shadowx

There is a desire that every computer geek (no insult, i would class myself as a computer geek and im damn proud of it! And i still have a social life ) has to infiltrate their school computers. And at the time it does seem like the admins are morons, and indeed somtimes they are, in fact most of the time they are! But on the other hand for two weeks i was a network techie at a university, and theyre not as dumb as you might think. would you know how to setup a cluster network to automatically share the load? How to use software similar to the telnet command to access a DHCP server and configure its pool of IP addresses? Write a VBScript file to access the current computer's motherboard and software info and then save that to a unique text file for later? You'd be surprised what they do know, they dont general have a lot of common sense but consider that at my school there was an account with admin access with the username "admin" and the password "admin" do you think that is an accident? I would imagine its a honeypot (an account set up that is easy to crack but contains a method of tracing so as soon as it is access the script kiddie is traced and caught) So... the point of this story is that what you are thinking is a bad idea. It may seem cool "Hey dude, you seen my A* in ancient history? *wink*" But accessing those files will do you no good. Although having said that, i and a few friends DID have access to the addresses of EVERY student at the school, including postal/zip codes with which it was possible to find phone numbers etc... but alas that was neglect on the teacher's part for leaving thte file on the shared area with a 5 letter, one word password. However what isnt cool is loosing access to the computers for 6 weeks. Those same computers that contain all your course work, home work and school work.... And you will be caught. Admins and teachers have software that shows them every computer in any room and the usernames logged on to that computer. As well as a live screen shot of the computer. So when they see an "admin" is logged on in their room they might just come round to check....Though having said that there are too ways around that It was too easy... but anyway, the basics are: You may manage it, you may delete some jock's coursework, leave a surprise love letter or change some grades. But WHEN you are caught you ARE liable for legal charges (it is an offence to gain unauthorized access) suspension from the school and/or computers and it will go on your record. So if you were to apply for a job in which computers feature heavily the employer will ask themselves "Will this guy destroy my computer systems? Steal confidential info? etc...".If you wish to learn about computer security and what the media generally defines as "hacking" i recommend you do a google search for "bright shadows" and follow the links (the site i am referring to is in NO WAY illegal. It features tutorials and "games" where a user may attempt to disable the security in controlled areas by using things like SQL injection etc.... and you are given FULL permission to do this by the owners. I highly recommend it and i must get myself back on there!) I think every computer user should know how to disable security, because then every computer user knows how to PREVENT their security being destroyed and computers are safer that way. Practice what you may or may learn in private or on systems where its permitted and what you learn will protect you as well as open up the possibilities if you ever venture into coding/programming. But using it at school is the second worst place you could use it! (second only to the US government systems which an english hacking may well go to guantanamo for, damn Bushy and his pet sheep....)

The latest CSS trick ive found from a WYSIWYG editor (i only use it to make layouts! I then edit the code as its rubbish!) is to use: margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto; Works perfectly no matter what size window or div!

ah yeh i get it! I think! Make a new array and compare the current position + 1 with the last position in the array. If the current + 1 is more than the last position then we are at the end and vice versa with the first position. Thanks for that, its given me something to think about, ill have a look at the DB structure and see which field is easiest to use etc... Midswing in the admin upload/add images part at the moment. Dont you love it when things just work?!

I have an auto increment ID field anyway, always have and always do! I suppose i could use the array version as they would be in the order i want. This might sound a stupid question but how would i get the entire DB into an array at once? I generally use something like: while($rows = mysql_fetch_array($result)){Do something....;} But as i understand it that simply takes one row at a time and puts it into the $rows variable. I was sure there was a function to return the current row number or something but i couldnt find it online. Or is there a query that can return the last row in the DB (as well as use an ORDER BY clause so i could have something like SELECT LAST FROM table ORDER BY name ASC and it would order the query by name ascending and then find the last result. Then i can simply compare its unique ID to the ID i have for the current row. If they match i am working with the last row, if they dont then i know im not working with the last row. Id still need a way to reference the next row in the DB though for the "next" link to find.... Either that or i drop the ability to use next/previous links in the big view and work on that later

Ok the story is im making an image gallery, so far so good. Currently im working on the page that shows the larger version of a single image. My gallery is database driven using the DB to store things like image title and description as well as the thumbnail file source and full size file source.I want a previous/next function on this page (already have one on the thumbnail view page). that in itself is easy! But my problem is this: Say i have 10 images. the user clicks on image 7 and that image is shown in the large view. How does my PHP script know if this image is the first, last or neither? the obvious answer is through the unique ID field of my database. However i am allowing the user (or developer really as i will be the one customizing this gallery) to change the ORDER BY value to any field in the DB (through editing a central settings file) So for example we could have this set up where the data returned via an sql query with "ORDER BY Image_Name ASC" is sorted by image name in ASCENDING order: (yet the DB remains untouched and is still sorted by default using the ID field.)ID Image_Name3 A_image1 B_image2 C_image4 D_imageSo if i am showing "C_image" how does my PHP know its position within the database? It cant go by the ID value, as that is 2 but this is the third row. There is no current_row(); function or similar in PHP. And the DB is still ordered by ID. Im really stumped by this one... If i knew the current row position i could do a simply query to search the DB for all rows AFTER the current one. If that returns ANY result it means the current row is NOT the last (as there are rows after it) and do the same but opposite for any previous rows. But for that i need to have a LIMIT clause with a START value which would be the row number of the current row. Anyone have any ideas? If i can get this to work then i dont know what ill do... i would need some sort of field in the DB that is automatically re-indexed when the gallery is loaded to order the DB by the user selected field (eg image name) and then automatically assign the new field and then i could work out if there are any rows after the current one by using the new field as a reference, but thats way too complex!

Hi guys. a client wants a mailing list thingy, so im thinking i can use flex to give a really nice, slick interface... though for the money i should make her write raw HTML Grr.... Anyway. The point is making the RTE (rich text editor) is easy peasy <mx:RichTextArea etc....> But getting the HTML output seems impossible!!! I cant find any useful info on the abode site and all the tutorials i can find inviolve the use of a WYSIYG editor, but im writing raw mxml code here so thats no good. Ive made a plain text area that i click a button and it is filled with the text of the RTE, that works fine, but i want the RTE to make HTML tags. For example, when the user clicks the bold button it writes "<B>" and then whatever the user types, when they click it again flex writes "</b>" etc.... and yet to the user it displays Bold text, not the HTML tags (this is possible, if i were to set the content of the RTE to "<B>bold text</b>" i would see "bold text". But how the hell do i get that back out as an output? when i click my button to set the second text box to have the same content as the RTE i just see "bold text" in normal writing with no bold tags. And this is no good! I also tried it submitting to a PHP script that saves it to a text file. Still no HTML tags. So how do i get my RTE to output HTML tags? this is doing my head in! i could conceivably make my own custom RTE using search/replace/insert functions to manually insert bold, italic etc.. tags in but i cant be bothered. So please! Someone tell me how i can get an RTE to output HTML tags!!!! EDIT: As is the way with much of my coding, ive found the answer eventually by trawling through source code. Its relatively simple, instead of using the "text" property of the RTE you use the htmlText property.... How dumb... Now i gotta remove the awkward HTML it writes. Im leaving this topic in place to help others. If anyone is interested the exact code is: <mx:request xmlns=""> <rte>{RTE_NAME.htmlText}</rte> </mx:request>

As a typical definition i would say a hacker is "one who modifies or otherwise forces a computer system to work differently to its original specification or purpose" (i didnt copy that, i made it up, hence no quote tags )So it COULD mean someone who modifies a security program to allow access rather than deny it. Or it could be someone who creates a mod or addon for a piece of software, for example creating their own doc>pdf converter addon. Crackers IMHO are those who "hack" passwords by brute forcing (i know its now hacking, hence the quotes) eg "he cracked the password" or those who analyse and decipher encryptions or cyphers, hence cracking the code, cracking the cypher, cracking the password etc.... IMHO they are only one step up from the dreaded "script Kiddie" Those who would take a brute forcing application and run it on a file to crack the password and then claim they hacked it or that it was some form of elite system or hacking that they used, when in fact they clicked one button. Generally to me it describes someone who has no understanding of the security in place and no understanding of what they are doing. Instead blindly doing it to prove a point to a friend. But there you go. I do agree that the media has stereo typed hackers very badly, when in fact many advanced systems such as traffic control software, operating systems, application, firewalls etc... wouldnt exist without the help of hackers making sure they are secure and functioning.

Never used the extension but i would imagine the slow load up time is due to the program dealing with the list of up a hundred images and then generating the popups before telling you about them. Disabling it seems like a good logical step

Yeh its an absolutely stupid idea. They take an example from a presumably fairly small restaurant and try to scale it up to one of the major ice cream producers... Its like a plan concocted by a 7 year old. Now im all for ethical treatment of animals. So why didnt they just write and ask B&Js to use free range dairy farmers or something? Thats much more reasonable and probably cheaper than using human milk.What a stupid letter to send...

To check that it is Echo of thunder's end and not T17 surely he/she could post the URL to their site and if we can see it then presumably everything is ok the T17 side

I feel the frustration though and i think a new topic is justified to get some attention. It seems Xisto - Support is REALLY lacking lately, a lot of members have had issues with getting a support ticket answered and even 24/7 live support has been offline which is counter productive. But Kubi is right, give us your URL so we can test it too, it could be only a limited number of users cant access it perhaps due to an ISP or DNS server nearer their end, or it could be as you suggest a Xisto problem in which case none of us will be able to access it. Its worth a try to isolate the issue.

As suggested try a different browser. As i said in the shoutbox im on the gamma server using FF3 and no problems. Also try clearing your cache (tools, clear data) and trying again. Also try CTRL+F5 (force refresh) see if that has any effect

I think to be honest the main issue is greed. Big oil companies dont want to help fund the R&D of fuels like pure water for hydrogen cells because of the money they make from oil!I also think that some tecnhnology used isnt that reliable. Though in my local shopping center there are two car spaces in the multistory car park that have facilities to plug in electric cars. Ive never seen a car there though....Electric cars make me laugh... Where does the electricity come from? You got it, coal burning power plants, and lets not forget coal is one of the most polluting fossil fuels!

I generally play the xbox or if its nice go fishing. If im feeling "uber geek" i will learn a new language or develop a new application or something. Sad!I also tend to check forums a lot and read some howstuffworks.com articles and check the news.

Thanks SM, after a bit of tinkering i made a simply validation function, its not the most elegant solution but given my lack of flex knowledge i just used the same logic i would use with PHP or JS and came up with this: function sendmyemail():void { <!-- Added validation code: --> var instringAT:int = email.text.indexOf("@"); var instringDOT:int = email.text.indexOf("."); if(instringAT < 4 || instringDOT < 9){ Alert.show("Please enter a valid email address to continue", "Invalid Email"); } if(fname.text.length < 3 || email.text.length < 12 || message.text.length < 25) { Alert.show("Please fill in the form completely paying attention to any field with a red border. All fields are required.", "Error"); } else { <!-- Original "senmyemail" code: --> sendmycontact.send(); btnsend.enabled = false; btnsend.label = "Sent" sendmycontact.resultFormat = "string"; sendmycontact.addEventListener(ResultEvent.RESULT, resulthandler); sendmycontact.addEventListener(FaultEvent.FAULT, fault_handler); } } Basically i just check the length of the value of the text boxes and for the email i do a search for the @ and . (DOT) characters. If it fails any of those checks they get an error. If its good it passes on to the code that sends the request. I also added a line to disable the send button and change its text to "sent" as soon as the request is sent. Ive just uploaded it to http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Ive changed the PHP so it does nothing and you will always get a nice thanks message, but if you enter your name as "failure" you will get a failed message (the irony!) Just to illustrate it all! And remember kids, the form was built basically from SM's tutorial just with less fields!

Now i was going to post my tutorial here in a reply but it turned out longer than i was thinking! I noticed you said: And last night i found out how to do this, and i just saw you wasnt sure how to do it so i made a tutorial, i was going to PM it but hey i get the credits this way and the rest of T17 (or Open Discussion as it currently seems to be!) can learn from it. The link is: http://forums.xisto.com/topic/61026-submitting-a-form-in-flex-follow-up-of-sms-tut/ (at the time of writing it is still waiting to be approved) So feel free to check it out and give me some feedback. I had problems working out how to do it because, like i think you said, most resources are flex2 which can be a pain. If you see any errors or anything let me know, i havent been using flex for long and its probably shoddy code! But it DOES work! Ps the CSS tutorial is really useful too

Now Saint Michael made an excellent 3 part tutorial that explains how to make a form HERE So if you need to design a form follow his nice tutorial. He did however mention he didnt know (yet) how to submit a form, so i did some searching last night and made my form submit to a PHP file and this is how its done (roughly, ive only had flex since last night so expect problems! My form is designed as an email contact form but at the moment because i dont have a local mail server configured im using the fwrite functions in PHP to illustrate that it works and to save the values of the variables to a text file to prove they are working, if it comes to rolling it out then i can use the mail function just by editting the PHP. <mx:HTTPService id="sendmycontact" url="contact.php" result="resulthandler(event)" resultFormat="text" method="POST" > First of course there is the HTTPService tag. Basically similar (as far as i can tell) to the <form> HTML tag. You specify the URL which is the "action" of a <form> and then of course the method, POST, GET and others i cant remember! all you need for a very basic form is the URL and the action parts and of course the ID which is used later to submit it. The interesting part is the "result" property. This is a property that defines what to do if/when the form receives an answer from the script, in my example i used the php: or die("failed") to provide feedback to the flex form. It automatically receives the text "failed" if the PHP encounters an error (for example your mail server dies and your user thinks a message has been sent but it hasnt. The error handler will notify the user of an error). In my example i created a function that i will explain in a sec, that takes the value of 'event' which will contain the text from my php file. So if my PHP die statement was: or die("no luck"); then the resulthandler(event) would pass on the value "no luck" to my function. You also need to specify the format of the result. In this case it is text. You can also use XML feedback for moe complex things like database functions. Anyway.... The next part is this: <mx:request xmlns=""> <name>{fname.text}</name> <email>{email.text}</email> <message>{message.text}</message> </mx:request> </mx:HTTPService> This basically sets the data to be transmitted to the URL specified in the first code block. In my example i have the users name, email address and their message. Basically my PHP code receives a variable named "name" containing the data from the fname text input box (this is set by the code: {fname.text} ) Now as you notice this code comes WITHIN the mx:HTTPService tag which is now ended after the mx:request tag. AS far as i know the xmlns property doesnt need to be filled in. I may be wrong but it works so far! Now we need to define our functions that submit the form and process the feedback. firstly you need (it seems) to import the controls form the library inside the mx:Script tag: <mx:Script> <![CDATA[ import mx.rpc.events.ResultEvent; import mx.rpc.events.FaultEvent; import mx.controls.Alert; You can see the Result and Fault Events have been included here as has the Alert controls because we will use an Alert to advise the user. Now we need to create our function to submit the form to the PHP program. I have called my function "sendmyemail" you can call it what you want. Youll notice i have also used the ID i set for my HTTPService which is "sendmycontact" (If you are confused see the first code block) function sendmyemail():void { sendmycontact.send(); sendmycontact.resultFormat = "string"; sendmycontact.addEventListener(ResultEvent.RESULT, resulthandler); sendmycontact.addEventListener(FaultEvent.FAULT, fault_handler); } Im not sure why we have the ":void" after the function declaration... But its a fact of life! It seems to replace "functionname(void)" in other languages (i have very little experience of actionscript and OO JS). EDIT: I have just discovered the meaning of the :void. It is the declaration of the type (eg string, int) that the program can expect. So as the program is going to receive a NULL value (void) the variable "type" is void, and the way to write that is :void an integer return would be :int and so on . The part that submits the form is the "sendmycontact.send();" statement. So now the form is sent. If you dont want to provide feedback on errors or success then that is the only line you need. However i will continue! Again we declare the format of the result expected from PHP You now see we are adding EventListeners to our HTTPservice, one to listen for a positive result, and one to listen for an error known by flex as a FAULT. First you tell flex you wish to add a listener with sendmycontact.addEventListener now you tell it to listen for a result/fault event with "(ResultEvent.RESULT," (substitute result for fault of course for a fault report) and then we name that listener as "resulthandler" or "fault_handler" respectively. Any names can be used here. So now the form has been submitted and flex is eagerly listening to the PHP for any sort of output. When it receives that output it will be put into resulthandler(event) as the <mx:HTTPService> Tag defined. So now we need to create this function using the following code: function resulthandler(event):void{ if(event.result == "failed") { fault_handler(); } else { Alert.show("Thanks! Your comments have been emailed and we will reply shortly if required.", "Thanks!"); } } So we take the value of "event" given to use by the HTTPService tag which is of course the output from PHP. (again im not sure why the :void is there but it seems to work! Feel free to correct my codes, ive only been learning flex for about 18 hours!) Now For some reason we must use the "event.result" variable/property of the event which contains the actual PHP output. In my PHP i wrote or die("failed") so in the event of some error my PHP output is simply the word failed so my IF statement logically checks to see i the output was "failed" If it was then there was of course an error and i need to notify my user and i do so using the fault_handler() function explained in a sec. The else statement of course is there in the event that the output is NOT the word failed (hence the PHP succeeded and the email was sent) then we can tell the user the email was sent using that alert box there. The first string is the message displayed and the second, shorter string, is the text of the alert box's title bar. So the user is greeted with a message saying they have done their part and can wait for the reply or whatever. function fault_handler():void{ Alert.show("The operation failed. Your comments were not received due to a technical failure. Please try again later after we have fixed this problem", "Failed"); } This is the opposite function that simply gives an alert telling the user it failed and to try again later. And that my friends is that! Of course to trigger this lot off you need to use: click"sendmyemail()" in your submit button. As i said ive only been learning flex since last night so this isny fool proof and its not very neat. But it gives you a nice starting point. What i would really like to find out is how to prevent my form being submitted if my validation (see SM's tut) flags up an error. Im working on that now!! But if you know an easy solution to that then reply and let me know

I cant answer your question but why dont you just get verified? Is dead easy, if you have a bank account they send you something like 0.01 and 0.03 cents (or whatever currency) when it arrives you login at paypal and enter 0.01 and 0.03 in the box and youre all done.Alternatively add a credit card to paypal and its verified straight away.

Mods: I have "bumped" this thread because to add an edit to the post above would be insubstantial and to create a whole new topic would just be spammy and trashy. Feel free to merge the posts if you need to, i just feel this is the best way to go about it as the following post is completely different content but on the same topic And so i begin... Ok its going well, ive made my form BUT there is a problem, it seems through viewing source codes i need to import a HTTPService library to send the data to a PHP script for processing : (a mixture of edited code from another app and my own code) But i dont have these libraries installed, i get this error when compiling: I just took what i think i need, the httprequest and alert functions.

thanks SM, ive given up on eclipse and just writing it in my normal syntax highlighted editor with XML syntax and compiling it manually from the command line. Its going well so far, considering ive never used XML before and this is so similar to XML, im also not an object or event driven programmer but so far its real easy. Im just going to follow your form tutorial now. got a label that hides/shows a second child panel so i can have things such as "Email a question" "Report a bug" etc... Each showing a new panel which contains a different, specialized form. We will see what happens, but first impressions are very good!

Thanks, i haver actually downloaded eclipse and i found this blog which was supposed to tell me how to set it up with flex: http://archive.darronschall.com/weblog/archives/000182.html But i dont actually know if its set up properly. What are the steps for setting it up? (what did you do?) Just download the eclipse ZIP and the SDK zip from adobe and extract them both in the same directory? Im really confused by this one! ive downloaded about 6 different things now! EDIT: I found another article that helped to install the plugins properly. But how the hell do i start a new flex project? Is it just a java project or should i have a special custom "flex" or "mxml" project title? This is such a *BLEEP* up its ridiculous! i hope to god flex is worth this! Its been hours now. Please, anyone what the hell do i need to do?! EDIT: (AGAIN) well that was a waste of time! ive scrapped using eclipse, its just annoying and im sticking with my current editor using XML syntax highlighting and the command line compiler that was with the flex SDK ZIP.... What a waste of time, if i had known this i wouldve had it set up in 5 minutes....So there ya go folks. Just get the SDK from adobe and use the compiler inside

But as i said, it IS possible to create some of these complex shapes without an overhead view as demonstrated by many hoaxers who admitted, and filmed themselves, doing it. One group paid a farmer to let them use his field and filmed it all. I still dont know how many are hoaxes though

And there is no logical reason for doing such a thing, if it was a new type of weapon they would test it in area 51 for the states and various other locations for other governments including of course far out at sea or in a desert. Adding fuel to the "There are aliens" group really isnt a logical thing for governments because it is these people that are most vocal about government secrecy. As for aliens, i doubt it. I do believe in aliens, i do not know if they have visited us though. Again, there isnt much logic involved in aliens doing it either. If they wanted to make contact they might drop a piece of technology or something, or arrive in a fleet or paint their names across the sky. Of course you could argue that doing so would invoke the might of the military which the aliens dont want and so they go with a more placid demonstration. then you have to consider it is all hoaxes, like the ones that have been admitted. They too were virtually perfect in their design and execution and yet were made by men with boards and strings. also the dead insects and slight microwave radiation damage can be done with a modified microwave oven and the metalic filings were replicated by detonating a small bomb full of small filings. In short i dont know the answer, however all these things can be easily faked by people, including lights on recordings (though it would be very hard to fake flying orbs of light in real life it is too easy to add them in as a visual affect in any video editing program.

Hi folks.Im currently trying to go freelance with another guy i know making websites, he is the designer, im the coder and i was viewing SM's tutorial on flex and i thought, damn! We could use that! And so my searching began.I really like the sleek and smoothness of the tutorial SM posted, im always making contact forms for clients and if i can provide something as jazzy as that itll really boost the business. But i hit a brick wall! I found out that the main IDE released by adobe is unsurprisingly ridiculously priced and way out of my range. So i got the SDK and thought, hum wheres the installer? Then of corse realized it was the framework to be used by another IDE and wasnt an IDE in itself, and thats where im stuck. I cant find an IDE to use!So if anyone knows of a good free flex IDE then link it!My next question is what exactly is flex? It looks like a cross between VB/actionscript and XML, i assume from various sources that it is compiled? So i would write it in the strange XML like code, have it compiled just like an ordinary flash item and then embedded in my HTML page?Any other advice is greatly welcomed, especially tutorials, i saw the video ones on the adobe site but i prefer text based ones so i can follow it at my own pace, and preferably a tutorial that gets in at the deep end and starts you building a form or something from the start, i get bored reading about it and learn a lot faster when im doing it :lol:So, any info? *looks in Saint Michael's direction*

Well a very very simple solution is dependant on your programming environment. If its possible wit the language/system you are using then create an overlay that is black or gray in colour and make it transparent. Now use the "brightness" value to determine how opaque to make it eg: 10=100 (totaly invisible, brightest there is) 9 = 95 8=90 7=85 and so on. Its not the best solution but i have no idea what language you are using and i only have experience of web languages like HTML, PHP etc...so its just something logical to try