Android Eye for the .Net Guy... The Android for .NET Developers Series by Dino Esposito

The Android for .NET Developers Series

    Part 1 Starting with this article, I'll discuss what you need to know to approach Android programming without any aid from your .NET expertise.
    Part 2 In this article, we'll go through an Android application that accepts input from the user and handles user's clicking.
    Part 3 In this article, you will learn how to build the user interface.
    Part 4 In this article, I'll be delving deep into menus and dialog boxes in Android for .NET, and discuss a few very common (and frequently used) types of menus and dialogs.
    Part 5 In this article, Dino Esposito focuses on the options that the Android SDK offers for local storage.
    Part 6 In this article, Dino Esposito shows how to build settings dialog boxes using a built-in feature of Android for .NET.
    Part 7 In this article, I'll dissect the code of a realistic application - a waterpolo score manager - to show how to save and resume the status of a game using both the internal storage and SD card.
    Part 8 In this article, I'll focus on the execution of common tasks from within an Android application. I'll build the skeleton of an application that takes a photo and emails to the specified address. For both tasks I'll use native Android components.
    Part 9 In this article, I'll discuss how to arrange an Android view where the dominant element is the list. I'll start with a plain list of strings and then improve up to populating a listview with downloaded content arranged using a custom layout.

Read more: Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day
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MySQL Stored procedure

Stored Procedures

MySQL stored procedures can be applied easily in any place. There are many places that  MySQL stored procedures can be used. Stored procedures are a set of sql commands that are stored in the database. Stored procedures are application and platform related and the task of execution becomes easier; less disorder. It also helps in decreasing the traffic in the networks and reduces the CPU work load. RDMBS supports recursive stored procedure but MySQL does not support it well.

There are many places MySQL stored procedures can be used :

    Where client applications are using various language in different platforms.
    If security is of highest importance, like in financial institutions,then users and applications would have no direct access to the database tables.
    This provides an excellent secured environment.
    The database servers service the client machines,providing efficient performance.    

Now we are describing a example of a simple stored procedure which uses an OUT parameter. It uses the MySQL client delimiter command for changing the statement delimiter from ; to // till the procedure is being defined.

Example :

mysql> CREATE PROCEDURE Happy(OUT p1 INT)
    -> SELECT COUNT(*) INTO p1 from persons;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.21 sec)

mysql> CALL Happy(@a);
Query OK, 1 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> select @a;

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Free and Professional .PSD UI Elements for Your Design

A web designer works on the basis of a pre-designed UI Elements which can be later edited accordingly. The web applications are increasing almost every day and for constructing a successful app one should be always ready with a smart idea. A User Interface Kit does the work of beautifying the app to create a better impression and a much easy work experience. These user kits can be downloaded as required by you in your projects.

UI elements kit are a PSD file and have the same user interface for app designs as well as for web. It has check boxes, radio button, search options, message alert to make it an useful UI element. The apple styled UI elements is nice and has detailed icons. The grayness UI kit, light UI PSD, Spring GUI, Blue and white GUI kit, Small UI set, orange interactive elements, Bloom UI kit, Web elements, UI for Japan are some of the other user interface elements.

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Facebook security bypassed with One single link

Affected Application: Facebook.com
Exploit Platform: Remote
Impact: Full Access to Facebook profile
Severity: High
Author: Anand Pandey
Email: anandkpandey1 (at) gmail (dot) com
Video:
____________________________________________________________________

->Description:
• Accessing Facebook account with just one single link and by passing all
security mechanism implemented by Facebook for preventing unauthorised
access and provide secure login to users.
• No way to track the unauthorized access and to know that someone accessed
your account. (Unless the intruder made some changes)
____________________________________________________________________

->What it can do ?
It has the power to by pass all the security machanisms applyied by
Facebook. It will not require the username/password, won’t present you with
Check point, will not track your location (so no geographical location
based restrictions) and no login review for the user, user will not be
presented with any notification that wheather the user or some one else has
accessed his/her account, and most importantly, there will not be any
active sessions created or listed, so you will have full access to those
resources where password is not required (because you don’t have the
password), and there is no way any one can track you, unless you make a
mistake of changing the profile picture or scream loudly ?
____________________________________________________________________

->How this link is generated?
This link is generated by Facebook for those who have registered their cell
phone on Facebook to receive the notification of activity on their accounts
by SMS on phone. Facebook generates this link for the convenience of those
mobile users, and send it via SMS. You will receive a notification from
Facebook stating that XYZ have commented on your photo (with the comment
made) and a direct link to that photo. So you will not have to login every
time to view your photos for comment or for anything using that particular
link.
____________________________________________________________________

->What all notifications contain this link?
• Comment made on your photo.
• Comment on your link.
• Comment made after you on a photo or a link.
• Tagged you in photo.

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USe Facebook as a proxy

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

- View HTML page of any website (not internal facebook pages);
- GET requests;
WHAT YOU CAN’T DO:

- Manage cookies;
- POST requests;
RESTRICTIONS:

- You must be logged in;

 

HISTORY:

- 14/12/2011: First contact
- 15/12/2011: No evidence to be a security flaw
- 15/12/2011: Pratical usage examples
- 23/12/2011: No response, published (GMT +1).
- 23/12/2011 (1h after publishing): “We do not consider this a security flaw. Thanks for taking the time to look into this and please send us any additional concerns you encounter in the future.”

Having a facebook account is not so bad if you can have a free and fast proxy!
The affected page is:

    developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/og/echo?q=

“q” parameter must be a valid unescaped URL. Output page will show you the HTML code of the URL and guess what? Request will be made by facebook server, without report your original IP. Also “x-forwarded-for” is not used (thanks to white_sheep for this check)

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Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In computing, the Linux Unified Key Setup or LUKS is a disk-encryption specification created by Clemens Fruhwirth and originally intended for Linux.

While most disk encryption software implements different and incompatible, undocumented formats, LUKS specifies a platform-independent standard on-disk format for use in various tools. This not only facilitates compatibility and interoperability amongst different programs, but also assures that they all implement password management in a secure and documented manner.[1]

The reference implementation for LUKS operates on Linux and is based on an enhanced version of cryptsetup, using dm-crypt as the disk encryption backend. Under Microsoft Windows, LUKS-encrypted disks can be used with FreeOTFE.

The design of LUKS aimed to conform to the TKS1 secure key setup scheme.[2]

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Exploit Pack

Exploit Pack  is an open source security tool for penetration testers and end users and it comes to fill a need, a framework for exploit writers and security researchers, with a GPL license and Python as engine for its modules. Also it is based on JAVA and SWT to get real cross-platform. GPL license is used for the entire project and thus ensure the code will always be free.

Exploit Pack try to ensures to fill the needs that an exploit developer or security expert has daily. And it will assist you when you have to test the security of your computer or servers.

Do you wanna get involved? Participate in the Community! Help us code!

    Community discussions occurs on mailing lists
    Real-time discussions are held over #exploitpack at irc.freenode.net
    Follow along with Facebook and Twitter
    Social coding at GitHub – We need help on Java and Python: Red Light | Green Light | Refactor!
    Tools for bugs reporting Bug Tracker!, wiki documentation, and more are available!
    Check out our new blog! Click here to go there!

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ownCloud

ownCloud gives you universal access to your files through a web interface or WebDAV. It also provides a platform to easily view & sync your contacts, calendars and bookmarks across all your devices and enables basic editing right on the web.

Discover more …

Installation has minimal server requirements, doesn’t need special permissions and is quick. ownCloud is extendable via a simple, but powerful API for applications.

Developer info …

Support and Services for companies is provided by ownCloud, Inc. Please visit owncloud.com for more information.

Read more: ownCloud 

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Springpad

Springpad is a free app that makes it quick and easy to take notes and save anything you want to remember - from notes and tasks to products, places, movies, recipes and more.

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30+ Free HTML Email Newsletter Templates

 

Email newsletters play a significant role when it comes to interacting with your customers and keeping them up to date with all the latest happening in your company. The design and layout of your newsletter is very important for grabbing the attention of your customers instantly . Beautiful and interesting designs will obvious attract customers and spread information about your product or service. A good HTML Email Templates, which have handy modification options, are always liked by readers as they not heavy for the reader’s Inbox. So today we have a list of Some Awesome Free HTML Email Newsletter Templates to make your Email newsletter stand out from the rest.

Use any of these Free HTML Email Templates on this effective and cost effective marketing tool for keeping in touch with your clients and subscribers, and for spreading information about your services. Check them out and pick the one you like the best!

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CentOS 6.2 Release

Welcome to the CentOS 6.2 release. CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by our Upstream OS Provider (UOP)1.

CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendor's redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork.)

We have decided not to follow the UOP's usage of Installation Codes. All 'channels' are available to the System Administrator at time of installation.

Similar to the practice of the upstream vendor, there is no supported path to 'upgrade' an installation of a prior major CentOS release (presently CentOS 5 or CentOS 4) to a new major release. This is not a CentOS imposed limitation, but rather reflects the upstream's approach on this matter. People who feel adventuresome and want to experiment are reminded to take and test backups first. As a note to people who attempt the upgrade in spite of this warning, such as by the unsupported upgradeany option from the media install command line, please note that you will need to manually retrieve the current centos-release package, manually do a rpm -e --nodeps removal of the prior centos-release package, and then manually install the CentOS 6 centos-release package, before yum can have any chance of working properly.

The continuous release ( CR ) repository makes generally available packages that will appear in the next point release of CentOS, on a testing and hotfix basis until formally released.

Please read through the other sections before trying an install or reporting an issue.

3. Install Media and sha1sum

sha1sum i386:
ad741581b3d3969bcf867cf1e47160902c8876f6  CentOS-6.2-i386-bin-DVD1.iso
6131d4c8ca2be77a25eaf1c61f94c7500786e683  CentOS-6.2-i386-bin-DVD2.iso
58cddfb2a6bd5094687a36f9fe94ce82967a4af0  CentOS-6.2-i386-LiveCD.iso
6c891e23c959787931fd2eb472211afd51709aa5  CentOS-6.2-i386-LiveDVD.iso
353d7e070a4cfc34148f9610b05cf1c55ad4fa57  CentOS-6.2-i386-minimal.iso
02444d6984089d9fc16ca989781482c8202357f0  CentOS-6.2-i386-netinstall.iso

sha1sum x86_64:
d97377c83fab7493dbd1c2e04dab29c8ba6cd351  CentOS-6.2-x86_64-bin-DVD1.iso
7eac42c403725891b53cd899f0ef7560dc3a9d72  CentOS-6.2-x86_64-bin-DVD2.iso
0c329da3db427c3279d44f15a57ba85341d12197  CentOS-6.2-x86_64-LiveCD.iso
086f102c4c3ee228c5663cbaa2f1d6bf2edf5c4b  CentOS-6.2-x86_64-LiveDVD.iso
10b26ce414af86be26f3a47dcc76d8f81e333979  CentOS-6.2-x86_64-minimal.iso
4858a8870cc5048876edd51dead25b9c718fcfbe  CentOS-6.2-x86_64-netinstall.iso

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Mono in 2011

This was a very interesting year for Mono, and I wanted to capture some of the major milestones and news from the project as well as sharing a bit of what is coming up for Mono in 2012.

I used to be able to list all of the major applications and great projects built with Mono. The user base has grown so large that I am no longer able to do this. 2011 was a year that showed an explosion of applications built with Mono.

In this post I list a few of the high profile projects, but it is by no means an extensive list. There are too many great products and amazing technologies being built with Mono, but a comprehensive list would take too long to assemble.
Xamarin

The largest event for Mono this year was that the team working on Mono technologies at Novell was laid off after Novell was acquired.

We got back on our feet, and two weeks after the layoffs had taken place, the original Mono team incorporated as Xamarin.

Xamarin's goal is to deliver great productivity and great tools for mobile developers. Our main products are Mono on iOS and Mono on Android.

These products are built on top of the open source Mono project and the MonoDevelop project. We continue to contribute extensively to these two open source projects.

Launching Xamarin was a huge effort for all of us.

Xamarin would not have been possible without our great customers and friends in the industry. Many people cared deeply about the technology and helped us get up and running.

In July, we announced an agreement with Attachmate that ensured a bright future for our young company.

A couple of days later, we were ready to sell the mobile products that had been previously developed at Novell, and we started to provide all existing Novell customers with ongoing support for their Mono-based products.

Half a year later, we grew the company and continued to do what we like the most: writing amazing software.

Meanwhile, our users have created amazing mobile applications. You can see some of those in our App Catalog.
C# Everywhere

On the Mobile Space: This year Sony jumped to C# in a big way with the introduction of PS Suite (see the section below) and Nokia adopted Windows Phone 7 as their new operating system.

And we got you covered on Android and iOS for all of your C# needs.

On the Browser: we worked with Google to bring you Mono to Native Client. In fact, every demo shown at the Google Native Client event on December 8th was powered by Mono.

On the Desktop: this year we added MacOS X as a first-class citizen in the world of supported Mono platforms. We did this by introducing MonoMac 1.0 and supporting Apple's MacStore with it.

Games: continue to take advantage of C# blend of performance and high-level features. Read more on my GDC 2011 post.

It is a wild new world for C# and .NET developers that were used to build their UI using ASP.NET or Winforms only. It has been fascinating to see developers evolve their thinking from a Microsoft-only view of the world to a world where they design libraries and applications that split the presentation layer from the business logic.

Developers that make this transition will be able to get great native experiences on each device and form factor.

Read more: Personal blog of Miguel de Icaza
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WPFSpark gets all V1.0!

WPFSpark is a library of user controls which can be used by developers to provide a rich User Experience in their applications.

"I am glad to announce that WPFSpark has finally hit v1.0!

This release adds four new controls - SparkWindow, FluidPivotPanel, FluidProgressBar and FluidStatusBar.

It also brings the following improvements to the existing three controls:

    SprocketControl
        Internal timer stopped when control is no longer visible. It is started only when the control is Visible. This reduces CPU load.
        Added the LowestAlpha dependency property which indicates the lowest Opacity value that must be used while rendering the SprocketControl's spokes.
        Added the AlphaTicksPercentage dependency property which indicates the percentage of total ticks which must be considered for step by step reduction of the alpha value. The remaining ticks remain at the LowestAlpha value.
        SprocketControl now implements IDisposable.
    ToggleSwitch
        Added the IsCheckedLeft dependency property which indicates whether the checked content appears in the left or right side of the ToggleSwitch
        Added the CheckedToolTip property which is displayed when the ToggleSwitch is in the Checked state. Set this property to String.Empty( "" ) to prevent this tooltip from displaying.
        Added the UncheckedToolTip property which is displayed when the ToggleSwitch is in the Unchecked state. Set this property to String.Empty( "" ) to prevent this tooltip from displaying.
    FluidWrapPanel
        Added the ItemSource dependency property which can be bound to an ObservableCollection<UIElement>.

Read more: Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day
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Implementing a message pass-through WCF Behaviour (Router WCF service)

I recently came across a requirement to implement a Windows Communication Service that acts as a message router across several other WCF backend services. This router service main functionality is to encapsulate the backend services and also to add automatic request monitoring. This should not be hard I was thinking but there are couple of twists, first the router service should not sensitive to the services themselves and how they change and communicate with their clients. It also will be handing encrypted messages that it cannot decrypt as these messages belong to other partners that we do not control and of course do not have the certificate used for encryption.

The way this is done is by implementing custom WCF message dispatch inspector and custom WCF message client message inspector behaviours. Why do we need both as our service acts as a WCF to all the clients and as a client to all the backend services. So the main idea is to when a message is received over the wire the entire message body is escaped and placed in a custom header element and before this message is sent to the backend the original message body is extracted from the header and written back to the message sent. While the response is being received from the backend service the same logic happens but in the reverse order. So the reply is written to the custom header as an escaped string and then before this reply is delivered to the original caller the reply is read from the header and sent to the client. Simple right J well it will get even better; since we want the original message unparsed and not changed coming on the wire this has to be done using a custom message encoder for both ways, receiving requests from the clients and receiving responses from the backend services. So to try to make this simple I placed the following diagram.

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A Visual Explanation of SQL Joins

I thought Ligaya Turmelle's post on SQL joins was a great primer for novice developers. Since SQL joins appear to be set-based, the use of Venn diagrams to explain them seems, at first blush, to be a natural fit. However, like the commenters to her post, I found that the Venn diagrams didn't quite match the SQL join syntax reality in my testing.

I love the concept, though, so let's see if we can make it work. Assume we have the following two tables. Table A is on the left, and Table B is on the right. We'll populate them with four records each.

id name       id  name
-- ----       --  ----
1  Pirate     1   Rutabaga
2  Monkey     2   Pirate
3  Ninja      3   Darth Vader
4  Spaghetti  4   Ninja

Let's join these tables by the name field in a few different ways and see if we can get a conceptual match to those nifty Venn diagrams.

SELECT * FROM TableA
INNER JOIN TableB
ON TableA.name = TableB.name

id  name       id   name
--  ----       --   ----
1   Pirate     2    Pirate
3   Ninja      4    Ninja

Inner join produces only the set of records that match in both Table A and Table B.

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Cloud Standards Wiki

Cloud Standards Coordination

Welcome to the Wiki site for Cloud Standards Coordination. The goal of this wiki is to document the activities of the various SDOs working on Cloud standards. There is a Press Release announcing our formation.

We plan to follow the same process as was used to create the group known as the Standards Development Organization Collaboration on Networked Resources Management (SCRM-WG): SCRM wiki

This includes the development of a Cloud Landscape to overview the various efforts and introduce terms and definitions that allow each standard to be described in common language, and an entry for each standard categorized by organization.

We are working on a Template to use in describing each standard and a list of Topics for potential standardization.

Below are descriptions of each group with pointers to their efforts (each group has provided their own description).

Cloud Standards Overview

The group prepared a presentation that overviews the standards coordination activities we are doing. It includes a draft landscape and some recommendations for central government collaboration cloud standards overview.
Cloud Standards Positioning

A hopefully interesting initiative can be that of editing and sharing a general "cloud computing standardization positioning", in which more relevant cloud standardization intiatives can be seen and related. a first informal proposal of the positioning can be seen at cloud standards positioning. If interested please provide comments in order to improve the picture.

Read more: Cloud Standards Wiki
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AlienVault Open Source SIEM (OSSIM)

AlienVault Open Source SIEM (OSSIM) is a complete Security Management solution available at no cost. Along with the AlienVault Unified SIEM, AlienVault OSSIM is in use at more organizations than all alternatives combined.

AlienVault OSSIM provides all of the functionality required to detect and profiles attacks and provides a comprehensive, intelligent Security Management platform and toolset.

The entire solution is composed of open source distributions including all seamlessly integrated tools, and the security management platform. The OSSIM project was created and is currently coordinated by the founders of AlienVault.

The OSSIM platform consists of a Management Server, and Sensor or “Probe”. A professional version that includes Logger functionality is also available (please see below). The solution may be implemented as a single monolithic appliance or a set of appliances in which probes are separated from the management server, and distributed throughout the enterprise.

Probes capture network and system information in real time, and send it to the central Management Server where the data is analyzed to assess immediate threats and risk, filter out false positives, and locate false negatives that other security devices and software on the network cannot detect.

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w3af

   w3af is a Web Application Attack and Audit Framework. The project's goal is to create a framework to find and exploit web application vulnerabilities that is easy to use and extend. To read our short and long term objectives, please click over the Project Objectives item in the main menu. This project is currently hosted at SourceForge , for further information, you may also want to visit w3af SourceForge project page .

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Rapid7

Rapid7’s security risk intelligence solutions include the integrated vulnerability management and penetration testing products Nexpose® and Metasploit®, which empower organizations to proactively obtain accurate, actionable and contextual intelligence into their threat and risk posture.

With daily reports of new high-profile data breaches, an ever increasing proliferation of new threats and widespread adoption of virtualization techniques, organizations need to obtain a more precise and predictable view into their risk posture. Rapid7 is uniquely positioned to deliver a closed-loop solution for security risk intelligence that dynamically determines the existence and likelihood of risk by combining the capabilities of Nexpose for vulnerability management and Metasploit for penetration testing and risk validation. By correlating data on vulnerabilities, exploit and malware exposure, misconfigurations and penetration test information, Rapid7 quantifies the Real Risk™ within your environment. Armed with this accurate and contextual information, we can provide clear and concise recommendations on mitigation and remediation strategies, as well as measuring and tracking risk trends over time.

Read more: Rapid7 Community edition
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Linux Kernel in a Nutshell

When the topic of this book was first presented to me, I dismissed it as something that was already covered by the plentiful documentation about the Linux kernel. Surely someone had already written down all of the basics needed in order to build, install, and customize the Linux kernel, as it seemed to be a very simple task to me. [1]

After digging through the different HOWTOs and the Linux kernel Documentation directory, I came to the conclusion that there was not any one place where all of this information could be found. It could be gleaned by referencing a few files here, and a few outdated websites there, but this was not acceptable for anyone who did not know exactly what they were looking in the first place.

So this book was created with the goal of consolidating all of the existing information already scattered around the Internet about building the Linux kernel, as well as adding a lot of new and useful information that was not written down anywhere but had been learned by trial and error over my years of doing kernel development.

My secret goal of this book is to bring more people into the Linux kernel development fold. The act of building a customized kernel for your machine is one of the basic tasks needed to become a Linux kernel developer. The more people that try this out, and realize that there is not any real magic behind the whole Linux kernel process, the more people will be willing to jump in and help out in making the kernel the best that it can be.

Audience for the book

This book is intended to cover everything that is needed to know in order to properly build, customize, and install the Linux kernel. No programming experience is needed to understand and use this book.

Some familiarity with how to use Linux, and some basic command-line usage is expected of the reader.

This book is not intended to go into the programming aspects of the Linux kernel; there are many other good books listed in the Bibliography that already cover this topic.

Read more: Linux Kernel in a Nutshell
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.NET Client Library for Google+ (Both in original binary form and decompiled/source version too)

Are you a .NET developer looking for a .NET Client library to develop cool applications using Google+ data? Here is a .NET library, developed using C#. You can download the .NET Library from here and use it to develop applications

We are excited to announce the release of GooglePlusLib, a .NET library for Google+ APIs.

Google announced the version 1 of Google+ APIs couple of days ago. As usual, Google released the APIs along with a couple of client libraries, including .NET client library. However, the client libraries released by Google have some learning curve since the usage is not in the native .NET programming style.

Here is a .NET client library we developed for Google+ APIs. They are very easy to use in your applications.

Licensing
You are welcome to use the GooglePlusLib.NET client library as you like. You can use this library to develop applications and distribute it with your applications.

Read more: Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day
Read more: .NET Client Library for Google+ APIs from GooglePlusTips.com
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Why have CPUs been limited in frequency to around 3.5Ghz for so many years? What prevents us from increasing the frequency to 10, 100, 1000Ghz?

Question:
Why have CPUs been limited in frequency to around 3.5Ghz for so many years? What prevents us from increasing the frequency to 10, 100, 1000Ghz?

Answer:

Oh cool I actually know the answer to a question in askscience. I am an electrical engineer and I work in the IC (integrated circuit) industry.

The short answer is that scaling of semiconductor transistors has reached a limit due to the physical properties defining them. In the 1980s and 1990s, we enjoyed "ideal" scaling and were able to increase the speed and decrease the size by keeping all electric fields inside the transistor constant. As they got smaller and smaller, effects that previously could be ignored due to the macroscopic nature of the devices took a bigger and bigger role in how the devices functioned.

One of the most important factors affecting constant-field scaling for devices intended to be used for digital applications (processors) is inability to scale the threshold voltage due to sub-vt operation causing leakage power. Basically the transistor is a switch, and you don't get a very good "off" if the threshold voltage is too low and every transistor inside the chip dissipates power all the time. Usually power is only dissipated in a logic circuit when it switches.

Here is a good paper explaining constant field scaling.

Edit: a lot of people have asked "why don't we just increase the area?" The area for chips has been roughly the same for a long time, and the reason for this is defect density and process variability. The logic behind this is that if there are a set number of defects in the manufacturing process per wafer [in #defects/cm2], then the bigger the chip is, the more area that the defect affects and you can't sell.

Read more: Reddit
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Sharing with CompositionScopeDefinition in MEF 2

In the previous post, we introduced ExportFactory<T> and demonstrated how it can be used to control the lifetimes of MEF parts. In this article we will talk about a new type MEF called CompositionScopeDefinition that can be used in conjunction with ExportFactory<T> to control sharing. Let’s take a scenario that we could not achieve using what we know currently and how CompositionScopeDefinition provides the needed control.

Important note: CompositionScopeDefinition is geared towards more advanced, desktop application scenarios. If you're using MEF in an ASP.NET MVC web application and want to control sharing and lifetime on a per-HTTP-request level, you should use the pre-defined ASP.NET MVC integration.

Lets go back to our application block diagram that we built in Part 1 of this article.

Now let’s add a few details to this architecture. As our application has grown more complex, we have decided to factor out the data access part into a separate component called DataAccessLayer, which handles manages the connection to the database and reading and writing to it. In addition to this we also want to add a logger, which also logs some tracking information to the same database. So our slightly expanded functional diagram looks like the following.

Read more:  BCL Team Blog
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CXXI: Briding the C++ and C# worlds.

The Mono runtime engine has many language interoperability features but has never had a strong story to interop with C++.

Thanks to the work of Alex Corrado, Andreia Gaita and Zoltan Varga, this is about to change.

The short story is that the new CXXI technology allows C#/.NET developers to:

    Easily consume existing C++ classes from C# or any other .NET language
    Instantiate C++ objects from C#
    Invoke C++ methods in C++ classes from C# code
    Invoke C++ inline methods from C# code (provided your library is compiled with -fkeep-inline-functions or that you provide a surrogate library)
    Subclass C++ classes from C#
    Override C++ methods with C# methods
    Expose instances of C++ classes or mixed C++/C# classes to both C# code and C++ as if they were native code.

CXXI is the result of two summers of work from Google's Summer of Code towards improving the interoperability of Mono with the C++ language.
The Alternatives

This section is merely a refresher of of the underlying technologies for interoperability supported by Mono and how developers coped with C++ and C# interoperability in the past. You can skip it if you want to get to how to get started with CXXI.

As a reminder, Mono provides a number of interoperability bridges, mostly inherited from the ECMA standard. These bridges include:

    The bi-directional "Platform Invoke" technology (P/Invoke) which allows managed code (C#) to call methods in native libraries as well as support for native libraries to call back into managed code.
    COM Interop which allows Mono code to transparently call C or C++ code defined in native libraries as long as the code in the native libraries follows a few COM conventions [1].
    A general interceptor technology that can be used to intercept method invocations on objects.

When it came to getting C# to consume C++ objects the choices were far from great. For example, consider a sample C++ class that you wanted to consume from C#:

class MessageLogger {
public:
    MessageLogger (const char *domain);
    void LogMessage (const char *msg);
}

One option to expose the above to C# would be to wrap the Demo class in a COM object. This might work for some high-level objects, but it is a fairly repetitive exercise and also one that is devoid of any fun. You can see how this looks like in the COM Interop page.

The other option was to produce a C file that was C callable, and invoke those C methods. For the above constructor and method you would end up with something like this in C:

/* bridge.cpp, compile into bridge.so */
MessageLogger *Construct_MessageLogger (const char *msg)
{
    return new MessageLogger (msg);
}

void LogMessage (MessageLogger *logger, const char *msg)
{
    logger->LogMessage (msg);
}

Read more: Personal blog of Miguel de Icaza
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How to test SSL based WCF services

I usually work with WCF service that needs to be secured with Certificates or simply using HTTPS. The usual question from other dev in the team is “how can I simulate HTTPS to work with WCF?”

The problem arise that to test https sites, people usually work with IIS self issued certificates.

This works great for sites, you can use the auto signed certificate in your sites in https binding, then when you navigate to the site you usually got an error because the certificate is not issued for the right site. What I need is usually to modifiy the hosts file in windows, creating an alias of www.mydomain.com to 127.0.0.1, so I can directly point to the right address with WCF client application and can simply manage to use the local or remote service simply modifying the hosts file.

Sadly enough, WCF does not tolerate problem in certificates and this makes useless working with Self-Signed Certificate. To be able to use a WCF Service secured with SSL in your dev machine you should issue yourself a valid certificate. The solution is using the SelfSSL.exe tool that comes with the IIS6 Resource Kit Tools.

Once installed you can simply go to installation folder with Administrator Command Prompt (you need to launch the command prompt as administrator or it wont work) and simply create a valid certificate with this command line

Selfssl /N:CN=www.codewrecks.com /V :2000 /S:3

as you can see with the option /N:CN you are able to specify the Common Name you want to use, the /V option is used to specify the duraction in years of the certificate, and the /S: is used to specify the Id of the site you want to change, just select the “site” node on IIS7 administration console to see the ID assigned to each site.

Read more: Alkampfer's Place
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SSMS Tools Pack : the tool that any T-SQL developer and SQL SERVER DBA must To install

As a DBA I instruct  all the developer / DBA to Install this Tools.

Read this Article And see why.

Let's Start with the List of Features comes with the New Version 2.1.

You can Download this Tool from :http://www.ssmstoolspack.com/Download

The Biggest Feature on this version is the :Execution Plan Analyzer

That going to  help you analyze the Query Execution Plan Analyzer

Is a feature that will :

Cut your query troubleshooting time at least by half or more.

With it you can easily see the costliest plan operatorsbased on different properties

Like IO, CPU, Number of rows, Cardinality, Relatice cost, etc....

Can't find a node that is on a particular index?

Read more: Yehuda Lasri
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