Messages

126

Living Room / Re: Encrypted DNS queries via OpenDNS dnscrypt for Windows / linux / BSD / iOS / OSX

« on: March 29, 2012, 05:31 AM »

So you use OpenDNS-Secure to look up a website IP but when you visit the website the IP address you are going to is still clear??? Surely anyone who wants to can just do a reverse look up to find where you were going (or if is is your ISP reporting back to Big Brother lust look up the IP at their own DNS server!!!)

-Carol Haynes (March 28, 2012, 04:46 PM)

Short of using an SSH Tunnel, the IP address would remain clear.

MOSTLY, the biggest deal is that DNS queries is a method that ISPs and corporations can easily use to track (or block) your behavior. Now, that easy mechanism isn't so easy.

127

Living Room / Re: A Patent Denied? What is this world coming to? Sanity?

« on: March 29, 2012, 04:53 AM »

Depends on what political side you're on. If you're on the liberal side, you might think sanity was coming back, but then you might check yesterday's Supreme Court ruling on other things. If you're on the conservative side, same situation, one decision seems sane, the other not.

128

Living Room / Re: Google is being suspicious

« on: March 28, 2012, 03:32 PM »

Taking a look at it, it seems to just be rogue Google blogger accounts and such (many of which have domain names of their own).

129

Living Room / Re: Google is being suspicious

« on: March 28, 2012, 10:33 AM »

I would be curious to learn what that actually means.

130

Screenshot Captor / Re: how to install Screenshot Captor for All users of a computer

« on: March 28, 2012, 09:58 AM »

Make sure you point it to a directory that all user accounts can write to.

-mouser (March 28, 2012, 09:35 AM)

e.g. The 'Public' folders  ...

SSC FTW

131

Living Room / Re: Windows 8 is just a Service/crapware pack for Windows 7

« on: March 26, 2012, 07:23 AM »

The only thing I am interested in are the new server editions from Windows. In a Microsoft video I saw some impressive functional (ribbon-less) improvements in that division.  

-Shades (March 26, 2012, 07:10 AM)

Have you ever tried to use a server edition for non-server (e.g. workstation) purposes? By default, Internet Explorer is locked down so tight you literally can't browse the web, lol. So, of course, everyone installs Firefox. Also, they are far from being 'user friendly' in general - as far average user appeal goes, and even technical user appeal. They are designed for specific tasks, and usually tasks far in excess of what any home user needs. After all, Windows 7 (all normal editions of Windows NT) will work fine as a server of all types themselves, even including (optionally) IIS. However, the UI and default settings are a lot different.

132

Living Room / Re: I'm Going to Build a PC. Suggestions?

« on: March 26, 2012, 03:28 AM »

http://www.tomshardw...59.html#xtor=RSS-182  ... here, just popped up NOW, so should be current.

133

MEWLO Web Framework / Re: OLD - Unfinished Web project: YUMPS

« on: March 26, 2012, 01:28 AM »

Cool.  I have a couple of entrepreneur friends here, I'll see what they think.  I also was introduced to the venture capitalist system here a couple of months ago, and they made it sound easier than I was imagining, so I was going to check that out also.

-superboyac (March 12, 2012, 10:43 AM)

Don't get me started on this ;p. Everyone wants easy money.. have a mere 'idea', go tell it to someone, and get a million bucks to start your company .. Too many ideas out there, too little implemention. Myself, I 'just do it'. The VC guys know what is up by now though, the age where they just handed out money to any web project are over .. at least I hope . It really became more like a get-rich-quick scheme than anything. Found some random company doing X, don't worry that much about how great it is, but make it good enough, or threatening enough, to be acquired by a larger corporation.

134

MEWLO Web Framework / Re: OLD - Unfinished Web project: YUMPS

« on: March 26, 2012, 01:25 AM »

Very nice! Indeed, you may be onto something big here. These days, CMS backed sites are the vast majority.. so you're talking about a huge market, and a compelling divergent vision that many will like.

135

Living Room / Re: I'm Going to Build a PC. Suggestions?

« on: March 26, 2012, 01:06 AM »

One thing: If possible, try to go with passive cooling on your graphics adapters. That may not be possible since you want a gaming system. In my case, not needing heavy duty GPU stuff, passive cooling was an option. The GPU fan always seems to be the first to go out on me, and often the loudest, but maybe it's just my dirty air ;p. So, I have been very pleased with passively cooled graphics adapters.

136

General Software Discussion / Re: Whats your preferred web browser?

« on: March 25, 2012, 02:13 AM »

Not this topic again ;p. Everyone has their own preference. Opera is an *excellent* web browser though and had zooming capabilities that were years ahead of its time (other browsers have only recently caught up). It still is my preference for Mobile use. These days, whichever you pick is good enough. Myself, it's Opera Mobile, Chrome, and Firefox. Internet Explorer is the only browser I try to never use, though even it has gotten a lot better than it used to be. I get sick of Chrome, and go back to Firefox. Get sick of Firefox, go back to Chrome. However, now that Google is integrating more of its online services into Chrome-specific code, they may very well try to 'tie' us Google users into Chrome.. Well, they already are in fact. At first they also offered the same extended capabilities via a Firefox or IE plug-in, but now it's Chrome only ;o

137

Living Room / Re: Kazakhstan's glorious anthem mishap

« on: March 24, 2012, 11:44 PM »

LOL, how the heck does this accidentally happen? My answer: It doesn't.

138

Developer's Corner / Re: The tricky issue of structuring a database log table for your web service

« on: March 24, 2012, 08:09 AM »

The root problem I believe you describe is not being able to create a log system generic enough to handle any type of data thrown at it, and in any quantity. I am not sure if using additional tables with foreign indexes is most optimal or not either, but it works. You may end up having to create log type specific tables though to cover the needs at hand, rather than try to be generic.

If there are millions of log events involved, you'll probably end up having to create a specialized logging system for it, regardless of what additional measures are taken. It would have to be highly optimal, or you'd need a powerful server one.

Someone who is a database expert can probably best answer this. That is a field into itself, as you know. And while we can easily create, maintain, and manipulate databases... the real SQL database guru's out there can probably give you a lot more input than me.

139

Developer's Corner / Re: The tricky issue of structuring a database log table for your web service

« on: March 24, 2012, 07:17 AM »

You enumerated the feasible ways to do it, though nuances of them are available. To mitigate the impact of a log growing excessively large, old or uncommon events can be moved to an ancillary 'archive' table. If a preliminary search in the primary table fails, your code must then join up with the secondary 'archive' table... or perhaps a properly written SQL statement will be equally as efficient and do the same thing all-in-one. As with everything databases, it is all about structure. I don't think there's a magic bullet, and optimization will depend heavily on the type and frequency of query.

Additional fields can be supplied, through foreign key links, while still maintaining use of a single log table. They can be dependent on the event type, again enumerated in a different table with a foreign key into it.

140

Developer's Corner / Re: Invoicing & inventory problem for my business.

« on: March 24, 2012, 07:07 AM »

@superboyac: Trust me, I'm not that sharp ;p.

our only real "external" issue is triggering the activity from a received email. With a product like Filemaker and AlphaFive you ask (and search) on their forums and you probably get a few good answers.  Should be fairly easy, a lot depends on the email product used (Note: Filemaker may have some email integration/hooks.)  Let's say you use Eudora but prefer Thunderbird or TheBat! for this app. You should be able POP-ify a Gmail account so that you could work that account with Thunderbird/Bat so you do not have to change your own personal email preference. "Pushing" the email response should be fairly simple, built in to the product (one of the reasons you purchase an environment instead of simply doing more basic raw code, as in a scripting language).

-Steven Avery (March 23, 2012, 11:20 PM)

I advise against using a mechanism such as this. It is better to have the server send the response email than some POP3 client handling a rule. It is extremely easy to code, perhaps easier than setting up a local client in many ways, and the server is more likely to be 'always up'. Well, this should be the obvious superior solution. For many, it is simply taking a step into something you've not done before. You'll find it is *very* easy to send an email from your server via PHP (or other) though. Just my two cents.

Even events that require file manipulation should be done on the server, and - again - ironically can often easier be done there. PHP and other scripting languages have grown so robust that you can do more with them than the 'rules' of any email client, that's for sure

141

Living Room / Re: Employers asking job seekers for Facebook passwords

« on: March 23, 2012, 08:10 PM »

http://digg.com/news...p;utm_source=diggapi

Congress to save the day! I wonder if they'll actually get this done ... We gotta give them credit when they do something useful, if they end up doing it.

142

ProcessTamer / Re: Wildcard for process kill

« on: March 22, 2012, 07:14 PM »

UNTIL mouser gets this added to Process Tamer, and I'm sure he will in time...

Process Lasso supports 'disallowed processes', even by wildcard. This is one of its 'always free' features. I'd understand if you prefer Process Tamer, mouser's application is more than worthy, and I understand a loyalty to him. You can always go back, switch as needed, LOL. The two *will* run OK in tandem, so long as there are no conflicting rules. I actually made sure of this. It will not be optimal at all, but it will be fine.

143

Living Room / Re: Coding Government - (Ted.com video - very good)

« on: March 22, 2012, 11:07 AM »

Haven't watched or read.. but something like this is the next revolution... direct democracy. However, it is also scary. Just look at Youtube comments if you'd like to be scared.

144

General Software Discussion / Re: Chrome Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« on: March 22, 2012, 11:06 AM »

RSS Subscription Extension

Others I've found totally optional, but handy

145

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: automate delete files from a .7z archive

« on: March 22, 2012, 10:18 AM »

I am sure someone here has the time to explain it to ya.. there are multiple people more than qualified. It's really very easy stuff at the command line. I wish I had more time, sorry. If I do get more time, I'll try to help. It is doable though, and easier than you think.

If you have multiple files to work on, a BATCH file with a file based loop will work great. There are plenty of BATCH experts here I'm sure.

146

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: automate delete files from a .7z archive

« on: March 22, 2012, 06:42 AM »

Yes, simple. Use the command line version of 7z, named 7z.exe. Then with a simple command to it (run it to get help) you can delete files from the archive. Create a batch file if you need to do more than one operation.

147

Living Room / Re: Windows 8 is just a Service/crapware pack for Windows 7

« on: March 22, 2012, 05:09 AM »

Vista was the big upgrade to the NT kernel. It allowed all that followed. Vista is NT 6.0.

Windows 7 was indeed a polishing of Vista, that's why it was NT 6.1.

Windows 8 is Windows 7 with the Metro UI slaped on top, Start Menu removed, default Font size adjusted, minor cosmetic changes to allow for touch screens (e.g. Window title in center instead of left justified). You know, stuff for touch screens.

No major kernel changes, although it will be built for a new platform (ARM), something largely facilitated with the kernel changes made in Vista, though supported ever since NT4.

On the ARM platform, from what I understand, Windows will be locking everything down to their own App Store - as they have no legacy apps to deal with since none are compiled for ARM processors (only x86 or x86-64 [AMD64].. or in rare cases IA64 before it died). I love the idea of getting Microsoft's approval before releasing an app ;o. NOT. However, it will mean less malware for Windows on ARM.

148

Living Room / Re: Encrypted DNS queries via OpenDNS dnscrypt for Windows / linux / BSD / iOS / OSX

« on: March 21, 2012, 10:42 PM »

Steve Gibson actually mentioned this, me, and my blog post on this and the mod_status 'vulnerability' on big servers in his last Security Now podcast. Doing what I can to save the Internet, lol ;p.

I noticed OpenDNS has extended capabilities you can turn on or off. You can choose to have it log your DNS queries, so you can see what sites everyone in your household is visiting, for instance.. block sites.. or you can have it not log ANYTHING, and it says it throws away all DNS queries. Of course, I opted for the latter, for privacy. That said, I'm not too concerned about anyone knowing what sites I visit, but I still like my privacy. At least this way you've got your DNS separate from your ISP or Google, and encrypted to protect from Sniffers. For these features you must sign up for an account, which also offers a DNS client to update your dynamic IP address at home (so it can track you if your IP address changes).

Don't bother signing up at all (even for their normal service) and you're probably most private, as their DNS servers (plaintext and encrypted) are open no matter what.

149

Living Room / Re: Windows 8 is just a Service/crapware pack for Windows 7

« on: March 21, 2012, 08:43 PM »

Wasn't Windows 7 basically a service pack update to Windows Vista?

I mean, look at the version number. Windows 7 identifies itself as Windows 6.5. . . 

-Deozaan (March 21, 2012, 08:26 PM)

Windows 6.1 not 6.5 ...

150

Living Room / Re: Encrypted DNS queries via OpenDNS dnscrypt for Windows / linux / BSD / iOS / OSX

« on: March 21, 2012, 08:03 PM »

There's no need to apply for it... you can 'just use it'. Yea, they put that beta test application there, but the code is 'up', pre-built for you.