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            <p>The last thing that java comunity need now is a serious java bug that would get widely reported on security sites. Unfortunately it has happened and this bug seems to effect all versions relased over last 5 years or so.</p>
            <p>The timing couldn't have been worse. Java has been gaining ground. The last serious flaw has been long forgotten by the public and even by the community. In the meantime java has taken over as the #1 technology at sourceforge. Products like Azureus have done a lot for the popularity of the java. I like to think that at Rad Inks we have played a role too with our applets.</p>
            <p>So in the middle of this we are now told that there is a bug in the sandbox that results in unsigned applets being able to access privileged resources. An exploit has not been published, but there may have been one published in underground sites.</p>
            <p>See the</p>
            <p><a href="http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t55086.html">Java Lobby discussion</a></p>
            <p><a href="https://secunia.com/advisories/17748/">Secunia report</a></p>
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A java bug.

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            <p>Just tried two of googles services, one made my head spin, the other made me wonder if google is loosing it's marbles.</p>
            <p>Urchin Web Analytics, now called Google Analytics used to be a $199 per month service. Just recently they started to offer it free of charge to adwords users. Since Rad Inks spends quite a bit of money on adwords, I decided to give urchin ago.</p>
            <p>It was only recently that we enabled conversion tracking, resisting the urge to add that javascript which created the google cookie. Afterwards tracking conversions for a while one of two conclusions can be reached. A)Spending money on adwords is a waste. Our cost per sale is far in excess of our revenue per sale. B) Conversion tracking is woefully inaccurate. When we cut down on ad spending our sales drop.</p>
            <p>It was in this backdrop that analytics was tried out. Even though the analytics JS is plainly visible on the pages on our site, google insists it's not there. I must have clicked the check status button a dozen times. What's really funny is that the log file does not show any identifiable google robot attempting to fetch anything from the site when the check status button is clicked. Somewhat suprisingly, a couple of pages in the analytics help section throw up 404s.</p>
            <p>The other google service that made my head spin was <a href="http://base.google.com">google base</a>. It sounds like a cross between the open directory, Ebay, and a classified system. Not suprisingly google has applied for some patents on classified systems.</p>
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Google Urchin on Home Base?

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            <p><a href="http://freshmeat.net">Freshmeat</a>, being such a large site, appears at the top for many search queries that revolve around software. Until today the description (the extract) that follows the link was a true extract of the webpage concerned.</p>
            <p>All that has changed. If you type in Rad Upload into google, this what you see:</p>
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                <p><a href="http://freshmeat.net/projects/radupload/">freshmeat.net: Project details for Rad Upload</a><br></p>
                <p>freshmeat maintains the Web's largest index of Unix and cross-platform open source software. Thousands of applications are meticulously cataloged in the ...</p>
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            <p>The link is correct but the extract is not correct. If you type in the name of any other project listed on freshmeat you will see the same description.</p>
            <p>This can only mean one of two things: a) Freshmet has started to cloak in a massive way - Which is very unlikely. b) Google has a serious bug. That is also unlikely. So what are we left with? Speculation.</p>
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Google bug?

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            <p>We should not make disparaging remarks about ASP.NET developers. They are the less fortunate in society. We should sympathize with this disadvantaged community who have never had the opportunity to write code in PHP or Java.</p>
            <p>Take for example the case of the include or require calls in PHP. These language constructs (They are not really functions) can be used to include another file in the response returned by the script on execution. The files themselves can be dynamic or static.</p>
            <p>Both PHP and Java provide at least four different ways in which another file can be included. That makes is very easy to create template driven websites.</p>
            <p>The misguided fools who only develop with VB.NET or C# have been brainwashed into believing that not having such a feature is a good thing. They have been taught at .NET has a superior architecture. Anything that is a copy of Java architecture whould be a good thing, but they have not copied everything. That is they have missed a bit.</p>
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ASP.NET and Include.

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            <p>Grr, who designed the structure for the ASP.NET documentation? I have been scratching my head for nearly an hour trying to figure out how to place a message in the apache log file.</p>
            <p>When you search you come up with 100 line solutions written by M$'s Most Valuable Pricks that show you how to write to windows event logs, send errors as email messages and send them as messages in a bottle. All of them seem to ignore this simple trivial one line solution.</p>
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ASP.NET logging to Apache error_log

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            <p>I first ran into the .NET platform in 2000, despite that I am happy to say I have never written a line of .NET code until now. My previous close encounter was purely to do with the fact that I was waging a lone battle for the honour of open source against an army of MCPs at a Microsoft certified solution provider. I read up a lot on .NET with out actually writing a single line of code.</p>
            <p>I am happy to say that many of my former collegues are now die hard PHP fans, even though they may not exactly be linux fans. One of them happens to have about a dozen microsoft qualifications including MCSE and MCDBA. But I digress.</p>
            <p>On friday, I installed the <a href="http://www.go-mono.com/">Mono</a> cause I was bored. Unfrotunately the all in one installer that I downloaded does not seem to include, mod_mono which is required if you wish to write web apps with .NET on linux. Mod_mono as you rightly suspect is the apache module that enables it to run ASP.NET scripts. (are they called scripts? who cares?)</p>
            <p>Mod_mono had to be downloaded and compiled by hand. Though all the sample code included in the download did run, my own hello world didn't work at all and it took me a while to realize the errors of my ways.</p>
            <p>Well, I haven't really realized the errors of my ways but I will pretend that I have. Which is fair enough because .NET is all about pretending. It pretends that it wasn't influenced by java to start off with. Someone please explain to me why .NET pretends to be even driven. HTTP simply doesn't work that way, but try explaining that to the idiots staring at a blue screen of death or formatting their hard disks because another virus got through IE.</p>
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ASP.NET and Mono.

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            <p>I have been experimenting with HTTP push. It doesn't work too well with IE so I had a look at the over hyped AJAX to see if it is any good. On the surface it is.</p>
            <p>You can listen to the readyStateChangeEvent and get notification when new data arrives. Obviously you will have to open your XMLHttpRequest object in asynchronous mode for this to work. However there is a catch you cannot get hold of the responseXML object. It gives you a null while the responseText object is populated.</p>
            <p>If you want to get hold of a DOM object you need to create a DOMParser and get it to parse the responseText. None of these are things that will give you nightmares what will give you a nightmare is what happens when you try to make another XMLHttpRequest while the PUSH is happening in the background. The browser freezes up.</p>
            <p>Does that mean that there can only be one XMLHttpObject instance per window?</p>
            <p>The mozilla javascript documentation certainly leaves much to be desired.</p>
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How asynchronous is AJAX

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            <p>It's election time in Sri Lanka. But as you know politicians don't really deserve your vote. It's much better to spend your time voting for a more worth while cause; such as my listings on <a href="https://www.hotscripts.com/">Hotscripts</a></p>
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Monthly Archives for 2005 11