It’s going to be a war of Operating Systems this November

Having put the title of this blog it’s very easy to predict what I’m after. But I can’t resist myself from writing this blog, I’m at the matrix of witnessing a very fierce competition in the OS market. Yes, it’s true and the participants are some very aggressive, muti-billion dollar companies like Microsoft Corporation, Apple Incorporation, Canonical Ltd., Sun Microsystems, etc. Now when you have so very powerful competitors it’s bound to generate sparks and it’ll reflect in all parts of media. Frankly speaking and the way its visible for the moment, there are three parties vying for a share in the OS market – Microsoft, Apple and the open-source enthusiasts. The latter among the three is just growing upon time with backing from some big Fortune 500 companies like Sun Microsystems, IBM, Canonical, etc. So without wasting much time let me put a glint on what each participant has got.


Microsoft Windows 7 :

The Lucky 7 bells have already started ringing at the world’s number ONE company and the leading software giant in Operating Systems. With Windows 7 it again intends to steal the show and it seems it’ll succeed probably in a better fashion than at the time of Windows Vista. Virtualization, dynamic UI, robustness in terms of security, speed and much better hardware available this time in contrast to Vista is enough to conclude that Microsoft is all geared up to reign supreme after failing last time. Truth be told Microsoft has played all cards of the game this time very shrewdly cause -- The BETA, RC and RTM of Windows 7. And the people loved & relished testing it and won the hearts of all. From marketing point-of-view its free Windows 7 upgrade for a part of a crowd and discounts for the underprivileged. Furthermore, propping up Windows 7 are products which are Microsoft’s own creations – Visual Studio 2010, IIS 7.5, .Net Framework 3.5 SP1, Live Messenger, Office 2010 and Web Installer. Also if the leading I.T. survey giants like Gartner and IDC are to be believed Windows 7 is just inevitable for all. A very good point to be noted in their report, with every dollar spent on Windows 7 it’ll return a corresponding 8.4 $.


Apple Macintosh Snow Leopard :

One common thing can be easily drawn out between Apple’s CEO Mr. Steve Jobs and Macintosh -- Both are CLASS EXTRAORDINAIRE. And who’s there to challenge this wise saying especially when Apple has already proven itself by becoming the best stock performer of 2009 and that too in the times of depression. It’s also a matter of fact that Apple has just not changed the meaning of software with Leopard but has changed the entire way of computing. No doubts Apple's Macbook and iPhone are an asset of the privileged class and it’s fan followers just hate even thinking about Windows. Also acknowledge the very fact that Apple has a very limited footprint in OS market but a very strong and cent percent footprint in whatever it does, let it be the hardware or software. Add to Apple’s advantage that it has cent percent control over its Macbook hardware and hence can choose to cater to only the privileged class and demand a good ransom. But it has done really well till now and with Snow Leopard available as a petty 29$ upgrade it's set to ROCK ON AGAIN. Personally speaking, I feel really impotent while speaking on the very genetics of Apple’s OS since I myself don’t have an Apple Macbook.


Linux and its many variants :

For a majority of PC users, its just a handful of users in case of Linux but underestimating it will be the biggest mistake. True with whatever I’ve said the OLD WINE just keeps on getting better and better with refinements, feature additions and a much better hardware support. So many variants are available in Linux that I’m short of time and thoughts as to which DISTRO I should write on. Talking about Ubuntu 9.10 which is one of the most liked versions of Linux, it is set to be released this 29th October, 2009 and it’s a much awaited release since a majority of features are set to be revised. Inherent features like Voice-over-Messenger, Open-Office, Mozilla Firefox 3.5.3, etc are a treat for the open-source followers, cost-cutting enthusiasts and those who believe in the very notion that software is our birth right and should be available free. Long live the ideology of Linux developers and its followers which are just growing day-by-day. Adding to the Linux party, even Google with its Google Chrome OS will be seen as a credible and a prominent competitor within a year.

My last blog on Windows 7 before it releases tomorrow

Windows 7, Windows 7, Windows 7 and on & on goes the poem. Sometimes I feel I had enough of it since January(when the BETA released) but the very moment I get my hands on it the learning curve and the experience just keeps on getting better and better. So Windows 7 enthusiasts and it's bitter critics just watch out this blog coz I'm having stuff for both of you and even who stand out as an exception !!!




Such is this peace of OS and written so well by it's developers that it has spurned a myriad of threads on all Forums regarding the very granularities of it's features. Features like Aero, Home Network, Win XP Mode, etc has invoked a sense of curiosity and desperation among application developers and even those on web to replicate the same in their projects. And guess what, to cater to such a vast audience Microsoft has played indeed well - thanks to it's Windows 7 SDK, Visual Studio 2010 and Web Platform Installer. Propping it side-by-side is another very inherent feature in Windows 7 which most of the audience including the developer community tend to forget - .Net Framework SP1. Yes, you read it well, no need to read that line back but if you still want to, here you go - .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 goes native on Windows 7.

Trust your intuition, prediction and your wildest judgement and they all are going to be true - Microsoft is planning to flood .Net Apps to complement Windows 7 bigtime. Infact, it's not in the planning stage but the planning has already manifested cause - Microsoft has launched "Windows Market Place" and "CodePlex" for Mobiles and PC's. So all roads leading to the very inevitable conclusion - "Windows 7 is going to be one of the biggest release in the history of software". Well cynics still won't agree ... !!! So here's the official IDC report and the Gartner report to substantiate my claims.

So with Windows 7 set to release tomorrow I enumerate some very obvious and not-so-obvious facts and bits on Windows 7 :

• A majority of audience who've tested it has labelled Windows 7 - "It's Windows Vista made perfect".
• With Windows 7 Microsoft intends to grab it's lion's share in OS market after Vista sapped it. It might sound really surprising but Microsoft considers the fact that Windows 7 will succeed because of the success of Windows Vista.
• Analysts, volume-licensing partners and other major vendors say Windows 7 is the most polished version of Windows ever and that businesses should not wait to deploy it till it's SP1 get's released.
• The world's leading information technology research and advisory firm - Gartner has termed Windows 7 inevitable for all. With every dollar invested in Windows 7 businesses world-wide will earn a corresponding 8.4 $.
  

AMEN.

Pre-compilation and code-hiding in ASP.Net

ASP.Net fanatics here comes something to relieve you from the pain and frustration. Do you always wanted to get your ASP.Net application/web-site loaded faster or you always wanted to hide your code from your not-so-very-trusted-client or say both ? Tough questions have the simplest of the answers and I'm not going to contradict that proverb by any chance. But before I dive into the question just let me clear some of the much needed basics. So just read on....


The very first time a request is sent for an .aspx page the .Net Framework residing on the computer which physically hosts these files compiles it and generates the corresponding .dll files i.e. assemblies which are the results of JIT(just-in-time) compilation.

In other words, the .aspx page has been serialized in the form of a .dll file. These .dll files are used in subsequent requests by de-serializing them to render the HTML to the user by the .Net Framework.

So the real catch is whether you can avoid the initial compilation and if yes the code i.e. your .aspx page can be hidden or not ?


Now assuming that you have Visual Studio 2005 or higher and IIS configured with your .Net Framework you can follow the below mentioned steps in Command Prompt to get the pre-compilation done :

1] You have to navigate to the right destination of your .Net Framework 2.0 :

cd "C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727"

2] You have to then compile your project/web-site folder with the following command :

aspnet_compiler -v /GuruSample -p "C:\GuruSample" "c:\Output"

where,
-v /GuruSample --> The virtual path to the project/web-site
-p "src" "target" --> The absolute physical path to the project folder and the location of the target files

NOTE:

Giving the "-p" switch means the IIS metabase will *not* be referenced during pre-compilation. Also it means the target path is mandatory.


Once the above command is executed the following files and folders will be generated at the target location :

• PreCompiledApp.config

• Web.Config

• GuruSample.sln

• Default.aspx

• A "bin" folder will also be generated which will be having the pre-compiled .dll file(s).

Your process of pre-compilation is done and now you can safely copy the target files and folders to the "wwwroot" folder of your IIS directory if you're currently experimenting it in your own PC. You can view the .aspx page using the "http://localhost/Default.aspx" switch in your browser.

NOTE:

1] Any changes made to the above files or folders needs re-compilation with all the above mentioned steps.

2] The .aspx file after pre-compilation need not be present. This helps in code-hiding.

3] You can download my "sample project folder" as used in the above explanation Here.

For MSP's - How to clear the probation period

Congrats and regards to all new MSP's. Sorry to be so straight to the topic but for you the intent is very much clear for now -- Score 150 points to stay in the league of MSP's.

'150 points' that's what the ADMIN have asked for and from my experience I can tell you that I had to literally screw my schedules apart to get it. The result - Bad performance in ACADS and a lot of sleepless nights. But that was the story then but I can assure you that you will surely not have to go through this - COURTESY ME.

Following are the list of activities(in the order of less work and more points) which you can pursue to see yourself besides me i.e. a permanent MSP (till you graduate) and then an MSP Alumni. So here I go ...


1] Imagine Cup 2010 :

Imagine Cup is a wonderful initiative and a technical competition held every year to promote display of expertise in various fields and learning to get there. Any active student can participate in it. Some of the categories include:

--> I.T. challenge
--> Software design
--> Inter-Operability
--> Software development
--> Game design and many more...

For more information you can check out www.imaginecup.com.

Registering for Imagine Cup in any of the above categories and going past the 1st round can get you a whopping 100 points. EASILY said then DONE but try yourself and see for yourself. Though not many qualify past the 1st round and those who do cannot cope with the 2nd round. A matter of fact, I qualified to the 2nd round of I.T. challenge which clashed with my Exam dates !!!

Coming back, you can also get participants to join this competition(in groups of 40) and win points from it.

You can create your own account with student-partners E-Mail and your ID part of your E-Mail becomes your "Referral code". For example, in my case "hardikguru".

I had penned down a blog on the same probably last year to promote it. You can check out Here.


2] Sessions :

A variety of sessions can be conducted to promote the MSP program, initiatives of Microsoft, any particular technologies of Microsoft like .Net/WPF/Silverlight/etc. The target audience can be students or even teachers.

But do keep in mind that if you conduct these activities under your colleges' Tech-Club than you would be at any added advantage i.e. you can keep your Tech-Club abuzz. Also on having a particular amount of activities in your Tech-Club you are entitled to BENEFITS so keep that in mind. Proofs in the form of PHOTOS, feedback forms, etc are required so check out the ACTIVITES TAB of our student-partners web-site.

Many other forms of sessions are there which include DevCon wherein you've got to conduct a day-long session on myriad of topics with a team of speakers and the mass audience should go into hundreds. Assistance in any form can be procured from "studpart@microsoft.com".

Other forms like Rhythm Sessions, HOL(Hands-On-Lab), etc can be learnt and understood from the ACTIVITES TAB of our student-partners web-site.

3] Microsoft Live@Edu and MSDN-AA campaign :

For Live@Edu you can check out my own blog dating back 10 months(At a time when I was learning to BLOG) Here.

You can also check out videos and any materials for the same Here.

Any questions on 'How-to' and 'What-to' can be forwarded to "livein@microsoft.com"

For MSDN-AA you can check out Here.

You get 140 points for deploying any of them in your own college or any of your peer.


Note :
Any pre-requisites for any activities are mentioned very clearly in the "ACTIVITIES" TAB of our student-partners web-site.

Besides this blog I'll be coming with another BLOG later on the benefits which you derive being an MSP. But for now don't even think about it coz that might lead you astray. FOCUS on the points and enjoy all the activities. Grab what you can.

"Do you have it in you to make a difference ?" -- The MSP Program caption

Outsmart your college/office FIREWALL now....

Are you miffed with the Systems Administrator blocking all your downloads and the so-very-important social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc and Torrent clients in your college or company ... ?

If yes, then just read on and crack the LOGIC behind the BARRIER and harness the same LOGIC to KILL it. Colleges/Organizations usually have a SQUID firewall installed on their Linux Server through which all your HTTP requests get parsed. Such extra-ordinary and powerful is this piece of software that it deserves a blog on it. Here are some of the salient features of SQUID firewall from knowledge point-of-view:

• It can populate all hosts currently on the N/W with their N/W statistics like the last request they made for a particular link and so on.
  
• Specific permissions can be granted and revoked to hosts on the N/W based on their IP, Subnet Mask, port, etc.
• Basically all HTTP requests are routed through the SQUID firewall so it can censor all URL's which the hosts demand. Specific keywords like xxx, orkut, game, facebook, s*x can be blacklisted so the URL's will be blocked.
• File level access-lists can also be defined to block/allow certain formats like '.exe', '.avi', '.wmv', etc.
  

I'm sure by now you've understood why you get the 'Permission denied' or 'Access denied' warning when downloading files with the above mentioned formats or while surfing through URL's which contain keywords which are banned. Excellent logic right .. ? But do not forget that there is another part of the world who live to challenge this piece of software and the citizens here also have their own band of followers including me. :)

So now that we're through with the LOGIC let's work to reverse-engineer it. At first glance this challenge might look really invincible but that's the way challenges are supposed to be right ... ? Let's risk an attempt and than we'll decide our own fate.

1] SQUID firewall like I had emphasized above screen the URL's of hosts. So the very obvious solution is that we need something to encode them. Let's move further.

2] Assuming URL's are encoded than what about my file downloads which I have to download? OK so let's make an exception in this case or say an 'if else' clause comes into picture if you're kind of an programming freak. So if files are there in the URL than they should be rendered as they are.

3] Furthermore, there may be more constraints as well which may have been defined at the SQUID firewall by the developers and kept secret, so to escape that you need to route your traffic through a completely different channel than the conventional one.


Now to apply all of the above points either you can use a service provided VIA a web-site or VIA a desktop application. You can also setup your browser to do the above (not all of the above but it may do the trick in some cases).

• There are web-sites available which can come to your rescue like www.avoidr.com, www.123hideip.com, www.forextail.co.cc, www.netbypasser.info, etc. These are proxy web-sites which offer free service to you. Just paste the link in the web-site and OFF YOU GO. You can search for more on Bing for better results.
• You can use desktop Apps. like UltraSurf to so the same. You can download more Apps. of the same subject Here under the 'Hacking and Sniffing Tools' section.
  
• You can also setup your browser's N/W configuration to manual with the following settings:

HTTP Proxy IP : 192.168.0.201 Port : 3128
Use the above settings for all possible protocols like SOCKS, SSL, FTP, etc.


Note:

• Apps. and certain web-sites have their own restrictions like files exceeding 20 MB in size cannot be downloaded.
• Beware while searching for results which include keywords like 'Proxy' coz the keywords might themselves be banned by your Admin.
• You can use the same technique of setting up your N/W configuration using a HTTP proxy IP and proxy port with Torrent clients like uTorrent, BitComet, Bear-Share, Limewire, etc. The settings are available beneath any of the menu-items so be patient. You can get more proxy IP's and ports Here and Here.
• SQUID firewall usually are installed on UNIX/Linux but it's equivalent on Windows platform also work on the same LOGIC so the above SOLUTION is applicable even there.