Code No Evil

A great embarrasment for Code No Evil

I have to say a great appology for anyone reading our site. It appears that over the last few days, we were h4x0r3d. What is most ironic, is this comes on the eve of me receiving my H4X0R3D license plates.

This attack comes as a result of not updating to the latest version of PHPnuke soon enough. In fact, this is same type of behavior that caused proliferation of the slammer virus against SQL Server 2000�.

The only articles that were lost were unsolicited product announcements from Cape Clear. Again, I am sorry, and I hope this has not tarnished our imagine.

Correction in regards to .net Workspaces

Thanks to Jonathan Goodyear of www.angrycoder.com, I need to post a correction to my Sourceforge for Capitalists article. As it turns out, they also have a restriction on its use for commercial software. Jonathan pointed this out to me:

I thought that you would like to know that your article on CodeNoEvil.com about .NET Workspaces is incorrect. If you view the GotDotNet Workspace Use Agreement (http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/Workspaces/licenses/OwnerAgreement.aspx), Section 5 (3rd paragraph), it clearly states: "Second, You also agree that You will not use the Workspace for any commercial purposes whatsoever." So, the capitalist folk will have to keep looking for a source-code collaboration environment for commercial code.

So, this is a bit unfortunate. But, the spirit of capitalism is still lives on.

GDN Workspaces updates license language

In response to many users of GotDotNet Workspaces, Microsoft has updated the language they used in the licensing agreement governing code uploaded to the site. You can read about it here.

Basically, they are not claiming rights to user's code, as it may have sounded in the past. Check it out for yourself.

SourceForge for Capitalists

If you're not already familiar, SourceForge.net is a centralized repository of open source projects. They provide source control (CVS), discussion boards, project website hosting, and a number of other development project resources. A significant number of open source projects are hosted at SourceForge.

The greatest drawback of SourceForge is its restriction against commercial projects. This, by its very nature, would violate the sacred covenant of open source projects. Therefore, faced with this dilema, where can a capitalist go, to collaborate on a development project that will actually generate revenue?

GotDotNet (which is owned and operated by Microsoft) has come to the rescue for those of use who earn our living as software developers. The service is titled GotDotNet Workspaces, and it went into beta testing on 9/16/2002. The mission statement for Workspaces reads:

GotDotNet Workspaces is an online collaborative development environment where .NET developers can create, host and manage projects throughout the project lifecycle.

GotDotNet Workspaces was brought to my attention when a workspace was created in conjunction with the #C# channel on EFNet. The channel workspace is located www.efnetcsharp.net (which just redirects you to the workspace at GotDotNet).

Access to a given workspace requires a Passport account. Once inside, they provide source control, bug tracking, and message boards for your workspace. In addition, since the workspaces are hosted within GotDotNet, code samples, FAQ's, and tutorials are only a click away. It's obvious that Microsoft is making an honest effort to help their development community by providing this collaborative workspace.

A whitepaper discussing GotDotNet Workspaces can be either viewed online or downloaded now.

Determining Unix Epoch in .NET

.NET does not make the number of seconds since 12:00:00AM 1/1/1970 readily available. This date and time is refered to the Epoch in the *nix world. It's primary use is for fix point date references.

I have wipped up some sample code that you can use to get this value in C#.

DateTime dtThen = new DateTime(1970,1,1,0,0,0,0); DateTime dtNow = DateTime.Now; TimeSpan span = dtNow - dtThen; int timestamp = (int)span.TotalSeconds;

This example is quite simple. What I'm doing is first creating a DateTime object that represents 12:00:00AM 1/1/1970. I then retrieve a DateTime object from the static property Now of the DateTime object. The next step is to cast the difference in the DateTime objects into a TimeSpan object. The TimeSpan object's Seconds property represents the total number of seconds between the two dates.

DateTime manipulation within .NET is very sophisticated, but sometimes, what seems so easy, isn't. I hope you find this helpful.

Cape Clear Releases Free WSDL Editor

Cape Clear Software released a free graphical WSDL Editor for programmers interested in working with Web Services. The WSDL Editor delivers the first complete environment for rapid Web Services Definition Language (WSDL) development. It supports novice programmers, while also providing sophisticated features for more experienced Web Services developers. The Editor includes powerful wizards, which eliminate the complexity of WSDL, as well as WSDL validation which simplifies testing, and support for the rapid creation of Web Services from XML Schema.

To download the WSDL Editor or for more information, go to http://www.capeclear.com/wsdleditor/.
You can also read about the WSDL Editor at InfoWorld.
Read the product announcement.

mod_rewrite

I posted the information contained in the last article on www.nukeforums.com, and one the administrators liked it so much, he has asked for more in regards to mod_rewrite.

mod_rewrite is probably one of the better features in Apache. I can tell you that I often miss it when working w/ IIS. I know, the only parallel that you can draw between Apache and IIS is that they are both webservers, but this not an Apache v. IIS discussion. So, anyhow, this is what I've found.

Nuke 5.4 to 5.5+ upgrade

Just a point of note, if you are upgrading PHPNuke 5.4 to 5.5 or 5.6, you'll want to put this in an .htaccess file in the root dir


RewriteRule ^sections.php.*$ /modules.php?name=Sections [R=permanent,L]

This is because sections ceased to be a seperate PHP file and is now a module. If your pages are indexed by Google et. al. using the old way, you'll avoid 404's. :)

Dangers of the Google tool bar exposed

The Register just reported a security exploit in the Google toolbar (of which I am a user). As noted, the toolbar has an auto-update feature, so everyone will get patched automatically. If you want to make sure, GreyMagic (the security firm who discovered this) has a page setup that shows the exploits, and how to check if your brower is vulnerable.

Links:

Register article: Dangers of the Google tool bar exposed

GreyMagic: GreyMagic Security Advisory GM#001-MC

CoolMon Extension

I just wrote an extension for DaisyMan's CoolMon system monitoring app. The script reads the mail waiting count in the registry that XP uses for the login screen. Check it out in the Downloads section here.