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August, 2006

Attacked!

A few minutes ago, I received a guestbook entry with a link to the url http://picocouple.oldledy2001.net/index.html. Curiously, I clicked on the link, only to find out that it redirects to a page on http://xearl.com/ which contains a threat detected by NOD32 as "Win32/Agent.NDA trojan". The site xearl.com itself has the message: "This site is closed."The attack was from IP Address : 80.50.82.90 which...

Bill Cosby and the continuing debate about the black poor

By Michael Eric Dyson For more than a year, I've been embroiled in a public debate with Bill Cosby about poor blacks. Cosby has been harshly critical of the poor, blaming them for their plight and arguing that personal responsibility is the key to their success. Cosby has dismissed both social forces and the legacy of racism in berating the poor for their many failures--bad parenting, bad language...

What's In A Name

Last night I had a chance of doing some work for an Italian family. When I told them that my name was Alfero and I believe its Italian, they told me that the name meant "Iron". I got very excited because I figured that closely matches my physique and personality :), until I did a little more research, only to find out iron is actually "Ferro" in Italian. Well, that was a little close, but that only...

Patent Law Ruling Threatens Free and Open Source Software

In a recent decision, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed its own "suggestion test" as the main method for determining when a patent should be found obvious over knowledge in the public domain. Under this test, even the most obvious incremental advances and add-ons can be patented unless the Patent Office or a defendant in court produces a document that shows someone else suggested...

RIAA Backs Down 1 Day After Being Counter-sued

Warner v. Stubbs, in Oklahoma, the defendant filed her answer and counterclaim against the RIAA on August 23, 2006. In it she likened the RIAA's tactics to "extortion". The very next day, on August 24, 2006, the RIAA turned around and asked the Judge for permission to withdraw its case: More…

ASP.NET Articles

Stay up-to-date with the latest tips, tricks, and techniques in these articles.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and ASP.NET Developers

In this article we're going to cover some basic concepts on what you can do in order to make your ASP.NET application as spider and search engine friendly as possible.

Optimizing Your ASP.NET Pages for Faster Loading and Better Performance

In this article the author discusses some options for speeding up the loading of your ASP.NET pages. Some tips include using caching, control use, and data handling techniques.

Client-side programming with Atlas

Microsoft has developed its own approach to AJAX development called Atlas, which promises browser ubiquity as well as tight, albeit optional, ASP.NET integration. In this column, we survey the Atlas architecture to get a better understanding of how you may use it in your development work.

Advanced Caching Techniques in ASP.NET 2.0

In this article, you'll learn about many of the new caching enhancements in the ASP.NET 2.0 framework. First, you'll learn what we mean by caching and how it is done using ASP.NET Framework 1.1. Next, you’ll learn how caching support has been integrated into the new DataSource controls. Finally, you'll learn how to configure and take advantage of SQL Cache Invalidation.

Advanced C# Website Search

Explains the process of adding 'advanced' search engine features like Stemming, Stop words, etc to a C#-based web-crawling indexer and search page that can be used on any Web site. Includes solution to the problem of Binary serialization and deserialization across Assembly versions. Full source for the spider and search included.

Passing Server-Side Values to Client-Side Script

In this article Peter describes best practices for taking server-side values (whether from a database, web.config or a calculated value) and sending them to the client to be used by JavaScript.

Preventing Spam With An ASP.NET CAPTCHA Control

A CAPTCHA image displays text that is readable to humans, but not to computers. The concept is useful because it provides a means to filter out automated programs while allowing real users to pass through. Bots for example, which spam comments on weblogs and other dynamic websites, are a fairly pervasive problem and even a regularly new and low traffic blog like this was getting dozens of spam...

Call users from your Gmail

A new feature for Gmail being rolled out right now allows you to call contacts from within your Gmail account. Currently you must be signed into the Google Talk application for it to show up, but hopefully soon the feature will be available to users who don't have the instant messenger installed. More…

Internet Explorer 7 for XP Release Candidate 1

[ABC News] For those of you who've been following the saga of IE7, RC1 is another in a long line of releases preceding the browser's launch. The RC1 build includes improvements in performance, stability, security, and application compatibility. Since beta 3, the user interface has been polished, support for CSS has been enhanced, French and Spanish language support has been added, and an auto-uninstall...

A scrolling revolution?

[Macworld] Earlier today, Logitech announced a new line of mice called, with sufficient bravado, Revolution. Comprising a full-size home model, the MX, and a smaller (though still sizable) portable model, the VX, the Revolution line aims to, as the company so modestly put it, “transform the experience of finding and manipulating the vast amount of digital content on a person’s computer or on...

SanDisk Drops a Flash Bomb

[ABC News]With the new 8GB e280, SanDisk has pulled way ahead of Apple in the flash memory game. This morning, SanDisk announced something that should make lots of holiday shoppers happy: an 8GB version of the SanDisk Sansa e200 series—officially called the e280.

.NET POP 3 Component

Pop3 Component written completely in managed code.Allow you to monitor your POP3 mailbox.Support attachments, HTML email or text email.

18 ways to stay focused at work

[Blogma] We felt a little guilty after posting yesterday's item that pointed to "10 tips on doing nothing at work," so we'll try to make amends.

Linux's iPod Generation Gap

An anonymous submittor says "Today's young generation can use Linux on the desktop provided it works with their iPod. Linux on the desktop still hasn't reached that stage and has to be compatible with multimedia applications like iTunes and iPod if it has to beat Microsoft's Windows dominance on the desktop. Open source gurus at LinuxWorld discuss solutions to make Linux more consumer-friendly."...

Dell to offer More Products with AMD Inside

The PC maker will offer desktops and servers powered by AMD processors, starting in September.

Color Schemer

Color Schemer is a handy site (and software tool) for you web designers to help you pick your colors.

10 tips on doing nothing at work

[Blogma] It's not that we advocate subversion in the workplace or anything, honest. We just want to help our readers keep their bosses and co-workers on their toes. With that in mind, we offer these 10 tips on how to get away with doing nothing at work. The pointers are apparently meant as satire, but we think they could be pretty effective--if we were so inclined to try them, which of course would...

A Nation Divided Over Piracy

Wired news describes how Sweden's pirate system has gone totally out of control and how pirates, with outstanding public support, are determined to force a paradigm shift It's not the problem of the pirates to figure out how to compensate artists or encourage invention away from the current intellectual property system -- someone else will figure that out. Their job is just to tear down the flawed...

Secrets of the Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay was born in the late summer of 2003, in a plain motherboard box in Mexico with a slow radio uplink to the net. While at the center of a heated debate, The Pirate Bay neither operates in a black market nor lays claim to a loophole of international law. Like its progenitor organization, Piratbyran, the administrators of the Pirate Bay believe the law is wrong.

SQL Pocket Guide, Second Edition

Graeme Williams writes "So many dimensions are folded into this compact book that it took me more than a few moments to see what I was looking at. In the space of 184 pages, SQL Pocket Guide, Second Edition documents, explains, illustrates and compares the most common SQL statements from Oracle (10g), DB2 (8.2), SQL Server (2005), MySQL (5.0) and PostgreSQL (8.1), with occasional notes on previous...

Rocky road for mobile Linux

(InfoWorld) - Linux has great potential in the mobile arena, but establishing it there will be a tall order, industry participants told a LinuxWorld Conference and Expo audience.

Death to Caps Lock

A movement to force hardware manufacturers to eradicate the Caps Lock key from the computer keyboard is afoot on the web.

Google Analytics Now Open To Everyone

The Google Analytics Blog has announced that you no longer need an invitation to receive the Website statistics tracking for free. Just head on over to the Google Analytics site and login with you Google account. It will then take you through the steps that are needed to setup your Website.

CSS Frames

One of the arguments for using frames has always been that they allow you to keep parts of the layout on-screen at all times. This can be emulated with CSS, as described here

Microsoft Released Windows Product Key Update Tool

In the Get Genuine program from Microsoft, they released a Windows Product Key Update Tool. So after getting a legal license they can choose to keep their pirated windows installation and change the key to a genuine one. So they won't have to reinstall their PC.Linkified: http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/purchase/UpdateInstructions.aspx (actual tool)

Samuel L. Jackson on The Daily Show

"Do you die?" "No man! I'm the f*n hero!" "You know why?" "SEQUEL!"

Dell Recalls 4 Million Batteries

Sony batteries used in several Dell laptop models are being replaced because of a demonstrated fire hazard. It's the largest electronics-related recall involving the Consumer Products Safety Commission.