All About Interop : on WSRP

All About Interop : on WSRP

A friend of mine was saying the other day that they are working on WSRP. I was surprised to hear the word. Reason being that its the first time I am hearing the word. when I queried, I was being told what WSRP is.

I did a quick search on Web Services Remote Portlets (WSRP) and its support in .NET led me to an intresting discussion on the msdn blogs.

something that is really intresting

Life, Being a Techie

Sometimes, sucks, sometimes wonderful.

Just cannot escape, nor love to escape

its part and parcel

something we go with it

hate it and love it

Help required on FLash

I am trying to call functions in flash from javascript or php or xml. I cannot change any files, I can just call the api functions. and am not sure on how to do that. I tried to look into different options as listed on the google search, but, found that none could be implemented.

Can anyone help me out on this, on how to acheive it?

I am new to this type of work. I had worked on different projects, but flash is something new. I am aware of action script alone, but not this combination.

Please help or mail me at kiranvnv at gmail with details

Security Developer Center: Regulatory Compliance Demystified

Security Developer Center: Regulatory Compliance Demystified:

I came across the above url while going through MSDN. Understanding the requirements for meeting the regulatory compliance while executing projects from US is a major task and this is something that would help everyone in understanding them clearly.

Many times, I was asked about the effect of NDA, Non-NDA, etc. Infact, I was also not aware till a few weeks earlier when a friend explained me the legal issues that could arise out of not meeting the terms and conditions laid out in NDA.

An article like this would certainly help many an individual.

Thanks for publishing one on MSDN...

CLR Inside Out: Using Strong Name Signatures -- MSDN Magazine, July 2006

CLR Inside Out: Using Strong Name Signatures -- MSDN Magazine, July 2006: "Strong name signatures (and signing in general) are a key facet of Microsoft� .NET Framework security. But regardless of how well designed .NET signatures may be, they won�t offer the maximum benefit if you don�t know how to use them properly. This installment of CLR Inside Out talks about strong names, strong name signatures, and how to use them.

A Short Refresher

Digital signatures are used to verify the integrity of data being passed from the originator (the signer) to a recipient (the verifier). The signatures are generated and verified using public key cryptography. The signer of a message has a pair of cryptographic keys: a public key, which everyone in the world knows, and a private key, which is kept secret by the signer. The verifier knows only the public key, which is used to verify that the signer knew the private key and the message.
In some cases, when some additional infrastructure is in place, digital signatures can also be used to reliably learn the name of the signer, and to ensure some chunk of data (a message, some code, or so on) has not been modified after the signer created the signature for the data.
Various mechanisms are used to implement digital signatures. The current implementation of strong names in the .NET Framework relies on the RSA public key algorithm and the SHA-1 hash algorithm."

If u forget VSS Admin Password

hmm, thinking of sharing a tip I learnt
Other day, I changed the VSS Admin password and later forgot it. I normally choose words that I can identify easily. I tried to log in using the same.
However, inspite for my umpteen attempts to log in, I could not. Its then that I decided to check Internet for ways to enter the VSS as an admin.
There were different hacks given, out of which, I found the below as simplest:
Create a new VSS database, with the same list of users you have in the original Database.
Go to the data folder of the new database and copy the file "UM.DAT"
go to the data folder of the original database and replace the file "UM.DAT" with the copied file.
You can now log in as the administrator
Side effects:
1. You have to give the password for each user and inform them again
2. You may have to give the permissions to Users for individual folders, if they were in existence.
After some research, I found a way out for #2 also. While creating the users for the new database, if you create them in the same order as you have done for the original database, the permissions would be retained as given.
I hope that this would help some one who forget the VSS Admin password.

Security Developer Center: Using Application Verifier Within Your Software Development Lifecycle

Security Developer Center: Using Application Verifier Within Your Software Development Lifecycle: "The Microsoft� Application Verifier (AppVerifier) is a runtime verification tool for unmanaged code that assists in finding subtle programming errors, security issues and limited user account privilege problems that can be difficult to identify with normal application testing techniques.
Introduction
One of the biggest challenges faced by programmers, software architects, testers, and security consultants is to understand the consequences of their applications when deployed into production. Even with access to source code, it is difficult to grasp everything that will occur during execution due to a variety of dependencies (for example. multiple groups contributing to code or leveraging external components). The Microsoft AppVerifier can play a critical role in helping to manage this complexity and the potential side effects of bugs. The AppVerifierassists in finding subtle programming errors, security issues, and user account privilege problems that can be difficult to identify during a typical test pass."

Visual Studio Magazine - Guest Opinion - Software is Too Darn Hard

Visual Studio Magazine - Guest Opinion - Software is Too Darn Hard: "Software development is too darn hard. As an industry, we spend more time discussing 'plumbing' issues like Java versus .NET, or .NET remoting versus Web services, than we do discussing the design of the actual business functionality itself.
Even when we get to the business functionality, we spend most of our time fighting with the object-oriented design tools, the form-designer tools that 'help' create the UI, the holes in databinding, the data-access code (transactions, concurrency, field/column mapping), and the database design tools"

How I Work: Bill Gates - Apr. 4, 2006

How I Work: Bill Gates - Apr. 4, 2006: "NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - It's pretty incredible to look back 30 years to when Microsoft (Research) was starting and realize how work has been transformed. We're finally getting close to what I call the digital workstyle.
If you look at this office, there isn't much paper in it. On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display area, you'll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity." ---Thanks to a colleague who forwarded this :-)

Sharing Lego blocks: Modular software reshapes the computing landscape - Technology - International Herald Tribune

Sharing Lego blocks: Modular software reshapes the computing landscape - Technology - International Herald Tribune: "The Internet is entering its Lego era.

Blocks of interchangeable software components are proliferating on the Web, and developers are joining them together to create a potentially infinite array of useful new programs. This new software represents a marked departure from the inflexible, at times unwieldy, programs of the past, which were designed to run on individual computers.

As a result, computer industry innovation is rapidly becoming decentralized. In the place of large, intricate and self-contained programs like Microsoft Word, written and maintained by armies of programmers, smaller companies, with just a handful of developers, are now producing pioneering software and Web-based services. These new services can be delivered directly to PCs or even to cellphones. Bigger companies are taking note.

For example, Google last month bought Writely, a Web-based word-processing program created by three Silicon Valley programmers. The Google chief executive, Eric Schmidt, said that Google did not buy the program to compete against Microsoft Word. Rather, he said, it viewed Writely as a key component in hundreds of products it is now developing.

These days, there are inexpensive or free software components speeding the program-writing process. Amazon recently introduced an online storage service called S3, which offers data storage for a monthly fee of 15 cents a gigabyte. That frees a programmer building a new application or service on the Internet from having to create a potentially costly data storage system.

Google now offers eight programmable components - elements that other programmers can turn into new Web services - including Web search, maps, chat and advertising. Yahoo o"