The new Java version fixes at least 14 vulnerabilities in the version designed for OS X 10.6 systems Apple last week pushed an update for Leopard and Snow Leopard systems that plugs a large number of security holes in Apple's version of Java, a package installed by default on those Mac OS X systems that enables a number of multimedia Web applications. The new Java version fixes at least 14 vulnerabilities in the version designed for OS X 10.6 systems; the package put together for 10.5 Macs corrects more than two dozen security flaws. Mac users can grab the patches via Software Update or from Apple Downloads. The patch fun continues into Tuesday of next week, when both Microsoft and Adobe are scheduled to issue updates to plug security vulnerabilities of their own. Microsoft said Thursday that it plans to issue at least six security patches (each patch fixes at least one -- but often multiple -- security flaws). Half of those updates will carry a "critical" rating, Redmond's most dire. Adobe said it plans to issue software updates to nix security flaws in its Flash Player and Adobe AIR applications. The company also confirmed the existence of a flaw in Adobe Illustrator on Windows and Mac systems, amid reports that instructions showing attackers how to exploit the flaw to break into vulnerable systems was circulating online. Adobe said it expects to publish a security advisory on Monday with further information on the Illustrator flaw -- including a schedule for an update to resolve the issue.
This is a big challenge, and companies are wrestling with it
As more data reside in distant computers connected via the Internet — or the cloud — just where in fact does the data reside, who controls and has access to it, and who is responsible for any legal or other problems that arise?
Answers are in the process of being ironed out in legal settings, corporate boardrooms and the court of public opinion.
"This is a big challenge, and companies are wrestling with it," said John Magee, vice president of product marketing for security software leader Symantec (SYMC). View Enlarged Image
Recent case in point: Mobile carrier T-Mobile's service for the Danger Sidekick phone was disrupted in October when systems failed in a cloud computing data center hosted by Microsoft (MSFT). The outage resulted in the loss of contacts, photos and messages for thousands of T-Mobile customers.
Microsoft, which traced the problem to third-party technology providers, said it recovered most and maybe all of the lost data. And T-Mobile sent $100 gift cards to affected customers.
But the Danger episode raised red flags about the dangers of cloud computing. Can Be Cost-Saving Approach
Cloud computing uses remote data centers for data processing and storage. Companies can cut their tech costs by using cloud computing. Consumers use cloud-type services all the time for things like e-mail and photo-sharing services. Users simply access data and software over the Web.
Companies, though, remain mostly in the dark about how regulatory compliance will play out in the cloud, tech observers say. Problems will start to grow as more corporate data get distributed across the cloud, predicts Symantec's Magee.
"There is an issue here and it's having an impact on a lot of customers I talk to," Magee said. "People are wrestling with these legal points. This is not just about technology."
According to a study, 10 per cent of the students surveyed were moderately addicted to the Internet, while less than one percent were severely addicted Teenagers who are addicted to the Internet are more likely to engage in self-harm behavior, according to an Australian-Chinese study. Researchers surveyed 1,618 adolescents aged 13 to 18 from China's Guangdong Province about behavior such as hitting themselves, pulling their own hair, or pinching or burning themselves, and gave them a test to gauge Internet addiction. Internet addiction has been classified as a mental health problem since the mid-1990s with symptoms similar to other addictions. The test found that about 10 per cent of the students surveyed were moderately addicted to the Internet, while less than one percent were severely addicted. The students ranked as moderately addicted to the Internet were 2.4 times more likely to have self-injured one to five times in the past 6 months than students without an addiction, said Dr. Lawrence Lam from the University of Notre Dame Australia. The moderately-to-severely addicted students were almost five times more likely than non-addicted students to have self-injured six or more times in the past 6 months, Lam and his colleagues from Guangzhou's Sun Yat-Sen University reported. "In recent years, with the greater availability of the Internet in most Asian countries, Internet addiction has become an increasing mental problem among adolescents," the researchers said in their study published in the journal Injury Prevention. "Many studies have reported associations between Internet addiction, psychiatric symptoms and depression among adolescents." They said their results suggested a "strong and significant" association between Internet addiction and self-injury in adolescence even after accounting for other variables previously associated with the behavior, including depression, family dissatisfaction, or stressful life events. They said this suggested that Internet addiction is an independent risk factor for self-injurious behavior. Experts interpret Internet addiction, among other things, as feelings of depression, nervousness, moodiness when not online, which only go away when the addict gets back online. Fantasizing or being preoccupied about being online are other signs of Internet addiction. "All these behaviors may be rooted in some common ... factors that require further exploration," they said.
With the Visual WebGui Cloud Application Platform developers can now deploy their applications to Windows Azure with the click of a button with no re-writes or new programming skills needed
Gizmox, the developer of Visual WebGui Web & Cloud Platform has announced that it will reveal its application platform atop Windows Azure and its development framework, Visual WebGui web/cloud platforms offers the only push-button .NET desktop legacy application migration path to Windows Azure.
With Visual WebGui enterprises will be able to migrate to Windows Azure, by reusing their existing Windows software code on Windows Azure without re-write or re-engineering. The process is as simple as copying and pasting the Windows code into VWG, selecting Windows Azure run in Visual WebGui SDK, and run said a press release.
"With our unique unrivalled legacy applications migration to Windows Azure, and the ability to run them as responsive as and as rich as desktop's, with proven unhackable security, we have crossed a new threshold," said Navot Peled, CEO of Gizmox,
Among the key benefits highlighted by Visual WebGui, its new cloud application platform will consume 50 per cent CPU and 10 per cent bandwidth compare to other solutions, resulting in additional dramatic cost saving benefits for users. The company is about to release assessment tools that will allow proper cloud planning and managing: pre-deployment calculating of cloud running costs, remote monitoring, tracing and reconfiguring for application optimization and provisioning.
"Visual WebGui presents a great opportunity for Windows Azure customers and enterprises that wish to move to the cloud," said Doug Hauger, general manager of Windows Azure at Microsoft Corp. "With a push-button method, Gizmox has made the process for migrating to Windows Azure easy."
Peled noted, "Visual WebGui offering is no doubt one of the most significance for enterprise cloud applications. We see the enormous interest it arises and we expect to lead enterprises to cloud migration."
With Windows 7, Microsoft has reoriented itself more towards multi-tasking, with special emphasis on speed
Its the much awaited launch in the Windows world; and it looks like the launch of Windows 7 was just a technicality for Microsoft, as it has kept the user interest at a high decibel over the last one year, right from Beta to RC.
So over the last year, Windows 7 was very much alive in the developer community, and even before OS was formally launched globally on October 22, proof points of Windows 7 have started emerging.
What makes Windows 7 pathbreaking is the clutter-free GUI, that is totally different from Microsofts previous OS versions. The OS is more oriented towards multi-taking, and hence users can seamlessly manage multiple tasks, yet navigate without any serious issues.
While in the past, Microsofts operating systems have enforced big hardware changes for it to work effectively; but in the case of Windows 7, Microsoft did not enforce any big Windows 7 configuration, and kept it to the current industry standard. Moreover, any PC running Vista, can run Windows 7.
This is a strategic move by Microsoft, and users with older hardware can also migrate to Windows 7. The OS is available in six versions, ranging from basic to ultimate versions, and also the Windows 7 enterprise edition.
The Key Differentiators While Windows 7 improves upon Vista look and feel in terms of GUI, the impact of the OS will be felt by users upon its stability and speed. Microsoft has embedded a lot of self-healing features, that makes for proactive auto-recovery.
Right from recovering a crashed browser tab to a document file, chances of users losing data is brought down to the minimum. Users will see subtle, but visible changes like for instance, features like Aero Peek, Aero Snap, and Aero Shake allowing them to preview open files; and what it means is that one can see it, without really clicking on that file, from the task bar.
One of the key areas in which Windows 7 scores ahead, compared to Vista or XP is speed. Its lightening fast; and this is the first significant impact any user will see, and surely get impressed. Windows 7 also makes managing the range of networked and peripheral devices, a lot easier.
For instance, attaching removable storage media like flash drives, or connecting a digital camera, etc, happens so fast. Microsoft has clearly given closer attention to these small, but significant aspects that a consumer will like. Meanwhile, discovering devices on a network and installing is also simplified. For instance, adding a network printer is done in minutes.
Clearly Windows 7 is the OS that plugs the pain areas of Microsofts previous OS, in terms of security, bugs, hang issues, etc. Moreover, users who have deployed Windows 7, vouch that the OS is far easier to deploy.
S Francis Rajan, head of ICT, Bangalore International Airport says, Overall we have found the deployment process for Windows 7 to be faster and smoother, than its previous operating systems. Installation took approximately 40% lesser time than the previous deployment; and we plan to upgrade all our computers to Windows 7 by December 2009.
Early Adopters According to the sources in Microsoft, already there are over 1,000 enterprises across India that have deployed Windows 7, and they have started getting significant cost savings and productivity benefits. These include Infosys, Maruti, Bangalore International Airport, L&T ECC, among others. Mahesh Manchi, CIO, Mahindra Holidays says, Windows 7 increases my notebook performance significantly, and is far more reliable.
Simple tasks, such as the time to boot and hibernate have been cut down significantly. This is brilliant, as the overall user experience has enhanced. We definitely see a reason to upgrade to Windows 7, as it is not too resource hungry as well.
The early adopters will act as proof points for agility of the OS. But if we look at the large enterprise scenario, how much mass migration will happen to Windows 7 from XP or Vista is still debatable right now; and its too early to see clearly the migration roadmap.
If we look at large organizations with PC fleet sizes ranging from 25K and above, in these instances analysts aver that only new purchase decisions would be more aligned towards Windows 7, rather than upgradation.
We take a look at the automatic and custom validation that you can have in data submitted to the server from your Silverlight 3 LoB application
We'll take a look at how you can add validation into the system so that there is both client and server side validation of the data that is sent back before it reaches the database.
The RIA SDK builds upon the LINQ model to deliver data both ways. This means that since the model is built from the database itself, some characteristics of the data schema are already present in the data model. This translates into some automatic validations that come into play by default.
For instance, if you have a field which is defined as a number, the user obviously should not be allowed to enter alphabets into it. Also, if you have defined the length of a particular field to be a particular value, the user should not enter strings longer than that. Luckily, such validations occur automatically in the DataForm control when bound to the DomainDataSource.
The DataForm control has built-in validation error displays that get triggered on the client end automatically when the data entered does not match the data model. The error is displayed in a number of ways:
A validation error summary block appears near the submit buttons that lets the user know of all the fields that caused errors along with the exact error message. Each error can be clicked to take the focus to the exact field.
Each field with an error is highlighted in the form in both the field entry outline as well as the name of the field.
On entering any error field (or by clicking a small arrow that appears on its side), that particular field's error message is shown next to it in a small popup tip.
All validations coming from the data model are very good. However, there is usually a need to add much more detailed level of validation into the model for individual fields that make up the data. The first way is to simply modify the metadata of the model itself.
We delve deeper into the new Taskbar features by writing code that can enhance the thumbnail experience that users shall get for your application
Last month we checked the Windows API Code Pack for .NET ? an open source release from Microsoft that lets you add Windows 7 features into your .NET applications with ease. This month we continue from where we left and add a few more features into the mix. So let's jump right in for the code.
Customizing the thumbnail One of the coolest new features of Windows 7 is the new interactive thumbnails shown for each running application. Not only can you perform an 'Aero Peek' into the window by simply hovering your pointer over a particular thumbnail, but you can also click it to switch, close the window, view tabbed or child windows and more. All these features are available to your application running on Windows 7 for 'free' ? that is, you don't need to add any code to get them. However, there are a number of other features that you can use to make your app look even better by simply adding a few lines of code.
Thumbnail toolbars The first new feature is the ability to add a toolbar on the thumbnail that contains buttons for users to click and have it interact with the main window. You can see an example of this in the new Windows Media Player that adds buttons allowing skipping, pausing and playing of content. To do this yourself you will need to add a little bit of code. So let's try this out by using the Windows Forms application we created last month and continue to build upon it.
Thumbnail Clipping One thing you will notice when you run the above code is that the entire application is shown in the thumbnail, since by default, Windows 7 captures the entire client area of the window for it. However, you might want to show only a (more relevant) part of the window in the thumbnail. In this sample, you might want to only show the image that is shown in the picture box in the thumbnail without all the other trimmings around it. For this, you will need to use a feature called thumbnail clipping. Using this feature, you can decide on a relevant part of your application's main window that you wish to highlight in the thumbnail and get the bounding rectangle for that and display it.
As you can see, customizing what your users see in the thumbnail of your application is quite easy. You can really enhance their producitivty in using your application by simply adding a few lines of code. Till next time, have fun.
Posts
