BBC: "US congressional aides are to visit Iran next month in a bid to improve relations, an American senator says. Senator Arlen Specter said the trip was arranged during a meeting with Iran's ambassador the UN on Wednesday."

AP: "David Bradley, an original member of the IBM PC team and the inventer of the control-alt-delete function, sits in front of one of the original PC computers and holds up a copy of the DOS software it used Friday, July 27, 2001, at the IBM office in Durham, N.C. Bradley is retiring after 28 1/2 years with IBM."

You can get it here.
"The Windows Server 2003 Security Guide focuses on providing a set of easy to understand guidance, tools, and templates to help secure Windows Server 2003 in many environments. While the product is extremely secure from the default installation, there are a number of security options that can be further configured based on specific requirements. This guidance not only provides recommendations, but also the background information on the risk that the setting is used to mitigate as well as the impact to an environment when the option is configured."

Spirit and Opportunity are blogging together from Mars:) Go and see what they say! Via Sean and Scott.

Anothre great article from Code Project. Via Brendan Tompkins. "CAPTCHA stands for "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart." What it means is, a program that can tell humans from machines using some type of generated test. A test most people can easily pass but a computer program cannot."

Head of member services and communication of RIPE NCC has claimed that DNS Root Servers outside US has surpassed those inside US! So we should move? No way!

Free Virtus Scanner, specially one which is online and you can be assure that your system is not being checked by something which is self-infected! Online Virus Scan from Trend Micro.

You remember Windows Update was attacked long ago? Now it is SCO's turn. MyDoom! I have got a lot of such emails lately in my inbox, but a big but! I never open attachments of my emails!

Anyone got idea on how to monitor bandwidth usage of a computer over 'net? I need to know the exact amount of data which is trasmited over my LAN Card. Not a commercial software though, I know some like DUMeter. Platform is Windows 2003 Server Standard. I know how to monitor web site's transfer usage, need more than that!

Lockergnome: "Under certain circumstances Word 2003 can become unresponsive when the user saves a file or when Word automatically saves an AutoRecover file. This update corrects that potential error."

Stefano Demiliani points to Microsoft ISA Server 2004 Public Beta on Microsoft web site

According to Scoble's post, Feedster is going to support Atom as well as RSS.

Simple Lite is what lets you have secure chat. Via The .NET Guy.

I haven't taken a look at it yet, but sounds interesting. Via Paschal L.

MSN Toolbar is there, but will you install it? I won't Google is there! It got what I want and also it is Google, The Internet OS!

It is very nice seeing .Text so improved. Someone has coded a package called cDotText for integration of .Text with DotNetNuke. Via Stefano Demiliani.

Great step by Scott for creating .Text Search. I still use Google for the purpose. Just try it: site:www.aliparvaresh.com Second News

"This week Microsoft annnounced the beta availability of the Java Language Conversion Assistant (JLCA), a tool designed to ease migration of Java applications to the .NET environment." Via Stefano Demiliani.

I was going to throw one away, but I may not by reading this article. Any suggestion for another computer's place?

Now, Blogger supports Atom.

I am adding more and more news resources to Second News. Last days these were added:
IKNA, IPNA, CHN, ITIran, IRITN, Pendar.
Also follow Iran's parlimant election news on www.secondnews.com/farsi/iran/election.htm.

Try Googlism to see who you are from Google's point of view.
Hehe, it was funny. Google is wrong about me at least! Via Vijay.

Remote Sensing and Remote Control over the Internet using the .NET Remoting Library and the GP-3 Board!

5 spam comments today, how to prevent them on .Text? Any idea?

An authority has told Mehr News that Bam was shaked 24 hours before the big shake on the dark Friday but none of the medias has announced that either and all people stayed there and died...

Another great Code Project article. How to generate image from PDF documents using VB.NET? Here you can get the answer. Via Stefano Demiliani.

Lockergnome: "Mobile AMD Athlon 64 processor 3000+ with 64-bit platform for improved multitasking performance; 1600MHz system bus with HyperTransport Technology 512MB PC2700 DDR memory for multitasking power, expandable to 2.0GB DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive"
BestBuy price, 1549 USD. Nice!

Our new server, is located at Server Matrix. They have been really nice so far to us. You can take a look at their Virtual Tour here.

You might have read about Churchill's 104 years old parrot. His kids say, it is fake. Read More . . .

Python for .NET is a near-seamless integration of the Python runtime with the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR). It lets you script and build applications in Python, using CLR services and components written in any language that targets the CLR (C#, Managed C++, VB.NET, etc.).

Even don't miss one news a day using Second News from now and on. Simply go to www.secondnews.com, choose your language and location, e.g. www.secondnews.com/farsi/iran. Then choose your desired category, after all, scroll the day's news in the current page with navigation links given on bottom of the page.
Iif you have missed news of last days, try the new feature, Second News Archive. Using it, you can browse all of the news in Second News format!
More idea? Suggestions? Leave me comments please.

@stake, Inc., an independent security consulting firm, performed an extensive analysis comparing security in the .NET Framework® 1.1, running on Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003, to IBM WebSphere® 5.0, running on both Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 2.1 and a leading commercial distribution of Unix.® This report gives customers a resource for better understanding the differences between the leading application platforms and for guidance on best security practices. Via Scoble.

You want to be safe in Windows? Go and get it! MBSA 1.2.

I haven't been reading blogs last days, and just saw that it is Robert's birthday. Happy birthday :)

Going to install a product of RedHat after a long time, I used to install and use Slackware last 2 years. Any feedback on Fedora?

Robert Wlodarczyk [MS] shows us some abilities of Avalon in imaging.

Do you own a server? You want to make it secure and not pay for another firewall? Go and do it! It's all here, IPSec.

An article by Steven M. Cohn.

CookieChipper, and advanced IE cookie management. Read More . . .

Hamid is interviewed around IranPHP, the site he established 2 years ago.

Paschal L says it is out.

Bindows is a Graphical User Interface Toolkit for writing rich client side web applications with the look, feel and behavior of modern Windows applications. Bindows applications are lightweight applications with zero footprint which means no installation required. Via Paschal L.

How to enable IIS 5 Isolation Mode in IIS 6?

Some updates to ASP.NET.

Lockergnome tells me why all servers around me restarted last night! Another flaw in MDAC.

Seems they are really working on Internet Explorer. Scoble had lunch with IE team and has written what he has heard. The most important this is that, it is there, IE. Read it yourself.

A common method to pass values between aspx pages is to use a query string. Using this method, the information often contained is indifferent to user modification or user access. When information does need to be secured, another method is employed, such as encrypted cookies or session management. However, these methods are not always available. Session management is not preferred in some situations, and users may choose to not accept cookies in other cases. In another scenario, you may want to give out a URL (e.g., in an e-mail) with which you do not want tampered, or maybe a URL in which you can expire after a certain amount of time. In this article, we’ll look at ways to secure your URLs from tampering using secure query strings.

Here you can read it. Via Scoble.

Topix is another news crawler done by OpenDirectory Project. It claims of updating every 10 minutes, searching 2000 news resources. Also it uses classification algorithms in many terms, including local news. Like what we did in Second News for Iran news, though on .NET platform.

MSDN article around encryption in .NET. Via Kevin Dente.

Anyone got more information on how to make shared hosting servers more secure in case of offering ASP.NET? Specially in Windows 2003 Server. I know application pools, any other ways? Setting up application pools takes a lot of time.

Microdoc News is asking, can Google keep up with the information revolution? We may better ask, who can? If Google isn't able to keep up with it, who else can then? If Google can't, can we say, we are lost?

I really like Nick Bradbury's idea on making Atom feeds well-formed before it becomes late.

Skinned controls make a user interface very flexible.With skinned controls, the functionality and the presentation of a server control are effectively separated, making it very easy to change the presentation of the control. If used properly, you can use skinned controls to change the look of an entire Web site by just selecting a separate set of skins. Read More . . .

Server controls add functionality to Microsoft ASP.NET by bundling code and controls into a single unit. See how to create a simple server control in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET to display items from any database. Read More . . .

TaskVision is a sample smart client task management application built using the Windows Forms classes of the Microsoft® .NET Framework—an integral Windows® component that supports building and running the next generation of applications and XML Web services. Via Matt Hawley.

Yet Another Forum.net is a opensource discussion forum or bulletin board system for web sites running ASP.NET. It is ASP.NET based with a MS SQL backend database. The full C# source code is available licensed as GPL. Via Paschal L.

MSN sniffer is a handy network utility to capture MSN chat on network. It records MSN conversations automatically. All intercepted messages can be saved as HTML files for later processing and analyzing. Via Colt Kwong.

Lockergnome: "1,800 publicly-available e-books including classic British and American fiction, major authors, children's literature, the Bible, Shakespeare, American history, African-American documents, and much more. Thousands more titles (currently web versions only) can be found in the Electronic Text Center's E-Book Library."

Slashdot: "Seems that SCO is seriously hinting that their next victim is going to be Google."

Slashdot says, Linux for Asia.

Weblogs @ MSDN.com using .Text

Atom.NET is Atom's framework for .NET. Via Scoble.

I was ParsOnline's user for around 2 years, but because of their 'net censorship, I had to change my ISP since none of other ISPs actually did as much censorship as they did. After all, since all the ISPs are to do censorship, now I can move back to ParsOnline specially I saw a great news on their web site today which can help specially me and my partners in our job.
ParsOnline is going to offer ADSL service within a month in Tehran. Congratulation! After so much waiting, I hope we at least get a reliable 64kbps connection. In a good price, less than 1000,000 Rials monthly.

You remember our president defended web control?
BBC: "Iran's judiciary has ordered one of two main pro-reformist websites to be "filtered", making it unavailable to internet subscribers in Iran."

Just try "Whois aliparvaresh.com". Via Evhead.

I like this one, can be used later, since installing it without any installation file is not the work of everyone.

Here you can see Microsoft.com December 2003 Statistics. So far Windows 2003 has been so good for me too.

"Heritrix is the Internet Archive's open-source, extensible, web-scale, archival-quality web crawler project. Heritrix (sometimes spelled heretrix , or misspelled or missaid as heratrix / heritix / heretix / heratix ) is an archaic word for inheritess . Since our crawler seeks to collect the digital artifacts of our culture for the benefit of future researchers and generations, this name seemed apt." Via Boing Boing.

January 19, 2004 is the day!
I like all the features, they are nothing for 29$.
The .NET Guy also explains more about it.
Do you like having your RSS with yourself where ever you go? Try NewsGator 2.0!

eyeranian and all Iranians are thankful for all you did for Iranians after Bam earthquake.
I also add those who helped by even giving link, talking about the disaster, giving ideas and all who concerned about it.
Thanks to all.

Lockergnome does Linux vs. OpenBSD.

According to IRIB News, an Iranian called Dr. Firouz Naderi is the manager of the Mars Program Office or known better these days as "The Spirit". Google News, NASA, IRIB News. All and all via Second News.

I get error while trying ASP.NET Forums today. Others?

Great step by step guide on how to install IIS6 and related softwares for a development team. By Kevin W. Hammond.

Here you can find a list of blog search engines. Via Lockergnome.

This is what Clarke Scott says, read it carefully. In some cases he is right.
"Does open source help our industry? I don't believe it does. In fact, I believe that it cheapens our value as software developers, makes shareware development and running ISV's even more difficult."

BBC: "A move from quake-prone Tehran is mooted, as aid efforts continue in the devastated city of Bam."

M. Keith Warren teaches us how to use SQL Query Analyzer in command line.
isqlw –S(yourserver) –d(Database Name) –E(Trusted Connection)

Scripting News says, "Google dominates search the way Microsoft dominates operating systems."

Wired News: "The Iranian defense minister said his country will launch a locally made satellite within 18 months, the official IRNA news agency reported. No details on the type of satellite were given."

Second News is moved to it's new server and we will be starting to improve it soon. Thanks for your support.

Scoble: "Someone I know, who works at a big software company, not Microsoft, told me how they stopped people from leaking screen shots. They would encode a color pattern into the pixels of their screen. Not visible to the human eye. But, when a screen shot would get leaked, they'd know which build it came from and who leaked it. My friend, who doesn't want to be named, said that after doing that they reduced their leaks to zero. Be careful out there!"
What a wise step! I always like new ways.

Robert McLaws shows you how to detect a fake Longhorn.

These days Hamed is mostly talking on his Pocket PC. He bought a nice one and I took my hands over it for a time. He has experienced how to make a theme for it, he is also writing an application for file management inside Pocket PC in a tree style, and also he explains how to connect to SQLCE.
Nice steps Hamed, go a head.

Reuters: "TEHRAN (Reuters) - Ordinary Iranians are cheering a warming of diplomatic ties between Tehran and the United States brought on by the Bam quake, and hope an end is in sight to a quarter century of isolation from a country many openly admire."

Anil Dash says, is it possible that Google makes a desktop search engine one day? I like the idea, assume you can search in your documents and emails using Google, it would be nice!

What is Flex Wiki?
Where to get it?
Who is the creator?

Share Your OPML, Top 100 Feeds.

Steven Forte informs us of the Middle East Developers Conferences 2004 which will be held from Jan 24th to 27th in Cairo, Egypt.

Roy pointed to good website with small cool tips. Including Query Analyzer Tricks.

Robert McLaws: " new virus is being sperad over MSN Messenger. Find out more about it here."

BBC: "The United States is to temporarily ease sanctions on Iran to help relief supplies following the Bam earthquake."

Finally, .Text v0.95 is out! Thanks to ScottW for such a great blogging tool. I am going to upgrade my blog today.
How to set up .Text?
Where to get .Text?
Where to ask on .Text?

Good review of iPAQ h4150. Via Owen Allen.

"The default System.Windows.Forms.DataGrid provided by the .NET Framework is a little bit limited in functionality. Therefore I've spent some time during my holidays building an extension to this default grid: the ExtendedDataGrid." Read More . . .

Happy New Year.