Weird things on the net

Occasionally, I'll come across some really odd things while going around on the net. For example, today I was looking up how to open up on Google the following search term:
ASP.NET C# "open csv file in Excel"
The results weren't many, but that is what I expect when refining my searches enough. However the majority of pages that came back were listing pages, such as "http://jl.ucabo.cn/zenwbkv.html" [Don't link to it if you are not prepared for potential security issues], almost all of them from China.

Having enough firewalls, checkers, etc installed on my system, I was curious to see what they were. They are just pages full of text - nothing exciting, just junk words to get search engines to find it... So I looked at the source code, and again, nothing exciting - except that it had a javascript from a server based in Germany (http://goodnserver.info/), near Frankfurt. I then went and looked at the script and found that the script referred a signal to a test page on a server near Washington D.C (http://mystats.name/).

Now, for all the conspiracy theorists out there, isn't it interesting that soon after the U.S. claims that its security systems were breached I find a trail of junk web pages on different servers in China that link back to Washington? Where is my tin hat?

ASP.NET Web Apps - Migrating from 1.1 to 2.0

I've spent an afternoon trying to deploy a web application that I've had in ASP.NET v1.1 on a production server to ASP.NET 2.0. The problem has been that after I deployed the application using the method that I had for 1.1 I got an error similar to this:

Parser Error

Description: An error occurred during the parsing of a resource required to service this request. Please review the following specific parse error details and modify your source file appropriately.

Parser Error Message: Could not load type 'Namespace.Global'.

Source Error:

Line 1: <%@ Application Codebehind="Global.asax.cs" Inherits="Namespace.Global" %>

Source File: /cs/global.asax Line: 1

Now, this was driving me nuts. But thankfully I found the reason in this blog - I thought I'd make note of it and explain it again, so that search engines will be able to find this better. Basically it boils down to this: in ASP.NET 2.0, when using VS2005, you must publish the site. Essentially this compiles everything into a neat package that you can save somewhere to upload it later or transfer directly using FTP.

To publish the site, in the Solution explorer in Visual Studio, right click on the Project and select "Publish...". I did this, saved it to my development machine, uploaded to a production server (albeit a sandbox area) and configured IIS.

And so it begins...

Apparently HD-DVD encoding has been cracked and is causing a revolt throughout the web particularly on the Digg.com site. Here is a blog about it:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070502.WBmingram20070502114904/WBStory/WBmingram/

So this is an indirect link to an indirect link to the actual events. Will this send teams of lawyers after me? I doubt it. The problem with info on the net is that once it is disseminated, it is essentially impossible to destroy. The double-edged blade of digital information - it is very easy to replicate and store.

More showcasing

Signed up onto Facebook a couple of days ago (so if you are reading this from an RSS/Atom feed on Facebook - hello!) partly out of curiousity. I had heard about it a couple of years ago when it was restricted to U.S. colleges. Now of course, it is the "big thing" in social networking, and is picking up steam for people like me in their 30s, who of course were the ones to really started using the internet in the early 90s. Some things I like, particularly their raison d'être, which is of course the networking. Some things thought seem limited - for example, there is a drop-down list of "political views", which carry run of the mill stuff - "conservative", "libertarian", "very liberal", etc. But I am fiscally conservative, socially liberal with a strong lean towards environmentalism in political governance. I've been voting Green the past few elections and was considering running for Green in Calgary. So where does that leave me on their list? I put "Other"...



Also, there is a note writing area with the ability to put in rudimentary html for styling - like bold or italics, but it does not allow me to use inline CSS styling, which is too bad, as that could really jazz up notes. So Blogger is a much better venue for writing my thoughts and getting some style with it.

On a final note, it is easy for me to know that Facebook is an American based site - you can put your religion in a part of you profile, which would then be used for social networking. As a Canadian, I notice this because in Canada, this would probably not be asked - Canada is much more secular a country than present day America, and we are also too worried about offending people to advertise our religious/spiritual beliefs.

My best news today is I bought a ticket for Interpol! My first live show at the MacEwan ballroom in nearly a decade... I'll feel old (especially as it is an all ages show) but it will be worth it!

Back on Linux

I finally got a Linux Ubuntu distro to work on my computer. One of my main problems with Linux is trying to get a distro to work on an AMD64 machine with an ATI card. While ATI may be one of the leading video card manufacturers, they suck at getting out Linux drivers. It should not be such a pain to get a system to basic functionallity - even as a professional in computers it is still difficult for me to get things working on Linux. So, after an hour of fighting with the xorg.conf file, I managed to get the desktop working...

Nonetheless, I am impressed at how far Linux desktop has come in the past couple of years. I used to use Red Hats Linux distros as they were easy to install, but because of their refusal to support MP3 players, I've never really thought Red Hat and Fedora were a lot of fun to use. Ubuntu, on the other hand is much more pleasant. One this I thought was really handy was the system automatically found my other hard drive that runs my Window's OS, and places an icon on the desktop that allows me to browse through it - so easy to grab pic, music, etc.

Now back to exploring what this thing can do!

A Failure of the DRM

I was trying to copy Beth Orton's new CD today (which I might add is legal in Canada, as long as it is for personal use) , however I was foiled by the DRM on the disc. Not only that, I couldn't even play the disc!

It seems that the company who published the cd made an agreement to have the DRM stuff hosted on the site www.musiconline.com. However, the site has been down at least for a couple of weeks. The CD itself does have one of the those autorun "install a piece of junk player without asking you", which I absolutely refuse to do, even before the big Sony scandal that occurred a couple of years ago.

So, I figure this is yet another example of the failure of DRM - if it prevents even basic accessing the content, it is more harmful than good. Really, why would a person go through all the trouble of dealing with this, when one can just go to the many P2P services and download tracks and/or the album?