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Just a quick post to ask for all your help.  I know you all have computers running that sit idle most of the time.  Put that idle time to some good use and help out the folding@home project.  Folding@home is a project that uses distributed computing to do protein folding simulations.  These simulations can help researches in finding cures for Alzheimer’s, ALS, Parkinson’s, etc.

So please go download their special screen saver program that runs these simulations and help out the world.  Oh and when the setup program asks for a team number enter in 11108.  That’s the Maximum PC Magazine team.  We’re currently 9 overall so we could use all the help we can to get to that number 1 spot!

Thanks!

The newest version of Subversion has been released today.  Subversion is a source code version control tool.  It’s similar to tools like the de facto standard open source CVS or Microsoft’s Visual Source Safe.  These tools are used to allow developers to manage changes to source code.  The major feature of any version control tool is the ability to allow a user to track every change made to a file in order to look back over the history of the file.  Should bugs or other issues crop up it allows a developer to compare the versions of code in order to find out exactly where the bug occurred.

Subversion has been around since early 2000 and was developed as a replacement for CVS which has some very significant shortcomings.

The major difference between CVS and Subversion is that Subversion does directory versioning where as CVS does file versioning.  This means that Subversion allows you to move, rename, delete, add, etc files and directories in a project over time and it properly tracks all that.  Why is this important?  Many times as you develop you might end up wanting to rearrange files into new directories or change their name.  CVS isn’t smart enough to track that.  If you rename a file or directory then CVS only sees a new file or directory and doesn’t know how to keep the history of the file, including the change tracked.  You could say the CVS only sees the trees where as Subversion sees the forest.

Anyhoo, version 1.2.0 has been released. Here’s the new stuff:
Optional locking (“reserved checkouts”)
Full WebDAV autoversioning
FSFS repository back end is now the default
Faster access to old revisions
Many improved APIs
Many bugfixes

I’m currently using version 1.1.4 for my projects.  I think I’ll probably wait a week or so before I upgrade.  I just like to give it time for other more daring people to take the plunge and weed out any problems.  I’m sure it’s safe and stable by I prefer to know that from others using it instead of having my repositories get lost because of some horrible bug.

Check out subversion though.  It’s a very nice tool and much more modern than stagnant old CVS.

Here’s a quick tip for anyone trying to delete a Web Service Extension in IIS 6.0 on Windows Server 2003.  As you know there are some extensions that don’t have the options of being deleted.

Here’s how to change that.

First you’ll need to download the Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Resource Kit Tools from Microsoft.

You really only need to install the Metabase Explorer but feel free to do a full install as all the tools can be handy to have.

Start up the Metabase Explorer and navigate to to SERVER(local) / LM / W3SVC.  Look for the key named “WebSvcExtRestrictionList”.  On my system it as an ID of 2168 but it might be different on yours.

Double click on the “WebSvcExtRestrictionList” key and a window will open with all the extensions.

Each line’s format follows this basic format (separate by commas):
Status (0 Prohibited, 1 Allowed)
File Name
Delete Flag (0 Can’t Delete, 1 Can Delete)
Service Extension Short Name
Service Extension Display Name

Just click on the extension you want to delete and set that delete flag to 1.  Click OK and exit the Metabase Explorer.  Open up IIS Manager or at least refresh the Web Service Extensions window.  You should now be able to delete the Extension you want.

You can read the Nintendo press release.

So, let’s see.  Ultra small design about the size of 3 dvd cases stacked together.  Very sleek and sexy!  512mb of memory.  That seems to be the standard amount for game consoles this round so whatever there.  Wireless controllers.  That’s a good and bad thing.  Wireless is cool but at the same time doing the battery dance can be a pain.  Two USB 2.0 ports.  Now this seems a bit odd.  Why two?  I assume they don’t plan on allowing wired controllers so I guess maybe it’s use will be relegated to 3rd party keyboards and whatnot.  Build it Wi-Fi support.  SWEET!  Now this is top notch Nintendo.  I like the idea of not having to plug the box in to do online gaming.  Also makes good sense since the new handheld player the Nintendo DS had built-in wifi.  Means neat links between the player and the Revolution.  Two things are absent here.  The cpu and graphics chips info.  Guess we’ll have to wait for that info later.

Now the real big news is this.  First the Revolution will be backward compatible with the Gamecube.  I don’t have a very large library but it’s nice knowing I will be able to sell off my cube and just get a Revolution.  Second as part of their new online gaming kick they’ll be releasing downloadable classics from the N64, SNES and NES.  No word on prices or how it’ll work but still awesome.  Being able to fire up the Revolution and play Super Mario 3 or whatnot is a very cool prospect.

You can read more and check out the pictures on the press release.

I shouldn’t have to say it but since I’ve been getting many of these fake emails lately I figured It wouldn’t hurt to post a reminder.

Watch out for phony emails asking for user account or credit card info!  The technique is called phishing.  Phishing attacks are called that because the senders are “fishing” for people’s personal information.  Common attacks target users of online banks, Paypal and eBay.  The email will claim there is a problem and your account will be closed or whatnot if you don’t correct the problem.  They nicely provide a link in the email message to the login page.  Here’s the problem.  That link, while it may seem to be a valid url to the company’s site, actually points to a fake webpage crafted to look legit.

Let me give an example that I actually received today!

quote:

---

Dear eBay member,
We at eBay are sorry to inform you that we are having problems with
The billing information of your account. We would appreciate it if you
Would visit our eBay Billing Center and fill out the proper
Information that we are needing to keep you as an eBay member. 
If you don’t comply until the June 2005, your eBay membership may be suspended.

Sign in Here https://signin.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll
As outlined in our User Agreement, eBay will periodically send you
Information about site changes and enhancements. Visit our Privacy
Policy and User Agreement if you have any questions.

Thank you! 

---

Sure sounds and looks legit doesn’t it!  However, I’m not a moron and I know it’s fake.  Here are the 3 things that show it’s a fake.  Now these aren’t easy to spot so you have be a bit knowledgeable of these things.

1) The message was sent to an email account that isn’t in any way associated with my eBay account!  Now if you only have one email account you won’t be able to catch this flaw but for people with multiple email accounts it will be.  I know I registered my ebay account with account@this_domain.com but this message showed up in the inbox of account@some_other_domain.com.

2) The to address doesn’t match.  The message arrived in the inbox of account@some_other_domain.com but in the header the to address is set to some hotmail.com user.  Again, this should be a rather duh moment for people yet so many would never notice this.  Why would this message show up in my inbox but be addressed to some random hotmail user?  Probably because someone is using a spamming program that just spits out random too addresses when it sends out messages.

3) The link to the login page doesn’t go to an eBay url!  Oh, sure it looks pretty legit when you see the page but it’s actually a different website.  I won’t post the actual url/ip but suffice to say when you visit the page you are NOT anywhere close to an eBay server.

So what can you do to protect yourself?  The easiest answer is this.  Any time you get an email message from your bank, eBay, Paypal, etc that asks you to click on a link to log in because your account is going to be cancelled or whatever, DON’T CLICK THE LINK!  Instead, open up your browser, type in your banks url manual and log in.  That means clicking on the url bar at the top and typing each letter of H T T P : / / W W W . E B A Y . C O M and pressing the enter key.  Phishing relies on one simple fact.  Users are lazy and will follow the path of least resistance.  That means just clicking a link and following it blindly.

Take the time and log in securely and keep your accounts safe everyone!