Eric A. Duncan

Getting GoDaddy SSLs working in Firefox on IIS

2008-05-09T05:15:59Z

Upon installing your SSL certificate purchased through GoDaddy, and your Firefox users get prompted with a certificate warning of "Unauthorized Authority", read on for a fix using Windows 2003 Server (and R2). This also works for any other authority that is not authorized by default in any browser. In this article, I provide links to GoDaddy's Intermediate Certificates. If you obtained your SSL certificate through another party, ask them for their "Intermediate Certificates" to download for IIS.

Overview

SSL certificates are commonly known to secure a channel of communications, such as the web and email. The problem when installing GoDaddy SSL certificates on a server is Firefox may prompt you stating that the certificate is from an "Unauthorized Authority".

Why is GoDaddy an unauthorized authority on SSL certificates? Bloggit has a good definition over on his blog, as well as a resolution for stunnel and apache systems. But, we are using IIS so things change a bit for us. The bottom-line is a simple quote from his blog post:

In practice, while Opera and Internet Explorer come [installed] knowing about GoDaddy [as an authorized authority], Firefox and Thunderbird do not. And therefore presumably several other devices also don't. They gripe that GoDaddy is an "Unknown Authority"... rather than silently accepting it.

To better describe what is happening, think of how an SSL certificate gets authorized by your browser. I am going to take a stab on how I think it works (feel free to correct me in the comments). The browser receives the header information for the SSL certificate upon the first communication to the web server. Within the header of this request is the complete information and public key of the SSL certificate information. But also included in the SSL certificate header information is the reference chain of the issuer, which is GoDaddy (or whomever issued your SSL certificate). If the client's browser does not have GoDaddy listed as a known and authorized issuer of SSL certificates (i.e. Firefox and Thunderbird do not, but IE7 does), the browser will prompt the user of the Unknown Authority. So the fix is to add a known issuer of SSL certificates that is "linked" to GoDaddy's (better known as Intermediate Certificates) at the server level.

Resolution

The fix is to get GoDaddy added to the list of companies that are authorized to issue SSL certificate. And, this is performed on the web server serving up your custom SSL certificate. We will need to add the GoDaddy company to the reference chain of authorized issuers of SSL certificates.

Basically we want to say, "GoDaddy is known as a child of the bigger company Starfield". Starfield is GoDaddy's parent company and is in Firefox and Thunderbird's list of authorized authorities.

And just like SSL certificates that must be issued by GoDaddy to be authorized, Starfield must issue a similar certificate that describes GoDaddy as a known authorized authority of SSL certificates.

I am going to list the steps first outlined by Doug Hughes, with some modifications and pictures. Below are the set of instructions to get your new GoDaddy SSL certificate installed first. We will tackle the Starfield GoDaddy Intermediate Certificate later.

Copy your GoDaddy certificate into a file named domainname.cer on your web server. The name is arbitrary, but let it end in .cer for simplicity.
Click Start -> Run and type mmc and press Enter. This opens the Microsoft Management Console.
Click File -> Add Remove Snap-In.
Click Add to open the Add Standalone Snap-In Window
Scroll to find the Certificates snap-in as shown below. Select it and click Add.
In the corresponding wizard, select Computer account and click Next.
Select Local computer and click Finish.
Click Close and then Ok. Now you will see the Certificates snap-in in the MMC.
Expand the Certificates node, right-click on Trusted Root Certification Authorities and select All Tasks -> Import as shown below.
Click Next and then select the domainname.cer you created in step 1 above.
The next step in the wizard should indicate that the certificates will be placed in the Trusted Root Certification Authorities. If it does not, you will need to select it by clicking Browse... Once it looks like the below, click Next.
Click Finish on the final page. You should be prompted with a dialog that states the import was successful.
Finally, you will need to stop and restart the website that the SSL certificate belongs to for the changes to take affect.

Final Procedure to install the Intermediate Certificate authority

Unfortunately, you are not done. The above only installs the GoDaddy certificate in the root trusted root certificates. The client's browser will not authorize it just yet. To finish the process, you will need to install GoDaddy's Starfield version of their Intermediate Certificate. Here is the all important link to go download it:

https://certs.godaddy.com/Repository.go

If you obtained your SSL certificate through another party, such as the discounted VeriSign type, you will need to obtain the Intermediate Certificate from your provider. But the steps are identical to resolve.

There are a number of certificates available in the link above. So for simplicity, I downloaded the bundled package that includes all of them named Go Daddy PKCS7 Certificate Intermediates Bundle (for Windows IIS).

Note: Take a special notice that this will download a file with the extension of .p7b.

The final step is to get the bundle of certificates installed. You do this by following exactly the steps I outlined above, 1 through 13 all over again. Except on step 10, you will need to filter the Files of type drop-down as shown below.

Note: You only need to perform this process once per server, as it will be installed at the root level of all certificates for the server. So any further GoDaddy SSL certificates installed will pickup the Starfield SSL certificate as the parent company of GoDaddy.

Step 10 change:

This will now let you browse to the gd_iis_intermediates.p7b file you downloaded from GoDaddy. Follow the rest of the steps exactly.

Final thoughts

That is it. Make sure to stop and restart the web site that your new SSL is to take effect on. Or you can do an IISRESET to force an update to all websites.

Why the Inspiron is a King

2007-12-11T06:13:00Z

I step away from the system, hands nearly numb, being reminded again since 4 years why PCs will always out perform the latest consoles such as the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. As I finish a two hour session of Battlefield 2 with my old buddies from TCU, I can't help but to be amazed at the new found graphics tonight I have not seen before because my previous systems could not handle HDTV and full graphics.

Battlefield2, 1920x1200x32, Ultra-High Hack, ~89 FPS

Stepping back, a bit dumb-founded, I question my sanity in the PC I just built tonight. I justify it quickly when I consider the tiny investment it took to bring this desktop to be the game-crushing machine it is now. Only this time it is not my 4.2 Ghz 1200mhz FSB desktop - it's my $900 Dell Inspiron E1705 work laptop that I spent $240 upgrading.

I have been a long-time advocate for Dell machines back from my IT Administrator days in Atlanta at CASE Masters and iDealmusic. Dell laptops in particular have had an interesting reign. Back in 1998, PC Magazine started to issue the "Drop Test" against the leading laptops. Being dropped from six feet, all laptops failed to boot up except one - the Dell Latitude series which was a business-class unit. It was my first laptop I bought, and still have it. I was using it all the way up to 2005, lastly for automotive tuning.

Dell Inspiron E1705/9400 Exploded View (source: support.dell.com)

This story starts with the Dell Inspiron E1705 or also known as the 9400. Dell has done something great here, a laptop that is user-serviceable and user-upgradable. Yes it is a discontinued laptop, but if I only have know when I had it back at Telligent there would have been some serious modding going on. Tonight, I ventured into wild with a few components and upgrades not normally available. Each one has its own story to tell.

E1705, 4 GB SDRAM, nVidia FX2500 7900GTX 512MB, Arctic Silver 5

4 GB SDRAM PC2-5400 667mhz

The first thing many will cry fowl on here is, "The Inspiron E1705/9400 does not support 4GB of ram." This is untrue. While yes the bios only sees 3.25 GB available, so does the M17xx XPS systems and many desktop motherboards. There are lots of theories to this, but the truth is that your peripherals reserve that memory space and Windows allows them to over 3 GB - even if they never will use it. Basically, they are powered but never used. Using PAE causes some mobo/bios combinations to free up that address block to 4 GB, allowing for up 4.5 GB to be used. But the sad fact is there isn't much you can do right now when it's restricted at the hardware level.

Me? I figured it was a good $61 investment for my next laptop to have 4 GB as well. :)

nVidia Quatro FX2500m 512MB, 7900GTX GPU, PCI-E CAD and Gaming Card

Another thing many will deny is the ability to stick an XPS or M90 "high-end" design cad and/or gaming card into the 'low-end" Inspiron business-class line. As you can see below, this is not the case either and the installation is pretty straight forward. The M90 designer-cad graphics card is the nVidia FX2500m Quatro, which is a modified version of the 7900 GTX 512 MB (from my research).

The forum gurus are spending $350 to $500 on this particular card. I snagged mine from eBay for $160. The theory here was if it truly performs as well as the desktop version, then I can finally, after 4 years of planning, downgrade my PC to our Vista MCE machine in the main room and move to the laptop full-time (mobile again!). That is precisely what the PC was built for, less the water-cooling rig which actually is built to handle the heat demands for the next 5 to 7 years of CPUs. So bring 'em on!

Dell 150w PA15 Power Adapter

Most Dells these days come with an 90w. While this one sufficed for the first few hours of gaming, I did notice the unit getting much hotter than normal. Others amongst the net have mentioned that a 130w or 150w is needed because the 90w will burn out with these upgrades. So I ordered an original Dell PA15 new in box from eBay for $20. I needed a 2nd adapter anyhow. But be warned - they don't call these things a "brick" for no reason. This thing is literally the size of a brick!

Overclocking

I do not think I will be overclocking, but yes it is true. People are dramatically overclocking their Dell laptops. At this time the E1705's CPU, bus, and memory can not be overclocked (except the memory timings). But the GPU (graphics processor unit) can be if it is the nVidia series, and quite extensively too!

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Paste

I only mention this because the other gurus on the forums have been putting this into their systems for the CPU upgrades. I have used AS5 for many years now, and I swear by it. My 4.2 Ghz desktop machine idles @ 28C and peaks at 37C with both cores maxed. That is just amazing (plus the water cooling).

So in this venture I decided to break out the old tube from the freezer and slap a dab on the CPU. The result was more than I expected with only 15 minutes of work, and well worth it. So let us begin the photo slide show with commen[dy]tary.

I was browsing one day and wanted a temperature reader for my laptop as I was noticing the fans kicking on high and the keyboard running quite hot at times. I stumbled upon Notebook Forums and was amazed at the level of upgrades people have done to their laptops from all brands. It seems the manufacturers have finally gave up and allowed end-users the ability to upgrade their machines. You can read up on your brand there.

As for the Dell E1705, there's numerous threads:

This post is not meant to be a complete guide to installing the hardware. Instead it is more of a visual verification cue of some modifications (read cutting) that you must do. Check out Dell's support page and view/download the service manual as it has very detailed, step-by-step instructions to opening and servicing your laptop.

So let us break this thing open.

Hinge Cover Removed

First thing the service manual says is to remove the hinge cover as shown above. It was a bit nerve racking to pry that hard on a piece of plastic, and having it pop - sounding like I was breaking each and every tab. Being the first step in the entire process, I did have a reservation. But pushed on, prying harder, knowing it would come off cause the manual said so.

This is the most difficulty step. Get past the cracking, creaking, and popping sounds and you are home free.

Tip: If you do not have a plastic scribe, you can use a small/tiny flat-head screwdriver but do not pry up as the manual says because this will scratch the white plastic. Instead, use a twisting motion to pop the panel up and loose at the location of the red arrow. Then slowly work your way around the corner, twisting and popping the rest loose. Once you can get your finger under it, pull up and don't be scared.

Keyboard Removed, ATI visible

Next comes the keyboard. Nothing special here. I just wanted to show you the first glimpse of the ATI X1400 video card to be removed.

Dell 1500 802.11n WiFi card and Antenna Leads

Skipping ahead, along the way of removing the LCD panel it says to disconnect the wireless antenna of your wireless card. Here you can see the antenna leads connected to the Dell 1500 802.11n card via the red arrows. There is some questions on the web to even having to do this step if you do not have a wifi card. The answer is yes, they are just connected to dummy terminals.

And yes, if you put things back together and have no signal on your wifi card - you forgot to connect these!

LCD Panel Removed

With the LCD removed, you've passed the point of no return (or now you are fully committed rather).

Magnetized Screwdriver Helps

This shows a little trick I have been using since I was a younglin'. I have a special set of tools that are magnetized, allowing me to remove (as shown) and install screws in very difficult places. Tools like this screwdriver pulls the screw right out, not having to flip over the system and let them drop and bounce.

It is very easy to magnetize your existing screwdrivers. Mr. Wizard showed me how when I was just a kid, and I have been doing it every since. Simply take a strong magnet and place it on the tip. Now slide it down the shaft, away from the tip in only one direction - do not twist the magnet around the shaft. This polarizes the shaft with the electrons that were resting at one end now oppositely charged at the other end of the shaft (because you moved the magnet). You can also de-magnetize by reversing precisely what you just did (place the magnet at the far end, and slide it towards the tip). This does not always work because you need to be using the same pole (North or South) of the magnet that when you started. Using the opposite pole will not have much effect.

Do not worry. Just slide the magnet down the shaft and be done. And do not magnetize all of your tools. Just two or three select screwdrivers, and keep them away from your other tools so they do not magnetize others. Note that I highly recommend the use of rare-Earth magnets as they are extremely strong.

And before you ask, yes I removed the HDD before using tools that were magnetized.

Above: nVidia Quatro FX2500m, Below: ATI X1400

Here is the view of the ATI X1400 still in the system and the new nVidia FX2500m for comparison. Notice there is no heat pipe on the left side of the ATI card, only the right side.

Above: ATI X1400, Below: nVidia FX2500m

Here you can see both cards and really see what others are calling "dual heat pipes" on the nVidia 7900 GTX (below).

Modifying the case to fit the FX2500m

Now for the point of no return. To get the nVidia FX2500m to fit, you will need to modify the left-rear area of the laptop case behind the CPU's heatsink. This is because the left heatsink for the FX2500m is too wide to fit into this area. So you have to grind down or break off the two plastic sides/tabs. You can see in this photo above that I am grabbing one of the tabs to break off with a pair of needle-nose pliers.

Another option that would keep your full warranty would be to modify the FX2500m's heatsink by grinding down the two ends. I believe this would fit well with slight bending on the copper pipe to raise the heatsink about 1/8". This does not block air-flow for the cpu's heatsink, and still is vented to the rear outlet. Alas I do not have a grinder here, or I would have done it myself.

Do not worry about warranty here. If you are going this far, then you have the ability to service the laptop yourself if a component fails during your warranty period. Dell's "low cost" warranty is parts-only, and there ya go. Dell will send you the parts to replace, which you can service it yourself - under warranty. Just I would not take the chance of sending the entire laptop in for repair as they may catch the broken tabs.

Right Tab Modified

Left Tab Modified

You can see above it does not take very much. Test fit the FX2500m a few times though to make sure you removed enough.

CPU & Northbridge Heatpipe/Heatsink Removed

While I had my system apart, I made plans to upgrade the CPU's cooling a little with a touch of Arctic Silver 5 as I noted above. You can see in this photo above the crap that Dell (and most PC makers) use on their CPUs. Mine had actually turned into a brittle paste.

Cleaned CPU and Northbridge
(CLICK FOR JPEG COMPRESSED 1.43 MB FULL-RES PICTURE FOR DETAIL/CLOSE-UP)

Before you can apply AS5, you must thoroughly clean both surfaces (the CPU and heatsink). My best experiences has always been to use rubbing alcohol with some lint-free clothes or even kitchen paper towels. AS5 works smaller than you can see, filling the microscopic gaps and imperfections of the two pieces. Above you can see how the CPU's surface is now mirror-like, reflecting the white water-bottle cap.

The copper heatpipe was another story though. It was extremely rough and the paste was near-impossible to remove. Sorry I forgot to snap a photo of my work, because of the time involved I was just in a hurry to get it polished down. But I ended up using 400grit sandpaper, than 1000grit, and 2000grit to get a near-polished surface. You do not have to do any of this to your heatpipe though. Just get it cleaned off.

I went this route of applying AS5 and polishing my heatpipe because I did not like my CPU's temps under normal conditions just idling and/or working. I wanted to cool down the 62C idle of my CPU! I am proud to say that using AS5 did the trick. My idle temps are down to 37C with ambient about 74F. For comparison, my 4.2 Ghz desktop noted above idles at 28C but that's not fair given the custom cooling I did with it. But, it's close!

CPU heatpipe and new (used) FX2500m all installed

Here is a shot of everything re-installed and tightened down. Note in comparison to a photo above of the ATI X1400 in the system.

Air gaps from Dell's stock setup of heatsinks
(CLICK FOR JPEG COMPRESSED 1.32 MB FULL-RES PICTURE FOR DETAIL/CLOSE-UP)

Now this was something I was not happy about. There is a large gap from the left fan (fan 1) to the CPU's heatsink from before. Then there was now a gap between the CPU and GPU's heatsinks. You can see in the picture above the screwdriver that is clearly visible (click the image for the full-res version).

In my history of custom cooling back in the 80s and 90s, there is one thing I learned that always remains constant: airflow is key. So my task would be to modify the airflow to force all air through the heatsinks by not allowing any to escape the airflow path through any gaps.

Aluminum Foil Shrouds

I accomplished this by using a few pieces of kitchen aluminum foil, scotch-tape, and additional AS5. There are multiple reasons for this. First for safety I evaluated the entire area and found no electrical components or circuit boards anywhere near this area. You do not want a piece coming loose and short-circuiting things!

Second is having aluminum foil allows the heat to transfer from one copper pipe to the other (just a tad though, too thin really to do a massive amount). That may not have been the best idea at first because CPUs usually run cooler than GPUs from my overclocking experience. But considering how freakin' high my CPU temps were before I even began, I could only see this as helping to offload some heat to the GPU's heatpipe - even if just a tad amount, anything had to help.

I also closed down the air escaping on the left side of fan's outlet to the CPU's heatsink, as well as the gaps between the two heatsinks. Now all air is forced by the fan trough the CPU heatsink, and then through the GPU's heatsink where it than only has room to exit the back vent.

CPU idle at 36C using Arctic Silver 5, down from 62C when OEM

It is very well worth it, even if I did not upgrade the GPU, because now my CPU temps are a steady 37C with fans set to low. With no fans, it creeps up to 47C. Compare that to the 62C idle before with fans on high, and I think I came out ahead.

CPU cores pegged reaches 72C after 30 minutes of stress-testing, down from much much higher

And for you guys into max CPU heat testing, using an instance of Prime95 on each core yields a max temp of 72C with 74F ambient after about 30 minutes. Much better than before! I will admit I did not pay a lot of attention to the max temp before the AS5 was applied. Let us just say I did not stress it for very long once it climbed to 85C.

While gaming the GPU hovered around 63 to 65C tonight after about two hours, and peaked at 70C just for an instant. I would have applied AS5 to the GPU's heatsink but I did not have a torx-bit small enough (it was missing from my collection) and I wanted to get my laptop running again after spending that time sanding down the CPU's heatpipe.

In conclusion, I feel this was very much worth the effort. A few hours of research over a few days time, finding a great deal on the video card, and planning/preparation before hand, and it all took about 3 hours from start to end (including the sanding of the CPU's heatpipe).

Not a bad system for under $1,200 with BF2 averaging in Fraps at 85 FPS and BF2142 around 78 FPS steady. Why someone would pay for an XPS system is beyond me. Just get an Inspiron for a good price, hunt around after a few months find a deal on the upgrade parts.

Now, if I can get my hands on one of those newer 1720/1730s with dual HDD bays...

HP Blackbird 002 vs Dell XPS 700 Series

2007-09-20T04:13:00Z

After Morgan Webb pitched me over to the Blackbird's Wikia's site about a month ago, I've been keeping an eye out for the specs. Now that I see HP has launched a site about the HP Blackbird 002 (love the bassy intro), I am able to compare the HP monster to what I consider it's #1 rival, the Dell XPS 700 series gaming desktops. Morgan and I have very similar views on many fronts, such as the advertising in PC games, so we dive into latest from HP.

First off, I can not do a direct hardware-to-hardware comparison. Sorry. I don't work for Tom's Hardware nor have I received a version of these PCs to review (if Dell/HP is reading this, hollar!). And I simply can't afford to buy both for a personal review. But I do consider myself an ubber elite PC enthusiast since the mid 80s (hey, I was 11 then) hacking the teacher's Apple for better grades. I will try to apply my knowledge to the posted information about each system to more accurately help you make your decision with minimal jargon-talk.

A little background info
HP was not the first to the "buy our name-brand performance-PC that you can mod" market. You could be technical and go way back to IBM I owned that was an 4mhz 8086 and boasted as "user upgradable" by allowing for memory chips to be purchased to upgrade it from 512kb to 640kb of total ram. But the dual 5.25" floppy-sized 10 MB HDD was a bit more complicated though. Tip: Use the DOS debug tool as it gave me another 1.20 MB of space by removing the extra space reserved for "bad sector marking". Woot! Ok, too much jargon.

By my recollection, Dell was the first to design, build, and release a fully customizable desktop with gamers and hardcore enthusiasts in mind allowing end-users to modify and upgrade it on their own, if only by their own kits. Heck, they even have special motherboard upgrade instructional videos and a dedicated website for just the upgrade. Obviously, this Dell PC I'm talking about is called the XPS 700 we are looking into here.

What I really like about Dell as a company is that their engineers have released videos and podcasts about this product (and most other products) right at the same time that Dell released their new Direct-2-Dell weblog and videoblog back in March 2007. The Direct2Dell site allows engineers to post thoughts, product descriptions, videos, and even customer service responses for just about anything Dell - and receive feedback directly from you on the subject matter. This is a first for an industry that seems to hide behind technical support to filter feedback to customer service and engineers, if it even gets that far.

Anyhoot, no I am not sponsored by Dell. Nor am I affiliated in any way with Dell, for the most part. My previous employer and I built the Direct2Dell blog site, so I am a little partial to Dell in that regard as I haven't seen any similar manufacturers doing the same. That, and I thought it was pretty freakin' cool of them.

The Dell XPS 700
Getting back to the topic at hand, the Dell XPS 700 series comes in two flavors: The XPS 700 and XPS 700H2O (water cooled). The 720 series now available includes support for quad-core processors as noted on ExtremeTech and is also available as a "Motherboard Upgrade" kit for earlier 700 series consumers. Yes, I'm plugging another larger community site I did wanting the recognition for our new web design and consulting company, Colorburn, specializing in CommunityServer large communities. Ok, no more plugs - I promise.

The XPS 700 series is pretty sleek. Instead of trying to define or describe this unit, I believe Dell's videoblog does the best job without me having to interpret their information here and here (the first video really shows it's size!), amongst the dozens of other posts from their engineers here, that yes you can provide direct feedback to. It's quite a beast, to say the least.

The one thing that struck me about the Dell XPS was how they actually encourage users to overclock, upgrade, and interchange parts. As time went on, I see the parts are mostly sold in "Upgrade Kits" from Dell such as newer proprietary motherboard and CPU combos. But still you can go throw in any newer PCIe 16x video card and CPU, and have a Core2 Duo system running over 1400mhz bus in no time.

HP Blackbird 002
No, I don't consider the Blackbird with it's Core 2 Extreme Duo Quad Core an SR-71 Blackbird (ah yes, a nice D.A.R.Y.L. flashback). It really is a serious machine. But in the world of videoblogging, I find myself scanning for text to read more and viewing a photo gallery. Eh, Dell has spoiled me.

Reading about the motherboard and their "Voodoo process of elimination", it seems they are going to be selling a rig with a custom mobo that's not interchangeable - just like the Dell. You can supply as many PCI and PCIe slots as you want to. These days, most things are built onto the motherboards now which you just end up swapping out every few years any ways. But given both the HP and Dell's mobos seem to be proprietary, maybe having these extra slots is a good thing so you can install the next-generation sound card when it's invented (since Creative's last effort, the X-Fi, didn't take off as they hoped it would).

I was impressed with the Blackbird with its built-in RAID5 for storage. Any storage junkie knows that RAID5 provides more throughput then a single HDD, and a RAID1 setup is dirt-slow. Dell's XPS only comes in RAID1 or RAID0 flavors (RAID0 being the fastest, yes, but not redundant). My only issue is there is no cache memory for the raid system (that I can see listed). As with the cache on CPUs, this makes all the difference in RAID setups and it's why I would stick to my Areca PCIe setup for a RAID solution.

Only time will tell (when released) if the Blackbird is truly an upgradable piece. If they offer "Motherboard Kits" such as the ones from Dell to keep their end-users happy by upgrading to the latest mobo/cpu combinations, then it really will give Dell a run for their money (serious money that is).

Taking the plunge
Both Dell and HP have developed amazing systems that can be bumped to some pretty high FSB and memory speeds with very little work. But what both will require instead is a decent credit score to be able to afford it. Yes that's right folks, these "user serviceable" PCs are not cheap. But on the flip side, they aren't overly expensive either such as the recent AlienWare units these days. Now I love AlienWare so don't flame me, but over the recent years they have moved to more of a "pay for our designer brand (cases)" instead of worrying about end-user affordability of super high-end PCs like they were in the past. My preferred HP Blackbird setup looks to be around $6500, while the matching Dell is $6100. But when pricing a comparable AlienWare, it came to $7100 - which is amazing if you consider that AlienWare is now owned by Dell.

Maybe it's similar to a Cadillac Escalade vs a Chevy Tahoe: one's decked out a lot more when compared to Dell's base desktops. But Dell now has the XPS 700 systems that directly competes with AlienWare's recent offerings. Maybe the XPS 700s are using the same base perhaps? But I don't see AlienWare boasting "Motherboard Upgrade" kits, so I'd have to say no to that theory and sway more towards the XPS systems that allows you to upgrade.

Water cooling
I'm not going into the whole liquid-cooling debate and trying to sell you on it, but just wanted to note a few advantages. Water is one of the best heat conductors, exchanging heat quite quickly and efficiently. With this idea in mind, the PC overclocking world developed into an industry requiring a good heat exchanger while keeping the volume down on the fans. Any chemistry expert can reaffirm you that by blasting water onto a water block made of copper or silver allows the heat to transfer to the water quite efficiently and away from the water block. Then all you have to do is move the water to a radiator to remove the heat.

In my rig which was my first H2O experiment (I know, late to the party), it turned out to be quite amazing. It's near-silent operation at 1200mhz FSB with my theory of "bigger is better" is achieved by simply using an extremely large and oversized radiator (oversized as it's just for the CPU and FSB), with three large (and quiet) fans spinning at the slowest speed possible (@ 4.4v). Most watercooling gurus use a small radiator just the size of a single fan, which usually requires the fan to run at full 12v speed. That's just too loud for me.

I mention watercooling as Dell's XPS 700 series actually has it as an option, where the HP Blackbird comes with a sealed unit from the get-go. HP is actually claiming they are the "first performance-PC manufacturer to effectively implement liquid-cooling". I find this hard to swallow looking at AlienWare (considered a manufacturer as of 2005 when they got away from off-the-shelve mobos), and even Dell earlier this year with their XPS 700H2O series. Now I will give HP mucho props for making it sealed and never needing service. That is what they should have focused on in their claims.

But given my research in the past, no "H2O kit" can hold a candle (heat - phun intended) to your own custom made setup. The effort required though, is a whole other story. Refer to www.ocforums.com if you want to take that path of the dark side (by far the best site for information on H2O I found years ago).

Conclusion
The Dell XPS with it's Core 2 Extreme QX68xx 8MB overclocked quad core available is close to the same cost as the HP Blackbird when it comes down to it with dual nVidia 8800 SLIs and LCD.

But I have to lean towards Dell with their Direct2Dell videoblog and engineer's playground of fishing for feedback to their products, where I feel I can be influential. Where is HP's Direct2HP website so I can provide my comments to their engineers? Is that what the blackbird.wikia.com website is for? This website doesn't seem to be geared towards feedback for HP's newest player to the market and looks more like an open blog.

I really want to get away from what Ms. Webb describes as "spending hours and hours with the same old issues" by building, maintaining, and upgrading my own hardware. I have to look at the cost I would spend to get a comparable PC from HP/Dell that I could build one for. So it comes down to, is your time worth a few grand to spend on saving you the time of building these PCs and upgrading? I can argue both sides of the equation, but only you can answer it for yourself. Hardcore builders will not be swayed by the Blackbird, nor Dell, and will continue to build for less. Much less.

But then again looking back at the time and effort it took to get my rig up to snuff, I really could have used those several months for something else to make up the cost for one of these XPS 700s or Blackbirds. Humm, I do need a new PC soon...

PostIcon CS Bug Fix

2007-09-03T18:59:00Z

With the previous release of The MiXX Collection, it was updated to work with CS 2007. Well there is a bug in CS 2007's CSModule that no longer allows updating the ExtendedAttributes after a post is created.

In other words, the bug in the PostIcon that was introduced with 1.0 release caused a 0.jpg PostIcon to be saved at times and not propertly updating the WeblogPost object.

Download: As always, you can download the latest version and source from the file gallery.

This release, version 1.1, resolves this issue with a performance penalty work-around. But due to the changes and protection in the CSModules, there isn't any other way. The work-around is during a CreatePost event, we don't write the ExtendedAttributes on the PrePost CSModule event (since we do not have the PostID any longer). Instead, I hook into the AfterPost event that fires, after the post has been created, to obtain the PostID. This fires off an UpdatePost method to write the entire post to the DB - again.

Don't worry, this is only during the first initial CreatePost event. If you go back and Update a post, it fires normally - that is only 1 time because we now have a PostID during the PrePost event to write to the ExtendedAttributes.

I'm open to suggestions if someone else has a cleaner solution. It all comes down to not being able to update/write to the ExtendedAttributes during the AfterPost (PostPost) CSModule event. I've mentioned it for years, there should be a method to save the ExtendedAttributes without having to update the entire object.

And as always, bookmark this link for updates: http://eduncan911.com/archive/tags/The+MiXX+Collection/default.aspx You can also access the RSS option in there to subscribe via RSS as well.

Living with Subversion (Part 4)

2007-07-14T18:14:00Z

In the forth and final part of my series, Living with Subversion, I cover a number of performance tips and some Dos and Don'ts.

Improving performance of TortoiseSVN

The performance improvement aspect of this article targets those mainly on laptops that want to save battery life and/or slower HDD machines, or simply have just too many projects (>50) within repositories. It is quite simple really, TortoiseSVN's folder icon overlays are very cool as a quick visual indication of what has changed recently. The problem with the icon overlays is TortoiseSVN constantly updates the status of these, especially if you are using Windows Explorer to view the folder tree no matter if you are playing a game, surfing the web, etc.

Still not on par with what I am explaining? Check out TortoiseSVN's Optimize Performance page. But they have left out one key improvement: Disable the Status Cache (icon overlays).

Icon Overlays Dialog

Icon Overlays
I set mine Status Cache overlays to "none". This effectively disables the Status Cache all together. Just like SGV Client, you'll have to perform an Update before starting your work everyday as this will pull down the latest copy to start with. If you like the red X effect, you'll want to leave this on Default. I personally don't want my HDD going in insane (like it did with the dozen+ repositories and icon overlays). So I disable mine, period.

Also be sure to uncheck "Show overlays only in explorer". This will keep the icons out of the standard Windows dialog popups, and only show them in the Windows Explorer. Again if you want to see when something is out-of-sync immediately, you'll want to skip this part but sacrifice performance.

Our final performance increase greatly effects Windows' users. Setting the include paths text box. As described in the Optimize Performance page by TortoiseSVN, you will want to specify the directory of where your projects are stored. This keeps TortoiseSVN from snooping around your Windows directory for hidden svn folders - constantly snooping.

Common TortoiseSVN mistakes

As mentioned above, TortoiseSVN uses hidden directories to store the Subversion versioning information for that directory and files. So a mistake several of us have made is while working with an existing repository is we use Windows Explorer to copy an existing directory to a new directory (i.e. Theme copying). The problem with this logic is that the hidden svn directories are still there. This causes versioning whoas and most likely will force your updates into the previous version of that directory (or an Update will override your changes without a merge). This is because TortoiseSVN is using the path information stored within the hidden svn folders.

Simple fix really but you have to use your head to remember: Always right-click the new directory after copying, click Search and search for the .svn or _svn directories and delete them. Then the next time you go to check in, the directories will appear to be new to TortoiseSVN and allow you to add them.

An easier fix would be to just use the Rep-browser to perform the action(s), and do an Update when done on your local machine. This will copy/pull down everything properly.

Another common task is if you need to move a directory, as with SGV Client, you will have to move it within the Repo-browser or suffer similar issues noted above.

Bottom-line: use the Repo-browser for most of your copy and/or moving of folders.

And that concludes this four-part series. Lot of reading for just a few options, eh?

Living with Subversion (Part 3)

2007-07-14T18:13:00Z

In part three of Living with Subversion, we cover one of the biggest reason of this series: Using a different Merge Tool.

Merging conflicts using SourceGear Vault Client's DiffMerge

Now onto one of the most useful tidbits of this article, using the trusty SGDM tool that is included with SourceGear Vault Client installation. I have been using SourceGear Vault Client 3.1.9 for a while now, so I am writing using that version. I know 3.5.x and 4.0 has been released, but our last version of SGV was 3.1.x so that's what I am used to.

Once installed, you do not have to do anything to the client. Instead, it's all about setting up Tortoise to use it as the merge tool.

Note: TortoiseSVN does come with its own DiffMerge tool. Maybe it is me too busy coding, or not spending enough time resolving conflicts, but I just cannot stand TortoiseSVN's version. Hence this topic. I am very use to SGV's robust version.

Diff Viewer Dialog

First, click the Diff Viewer on the left and select the "External" option. Next find/note the location of your Vault Client directory. There should be a sgdm.exe file here. Change the Diff Viewer (you will want to keep the quotation marks too) location to:

"C:\Program Files\SourceGear\Vault Client\sgdm.exe" %mine %base

Making sure the path matches obviously. This will put your local copy in the left panel and the repository's version in the right panel.

Merge Tool Dialog

Next click the Merge Tool on thee left and select External once again. Using the same location of the sgdm.exe as above, paste it in. But this time, the command-line arguments are a good bit longer:

"C:\Program Files\SourceGear\Vault Client\sgdm.exe" /result:%merged /title1:%yname /title2:%mname /title3:%tname %mine %merged %theirs

This will put your working version on the left panel, the repository's version in the right panel, and the TortoiseSVN's merged version in the center.

The trick is that now you can use SGV's DiffMerge tool, easy color coding and replace options that you are used to, overriding the TortoiseSVN's merged (and often broken) result area highlighted in bright yellow as shown below.

SGV Client's SDMG.exe opened by TortoiseSVN after a conflict

The Unified Diff Viewer is a viewer for CVS patch files. By default on Windows, TortoiseSVN uses Notepad. Tip: Upgrade to Notepad2 for you local notepad.exe in windows.

Continue to Part 4

Living with Subversion (Part 2)

2007-07-14T18:09:00Z

This is part duex in the series Living with Subversion, starting to get into the nit-n-gritty.

Configure your software

After you install TortoiseSVN and SGV's Client, you will want to configure TortoiseSVN for a number of things. You will access this by right-clicking on your empty desktop, going to TortoiseSVN, and then to Settings.

TortoiseSVN's Context Menu for Settings

Exclude files you do not want to check-in
These includes directories to ignore such as /bin, /obj, /_sgbak, and files such as *.suo, *.pdb, *.bak and so on. Basically, you do not want to check-in these types of files.

Go to the TortoiseSVN's Settings dialog and click Edit.

TortoiseSVN's Settings Dialog

This should open a Notepad window displaying a lot of options. Around line 71, replace the line for # global-ignores with the following:

global-ignores = bin obj cache storage _sgbak *.suo *.pdb *.bak *.user *.db

And make sure to remove the "# " at the beginning. Save it and it should take effect immediately. The "cache" and "storage" folders are there because of working with CommunityServer. With CommunityServer, the cache and storage sub-folders are used for images and attachments for most applications. We don't want to check in those images, attachments, nor the thumbnails.

Using underscores to prefix the hidden directories
TortoiseSVN stores the versioning information of a directory and files in a hidden svn folder, usually prefixed with a dot ".". This can reek havok on a few developer applications. So I check Use "_svn" instead of ".svn" directories on the same dialog shown above. Visual Studio 6.0's Interdev did not like files starting with a dot ".", and I've seen some funkiness with VS 2003. VS 2005 may be ok, but it is just a force of habit to use underscores instead of periods for the hidden directories.

Continue to Part 3

Living with Subversion (Part 1)

2007-07-14T18:02:00Z

Friends of mine ask a lot about my custom settings for TortoiseSVN. To make it play nicer with Visual Studio, easier (or should I say dumb-proofing) the auto-merging, performance tweaks especially on laptops, and overall tips to ensure you don't duplicate the mistakes my friends and I at Telligent have found through trial-n-error. I occasionally forget these myself and have to dig around a previous machine or image snapshot to find the settings. So here is a post to archive it all off for my records as well as for you to use for your reference.

Introduction

This four-part series targets the Microsoft .NET developer looking for a clean and stress-free environment utilizing Subversion for the first time, or even seasoned veterans by tweaking their installs and usability. It especially targets those with SourceGear Vault experience and want that clean and easy experience with Subversion.

So with that in mind, we will be covering a number of applications to install. Each with custom settings documented here that will help you get the most out of each, especially those with laptops.

A few definitions and what we will be using

First on this agenda targets those new to Subversion and its tools. I'm not going to bore you with the details of the history of Subversion and CVS definitions or even how to use SubVersion. All of that information is available in the docs for these. Instead this is just a quick overview to help those moving to Subversion and what parts make it work that is out of the norm.

Subversion is an open-source product as you may already know. A quick misnomer to those looking to switch is that you do not have to download and install Subversion itself. Yes it is a client and server package that does it all, but it is not needed for your client (developer) machine since you are connecting remotely. Why? It's all command-line based. Those server admins looking for tips and tricks - I'll cover ya'll in another post.

What you want instead is an Subversion-compatible GUI client and there are a few out there. Telligent's IT guru immediately adopted TortoiseSVN as the client for all when they switched to Subversion (i.e. only one they will support). I've used a few others like RapidSVN and will have to agree that Tortoise, while being a Windows Shell Extension (yes, cringe), is the most feature-full version so far. But feel free to write your own and drop me a line to beta test. RapidSVN is coming along nicely and I continue to keep my eye on it. Think RapidSVN = SourceGear Vault for Subversion, a stand-alone application that doesn't integrate with Windows Explorer. But for now, we'll stick to TortoiseSVN until RapidSVN matures a bit more.

SourceGear's Vault (SGV) is a very robust code repository system which can be configured for CVS or VSS. Most of us developers have fallen in love with SGV, but I have come to recognize its inability to scale with a large number of repositories, check-ins, and branching within a single MSSQL install.

The SGV Client is what I install to use as my TortoiseSVN merge and diff tool. The SGV Client includes a nifty tool called SGDM.exe (SourceGear DiffMerge) that can be command-line driven. So I have been cheating by installing the SGV Client 3.1.9 (I have not used a newer version yet), linking only to sgdm.exe, and ignoring the rest of the install. And before you ask, yes the EULA for the Vault Client states a license is required to connect to a SGV repository. We are not connecting to a repository, just using a tool which I could not find anything the EULA preventing that or by running it in a stand-alone environment.

Interestingly enough SourceGear has released a DiffMerge tool that is available for free, but I do not like this version. I noticed the command-line arguments are much different. I have installed it and tested a few merges, but the color-coding I did not like as much as the client's version of this tool. So for now, I am sticking to the SGV Client 3.1.9's DiffMerge tool as it is tried and true.

Continue to Part 2

My First Breaking News Report

2007-06-29T16:13:00Z

Breaking news! At 11:05 AM today, two suspects were apprehended for allegedly stealing a traffic pole that was to be erected at a corner near Elm and N. Good Latimer Expressway. I was first on the scene as it was kind of hard to ignore the police sirens and helicopter flying overhead. The suspects stopped right in front of my building, so it was quiet easy to snap these photos. With guns drawn, they ordered the male and female out of the truck. The rest is history obviously.

Lol. Thought I'd log my first breaking news post! Now, who can I sell these photos to?

(click pictures for larger view)

MiXX Collection and PostIcon Updated for CS 2007

2007-06-05T16:19:00Z

This past weekend, someone gave me a swift kick in the butt to get my MiXX Collection updated for CS 2007. I didn't realize it was under such high demand. Nice. Anyhoot during this upgrade I went ahead and refactored the source to match my other code I've been working with for other clients which lays the groundwork for me to just releasing more addons built into this collection.

The update for CommunityServer 2007 wasn't so much as code edits (there was one line that needed updating). But more so that you must run under Full trust. So I've updated the documentation to detail these steps, as well as giving pointers to those in need of accessing the Post object in the site-wide's BlogPostList repeater (not an individual BlogPostList repeater, that's easy).

Subscribe to The MiXX Collection RSS feed for updates and bug fixes: http://eduncan911.com/archive/tags/The+MiXX+Collection/default.aspx

Here's the change log:

2007-06-02
- Updated to support CommunityServer 2007.
- Now requires you to specify Full trust level due to CS 2k7 change.

2007-04-18
- Re-factored into new MiXX.Core schema shared with other projects.
- Updated to cast content as WeblogPost or IndexedPost, so PostIcon
   can be shown in search results for Blog posts.
- Fixed some error logging.
- Fixed a small bug where the ImageUrl stored in the EA had a double
  "//" in the url. Not a big bug, so there's no need to go back and
  re-process your old posts. Most browsers will render it properly.

2007-02-05
- Fixed the inline <img> parsing bug when using the new ImageQuality
attribute for saving in a higher quality (a bug that was
introduced with backend non-released versions for testing).

(install only)
http://eduncan911.com/files/folders/2611/download.aspx

(source code-must compile)
http://eduncan911.com/files/folders/5894/download.aspx

Enjoy and post a comment to your siteurl that is using it!

Guitar Hero 2 - Halo 2 Theme

2007-05-07T05:44:00Z

Thanks to my buddy over at forgetfoo (<- NWS), I now have a reason to get an Xbox 360.

Well, after someone hacks the 360 version that is...

Don't ever cross Pearl

2007-04-24T16:16:00Z

Larry (my friend who is a landlord), this is for you!

PLAY! A Video Game Symphony

2007-03-23T18:13:00Z

Oh, what a flashback. Check the video below for Mario!

This is PLAY! A Video Game Symphony. And they will be in Fort Worth in Jan 2008. Here's the website:

http://www.play-symphony.com/

Dynamic Instance Names of TextFields - A work around

2007-03-07T20:08:00Z

As I am starting to get back into heavy Flash development after my 5+ year hiatus, I see that Macromedia has added quite a lot of interesting concepts to the newer versions of ActionScript.

But the purpose of this post is to outline that Macromedia (err now Adobe) still has a lot of work to do on their ActionScript engine, specifically with Dynamic Instance naming conventions (and new-object intellisense would really be nice by now, after all of these years). I am assuming you know flash, a little bit. At least to the level of knowing that you need set an InstanceName of a Symbol, in order to be able to edit its properties at runtime.

I just spent too much time today trying to figure out why my code wasn't working. I am creating numerous dynamic TextFields, but I need to be able to access them for updates in code. And to complicate things, the TextFields will be loaded from different XML files - meaning they will have different InstanceNames.

You usually can create a dynamic instance name by using the old-school method of hardCodedName[variable] or the even older eval("hardCodedName" + variable) method. For example, say I want to create a new movie into a dynamic variable made up of an integer I have in a for i++ loop:

for (int i = 0; i < total; i++)
{
loadMovie( "myMovie" + i + ".swf", _root.myMovie[ i ] );
}

or

for (int i = 0; i < total; i++)
{
loadMovie( "myMovie" + i + ".swf", _root.eval("myMovie" + i) );
}

Both of these examples should result in loading myMovie0.swf into the dynamic variable name of /level0/myMovie0 (or _root.myMovie0 per dot-syntax).

What I found today is that when using some of the newer ActionScript 2.0 and 3.0 functions, they do not honor these methods completely. I had to use a mixture of the two examples above to get it work, and actually could not use either method when creating the object! This is the craziest thing I've seen to where eval() works in referencing the object, but does not work in the creation of the object.

var _root.totalCount:Number = 0;

function CreateMenuItem(Text:String, Href:String, Title:String, Spacer:Boolean)
{
// create the symbol at the last Y position we are tracking
this.createTextField("movFlyoutText" + _root.totalCount, _root.totalCount, _root.textXpos, _root.lastYpos, _root.textWidth, _root.textHeight);
eval("movFlyoutText" + _root.totalCount).wordWrap = true;
eval("movFlyoutText" + _root.totalCount).multiline = true;
eval("movFlyoutText" + _root.totalCount).border = false;
eval("movFlyoutText" + _root.totalCount).type = "dynamic";
eval("movFlyoutText" + _root.totalCount).antiAliasType = "advanced";

textFormat = new TextFormat();
textFormat.color = 0xffffff;
textFormat.size = 12;
textFormat.font = "Futura Condensed";

if (Spacer != true)
{
  formatText.url = Href;
}

if (Text.length > 0)
{
  eval("movFlyoutText" + _root.totalCount).text = Text;
}
else
{
  eval("movFlyoutText" + _root.totalCount).text = " ";
}

eval("movFlyoutText" + _root.totalCount).setTextFormat(textFormat);

// reset some vars
var tmp:Number = eval("movFlyoutText" + _root.totalCount)._height;
_root.lastYpos = _root.lastYpos + tmp;

_root.totalCount++;
}

Above is the code I wrote today, to where I can not use [] reference or the eval() reference to get the TextField created properly using the newer createTextField method. But in other methods throughout my code, using the [] reference works at the baseline. Go figure.

And as mentioned above, I can not use brackets[] when referencing the object either to set its properties! I had to use eval(). Man, how ugly is this code? I'm open to other suggestions.

Enabling HTTP Compression with ASPX

2007-02-12T16:50:00Z

Here's a quick-n-easy post about enabling HTTP Compression on your server, as I've done over the weekend. But instead of reading endless blog posts about it, and MSDN articles about enabling each and every step, I've compiled it all into a single CMD script you can copy and run on your server. Easy.

First a tiny bit of background... Yeah, I am so late to this game. For a while I heard the buzz word, but only thought it was similar to Analog Modem compression (back when I worked for Hayes) to where both modems must support a common compression algorythm, which was mostly never the case. Hence the "Call these sets of numbers if you have a USR, call this number if you have a Hayes modem, etc" you may remember back in the modem days.

After reading up on HTTP Compression here this weekend, boy have I missed the boat. I've enabled it on my server over the weekend, over most dynamic file types, and it's really picking up speed now (page loads seem faster). I also found a nifty HTTP Compression Test website, that ensured me I finally got it enabled (it was a PITA for additional extensions).

Now the problem I had with HTTP Compression was the default list of extensions are very limited. And it only does asp for dynamic content? In IIE6? You'd think they would default to aspx and asp.

Note that you will need to enable HTTP Compresison first, before running the attached script. Instructions can be found here and just read the Procedures part. Don't worry about running the scripts in that article as the attachment takes care of that, and additional extensions.

The attached script enables static and dynamic compression types as listed below. They are as follows:

Dynamic Types: ASP, DLL, EXE, ASPX, ASCX, ASMX, ASHX

Static Types: HTM, HTML, TXT, PPT, XLS, XML, PDF, XSLT, DOC, XSL, HTC, JS, CSS

You'll notice a few up for debate in that list, such as ASCX and PDF. The debates ranged all over the web and saw it as an advantage more then disadvantage. So over the next few weeks, I ask those I am hosting on my server to see if any dynamic content isn't so dynamic. Kind of like a passive-monitoring approach by asking my users to see if they notice any difference.

About the PDF, some websites generate dynamic PDF content. But usually it's just encoded as a PDF MIME-TYPE, and doesn't actually have the extension of PDF. IIS6's HTTP Compression is based off of extensions, not the mime-type. So I classified it as static.

A little script support. First, this script assumes your OS is installed on C:. And it assumes you have the file adsutil.vbs located at C:\InetPub\AdminScripts\ (default location). If different locations, you can edit the script file as need be. Besides that, you must be running at least W2K3 or R2 and as mentioned above already have HTTP Compression enabled. Haven't tested this yet on IIS7 (Longhorn) yet.

Another PostIcon Site Launches - Soapinions

2007-02-06T18:33:00Z

Barbie, here's a website for you.

Soapinions is a community site for discussion with the latest soap operas on daytime television. Like what the Sex of Chad's Lover is! OMG! It can't be!

They were looking for more of a "visual" appeal. Well, they got now. :)

http://soapinions.com/blogs/default.aspx

Using my MiXX.PostIcon, they are simply going back and flooding their original posts with new images. I kind of actually like the larger 100px sizes vs my 63px here on my site. I may update mine.

Interesting String.GetHashCode() issue between ASP.NET 1.1 and 2.0

2007-02-01T16:50:00Z

Today a fellow co-worker, David Penton, ran into an interesting issue about a background ASP.NET thread using ASP.NET 2.0, instead of ASP.NET 1.1 when the individual website was set to run under 1.1.

First a little background. The internal staging server is Windows 2003 R2. In the past Windows 2003 would throw an exception at the web application level when two or more websites were sharing the same application pool, and they were set to different versions of ASP.NET. The R2 release seems to have resolved this issue, hence our IT Administrator running most sites under the common Default Application Pool.

We have a client that requires an ASP.NET 1.1 build of the website. So the developer was working within VS2k3. The background processes in question of the web application is to process the searching algorithm we use for an out-of-the-box CommunityServer install (nicknamed the SearchBarrel). We have an Enterprise Search addon available that uses Lucene.NET, but for this client they are using the search barrel. The SearchBarrel breaks up a post into individual words, then issues a ToLower() and then GetHashCode() on the string for each word. We store this Int32 hash in the database as number matching is faster to index than string matching.

The String.GetHashCode() method is different between .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0. So when you are upgrading an application from 1.1 to 2.0, and you are storing the HashCode for strings somewhere, you'll have to generate new HashCodes in .NET 2.0.

The issue the developer ran into was very odd. The post was using a mix of English and Chinese, so we are dealing with an extended character set as well.

(The word we are trying to hash)
ps3对蓝光技术的采用也是令大家称道的原因之一

When a single word mixed English and binary characters without spaces (i.e. Chinese Simplified as above), the background SearchBarrel CSJob (the thread) would generate an ASP.NET 2.0 HashCode for the above word!

(.NET 2.0 HashCode of the word above)
-309760669

(.NET 1.1 HashCode of the word above)
1104497610

Yes, the website was set to ASP.NET 1.1. Yes, the binaries were built under .NET 1.1. But yet, we were getting an .NET 2.0 hashcode. The only thing that came to my mind was that it was using the default application pool, which was shared with many other staging websites - mostly ASP.NET 2.0 sites I'm guessing (since most of our clients have moved to ASP.NET 2.0).

It gets even odder. If the developer was to edit the post, change that one word of mixed English and Chinese characters to insert a space between the two different languages, clearing the search barrel and letting the background thread re-hash the post - it would then use ASP.NET 1.1 to generate the HashCode!

Very very odd. And we could re-produce it consistently by adding and removing that space and forcing the searchbarrel to rebuild.

The only thing we could guess is that .NET 1.1 choked on the English + Chinese character mix when encoding the hashcode and somehow reverted back to ASP.NET 2.0 to generate the GetHashCode() method.

The fix? Move the website to its own dedicated Application Pool.

Animaniacs released to DVD!

2007-01-27T20:43:00Z

For those of you looking for that special gift to get me, the Animaniacs DVD collection is it. I just read where in 2007, Warner Bros. is releasing the first 50 episodes in a DVD set (there's 99 episodes total). Thank you WB! Not sure if it is out yet, but keep an eye out.

View Video
Format: aspx
Duration: 1:08

I've wondered for a long long time what happened to this blockbuster Steven Spielberg series. Think calling this a blockbuster is going a bit too far? Not so. Per the updated Wikipedia entry:

Animation fans consider Animaniacs the high point of the Warner Bros. revival of the 1990s that was inspired by the original Termite Terrace.

Animaniacs premiered on September 13, 1993. New episodes of the show were aired during the 1993 through 1998 seasons, and episodes were rerun in syndication for several years after production of new episodes ceased. One feature-length direct-to-video Animaniacs movie, Wakko's Wish, was released on VHS only (there has not yet been a DVD release) in 1999. The series was popular enough for Warner Bros. Animation to invest in additional episodes of the show past the traditional 65-episode marker for syndication; a total of 99 episodes were finally produced. One theatrical cartoon short film starring the Warner siblings, "I'm Mad," was produced and released to theaters in 1994 with the feature Thumbelina.

The show introduced the popular cartoon characters Pinky and the Brain, who were subsequently spun-off into their own TV series in 1995.

I've been a long-time fan of this series and have many sound-bites of the series. Such as Yacko's Multiplication skit (grab a piece of paper and follow).

http://eduncan911.com/files/folders/comedy/entry3948.aspx

It wasn't so a kids cartoon, but targeting more of the young-adults to early 20 year-olds. I was 17 when it first aired, and watched it religiously until I got bogged down in college. After that, I kinda of lost track of them - catching an episode here and there. And then, they were pulled from syndication in early 2000. Gone.

If you watch ads, you should get free stuff

2007-01-27T18:01:00Z

Warning, this is a rant. A rant against the gaming industry. I'm going to bash it hard. EA, turn away as you don't want to read this.

What's got me off my rocker tonight? Advertising within games.

Morgan Webb was just on G4tv's X-Play bashing the gaming industry for pushing these Intel and Cingular ads on billboards, but the game makers still charge the full price for the game. She mentioned a few key points.

"Advertising within Halo on Xbox Live? It should be free to play then. Advertising for Cingular on a billboard as you crash your car into it at 120 mph on the bottle in a race car game? It should be $30, not $60 then to buy."

So, she got me ramped up to night to flame the gaming industry. Morgan, I completely agree!

Me? Oh, I'm the last guy they wanted to piss off. I've paid, absolutely paid for every single game I have ever played. I was that kid who blew his $20 that his mother game him all in the arcade at the mall. I was that guy who stayed up all night playing the King Quests (which I beat 2-5 btw, with no cheats). I was that kid who mowed so many lawns only to buy that game that everyone had. I'm that guy who plays games without the cheat codes as I want what I paid for. Currently in my office I have a number of boxes of the last few games I've played (counting 'em, 24). The latest? EA's Battlefield 2142.

EA Battlefield 2142 is EA's first attempt at online advertising using a company called IGA Worldwide, within the game. Ok, still haven't got the bigger picture yet? Say you are driving a car in the game. You come up onto a billboard on the side of the road. Battlefield 2142 is based into the future; the year 2142. But yet, you see an ad for Intel's Core 2 Duo plastered on the side. WTF. Or EA's current market advertising for the next game addon to be released, Battlefield 2143.

Then there was the scare that IGA was installing some type of spyware with Battlefield 2142. An EA rep recently informed the industry:

“The advertising program in Battlefield 2142 does not access any files which are not directly related to the game. It does not capture personal data such as cookies, account login detail, or surfing history.

BF 2142 delivers ads by region. The advertising system uses a player’s IP address to determine the region of the player, assisting to serve the appropriate ads by region and language. For instance, a player in Paris might be presented with ads in French. The information collected will not be repurposed for other uses.

Battlefield 2142 also tracks 'impression data' related to in-game advertisements: location of a billboard in the game, brand advertised, duration of advertisement impression, etc. This information is used to help advertisers qualify the reach of a given advertisement.”

Bandwidth. Most online gamers these days are on broadband. We all strive for the absolute lowest ping to the server. Well, these ads eat up a small chunk of internet bandwidth from your computer. While the bandwidth usually isn't the issue, it's the ping response time that is hindered.

The point Morgan and I are trying to make is if you are advertising in the game - GIVE US A FREAKIN BREAK ON THE PRICES! Don't charge full price for the game. Don't charge us for Xbox Live.

There's a flip side to this story though. Game developers are overworked and mostly underpaid for their skill level. Looking at Wikipedia's definition of in-game advertising, it looks to be quite profitable ($56 mil last year and an estimated $1.8 billion by 2010). One might think that this is a great way to drive more revenue to up the salaries of EA's developers. Yeah right. If that ever happens, you game developers let me know when your salaries double (aka come back into normal pay scales that match the rest of the industry).

Oh and Morgan, I u. ;) Hollar!

Edit: This post was originally written on December 14th, 2006.

That's it. I'm done with FireFox.

2007-01-17T06:52:00Z

This is a major Duncan-rant.

Yes, many of you will try to respond. But only those "internet savvy" people will look down on this post. Psst, here's a thought - think about the other 99.95% of the population that doesn't know what you know about PCs. That have no clue how to manually download DLLs and install them into their Program Files directory, especially if they are not an administrator of their PC. This is an absolutely horrible solution of FireFox - and yes, it's for new installs. Read on.

New OS format. Old machine upgrades. Latest version of everything. Blah blah. I've tried. I really did try to give FF a chance for a few years. But after what I had to do tonight to get plugins working, I'm soo done with FireFox - because this is the most ridiculous method I've ever seen to get a plugin installed, for first time use!

I just spent over an hour tonight trying to track down what the hell is wrong with my FireFox plugins, specifically for Windows Media Player (WMP) and Real Player. You won't believe the fix (yes, the fix is below for those of you looking for it). It receives the worse-ever-fix award for a new application install. No normal user will know how to perform these steps, and the target audience for this one website I was looking to fix for FireFox are not Internet Savvy. Absolute horrible solution guys.

The problem?
When you view a page that has a plugin, such as Windows Media Player, Flash, or Real Player, you are displayed with "Click here to download plugin." And of course, when you click it, you get "Unknown Plugin". Then there's a button for Manual Install, which itself has so many flaws in that concept! The web designer sets the link for the Manual Install, which all of them point to some type of Download and Install - which is absolutely the wrong link to be linking to! Re-installing the software will not resolve this issue!

The fix?
Use IE7 or Safari. Oh wait, we're talking about fixing FF - I'm sorry for those of you. Ok, the fix. Download old/3^rd party specific DLLs and place them into a specific directory, as long as you are an administrator of your machine. How horrible of a fix is that? It's not even a "fix", it's what is required to get the plugin installed for the first time! No, FireFox 2.0 does not even resolve this issue ladies and gentleman.

You can read up on how to install WMP for Firefox on Mozilla's very own Plugin Install page for WMP.

Developers, this is also the proper link to put into your plugins page attribute for your <embed> tags of your object - well, if it's WMP. Other links are there for Flash and Real and such as you embed each.

If you had an older version of WMP installed (version 7.1 or earlier), you won't have this issue as those DLLs were included with that version. What does that tell me? It tells me that FireFlux needs to get their ass in gear and update their software to utilize newer versions. Period.

Absolutely the worse method I've ever seen to install a plugin guys. I'm done with FireFox. Goodbye.