Auditing Web Site Authentication

SecurityFocus has an article on auditing Web Site Authentication. The article (first part) discusses a standard audit procedure consisting of a list of questions to test Web site authentication schemes. Not all the questions may be relevant to a particular authentication scheme but still a very good read.

Hard Drive Noise on Sony Vaio

Atlast we fixed the hard drive noise on our Sony Vaio (PCG-GRX500P) notebook. After frantically searching for this information on net for few days, I found the answer at one of the forums hosted by HP. It seems this is a known problem with some Hard drives (In our case Toshiba) and Intel chipsets. Here are the steps you need to perform to get rid of the clicking noise. :

1. Determine the intel chipset that you have. To do this download the Intel® Chipset Identification Utility. To run the Intel Chipset Identification Utility, simply download the file and run it. Our Sony Vaio has Intel 845MP/MZ chipset on the motherboard.
   
2. Download and install the Intel® Application Accelerator . It supports almost all of the Intel chipsets in the 800 series. Note that Mobile chipset support was removed from Intel Application Accelerator version 2.3. Version 2.2.2 is the last version available that supports mobile chipsets. So we had to install Verison 2.2.2. Also note that IAA works on computer systems running Intel® Pentium® III or Pentium® 4 processor only.
   
3. Located within the Parameters window on the Device Information property page are certain parameters that are modifiable. To change a selected parameter, select the device you wish to modify in the Devices window. The corresponding available parameters will be displayed in the Parameters window, to the right.Left double-click on the gray wrench icon associated with the modifiable parameter. The “Edit Value” dialog box will appear. Click on the scroll down arrow and select the option desired.
   
4. To get rid of the noise, You have to select the "Maximum Performance" option under the "Advance Power Management" parameter.
   

In our particular case on a Toshiba drive, there is almost 90% reduction in noise. Cool.

Disclaimer: Try the above steps at your own risk. It worked for us and there is no guarantee it will work for you.

CSS Changes

We have made few changes to the stylesheet (CSS) of the website to allow for better user experience. Notable changes include:

• Bumped up the font size by 2 % and it makes a world of difference now.


• Styles for the blockquote element changed to appeal visually and provide focus on the quotes.

Windows Server 2003 Evaluation Kit

Microsoft is giving away Windows Server 2003 Evaluation Kit for free. The 180-day trial version will be available shortly after the product launches on April 24, 2003. If you are in US, Go grab your own FREE copy.

The following items are included in the Windows Server 2003 Evaluation Kit:

• Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, RTM CD


• Windows Server 2003 Resource CD


• A unique Product Key (required for installation)


• Links to additional Web-based documentation

The Evaluation Kit is available only in English when you order it from this Web site. Localized versions may be available in other locales. We will add international Web site links as they become available. There is no fee for the Windows Server 2003 Evaluation Kit. As a special promotional offer, Windows Server 2003 Evaluation Kits will be shipped at no charge to customers in the United States, through July 31, 2003. (However, fees will apply if customers choose to receive their shipment via express methods.) Orders from outside the United States are subject to shipping charges and may be subject to import duties and taxes. When ordering from this site, you are considered the importer of record and must comply with all laws and regulations of the country/region in which you are receiving the shipment.

XML Enlightenment

Some days back Don Box pointed out to this excellent discussion by Aaron Skonnard. I bookmarked it then and got a chance only today to go through all the three articles. I must say all of these are a must-must read for all of us working with various XML API's presented by the .Net Framework. In the first part, he discusses the tradeoffs between XML API's for both reading and writing XML documents. The Second and third part describes choosing the right API's for reading and writing XML documents with the help of code examples.

[Also posted at My .Net Weblog]

The five biggest trends in tech

Fortune reports on the Five biggest trends in tech:

Standardization - An ever-widening array of technology tools are available in inexpensive, standardized form. The price of computers, storage, and bandwidth, among other things, continues to drop per unit of performance. Dell Computer is the ultimate apostle of this trend, but Dell only succeeds because of the work of Intel, Microsoft, the Linux community, and others.
Open source - Software that costs essentially nothing can do more and more tasks. I wrote the other day about the mySQL database. Meanwhile, Linux continues to astound. It makes available to anyone, inexpensively, the kind of robust software provided by the traditional proprietary Unix vendors. Linux also allows Wal-Mart to sell a $200 PC.
Wireless - The cost of deploying a broadband network is plunging because it can now be done wirelessly. This suits our public spaces, workplaces, schools, and homes. We can thank not the telecommunications industry but those in the computer industry who developed the standards-based unregulated Wi-Fi technology.
'Data Comes Alive' - This was the theme of Esther Dyson's recent industry conference, and aptly summarizes a panoply of emerging new technologies that hold the promise of dramatically increasing what software can do. Among them: web services, which allow applications to seamlessly communicate with each other; the so-called "semantic web," a richer version of the web we use today that allows software to communicate more efficiently without human intervention; and a variety of new enterprise applications that will bring the benefits of automation to many intractably uncomputerized business processes.
Selling software as a service - I've written in this column about the phenomenal growth of Salesforce.com's per-user-per-month sales automation software. Salesforce is just one of several new companies that allow anyone to automate parts of their operations without buying hardware, networks, and expensive enterprise software. All you need is a browser and you can get work done. If you apply this concept to your entire computing and software infrastructure, you have what IBM calls "on demand" computing, or Hewlett-Packard refers to as "adaptive infrastructure." It's all about getting more efficient use of technology resources, whether you own them or not.

Interesting phrase for web services, "Data comes Alive" although not sure if it was meant to be restricted to just web services. No major surprises in this list of trends. I don't think Standardization can be termed as a tech trend. Standardization in the way the article describes is bound to happen in any economy. After a point of time things will become inexpensive and this happens with all the fields, tech is no exception.

Drew Robbins has a blog

Never knew Drew Robbins has a blog (rather a complete website). Drew works for InDepth Technology and has presented a lot of time at the Columbus .Net Developers Group and generally acts as the MC for all the meetings. He is scheduled to present again real soon (April ?) on Business value of .Net. Cool !! RSS subscribed.