Posts by Infarction

I kind of want to see what Leopard is like. Do any of you like it?

It's a Mac OS, which I've not used (or not enough so's it would count). I couldn't stand it. And the iTunes-ish file browser first cracked me up, then pissed me off. But really, my opinion values little for OS X.

gibait lannage but serunsons pc only did 10/100 so he never got to reap the benefits

100 to 1G is overkill for anything except high-traffic network segments; games hardly, if ever, fall into that category.

I was thinking it was maybe bearable, and then the singer started... I'll second jwenting's opinion...

oh yeah, I forgot to mention locking it in a safe, spilling molted led ovet that safe and launching it into the sun so no hackers will get their hands on it :D

Perfect! Now we have a workable security system... some usability issues to work out in the future, but it'll be secure :D

Wanna avoid ALL threat of a security attack? Write your own O.S. With zero installed base, I promise nobody will attack it; promise.

Wanna buy a system that is cheap, has oodles of software that is cheap/free, and doesn't require any technical knowledge to use? Preditors lie in wait.

Place your bet.

Making the assumption that this custom OS will be binary compatible with other commonplace OSs (just for the sake of allowing the user to have some software), there will still be attacks on either the installed software or simply on the user's gullibility, or maybe other attacks like DNS cache poisoning, where it doesn't matter what computer the user is running.

pull the modem cable out :)

That would resolve all internet based attacks, but if the computer can be physically compromised then it's still not "completely secure." :P

Try and find The Conquerers Expansion Pack for AOE II its good.

IIRC, Spanish were way overpowered in the expansion. And Brits ftw. But yeah, AoE 2 was good times. Freshman year of college, my roommate and I would play a game every morning before classes :P

I use an outline form, but the amount of notes taken varies by content and how well I think I'll remember it. For example, I had a meeting a few weeks ago I took 3 notes, then went back to my office and sent a 1/2 page email to my manager summarizing the meeting. Other times I've taken many more notes and still couldn't remember what had been discussed.

I had a friend wake up half-way through one of his finals once...

I tend to keep my screens at full brightness unless I'm in a room with very little or no lighting. I also try to avoid using a computer at all in such rooms.

I wouldn't say it's particularly geeky. I have a group of friends from mixed backgrounds (and some are definitely geeks but others not so much) and we LAN a couple times a year.

On the other hand, when you have people who bring their own table, chair, power strip, gigabit switch, monitor, gaming mouse, joystick, and have a special carrying strap for their desktop, it can be a little geeky...

IMO *nix sucks because it is soooo complex. I know a lot of people will disagree and that's ok too because we each have our own preferences. Some will even say MAC is the way to go.

The complexity of a *nix system is increasingly becoming up to the user. Ubuntu and friends are becoming much more usable for the average user (see: people who don't want to configure text files to setup their system). On the other hand, the available software for *nix platforms and the compatibility (or lack thereof) with their Windows counterparts continue to make them inviable for many.

Access is available with the Professional and Ultimate editions of Office. AFAIK, those are the only ones.

I used Linux for a while, but I'm back to Windows.

On the computer, I occasionally go to LAN parties with my friends and we've played mostly DotA but some Starcraft, Supreme Commander, and MW4. Other than that, I don't play much on the computer (Halo 3 ftw)

Taking a wild guess at this (since I'm not very familiar with IIS), I'd first assume that for some reason it's not set to process .aspx files through the ASP engine. My assumption is largely based on the fact that the ASP markup should never reach the client. Unfortunately, I don't know how to reconfigure that properly.

One potential workaround is to create your projects as File System websites. This will cause them to be processed by Cassini, which is a mini-IIS packaged with VWD, instead of using your computer's IIS. Note that this will cause complications if you try to deploy your websites to a server, as the server will use IIS. But if you're just playing around with ASP.NET, file system webs should get you going for now.

When it says press any key to boot from CD, does it have a "....." that shows up one . at a time? If so, your computer is probably set to read from the CD first so it shows this option. If you don't press a key, it will then fall back to booting from the hard drive, which is where your new install should be.

I had talked to people and so many have made vista only 40gb or even less. What am I doing wrong that I have this happening? I also found a file called winsxs. It is packed with amd64 stuff. Does everyone have this?

The sxs stands for side-by-side. This is to aid you in running 64-bit and 32-bit stuff at the same time.

System restore points take up a ton of disc space. I found 7GB of them on my 2 week old laptop the other day. Open the disk cleanup wizard, go to the More Options tab, and hit the button for System Restore and Shadow Copies. Hopefully that'll be your jackpot... :)

Underweight: 6', and about 9.5 stone (I'm an American, and I vote for using stone; makes the numbers go way down :P).

Or, to put it a different way, I'd wear 30"x34" jeans (with a belt) if I could find them in the stores...

You are of course correct, Narue.

I often take my birthyear and center it with my favorite food. Something like "19kumquat84"

this post reminded me of good times

That said, the easy-to-remember is important and not a word is important. Another example I've seen is taking something like "4 score and 7 years" and turning it into 4s&7y, or using mixing in some 1337, so that awesomepassword becomes 4w3$0m3|>a5$w0rd.

There's also ongoing research into alternates to text-based passwords, such as using a sequence of images (e.g. given 9, select the correct one, and have a sequence of, say 4), or using inkblots to help users remember strong passwords.

We had our snow a few weeks ago, now we're back go glorious rain... :P

You really can't ignore the fact that there are *zero* currently effective (e.g working) Linux viruses and thousands of windows ones. One Linux and UNIX, you really just have to worry about being attacked, in which you are actually a more diserable target.

I'm so glad you brought this up. While I will acquiesce that there are few viruses in the wild against *nix systems relative to Windows (which we might discuss later in this thread :icon_twisted:), that's not to say that the system is more secure. As coincidence would have it, today I happened upon an old blog post that you may find a little surprising (obviously, take it with a grain of salt, but the numbers are somewhat impressive): link
[edit:] for some humor, here's a response from a pro-Redhat perspective: link :D

That said, the OS itself is getting to be a very secure bit of code. It's the apps on top of it that contain most of the exploitable code. And to make matters worse, by some estimates, over 1/2 of the attacks on the Internet today aren't even code related. User education is [currently] perhaps the most effective security investment today (though hard to market...)

If you're using VS 2008 (or VWD 2008) you can get the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit (available somewhere on http://asp.net/ajax), which includes a tab extender, as seen here. As I recall, this extender is applied to a multiview to get this functionality.

Pre-response disclaimer: I skimmed your code quickly to find what part of it was related to this query, and then took a guess at the problem.

In the lines

sqlcom.Parameters["@Name"].Value=((TextBox)e.Item.Cells[3].Controls[0]).Text;
sqlcom.Parameters["@Describes"].Value=(e.Item.FindControl("TextBox"));
sqlcom.Parameters["@Money"].Value=(e.Item.FindControl("TextBox"));

notice that for the first parameter you assign it a String (the .Text property of the control), whereas the other ones you are attempting to assign the control. You probably forgot to add the .Text or something like that.

Hope I got it right :icon_wink:

PS: in the future, please post your code inside [code] and [/code] tags, and please try to only post the relevant code segments. Thanks!

add the runat="server" attribute to your html tag and it should show up in the code behind.

As this has turned out to be an interesting learning experience, I may as well point out that the MSIL for the switch and the if-elseif are different. Apparently, switch is directly supported in MSIL.

That said, such a minor optimization is silly to worry about. :P

And for a login system, a database query really is the best easiest way to do it, especially if you already have a DB in place.

*exeunts gracefully*

Just to give you an idea, my laptop has a 100GB hard drive (well, 87 after marketing scams and a recovery partition), and with Vista Ultimate, VS 2008 Team Suite, Office 2007 Ultimate, a handful of other small programs and about 25GB of music I still have 15GB left over.

Start -> Control Panel -> Security -> Turn automatic updating on or off, select a setting other than "Install new updates automatically". It's the first thing I do whenever I set up my own box.

Keep this in mind, if.. end if statements are faster than Select Case statements. However, if.. elseif.. end if statements are SLOWER than Select Case statements.

So if you are only looking for one value like the above code, use if.. end if. If you are looking for different ones, avoid elseif and use select case methods because it is drastically faster when using many of them.

It's faster? Really? Has someone benchmarked this? I'd be willing to bet that the compiler takes a Select Case and turns it into an if-elseif-else chain.

That said, if you're using a database, then you just need to run a select statement like Fungus said and see if you get a result. That way you don't need a case for every user on your site.

You don't actually serve (e.g. link to) the masterpage. The .aspx file refers to the masterpage, so the server knows to put everything together correctly. This allows you to use the same masterpage on your entire site (e.g. to preserve a constant layout easily) but still link to each page. So, you'll need a content page for your masterpage and then you just link to that :)

Well, your file is currently set up to use a VB.NET code file (see the Language="VB" in the Page declaration?) and it looks for that code in Default.aspx.vb. If you add a new page to your website, and select C# as the code-behind language, you'll be ready.

I've attached a screenshot from Visual Studio 2008 (I don't have 2005 handy, but they're similar at this point). The red arrow shows where the language is. The checkbox by the green arrow selects if you want your code at the top of the page (like you did - this is ASP style), or in a separate file dedicated to code (this would be YourPage.aspx.cs, which is ASP.NET style).

As an aside, I recommend you try out Visual Web Developer 2008. There's a lot of new features that have been added in the new version. :)

The Unix-based "viruses" seem to be pretty lame, in my opinion. I have yet to see a real virus exist on Mac OS X, the only thing close to it that I've seen is the LeapA Trojan which works by a user downloading, installing and entering their administrator password to authorize the install...

True enough, but the number of viruses that target operating systems is pretty steadily decreasing. Unix-based and Vista* systems are both rather difficult to exploit, so far as the OS itself is concerned. It's a lot easier to write programs that take advantage of 3rd party software made by companies who don't want to afford the costs of hardening their applications, such as Symantec's AV software (just had to throw that in :P). Also, there's a disturbing trend towards social engineering attacks (i.e. phishing) that cannot be programmatically distinguished from authentic software. The stereotypical Linux user (though this is changing) is probably best suited to handle this new attack vector, as they [stereotypically] are more aware of such methods. The average Mac or Windows user is probably quite vulnerable to this sort of attack.

Maybe this should be in a different thread... but it's a fun discussion :D

*: Vista is still young, so time will tell but it's been largely rearchitectured with security in mind. It is certainly doing better than previous Windows versions.

I got a new 19 inch LCD screen for my computer. YAY!

I'm going to hope that this isn't your Christmas present. It's no fun knowing beforehand. :P

Voting via the internet is currently being experimented with in several countries.
It is possible, but there are still security issues to be overcome (especially how to make certain that the person casting the vote is really the person he says she is, to prevent people selling their access votes to the highest bidder).

There's also issues of anonymity and secure transmission of the votes. Almost anything on the internet can be messed up with a man-in-the-middle attack, and a good many users don't know enough about how to avoid these.

Or start giving warnings to those who do it.

IMHO this is the better plan. It should be considered unacceptable behavior to leave such messages, whether or not the words show up or the comment is rephrased.

RTS = Starcraft. 'Nuff said.

Looks like your 8 months of training is paying off :P

I won already, it was like my 3rd try.

Those iMacs are cool, my brother in law has one so I can envy him. I guess, if you sit in front of a computer a lot, you might as well have something that looks neat and unboring.

Sitting in front of a computer a lot, I put a lot more emphasis on having a system I know how to use than one that looks pretty. After enough hours, the eye candy wears off anyways. As I've never used a Mac very much, I find it very frustrating to try and use them now, and besides, Vista looks just as good (IMHO).

And oh please. I havent applied to any Universities yet, and I'm beginning to think American Universities might not be such good options after seeing first-hand what they produce and try to pass off as "intelligence" (assuming you actually went to one and don't replace hard-drives at your local geek squad).

Please don't give up hope. While there are some USians who go around spreading FUD about the rest of the world, most of us really are nice, mostly intelligent people. It's just the few bad eggs deal. And since credentials are so important in this thread, you can trust me because my degree is from the 16/17th best university in the world according to the earlier links. :P

Yeah, that was poorly phrased. I guess I meant that the level of our universities tends to be higher than most, whereas our grade school is lower level.

I actually think that words can be worse and more damaging then a smack because while you quickly forget the pain from a smack you never really forget the lesson learnt. Where as you will always remeber the pain from a harsh word especially when that word comes from a loved one. I also think that it is very easy to say something that is not going to be easily forgotten.

I think it's also a lot easer to associate pain as a consequence of an action or behavioral pattern than to associate a verbal response. Furthermore, the verbal memory tends to stay longer, whereas with a smack it's more along the lines of "if I do X, then I'll get hurt" and that's that.

Off-topic, but Josh, out of curiosity, which World Class Institution for Higher Education are you currently enrolled at?

Back on topic, I think it's fair to say, as I intended in my previous post, that the US has - in general - a better infrastructure for higher education. This is good, but our poor quality of basic education really drags us down. And we get some really unabashed ignoramuses who come out of said system and provide to the world an image of Americans which, frankly, I'm embarrassed about. Our culture also contributes to the ignorance of our population... if only it were true that ignorance were bliss.

Or is it, Josh?

Words can be just as painful as a physically punishment.

Moreso, IMO, but a good smack can get the point across quite well. Of course, abuse should not be tolerated, but I think a little physical consequence does help to train a child.

They are? What, are do yall brits have a better education system or something? America not the best in something?? I refuse to believe that... lol ;-)

Well anyway, the SAT results backed me up a bit.

American high school sucks. A lot of places around the world tend to have more difficult curricula in what we call high school, and we make up for it in what we call university.

No, I don't have facts to back this up. But I went through our system and came out rather dissatisfied.

>>What was your career field?
Statistical Analyst for the Comptroller (moneybags). Worked closely with Accounting & Finance as well as Budget. We used to loose millions of dollars just in rounding the money to the nearest 100 million. That's probably why I can never keep my personal checkbook balanced, and why I let my wife do it :)

Yeah, I've found that rounding my checkbook to the nearest 100 million really doesn't help either :P

If the lazy one is the white guy, then the company will probably fire him. However, if the lazy one is the black guy, the company may choose not to fire him, on the grounds that if fired, he may choose to sue the company for his termination. Rather than admitting it's his own fault for his laziness and unwillingness to do the job, he may claim he was fired for his skin color. Given that a sizable portion of the American population would be willing to buy that explanation without looking deeper into the issue (<sarcasm>after all, everyone 'knows' that corporate entities are evil, cruel, racist monstrosities, right?</sarcasm>), the company may decide that the effort to get rid of the dead weight employee will cost more than the removal of the employee is worth.

Yeah, that's a definite problem. And it happens by gender as well. Here in WA, employers at least have a 90 day period in which they can fire a new employee without cause. But it's still really difficult to fire an employee after that. A paving company I used to work for was in a lawsuit for firing one of their female truck drivers. Their reason was that she'd been in 2 accidents in the last 2 years, but she was suing on the grounds that it was based on her gender. The fact that it actually got filed shows how sad things are...

I've also noticed throughout my high school career that the minorities got special privileges and advantages when it came to the college application process. Affirmative Action and other government policies/funding helped primarily students of a certain race. Is this not racism? If anything, the minorities should be appalled with these special initiatives. Basically, the government is saying minority students are not good enough.. not smart enough.. not 'white enough', and thus need special treatment from the government. This is complete bull crap, and is fueling racial tensions. Colleges should not have a goal for 'racial diversity', but should instead admit the students that are best qualified.

Affirmative action is a double-edged sword, and it cuts people on both sides. On the one hand, yes, it's basically legislated racism against the majority, which inspires some resentment. On the other, it does ensure that some portion of the, as I've mentioned a few times, traditionally underclassed and therefore underprivileged class is able to acquire the same higher education as the more privileged class, which is great as a lot of them deserve it. America's privilege tends to lie with the white population (to be fair: there are whites who are poor and there are non-whites who are wealthy). Also, Aff. Action was established at a time when racism was still very much a problem in this country. It may still be in certain areas; I know my own experiences have been quite sheltered from the African American community at least (due to …

Social skills? That's rather rude.. Actually, people have said that I am an overly-aggressive debater.. but I am simply portraying my opinion.. If someone could show me that I am wrong then I would gladly concede.

The common consensus, as I view it, is simply that your posts have little tact. They are very opinionated, which is fine, but they're also quite cutting and, on occasion, too personal. I portray my opinion as well, but I spend a small bit of time thinking about how it's phrased and how that might be interpreted. I recommend the practice.

And no, I'm not perfect either (hell, I suck at arguing), but I like to think that at least my posts are as inoffensive as I intend for them to be. Unless you're aiming for offensive posts...?

Also, there is a reason black people are discriminated against in America.. who are they portrayed as? Gangsters. This is what they want, though.. Many black people, for some reason, like to be tough gangsters. They think it's cool or something. The fact that black people commit more crime than any other race does not help their image either. I know, it isn't fair to judge people based on the majority and generalizations.. but it's natural and logical.

IMHO, this is quite similar to what you said earlier about the AA (African American) population telling themselves stuff. While I disagree that they've convinced themselves that education isn't important, I do think that they are the main cause of the gangsta image being portrayed as cool and even in cases an ideal. And the young impressionable minds see their pop idols behaving that way and try (somewhat successfully) to emulate such behavior. Admittedly, I cringe a little every time I see somebody (of any race) walking along the sidewalk wearing huge baggy clothes, holding their pants up with one hand and their bling in place with the other... but that's a different topic :icon_wink: