July 2008 - Posts
MPAA Hacker Spied on The Pirate Bay
Court documents show that a hacker, hired by the MPAA, offered to reveal the identities of the Pirate Bay founders. The hacker, who also retrieved private information from TorrentSpy, was paid $15.000 for his efforts.
It turns out that the MPAA will do pretty much anything to obtain information about BitTorrent sites and its users. Back in 2006, they made a deal with a “hacker”, better known as Robert Anderson, to steal e-mail correspondence and trade secrets from TorrentSpy.
The hacker later admitted that this was indeed true, and in a surprising turn of events, he switched sides, and joined TorrentSpy. The court case between the MPAA and TorrentSpy eventually led to the downfall of TorrentSpy, but it turned out that the MPAA was also interested in intel on The Pirate Bay.
Cnet cites court documents showing that Anderson wrote to the MPAA: “We can provide the names, address, and phone (numbers) of the owners of Torrentspy.com and Thepiratebay.org — along with evidence, including correspondence between the two companies.”
In addition, the court documents reveal that MPAA’s Dean Garfield stated: “We were going to get information about the location and identity of the people who were running Torrentspy, as well as information related to a general conspiracy and relationship between Torrentspy and a number of other prominent services including ThePirateBay.”
I a response to the news, Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak: “We’re very open with what we do. I think the e-mails between us and Justin would be something along the lines with “what’s up with the scraper that is going berserk” or “what the *** is up with that filerights-***?”.. I think it’s amazingly funny if the MPAA bought information like that, expensively, and against the US law. Only proves their stupidity and that they have no case.”
The Pirate Bay has always been one of the main targets of the MPAA. In 2006, John Malcolm, Executive Vice President of the MPAA wrote a letter to Sweden’s State Secretary in which he urged the authorities to take action against the site: “It is certainly not in Sweden’s best interests to earn a reputation among other nations and trading partners as a place where utter lawlessness with respect to intellectual property rights is tolerated.”
It is of course interesting to see that the MPAA is interested in the identities of the Pirate Bay founders, but they could have easily done a Google search, because that info is pretty much public information. I guess they rather use a hacker.
The Pirate Bay website is offline at the moment, unrelated to this news, as they are doing some server maintenance and site upgrades. They will be back soon.
The ability to split up a string into separate chunks has been supported in many programming languages and it is available in Javascript as well. If you had a long string like "Bobby Susan Tracy Jack Phil Yannis" and wanted to store each name separately, you could specify the space character " " and have the split function create a new chunk every time it saw a space.
Split Function: Delimiter
The space character " " we mentioned will be our delimiter and is used by the split function as a way of breaking up the string. Every time it sees the delimiter that we specified it will create a new element in an array. The first argument of the split function is the delimiter.
Simple Split Function Example
Let's start off with a little example that takes a string of numbers and splits when it sees the number 5. That means the delimiter for this example is 5. Notice that the split function returns an array that we store into mySplitResult.
Javscript Code:
<script type="text/javascript">
var myString = "123456789";
var mySplitResult = myString.split("5");
document.write("The first element is " + mySplitResult[0]);
document.write("<br /> The second element is " + mySplitResult[1]);
</script>
Display:
The first element is 1234
The second element is 6789
Make sure you realize that because we chose the 5 to be our delimiter, it is not in our result. This is because the delimiter is removed from the string and those remaining characters are separated by the chasm of space that the 5 used to occupy.
Larger Split Function Example
Below we have created a split example to illustrate how this function works with many splits. We have created a string with numbered words zero through four. The delimiter in this example will be the space character " ".
Javscript Code:
<script type="text/javascript">
var myString = "zero one two three four";
var mySplitResult = myString.split(" ");
for(i = 0; i < mySplitResult.length; i++){
document.write("<br /> Element " + i + " = " + mySplitResult);
}
</script>
Display:
Element 0 = zero
Element 1 = one
Element 2 = two
Element 3 = three
Element 4 = four
Here is the Link to the original Article : CLick Here

Windows Server 2008 Product Overview
Windows Server 2008 is the most advanced Windows Server operating system yet, designed to power the next-generation of networks, applications, and Web services. With Windows Server 2008 you can develop, deliver, and manage rich user experiences and applications, provide a highly secure network infrastructure, and increase technological efficiency and value within your organization.
Windows Server 2008 builds on the success and strengths of its Windows Server predecessors while delivering valuable new functionality and powerful improvements to the base operating system. New Web tools, virtualization technologies, security enhancements, and management utilities help save time, reduce costs, and provide a solid foundation for your information technology (IT) infrastructure.

A Solid Foundation for Your Business
Windows Server 2008 provides a solid foundation for all of your server workload and application requirements while also being easy to deploy and manage. The all new Server Manager provides a unified management console that simplifies and streamlines server setup, configuration, and ongoing management. Windows PowerShell, a new command-line shell, helps enable administrators to automate routine system administration tasks across multiple servers. Windows Deployment Services provides a simplified, highly secure means of rapidly deploying the operating system via network-based installations. And Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering wizards, and full Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) support plus consolidated management of Network Load Balancing, make high availability easy to implement even by IT generalists.
The new Server Core installation option of Windows Server 2008 allows for installation of server roles with only the necessary components and subsystems without a graphical user interface. Fewer roles and features means minimizing disk and service footprints while reducing attack surfaces. It also enables your IT staff to specialize according to the server roles they need to support.
Virtualization Built-in
Windows Server Hyper-V, the next-generation hypervisor-based server virtualization technology, allows you to make the best use of your server hardware investments by consolidating multiple server roles as separate virtual machines running on a single physical machine. You can also efficiently run multiple operating systems - Windows, Linux, and others – in parallel on a single server. With Hyper-V and simple licensing policies, it's now easier than ever to take advantage of the cost savings of virtualization.
Applications can also be efficiently virtualized using Windows Server 2008 centralized application access technologies. Terminal Services Gateway and Terminal Services RemoteApp allow easy remote access to standard Windows-based programs from anywhere by running them on a terminal server instead of directly on a client computer - without the need for a complicated virtual private network (VPN).
Built for the Web
Windows Server 2008 comes with Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS 7.0), a Web server and security-enhanced, easy-to-manage platform for developing and reliably hosting Web applications and services. A major enhancement to the Windows Web platform, IIS 7.0 includes a componentized architecture for greater flexibility and control. IIS 7.0 also provides simplified management, powerful diagnostic and troubleshooting capabilities that save time, and comprehensive extensibility.
Internet Information Server IIS 7.0 together with the .NET Framework 3.0 provides a comprehensive platform for building applications that connect users and data, enabling them to visualize, share, and act on information. Additionally, IIS 7.0 plays a central role in unifying Microsoft's Web platform technologies—ASP.NET, Windows Communication Foundation Web services, and Windows SharePoint Services.
High Security
Windows Server 2008 is the most secure Windows Server yet. The operating system has been hardened to help protect against failure and several new technologies help prevent unauthorized connections to your networks, servers, data, and user accounts. Network Access Protection (NAP) helps ensure that computers that try to connect to your network comply with your organization's security policy. Technology integration and several enhancements make Active Directory services a potent unified and integrated Identity and Access (IDA) solution. And Read-Only Domain Controller (RODC) and BitLocker Drive Encryption allow you to more securely deploy your AD database at branch office locations.
High Performance Computing
The benefits and cost savings of Windows Server 2008 extend to Windows HPC Server 2008 for your high performance computing (HPC) environment. Windows HPC Server 2008 is built on Windows Server 2008, x64-bit technology and can efficiently scale to thousands of processing cores with out-of-the-box functionality to improve the productivity, and reduce the complexity of your HPC environment. Windows HPC Server 2008 enables broader adoption by providing a rich and integrated end-user experience that scales from the desktop application to the clusters, and includes a comprehensive set of deployment, administration, and monitoring tools that are easy to deploy, manage, and integrate with your existing infrastructure.
Silverlight Overview
http://www.microsoft.com/SILVERLIGHT/ <---- check this out! so cool!
Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform implementation
of the .NET Framework for building and delivering the next generation
of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIA) for the
Web. Silverlight unifies the capabilities of the server, the Web, and
the desktop, of managed code and dynamic languages, of declarative and
traditional programming, and the power of Windows Presentation
Foundation (WPF).
What Is Silverlight?
Silverlight enables you to create a state-of-the-art application that has the following features:
-
It
is a cross-browser, cross-platform technology. It runs in all popular
Web browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox,
and Apple Safari, and on Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X.
-
It provides a consistent experience no matter where it runs.
-
It is supported by a very small download that installs in seconds.
-
It
streams video and audio. It scales video quality to everything from
mobile devices to desktop browsers to 720p HDTV video modes.
-
It includes compelling graphics that users can manipulate—drag, turn, zoom—directly in the browser.
-
It reads data and updates the display, but it doesn't interrupt the user by refreshing the whole page.

What Features Are in Silverlight?
Silverlight
combines multiple technologies into a single development platform that
enables you to select the right tools and the right programming
language for your needs. Silverlight offers you the following features:
-
WPF
and XAML. Silverlight includes Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
technology, which greatly extends the elements in the browser for
creating UI. WPF lets you create immersive graphics, animation, media,
and other rich client features, extending browser-based UI beyond what
is available with HTML alone. Extensible Application Markup Language
(XAML) provides a declarative markup syntax for creating WPF elements.
See Creating User Interfaces with Silverlight for more information.
-
Extensions
to JavaScript. Silverlight provides extensions to the universal browser
scripting language that provide powerful control over the browser UI,
including the ability to work with WPF elements. See Silverlight 1.0 - Development with JavaScript for more information.
-
Cross-browser,
cross-platform support. Silverlight runs the same on all popular
browsers (on any platform). You can design and develop your application
without having to worry about which browser or platform your users
have. See Creating and Deploying Silverlight Applications for more information.
-
Integration
with existing applications. Silverlight integrates seamlessly with your
existing JavaScript and ASP.NET AJAX code to complement functionality
you have already created. See Integrating Silverlight with ASP.NET Web Pages for more information.
-
Access
to the .NET Framework programming model and to associated tools. You
can create Silverlight-based applications using dynamic languages such
as managed JScript and IronPython as well as languages such as C# and
Visual Basic. You can use development tools such as Visual Studio to
create Silverlight-based applications. See Common Language Runtime and Base Class Library in Silverlight and Dynamic Languages in Silverlight 2 for more information.
-
LINQ.
Silverlight includes language-integrated query (LINQ), which enables
you to program data access using intuitive native syntax and strongly
typed objects in .NET Framework languages. See Working with XML Data in Silverlight for more information.
-
If
you already use ASP.NET, you can integrate Silverlight with the server
and client capabilities of ASP.NET that you are familiar with. You can
create server-based resources in ASP.NET and use the AJAX capabilities
of ASP.NET to interact with server-based resources without interrupting
the user.

Silverlight.net
Silverlight.net
is a general Silverlight developer site that provides resources such as
samples, QuickStarts, white papers, instructional videos, forums, and
blogs. In particular, beginners might want to check out the
Silverlight.net QuickStarts.
Tools
Silverlight.net provides all the downloads you need to create Silverlight-based applications, including developer and designer tools.
Silverlight for Designers
Designers
can benefit from many of the resources listed previously in this topic,
especially those that cover XAML. XAML is a powerful declarative markup
language that is the foundation for creating engaging graphics,
animation, and media in Silverlight. XAML is similar to HTML, but it is
more powerful and extensible. In addition, there are several
professional design tools available to Silverlight designers. You can
find these tools on the Silverlight.net site.
Samples