Technology, research, other nuts

During my everyday windows usage I need to copy the path of files and directories in order to put them into my emails, documents, wiki pages. This could be simple when copying the path of local files:

• Copy the folder name from windows explorer address bar and paste it into your document
• Copy the file name by pressing F2 and then Ctrl-C and again paste it into your document

So we have just 5 keyboard strokes and 3-4 window switches.
Situation is much worse when you’re copying the file path of network file. Then you could encounter multiple problems:

• You mapped the network path to drive letter. If you’ll copy the path as is then most probably someone who’ll try to use your path or hyper link from other computer or even from the same computer with different account won’t be able to access the referenced file due to different network path mappings.
• Server name you used in your file could be without fully qualified domain name and thus can be accessed in you LAN, but can’t be accessed through corporate LAN.
• Situation can be even worse if the path you provide will be used by users external to your network.

I’ve used different copy path applications, which usually integrated into windows context menu, but only one was really helpfull: Ninotech Path Copy 4
(I know there is similar Windows Vista functionality - never tried)
It allows you to copy the short and long file and folder paths, it allows to copy their UNC path and even Internet path in a form of file://…
But the best part is configurable copy path option, which I’ll cover in separate post (if at all, knowing my indolence).

Download from: http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/tools/13986.html
Original home page (was inactive last time I tried): http://home.worldonline.dk/ninotech/freeutil.htm#pathcopy
Installation:

• Download the zip file
• Open it in a temporary place
• Right click on the INF file and choose install

Usage:

• Right click on file or folder you would like to copy its path
• Choose Copy Path submenu and then one of default copy methods or setup your own

Have simple aim: get acquainted with JPA through few examples and then check how it can be used in my current project.

Possible usages:

• Use current SAP NetWeaver implementation of JPA for simple ORM usages and create all needed services around it
• Put proprietary mature repository with stable codebase and vast offer of services as a JPA persistence agent and allow developers use it with a simple, but powerfull JPA programming model

So first steps is to find the simplest platform to experiment with. Plain J2SE JPA implementation seems very tempting.

“The number of brands exploited by online con artists grew to a record 154 in July, according to a report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group.” From article on news.zdnet.com

“Even as phishers widen their nets, they are getting ever more focused on targeting financial services, which grew to 93.5 percent of all targets in July, according to the APWG report.

The report showed a drop in the number of unique reported phishing campaigns from 28,571 to 23,670, but the number of reported phishing sites rose steeply to 14,191, 18 percent higher than the previous peak.

The U.S. topped the list of countries hosting phishing sites, with 29.9 percent, followed by the Republic of Korea with 13.3 percent, China with 12 percent, France with 5.9 percent and Australia with 4.6 percent.

Attacks are getting more sophisticated, the group found, noting that a malicious site is now capable of placing a Trojan horse onto a system without user interaction. The Trojan involved, Web Attacker, is a Russian do-it-yourself toolkit sold for anywhere from $20 to $300. ”

In most cases user can handle phishing by himself, just check real domain against stated one and don’t follow stupid emails, but there are more sofisticated attacks:

1. DNS cracking and modification of system’s DNS settings to direct some or all DNS lookups to a fraudulent DNS server capable of directing users to fraudulent sites when particular addresses are entered.

2. Trojan horses. For example in some cases (IE someone told?) a malicious site is now capable of placing a Trojan horse onto a system without user interaction. The Trojan involved, Web Attacker, is a Russian do-it-yourself toolkit sold for anywhere from $20 to $300. “

3. Putting phishing pages on real brand domains, like Google phishing hole or PayPal flaw.

Friend of mine, Omry, posted recently that he is involved in case of his friend, Sasha Marianovsky, against IChessU. Details could be found on Sasha’s site. What is really interesting in this case is that it is GPL legal test, probably first in Israel.

I remembered that there were already such cases in the world and found winning example pretty fast. Additionally there is a site dealing with all aspects of GPL violations. There is a lot of interesting info about this controversial license.

This article by George Rudolph is actually kind of decision tree for rules engine deployment go/no go. If you evere thought does your product need rules engine you should definitely read it.

Ever wonder why there are few (5) WSDL types around? Find this interesting article on IBM’s developer works.

Got it today in my email box from colleague.

Rally after web 2.0 winners continues with Sony acquiring of Grouper for 65M$ as reported by ZDNet.
Major players in the content space understand whee is their future.

Everyone is talking about SOA. SOA means web services (no by definition, but de facto). Web services mean XML. XML mean slow performance, right?
There were lot of tries in recent years to improve performance of XML collaboration.
It was binary XML, that never flied, SUN’s fast web services that aren’t too popular and still too slow.
May be this performance test could bring us a solution. It is also backed up by test conducted by IBM developerWorks.
The holy grail of XML found in those two tests is XBIS XML, open source project on sourceforge.
I’m going to research it. Results will be reported.

“GPU is a Gnutella client that allows users to share CPU-resources. GPU allows the creation of computer alliances.”

GPU doesn’t manage resource sharing in means of fairness, resources are managed based on simple and very familiar idea: take whatever you need (and we can give you), give us whatever you have (and want to give).

This principe can’t workout for internet, so they are talking about computer aliances.

Basically idea isn’t new. There were lot of theoretical work (Tuple Spaces, etc.), specifications (Java Spaces) and implementations (GigaSpaces).

There is a new beast in the town, multi factor security. PhishCops are talking about completely utopian solution they provide to the world and are talking about vulnerabilities of conventional methods of authentication: here and here.

There are lot interesting security and cryptography related info on their site. Specifically:

- New secure hash standard

-General description of their methods