Google Super Sync Sports Turns Your Phone Into A Gamepad

Posted by jasper22 at 17:00 | Thursday, March 21, 2013

Using a mobile device to control an application on a PC, media player or video game console, isn't too uncommon, but it is when the content being controlled is a game. Just how possible would it be to play a fairly fast-paced game on your PC via your mobile device? Google wanted to find out, so it crafted a game called Super Sync Sports, where you control an athlete on your desktop or notebook via controls on your phone or tablet. To make a game like this possible, Google turned to WebSockets for real-time collaboration between two devices, HTML5 for the audio, Canvas for the graphics, and CSS3 for the styling and transitions.

List Of Windows Services That Can Be Safely Disabled

Posted by jasper22 at 16:46 |

Windows Services are executable programs that run constantly in the background and perform specific functions on their own. Users with administrator privileges can choose a default startup behavior for these services. For instance, they can be set to start at system boot, paused and restarted whenever required, or simply disabled. While some services come with the operating system by default, at times different third party software also add their own services. While leaving the services running in the background allows certain tools and utilities to function better, disabling the ones you don’t need can also increase the performance of your system. In what follows, we’ll guide you through the process of starting, stopping and disabling Windows Services.

How To Disable Windows System Services

Before you start or stop a service, it is important to know its function so that stopping it does not disrupt any important Windows feature or task. If you know the exact nature of a particular service, you can disable it if you don’t need that feature. For example, if you do not use Bluetooth devices with your system, there no need to have its service running all the time and you can easily disable the Bluetooth Support Service without an issue. Since you can start or stop a service anytime that you like, you can even use this feature for the services that you use very rarely to keep them disabled or stopped and enabling them only when required. Continuing with the aforementioned example, if you connect a Bluetooth device to the computer once every two weeks, you can turn on the service whenever needed and keep it off by default.

You can easily access the Services dialog box from the start menu to view and control all services. Moreover, third party tools, such as Windows Service Monitor and Services Monitor can also be used to manage Windows services, both locally and remotely.

How to write your first USB client driver (UMDF) (Windows Drivers)

Posted by jasper22 at 12:26 |

In this topic you'll use the USB User-Mode Driver template provided with Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 to write a user-mode driver framework (UMDF)-based client driver. After building and installing the client driver, you'll view the client driver in Device Manager and view the driver output in a debugger.

UMDF (referred to as the framework in this topic) is based on the component object model (COM). Every framework object must implement IUnknown and its methods, QueryInterface, AddRef, and Release, by default. The AddRef and Release methods manage the object's lifetime, so the client driver does not need to maintain the reference count. The QueryInterface method enables the client driver to get interface pointers to other framework objects in the Windows Driver Frameworks (WDF) object model. Framework objects perform complicated driver tasks and interact with Windows. Certain framework objects expose interfaces that enable a client driver to interact with the framework.

A UMDF-based client driver is implemented as an in-process COM server (DLL), and C++ is the preferred language for writing a client driver for a USB device. Typically, the client driver implements several interfaces exposed by the framework. This topic refers to a client driver-defined class that implements framework interfaces as a callback class. After these classes are instantiated, the resulting callback objects are partnered with particular framework objects. This partnership gives the client driver the opportunity to respond to device or system-related events that are reported by the framework. Whenever Windows notifies the framework about certain events, the framework invokes the client driver's callback, if one is available. Otherwise the framework proceeds with the default processing of the event. The template code defines driver, device, and queue callback lasses.

For an explanation about the source code generated by the template, see Understanding the UMDF template code for USB client driver.

15 Cool and Creative Resumes

Posted by jasper22 at 13:50 | Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Unless you are a desired professional, job hunt is not the kind of activity you would enjoy doing very often. All the searching, sending, phone-calling and trying to simply get noticed by the employer can really wreck your nerves.

The principle “don’t judge a book by its cover” is not widely used here – on the contrary, you have to LOOK good and stand out from the others to get the job. And looking good doesn’t only mean putting on a new shirt or a skirt, but most importantly – having a solid resume and a cover letter.

Looks like these job-seekers didn’t have problems getting noticed by the employer. Building a creative yet informative resume is a good way to clearly present you personality and skills. And to get noticed, of course. Browse here for inspiration and get creative the next time you’re on the job market.

40 INCREDIBLY EYE-CATCHING CVS

Posted by jasper22 at 13:45 |

Microsoft shares Kinect source code

Posted by jasper22 at 11:53 | Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Source code initially offers face tracking, depth of field and more

Microsoft has shared the source code for some elements of the PC version of Kinect, its motion control hardware.

Until now, developer and hobbyist’s wanting to use Kinect had to work from an official software toolkit that covered the underlying code.

The software maker has posted 22 code samples used in Kinect for Windows to CodePlex.

The Kinect for Windows sample code is available in C#, C++ and Visual Basic. Some of elements it offers include colour basics, face tracking, depth of field, skeleton basics and audio capture.

Developers who wish to use the software will need to download Visual Studio, .NET and the Kinect for Windows SDK before getting started.

All the Kinect code samples are released under an Apache 2.0 licence and are free for users to take, reuse or remix.

Decompiling Async/Await

Posted by jasper22 at 11:44 |

You can get the async-enabled ILSpy build from our build server.

The async support is not yet complete; for example decompilation fails if the IL evaluation stack is not empty at the point of the await expression.

The decompilation logic highly depends on the patterns produced by the C# 5 compiler - it only works with code compiled with the C# compiler in the .NET 4.5 beta release, not with any previous CTPs. Also, it is likely that ILSpy will need adjustments for the final C# 5 compiler.

While testing, I found that the .NET 4.5 beta BCL was not compiled with the beta compiler - where the beta compiler uses multiple awaiter fields, the BCL code uses a single field of type object and uses arrays of length 1. This is similar to the code generated by the .NET 4.5 developer preview, so my guess is that Microsoft used some internal version in between the developer preview and the beta for compiling the .NET 4.5 beta BCL. For more information, take a look at Jon Skeet's description of the async codegen changes.

This means the ILSpy cannot decompile async methods in the .NET 4.5 beta BCL. This problem should disappear with the next .NET 4.5 release (.NET 4.5 RC?).

So how does ILSpy decompile async methods, then? Consider the compiler-generated code of the move next method:

// Async.$AwaitInLoopCondition$d__17

void IAsyncStateMachine.MoveNext()

{

try

{

int num = this.$1__state;

TaskAwaiter<bool> taskAwaiter;

if (num == 0)

{

taskAwaiter = this.$u__$awaiter18;

this.$u__$awaiter18 = default(TaskAwaiter<bool>);

this.$1__state = -1;

goto IL_7C;

}

IL_23:

taskAwaiter = this.$4__this.SimpleBoolTaskMethod().GetAwaiter();

if (!taskAwaiter.IsCompleted)

{

this.$1__state = 0;

this.$u__$awaiter18 = taskAwaiter;

this.$t__builder.AwaitUnsafeOnCompleted<TaskAwaiter<bool>, Async.$AwaitInLoopCondition$d__17>(ref taskAwaiter, ref this);

return;

}

IL_7C:

Extending C# Listview with Collapsible Groups

Posted by jasper22 at 11:40 |

NOTE: This post is kinda long. However, most of the length is a result of code postings (even after removing some extra stuff). Bear with me!

I’ve been deep in a project for work for the past two months. Sadly, it is nothing sexy, no exciting bleeding-edge technology, just another enterprise database, using the very mature and slightly dull Winforms library in the .NET platform.

However, I did stumble across an interesting project requirement for what is essentially an expandable group of the venerable Listview control, what one might get if one combined a Listview with a Treeview, or if the “groups” built into the Listview control could be expanded/collapsed, right-clicked, etc.

Xamarin previews C# async on iOS and Android

Posted by jasper22 at 10:56 |

One of the most requested features we’re hearing at Xamarin these days is support for async in C#. Today, we are very happy to announce the first preview of async support in our products. The code is available now on the Alpha channel in the Xamarin Updater.

First-class support for asynchronicity is a powerful and brilliantly simple language tool.

It makes it easy to write responsive user interfaces, which in turn makes for delighted users
It makes complex workflows, with their error handling, natural to write. This translates into proper error messages and proper program recovery; and finally
By letting the compiler do the work for you, it eliminates bugs from your code, and enables you to enjoy your work and to focus on what really matters for your application.

This is best seen by watching it in action. See how this piece of old C# code turns into a piece of beauty. Error handling and dealing with the UI thread go from painful to trivial. To learn more about how to use async start from this article.

While asynchronicity is the main theme of this release, we also pack two years of improvements to the Mono runtime spread over more than 7,000 individual commits that are now available to Android, Mac and iOS users.

Kali Linux

Posted by jasper22 at 14:47 | Monday, March 18, 2013

Kali Linux is an advanced Penetration Testing and Security Auditing Linux distribution.

Kali Linux Features

Kali is a complete re-build of BackTrack Linux, adhering completely to Debian development standards. All-new infrastructure has been put in place, all tools were reviewed and packaged, and we use Git for our VCS.

More than 300 penetration testing tools: After reviewing every tool that was included in BackTrack, we eliminated a great number of tools that either did not work or had other tools available that provided similar functionality.
Free and always will be: Kali Linux, like its predecessor, is completely free and always will be. You will never, ever have to pay for Kali Linux.
Open source Git tree: We are huge proponents of open source software and our development tree is available for all to see and all sources are available for those who wish to tweak and rebuild packages.
FHS compliant: Kali has been developed to adhere to the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, allowing all Linux users to easily locate binaries, support files, libraries, etc.
Vast wireless device support: We have built Kali Linux to support as many wireless devices as we possibly can, allowing it to run properly on a wide variety of hardware and making it compatible with numerous USB and other wireless devices.
Custom kernel patched for injection: As penetration testers, the development team often needs to do wireless assessments so our kernel has the latest injection patches included.
Secure development environment: The Kali Linux team is made up of a small group of trusted individuals who can only commit packages and interact with the repositories while using multiple secure protocols.
GPG signed packages and repos: All Kali packages are signed by each individual developer when they are built and committed and the repositories subsequently sign the packages as well.
Multi-language: Although pentesting tools tend to be written in English, we have ensured that Kali has true multilingual support, allowing more users to operate in their native language and locate the tools they need for the job.
Completely customizable: We completely understand that not everyone will agree with our design decisions so we have made it as easy as possible for our more adventurous users to customize Kali Linux to their liking, all the way down to the kernel.
ARMEL and ARMHF support: Since ARM-based systems are becoming more and more prevalent and inexpensive, we knew that Kali’s ARM support would need to be as robust as we could manage, resulting in working installations for both ARMEL and ARMHF systems. Kali Linux has ARM repositories integrated with the mainline distribution so tools for ARM will be updated in conjunction with the rest of the distribution. Kali is currently available for the following ARM devices:

rk3306 mk/ss808
Raspberry Pi
ODROID U2/X2
Samsung Chromebook

Kali is specifically tailored to penetration testing and therefore, all documentation on this site assumes prior knowledge of the Linux operating system.

Kernel-Mode Debugging in a VM using Visual Studio 2012

Posted by jasper22 at 12:13 |

Introduction

This article is about how to setup Kernel-Mode debugging in a VM using Visual Studio 2012. This article will be helpful for people new to driver development that wish to create, build, deploy, and debug a simple "HelloKernel". project.

Background

The setup process can be divided to three parts:

Setting up the Virtual Machine
Setting up Visual Studio 2012
Setting up your HelloKernel Project

Each part will be explained step by step.

How to Setup the Virtual Machine

The Virtual Machine setup was tested on VMWare 9.0 running Windows 7 x64 OS.

Create a new VM, use default settings (tested on VmWare, Win7 x64)
Add a serial port to the VM, follow these steps:

Right click VM -> Settings -> Add -> Serial Port -> Output to named pipe
Named pipe = \\.\pipe\com_2
First Combobox = The end is the server
Second Combobox = The other end is an application
Connect at power on = Checked
Finish
Yield CPU on poll = Checked

In the VM, in an elevated Command Prompt window, enter the following commands:

bcdedit /debug on
bcdedit /dbgsettings serial debugport:2 baudrate:115200

NHibernate 3.3.3 Candidate Release 1 available

Posted by jasper22 at 10:57 |

NHibernate 3.3.3 Candidate Release 1 is now available for download

from Sourceforge and Nuget (you need to enable use of pre-releases).

http://sourceforge.net/projects/nhibernate/?source=directory

It keeps the previous assembly version so it's a drop in replacement

for 3.3.1 and 3.3.2. There are no known breaking changes. Unless any

problem appears, I think we should do the GA release in about a week.

A big thanks to everyone that contributed to this release!

Summary of changes:

There is a good number of bugs and enhancements in this release, many

revolving around LINQ. Some notable improvements are:

Fixes/enhancements related to LINQ in combination with WCF Data Services.

It is now possible to issue free-form LIKE queries through LINQ. Use

NHibernate.Linq.SqlMethods.Like() or any other method with the same

signature and class name.

A custom timeout can be set for a LINQ query (see

LinqExtensionMethods.Timeout()).

ToFutureValue() can be used with aggregates on LINQ queries (see NH-3184).

Full list of changes:

[3.3.3]

https://nhibernate.jira.com/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=10000&version=11740

1197 icons regularly updated!

Posted by jasper22 at 16:25 | Sunday, March 17, 2013

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