Nevermind.dk

When the order is crucial - use of both compression and encryption on data.

Jesper B. Ki�r — Sun, 06 May 2012 22:00:00 GMT

Sometimes the order in which things are done is really crucial. An example to this is the mix of encrypted and compressed data. Should you: Compress encrypted data ? or Encrypt compressed data? Due to the nature of encryption and compression the answer is of course very obvious, but I will anyhow back it with a small example. I have created some simple Java code which does the following: 1. Takes an XML file with domain names and creates an DES encrypted file from it. 2. Creates a compress GZip file of the DES encrypted XML file 3. Creates a compress GZip file of the original XML file. 4. Creates a encrypted file of the GZip compressed file. 1. The original XML file "hosts.xml" has the size 82.767 KB 2. The DES encrypted file of the XML file has the same size of 82.767 KB 3. The GZip compressed original XML file has the size of 8.520 KB 4. The DES encrypted file based on the GZip compressed XML file has the size of 8.520 KB The results come as no surprise since: - The nature of lossless compression is finding redundant information, patterns which can be replaced by a shorter representation. - The nature of encryption is the opposite, the encrypted file must not contain any patterns at all, but rather appear like white noise, ....(which can not be (lossless) compressed) Conclusion: if you need to compress and encrypt data ....ALWAYS compress first and then encrypt the compressed data. Download: Java files to demo encryption and compression order

Mail "slide in a summary" pop-up feature in Lotus Notes 8.5.3 - was this ever tested at IBM?

Jesper B. Ki�r — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 22:00:00 GMT

Several times I have wondered, does IBM really have a team of testers in connection with Lotus Notes development? ..or are things just tested � la "this seems to work OK, ..next" ? I have come to the conclusion the later is sometimes the case. If you have used the new "slide in a summary" pop-up feature in Lotus Notes 8.5.3, which shows a window when new mails have arrived, you may know what I mean By analyzing the behavior of the pop-up it seems to pop-up when a new mail has arrived to the database, however the content of the pop-up is another story . The content seems if based on a combination of a random selection of unread documents from the inbox, mostly new ones and are often the same mails repeated. The junior developer, who coded this ...send a few mails to himself, saw a pop-up window, smiled and said "this seems to be working all right.. " NO, it does not work all right ! Testing is not about simulating a simple "normal" scenario only, It is about getting out in abnormal weird scenarios too. Hints to IBM:Mail rules may actually move a document to a folder, so it is actually never shown in the Inbox? OK? It is not uncommon to use mail rules, the pop-up window was clearly NOT tested with a combination of mail rules. Only show me the "new" mails in the pop-up list ONCE!, my users are freaking out and are really annoyed, ..ONCE ! Was this feature tested on real users? Clearly not, users like subtle, discrete hints of a new mail has arrived ....ONCE! The principles are actually rather simple: Compare date/time when the pop-up was last run with creation date for documents from a date/time sorted list of all documents (not only inbox) in the mail database Show only incoming mails and unread

Flaw in popular mobile apps exposes users to identity theft - storing passwords in plain text files

Jesper B. Ki�r — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 22:00:00 GMT

Storing passwords in plain text files on an iPhone?? You would think it would be very obvious that this a very bad idea, right?. But NO! ..Facebook, LinkedIn, Dropbox (again?) and others thinks this is a great idea...well at least until Security researcher Gareth Wright revealed how they handles security in their iPhone Apps (and most likely Android too he says). Again this makes you think...when such a fundamental security rule is broken, which other are broken too? Outsourcing anyone? Link to Infoworld.com: Flaw in popular mobile apps exposes users to identity theft

The old joke of making somebody read complex names out loud in an airport, which actually means something very different, (still funny)

Jesper B. Ki�r — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 22:00:00 GMT

Found this joke in an very old mail... This is an absolute classic. you must read the story first. Its a bit complicated the story, but basically they wait for a flight from a far away place and then write down names to give to the announcer at the airport and then go near a speaker and record what they say This is his story..... "We'd go and sit on the balcony at Terminal 3 at Heathrow, directly under one of the speakers as the roof is low. We put the tape machine in our bag with the microphone poking out of the top. We'd look for a flight that'd arrived in the last 40 minutes from somewhere where you'd expect mental names, then write a letter saying "Could you go and pick up etc. etc. from flight, etc". That way, it looked like it'd been arranged in advance as the flight arrival details were written on the note. We also wore an ID-style badge and carried a mobile so that we looked like taxi drivers. One of us would get the first one read out and then the other did the second. We'd pretend to be unable to pronounce it and then hand them the bit of paper with the name written on it. Long winded, but well worth it! These are the names written down: 1. Arheddis Varkenjaab and Aywellbe Fayed 2. Arhevbin Fayed and Bybeiev Rhibodie 3. Aynayda Pizaqvick and Malexa Kriest 4. Awul Dasfilshabeda and Nowaynayda Zheet 5. Makollig Jezvahted and Levdaroum DeBahzted 6. Steelaygot Maowenbach and Tuka Piziniztee " And this is what they sound like: 1. "I hate this fucking job, and I will be fired." 2. "I've just been fired, and bye-bye everybody." 3. "I need a piss quick, and my legs are crossed." 4. "Oo-ah, that's better and now I need a shit." 5. "My colleague just farted, and left the room, the bastard." 6. "Still, I got my own back and took a piss in his tea." We got rumbled doing the "My colleague just, etc". They actually threatened to arrest us as apparently they'd actually had complaints over the previous weeks! We were toying with doing it again just to see what they'd arrest us for, but we rang Chris and all he said was, "go to Gatwick!". This is the reason the last one sounds so crap 'cos Gatwick is a much noisier place and the ceilings are high, and it was difficult to get near a speaker. The lengths we had to go to..."

Importing Holidays into the Lotus Notes Calendar

Jesper B. Ki�r — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 23:00:00 GMT

There are a few simple steps to update a Lotus Notes Calendar with holidays for your country or religion. The administrator: Open up the administrator client and go to the "Configuration" tab. Go down to the "Miscellaneous" section and open up "Holidays". You will see entries for each country or religion. They may look old but they are actually repeats so they could be quite valid. My old entries here are good for 10 years. The newest Holiday entries are kept in the NAB template. To get them into your NAB click on "Actions" in the menu and select "Import Holidays from Template". After running the import: TIP: Since all calendar entries are in English you might want to consider translating the entries in the NAB now for any of your non-english speaking countries in your organization before they get pushed out to your users calendars. The user: Open up your calendar. Click on the "More" button and select "Import Holidays" Choose your country or religion. Click OK and your are done! Easter Holidays which I had translated first in the NAB In regards to holidays, you will not need to update the calendar until 2017

Why corporate cloud storage might not be heaven

Jesper B. Ki�r — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:00:00 GMT

People tend to be blinded by all the "Cloud" galore and it is nice when somebody instead takes look at what real life Cloud is. A short article on Infoworld.com Why corporate cloud storage doesn't add up Full-on outsourcing of corporate storage needs is a puzzling concept, to say the least Puts a nice real life perspective on corporate cloud storage

Youporn.com handles over 300.000 queries per second with Redis NoSQL database cluster

Jesper B. Ki�r — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:00:00 GMT

If you really want to stress test your hardware and software solutions nothing does it better than a free porn site. Youporn.com runs Redis as their primary database, which of course is a NoSQL database. A cluster of Redis databases handles over 300.000 queries per second!!. and over 100 million page views per day. That is a hole lot of queries and page views... You can read some of the technical background for youporn.com here and if you have not bookmarked it already you can access the busy website here: youporn.com

3 simple wishes for Lotus Notes Domino at LotusPhere 2012

Jesper B. Ki�r — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Sadly I am not going to LotusPhere 2012..so instead I will make a short list of 3 wishes for LS 2012 of what could make Lotus Notes/Domino an even better platform 1. Evolution of the NFS database Time has passed but the NSF database has mainly stayed the same. There has been little evolution over the years, mainly IO performance optimization etc. What is really needed is evolution on a higher level. Facts are that really nothing has changed much the last 20 years, if you look at things from a higher perspective. What is really really needed? Relations! No no.., I am not talking about RDMS, I am talking about Graph Databases! Learn from other NoSQL databases, like Neo4J but mostly OrientDB OrientDB has very much in common with the NSF database, and in many cases it resembles a version of what NSF could have been today Have a look at OrientDB and be pleasantly surprised OrientDB will be released as a version 1.0 very soon. My Wish: Make NSF database support Graphs..this will make the NSF ROCK! 2. CoffeScript Rocks..JavaScript Sucks Look it up on the internet, and you will see there are tons of things wrong with JavaScript. The problem is that some "idiot" from Netscape a long time ago created JavaScript when Netscape ruled the browser world and JavaScript got stuck as a "de facto" coding language in the browser. Unfortunately nobody cared to tell Netscape that is was a "piece of crap" and it needed reworking, so we all have to live that many years later. So what can you do? JavaScript won't go away, it will not be fixed, though it is being mended over the years, ...but that is not enough... CoffeScript to the rescue! What is CoffeScript ? It is a much cleaner language that transcompiles into JavaScript, a facade, a syntactic sugar. Watch this very recent and great video from its inventor My Wish: Make XPages use CoffeScript as an alternative via a plugin or whatever. I really mean "transcompile" CoffeScript to JavaScript and "trans-decompile" JavaScript back to Coffescript This would give SSJS (SSCS) a BIG boost in readability, productivity and overall just a much much nicer coding experience 3. Easy styling and layout. XPages should never have been based on JSF, but it is. If you think JSF is a light weight, agile web framework, you are probably not aware what else is "out there" (Play Framework, Rails, ...) Do a Google search "JSF sucks" and there is plenty of angry hits. Well aggregated here "JSF sucks". When James Gosling says "I hate JSF with a passion" maybe there is something about it...I mean this is the guy who invented Java! OK, JSF is here to stay in XPages, so I will make my wish gentle. My Wish: Give me something light, visual and easy to use and understand for laying out and designing my XPages. Not something stupid and complicated like the bloated Themes stuff in XPages. IBM ...this is 2012..you know?

Watch out ..working with web services in 8.5.3 may (will) wipe all your Working Sets ....completely

Jesper B. Ki�r — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 23:00:00 GMT

This has happen for me tonight..twice. After having been working with some web services, Java and LotusScript I have found that every single Working Set is completely empty the next time the Designer is started. OK, maybe it is just IBM's way of saying web services is overrated anyway .......

Upgrading to 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1, a bit messy journey

Jesper B. Ki�r — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:00:00 GMT

Today I downloaded the Lotus Notes/Domino 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1, ran the installer and it quit with an error. Naive as I was I thought it was a simple install procedure. Well if you have not installed any of the extLib from OpenNTF, it is. But I have had the pleasure of the early versions of the ExtLib, so I had to go the messy route. Per Henrik Lausten made me aware of the Install guide, which has some important points. In short it is: - make a change to a config file - get rid of all the old ExtLib. You would think that this would be a job for the installer, but no you must manually delete all references. You must remove ALL old ExtLib files or the installer won't continue. When I got the installer working without an error I actually uninstalled the Upgrade Pack 1 by mistake. A small typo with a big difference confused me. In the last dialog there is an error in the Danish text. No matter what the installer always says it has uninstalled the Upgrade Pack. This made me run the installer a couple of times extra until I saw the error... :-).