Windows .NET in C# Major – Web Interaction With Self Signed SSL Certs. Part 1

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I am going to shift gears a bit, actually change cars entirely, and do a windows programming tutorial in Microsoft’s .NET environment using C#. Why? Because the world runs windows and in the World of Windows, the fastest method of development is through the .NET framework and the best language on that framework is, without a doubt, C#. I know. I took a poll. Stats never lie.

In this tutorial we are going to create a class to handle website interactions, giving us a simple way to post or get information from a web server, with or without an SSL cert and even a self signed one. Usually self signed certs present a problem since the cryptographic side tries to validate the authenticity of the cert, presenting problems. We will get around that.
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Google Gets Lively

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Ultra mega powerhouse Google announced Lively, a ‘build your own avatar’ animated chat program, yesterday. It’s currently only available for Windows XP/Vista users who are running Firefox or internet exploder. With me being the ever inquisitive connoisseur, I had to check this out. The first thing that crossed my mind after setting up my avatar (which is not a quick process) was “this is Google’s answer to second life”. Another thing you notice right off the bat is it’s slow; very, very, terribly slow. But, hey, it’s still in beta, so you can’t really expect all that much from it just yet. The controls are a little awkward and the help pages seem to leave out basic things like walking around (a task that’s still baffling me); but man oh boy, I sure can body slam people. Google tacked on a ton of interactive animations: you can kick, hug, dance, ‘kung-fu’, and yes, even body slam other people – just to name a few. You can also build your own chat room and embed it into your site or blog. All in all it’s a pretty nifty chat setup, but again, it’s still in beta and most people would probably ditch it just for the load times.

Windows encryption.

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Whether you travel with a laptop for business, or simply want to protect your data from prying eyes or hackers, encryption is quickly becoming a must for sensitive data. Fortunately Windows XP and Vista both offer encryption for files and directories.

1. First identify the folder you wish to encrypt.
2. Right click on that folder and then choose properties.
3. To the right of “Read-only” you should see a button labeled “Advanced…”. Click this button.
4. The fourth option down on this page should read “Encrypt contents to secure data”. Click the square white box next to this option to check mark it.
5. Click OK
6. Click Apply
7. Click OK to close after it has finished encrypting that folder.

Now if you need more protection then this, then you should consider one of the many full drive encryption softwares available. My personal favorite is CompuSec which also has a linux build!

Perl on Linux – Making a Daemon

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It's me!One if the nice advantages to linux is the ability to create daemons relatively quickly and get them to do your brute and routine work for you. For this example, I am going to use perl to create the daemon, since perl is the glue that holds the bricks of linux together. Its regex functionality combined with fast and easy syntax makes it almost too easy to use for quick and dirty programming in the text based realm of linux. So without further adieu, the daemon:
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Partition madness!

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So, you’ve found out the hard way that your ESP wasn’t quite correct when setting up those Linux partitions? Your root directory is almost full, while your home directory is almost empty (or vice-versa)? Thinking about reinstalling that machine? Not so fast! There are tools available to re-allocate partition space – GParted being my favorite. GParted is a free, open source tool to re-distribute disc space to new or existing partitions. You can get a bootable “live cd” here. Simply boot your server, or machine, off this disc and follow the basic setup instructions – the defaults are normally fine. Once GParted starts, you can remove allocated disc space from partitions that have too much space (by using the ‘move’ option) and give them to partitions that don’t have enough. It’s a very simple and easy to use interface. Once you remove some disc space from a partition, apply it, then select the partition you want the disc space to go to and add it there, then apply again. Reboot and you’re done. Depending on the size, type, etc of hard discs you’re using and how much space you’re moving around, it could take quite a while to complete. All in all it’s a very painless and easy way to reallocate partition space.

Run what you want

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Would you like to try out Linux, but haven’t a clue how to create a dual boot system? VirtualBox allows you to do just that. This is a software based virtualization platform that runs in Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Solaris that supports guests (virtual machines) of the same. Now you can easily roll out a Windows install on your Mac or Linux PC, or any other combination. As seen here, this is one of the coolest Linux demonstration videos I’ve had the chance to view, you’ll notice a Windows XP system running in the opposing desktop view in full screen even. The desktop effects you see are Compiz which I will discuss in a later post.

Windows tweaks. Available bandwidth mod.

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Were you aware that Microsoft Windows reserves 20% of your available bandwidth for updates etc? This is not a problem for most, but for those of us who like to tweak and customize here is how to change that.

Click Start
Click Run
Type gpedit.msc in the space provided
Click OK or press enter on your keyboard to run that command. This will open the group policy editor

Double click on Local Computer Policy
Double click on Computer Configuration
Double click on Administrative Templates
Double click on Network
Double click on QOS Packet Scheduler
Double click on Limit Reservable Bandwidth
Click the “Enable” radius button
Set the value in the “Bandwidth limit %” field to zero
Lastly click OK and you are done.

if you would like to do some additional reading on this particular mod please click here.

One Billion Strong… And Growing.

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there's a billion of these litte guys!Tech Tree is reporting there are (estimated) over one billion PCs installed around the globe. The Gartner Group called them ‘installed’ PCs as their estimation is for personal computers in use – not just shipped ones or machines sold. They factor in not only new machines, but second hand PCs as well. That’s over 1,000,000,000 PCs in use folks! The growth rate of installed base PCs is estimated to grow roughly 12% each year as more and more countries develop. They’ve also figured in “churning” and figure some 16% of installed machines will be replace this year alone. If you’re planning on being a part of that 16% who replaces an older PC, there are many donation and recycling options available for your old hardware.

Break out the cheese and crackers, WINE 1.0 released

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Have you had enough of Windows faulty features yet? After 15 years of development and testing, WINE has finally reached v1.0 this week. Think of WINE as a gateway program to break free from the Microsoft operating system and still be able to run Windows programs in Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, and Solaris. This will give software companies an incentive to embrace Linux with their products without having to rewrite their entire code to get compatibility. It will also allow consumers and business alike the ability to make use of the huge assortment of Open Source Software while still holding onto their beloved Windows program they cannot live without.