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Any update on TLD hosting? My website, ycoderscookbook.com, is still resolving to the old IP.

I hate to complain too much but it’s going on 5 days. According to http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ the Gamma server is up and I can get to gamma.xisto.com but it is the default Apache Webserver setup page. While looking at the status page I didn’t realize that Xisto had so many server so I am sure the free server is last on the list. My only request is that everyone gets 5 days credit free or how ever long the servers are down. I understand the move but I am sitting here watching my hosting credits dwindle away without any hosting.

Slashdot has an article today (https://news.slashdot.org/story/08/04/29/0145246/falling-microsoft-income-endangers-yahoo-bid) pointing out that Microsoft’s stock has dropped over the past quarter due to slumping sales. This puts Microsoft’s original bid of $44 billion closer to $40 billion.

There is a posting on Slashdot today entitled âMicrosoft Helps Police Crack Your Computerâ (https://tech.slashdot.org/story/08/04/29/1441215/microsoft-helps-police-crack-your-computer). To summarize, Microsoft is distributing a thumb drive device with specialty forensics tools to select law enforcement officials. Apparently this is a beta test of the new tools to see how well they are accepted (http://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/microsoft-device-helps-police-pluck-evidence-from-cyberscene-of-crime/).The knee jerk reaction to this is that Microsoft has done it again but I donât believe they are to blame. I am sure law enforcement initiated this course of action and Microsoft is only keeping one of their biggest customers happy. You canât blame Microsoft because they only made the process easier. The tools to do all of this is already on the market, Microsoft has only shrink wrapped them and put a pretty bow on top. Of course there should be ways to forensically investigate computer systems but hearing things like this always makes be uneasy considering many of the privacy problems of the recent past. This is another reason to go over to http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/ and download the latest version of their free whole disk encryption package.

Hope you donât mind but I am going to reply to the original post There are many ways in which you can manipulate files and you need to be more specific in what you want to do. From what I gather from your post you want to manipulate the files themselves and not the contents. From my experience the best way to do that is with the System.IO.FileInfo class. First you should declare the object. Dim fiFile As New System.IO.FileInfo("c:\test.txt") If for some reason the file does not exist then you can create it. fiFile.Create() You can also copy it to another location. fiFile.CopyTo("c:\testCopy.txt") You canât actually read or write the contents of the file with a FileInfo object but it is easy to create a Stream. Dim sStream As System.IO.FileStreamsStream = fiFile.Open(IO.FileMode.Open) Once you are done with the file you can simply delete it. fiFile.Delete() If all you have to do is read or write to the contents then FileInfo may be over kill but if you want to copy, create, change the attributes, or delete the file then you will need FileInfo. Another great function is DirectoryInfo which does many of the same functions but to directories. While writing a program that does any type of file IO I have found that FileInfo.exists is indespensible in order to avoid run time errors involving file exception errors. P.S. The only time I have found any descripiancy between VB.NET and C# was in version .NET 1.1. At the time I could not declare an unsigned 64-bit long in Visual Basic. Since then that has been cleared up and I know of absloutly nothing that can be done in C# and not Visual Basic.

My site runs phpBB version 2 but that is mostly because 2 was the current release when I set it up and I don’t feel like going through the hassle of updating it to version 3. Over the years I have had problems with SPAM but no recognizable hacking. To combat the SPAM I implemented CAPTCHAs at signup and only members can post. I also added a few other scripts that do not allow the Guest account to post and a modified signup page. On the hacking side I make sure to keep the release updated. I don’t think it matters which package you pick from a security stand point as long as you keep it updated. All of the popular packages are written in PHP and operate basically the same. phpBB, SMF, and others have high value targets running the respective packages and are under attack all the time. When a vulnerability is found a patch is issued and the world is a happy place again. Just remember patches are usually not feature upgrades but security fixes so apply them as soon as you know about them.

I have not tried this particular distribution but it sounds complete. The one drawback to the CD format is the lack of updates. Metasploit and Nessus both have fairly regular updates to their databases so just like antivirus application, it is important to keep your scanning database updated. A read only CD is good for forensics work where you do not want to disturb the underlying system and especially file system, but I still prefer dedicating a complete system to these tasks.

Yes this would mean that Microsoft would own Flickr and every other Yahoo! commodity. This is not to say that you will be seeing Microsoft branded Flickr products on the shelf of you local store. Many times when these deals go through the bought company remains a separate and distinct entity. I have seen several examples where the buyer just wants to diversify and buys into a different market segment or in Microsoft’s case strengthen its market share in search and advertising.If I had to make a guess as to what would happen to Yahoo! if Microsoft bought them, Yahoo! would remain fairly separate for about three to five years. There would be strong cross company promotions but from a logical standpoint they would still be separate with Yahoo! still maintaining a fair amount of say in their business. After that time things will start to get consolidated and that’s when some of the peripheral areas will get cut. I would like to say that the best and most popular service will win but when you have Hotmail verses Yahoo! Mail, you never know. I have a feeling that the native Microsoft branded products will win and eventually Yahoo! will be absorbed.So the question is not if there will be a Microsoft Flickr but will there be a Flickr at all?

Agreed, this is like saying that I have done finger painting and now will you show me how to paint the Sistine chapel? Compared to almost any other paint like application Photoshop is an entirely different animal. Basically put it is what the professionals use and there is a reason they went to school for graphic design for four years.In my opinion, one of the key features of Photoshop is layers. You are not constrained by just one sheet but you can combine and interact with multiple layers to create some really nice effects. Another feature that I use all the time is the layer effects such as glow or drop shadow. I never did get the hang of using the pen tool but I have seen really great things done with it. My advice is to ask a specific question and then get some feedback.

I have to agree with you on this one. Even though I have gripes with Yahoo! and some of their practices, it is clear that Yahoo! has a much better community atmosphere than Microsoft. If Microsoft buys Yahoo! then all of the free spirit nature of the communities will be crushed. Even though Yahoo! Messenger beats MSN Messenger in the number of users 3 to 1, it will be killed of to make room for MSN. Microsoft is good at making software but they have a terrible track record in making communities (mainstream, I think MSDN is an exception). Microsoft will squeeze out all of the few good things Yahoo! is doing and leave it for the vultures. Microsoft should back down from this one but they will not.

Over the past week the talks of Microsoft buying Yahoo! has not diminished. Recently Slahsdot (https://tech.slashdot.org/story/08/04/07/236215/yahoo-rejects-microsofts-offer-says-still-an-option) published a note that points to both a Microsoft press release (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/) and the Yahoo! reply (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/). The bottom line is that Yahoo! hasn’t said no, they just want more money. In my mind the simple fact that Microsoft has not backed down after the initial offer means they will see this one through. Historically Microsoft has been like a shark. They swim up and take a small bite to see if they are interested. If it turns out to be a Styrofoam surfboard then they turn around and swim the other way. On the other hand, once they have committed to make the kill they see it all the way to the end even if it ends up hurting them or it doesn’t make the best business sense at the end of the deal. If I had to make a Vegas bet I would say that the odds are 2 to 1 that Microsoft will buy Yahoo!The part that really seals the deal is that Microsoft says they are going to attempt a hostile take over (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/). This means that Microsoft is going directly to the share holders and offering them money to over through the current board of directors. This mean that I am looking forward not to the latest version of Yahoo! Messenger but the latest version of Microsoft Messenger.

Speaking of good tutorial for Visual Basic.NET, I have found that the Microsoft Express site has some really good beginner courses and examples. About a year ago I was tasked to write a simple SQL server front end. I had never done any SQL programming before and I was completely lost at where to start. While downloading SQL express I was some lessons offered and decided to give them a try. What I found was absolutely amazing. At the time there was a series of video tutorials and showed me all of the basics to quickly get started and even some more advanced topics. It was just a guy that was running a screen capture utility talking but it suits my learning style very well. It is a lot faster paced than reading and looking at still images. All together there were at least 12 hours of videos and I had all of the basics down by about 5 hours. If you are a beginner I would highly recommend starting here.

I am also voting for faulty RAM. I have seen it happen in my own system. You can use a free utility from Microsoft called Windows Memory Diagnostic (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/) which does a good job. You may also want to check the cooling of your system because sometimes heat can cause a lockup.P.S. It is an older computer so is could also just be choking on some webpage scripting.

Itâs funny that you mention using your fingerprints as passwords. Today I read an article where hackers have basically made a fingerprint keylogger. http://www.darkreading.com/default.asp

I personally use two different kinds of firewalls, hardware and software. My opinion is that the hardware firewall is more important and effective. I am currently using a Sonicwall small business firewall/router but any consumer NAT router should work well. The key is the NAT (network address translation) routing which puts all of your computers behind the router on their own subnet such as 192.168.x.x. In this case the 192.168.x.x address range is not Internet routable and no information can be directly transferred from the Internet to your computer. In order for a request to be seen by your inside computer, the Internet computer must use the public IP assigned to the router. After that the router analyses the packet to see what port it is and if any rules have been added for port forwarding. If so the packet is passed into the internal network and if not it goes to the great bit bucket in the sky. Just by having a NAT firewall router you can cut your attack area by about 99% for unsolicited attacks.I also run a software firewall on my internal machines. On all of them except one I only have the standard XP SP2 firewall and on the other I have the free version of Zone Alarm. The software firewall only adds minimal protection from any computers brought into the internal network that may already be infected. It also allows you to control any outbound communications. This way you can make that even if a rouge programs gets into your computer, you have to give it permission before it can talk to the outside world. (The above case goes from XP SP2 because by default Vista does filter outbound traffic in addition to inbound traffic.)If your father is fairly confident that he did not let anything nasty onto his system I would suspect that it is actually a hardware failure. I have seen many, many hard drives over the years develop bad sectors and sometimes they happen in a critical Windows file. When this happens the computer simply will not boot and can even say that the System32 folder could not be found. My suggestion would be to boot into the recovery console and run chkdsk. If chkdsk does not find anything then you may want to get a utility more advanced such as Spinrite. While you are at it you should scan for viruses with a scanner that boots from CD and not from within Windows. Just make sure the definition database is up to date.

A quick comment about Symantac. I agree that you should not install the full blown home crapware version but the corporate version is worth looking into. The corporate client is light weight and can be configured to automatically update from your own central server and not from Symantac. You can also lock down the interface so the users can not uninstall it or mess with it except to perform a set list of scans. When compared with the retail version, the corporate version is like night and day.

I recently got an email from someone looking for the source code referred to in my previous post. Apparently the original link died so I have uploaded it to my website and can be found at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

One thing to remember is that from a programming standpoint the start button is nothing more than another window and can be manipulated as such. Using a utility such as Winspector (http://purpleport.com/front.asp), you can see that it is a button class that is inherited from Shell_TrayWnd. Using the Windows API you can capture and send events to the window which opens an entire new world of options.After some research I found a great article explaining this in detail and as a bonus has a free program that does it for you (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/). You can also break the limit of five characters and even add symbols that are in the Unicode library. This may be the only way but I don’t see what is keeping you from grabbing the button text with the Windows API and then setting a new string.

You can at the least look at the HTTP code and see what the problem is (http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html). In this case I know that the requestor received a 200 OK and the transaction went through without any problems. The most common problems include 404 Not Found or 206 Partial Content. The 404 means that the user asked for a document that is not on the server and can usually be corrected by updating your links. A 206 means that the entire page was not displayed before the connection was closed. This could mean that the server is overloaded. In general a 2xx message is a status message and is normal operation. 1xx is informational and is usually not seen, 3xx is redirection, 4xx is a client error, and 5xx is a server error. The big one is the 4xx series and you should try to fix these problems if possible.

I will look at doing this but regular expressions never were my friend. What does the [NC] and [L] mean?

I had a very similar problem a few weeks ago but never found a good answer. I have a new version of YCC Bot Maker that went from version 1.1 to 1.2. I usually publish my software with the Association of Shareware Professionals via a PAD file (http://pad.asp-software.org/). Long story short they have a repository that any shareware or software publisher can access and put your software on their site. Some of the sites that pick up the software a pretty cheesy but it sure drives a lot of traffic.By reviewing my logs I found out that more people are downloading the older non-working version than the newest one. This of course makes me look bad as a software developer so I investigated. It turns out that many of the download sites never go back and update their records for updates even though ASP provides this function. They apparently do a mass fetch from the database and never do any updating.The perfect solution would be a redirect. When accessing Cpanel you can access redirects via Site Management Tools > Manage Redirects. You can put in the old path that you don’t want to show anymore and more them to either another domain or somewhere else on your site. The interface is fairly straight forward but you have to remember add the domain name to the second field if you want to stay within you own site.My problem is that I want to redirect a file that happens to be a .RAR. The user interface completely choked and kept adding an extra “/” at the end of the from string. I can only assume that it doesn’t recognize a RAR file and has this problem. I then manually edited the redirects file by opening “.htaccess” and changing RewriteRule to what it should be. I never did get it to work even after much Google hunting and trial and error.In the end I deleted the file and created a custom error page (Site Management Tools > Custom Error Pages). From reviewing the logs I knew that most of the errors came from the missing download so I added the usual 404 error message and added links to the main sections. At the bottom I also said if you are looking for YCC Bot Maker then you can access it directly here. I don’t believe this is the best method and I would like to have a redirect but I just couldn’t get it to work.

Just a suggestion but you might want to look in Cpanel under Analysis and Log Files. Under the Latest Visitors function you might get an idea as to what is happening. If you really want to dig into the problem then take a look at the Raw Access Logs.

I hate to say but it doesn’t very good for you. I soon learned that the data on USB drives can be just important as you primary drives. I lost my first drive several years ago and since then I keep mine encrypted at all times and use a regular backup schedule. I keep the contents encrypted just in case it does go missing. The last one didn’t have anything vital but you never know what someone can do with even the most innocent information.

If past performance is any indication it will take at least another three years. I remember when Diablo II was announced and it was almost three years before it was officially released. This is usually a good thing because Blizzard (or who ever owns them now) doesn’t release crap. All of the Blizzard titles have been rock solid and game of the year when they were released. This means that you will have to wait but the wait is usually worth it.

I have to say that I just finished downloading a 43 Gb torrent and I had a great experience. The torrent is a rainbow table distribution and is completely legal because the creators not only allow the sharing of the content but also encourage it. Due to the incredible size of the data, torrents are really the only way to go. The file took around 10 hours to complete and averaged in the neighborhood or 800k/sec download speed. No matter what you think of torrents, this is clearly a great example of the power of peer to peer networks. It would have been hard for a single server to maintain that bandwidth for the entire download time and impossible for a small group to provide the bandwidth for more than a few people a month. Torrents provide a great distribution mechanism for large amounts of data and resource strapped entities.This is of course the case as long as you are downloading your favorite Linux distribution but as stated earlier it should not be used for illegal means.