Recently, I saw a trojan able to sneak itself into my f drive "System Volume Information" read-only folder without my knowledge. However when i tried to access this folder to delete the trojan, it prompts me access denied on this folder.
Why this folder is so special?
This folder is actually a part of System Restore; the tool that allows you to set points in time to roll back your computer. The System Volume Information folder is where XP stores these points and associated information that makes them accessible.
Read more about it here to change the access permission of the folder:
1. http://www.theeldergeek.com/system_volume_information_folder1.htm
2. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309531
No wonder Microsoft wants people to upgrade to Vista...WinXP is not safe by itself.
I managed to clean this trojan by using NOD32 antivirus. Yeah!
1. Session("dataSetXXXX") = dsSelect
2. dsSelect = CType(Session("dataSetXXX"), DataSet)
In (1), what if your dataset contain 60,000 rows of data?
(2), the conversion of a big session variable to a dataset will take up resources (memory usage).
The above is a WTF example of bad coding standard which I saw recently when I was doing a code review of someone's else code.
I got this from windowssecrets.com in my email today, just sharing the info...
Your private health information is migrating wholesale onto the public network with the advent of online health-care records stored in massive data centers around the world.
While the services aim to make it easier for consumers to access and manage their personal health information, the ready availability of this data also makes it much easier and less expensive for insurers to put your medical history under the microscope.
Surprised? You shouldn't be. You voluntarily grant access to that sensitive information every time you sign a waiver so that your health insurer can decide whether to pay for a doctor's visit, a prescription, or an expensive medical test.
What's more, most of the gathering and collating of this information is legal. In fact, the number of companies that have access to this information runs into the millions, say privacy advocates.
As recently as last year, only 1% to 3% of U.S. consumers had electronic versions of their health records, according to market research firm Health Industry Insights, an IDC company.
That is about to change.
The fact that two of the biggest players in the emerging world of cloud computing services — Microsoft and Google — are jumping into that arena with both feet will likely accelerate the shift to online medical records.
Microsoft kicked off the beta test of its HealthVault service almost a year ago, while Google announced its Google Health service last February and launched a beta in May. While both services are still in beta, each company has partnered with large health-care providers for pilot tests: Microsoft with Kaiser Permanente and Google with the Cleveland Clinic.
Private health data goes public by mistake
Part of consumers' reticence to sign up for electronic personal health-care records — with or without services "in the cloud" — has to do with a handful of recent high-profile data breaches. In April, the largest health insurer in the U.S., WellPoint, disclosed that records on as many as 130,000 of its customers had leaked out and become publicly available over the Internet.
To be fair, so-called cloud services aren't at fault, at least not so far. Microsoft, Google, and other companies that put your medical records online are adamant that their security is top-of-the-line. Their services are intended to give consumers greater, not less, control over who sees what by giving consumers personal ownership of their information, according to the services.
"[As a consumer], I control release of that information," Grad Conn, senior director of the Microsoft Health Solutions group, told me in describing HealthVault. A Google spokesperson expressed virtually the same assurance about Google Health. Neither company is disclosing how many users it has signed up thus far.
Indeed, consumers' control of their health data is not the core problem. It's what happens to your information after its initial release that worries privacy advocates — and with good reason. Once the data leaves the safe harbor of a secure cloud service, it's fair game for companies in several different industries.
Take, for example, prescription records.
"All 51,000 pharmacies in the U.S. are wired for data mining. Selling prescription records is a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry," states an FAQ published by Patient Privacy Rights, a major consumer-health and privacy-rights organization.
This data mining of prescription records can cost consumers big-time.
For instance, a July article in Business Week cited the case of a Louisiana couple denied health insurance because the wife took two medications that set off red flags for a prospective insurer.
Ironically, both were for "off-label" uses — that is, they were prescribed not for the maladies that the drugs were originally designed to treat. The woman's doctor prescribed an antidepressant to help her sleep due to symptoms of menopause and a hypertension drug to reduce swelling in her ankles.Although clinically she was neither depressed nor had high blood pressure, the couple's application for health insurance was denied, the article stated.
Or take the case of supermarket customers who use so-called "affinity" cards to obtain discounts at their favorite grocery. Data showing that a customer regularly buys cigarettes might be obtained by an insurer or employer and combined with a health record where the customer claimed to be a nonsmoker.
"It's interesting how they can tie all of that [information] together," Lynne Dunbrack, program director at Health Industry Insights, told Windows Secrets.
Consumer privacy may get lost in the clouds
Cloud computing is the latest buzz phrase for putting the massive processing power and storage capacity needed to provide ubiquitous computing out on servers located on the public network, or "in the cloud." Microsoft, Google, and many other online companies have embraced the idea.
Most observers — including privacy advocates — state that the move to store our health records in the cloud is inevitable. In fact, there are many benefits to consumers for having that information available virtually instantly. For example, if you were in a different city and needed to be rushed to the emergency room, your health history would be immediately available to the physicians on call.
Or, Dunbrack added, having access to a patient's commplete prescription information can help displaced persons stay alive in a hurricane-ravaged area, for example.
In fact, a survey conducted last spring for the Markle Foundation found that, of nearly 1,600 respondents, four out of five see electronic health records as useful, but many indicated that protecting the confidentiality of that information is crucial. "Nearly half called specific privacy practices 'critical' in their decision to try one out," a foundation statement said.
The downside is that storing health records online makes it easier for insurers to calculate the odds that you will be more expensive to insure than the next person. That's the rub, say privacy advocates.
Wait, you say. Isn't there a law that keeps your data from being misused? Yes and no.
It's called the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. Moreover, there are many exceptions to the law. Additionally, both Microsoft and Google claim their health services are not subject to HIPAA regulation, since they don't offer health-care services themselves.
Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, says HIPAA is far from perfect but better than no protection at all. "Before HIPAA, it really was much worse," she said. However, she agrees that "secondary use" of patient data has become an industry unto itself — a genie that will be difficult or even impossible to get back into the bottle due to the billions of dollars that can be made from it.
"Right now, disclosure of health information is out of control," Dixon said, adding ruefully, "Technology is not going to go backwards."
How to safeguard your health-care records
So, what can you do to protect yourself? Patient Privacy Rights offers these recommendations and questions to ponder as you navigate the sometimes-perilous world of electronic health records:
• Don't even think about using a personal health record (PHR) that's offered by an employer or insurer. These are the last companies with which you want to share all your personal health and daily activities.
• Don't simply rely on a "HIPAA-compliant" PHR. HIPAA has more loopholes than the tax law; millions of businesses can legally access your information without your consent.
• How do you authorize access to the information? If gaining access requires nothing more than having someone guess your password, say "no, thanks."
• Does the PHR provider have the right under its "agreements" to take, sell, or share your information?
• What security does the PHR provide?
Finally, a little personal advice: hold off signing up for any electronic health-records system for the time being. So few people have joined to date that there are bound to be problems to work out, not to mention the potential for identity theft. Let somebody else play the role of pioneer.
I found this url
http://www.aphonetracker.com/Register
to track your iphones toprevent lost.
You can see the location of your lost iphone online at the web site.
Compress PDF file and reduce the actual size of PDF document with this completely free PDF Compressor.
Free PDF Compressor removes duplicate PDF objects, optionally takes advantage of new compression features of latest PDF specifications that for many classes of documents compresses 30 - 60% better than what is possible in PDF 1.5.
Free PDF Compressor allows you to shrink PDF file by using Flate or RunLength compression algorithm. With this freeware, you are able to set the compression level to generate PDF files of smallest size.
Another benefit of this freeware utility is that you can decompress or expand any PDF file to its original size for better conversion from PDF to other formats.
http://www.nicepdf.com/PDFCompressor.exe
Microsoft is providing a small measure of relief for those purchasing TechNet Subscription. When purchasing a new Microsoft TechNet Subscription, you will be ask for a Discount Code. When prompted, simply enter TMSAM02 and instantly save 15%!
(Special Note: This Discount Code will work in any part of the world where Microsoft TechNet Subscriptions are available for purchase and is only valid for new Subscriptions.)
TestDisk is OpenSource software and is licensed under the terms of the GNU Public License (GPL).
TestDisk is a powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy.
TestDisk can
Fix partition table, recover deleted partition
Recover FAT32 boot sector from its backup
Rebuild FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 boot sector
Fix FAT tables
Rebuild NTFS boot sector
Recover NTFS boot sector from its backup
Fix MFT using MFT mirror
Locate ext2/ext3 Backup SuperBlock
Undelete files from FAT filesystem
Copy files from deleted FAT, NTFS and ext2/ext3 partitions.
TestDisk has features for both novices and experts. For those who know little or nothing about data recovery techniques, TestDisk can be used to collect detailed information about a non-booting drive which can then be sent to a tech for further analysis. Those more familiar with such procedures should find TestDisk a handy tool in performing onsite recovery.
TestDisk can find lost partitions for all of these file systems:
BeFS ( BeOS )
BSD disklabel ( FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD )
CramFS, Compressed File System
DOS/Windows FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32
HFS, HFS+ and HFSX, Hierarchical File System
JFS, IBM's Journaled File System
Linux ext2 and ext3
Linux LUKS encrypted partition
Linux RAID md 0.9/1.0/1.1/1.2
RAID 1: mirroring
RAID 4: striped array with parity device
RAID 5: striped array with distributed parity information
RAID 6: striped array with distributed dual redundancy information
Linux Swap (versions 1 and 2)
LVM and LVM2, Linux Logical Volume Manager
Mac partition map
Novell Storage Services NSS
NTFS ( Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008 )
ReiserFS 3.5, 3.6 and 4
Sun Solaris i386 disklabel
Unix File System UFS and UFS2 (Sun/BSD/...)
XFS, SGI's Journaled File System
Url:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
I am searching for hotmail pop3 access but found they have disabled it. :(
Only solution are to use OutLoook Connector with Outlook to browse your emails on hotmail.
Check out this url for more info:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA102218231033.aspx?pid=CH100622151033
For those who are interested in open source development, there is a 5 day seminar at Portland, Oregon, USA. Join over 2,500 open source developers, hackers, experts, IT managers, and users at OSCON 2008. This year's convention will include 40 tutorials that go deep into open source technology and over 400 sessions focusing on Administration, Business, Databases, Emerging Topics, Java, Linux, Mobile, People, Perl, PHP, Programming, Python, Ruby, Security, Web Applications, and much more. This event is organised by Oreilly.
Here is the schedule.
http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2008/public/schedule/grid
Here is the official web site.
http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2008/public/content/home
I have been checking my emails lately after my NS reservist. Among one of my spam emails, I manage to find a useful url for optimising cursors within stored procedures in SQL Server.
Yes we all know that cursors is slow but this guy manage to optimise them.
Read more:
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/hugo_kornelis/archive/2007/11/21/curious-cursor-optimization-options.aspx
Amazon has come up with kindle , however, this set does not work in singapore becos the wireless book service is not available in singapore.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FI73MA/ref=sa_menu_kdp4?pf_rd_p=328655101&pf_rd_s=left-nav-1&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=507846&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0KXSN65GMW3H7FJJX4GC
Sony has come up with an e-reader for ebooks and this works in local context.
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?storeId=10151&mpe_id=1908904905&identifier=S_BrandShowcase_Reader
so what is next? A lot of similar products but belongs to different company.
From the author of codebetter:
" I'm excited to finally release the official, and completely free, Foundations of Programming EBook. This essentially contains all 9 Foundation parts including a conclusion and some typical book fluff (table of content, acknowledgement and so on). A number of spelling errors were corrected, along with some small technical changes and clarifications - largely based on feedback, so thanks for everyone who provided it! Otherwise it's exactly the same as what's been posted here over the past several months. "
Download the free ebook
http://codebetter.com/files/folders/codebetter_downloads/entry179694.aspx
We got a Production issue about this following error:
System.MissingFieldException - Field Not Found: ?.s_webServicesFactoryType
Googling on it does not yield any useful results so we turn to microsoft support staff.
They advise us to
Method 1: 1. Check the ASP.net IIS Tab whether there is same version of asp.net being used for the web app.
2. If the asp.net Tab is missing,
Check if only one version of ASP.NET is allowed in the web service extensions. If it is, the Tab will not appear since 2 versions are installed but only 1 is allow in the web server extensions.
Other links to solve the missing tab:
http://weblogs.asp.net/plip/archive/2006/05/25/Where_2700_s-the-ASP.NET-Tab-in-IIS_3F00_-It_2700_s-Missing_2100_-I_2700_ve-installed-.NET-2.0-_2E002E002E00_.aspx
http://dotnet.org.za/ahmeds/archive/2005/04/26/19028.aspx
Method 2: do a NGEN
1. Open a command window,
2. Navigate to the .Net Framework 1.1 directory, which should be %windows%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v1.1.4322\
3. Run this command (without the quotation marks) “ ngen System.runtime.remoting.dll “
4. After this operation, you can check the GAC assemblies for the result, there should be native version of remoting.dll. To do this you can navigate to %windows%\assembly\ path, and can run this command (without the quotation marks) “ dir /a /s /b System.runtime.remoting.*.* ”
I did a benchmark of my project aspx pages that are written in asp.net 1.1 and observe some improvements in viewstate and overall page size.
Before Change of Code,
ReportMapping_Selection.aspx has page size of 39 kb
has viewstate size of 16 kb
After Change of Code,
ReportMapping_Selection.aspx has page size of 33 kb
has viewstate size of 12 kb
Before Change of Code,
AddReportMapping_Selection.aspx has page size of 53 kb
has viewstate size of 43 kb
After Change of Code,
AddReportMapping_Selection.aspx has page size of 17 kb
has viewstate size of 4 kb
I did use a free tool though called ViewStateHelper.
Forumula - > Page Size = ViewState + HTML markup
Viewstate can be reduced by using html controls to an extent but it is not a full-proof solution.
Scenario 1:
For example, datagrid in asp.net don't have an equivalent client-side control. Imagine a datagrid with 1,600 rows of data on 1 single page. Yes, I can probably improve the viewstate by disabling the viewstate row by row but however due to the large amount of data, HTML markup remains big.
According to the above forumla, if I have a small viewstate but big HTML markup size, I still stuck with a big page like 4 megs? That is where pagination comes in. Lol.
Scenario 2:
If I use viewstate to store my datatable on a page, and with each click of a button, it refresh the datatable, it will result in viewstate being different at different points of the day. That is where Caching comes in.
By looking at Scenario 1 and 2, you will notice both are common Viewstate problems but have varying solutions. So there is no hard and fast way to reduce a page size but rather you use the tool you are blessed with to solve a problem at hand depending on Scenarios.
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