Virus

Based on IC3(Internet Crime Center) report, fake antivirus or a malware advertise as a legit software is one of the scam for 2009 which after installation of those free-to-try or freeware antivirus, a user or consumer received an ads warning on the existence of a virus or illegal content on the computer. The unaware user then are directed to purchase the antivirus software in order to fix or removed a “reported” viruses or illegal content.

Example of a Rogue Antivirus

Some of us try to install different AV or software only to end up having more problem than getting the solution. On my case, I usually search for a review of the product from different AV sites or forum then install the trial copy to be sure that the software is a legit product. For 2 years now, I’m happy using Eset products and wouldn’t change in years to come I think. There are different AV vendors that have good reviews like Kaspersky, Norton,Trend,F-Secure and others that are worth mentioning…the choice is always yours.

NOD Antivirus

As describe on the site, Intype is a powerful and intuitive code editor for Windows with lightning fast response.It is easily extensible and customizable, thanks in part to its support for scripting and native plug-ins. It makes development in any programming or scripting language quick and easy.

Menu is very simple, using “File” to manipulate or open a file; “Edit” to do copy/paste or whatever text related work to be done and other standard menu options which clicking or exploring it is quite easy and self explanatory of what it should achieve.

On the edit mode, it doesn’t have any type-ahead or ala autocomplete feature which can be found in other editor like NUSphere, Zend IDE or Komodo Edit but it does however a quick way of automation on syntax. Assuming you’re editing an HTML document, typing the “tag” then follow by “tab” will give you a template with both opening and closing tag already filled in with default values. Intype also offers some basic themes under “Edit” / “Preference” for those who wants to switch between light or dark background.

On the status bar portion, it will give you the current line and column with the type of document you’re using, e.g. HTML, PHP, SQL etc. As the introductory page stated, Intype is very fast which is very ideal of doing a quick code edit or changes. The only caveat of this product is that the development seems stagnant already as of writing this post(08/2010) but it’s OK on my end because I’m using it without any problem so far and serves its purpose well on XP to Win7 platform.

For those programmer or developer who wants a lightweight, fast and no bloat text editor…give Intype a try!

He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him.They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well.

At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly.Then, to everyone’s amazement he quieted down.

A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well.

He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back,the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up.

As the farmer’s neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal,he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon,everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!

MORAL :
Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt.The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up.Each of our troubles is a steppingstone.We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping,never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.

Remember the five simple rules to be happy:
1. Free your heart from hatred – Forgive.
2. Free your mind from worries – Most never happen.
3. Live simply and appreciate what you have.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less

Source/Credits:
From a LinkedIn member within Saudi Jobs Group

I’ll divide the summary into 2; first half contains on what to expect on the first 3 chapters and the other half deals with the remaining chapters.

The first few chapters gives the reader a glimpse on the history, some people behind it and evolution of how “Open Source” software came into existence, considerations on the possible benefits and risk of using such solution, on going trends and how being involve with different projects could benefit you as a possible contributor on your career. There are some “Did you know?” stuff that a user might find informative and check the web for relevant data like one below.

“First web server was developed in December 24,1990 which was CERN httpd, however Apache HTTP server that was developed in 1994 by Robert McCool still powers majority of websites today comprising of almost 100+ millions hosted sites.”

Additional source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN_httpd

These section also focuses on how commercial company could use “Open Source” and how existing companies earn money despite releasing software as “Free” in the community at large.Lastly on first half, the authors discusses to the confusing different licensing scheme that a developer or company can adapt to fit their business needs when releasing solution/s that has “Open Source” component or has some GPL,MIT,BSD to name a few Open Source licenses attached to it.

The other half of course deals with community and the participation on “Open Source” project; if you have questions on how a project is delivered by community, the stages/cycles it undergoes and some development tools that developers used; then reading this part is worth a time. This section also give examples on what means or channels available to sync/coordinate people since most developers are doing work in different timezone and some are from different part of the world.The remaining few chapters also sited some case studies done by IBM on how they’ve contributed in the community including their “Express” edition of DB2, one of the leading enterprise database solution today.

Above summary is short but for a 138 pages ebook giving introduction on how “Open source” works, the ecosystem it has and the benefits it can give to a developer or company; the authors indeed delivers to inform and gives the big picture that the reader can easily understand.

Title:
Getting Started with Open Source Development
A book for the community by the community
Publisher: IBM – DB2 On Campus Series
ISBN: ???
Number of Pages: 138
Authors:
Rachna Kapur, Mario Briggs,Tapas Saha,Ulisses Costa,Pedro Carvalho,Raul F. Chong,Peter Kohlmann

Download the Open Source Development Ebook now! (You need an IBM ID which registration is easy)
Disclaimer: Above summary is a personal inputs after reading the ebook…Cheers. c”,)

Above mentioned are just a few of them and checking Wikipedia alone…we still have several on the list that is worth evaluating and add in our web development arsenal, some are open source others are not. Yesterday, I’ve stumbled upon MIDORI created by Aycan Gulez which checking the examples given; IMHO, it would surely be another framework that any developer can use on their application or project. Based on the introduction from the site, below are some of the things that the framework can offer…

What is midori?
midori is an ultra-lightweight JavaScript framework that gets the job done without getting in your way.

• Use CSS selectors to quickly access matching elements on a page: midori.get(‘div.serious’).apply(‘className += ” fun”‘) anyone?
• Ajax without breaking the back button. People don’t like to go back to the homepage after clicking 30 links (“what do you mean they weren’t actually links?!”), nor do they like broken bookmarks.
• Auto complete. Thanks to social networking, everyone on the planet knows about a million people on average now. So, make it easy for them to find the right “John” in your next-gen address book app.
• And more which checking the site is a must to know more on what MIDORI can offer!

After minutes of reading the examples, I’ve open up my Intype and do some basic codes to evaluate the framework. Voila, after a few minutes…got a basic example which basically access DOM element and it’s quite really easy! Just like the leading framework that most developers are already using, MIDORI had several functionality that is ready to use; DOM Manipulation, FX effect, Autocomplete, AJAX..and more.

HTML:

"Use CSS selectors to quickly access matching elements on a page..."

 Trigger:

 

CSS:

body {
 margin:0;
 padding:0;
 font-family:"Lucida Grande", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;
 font-size: 12px;
}

a:link,
a:visited { text-decoration: none; color: #cd5500; }
a:hover { color: #147DB6; }

#container {
 margin-top: 50px;
 margin-left: 100px;
 margin-bottom: 50px;
 margin-right: 100px;
}

#el-example {
 padding: 5px;
 border: gray dotted 1px;
 color: white;
 background-color: black;
}

#el-trigger {
 padding-top: 10px;
 padding-left: 0;
 padding-bottom: 10px;
 border-bottom: black solid 3px;
}

#el-output {
 margin-top: 5px;
 padding-top: 20px;
 padding-left: 10px;
 padding-bottom: 20px;
 padding-right: 10px;
 border: orange solid 1px;
}

.el-demo {
 color: white;
 background-color: orange;
}

JS:

midori.addEventListener(window,'ready',function(e) {
midori.addEventListener(midori.get("#el-button"),'click',function(e) {
var oOutput = midori.get("#el-output");
oOutput.innerHTML = "Welcome midorijs!";
oOutput.className = 'el-demo';
});
});

Source code can be downloaded MIDORI Demo. Some JS library achieve things in shorter line of codes with probably better/faster implementation but there’s no harm in trying so checking it out is definitely worth it. The only minus point on my very short evaluation of the framework is that I can’t minify/pack the library and there seems to be no forum or basic support at least within the site.

I’ve remember once at PHPUGPH.COM when we had the discussion on one Philippine manning/agency site which our founding member AJ reported it to site owner because it exposes our fellow “Kababayan” personal identity. Why bother reporting it? because the site itself hosted all scanned documents that they processed that have; passport and VISA information,resume/cover letter,credentials and other personal notes of a specific person. Unfortunately, we had a very unusual and unexpected reply…lol.

Fig. 1 Email to the Agency/Manning Site

Fig. 2 Unusual Reply(Probably an Automated Reply…)

Anyway, what are the things that we can find at Google by using advance syntax of what often referred to by media as “Google Hacking”?
1. Files (index.of? pdf)

Fig. 3 Free Ebooks

2.Default Installation that anybody can make fun of?!! (xampp “inurl:xampp/index)

Fig. 4 XAMPP

3. Informative Stuff and many other things by using other syntax/search query that anybody can try:

inurl:Proxy.txt

intitle:index.of administrators.pwd

Index of phpMyAdmin
Notes:
* To search for a phrase, supply the phrase surrounded by double quotes (” “).
* A period (.) serves as a single-character wildcard.
* The index.of: operator instructs Google to search for a term that Google had indexed.
* The inurl: operator instructs Google to search only within the URL (web address) of a document.

I’d recommend to check the book by Johnny Long or type in “Google Hacking” within Google search and it will tell you more!

Resources:
Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_hacking

Johnny Long

http://www.amazon.com/Google-Hacking-Penetration-Testers-1/dp/1931836361

http://www.hackersforcharity.org

Sulit.com.ph is the leading buy and sell website in the Philippines. Post advertisements or find great deals at Sulit.com.ph.

Celebrate Sulit.com.ph 4th Anniversary! Join the Sulit Banner Making Contest for July and get a chance to win cool gadgets from Sulit.com.ph, Blackberryzuela.com, and GadgetGrocery. com!

*** For whatever reason, all my post was broken after changing theme…anyway, since based on contest rule that only 1 banner per domain; I’ve removed the first 2 entries.

Why? all functions were defined as global objects or within the window object and funny thing is that even the built-in function confirm() were override with their functionality! I believe the original programmer who wrote it assumes that throughout its code existence, no other developer/programmer would use similar or related function..which is really not a very good approach.

Example:
common.js

function removeData(el) {
    var tmp = $(el);

    $(tmp).text("").attr("background-color","white");
};

…function list and so on.There are around 14 attached JS files which had functions scattered randomly and were were just renamed function like removeDataY() which has the same functionality.Sigh…

Anyway, for those who are new to javascript…I’d suggest you encapsulate or create a simple namespace for your code so that it would not conflict with other external JS file assuming the function used is the same.

Example:
common1.js

var CM1 = {};

CM1.removeData = function(el) {
   var tmp = $(el);

   $(tmp).text("").attr("background-color","white");
};

…function list and so on.

common2.js

var CM2 = {};

CM2.removeData = function(el) {
   var tmp = $(el);

   $(tmp).text("").attr("background-color","white");
};

And within application code, CM1.removeData() will never have conflict with CM2.removeData() since they belong to a different object, it’s cleaner and can easily be debug…There are some pattern which I find useful like the “Module Pattern” from Yahoo but that’s a different story and I’ll post it later in the next blog entry.

Anyway, what is the “Toyota Way” have to do with these!?…basically, “Toyota Way” is a good example of a reliable self improvement process that eliminate waste, solve problem at root cause and always about efficiency to make a company successful and in these posted case…a web project. Try googling or searching the net, “Toyota Way”, and this will give you an idea about how efficiency and productivity is done in a manufacturing environment.

So, how can we improve a bit by applying a few “Toyota Way” of improving the system?

1. Identify Problem, waste or causes(Kaizen)
- Development server should always be a replica of the Production Server to easily reproduce bugs and fix immediately. In our case, production server is totally different from another production server and development sandbox as well which makes debugging chaotic that even a simple “index” error on pages are suppressed just to hide errors instead of fixing them.

- Over processing and multitasking because reading all the codes without any single API present or published considering the project is almost 4 years and running that is only based on PHP and MSSQL!

- Kaizen what???,basically it all boils down on how we proactive to see waste/problems, solving it and further improving  the process being implemented. In our case, how do we often apply patches? how do we often break things before hand(testing) and fixing it before our boss or the demanding user see it? Should we used unit testing?

2. Standards, a must!
- Having standards create repeatable method that is predictable, high productive and of course, high quality. In our case again,  the web project.
Be it creating “Coding Standard”, using Version Control and even using standard development practices e.g. architecture, libraries, reusable components and unit testing.

3. Always have an accountable Team Member/s
- Productive team member is one of the key player in web projects implementation and on-going code improvement. Each should be diverse and capable of solving wide range of web related problems from site usability to hard-to-find bugs.

There are lot of stuff that can be followed by using the “Toyota Way”, this humble post is too specific on what I’m into right now. By looking or finding references on the net would give you more ideas and keep your existing processes improving over time.

When: 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM – January 30, 2010, Saturday
Where: Hotel Rembrandt – 26 Tomas Morato Extension Quezon City, Philippines
Google Map Location

In partnership with Microsoft Philippines, PHP User Group Philippines
presents PHP Developers Summit 2010. We are inviting you to come and join us in this gathering of the country’s best tech-talents, professionals and web developers promoting the use of PHP and open source solutions in the enterprise and schools. Free flowing coffee with lots of freebies and raffle prizes! So what are you waiting for?

Registration starts at 8:00 AM. See you all there! ^_~

Speakers:

Dominick Nowell A. Danao (CEO of Happy Mobile Inc.) – Former VASHead of Sun Cellular. Founder of Pinoymail which he sold to Smart’s Orlando Vea for P100M back in the early 2000s. He is also a Palanca Awardee. He will discuss PHP Development with Yahoo Developer’s Network. He recently won in the Yahoo Open Hack’s Day in Indonesia.
Bing Bryan Tan (President and CEO of Brewed Concepts) – Keynote Speaker
Paolo Alexis Falcone (Senior Developer, Friendster Inc.) – Will discuss PHP Scaling
Alezandra Nicholas (Microsoft Developer Evangelist) – Website spark and Bizspark
Rodney Jao (MCP) – PHP in IIS7 (using Fast CGI) and about PHP and ASP.NET interop via SOAP
Rick Bahague, Jr. (Computer Professionals’ Union) – Windows Cache Extension for PHP
Globe Labs – Globe Labs API

Sponsors:

Microsoft Philippines
Zend
Globe Labs

Limited Special Offer

If you register early and pay within the year 2009, you’ll get a
ticket for only Php 1,000.00 and we’ll give you One (1) FREE Microsoft
limited edition thumb drive.

Registration and Ticket Payment Instructions

Online registration website is currently being tested right now. In
the mean time, you could pre-register by sending your name, position,
company and contact details to chean [ at ] phpugph [ dot ] com and by settling your
ticket payment through bank deposit:

Bank Name: Banco de Oro (BDO)
Account Name: PHP User Group Philippines Inc.
Savings Account No. 290226988
Branch: San Juan Branch

To all who would pay for the event tickets, kindly send me a scanned
copy of the deposit slip for payment confirmation.

Thank you very much.

Truly yours,
Cherrie Ann B. Domingo
President
PHP User Group Philippines Inc.

Email: chean [ at ] phpugph [ dot ] com
Web: http://www.phpugph.com
Mobile: +63917.865.2412
Phone: (02) 975.6976