But this time I don’t feel the same way. I have an open mind towards Java for the first time (since I ever heard the word) and I am gonna say “Hello Java!” with a smile. I know my life won’t be cushy without the pampering of the good old Visual Studio and all the good things in C#. But I will live.

Hello Java! Hello Eclipse!

I faced this issue in VS 2008 on my Windows 7 machine and had to get rid of this error somehow. Accidentally I came to know that if UAC is turned off, the error vanishes. On researching (googling ) I could find that this is a permission (UAC) related open bug in Visual Studio from VS 2005 through VS 2010 (not verified) and the one and only solution for the time being seems to be Delay Signing. By delay signing your assembly you can get rid of the nag window in Visual Studio and by signing the assembly with your key file before distribution you could achieve the security you want. This though comes with a catch. If you set the project for delay signing, you cannot debug your application as the verification of the strong name fails. To override this verification, you have to add your key file to the list of keys skipped for verification in your machine.

I could not find the steps for delay signing and verification skipping online easily. So I am just recompiling the steps for future reference

1. Open a Visual Studio command prompt.
2. Run the command sn -p <original-key>.pfx <public-key-file>.pk (Export the public key from your .pfx file using the SN tool.)
3. In the Project Properties Page, Select Signing Tab, Set the key file in Visual Studio to <public-key-file>.pk and check the Delay Sign only option.
4. To skip the strong name verification, you have two options. Configure the skipping of a particular assembly. sn – Vr <assembly name>
   1. Or Enable skipping for all the assemblies signed with the same key. Personally I preferred this method as there were 4 or 5 assemblies signed with the same .pfx file. To achieve this,
      1. First Run sn -T <assembly-name>. This gives us the public key token for the assembly.For example the output will be something like Public key token is bd91f093f07f35ac.
      2. Now Run sn -Vr *,<public-key-token>. For example sn -Vr *,bd91f093f07f35ac in my case.
5. When you finally want to ship your assembly Run sn -Rc <assembly-name> <original-key>.pfx

For this to work on 64bit, you need to do these extra steps:

1. Open a command prompt as Administrator
2. Go to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bin\x64\
3. Run the same.. sn -Vr *,<public-key-token>

This is to add theverification skip to the 64 bit registry as well.

This is what my friend and I had in mind when we decided to create a job site.

To make the “Easiest Job site”. A job site which I and most probably you will use without scowling.

With a lot of reusable stuff from Skillda and 2 months of planning and development we have come out with the beta version of our job site – www.jobhunt.in. What makes it the easiest is that you don’t have much to do either as a job seeker or a recruiter.

As a job seeker, Just upload your resume on the front page or just email it to post@jobhunt.in. Thats it! No more registration or filling up pages of boxes. Our automatic analyzing system picks up the data and tags your resume.

Recruiters too don’t have to pay and register or search for hours to dig up the resumes they want. Type in your filter tags and subscribe. You start getting daily mail from the site with matching resumes.

Isn’t this EASY?

Though a big disappointment and failure, the previous project had changed my view on a lot of stuff especially processes and documentation. I had always considered micro-level documentation as an avoidable overhead and never believed in process. If you think like me, may be your opinion will change if you know my story.

A project without any proper documentation (scope, requirements, design, project plan…. the list goes on). A very aggressive deadline. Here is where I landed into the project at the end of 2 months. Was anyone scared if the client will go bad? Nobody was. Fast forward >> Client denies the scope. Squeezes in double the original requirements into the scope. You know what happened in the end? He made us work for 6 months and coolly paid for just the original 3 months.

We were screwed big time just for the lack of process and documentation. You know.. I learned it.

For example:
//here for simplicity i am considering a single select case

function setSelectValue(selectList, val) {
for (option in selectList.options) {
if (option.value == val) {
option.selected = true;
break;
}
}
}

This piece of code will work for almost all web browsers. But not so surprisingly there is a difference in the way IE and other browsers handle the select list. In Firefox a listitem given without a specific value attribute considers the given text as the value. Though IE also gives the same result on post back, while programmatically checking the value of an option it says its undefined. So you cannot use the setSelectValue function for <li>Hello</li> in IE. To make it work for IE you have to explicitly give <li value=”Hello”>Hello</li>.

Not a big deal but it cost me half a day

I got this forward from a friend and we figured it out and then googled to see what others were saying. Believe me you can find framewise analysis, physiological theories, to plain wonder.

Wanna know how to see the girl spin both ways? Just look at it from 2 different angles. Either tilt the monitor or move your head sideways. It is just a trick of optical angle.

My friend and I were looking at it and both of us always seem to see the exact opposite and then suddenly it occured to us to just turn the monitor towards the other guy, We discovered at that instant our perception of how the girl moved changed. It seems to be a trick with the angles.

But It still could have something to do with which half of the brain gets to process it first. Or it could be due to the differential delay in the propagation of the optical impulse to wherever it gets processed.

Dont know what they call it. Hey we are just amateurs.

P.S. Incase you dont find the original post, you can check it out on my picasa album.

I have done things like, Starting a company while in college with practically no idea what I was doing, completely neglecting studies (not part of the main plan but just was not there among priorities), Not trying to get a job like “others”, Spending a couple of years after college penniless on the craziest of ideas, Quitting a regular and somewhat satisfying job just to get back to the dream project and millionaire dreams. So as you see life had always been like a roller-coaster ride and I enjoyed it. To be frank this was never easy. But I was following my dreams and passion. And that was my fuel, my cushion on the bumpy ride.

As my responsibilities got bigger, I started getting scared of the risks and decided to have a balance of both, to “Follow the Heart and the Head”. But 3 months from the decision, I hate to say it, I regret Following the Head. My work was my passion and now it has become just my ration.

So… “Here I go again on my own
goin’ down the only road I’ve ever known.
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone.
An’ I’ve made up my mind, I ain’t wasting no more time….“

I did a little bit of googling looking for any connection between orkut and powerscrap. But it seemed like people are using the latter as an alternative to Orkut in places where it is blocked and were all praise for powerscrap. I believe this must be a trusted site. But someone can use this technique just to snatch you off your username and password too. The sad part is that people are so desperate to network and don’t think twice when asked for username or password.

I think this now leads to the simplest form of social engineering. If you have a website and some web programming knowledge you can just walk away with thousands (at least hundreds) of usernames and passwords. You dont need content or users or even a database . You can thrive on a popular website’s user-base and just enjoy the free passwords. As my title goes password hacking had never been easier.

1. Go buy a domain. Even a free sub-domain will do .
2. Write code to pull data from Orkut or a similar website.
3. Send messages to a few giving your url and telling them the ADVANTAGE of using your website.

You are done. In a few days you might be honored for stealing passwords!!

Most of the modern browsers (IE7, Firefox, Opera etc.) support the fixed styling. But older versions of Internet Explorer (prior to IE 7) does not. The problem with older IE is that it completely ignores the fixed attribute and the default styling (position:relative) is applied. This can completely disrupt your page design.

Accepting the fact that IE6 still remains the most widely used web browser, we cannot ignore this issue. One way to solve this is by changing the value of position attribute to absolute (which is the closest to fixed) in case of IE older than version 7. To give the actual effect of fixed we also need to handle the scroll event or else this element will also move along with the rest of the page. In the scroll event you have to reload (hide and show) the element and you get the most closest fixed style implementation in IE.

You may download the complete working page source.

<script type="text/javascript">
/* <![CDATA[ */
   var isOldIE = false;
   function onPageLoad()	{
      if (navigator.appName.indexOf('Microsoft Internet Explorer') > -1)  {
         ver = navigator.appVersion.substr(navigator.appVersion.indexOf('MSIE ')+5,3);
         if (ver < 7) {
            document.getElementById('fixedDiv').style.position = 'absolute';
            window.onscroll = reloadFixedDiv;
         }
      }
   }

   function reloadFixedDiv()	{
      var d= document.getElementById('fixedDiv');
      d.style.display = 'none';
      d.style.display = 'block';
   }
/* ]]> */
</script>
<style type="text/css">
<!--
#fixedDiv	{
	position:fixed;
	right:0px;bottom:0px;
	height:72px;
	width:256px;
	background-color:#ABCDEF;
}
-->
</style>

and also

 <body onload="javascript:onPageLoad();">

Note: There will be a slight flickering on the element.

Catching the onbur and onfocus events is the most recommended way to know when a window gains or loses focus. But this does not work in all cases. The onfocus event is triggered correctly in almost all browsers. But onblur on the other hand is highly unpredictable. In Internet Explorer, every onfocus event is immediately followed by an onblur event even though the window is still in focus. On Firefox, the onblur will not be trigerred if the active element of the window is of input type.

Solution: IE has its custom events which works fine for it namely focusin and fosucout. For firefox, we need to check whether the active element has changed.

var isIE = (navigator.appName == "Microsoft Internet Explorer");
var hasFocus = true;
var active_element;

function setFocusEvents()	{
	active_element = document.activeElement;
	if (isIE)	{
		document.onfocusout = function() {	onWindowBlur();	      }
		document.onfocusin = function()	 {	onWindowFocus();     }
	}	else	{
		window.onblur = function()	  {	onWindowBlur();	         }
		window.onfocus = function()	 {	onWindowFocus();       }
	}
}

function onWindowFocus()	{
	hasFocus = true;
}

function onWindowBlur()	{
	if (active_element != document.activeElement) {
		active_element = document.activeElement;
		return;
	}
	hasFocus = false;
}

NB: I have tested mostly on IE 6+ and Firefox. So you might find my method incomplete for other browsers.

Update: This post has been updated (corrected) as per Lucent’s comment.