These little applications are simply evil. Even the windows live, Yahoo and the greatest offender Google. Making general users think these toolbars are great having the search features at your beckon call.

Truth is all toolbars including the famous stumbleupon toolbar are evil (of course for multiple reasons) but what makes these evil is:

-Privacy concerns. (yes bryan google already knows where you live)

-Network slow downs. Toolbars are constantly calling home (pinging home servers to include all types of info about you(see privacy concerns)). If you don’t believe me download WireShark, Network monitor or Fiddler and watch the amount of traffic your Toolbar (BHO(Browser Helper Object)(Fancy name for software)) is sending and receiving.

-Search providers are built in to your address bar area.

I get told constantly(of course this is when I bring up my pet peeve) well I like how I can type in the search info in the search area and it takes me to the (insert search engine) page.

Silly people look at your browser (Chrome, Safari(had to get the other OS’s browsers out of the way first), IE(eww), Firefox and Opera. (There are more and I don’t care)) address bar and on the very right had side there is what your browser would call a search provider area.

You can add Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, even made up ones from your favorite search engines(such as Ebay, Monster and Amazon to name a few) to which you can search anything your heart desires.

Does all that one would expect a search box to do and you don’t have to install anything. Also you don’t have as much network slow downs.

So for the love of my sanity do not install these crappy applications on top of your browser.

Clicking on this will take you to the google Gears page to install the gears application.

This application is supposed to cache your browser session much more efficiently. Gears works for all browsers. It installs a Sql lite database to keep track of your browsing sessions.

Not sure on how I feel about a mini database supposedly keeping track. However it does seem to speed things up.

Try out google gears if you dare.

The software was originally released by Microsoft in January 2005 as a basic virus removal tool. Of course this is not a true antivirus application like Windows Live OneCare or Symantec.

However this little tool (Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool or MWMSRT) is pretty cool. It allows you  to track down the little baddies (Viruses ( Trojans, Worms etc..)). The disadvantage is two things:

Only typically runs a quick scan when the application is run.

Only has the last months known baddies (Viruses ( Trojans, Worms etc..)).

I would highly recommend you run this little tool (MWMSRT) as a full scan.

Here is the how to:

- Click on the Start button(Windows Ball – Vista)

- Click on Run

- In the Open dialog box  add: MRT

You will get a GUI application that looks like this:

This interface looks allot like a antivirus light. It does take quite a while for the scan to complete. Truth be known it makes you feel like it is truly looking hard for the baddies (Viruses ( Trojans, Worms etc..)).

Thanks Microsoft for this little know application that does work.

Luckily I have great friends like Joe Levi to keep my site up and running. He even talked me back into wordpress and yes I am impressed. It was hard to go back to a php codebase but it is so accommodating. So I must thank Joe Levi. 

During my time away from blogging I did have a lot of time to think about what I should and should not do while delivering content on the internet(via my blog of course). I also have learned a great deal about writing content using those special key words to get googles attention. Like for instance how to clean a fish using your lifetime table or the ever present an loving Forbiden Rice. Why these things drive traffic will continue to escape me. I have also discovered that while doing a ton of metrics using google analytics as well as microsoft analytics(Yes they have a analytics program) that mikes links monday was a dud(crap or otherwise no one cared).

Of course that is a robot telling me that so I will as you the wonderful readers of mikedopp.com if this (mikes links monday) should continue or it should fade way as the .net version of mikedopp.com did. To do this I will forgo the wonderful polling applications on the wonderful world wide web. I will ask for your comments. Please leave a good bad or ugly comment. As you have noticed I have not added the mikes links monday pages back to mikedopp.com until I hear back from you. I will give until February 1st to gather all comments and if there is an outcry of emotion (love hate or bad spam ) I will then determine the fate.

I have a ton of things I have been working on.

-The real mikedopp

A new chapter has arrived and he’s back to WordPress (and quite impressed with what WP2.7 offers, I might add). The difficulty here is that now he’s got two big tasks ahead of him: migrating all his old posts over to this platform, and posting current articles.

He’s decided to focus on the former first, and will address the latter as “blog-worthy material” comes his way (I know you’re all eagerly awaiting the return of Mike’s Links Monday’s).

In the meantime, patience please. Just because the home page doesn’t show new posts, rest assured that the old posts are being submitted, they’re just being back-dated to their original post date.

Use this as a prime opportunity to subscribe to Mike’s RSS Feed: http://feedproxy.google.com/mikedopp

We all love Windows Vista in our own way.

Working for and with many PC manufactures I used to love to run Sysmark and associated types of System Tests to show off why I paid more or why someone should pay more for one PC versus the other.

So when Microsoft announced that in Windows Vista(all versions(a marketing idea I might add)) would have a internal way to test the hardware in a given pc to give you a status(Windows Experience index)  of how well Vista will work with given hardware components. I thought great now I can determine which laptop I should buy next.

So I headed out to a well known Vendor of name brand PC’s. I was really debating between a HP, Sony(I know ewww right?) or Dell. All had great components on paper. The components were:

• 3GB Ram
• 250GB HD
• Windows Vista Home Premium
• The big difference was the Processor: AMD or Intel? Dual core 64bit or Quad core 32bit?

So being a hardware geek I wanted to know what the Windows Experience Index was. Not that this was a determining factor since I was in love with the AMD anyway.

So on to my point. I was doing some exploring of windows operating systems like I do. I know your questioning yourself do I really want to continue reading this? Be sure this Edit is very simple and the point I will make is valid.

Like I said I was doing some exploring of the Windows Directory of Windows Vista Home Premium and found a folder called performance. Opened it up and found WinSAT and well was curious so I dug further. Found a bunch of files that didn’t make much sense but started doing editing and looking at the resources. Came up with mostly nothing other than videos of water and a prx file. Then I decided it was time to open the DataStore folder and found some XML files. I love XML so easy to hack edit so I poked around in these files unsure if I was going to break anything. The amount of love(data) in these xml  files was tremendous(at least for a windows machine) oh the hacking I will go I thought.

Did some editing of the File named: YYYY-MM-DD HH.MM.SS.MSMSMS Assessment(Initial).WinSAT.xml and to no avail nothing changed. Crap.

So I did some editing of the File named: “”(Formal).WinSAT.xml and changed all the values in the Root Node from:

<WinSPR>
    <SystemScore>3.6</SystemScore>
    <MemoryScore>4.9</MemoryScore>
    <CpuScore>4.8</CpuScore>
    <CPUSubAggScore>4.7</CPUSubAggScore>
    <VideoEncodeScore>4.9</VideoEncodeScore>
    <GraphicsScore>3.6</GraphicsScore>
    <GamingScore>4.5</GamingScore>
    <DiskScore>5.3</DiskScore>
  </WinSPR>

to:

<WinSPR>
    <SystemScore>9.9</SystemScore>
    <MemoryScore>9.9</MemoryScore>
    <CpuScore>9.9</CpuScore>
    <CPUSubAggScore>9.9</CPUSubAggScore>
    <VideoEncodeScore>9.9</VideoEncodeScore>
    <GraphicsScore>9.9</GraphicsScore>
    <GamingScore>9.9</GamingScore>
    <DiskScore>9.9</DiskScore>
  </WinSPR>

Saved the XML file and went back to the Windows Experience Index and found hey instead of a System Score of 3.6 I got the best score you can get 9.9 . Trust me the software WinSAT will choke on you.

The most interesting thing is even when you try to refresh the settings hoping that the program will regenerate the Scores it just uses the old Scores as if they were true.

So the question is: How do we know if the Hardware Manufacture knows about this hack/edit and in order to sell more PC’s they change the XML on the OS as it ships?

Great question eh? Ah paranoia. It looks like Microsoft might need to update this issue as I have yet to find a fix or hotfix that will make this little piece of software work correctly.

Looks like this is not the only issue with WinSAT.exe on the Windows Vista platform.

Also if you copy WinSAT folder to Windows XP it will work on that platform as well. Of course that is for another blog post.

Of course the next question is does anyone really care? Does anyone use Windows Experience Index to judge the difference in PC’s? I would like to know.

Recently I was doing some heavy editing of Tab Delimited Product feeds for work.

I had sucked in a large XML data dump from our MSSQL database and was attempting to convert it to Tab Delimited  Text for a data feed it was a long process luckily I was using Microsoft Excel to do most of the column editing. I finally added all the fields and formulas and exported the large file to Tab Delimited Text  and attempted the upload.

The file would not upload the service kept telling me there was a added Tab in the lines. This was frustrating as I was pulling the data back into Excel and editing the data over and over again. I could not find the tab anywhere.

Finally one of the great developers I work with chimed in and said use Notepad2. Open the file and use the View Option->Show White Space. As you can tell now you can see the tabs versus the spaces.

Spaces = dots

Tabs = ——-> or arrows.

Alternatively you can search in Microsoft Word using the ^t symbol.

So lesson learned now go out and edit your Tab Delimited Text files.

Cyber Monday has come and gone and those of us that got all our goodies online are now awaiting for those special packages to arrive soon to be placed underneath the Christmas tree. How sweet it is.

However did you ever think identity theft and phishing sites are also on the prowl.

I know what your thinking this is another one of those ads for some service that will hold your ID safe like oh the craptastic ID vault commercials I hear all the time.

You ask what is wrong with ID Vault? Well I can’t say much is wrong. They have the right idea. However they pray on all those whom don’t understand how to keep themselves safe online.

Let just start with your online Password. I am sure where you work they have a password policy and even some biometrics set up so that the company as well as you are protected mostly the prior.

Truth is most people go home and start shopping online and surf over to walmart.com or my favorite Buylifetime.com for some goodies and the sites tend to ask you for a special thing called a user account. Given this you only really wanted to be on the web site for at most 30 seconds. However you are cool with setting up an account because it make you feel o’ so safe and your ready to buy. Here is where the majority of people run into the least secure part of their transaction. While every shopping site has a “https” or “Secure Certificate” the only thing that makes these sites “Secure” is they paid a lot of money to have a company like VeriSign to do research them and give them a “Certificate” saying yes this is the company and site they say they are. There is no secret tunnel that you are in. For mere argument yes you do change IP ports from 80 to 443 however those ports are still just ports for transport of information along the same internet we all use.

So now that I have you paranoid. Well you should and should not be. Whaaa? are you smoking something mike?

First No. Paranoia should be a good friend when you are on the internet. Millions of bits and not to mention the crap in those bits intermingling.

The reason not to be paranoid is most sites that offer the “SSL” or “Https” are typically safe and do a ton of work to make sure you transactions are safe. 

So going back to the reason for this article is make sure your passwords are STRONG! Can’t say that more. Having a Strong password will save your account from being hacked into like well Sarah Pallin’s Email.

The following little spreadsheet will ask you questions about your password not for your password and tell you how strong it is as well as how long it will take to crack your password.

Download from Drop.io(http://drop.io/BFTCalc)

Please be safe on the internet have strong passwords and remember the internet while it feels safe and your accounts are protected that doesn’t mean they are.

Rule of thumb: If your data is on the internet. It is accessible to anyone anytime no matter how locked down or safe a website says it is.

Anything is hack-able given time.

Get these tools if you don’t have them yet:

• ResHacker
• Replacer

We’ll begin by copying shell32.dll to a safe place.
Copy it two times, one which we’ll be editing, and one which is a backup.
Open it in ResHacker and you’ll see a list on the left side showing all available resources.

Now select the ‘Dialog’ resource, and look at 1003. You’ll notice it’s the Run box.

We’ll start by adding a bitmap to place on our Run box. Go to ‘Bitmap’ and select ‘Action’, ‘Add a new Resource’.

Here you select a bmp file and give it the name RUNGFX. You can get the bmp I used here: Runbox.bmp.

Press ‘Add Resource’ and now you can see it’s added.

Now we’ll go back to the ‘Dialog’ 1003, 1033 and replace the existing script with this one:
1003 DIALOGEX 0, 0, 188, 83
STYLE DS_FIXEDSYS | DS_MODALFRAME | DS_NOIDLEMSG | DS_CONTEXTHELP | WS_POPUP | WS_CAPTION | WS_SYSMENU
CAPTION ":: run ::"
LANGUAGE LANG_ENGLISH, SUBLANG_ENGLISH_US
FONT 8, "MS SHELL DLG"
{
CONTROL "", 12298, COMBOBOX, CBS_DROPDOWN | CBS_AUTOHSCROLL | CBS_DISABLENOSCROLL | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_VSCROLL | WS_TABSTOP, 3, 53, 181, 198
CONTROL "R", 12306, BUTTON, BS_AUTOCHECKBOX | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_DISABLED | WS_TABSTOP, 21, 90, 1, 1
CONTROL "Run", 1, BUTTON, BS_PUSHBUTTON | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP, 3, 67, 59, 14 , 0×00020000
CONTROL "Cancel", 2, BUTTON, BS_PUSHBUTTON | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP, 63, 67, 59, 14 , 0×00020000
CONTROL "Find", 12288, BUTTON, BS_PUSHBUTTON | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP, 124, 67, 59, 14 , 0×00020000
CONTROL "RUNGFX", 0, STATIC, SS_BITMAP | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_GROUP, 3, 3, 181, 48
}
To make your life easier, and to be sure you don’t make a mistake due to your browser word wrapping the script, copy paste it from this text file: runscript.txt.
When you have replaced it you press ‘Compile Script’.

And now you’ll see the preview has changed to our new runbox!

Press CTRL+S to save the modified dll.
The last thing we need to do is to use Replacer to replace our existing shell32.dll in SYSTEM32 with our new file. You can’t just copy it in there because Windows File Protection would replace it with a backup. Therefore we use Replacer, just follow the instructions Replacer shows and you’ll be fine. Replacer also prompts you to make a backup, make sure you make one, you never know what can go wrong.
When the file is replaced (Replacer replaces the file itself along with the one in dllcache) you have to reboot and when everything went fine, you now have a new Run box! A really good looking one, different from everyone else.
Some notes:
If you move the controls around, make sure to not place any above or behind the bitmap, it could give problems. Also don’t include a bitmap bigger then your box. Make sure you leave a bit of spaces from the edges, when you put the bitmap against the border, it won’t show up.

***You will need a decent video card to pull this off***

Windows Aero needs a graphics card that supports DirectX 9 acceleration, has WDDM-compatible driver and minimum 128 MB of graphics memory plus Pixel Shader 2.0 with 32 bits per pixel support. This requirement is too demanding for users who likely to purchase Vista HB edition, where the machine tends to be cheaper and of lower specification such as with just built-in on-board Super VGA graphics card.

However, if you accidentally buy Vista Home Basic, or your computer purchased from OEM brand comes with Vista Home Basic only, but the computer has the necessary CPU processing power, memory and graphics card to support Windows Aero, here is a simple registry hack that allows Windows Aero user experience to be turned on or enabled in Windows Vista Home Basic edition.

To enable Windows Aero desktop theme:

Click on Vista Start button, then enter “regedit” into Instant Search box. Click on the registry editor found in the search results list.
Navigate to the following registry key and select (highlight) the key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM

In the right pane, you should see there are 2 value names, namely Composition and Composition Policy. Modify and edit the value date of Composition to 1 and Composition Policy to 2.

Restart the Desktop Windows Manager Session Manager by issuing the following command in a command prompt window with administrative privileges:

net stop uxsms

and then,

net start uxsms

Alternatively, you can also use Services applet in Control Panel to restart the DWM service.

Reboot Windows Vista Home Basic system.

Once again please be careful when editing the Windows Registry as if you edit it incorrectly it can mean a rebuild of you Operating System.

Enjoy and good luck.

Enjoy!

Around 3 weeks ago on a very rainy Saturday I walked into a T-Mobile store(yes you can make fun of me) to get the latest greatest VOIP idea since well VOIP(yes there is more services out there. Stay with me on this.) I received a @home router much like my friend Joe Levi. It was a process and about 4 hours later I emerged from the store with all my gear and a shove it to Qwest and all the high priced land line costs.

T-Mobile told me it would take 10 days to port the phone number I like(I know you all want it. Sorry!) so days turned into well days. All the sudden I had tons of people calling my new line that had not been hooked up yet(lazy me). This is where I ran to home depot and grabbed 100 feet of RG6 cable and ran an entirely new line to my current DSL line(cause it uses a phone line still). This all happened on a Saturday(October 11th to be exact) I was amazed by how clear the T-Mobile VOIP was.

I enjoyed the service for about 3 days until around 8pm on Tuesday October 14th my DSL died. The reason I knew this was I was in the middle of dinner and my mother in law(she is the coolest mother in law) calls on my cell phone telling me the phone was going straight to voicemail. So I calmly go down to my Server/Router closet to find what is the matter with the modem. I look up and the Internet light has gone dark. So I call my ISP and they tell me Qwest cannot talk to the ISP the “Cell was down”. I think of myself pretty communications savvy but have no idea what the crap a cell is? I gear up and call Qwest technical support and go through the motions 3 times (got hung up on twice) till I finally get a manager on the phone. I work with him and 3rd tier support until around 1 am Wednesday. Where I am informed I need to call the “business office” at 8am to see if they can push buttons.

Wednesday comes about and I call the “business office” and I am told I was shutoff due to non payment. I was 11 days late (wow that is for another blog post) so I pay up and ask when will this be resolved. I am told after 5pm. I am excited but angered a little. It gets to about 6pm and my DSL is still not on. In fact the DSL light mocks me by just flashing. I call Qwest support again and talk to a manager that says we cannot find a turn on notice in the notes and until they do they cannot do anything. I lose my patience and hangup.

Thursday morning I call the business office and say I want all but my DSL and DirectTV turned off immediately. The nice but somewhat dim witted Customer service person deletes my account and creates an new account and tells me that my service will not be active until Tuesday the 21st of October. I immediately lose my patience. I asked for the manager and I want a Rush on this. The manager then tells me there is no such thing and I will have to be patient. Grrr… What Can I do they have me hostage.

Tuesday morning comes and I call Qwest to make sure the DSL line will be up. I am assured that it will be up at 5pm (yeah right). I am hopeful and doubtful. So 7pm comes along and DSL is still toast. I spend the next 4 hours on the phone with 3rd tier support trying to resolve the issue until they schedule me  a tech the next morning? Sweet finally someone to fix my issue.

Wednesday morning 8am waiting for tech and 9am comes and I am beyond pissed and frustrated. I call tech support and get the manager again on the phone to which I am told I do not have an appointment until Thursday at 8am to which I tell the manager no he will be here in 15 minutes. He agrees. 30 minutes later I am insured a tech will be at my house in a few minutes. I ask to be transferred to billing and the billing supervisor(steve) and I have a one sided(my side) scream fest about who is paying for my bill. I ask if Qwest has any loyalty to any to its customers? I was answered “Qwest does not have any more loyalty to existing customers than it has to new customers.” This was told to me three times. I ended up hanging up frustrated and very very pissed off.

I then email my customer advocate friend Joe Levi  to which I was told he called the CEO of Qwest (I have the number if you need it) to explain the issue and that he would be publishing my complaint on a large web news site he publishes for. I was told that the PR director for Qwest called and found out the issues and cleared up all confusion. To him I have to thank.

It seems that when I got my @home from T-Mobile the order to cancel my phone service was not only sent out as just phone service but “All Services”. I love to eat crow(not really). So make sure just the phone service is cancelled/ported and not your DSL service that T-Mobile does not provide is not switched off.

I would like to thank Joe Levi as well as the CEO and PR director for Qwest communications. I hope steve the billing manager can forgive me for my tirade.

Typically the word Adobe used in a sentence feels me full of fright from nightmares of Adobe Products being installed and watching the system resources completely diminish on any great Server or Desktop including Apple OS’s.

Let’s just talk about Adobe for a second. Here is a company with great ideas and a great means. The idea of tools like Photoshop (not sure I can say that without paying royalties), AIR and Flex are brilliant. Yes I just said brilliant.  However being a developer of all kinds of technologies (this means I have developed using Adobe as well as SUN technologies not just microsoft). Adobe was always had great ideas but poorly implemented. This can be said for Java as well (I will rant later on this).

I have always felt flash left something to be desired. Once again I have written a few small applications in flash. To be honest using flash 4 (yes it was old and very outdated. Scripting was only a thought).  It is and was very clunky to write in excuse me I mean add animations.

Flash is a ways or a means to deliver content using animations or using video and compress it so that it should be faster smarter and better than a means such as AVI or DIVX/XVID. In this realm it does well, making the video smaller and more available without installing more codex’s to run video over the web (take all your favorite video sites as an example(youtube). It is also nice to run on any type of web site using any and all technologies. Hats off to Adobe for this. However Adobe Flash is a serious bandwidth hog and slows down a clients web browsing experience. I have to admit there is ways of compressing these files to be less um hoggy if you will. However it seems since only designers like to use and “devisign” (Develop + Design = devisign) in it.  Most designers don’t use compression or like to make these files smaller cause it might take away from the “Artsy” work they have done.

Things that Adobe could fix in my humble opinion are:

-Enable better compression

-Use or I guess copy the Silverlight model of tiny sized bits to be served for great quality and less bandwidth hogging.

-Add a set of standards for you developers oops.. devisigners!

-No more splash screens using Flash PLEASE! (this goes for all you web designers stop it. It is ugly and making the web ugly.)

Also Adobe could you please de-junk Acrobat. It is crazy crapware that I will not install. Learn from Foxit Software please.

When I started at my first true getting paid to write complex batch, command files, inf scripts as well as long html/xhtml/xml scripting. I was using notepad and had many syntax errors due to lack of syntax outlining like a great IDE that I couldn’t afford. That is when my boss pointed me to a great little application call Program File Editor. I was amazed by the ability of this robust little application.

My favorite part was the little record button that would make what ever I did like line spacing as well as parsing long xml strings easy and very efficient.

Created by Alan Phillips at Lancaster University. Also has not been updated since 1999. As you can see it still works in Vista.

If you need a great little application to write complex macro’s or a great little text editor give Program File Editor a try.

Download Here – From Download.com

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch (Oct. 23, 1960 - July 25, 2008) gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving presentation.

As you can tell if you have been to Lego Land that there is more. Unfortunately I was asked to move onto the kid rides. I would pay the 50dollars again just to sit for hours looking at this.

Still the question remains: How much should a site cost?

Remember a developer can develop and a designer well designs and you will want it (the site) maintained. These costs are not usually included unless you can talk a developer to do so (includes more money).

Like the businesses they represent, web sites are not all created equal and serve various purposes, therefore they can vary greatly in cost as the level of design and functionality increases and becomes more complex to suit your company’s needs.

>$2000 A basic designed web site, acting primarily as an online brochure to merely establish a necessary presence online to answer the questions ‘do you exist?’, ‘are you professional?’ and ‘what do you do?’, can be done for a mere market average of $2000. This web site will not allow you to interact with your audience (social networking, blog), transact business directly through your site (ecommerce), or enable you to manipulate and update the pages and content within your site without hiring a web programmer/designer to do it for you(Content Management System does enable this for more $$$).

But the site will serve to help brand and market your company, showcase your products and services and inspire sales as a lead generating tool.

Unfortunately, the design of your web site will be template at such low costs. This means that your site probably mirrors that of other sites on the web with similar design and structure.

$3000-$7000 Custom designed web sites, with all the aesthetic beauty that you can possibly envision, costs a market average of $5000. These sites are not very functional but are extraordinarily pretty and all design elements are created and designed specifically for your site and tailored to your market needs. These sites will still not enable audience interactivity, ecommerce, or content management. The sites cost is all due to the number of hours it takes to create beauty within the pages of your site.

The site will serve the same necessary purposes that a basic designed web site will but will be far more aesthetically pleasing and custom to your businesses desires.

-Not recommended. The reason is you do not want a site that is just pretty. Why pay for pretty without functionality?

$7000- $12,000 Depending on the level of aesthetic design that is requested Content Management System (CMS) web sites will run at a market average of $10,000. These web sites are created with both functionality and design in mind, as you will receive both custom art design and mid level functionality including the ability to manage and update all content, images, and text contained within the pages of your site (infinite number of pages possible). With a CMS capable web site, your site will have endless possibilities as a pluggable, flexible web application capable of adding additional features as you desire.

These web sites are built with the idea that you will have a significant number of changes, additions or updates to be made to your site in the near future. Instead of being charged hourly rates to make such changes, a CMS system enables you to do a majority of the basic additions without prior coding or web designing knowledge.

Social interactivity with your site visitors is possible with a site of this caliber, as a BLOG will be present within your site enabling you to place posts of content that you believe is relevant and desired by your audience. Your audience can choose to respond to your blog posts and each others comments allowing for 2 dimensional interaction between you, your audience, and within your audience.

Some ecommerce and real state listing sites can be created within this price range depending upon level of functionality and design.

Also, sites of this caliber have varying prices with regard to design elements. These sites do have custom design work, but more expensive elements like Flash Art creation will affect pricing.

$12,000- $100,000+< If you are looking for advance functionality including social networking, blogging, ecommerce, or any other web application topped off with the markets leading design elements, you should expect to pay a market average of $25,000! Like I said before, some ecommerce and web applicable sites can be created for less, while most successful ventures are created for much more.

Sites that have fallen in this price range include Facebook.com, Twitter.com and Digg.com to name only a few.

A site within this price range will be built and hand coded from scratch. That means your site is unlike any other and requires the attention and expertise of an experienced web application developer(s) and web site designer(s). A site that falls into this category requires months of market analysis, software research, consulting, database design and implementation, software development and integration, site quality assurance and testing. This is the mother load and it is priced accordingly.

I know what you are thinking, ‘who knew it was so expensive?’ And the only answer I can give is that web design and creation is like any other craft or trade and requires a high level of knowledge and expertise. Furthermore, with the rapid rate that technology and the internet is constantly changing, the gap is beginning to seriously widen between web amateurs and professionals. Can you still get a web site for $500? Sure you can, but it will not display and operate like a professionally designed web site will and it will be as ineffective and unsuccessful as the individual who designed it.

You’ll even get emails sent to g.e.e.k.d.o.r.k@gmail.com, for the crazies in your family. Ooh, and anything sent to "googlemail" instead of "gmail." Honestly, it’s the little things that are fun (and btw, none of the above email addresses belong to me!).

More usefully, you can add a plus sign to the end of your address, and then you can set up a folders in your email that coordinate with that. For instance, say you open an online account with USBank. When you sign up, give your email address as "geekdork+banking@gmail.com", then in Settings, set up a filter. In the From box, add in USBank or your chosen bank, in the To box, put in your newly-created geekdork+banking@gmail.com address, and the set the filter to put in a folder titled "banking." You can also use this technique when you sign up for something and send their emails to you directly to the trash!

Don’t worry about thanking me.

Make sure you have 512megabytes of ram before doing this.

-Start > Run > then type SYSEDIT.EXE
-Expand the system.ini file window.
-Scroll down almost to the end of the file till you find a line called [386enh]
-Press Enter to make one blank line, and in that line type
Irq14=4096

NOTE: The above info for the new line is CASE SENSITIVE
- Select File > Save
- Close SYSEDIT and reboot your computer

Simple and works with Windows Xp - Vista.

"

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]

"welcome"="Good Times Enter your own welcome message here"

"

Make sure the "welcome" is a String when adding it to the registry.

1. Save the whales. Collect the whole set
2. A day without sunshine is, like, night
3. On the other hand, you have different fingers.
4. I just got lost in thought. It was unfamiliar territory.
5. 42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.
6. 99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
7. I feel like I’m diagonally parked in a parallel universe.
8. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be
misquoted, then used against you.
9. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be without sponges.
10. Honk if you love peace and quiet.
11. Remember half the people you know are below average.
12. Despite the cost of living, have you noticed how popular it
remains?
13. Nothing is foolproof to a talented fool.
14. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
15. He who laughs last thinks slowest.
16. Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
17. Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.
18. The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the
cheese.
19. I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.
20. I intend to live forever - so far so good.
21. Borrow money from a pessimist - they don’t expect it back.
22. If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
24. Quantum mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of.25. The only substitute for good manners is fast reflexes.
26. Support bacteria - they’re the only culture some people have.
27. When everything’s coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane and
going the wrong way.
28. If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you
tried.
29. A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
30. Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need
it.
31. For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism.
32. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks
33. Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with.
34. No one is listening until you make a mistake.
35. Success always occurs in private and failure in full view.
37. The hardness of butter is directly proportional to the softness
of the bread.
38. The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the
ability to reach it.
39. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many
is research.
40. To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your
principles.
41. Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7 of your life.
42. You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
43. Two wrongs are only the beginning.
44. The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
45. The sooner you fall behind the more time you’ll have to catch
up.
46. A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
47. Change is inevitable except from vending machines.
48. Get a new car for your spouse - it’ll be a great trade!
49. Plan to be spontaneous - tomorrow.
50. Always try to be modest and be proud of it!
51. If you think nobody cares, try missing a couple of payments.
52. How many of you believe in telekinesis? Raise my hand…
53. Love may be blind but marriage is a real eye-opener.
54. If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving isn’t for you.

Open Notepad and type:

text1=msgbox("your text here",52,"your title here")

You can write as many text message boxes as you want. The many you write the many pop-ups will appear.

2. Save the text as popup.vbs. Be sure the change the ‘Save as Type‘ to ‘All Files‘ .

3. You can use scary messages to make a prank to your friends, like:

text1=msgbox("Virus Detected",52,"Warning: VIRUS")
text2=msgbox("Virus is installing on your system",52,"Installing…")
text3=msgbox("Virus is installing on your system",52,"Installing…")
4. When you click on popup.vbs you will receive on your screen something like this:

Do you want it now and free? 

Check this little app out.

It comes from our friends at niknak.org.

niknak.org - IIsTrafficMonitor

Free!

http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/2006/09/15/free-controls-for-user-and-roles-management/

http://digg.com/tech_news/Amazon_com_Father_s_Day_Horror_Story/
http://www.joelevi.com/blog/index.php/2007/06/20/msn-direct-and-fossil-abacus-smart-watch-2006-problems/

NewDopp was born! He’s a biggun at 8 pounds 7 ounces and 18 inches long. Mother is doing well, baby is slated to be in the NICU for another couple of days due to breathing issues. Otherwise he is healthy and doing well.

More news to follow…

Sweet now I can make my own anti motivation ads.read more | digg story

I would trade my IPOD for this…read more | digg story

% Available - Downtime/year
98% - 7.30 days
99% - 87.6 hrs
99.9% - 8.76 hrs
99.99% - 53 mins
99.999% - 5.25 mins
99.9999% - 31 secs
99.99999% - 3.1 secs

Did you know the Telco industry shoots for 99.999% uptime? That is a lot of nines.

Sponsored by your friends at

Office displays several shortcuts on the Places Bar in the Open and Save As dialog boxes.  By default this is limited to My Recent Documents, Desktop, My Documents, My Computer and My Network Places. You can add additional shortcuts to this list by:

• Navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\[version]\Common\Open Find\Places\UserDefinedPlaces

Where [version] corresponds to your Office version: 9.0 = Office 2000, 10.0 = Office XP, and 11.0 = Office 2003, 12.0 for Office 2007

• Create a sub-key named "PlaceN" beneath the UserDefinedPlaces key

Where N is an unrepeated number starting with 1–for example; Place1, Place2, Place3, and so forth.

1. Open your new PlaceN sub-key
2. Create two new String Values named "Name" and "Path".
3. Set the Name value to the desired shortcut name to see. (example "Business")
4. Set the Path value to the desired path. (example "c:\BusinessStuff")
5. Close the Registry Editor and restart the Office application.

When you use the Open or Save As dialog boxes your new Place(s) will appear.

As seen on:GeeksWithBlogs.net

List of environment variables used in programming and batch files.

%ERRORLEVEL% - System returns the error code of the most recently used command. A non-0 value usually indicates an error.

%HOMEDRIVE% - System returns which local workstation drive letter is connected to the user’s home directory. This variable is set based on the value of the home directory. The user’s home directory is specified in Local Users and Groups.

%HOMEPATH% - System returns the full path of the user’s home directory. This variable is set based on the value of the home directory. The user’s home directory is specified in Local Users and Groups.

%HOMESHARE% - System returns the network path to the user’s shared home directory. This variable is set based on the value of the home directory. The user’s home directory is specified in Local Users and Groups.

%LOGONSERVER% - Local returns the name of the domain controller that validated the current logon session.

%NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS% - System specifies the number of processors installed on the computer.
%OS% -System returns the OS name. Windows XP and Windows 2000 display the OS as Windows_NT.

%PATH% - System specifies the search path for executable files.

%PATHEXT% - System returns a list of the file extensions that the OS considers to be executable.

%PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE% - System returns the processor’s chip architecture. Values: x86, IA64.

%PROCESSOR_IDENTIFIER% - System returns a description of the processor.

%PROCESSOR_LEVEL% - System returns the model number of the computer’s processor.

%PROCESSOR_REVISION% - System returns the revision number of the processor.

%PROGRAMFILES% - Returns the location of the default install directory for applications.

%PROMPT% - Local returns the command-prompt settings for the current interpreter. Cmd.exe generates this variable.

%RANDOM% - System returns a random decimal number between 0 and 32767. Cmd.exe generates this variable.

%SYSTEMDRIVE% - System returns the drive containing the Windows root directory (i.e., the system root).

%SYSTEMROOT% - System returns the location of the Windows root directory.

%TEMP% - System and User return the default temporary directories for applications that are available to users who are currently logged on. Some applications require TEMP and others require TMP.

%TMP% - System and User return the default temporary directories for applications that are available to users who are currently logged on. Some applications require TEMP and others require TMP.

%TIME% - System returns the current time. This variable uses the same format as the time /t command. Cmd.exe generates this variable. For more information about the time command, see the Time command.

%USERDOMAIN% - Local returns the name of the domain that contains the user’s account.

%USERNAME% - Local returns the name of the user currently logged on.

%USERPROFILE% - Local returns the location of the profile for the current user.

%WINDIR% - System returns the location of the OS directory

Now, to get rid of it:
Start / Run / gpedit.msc / Local Computer Policy / Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Update / Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations

You can configure how often it will nag you (I re-configured it for 720 minutes, which means I’ll be asked twice on a work day), or completely disable it.

[edit]Oh, I almost forgot: this setting is only loaded when Windows starts, so a reboot is needed. If that stupid dialog is on your screen now, just stop the “Automatic Updates” service (but keep it as Automatic, so it gets reloaded on the next start) and you won’t see it again.

ping (IP) -t > C:\whatever you want.txt

Have you ever been working with a good number of applications at once? Are you a naturally born multitasker? Alright, answer me this - who has had Windows buckle under the weight of all of these applications and display error messages stating that the system is out of memory or out of resources, buttons and menus do not work correctly, or you get an error sound but no message on the screen? I’ve hit this numerous times, to the point that I’ve lost work because of it…

(By the way, Adobe, can you please implement that little feature that Microsoft Office has had for years known as “auto save”? I don’t know how many times I’ve managed to completely max out Windows designing a website and have had Photoshop fall over dead and dissapear off my screen, only to find out that when I open Photoshop up again that the entire thing saved jack-all, all of those layers and documents gone poof into the void of darkness… if Microsoft can do it, why can’t you?)

Sometimes this happens even when you have a lot of system memory (RAM) still available. For instance, open up Internet Explorer and hold Ctrl+N to open up as many Internet Explorer windows as you can before menus, icons, and menus start displaying incorrectly, dissapear, buttons aren’t clickable, etc. Close a few out and check your Windows Task Manager in the “Performance” tab, I bet you will find that alot of your Physical Memory is still available.

This publication applies to:

* Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
* Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
* Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
* Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
* Microsoft Windows XP Professional
* Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
* Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition
* Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition

DISCLAIMER: digitalfive.org and Kristan Kenney hold no responsibility or liability whatsoever should something go wrong, or if you incorrectly modify the Windows Registry. Please take extreme caution while following this publication and follow the steps correctly.

“Okie-dokie, if I have all of this memory still available, why is Windows saying I’m out of memory and out of system resources!?”

Simple. You have hit the “user handle” or “GDI handle” limit in Windows. This limit is there for two reasons:

* Leaky applications or faulty code & malware can’t easily crash the system by attempting to overflow the system with GDI handles, making everything un-usable until a reboot is performed.
* To prevent a user from opening up more applications than the system can handle.

If you have 1 gigabyte (or 1024MB) of RAM or higher, the default User Handle and GDI Handle limits can be pretty restrictive when running a large working set of applications that demand the most from your system and tax it heavily.

“Do you feel my pain?”

Yes, of course. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be writing this article that is more than likely a good 2 or 3 pages in length.

I’m a designer and coder, I use Adobe Photoshop with a lot of documents opened up - on top of that, I usually listen to music while working as it helps me work better, so Windows Media Player 10 is usually open on my machine. Also opened are Windows Messenger, Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, SmartFTP (one of the best FTP clients I’ve ever used, highly recommended), Microsoft Word, a few dozen Internet Explorer windows, some Mozilla Firefox windows with a few tabs opened in each one, and EditPlus 2 for coding.

That’s a pretty heavy working set of applications, and I demand the most out of my computer when it comes to multitasking (I have a Pentium 4 2.66GHz, with 1.5GB of RAM just for those who are wondering).

I too have nailed these handle limits - more than once. After much searching and pondering I have finally come up with a working solution around this issue (hurray!)

“Yeah yeah, stop rambling and cut to the chase!”

First and foremost, I must warn you that modifying these settings incorrectly can render your Windows installation near useless. Also, depending on your computer configuration and the amount of RAM in your system, you may wish to play around with the numbers until you find a setting that is perfect for your computer.

To back up everything, open the Registry Editor (click on Start, Run, and then type “regedit.exe” (without the quotes).

To backup a registry key:

* In the Registry Editor on the left hand side, you will see the navigation pane. Using your mouse or keyboard, navigate to the following subkeys:

* HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\SubSystems
* HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows
* Right click on each of the subkeys above in the left hand pane and from the context menu that appears, choose the “Export” option. Save the exported registry data file where ever you wish, but make sure that it will be accessible should we need to restore the files.

“OK, I’ve backed everything up! Now what!?”

Don’t quit the Registry Editor just yet - we still need to make some modifications in order to increase the handle limits in Windows.

With the Registry Editor opened, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\SubSystems. You will notice a set of “REG_MULTI_SZ” and “REG_EXPAND_SZ” keys in the right hand pane. The one that we are interested in modifying is called “Windows”.

To modify the key, double click on it. It should look something like this:

%SystemRoot%\system32\csrss.exe ObjectDirectory=\Windows SharedSection=1024,3072,512 Windows=On SubSystemType=Windows ServerDll=basesrv,1 ServerDll=winsrv:UserServerDllInitialization,3 ServerDll=winsrv:ConServerDllInitialization,2 ProfileControl=Off MaxRequestThreads=16

The section of this string we are interested in modifting is “SharedSection”.

In the SharedSection part of the string you will notice 3 numbers. What we are interested in is the middle value, “3072?. Modify this value so that the middle number is “8192?.

It should look something like this after modifying the value:

%SystemRoot%\system32\csrss.exe ObjectDirectory=\Windows SharedSection=1024,8192,512 Windows=On SubSystemType=Windows ServerDll=basesrv,1 ServerDll=winsrv:UserServerDllInitialization,3 ServerDll=winsrv:ConServerDllInitialization,2 ProfileControl=Off MaxRequestThreads=16

Now that we’ve changed this, lets continue, shall we?

In the left hand pane of the Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows. In the right hand side, you will see two REG_DWORD values, named “GDIProcessHandleQuota” and “USERProcessHandleQuota”. We will need to modify both of these.

The first key we will want to modify is “GDIProcessHandleQuota”. This keys value can be set between 256 and 16,384 (maximum), and the default value is 10,000. I’d recommend using 15,000 as a value for this key, however if you are doing a lot of multitasking, shoot for the stars and go with 16,384.

This key can not be set past 16,384 as it is the maximum acceptable value.

Now, lets modify “USERProcessHandleQuota”. This keys value can be set between 200 and 18,000 (maximum), with a default value of 10,000. I’d recommend increasing this value to the same number used with “GDIProcessHandleQuota”, however as previously mentioned if you are working with a hefty application workload, shoot for the stars and go wth the maximum value of 18,000.

This key can not be set past 18,000 as it is the maximum acceptable value.

Do NOT attempt to increase these values past the maximum - Windows will become very unstable and may even stop working correctly. If Windows starts acting up after changing these values, lower them until the issues are resolved, or restore the backups of these keys’ values that we created before making modifications.

Now that you’ve changed these values, restart your computer and tax the system using the Internet Explorer trick mentioned previously - open Internet Explorer and hold down Ctrl+N on your keyboard to open up new Internet Explorer windows. Continue this until menus, buttons, and user interface elements stop working correctly. Also, open any applications you run day-to-day while you are performing this, so that you can get more of an idea if you have everything configured correctly.

You may also want to monitor your memory usage and handles information in Task Manager to see whether or not the above registry values need any more modifications.

I hope this helps with any multi-tasking issues you may have run into while running Microsoft Windows, now get back to work!

If anyone knows the blog or to whom wrote this I would love to give them proper Cred as doing this to an xp machine really Helps

Ticket

Agenda Monday April 30

1:30 PM XBD07 Enable Windows CardSpace and Information Cards in Your Web Site

Novell and Microsoft Present using a infocard as a ID selector(Digital ID’s) Part of the user Workstation.
Windows Cardspace (an addin in windows xp-Vista) That encodes its self with the
machine ID and works on the kernel level also created by user including whatever
credentials user wants.creates a site specific ID in combination with
sites SSL cert. So the PPID(CardSpace ID) combines with the website
RSA key or SSL cert and hashes this combined key and saves it on the
web server and the users workstation. Duplicate keys can be created through either the website or
local workstation to external drive ie USB drive.**Also can be used with AD or Active Directory**
Did I mention you have to have a SSL cert for the domain?

The cross platform connection came with a test on a apple box and a suse linux box(novell) with
its version of cardspace called bandit project or the Higgins Project.

OpenID has yet to meet this standard.

Impression:

This is sweet that I can now write this functionality into every secure site I create.
Was a excellent session

3:00 PM DEV20 Developing Data Driven Applications Using the New Dynamic Data Controls in ASP.NET
XD006 Accessing Data Services in the Cloud Delfino 4105
Ready for Dynamic languages(Iron Python, Iron Ruby, Jscript and Vbscript) in your asp.net apps?
Dynamic Languages + Static Languages = Dynamic Data Controls for Asp.net
So take a IronPython Page and set a datasource(MSSQL, SQLLite, MySQL, ORACLE, Access) Drag
a Dynamic Data Control on the page like a dynamic data grid and run the app.
Not only does the DDC pull in the data from the source but it looks for both the primary and foreign keys of the
Table and creates dropdown lists linking to these other tables as well as depending on the primary and foreign keys
insert delete and update based on database schema. WOW!
Drop in your Ajaxified controls and you run async data updates and pulls within seconds. SWEET!

Impression:

Going back to the eighties for this one… Radicool! I started developing dynamic pages from that moment on.

4:30 PM DEV04 - Using LINQ to Dramatically Improve Data Driven Development in Web Applications
So being exhausted and excited and basically in zen. This day couldnt get any better right?
Once again wrong. When the Anders Hejlsberg starts off the session with the queries going Where, From and select instead of
Select, from and where. Some yells out why are you doing it in reverse? Anders says: “To be frank with you the SQL team got it wrong. I mean when you send a query select from where. The query is sent and processed backwards anyway. I mean think about it logically. How do you select something without knowing where and from first?”
Wow. Vindicated.
So Linq has datasouces using objects SQL, Datasets(ADO) and XML. Very sweet. Taking a database or table and making it an object in which intellisense works. I was in Database nirvana. I cannot wait untill release.

Impression:

ADO.net is dead as a doornail with this. Good riddance!

End of Day 1