Date: 03/09/06 (Security)    Keywords: software, security

A trio of updates for Windows Media Player, including a recent security patch, can cause the software to malfunction.

Source: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6047762.html

Date: 03/09/06 (Security)    Keywords: software, technology, security, spyware, microsoft

Preview version of Microsoft's security software is updated with anti-spyware technology, a slight name change and bug fixes.

Source: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6048141.html

Date: 03/10/06 (Microsoft Windows)    Keywords: software

(do any of you guys have any first-hand experience with any free parental control software? are there applications you would recommend? avoid?

i'm in a mentor program and the youth get computers but the program coordinators want to install parental control software.

without going into my opinion on the whole thing, thank you in advance.)

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/ms_windows/61376.html

Date: 03/10/06 (Java Web)    Keywords: software, web, google

Google Inc. bought the Silicon Valley start-up Upstartle, creators of Writely , high quality internet word processing software. Writely lets users compose documents on the Web and share them with others as well as blog them. Upstartle released a test version of Writely software last August. The acquisition puts Google in direct competition with Word software from [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/google-acquires-writely/

Date: 03/11/06 (Security)    Keywords: software

Two flaws in open-source cryptography software could allow an attacker to add content to a digitally signed message or forge signatures.

Source: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6048612.html

Date: 03/10/06 (Open Source)    Keywords: software

India doesn't need cheap software or cheap hardware. It needs stuff that works, computers that talk to one another in a common language but to people in their own.

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=589

Date: 03/11/06 (Javascript Community)    Keywords: software, browser, css, html, xml, asp, java, web, linux, seo, microsoft

Events: A Introduction to the Model of GUI programing

Xah Lee, 2005-05

In Graphical User Interface (GUI) programing, there's the concept of event. For example, moving the mouse, clicking a mouse button, switch to a different window, hitting a key. The software needs to respond to these things. The way it works is that, the programer writes code that draw buttons, menus, windows etc. And the programer write his program so that it knows the mouse position, mouse click, keyboard press, or any other signal from input devices. The programer also writes code so that for example if a mouse click happened, and its position is inside a button, then some function is called as a reaction.


All this is very tedious and very complex. What happens today is that most of the common tasks for GUI software are already written as a package called framework. That is to say, the codes to draw GUI elements such as windows or buttons or dialogue popups, and the detection of input signals such as button clicking or menu selection or keyboard inputs, are all integrated together as a pre-written set of code. The programer is relieved of writing these tedious code. Instead, he call predefined functions in the framework to deal with many issues related to creating a GUI.

In such a framework, it is still quite complicated. Such framework often comes in the guise of Operating System Developer's Kit. For example, writing application in Mac OS uses Apple's kit called Cocoa, Carbon, Toolbox, and there's also Microsoft's Foundation Classes (MFC) and Linux has frameworks such as Gnome, and Java offers its own GUI framework called AWK and Swing.

All these frameworks are incompatible with each other, but the model they use are basically the same. In today's personal computing, one basically have graphical “Windows”, and in it one has “Menus”, and “Buttons”, “Dialogues”. User point or click on these to tell the software to do specific things. For the programer, the way it works in these frameworks is like this:

In the framework, GUI elements such as Windows, Menus, Buttons are collectively called “widgets”. For each GUI element there is a pre-defined function that draws them. The programer calls these functions to draw them. When a user act on these widgets such as pressing a button, the widget's function will receive a signal. Each widget may be associated with different types of signals. For example, Windows can be dragged or resized, while a button can be clicked, a menu has items to be selected. When a Window is dragged, the corresponding widget function might get a signal that is the positions of beginning and ending coordinates. When a window is closed, the widget function will get a “close” signal. When a button is clicked, that button's widget function will get a “click” signal. When a menu is pulled, that menu's widget function will get a signal of the selected item.

For each widget-drawing function the programer called, he assigns to it a function called “event handler”. These event handlers are called and are given the signals when user acts on them. For example, when a button is clicked, the button widget function automatically calls its event handler function and gives it “clicked” as argument.

The programer doesn't have to worry about how the button function knew when it is being pressed. All that is implemented in the framework. The GUI programer today only needs to call these widget function as to design the appearance of the window, where the button shows up, what menu items are there etc, and assign a function (event handler) to each of these functions, so that when these GUI elements are hit, the widge functions call the programer's event handler functions, which do whatever computation the software is actually supposed to do.
HTML, DOM, JavaScript, and the Browser as a GUI Application Platform

In writing Web Application using JavaScript, the technologies involved are HTML, DOM, JavaScript, and the Browser.

The HTML (and related technologies such as XML and CSS) are used to show the GUI widgets and content. DOM ascribes to HTML a standard definition of structural meaning so that it can be manipulated programmatically. And, JavaScript is the language that actually lets the programer program what happens. While the browser, is the underlying engine that ties everything together. It takes care of rendering the HTML, and takes care of knowing all the mouse positions and register all events (user actions) such as keystroks, mouse movement, clicks, menu pulls, window closing etc. It takes care of interpreting the JavaScript code, and will execute them when a event happens.

Here, the GUI is the browser window and HTML elements (radio checklist, check box list, menu list, text field, button, window pane/frame etc.). The events (user actions) are defined by DOM. They are for example: oncopy, ondrag, onload, onclick, onkeydown, onmouseover. And the actions (event handlers) are JavaScript functions the user writes.

For example, it may be desired to change the cursor icon to a finger when the mouse is moved over a hyperlink. So, a hyperlink (considered as a widget) has a MouseOver event, and the programer can assign a event handler to it, so when a mouse hovers over a link, that function is called, and the function's code changes the mouse pointer icon to a finger icon.

For list of events defined by DOM, see for example: http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/events.asp
Assign Event Handlers to GUI Widgets

To associate a event handler to a HTML widget, there are two ways. One way is to put the code directly inside the HTML tag, like this:

Hover Over Me!

Hover Over Me!

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/javascript/96319.html

Date: 03/14/06 (Security)    Keywords: software

Software giant plans to release two versions of its new, no-cost parental control software for Windows XP this year.

Source: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6049294.html

Date: 03/14/06 (Computer Geeks)    Keywords: software, browser, html, web, google

Edited for solution

It's been forever and a day since I've been able to view any of the tutorials from this site -- http://tutorials.stuartlittlephotography.co.uk/

Apparently I'm not the only one, so he sent out an email the other day --


Removing White Backgrounds

Hi There,

In the past 2 weeks I have been experimenting with different ways of delivering the weekly tutorial, because depending on what computer set up you have, you either get to watch the tutorial or you don't. "I have been listening to your comments you know" :)

So I have come up with a way of embedding the normal Quicktime video into a pdf and using that pdf as a container for delivery through your browser. The pdf version has been tested with users like yourself this week on Internet Explorer, Mozilla & Safari web browsers and no problems so far.

Instructions

You will need to have the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader 7. Its free and you can get it by clicking on the link below or copying and pasting the url into your web browser.

Get Adobe Reader

Click or Copy & Paste into Browser.
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

Once you have Acrobat installed you can then go to the tutorials page as normal.

When you click on the "View Here" link, a blank browser page will appear and the pdf will start to download. It is 10.48mb in size and will take about 2.5 min's to download.

Once you can view the page in the browser you will then be able to "save a copy" to your desktop and view offline for as long as you want.

Finally, there is an option in Acrobat to change the view in %. The video tutorial is best viewed at 75% rather than the default 100%. If you have any problems then please email me by return.

This method of pdf delivery has been tested this week, but I am very keen to know what you think of it?

Removing White Backgrounds

This episode shows you how to remove a subject from its white background and blend with another image.

Click or Copy & Paste into Browser.
http://tutorials.stuartlittlephotography.co.uk/

I downloaded the tutorial. I have Adobe Acrobat Reader 7 and Quicktime 7 but when I tried to
view it, I got the error "The media requires an additional player. Please click 'Get Media Player' to download the correct media player. To play the media, you will need to close and restart the application once the player installation is complete." When I click 'Get Media Player' it takes me to the Apple site and I download Itunes and Quicktime 7, which I already have. So, I uninstalled QuickTime 7 and installed 6.5.2. Now I can get past that initial error, but I am back to hearing audio and no video. I get this error "QuickTime is missing software required to perform this operation. Unfortunately, it is not available on the QuickTime server."

I can't seem to find anything helpful with google. Can someone please help me alleviate my frustration?

Cheers!!

The solution
was so easy once I found out. In Adobe Reader, there is an option to check for new updates. When I clicked this, I received a message that there were no new updates. Googling the right question brought me to an actual Adobe page that had a link to some updates. (Not sure why the program didn't find these). I updated my Adobe Reader to 7.0.5 and now have no troubles viewing the movie.

I found this solution on this page -- http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/331566.html

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/893193.html

Date: 03/16/06 (WebDesign)    Keywords: software, web

help?

I have a client who's a musician and he wants to put clips of his music on his website. I've got copies of the songs and as far as I can tell they're normal mp3's but any kind of software I've tried downloading to edit these suckers keeps telling me they're not valid mpeg files.

Does anybody have any suggestions on what to try with these things?

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/webdesign/1079898.html

Date: 03/17/06 (Security)    Keywords: software, security

Incorrect update to Symantec's Norton security software blocks Internet access for some America Online users.

Source: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6050786.html

Date: 03/17/06 (Web Development)    Keywords: software, html

To send HTML emails, I am currently sending the HTML page via WIndows XP through the "send page by email" option in Internet Explorer.

I have a client that does not like the fact that you can see anything in the 'attachment' section of the email header. Does anyone know how to send HTML emails in a different / better way? Or do you know if there are any software packages that will help code and set-up more robust and diverse HTML emails?

I have GoLive & DreamWeaver, is there something built into either of them that will do as I am asking?

Any help you could offer would be most appreciated, sorry if this is the incorrect place to post this query, I was unsure.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/webdev/307844.html

Date: 03/18/06 (Security)    Keywords: software

Cash register software by Fujitsu comes under scrutiny while wave of debit-card fraud hits country.

Source: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6051261.html

Date: 03/20/06 (MySQL Communtiy)    Keywords: software

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/mysql/90045.html

Date: 03/20/06 (Web Technology)    Keywords: software

Software maker hopes Vexcel will provide a boost to the company's digital mapping efforts.

Source: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6051449.html

Date: 03/23/06 (Java Web)    Keywords: software

Overview This is a detailed project proposal along with software system architecture which will give you a clear understanding of the hardware requirements and software design required to automate temperature tracking in Hospitals and other buildings. This shows a highly scalable, low-cost architecture using low-cost temperature sensors from Dallas Semiconductor. Motivation Temperature automation enables: Maintenance of optimum temperature thereby [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/how-to-develop-automated-temparature-tracking-for-hospitals-and-buildings-hardware-and-software/

Date: 03/23/06 (Java Web)    Keywords: software, java, google, apache

Google is contemplating joining the Eclipse (Java IDE) Foundation in some capacity. Good news for Eclipse and Java all around. Greg Stein, an engineering manager in the open-source group at Google and chairman of the Apache Software Foundation, told eWEEK that Google has considered joining Eclipse and has talked with Eclipse's executive director, Mike Milinkovich, about [...]

Source: http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/google-plans-to-get-eclipsed-like-salesforce/

Date: 03/27/06 (Algorithms)    Keywords: software, database, asp, security, web

Hello

I am a software engineer in MA for a small internet company. Currently I am working on a webservices API our product and have been struggling with the authentication model. I read around and found an article that talked about WSSE authentication This seems relatively easy to implement and I kind of have a mock demo set up, but there is a problem with my demo, that I am not sure how to fix, as I am not a cryptologist and though I use crypt() and know how to compare a plain text password to a crypt encrypted password, more advance topics are beyond me. So this is my problem I will refer to the ideas in the article so I recommend you giving it a quick read.

In the artcle it discusses creating a "password digest" using a "Created Date" a "nonce" and the "password string". as a Base64 encoded sha1 string(i'll probably ise md5). the sha1 string is "nonce"+"created date"+"password string". They then pass the nonce and create date in the header and assume that you have the password on the other end and can piece it back together creating another sha1 string to compare it too and verify authentication.

I have a test ap, and here is the problem problem I am running into. Say I have my api, and I have a company writing an app to use it. I tell them to use the above method and to use crypt to create their password string from their user inputed password. I get their data parse the headers and have the 3 aspects. I decode the base64 string to the sha1 string, but when I compare them it fails. The problem being that they are not encrypted with the same salt when crypt was used. Therefore the encrypted password they put in their string is different than the encrypted version in my database. This can be fixed if they know my salt, but that's a security risk. So I am not sure how to get around this problem.

Suggestions?

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/algorithms/74647.html

Date: 03/27/06 (Application Development)    Keywords: software

The software giant lays out a plan for new graphics software that will run on non-Windows systems and take on Adobe's Flash.

Source: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9593_22-6053893.html

Date: 03/27/06 (Application Development)    Keywords: software, microsoft

As the shift to Vista drags on, the software honcho notes that for consumers, Microsoft is "sort of their IT department."

Source: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9593_22-6054351.html