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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 01, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 01, 2014Popular ReleasesSandcastle Help File Builder: Help File Builder and Tools v2014.5.31.0: General InformationIMPORTANT: On some systems, the content of the ZIP file is blocked and the installer may fail to run. Before extracting it, right click on the ZIP file, select Properties, and click on the Unblock button if it is present in the lower right corner of the General tab in the properties dialog. This release completes removal of the branding transformations and implements the new VS2013 presentation style that utilizes the new lightweight website format. Several breaking cha...Tooltip Web Preview: ToolTip Web Preview: Version 1.0Database Helper: Release 1.0.0.0: First Release of Database HelperCoMaSy: CoMaSy1.0.2: !Contact Management SystemImage View Slider: Image View Slider: This is a .NET component. We create this using VB.NET. Here you can use an Image Viewer with several properties to your application form. We wish somebody to improve freely. Try this out! Author : Steven Renaldo Antony Yustinus Arjuna Purnama Putra Andre Wijaya P Martin Lidau PBK GENAP 2014 - TI UKDWAspose for Apache POI: Missing Features of Apache POI WP - v 1.1: Release contain the Missing Features in Apache POI WP SDK in Comparison with Aspose.Words for dealing with Microsoft Word. What's New ?Following Examples: Insert Picture in Word Document Insert Comments Set Page Borders Mail Merge from XML Data Source Moving the Cursor Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are yet to come here. Keep visiting us. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.babelua: V1.5.6.0: V1.5.6.0 - 2014.5.30New feature: support quick-cocos2d-x project now; support text search in scripts folder now, you can use this function in Search Result Window;SEToolbox: 01.032.014 Release 1: Added fix when loading game Textures for icons causing 'Unable to read beyond the end of the stream'. Added new Resource Report, that displays all in game resources in a concise report. Added in temp directory cleaner, to keep excess files from building up. Fixed use of colors on the windows, to work better with desktop schemes. Adding base support for multilingual resources. This will allow loading of the Space Engineers resources to show localized names, and display localized date a...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.71.2: More memory and performance improvements. Fixed an issue with pivot table field order.Fancontroller: Fancontroller: Initial releaseVi-AIO SearchBar: Vi – AIO Search Bar: Version 1.0Top Verses ( Ayat Emas ): Binary Top Verses: This one is the bin folder of the component. the .dll component is inside.Traditional Calendar Component: Traditional Calender Converter: Duta Wacana Christian University This file containing Traditional Calendar Component and Demo Aplication that using Traditional Calendar Component. This component made with .NET Framework 4 and the programming language is C# .SQLSetupHelper: 1.0.0.0: First Stable Version of SQL SetupComposite Iconote: Composite Iconote: This is a composite has been made by Microsoft Visual Studio 2013. Requirement: To develop this composite or use this component in your application, your computer must have .NET framework 4.5 or newer.Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.9.101: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.9.1. Breaking changes: - Int/short Set methods of WritablePixelCollection are now unsigned. - The Q16 build no longer uses HDRI, switch to the new Q16-HDRI build if you need HDRI.fnr.exe - Find And Replace Tool: 1.7: Bug fixes Refactored logic for encoding text values to command line to handle common edge cases where find/replace operation works in GUI but not in command line Fix for bug where selection in Encoding drop down was different when generating command line in some cases. It was reported in: https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/workitem/34 Fix for "Backslash inserted before dot in replacement text" reported here: https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/discussions/541024 Fix for finding replacing...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.59: changes NEW: Added Support for 'GokoImage.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ViperII.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'PixxxView.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgRex.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'PixLiv.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'imgsee.me' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgS.it' linksToolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011/2013: XrmToolBox (v1.2014.5.28): XrmToolbox improvement XrmToolBox updates (v1.2014.5.28)Fix connecting to a connection with custom authentication without saved password Tools improvement New tool!Solution Components Mover (v1.2014.5.22) Transfer solution components from one solution to another one Import/Export NN relationships (v1.2014.3.7) Allows you to import and export many to many relationships Tools updatesAttribute Bulk Updater (v1.2014.5.28) Audit Center (v1.2014.5.28) View Layout Replicator (v1.2014.5.28) Scrip...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 5.10: Fix for Issue #20875 - echo switch doesn't work for CSS CSS should honor the SASS source-file comments JS should allow multi-line comment directivesNew ProjectsCet MicroWPF: WPF-like library for simple graphic-UI application using Netduino (Plus) 2 and the FTDI FT800 Eve board.Fakemons: Some Fakmons, powered by XML, XSLT, CSS and JavascriptFling OS: Fling OS is a C# operating system project aiming to create a new, managed operating system from the ground up.MudRoom: Experimental tool sets in mud parsing and area definitionOOP-2112110158: My name's NgocDungRoslynResearch: Roslyn ResearchTHD - Control de Usuarios: control de usuarios y permisosWPF Kinect User Controls: WPF Kinect User Control project provide simple Tilt and Skeleton Tracking Parameter Controls.

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• Anatomy of a .NET Assembly - PE Headers

  - by Simon Cooper

  Today, I'll be starting a look at what exactly is inside a .NET assembly - how the metadata and IL is stored, how Windows knows how to load it, and what all those bytes are actually doing. First of all, we need to understand the PE file format. PE files .NET assemblies are built on top of the PE (Portable Executable) file format that is used for all Windows executables and dlls, which itself is built on top of the MSDOS executable file format. The reason for this is that when .NET 1 was released, it wasn't a built-in part of the operating system like it is nowadays. Prior to Windows XP, .NET executables had to load like any other executable, had to execute native code to start the CLR to read & execute the rest of the file. However, starting with Windows XP, the operating system loader knows natively how to deal with .NET assemblies, rendering most of this legacy code & structure unnecessary. It still is part of the spec, and so is part of every .NET assembly. The result of this is that there are a lot of structure values in the assembly that simply aren't meaningful in a .NET assembly, as they refer to features that aren't needed. These are either set to zero or to certain pre-defined values, specified in the CLR spec. There are also several fields that specify the size of other datastructures in the file, which I will generally be glossing over in this initial post. Structure of a PE file Most of a PE file is split up into separate sections; each section stores different types of data. For instance, the .text section stores all the executable code; .rsrc stores unmanaged resources, .debug contains debugging information, and so on. Each section has a section header associated with it; this specifies whether the section is executable, read-only or read/write, whether it can be cached... When an exe or dll is loaded, each section can be mapped into a different location in memory as the OS loader sees fit. In order to reliably address a particular location within a file, most file offsets are specified using a Relative Virtual Address (RVA). This specifies the offset from the start of each section, rather than the offset within the executable file on disk, so the various sections can be moved around in memory without breaking anything. The mapping from RVA to file offset is done using the section headers, which specify the range of RVAs which are valid within that section. For example, if the .rsrc section header specifies that the base RVA is 0x4000, and the section starts at file offset 0xa00, then an RVA of 0x401d (offset 0x1d within the .rsrc section) corresponds to a file offset of 0xa1d. Because each section has its own base RVA, each valid RVA has a one-to-one mapping with a particular file offset. PE headers As I said above, most of the header information isn't relevant to .NET assemblies. To help show what's going on, I've created a diagram identifying all the various parts of the first 512 bytes of a .NET executable assembly. I've highlighted the relevant bytes that I will refer to in this post: Bear in mind that all numbers are stored in the assembly in little-endian format; the hex number 0x0123 will appear as 23 01 in the diagram. The first 64 bytes of every file is the DOS header. This starts with the magic number 'MZ' (0x4D, 0x5A in hex), identifying this file as an executable file of some sort (an .exe or .dll). Most of the rest of this header is zeroed out. The important part of this header is at offset 0x3C - this contains the file offset of the PE signature (0x80). Between the DOS header & PE signature is the DOS stub - this is a stub program that simply prints out 'This program cannot be run in DOS mode.\r\n' to the console. I will be having a closer look at this stub later on. The PE signature starts at offset 0x80, with the magic number 'PE\0\0' (0x50, 0x45, 0x00, 0x00), identifying this file as a PE executable, followed by the PE file header (also known as the COFF header). The relevant field in this header is in the last two bytes, and it specifies whether the file is an executable or a dll; bit 0x2000 is set for a dll. Next up is the PE standard fields, which start with a magic number of 0x010b for x86 and AnyCPU assemblies, and 0x20b for x64 assemblies. Most of the rest of the fields are to do with the CLR loader stub, which I will be covering in a later post. After the PE standard fields comes the NT-specific fields; again, most of these are not relevant for .NET assemblies. The one that is is the highlighted Subsystem field, and specifies if this is a GUI or console app - 0x20 for a GUI app, 0x30 for a console app. Data directories & section headers After the PE and COFF headers come the data directories; each directory specifies the RVA (first 4 bytes) and size (next 4 bytes) of various important parts of the executable. The only relevant ones are the 2nd (Import table), 13th (Import Address table), and 15th (CLI header). The Import and Import Address table are only used by the startup stub, so we will look at those later on. The 15th points to the CLI header, where the CLR-specific metadata begins. After the data directories comes the section headers; one for each section in the file. Each header starts with the section's ASCII name, null-padded to 8 bytes. Again, most of each header is irrelevant, but I've highlighted the base RVA and file offset in each header. In the diagram, you can see the following sections: .text: base RVA 0x2000, file offset 0x200 .rsrc: base RVA 0x4000, file offset 0xa00 .reloc: base RVA 0x6000, file offset 0x1000 The .text section contains all the CLR metadata and code, and so is by far the largest in .NET assemblies. The .rsrc section contains the data you see in the Details page in the right-click file properties page, but is otherwise unused. The .reloc section contains address relocations, which we will look at when we study the CLR startup stub. What about the CLR? As you can see, most of the first 512 bytes of an assembly are largely irrelevant to the CLR, and only a few bytes specify needed things like the bitness (AnyCPU/x86 or x64), whether this is an exe or dll, and the type of app this is. There are some bytes that I haven't covered that affect the layout of the file (eg. the file alignment, which determines where in a file each section can start). These values are pretty much constant in most .NET assemblies, and don't affect the CLR data directly. Conclusion To summarize, the important data in the first 512 bytes of a file is: DOS header. This contains a pointer to the PE signature. DOS stub, which we'll be looking at in a later post. PE signature PE file header (aka COFF header). This specifies whether the file is an exe or a dll. PE standard fields. This specifies whether the file is AnyCPU/32bit or 64bit. PE NT-specific fields. This specifies what type of app this is, if it is an app. Data directories. The 15th entry (at offset 0x168) contains the RVA and size of the CLI header inside the .text section. Section headers. These are used to map between RVA and file offset. The important one is .text, which is where all the CLR data is stored. In my next post, we'll start looking at the metadata used by the CLR directly, which is all inside the .text section.

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• Newbie worried about CASE tool.

  - by Jason Evans

  Hi there. I'm looking for some guidance on CASE tools and whether my concerns are valid. Recently I was in a meeting between my employer and an external software company which have a CASE tool currently in beta. They demonstrated this tool to us, showing how you build a UML model in Enterprise Architect (or something like it) and then, through their tool, that UML model is transformed into a Visual Studio project, with C# files, stored procedures for SQL Server, code for the data layer, WCF stuff, logging code and allsorts. Now, admittedly, I don't see the point in this, as in I'm not convinced it will save that much time (plus it feels like overkill). The tool authors said that a trial of the tool at another company had saved a team there 5 weeks of development time (from 6 weeks down to about 1 week) using this tool. I find the accuracy of that estimate hard to believe. My main concern is whether using this tool is going slow down my productivity. For example - Say I have a UML model which I built a VS solution from. Now, I want to rename a class method to something else; will this mean having to update the UML model first and then rebuilding the code? Is this how case tools normally work? Something I will need to check with the authors is the structure of the generated VS solution. I like the Domain Driven Design way of project structure - Infrstructure, Services, Model, etc. I doubt very much this tool will do that. Also, I've been playing around with Entity Framework Code First and think it's a great way to build the data model. I have nice repositories, unit of work classes and other design patterns that work well with EF. I have data anootations and stuff like that working great. By not having EF (the CASE tool uses it's own data layer code) I'm concerned that this tool's data layer code might not be a nice to integrate in the UoW pattern, repositories, etc. This I will need to verify when I get a closer look at the generated code. What are other people's experiences with CASE tools? Am I being paranoid about nothing? Am I being unfair - are my negativities unfounded? EDIT: I like to use TDD/BDD for building my code, and using a CASE tool looks like it will make this difficult. Again, any feedback on this would be great. Cheers. Jas.

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• The Red Gate Guide to SQL Server Team based Development Free e-book

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  After about 6 months of work, the new book I've coauthored with Grant Fritchey (Blog|Twitter), Phil Factor (Blog|Twitter) and Alex Kuznetsov (Blog|Twitter) is out. They're all smart folks I talk to online and this book is packed with good ideas backed by years of experience. The book contains a good deal of information about things you need to think of when doing any kind of multi person database development. Although it's meant for SQL Server, the principles can be applied to any database platform out there. In the book you will find information on: writing readable code, documenting code, source control and change management, deploying code between environments, unit testing, reusing code, searching and refactoring your code base. I've written chapter 5 about Database testing and chapter 11 about SQL Refactoring. In the database testing chapter (chapter 5) I cover why you should test your database, why it is a good idea to have a database access interface composed of stored procedures, views and user defined functions, what and how to test. I talk about how there are many testing methods like black and white box testing, unit and integration testing, error and stress testing and why and how you should do all those. Sometimes you have to convince management to go for testing in the development lifecycle so I give some pointers and tips how to do that. Testing databases is a bit different from testing object oriented code in a way that to have independent unit tests you need to rollback your code after each test. The chapter shows you ways to do this and also how to avoid it. At the end I show how to test various database objects and how to test access to them. In the SQL Refactoring chapter (chapter 11) I cover why refactor and where to even begin refactoring. I also who you a way to achieve a set based mindset to solve SQL problems which is crucial to good SQL set based programming and a few commonly seen problems to refactor. These problems include: using functions on columns in the where clause, SELECT * problems, long stored procedure with many input parameters, one subquery per condition in the select statement, cursors are good for anything problem, using too large data types everywhere and using your data in code for business logic anti-pattern. You can read more about it and download it here: The Red Gate Guide to SQL Server Team-based Development Hope you like it and send me feedback if you wish too.

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• Design for complex ATG applications

  - by Glen Borkowski

  Overview Needless to say, some ATG applications are more complex than others.  Some ATG applications support a single site, single language, single catalog, single currency, have a single development staff, single business team, and a relatively simple business model.  The real complex applications have to support multiple sites, multiple languages, multiple catalogs, multiple currencies, a couple different development teams, multiple business teams, and a highly complex business model (and processes to go along with it).  While it's still important to implement a proper design for simple applications, it's absolutely critical to do this for the complex applications.  Why?  It's all about time and money.  If you are unable to manage your complex applications in an efficient manner, the cost of managing it will increase dramatically as will the time to get things done (time to market).  On the positive side, your competition is most likely in the same situation, so you just need to be more efficient than they are. This article is intended to discuss a number of key areas to think about when designing complex applications on ATG.  Some of this can get fairly technical, so it may help to get some background first.  You can get enough of the required background information from this post.  After reading that, come back here and follow along. Application Design Of all the various types of ATG applications out there, the most complex tend to be the ones in the telecommunications industry - especially the ones which operate in multiple countries.  To get started, let's assume that we are talking about an application like that.  One that has these properties: Operates in multiple countries - must support multiple sites, catalogs, languages, and currencies The organization is fairly loosely-coupled - single brand, but different businesses across different countries There is some common functionality across all sites in all countries There is some common functionality across different sites within the same country Sites within a single country may have some unique functionality - relative to other sites in the same country Complex product catalog (mostly in terms of bundles, eligibility, and compatibility) At this point, I'll assume you have read through the required reading and have a decent understanding of how ATG modules work... Code / configuration - assemble into modules When it comes to defining your modules for a complex application, there are a number of goals: Divide functionality between the modules in a way that maps to your business Group common functionality 'further down in the stack of modules' Provide a good balance between shared resources and autonomy for countries / sites Now I'll describe a high level approach to how you could accomplish those goals...  Let's start from the bottom and work our way up.  At the very bottom, you have the modules that ship with ATG - the 'out of the box' stuff.  You want to make sure that you are leveraging all the modules that make sense in order to get the most value from ATG as possible - and less stuff you'll have to write yourself.  On top of the ATG modules, you should create what we'll refer to as the Corporate Foundation Module described as follows: Sits directly on top of ATG modules Used by all applications across all countries and sites - this is the foundation for everyone Contains everything that is common across all countries / all sites Once established and settled, will change less frequently than other 'higher' modules Encapsulates as many enterprise-wide integrations as possible Will provide means of code sharing therefore less development / testing - faster time to market Contains a 'reference' web application (described below) The next layer up could be multiple modules for each country (you could replace this with region if that makes more sense).  We'll define those modules as follows: Sits on top of the corporate foundation module Contains what is unique to all sites in a given country Responsible for managing any resource bundles for this country (to handle multiple languages) Overrides / replaces corporate integration points with any country-specific ones Finally, we will define what should be a fairly 'thin' (in terms of functionality) set of modules for each site as follows: Sits on top of the country it resides in module Contains what is unique for a given site within a given country Will mostly contain configuration, but could also define some unique functionality as well Contains one or more web applications The graphic below should help to indicate how these modules fit together: Web applications As described in the previous section, there are many opportunities for sharing (minimizing costs) as it relates to the code and configuration aspects of ATG modules.  Web applications are also contained within ATG modules, however, sharing web applications can be a bit more difficult because this is what the end customer actually sees, and since each site may have some degree of unique look & feel, sharing becomes more challenging.  One approach that can help is to define a 'reference' web application at the corporate foundation layer to act as a solid starting point for each site.  Here's a description of the 'reference' web application: Contains minimal / sample reference styling as this will mostly be addressed at the site level web app Focus on functionality - ensure that core functionality is revealed via this web application Each individual site can use this as a starting point There may be multiple types of web apps (i.e. B2C, B2B, etc) There are some techniques to share web application assets - i.e. multiple web applications, defined in the web.xml, and it's worth investigating, but is out of scope here. Reference infrastructure In this complex environment, it is assumed that there is not a single infrastructure for all countries and all sites.  It's more likely that different countries (or regions) could have their own solution for infrastructure.  In this case, it will be advantageous to define a reference infrastructure which contains all the hardware and software that make up the core environment.  Specifications and diagrams should be created to outline what this reference infrastructure looks like, as well as it's baseline cost and the incremental cost to scale up with volume.  Having some consistency in terms of infrastructure will save time and money as new countries / sites come online.  Here are some properties of the reference infrastructure: Standardized approach to setup of hardware Type and number of servers Defines application server, operating system, database, etc... - including vendor and specific versions Consistent naming conventions Provides a consistent base of terminology and understanding across environments Defines which ATG services run on which servers Production Staging BCC / Preview Each site can change as required to meet scale requirements Governance / organization It should be no surprise that the complex application we're talking about is backed by an equally complex organization.  One of the more challenging aspects of efficiently managing a series of complex applications is to ensure the proper level of governance and organization.  Here are some ideas and goals to work towards: Establish a committee to make enterprise-wide decisions that affect all sites Representation should be evenly distributed Should have a clear communication procedure Focus on high level business goals Evaluation of feature / function gaps and how that relates to ATG release schedule / roadmap Determine when to upgrade & ensure value will be realized Determine how to manage various levels of modules Who is responsible for maintaining corporate / country / site layers Determine a procedure for controlling what goes in the corporate foundation module Standardize on source code control, database, hardware, OS versions, J2EE app servers, development procedures, etc only use tested / proven versions - this is something that should be centralized so that every country / site does not have to worry about compatibility between versions Create a innovation team Quickly develop new features, perform proof of concepts All teams can benefit from their findings Summary At this point, it should be clear why the topics above (design, governance, organization, etc) are critical to being able to efficiently manage a complex application.  To summarize, it's all about competitive advantage...  You will need to reduce costs and improve time to market with the goal of providing a better experience for your end customers.  You can reduce cost by reducing development time, time allocated to testing (don't have to test the corporate foundation module over and over again - do it once), and optimizing operations.  With an efficient design, you can improve your time to market and your business will be more flexible  and agile.  Over time, you'll find that you're becoming more focused on offering functionality that is new to the market (creativity) and this will be rewarded - you're now a leader. In addition to the above, you'll realize soft benefits as well.  Your staff will be operating in a culture based on sharing.  You'll want to reward efforts to improve and enhance the foundation as this will benefit everyone.  This culture will inspire innovation, which can only lend itself to your competitive advantage.

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• No GLX on Intel card with multiseat with additional nVidia card

  - by MeanEYE

  I have multiseat configured and my Xorg has 2 server layouts. One is for nVidia card and other is for Intel card. They both work, but display server assigned to Intel card doesn't have hardware acceleration since DRI and GLX module being used is from nVidia driver. So my question is, can I configure layouts somehow to use right DRI and GLX with each card? My Xorg.conf: Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Default" Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0 Option "Xinerama" "0" EndSection Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "TV" Screen 0 "Screen1" 0 0 Option "Xinerama" "0" EndSection Section "Monitor" # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid Identifier "Monitor0" VendorName "Unknown" ModelName "DELL E198WFP" HorizSync 30.0 - 83.0 VertRefresh 56.0 - 75.0 Option "DPMS" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "Monitor1" VendorName "Unknown" Option "DPMS" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Device0" Driver "nvidia" VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation" BoardName "GeForce GT 610" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Device1" Driver "intel" BusID "PCI:0:2:0" Option "AccelMethod" "uxa" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen0" Device "Device0" Monitor "Monitor0" DefaultDepth 24 Option "Stereo" "0" Option "nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-1" Option "metamodes" "DFP-0: nvidia-auto-select +1440+0, DFP-1: nvidia-auto-select +0+0" SubSection "Display" Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen1" Device "Device1" Monitor "Monitor1" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection Log file for Intel: [ 18.239] X.Org X Server 1.13.0 Release Date: 2012-09-05 [ 18.239] X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0 [ 18.239] Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.24-32-xen x86_64 Ubuntu [ 18.239] Current Operating System: Linux bytewiper 3.5.0-18-generic #29-Ubuntu SMP Fri Oct 19 10:26:51 UTC 2012 x86_64 [ 18.239] Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.5.0-18-generic root=UUID=fc0616fd-f212-4846-9241-ba4a492f0513 ro quiet splash [ 18.239] Build Date: 20 September 2012 11:55:20AM [ 18.239] xorg-server 2:1.13.0+git20120920.70e57668-0ubuntu0ricotz (For technical support please see http://www.ubuntu.com/support) [ 18.239] Current version of pixman: 0.26.0 [ 18.239] Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org to make sure that you have the latest version. [ 18.239] Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting, (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational, (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown. [ 18.239] (==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.1.log", Time: Wed Nov 21 18:32:14 2012 [ 18.239] (==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" [ 18.239] (==) Using system config directory "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d" [ 18.239] (++) ServerLayout "TV" [ 18.239] (**) |-->Screen "Screen1" (0) [ 18.239] (**) | |-->Monitor "Monitor1" [ 18.240] (**) | |-->Device "Device1" [ 18.240] (**) Option "Xinerama" "0" [ 18.240] (==) Automatically adding devices [ 18.240] (==) Automatically enabling devices [ 18.240] (==) Automatically adding GPU devices [ 18.240] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic" does not exist. [ 18.240] Entry deleted from font path. [ 18.240] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/" does not exist. [ 18.240] Entry deleted from font path. [ 18.240] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/" does not exist. [ 18.240] Entry deleted from font path. [ 18.240] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi" does not exist. [ 18.240] Entry deleted from font path. [ 18.240] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi" does not exist. [ 18.240] Entry deleted from font path. [ 18.240] (WW) The directory "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType" does not exist. [ 18.240] Entry deleted from font path. [ 18.240] (==) FontPath set to: /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc, /usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1, built-ins [ 18.240] (==) ModulePath set to "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xorg/extra-modules,/usr/lib/xorg/extra-modules,/usr/lib/xorg/modules" [ 18.240] (II) The server relies on udev to provide the list of input devices. If no devices become available, reconfigure udev or disable AutoAddDevices. [ 18.240] (II) Loader magic: 0x7f6917944c40 [ 18.240] (II) Module ABI versions: [ 18.240] X.Org ANSI C Emulation: 0.4 [ 18.240] X.Org Video Driver: 13.0 [ 18.240] X.Org XInput driver : 18.0 [ 18.240] X.Org Server Extension : 7.0 [ 18.240] (II) config/udev: Adding drm device (/dev/dri/card0) [ 18.241] (--) PCI: (0:0:2:0) 8086:0152:1043:84ca rev 9, Mem @ 0xf7400000/4194304, 0xd0000000/268435456, I/O @ 0x0000f000/64 [ 18.241] (--) PCI:*(0:1:0:0) 10de:104a:1458:3546 rev 161, Mem @ 0xf6000000/16777216, 0xe0000000/134217728, 0xe8000000/33554432, I/O @ 0x0000e000/128, BIOS @ 0x????????/524288 [ 18.241] (II) Open ACPI successful (/var/run/acpid.socket) [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension Generic Event Extension [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension SHAPE [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension MIT-SHM [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension XInputExtension [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension XTEST [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension BIG-REQUESTS [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension SYNC [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension XKEYBOARD [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension XC-MISC [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension SECURITY [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension XINERAMA [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension XFIXES [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension RENDER [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension RANDR [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension COMPOSITE [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension DAMAGE [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension MIT-SCREEN-SAVER [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension DOUBLE-BUFFER [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension RECORD [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension DPMS [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension X-Resource [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension XVideo [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension XVideo-MotionCompensation [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension XFree86-VidModeExtension [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension XFree86-DGA [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension XFree86-DRI [ 18.241] Initializing built-in extension DRI2 [ 18.241] (II) LoadModule: "glx" [ 18.241] (II) Loading /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xorg/extra-modules/libglx.so [ 18.247] (II) Module glx: vendor="NVIDIA Corporation" [ 18.247] compiled for 4.0.2, module version = 1.0.0 [ 18.247] Module class: X.Org Server Extension [ 18.247] (II) NVIDIA GLX Module 310.19 Thu Nov 8 01:12:43 PST 2012 [ 18.247] Loading extension GLX [ 18.247] (II) LoadModule: "intel" [ 18.248] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/intel_drv.so [ 18.248] (II) Module intel: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 18.248] compiled for 1.13.0, module version = 2.20.13 [ 18.248] Module class: X.Org Video Driver [ 18.248] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 13.0 [ 18.248] (II) intel: Driver for Intel Integrated Graphics Chipsets: i810, i810-dc100, i810e, i815, i830M, 845G, 854, 852GM/855GM, 865G, 915G, E7221 (i915), 915GM, 945G, 945GM, 945GME, Pineview GM, Pineview G, 965G, G35, 965Q, 946GZ, 965GM, 965GME/GLE, G33, Q35, Q33, GM45, 4 Series, G45/G43, Q45/Q43, G41, B43, B43, Clarkdale, Arrandale, Sandybridge Desktop (GT1), Sandybridge Desktop (GT2), Sandybridge Desktop (GT2+), Sandybridge Mobile (GT1), Sandybridge Mobile (GT2), Sandybridge Mobile (GT2+), Sandybridge Server, Ivybridge Mobile (GT1), Ivybridge Mobile (GT2), Ivybridge Desktop (GT1), Ivybridge Desktop (GT2), Ivybridge Server, Ivybridge Server (GT2), Haswell Desktop (GT1), Haswell Desktop (GT2), Haswell Desktop (GT2+), Haswell Mobile (GT1), Haswell Mobile (GT2), Haswell Mobile (GT2+), Haswell Server (GT1), Haswell Server (GT2), Haswell Server (GT2+), Haswell SDV Desktop (GT1), Haswell SDV Desktop (GT2), Haswell SDV Desktop (GT2+), Haswell SDV Mobile (GT1), Haswell SDV Mobile (GT2), Haswell SDV Mobile (GT2+), Haswell SDV Server (GT1), Haswell SDV Server (GT2), Haswell SDV Server (GT2+), Haswell ULT Desktop (GT1), Haswell ULT Desktop (GT2), Haswell ULT Desktop (GT2+), Haswell ULT Mobile (GT1), Haswell ULT Mobile (GT2), Haswell ULT Mobile (GT2+), Haswell ULT Server (GT1), Haswell ULT Server (GT2), Haswell ULT Server (GT2+), Haswell CRW Desktop (GT1), Haswell CRW Desktop (GT2), Haswell CRW Desktop (GT2+), Haswell CRW Mobile (GT1), Haswell CRW Mobile (GT2), Haswell CRW Mobile (GT2+), Haswell CRW Server (GT1), Haswell CRW Server (GT2), Haswell CRW Server (GT2+), ValleyView PO board [ 18.248] (++) using VT number 8 [ 18.593] (II) intel(0): using device path '/dev/dri/card0' [ 18.593] (**) intel(0): Depth 24, (--) framebuffer bpp 32 [ 18.593] (==) intel(0): RGB weight 888 [ 18.593] (==) intel(0): Default visual is TrueColor [ 18.593] (**) intel(0): Option "AccelMethod" "uxa" [ 18.593] (--) intel(0): Integrated Graphics Chipset: Intel(R) Ivybridge Desktop (GT1) [ 18.593] (**) intel(0): Relaxed fencing enabled [ 18.593] (**) intel(0): Wait on SwapBuffers? enabled [ 18.593] (**) intel(0): Triple buffering? enabled [ 18.593] (**) intel(0): Framebuffer tiled [ 18.593] (**) intel(0): Pixmaps tiled [ 18.593] (**) intel(0): 3D buffers tiled [ 18.593] (**) intel(0): SwapBuffers wait enabled ... [ 20.312] (II) Module fb: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 20.312] compiled for 1.13.0, module version = 1.0.0 [ 20.312] ABI class: X.Org ANSI C Emulation, version 0.4 [ 20.312] (II) Loading sub module "dri2" [ 20.312] (II) LoadModule: "dri2" [ 20.312] (II) Module "dri2" already built-in [ 20.312] (==) Depth 24 pixmap format is 32 bpp [ 20.312] (II) intel(0): [DRI2] Setup complete [ 20.312] (II) intel(0): [DRI2] DRI driver: i965 [ 20.312] (II) intel(0): Allocated new frame buffer 1920x1080 stride 7680, tiled [ 20.312] (II) UXA(0): Driver registered support for the following operations: [ 20.312] (II) solid [ 20.312] (II) copy [ 20.312] (II) composite (RENDER acceleration) [ 20.312] (II) put_image [ 20.312] (II) get_image [ 20.312] (==) intel(0): Backing store disabled [ 20.312] (==) intel(0): Silken mouse enabled [ 20.312] (II) intel(0): Initializing HW Cursor [ 20.312] (II) intel(0): RandR 1.2 enabled, ignore the following RandR disabled message. [ 20.313] (**) intel(0): DPMS enabled [ 20.313] (==) intel(0): Intel XvMC decoder enabled [ 20.313] (II) intel(0): Set up textured video [ 20.313] (II) intel(0): [XvMC] xvmc_vld driver initialized. [ 20.313] (II) intel(0): direct rendering: DRI2 Enabled [ 20.313] (==) intel(0): hotplug detection: "enabled" [ 20.332] (--) RandR disabled [ 20.335] (EE) Failed to initialize GLX extension (Compatible NVIDIA X driver not found) [ 20.335] (II) intel(0): Setting screen physical size to 508 x 285 [ 20.338] (II) XKB: reuse xkmfile /var/lib/xkb/server-B20D7FC79C7F597315E3E501AEF10E0D866E8E92.xkm [ 20.340] (II) config/udev: Adding input device Power Button (/dev/input/event1) [ 20.340] (**) Power Button: Applying InputClass "evdev keyboard catchall" [ 20.340] (II) LoadModule: "evdev" [ 20.340] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/evdev_drv.so

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• Cloud Computing = Elasticity * Availability

  - by Herve Roggero

  What is cloud computing? Is hosting the same thing as cloud computing? Are you running a cloud if you already use virtual machines? What is the difference between Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and a cloud provider? And the list goes on… these questions keep coming up and all try to fundamentally explain what “cloud” means relative to other concepts. At the risk of over simplification, answering these questions becomes simpler once you understand the primary foundations of cloud computing: Elasticity and Availability.   Elasticity The basic value proposition of cloud computing is to pay as you go, and to pay for what you use. This implies that an application can expand and contract on demand, across all its tiers (presentation layer, services, database, security…).  This also implies that application components can grow independently from each other. So if you need more storage for your database, you should be able to grow that tier without affecting, reconfiguring or changing the other tiers. Basically, cloud applications behave like a sponge; when you add water to a sponge, it grows in size; in the application world, the more customers you add, the more it grows. Pure IaaS providers will provide certain benefits, specifically in terms of operating costs, but an IaaS provider will not help you in making your applications elastic; neither will Virtual Machines. The smallest elasticity unit of an IaaS provider and a Virtual Machine environment is a server (physical or virtual). While adding servers in a datacenter helps in achieving scale, it is hardly enough. The application has yet to use this hardware.  If the process of adding computing resources is not transparent to the application, the application is not elastic.   As you can see from the above description, designing for the cloud is not about more servers; it is about designing an application for elasticity regardless of the underlying server farm.   Availability The fact of the matter is that making applications highly available is hard. It requires highly specialized tools and trained staff. On top of it, it's expensive. Many companies are required to run multiple data centers due to high availability requirements. In some organizations, some data centers are simply on standby, waiting to be used in a case of a failover. Other organizations are able to achieve a certain level of success with active/active data centers, in which all available data centers serve incoming user requests. While achieving high availability for services is relatively simple, establishing a highly available database farm is far more complex. In fact it is so complex that many companies establish yearly tests to validate failover procedures.   To a certain degree certain IaaS provides can assist with complex disaster recovery planning and setting up data centers that can achieve successful failover. However the burden is still on the corporation to manage and maintain such an environment, including regular hardware and software upgrades. Cloud computing on the other hand removes most of the disaster recovery requirements by hiding many of the underlying complexities.   Cloud Providers A cloud provider is an infrastructure provider offering additional tools to achieve application elasticity and availability that are not usually available on-premise. For example Microsoft Azure provides a simple configuration screen that makes it possible to run 1 or 100 web sites by clicking a button or two on a screen (simplifying provisioning), and soon SQL Azure will offer Data Federation to allow database sharding (which allows you to scale the database tier seamlessly and automatically). Other cloud providers offer certain features that are not available on-premise as well, such as the Amazon SC3 (Simple Storage Service) which gives you virtually unlimited storage capabilities for simple data stores, which is somewhat equivalent to the Microsoft Azure Table offering (offering a server-independent data storage model). Unlike IaaS providers, cloud providers give you the necessary tools to adopt elasticity as part of your application architecture.    Some cloud providers offer built-in high availability that get you out of the business of configuring clustered solutions, or running multiple data centers. Some cloud providers will give you more control (which puts some of that burden back on the customers' shoulder) and others will tend to make high availability totally transparent. For example, SQL Azure provides high availability automatically which would be very difficult to achieve (and very costly) on premise.   Keep in mind that each cloud provider has its strengths and weaknesses; some are better at achieving transparent scalability and server independence than others.    Not for Everyone Note however that it is up to you to leverage the elasticity capabilities of a cloud provider, as discussed previously; if you build a website that does not need to scale, for which elasticity is not important, then you can use a traditional host provider unless you also need high availability. Leveraging the technologies of cloud providers can be difficult and can become a journey for companies that build their solutions in a scale up fashion. Cloud computing promises to address cost containment and scalability of applications with built-in high availability. If your application does not need to scale or you do not need high availability, then cloud computing may not be for you. In fact, you may pay a premium to run your applications with cloud providers due to the underlying technologies built specifically for scalability and availability requirements. And as such, the cloud is not for everyone.   Consistent Customer Experience, Predictable Cost With all its complexities, buzz and foggy definition, cloud computing boils down to a simple objective: consistent customer experience at a predictable cost.  The objective of a cloud solution is to provide the same user experience to your last customer than the first, while keeping your operating costs directly proportional to the number of customers you have. Making your applications elastic and highly available across all its tiers, with as much automation as possible, achieves the first objective of a consistent customer experience. And the ability to expand and contract the infrastructure footprint of your application dynamically achieves the cost containment objectives.     Herve Roggero is a SQL Azure MVP and co-author of Pro SQL Azure (APress).  He is the co-founder of Blue Syntax Consulting (www.bluesyntax.net), a company focusing on cloud computing technologies helping customers understand and adopt cloud computing technologies. For more information contact herve at hroggero @ bluesyntax.net .

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• Canonicalization of single, small pages like reviews or product categories [SEO]

  - by Valorized

  In general I pretty much like the idea of canonicalization. And in most cases, Google explains possible procedures in a clear way. For example: If I have duplicates because of parameters (eg: &sort=desc) it's clear to use the canonical for the site, provided the within the head-tag. However I'm wondering how to handle "small - no to say thin content - sites". What's my definition of a small site? An Example: On one of my main sites, we use a directory based url-structure. Let's see: example.com/ (root) example.com/category-abc/ example.com/category-abc/produkt-xy/ Moreover we provide on page, that includes all products example.com/all-categories/ (lists all products the same way as in the categories) In case of reviews, we use a similar structure: example.com/reviews/product-xy/ shows all review for one certain product example.com/reviews/product-xy/abc-your-product-is-great/ shows one certain review example.com/reviews/ shows all reviews for all products (latest first) Let's make it even more complicated: On every product site, there are the latest 2 reviews at the end of the page. So you see, a lot of potential duplicates. Q1: Should I create canonicals for a: example.com/category-abc/ to example.com/all-categories/ b: example.com/reviews/product-xy/abc-your-product-is-great/ to example.com/reviews/product-xy/ or to example.com/review/ or none of them? Q2: Can I link the collection of categories (all-categories/) and collection of all reviews (reviews/ and reviews/product-xy/) to the single category respectively to the single review. Example: example.com/reviews/ includes - let's say - 100 reviews. Can I somehow use a markup that tells search engines: "Hey, wait, you are now looking at a collection of 100 reviews - do not index this collection, you should rather prefer indexing every single review as a single page!". In HTML it might be something like that (which - of course - does not work, it's only to show you what I mean): <div class="review" rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/reviews/product-xz/abc-your-product-is-great/">HERE GOES THE REVIEW</div> Reason: I don't think it is a great user experience if the user searches for "your product is great" and lands on example.com/reviews/ instead of example.com/reviews/product-xy/abc-your-product-is-great/. On the first site, he will have to search and might stop because of frustration. The second result, however, might lead to a conversion. The same applies for categories. If the user is searching for category-Z, he might land on the all-categories page and he has to scroll down to the (last) category, to find what he searched for (Z). So what's best practice? What should I do? Thank you for your help!

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• Securing User Account Details with MySQL

  - by Antoinette O'Sullivan

  Keeping user account details secure is always at the forefront of a Database Administrator's mind. However, users want to get up and running as soon as possible without complex login procedures. You can learn more about this and many other topics in the MySQL for Database Administrator course. For example, MySQL 5.6.6 introduced a new utility: mysql_config_editor, which makes secure access via MySQL client applications much easier to establish, while still providing a good measure of security. The mysql_config_editor stores a user's authentication details in an encrypted login file called mylogin.cnf. This login file is readable and writable for the user who invokes the utility, and invisible to everyone else. You can use it to collect all your hard-to-remember server locations and paswords safe in the knowledge that your passwords are never invoked using clear text. The MySQL for Database Administrators course is a 5-day instructor-led course which is available as a: Training-on-Demand: Start training within 24 hours of registration, following lecture material at your own pace through streaming video and booking time on a lab environment to suit your schedule. Live-Virtual Event: Attend a live event from your own desk, choosing from a selection of events on the schedule to suit different timezones. In-Class Event: Travel to an education center to attend this course. Below is a selection of the events already on the schedule. Location  Date  Delivery Language  Brisbane, Australia  18 August 2014  English  Brussels, Belgium  25 August 2014  English  Sao Paulo, Brazil  2 June 2014  Brazilian Portuguese  Cairo, Egypt  28 September 2014  Arabic  London, England  14 July 2014  English  Belfast, Ireland  15 September 2014  English  Dublin, Ireland  29 September 2014  English  Rome, Italy  16 June 2014  Italian  Seoul, Korea  9 June 2014  Korean  Petaling Jaya, Malaysia  16 June 2014  English  Utrecht, Netherlands  25 August 2014  English  Edinburgh, Scotland  26 June 2014  English  Madrid, Spain  6 October 2014  Spanish  Tunis, Tunisia  27 October 2014  French  Istanbul, Turkey  14 July 2014  Turkish To register for an event, request an additional event or learn more about the authentic MySQL curriculum, go to http://education.oracle.com/mysql. To read more about MySQL security, consult the MySQL Reference Manual - http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/security.html.

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• Viewing at Impossible Angles

  - by kemer

  The picture of the little screwdriver with the Allen wrench head to the right is bound to invoke a little nostalgia for those readers who were Sun customers in the late 80s. This tool was a very popular give-away: it was essential for installing and removing Multibus (you youngsters will have to look that up on Wikipedia…) cards in our systems. Back then our mid-sized systems were gargantuan: it was routine for us to schlep around a 200 lb. desk side box and 90 lb. monitor to demo a piece of software your smart phone will run better today. We were very close to the hardware, and the first thing a new field sales systems engineer had to learn was how put together a system. If you were lucky, a grizzled service engineer might run you through the process once, then threaten your health and existence should you ever screw it up so that he had to fix it. Nowadays we make it much easier to learn the ins and outs of our hardware with simulations–3D animations–that take you through the process of putting together or replacing pieces of a system. Most recently, we have posted three sophisticated PDFs that take advantage of Acrobat 9 features to provide a really intelligent approach to documenting hardware installation and repair: Sun Fire X4800/X4800 M2 Animations for Chassis Components Sun Fire X4800/X4800 M2 Animations for Sub Assembly Module (SAM) Sun Fire X4800/X4800 M2 Animations for CMOD Download one of these documents and take a close look at it. You can view the hardware from any angle, including impossible ones. Each document has a number of procedures, that break down into steps. Click on a procedure, then a step and you will see it animated in the drawing. Of course hardware design has generally eliminated the need for things like our old giveaway tools: components snap and lock in. Often you can replace redundant units while the system is hot, but for heaven’s sake, you’ll want to verify that you can do that before you try it! Meanwhile, we can all look forward to a growing portfolio of these intelligent documents. We would love to hear what you think about them. –Kemer

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• Customizing Flowcharts in Oracle Tutor

  - by [email protected]

  Today we're going to look at how you can customize the flowcharts within Oracle Tutor procedures, and how you can share those changes with other authors within your company. Here is an image of a flowchart within a Tutor procedure with the default size and color scheme. You may want to change the size of your flowcharts as your end-users might have larger screens or need larger fonts. To change the size and number of columns, navigate to Tutor Author Author Options Flowcharts. The default is to have 4 columns appear in each flowchart, but, if I change it to six, my end-users will see a denser flowchart. This might be too dense for my end-users, so I will change it to 5 columns, and I will also deselect the option to have separate task boxes. Now let's look at how to customize the colors. Within the Flowchart options dialog, there is a button labeled "Colors." This brings up a dialog box of every object on a Tutor flowchart, and I can modify the color of each object, as well as the text within the object. If I click on the background, the "page" object appears in the Item field, and now I can customize the color and the title text by selecting Select Fill Color and/or Select Text Color. A dialog box with color choices appears. If I select Define Custom Colors, I can make my selections even more precise. Each time I change the color of an object, it appears in the selection screen. When the flowchart customization is finished, I can save my changes by naming the scheme. Although the color scheme I have chosen is rather silly looking, perhaps I want others to give me their feedback and make changes as they wish. I can share the color scheme with them by copying the FCP.INI file in the Tutor\Author directory into the same directory on their systems. If the other users have color schemes that they do not want to lose, they can copy the relevant lines from the FCP.INI file into their file. If I flowchart my document with the new scheme, I can see how it looks within the document. Sometimes just one or two changes to the default scheme are enough to customize the flowchart to your company's color palette. I have seen customers who have only changed the Start object to green and the End object to red, and I've seen another customer who changed every object to some variant of black and orange. Experiment! And let us know how you have customized your flowcharts. Mary R. Keane Senior Development Director, Oracle Tutor

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• Canonicalization of single, small pages like reviews or product categories

  - by Valorized

  In general I pretty much like the idea of canonicalization. And in most cases, Google explains possible procedures in a clear way. For example: If I have duplicates because of parameters (eg: &sort=desc) it's clear to use the canonical for the site, provided the within the head-tag. However I'm wondering how to handle "small - no to say thin content - sites". What's my definition of a small site? An Example: On one of my main sites, we use a directory based url-structure. Let's see: example.com/ (root) example.com/category-abc/ example.com/category-abc/produkt-xy/ Moreover we provide on page, that includes all products example.com/all-categories/ (lists all products the same way as in the categories) In case of reviews, we use a similar structure: example.com/reviews/product-xy/ shows all review for one certain product example.com/reviews/product-xy/abc-your-product-is-great/ shows one certain review example.com/reviews/ shows all reviews for all products (latest first) Let's make it even more complicated: On every product site, there are the latest 2 reviews at the end of the page. So you see, a lot of potential duplicates. Q1: Should I create canonicals for a: example.com/category-abc/ to example.com/all-categories/ b: example.com/reviews/product-xy/abc-your-product-is-great/ to example.com/reviews/product-xy/ or to example.com/review/ or none of them? Q2: Can I link the collection of categories (all-categories/) and collection of all reviews (reviews/ and reviews/product-xy/) to the single category respectively to the single review. Example: example.com/reviews/ includes - let's say - 100 reviews. Can I somehow use a markup that tells search engines: "Hey, wait, you are now looking at a collection of 100 reviews - do not index this collection, you should rather prefer indexing every single review as a single page!". In HTML it might be something like that (which - of course - does not work, it's only to show you what I mean): <div class="review" rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/reviews/product-xz/abc-your-product-is-great/"> HERE GOES THE REVIEW</div> Reason: I don't think it is a great user experience if the user searches for "your product is great" and lands on example.com/reviews/ instead of example.com/reviews/product-xy/abc-your-product-is-great/. On the first site, he will have to search and might stop because of frustration. The second result, however, might lead to a conversion. The same applies for categories. If the user is searching for category-Z, he might land on the all-categories page and he has to scroll down to the (last) category, to find what he searched for (Z). So what's best practice? What should I do?

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• It's intellisense for SQL Server

  - by Nick Harrison

  It's intellisense for SQL Server Anyone who has ever worked with me, heard me speak, or read any of writings knows that I am a HUGE fan of Reflector.    By extension,  I am a big fan of Red - Gate   I have recently begun exploring some of their other offerings and came across this jewel. SQL Prompt is a plug in for Visual Studio and SQL Server Management Studio.    It provides several tools to make dealing with SQL a little easier for your friendly neighborhood developer. When you a query window in a database, the plugin kicks in and gathers the metadata for the database that you are in.    As you type a query, you get handy feedback like a list of tables after you type select.    You can select one of the tables, specify * and then tab to expand the select clause to include all of the columns from the selected table.    As you are building up the where clause, you are prompted by the names of columns in the selected tables. If you spend any time writing ad hoc queries or building stored procedures by hand, this can save you substantial time. If you are learning a new data model, this can greatly cut down on your frustration level. The other really cool thing here is Format SQL.   I have searched all over the place for a really good SQL formatter.    Badly formatted  SQL is so much harder to read than well formatted SQL.   Unfortunately, management studio offers no support for keeping your SQL well formatted.    There are many tools available to format your SQL.   Some work better than others.    Some don't work that well at all.   Most will give you some measure of control over how the formatted SQL looks.    SQL Prompt produces good results and is easy to configure. Sadly no tool is perfect, and what would we be without a wish list.    There are some features that I would like to see: Make it easier to paste SQL in and out of code.    Strip off string builder, etc Automate replacing hard coded values with bind variables or parameters In addition to reformatting SQL, which is a huge refactor, support for other SQL refactors would be nice.    Convert join to sub query and vice versa come to mind Wish list a side, this is a wonderful tool that easily saves me an hour or more on most weeks.

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• Unable to boot Ubuntu 13.10 (nVidia GTX 770m and Intel HD 4600)

  - by Raziel Gonzalez

  Ever since I bought this laptop I've been trying to install Ubuntu on it. It came with W8 preinstalled. Up to this point, I've been able to boot in UEFI mode with a black screen. I can tell it's trying to use the nVidia card (there's a led on the computer, depending on the color you can tell which GPU is using) and if I press crtl+alt+F1 I can go to console mode. Taking this advantage I tried to install bumblebee and after a successful install the led that indicates which GPU is being used change, indicating that it switched to the Intel HD 4600 graphics. After the installation I tried to initiate the graphic interface (startx) with no success. Xorg.0.log shows the error: [ 3706.779] X.Org X Server 1.14.3 Release Date: 2013-09-12 [ 3706.782] X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0 [ 3706.783] Build Operating System: Linux 3.2.0-37-generic x86_64 Ubuntu [ 3706.783] Current Operating System: Linux ubuntu 3.11.0-12-generic #19-Ubuntu SMP Wed Oct 9 16:20:46 UTC 2013 x86_64 [ 3706.783] Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/casper/vmlinuz.efi file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper nomodeset -- [ 3706.785] Build Date: 15 October 2013 09:23:37AM [ 3706.786] xorg-server 2:1.14.3-3ubuntu2 (For technical support please see http://www.ubuntu.com/support) [ 3706.786] Current version of pixman: 0.30.2 [ 3706.788] Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org to make sure that you have the latest version. [ 3706.788] Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting, (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational, (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown. [ 3706.791] (==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Sat Nov 2 12:28:52 2013 [ 3706.792] (==) Using system config directory "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d" [ 3706.792] (==) No Layout section. Using the first Screen section. [ 3706.792] (==) No screen section available. Using defaults. [ 3706.792] (**) |-->Screen "Default Screen Section" (0) [ 3706.792] (**) | |-->Monitor "<default monitor>" [ 3706.792] (==) No monitor specified for screen "Default Screen Section". Using a default monitor configuration. [ 3706.792] (==) Automatically adding devices [ 3706.792] (==) Automatically enabling devices [ 3706.792] (==) Automatically adding GPU devices [ 3706.792] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic" does not exist. [ 3706.792] Entry deleted from font path. [ 3706.792] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/" does not exist. [ 3706.792] Entry deleted from font path. [ 3706.792] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/" does not exist. [ 3706.792] Entry deleted from font path. [ 3706.792] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi" does not exist. [ 3706.792] Entry deleted from font path. [ 3706.792] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi" does not exist. [ 3706.792] Entry deleted from font path. [ 3706.792] (==) FontPath set to: /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc, /usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1, built-ins [ 3706.792] (==) ModulePath set to "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xorg/extra-modules,/usr/lib/xorg/extra-modules,/usr/lib/xorg/modules" [ 3706.792] (II) The server relies on udev to provide the list of input devices. If no devices become available, reconfigure udev or disable AutoAddDevices. [ 3706.792] (II) Loader magic: 0x7ff680918d20 [ 3706.792] (II) Module ABI versions: [ 3706.792] X.Org ANSI C Emulation: 0.4 [ 3706.792] X.Org Video Driver: 14.1 [ 3706.792] X.Org XInput driver : 19.1 [ 3706.792] X.Org Server Extension : 7.0 [ 3706.793] (--) PCI:*(0:0:2:0) 8086:0416:1462:10e8 rev 6, Mem @ 0xf7400000/4194304, 0xb0000000/268435456, I/O @ 0x0000f000/64 [ 3706.793] (II) Open ACPI successful (/var/run/acpid.socket) [ 3706.794] Initializing built-in extension Generic Event Extension [ 3706.795] Initializing built-in extension SHAPE [ 3706.796] Initializing built-in extension MIT-SHM [ 3706.797] Initializing built-in extension XInputExtension [ 3706.797] Initializing built-in extension XTEST [ 3706.798] Initializing built-in extension BIG-REQUESTS [ 3706.799] Initializing built-in extension SYNC [ 3706.799] Initializing built-in extension XKEYBOARD [ 3706.800] Initializing built-in extension XC-MISC [ 3706.801] Initializing built-in extension SECURITY [ 3706.802] Initializing built-in extension XINERAMA [ 3706.802] Initializing built-in extension XFIXES [ 3706.803] Initializing built-in extension RENDER [ 3706.804] Initializing built-in extension RANDR [ 3706.804] Initializing built-in extension COMPOSITE [ 3706.805] Initializing built-in extension DAMAGE [ 3706.806] Initializing built-in extension MIT-SCREEN-SAVER [ 3706.806] Initializing built-in extension DOUBLE-BUFFER [ 3706.807] Initializing built-in extension RECORD [ 3706.807] Initializing built-in extension DPMS [ 3706.808] Initializing built-in extension X-Resource [ 3706.809] Initializing built-in extension XVideo [ 3706.809] Initializing built-in extension XVideo-MotionCompensation [ 3706.810] Initializing built-in extension SELinux [ 3706.811] Initializing built-in extension XFree86-VidModeExtension [ 3706.811] Initializing built-in extension XFree86-DGA [ 3706.812] Initializing built-in extension XFree86-DRI [ 3706.812] Initializing built-in extension DRI2 [ 3706.812] (II) "glx" will be loaded by default. [ 3706.812] (WW) "xmir" is not to be loaded by default. Skipping. [ 3706.812] (II) LoadModule: "dri2" [ 3706.812] (II) Module "dri2" already built-in [ 3706.812] (II) LoadModule: "glamoregl" [ 3706.813] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libglamoregl.so [ 3706.813] (II) Module glamoregl: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 3706.813] compiled for 1.14.2.901, module version = 0.5.1 [ 3706.813] ABI class: X.Org ANSI C Emulation, version 0.4 [ 3706.813] (II) LoadModule: "glx" [ 3706.813] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/libglx.so [ 3706.813] (II) Module glx: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 3706.813] compiled for 1.14.3, module version = 1.0.0 [ 3706.813] ABI class: X.Org Server Extension, version 7.0 [ 3706.813] (==) AIGLX enabled [ 3706.814] Loading extension GLX [ 3706.814] (==) Matched intel as autoconfigured driver 0 [ 3706.814] (==) Matched vesa as autoconfigured driver 1 [ 3706.814] (==) Matched modesetting as autoconfigured driver 2 [ 3706.814] (==) Matched fbdev as autoconfigured driver 3 [ 3706.814] (==) Assigned the driver to the xf86ConfigLayout [ 3706.814] (II) LoadModule: "intel" [ 3706.814] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/intel_drv.so [ 3706.814] (II) Module intel: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 3706.814] compiled for 1.14.3, module version = 2.99.904 [ 3706.814] Module class: X.Org Video Driver [ 3706.814] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 14.1 [ 3706.814] (II) LoadModule: "vesa" [ 3706.814] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/vesa_drv.so [ 3706.814] (II) Module vesa: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 3706.814] compiled for 1.14.1, module version = 2.3.2 [ 3706.814] Module class: X.Org Video Driver [ 3706.814] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 14.1 [ 3706.814] (II) LoadModule: "modesetting" [ 3706.814] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/modesetting_drv.so [ 3706.814] (II) Module modesetting: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 3706.814] compiled for 1.14.1, module version = 0.8.0 [ 3706.814] Module class: X.Org Video Driver [ 3706.814] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 14.1 [ 3706.814] (II) LoadModule: "fbdev" [ 3706.814] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/fbdev_drv.so [ 3706.815] (II) Module fbdev: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 3706.815] compiled for 1.14.1, module version = 0.4.3 [ 3706.815] Module class: X.Org Video Driver [ 3706.815] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 14.1 [ 3706.815] (II) intel: Driver for Intel(R) Integrated Graphics Chipsets: i810, i810-dc100, i810e, i815, i830M, 845G, 854, 852GM/855GM, 865G, 915G, E7221 (i915), 915GM, 945G, 945GM, 945GME, Pineview GM, Pineview G, 965G, G35, 965Q, 946GZ, 965GM, 965GME/GLE, G33, Q35, Q33, GM45, 4 Series, G45/G43, Q45/Q43, G41, B43, HD Graphics, HD Graphics 2000, HD Graphics 3000, HD Graphics 2500, HD Graphics 4000, HD Graphics P4000, HD Graphics 4600, HD Graphics 5000, HD Graphics P4600/P4700, Iris(TM) Graphics 5100, HD Graphics 4400, HD Graphics 4200, Iris(TM) Pro Graphics 5200 [ 3706.815] (II) VESA: driver for VESA chipsets: vesa [ 3706.815] (II) modesetting: Driver for Modesetting Kernel Drivers: kms [ 3706.815] (II) FBDEV: driver for framebuffer: fbdev [ 3706.815] (--) using VT number 7 [ 3706.819] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for modesetting [ 3706.819] (EE) open /dev/dri/card0: No such file or directory [ 3706.819] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fbdev [ 3706.819] (II) Loading sub module "fbdevhw" [ 3706.819] (II) LoadModule: "fbdevhw" [ 3706.819] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libfbdevhw.so [ 3706.819] (II) Module fbdevhw: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 3706.819] compiled for 1.14.3, module version = 0.0.2 [ 3706.819] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 14.1 [ 3706.819] (II) Loading sub module "vbe" [ 3706.819] (II) LoadModule: "vbe" [ 3706.819] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libvbe.so [ 3706.819] (II) Module vbe: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 3706.819] compiled for 1.14.3, module version = 1.1.0 [ 3706.819] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 14.1 [ 3706.819] (II) Loading sub module "int10" [ 3706.819] (II) LoadModule: "int10" [ 3706.819] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libint10.so [ 3706.819] (II) Module int10: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 3706.819] compiled for 1.14.3, module version = 1.0.0 [ 3706.819] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 14.1 [ 3706.819] (II) VESA(0): initializing int10 [ 3706.820] (EE) VESA(0): V_BIOS address 0x0 out of range [ 3706.820] (II) UnloadModule: "vesa" [ 3706.820] (II) UnloadSubModule: "int10" [ 3706.820] (II) Unloading int10 [ 3706.820] (II) UnloadSubModule: "vbe" [ 3706.820] (II) Unloading vbe [ 3706.820] (EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration. [ 3706.820] (EE) Fatal server error: [ 3706.820] (EE) no screens found(EE) [ 3706.820] (EE) Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support at http://wiki.x.org for help. [ 3706.820] (EE) Please also check the log file at "/var/log/Xorg.0.log" for additional information. [ 3706.820] (EE) [ 3706.827] (EE) Server terminated with error (1). Closing log file. I also saved the dsmeg output to see if it can be of any help. In order to be able to get to this stage I had to boot with nomodeset option and removed quiet and splash. Anyone got this same error? Any guidance? I've tried other linux distros and so far the only one that is able to boot is Opensuse 12.3 without any issues (but only when I switch to legacy mode instead of UEFI).

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• How to Never Use iTunes With Your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch

  - by Chris Hoffman

  iTunes isn’t an amazing program on Windows. There was a time when Apple device users had to plug their devices into their PCs or Macs and use iTunes for device activation, updates, and syncing, but iTunes is no longer necessary. Apple still allows you to use iTunes for these things, but you don’t have to. Your iOS device can function independently from iTunes, so you should never be forced to plug it into a PC or Mac. Device Activation When the iPad first came out, it was touted as a device that could replace full PCs and Macs for people who only needed to perform light computing tasks. Yet, to set up a new iPad, users had to plug it into a PC or Mac running iTunes and use iTunes to activate the device. This is no longer necessary. With new iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches, you can simply go through the setup process after turning on your new device without ever having to plug it into iTunes. Just connect to a Wi-Fi or cellular data network and log in with your Apple ID when prompted. You’ll still see an option that allows you to activate the device via iTunes, but this should only be necessary if you don’t have a wireless Internet connection available for your device. Operating System Updates You no longer have to use Apple’s iTunes software to update to a new version of Apple’s iOS operating system, either. Just open the Settings app on your device, select the General category, and tap Software Update. You’ll be able to update right from your device without ever opening iTunes. Purchased iTunes Media Apple allows you to easily access content you’ve purchased from the iTunes Store on any device. You don’t have to connect your device to your computer and sync via iTunes. For example, you can purchase a movie from the iTunes Store. Then, without any syncing, you can open the iTunes Store app on any of your iOS devices, tap the Purchased section, and see stuff you’ve downloaded. You can download the content right from the store to your device. This also works for apps — apps you purchase from the App Store can be accessed in the Purchased section on the App Store on your device later. You don’t have to sync apps from iTunes to your device, although iTunes still allows you to. You can even set up automatic downloads from the iTunes & App Store settings screen. This would allow you to purchase content on one device and have it automatically download to your other devices without any hassle. Music Apple allows you to re-download purchased music from the iTunes Store in the same way. However, there’s a good chance you have your own music you didn’t purchase from iTunes. Maybe you spent time ripping it all from your old CDs and you’ve been syncing it to your devices via iTunes ever since. Apple’s solution for this is named iTunes Match. This feature isn’t free, but it’s not a bad deal at all. For $25 per year, Apple allows you to upload all your music to your iCloud account. You can then access all your music from any iPhone, IPad, or iPod Touch. You can stream all your music — perfect if you have a huge library and little storage on your device — and choose which songs you want to download to your device for offline use. When you add additional music to your computer, iTunes will notice it and upload it using iTunes Match, making it available for streaming and downloading directly from your iOS devices without any syncing. This feature is named iTunes Match because it doesn’t just upload music — if Apple already has a song you upload, it will “match” your song with Apple’s copy. This means you may get higher-quality versions of your songs if you ripped them from CD at a lower bitrate. Podcasts You don’t have to use iTunes to subscribe to podcasts and sync them to your devices. Even if you have a lowly iPod Touch, you can install APple’s Podcasts app from the app store. Use it to subscribe to podcasts and configure them to automatically download directly to your device. You can use other podcast apps for this, too. Backups You can continue backing up your device’s data through iTunes, generating local backups that are stored on your computer. However, new iOS devices are configured to automatically back up their data to iCloud. This happens automatically in the background without you even having to think about it, and you can restore such backups when setting up a device simply by logging in with your Apple ID. Personal Data In the days of PalmPilots, people would use desktop programs like iTunes to sync their email, contacts, and calendar events with their mobile devices. You probably shouldn’t have to sync this data form your computer. Just sign into your email account — for example, a Gmail account — on your device and iOS will automatically pull your email, contacts, and calendar events from your associated account. Photos Rather than connecting your iOS device to your computer and syncing photos from it, you can use an app that automatically uploads your photos to a web service. Dropbox, Google+, and even Flickr all have this feature in their apps. You’ll be able to access your photos from any computer and have a backup copy without any syncing required. You may still need to use iTunes if you want to sync local music without paying for iTunes Match or copy local video files to your device. Copying large local files over is the only real scenario where you’d need iTunes. If you don’t need to copy such files over, you can go ahead and uninstall iTunes from your Windows PC if you like. You shouldn’t need it.     

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• SQL SERVER – Template Browser – A Very Important and Useful Feature of SSMS

  - by pinaldave

  Let me start today’s blog post with a direction question. How many of you have ever used Template Browser? Template Browser is a very important and useful feature of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). Every time when I am talking about SQL Server there is always someone comes up with the question, why there is no step by step procedure included in SSMS for features. Honestly every time I get this question, the question I ask back is How many of you have ever used Template Browser? I think the answer to this question is most of the time either no or we have not heard of the feature. One of the people asked me back – have you ever written about it on your blog? I have not yet written about it. Basically there is nothing much to write about it. It is pretty straight forward feature, like any other feature and it is indeed difficult to elaborate. However, I will try to give a quick introduction to this feature. Templates are like a quick cheat sheet or quick reference. Templates are available to create objects like databases, tables, views, indexes, stored procedures, triggers, statistics, and functions. Templates are also available for Analysis Services as well. The template scripts contain parameters to help you customize the code. You can Replace Template Parameters dialog box to insert values into the script. Additionally users can create new custom templates as well with folder structure. To open a template from Template Explorer Go to View menu >> Template Explorer or type CTRL+ALT+L. You will find a list of categories click on any category and expand the folder structure. For our sample example let us expand Index Folder. In this folder you will notice the various T-SQL Scripts. These scripts can be opened by double click or can be dragged to editor area and modified as needed. Sample template is now available in the query editor area with all the necessary parameter place folder. You can replace the same parameter by typing either CTRL+SHIFT+M or by going to Query Menu >> Specify Values for Template Parameters. In this screen it will show  Specify Values for Template Parameters dialog box, accept the value or replace it with a new value. This will now get your script ready to go. Check it one more time and change the script to fit your requirement. I personally use template explorer for two things. First one is obviously for templates but the hidden one and an important one is for learning new features and T-SQL commands. There is so much to learn and so little time. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Unit Testing TSQL

  - by Grant Fritchey

  I went through a period of time where I spent a lot of effort figuring out how to set up unit tests for TSQL. It wasn't easy. There are a few tools out there that help, but mostly it involves lots of programming. well, not as much as before. Thanks to the latest Down Tools Week at Red Gate a new utility has been built and released into the wild, SQL Test. Like a lot of the new tools coming out of Red Gate these days, this one is directly integrated into SSMS, which means you're working where you're comfortable and where you already have lots of tools at your disposal. After the install, when you launch SSMS and get connected, you're prompted to install the tSQLt example database. Go for it. It's a quick way to see how the tool works. I'd suggest using it. It' gives you a quick leg up. The concepts are pretty straight forward. There are a series of CLR commands that you use to configure a test and the test assertions. In between you're calling TSQL, either calls to your structure, queries, or stored procedures. They already have the one things that I always found wanting in database tests, a way to compare tables of results. I also like the ability to create a dummy copy of tables for the tests. It lets you control structures and behaviors so that the tests are more focused. One of the issues I always ran into with the other testing tools is that setting up the tests might require potentially destructive changes to the structure of the database (dropping FKs, etc.) which added lots of time and effort to setting up the tests, making testing more difficult, and therefor, less useful. Functionally, this is pretty similar to the Visual Studio tests and TSQLUnit tests that I used to use. The primary improvement over the Visual Studio tests is that I'm working in SSMS instead of Visual Studio. The primary improvement over TSQLUnit is the SQL Test interface it self. A lot of the functionality is the same, but having a sweet little tool to manage & run the tests from makes a huge difference. Oh, and don't worry. You can still run these tests directly from TSQL too, so automation has not gone away. I'm still thinking about how I'd use this in a dev environment where I also had source control to fret. That might be another blog post right there. I'm just getting started with SQL Test, so this is the first of several blog posts & videos. Watch this space. Try the tool.

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• Oracle at ASMC PDI 2012

  - by jeffrey.waterman

  Recently, I had the pleasure of representing Oracle at the American Society of Military Comptrollers National Professional Development Institute (PDI).  The PDI is the premier training event for resource managers in the Department of Defense and US Coast Guard.  Each year they assemble top presenters and key note speakers to convey their experiences and share the upcoming goals and vision for the Defense Department's financial and resource management community.  This year, the common themes were centered around 'auditability' and 'efficiency'.   What is auditability?  There were many definitions/themes tossed around, but to summarize my notes, it boiled down to:- the proper tracking of funds- audit readiness- proper controls- proper documentation There were sessions regarding entire programs focused on the need for auditability.  For example, FIAR: Financial Improvement and Audit Readiness (http://comptroller.defense.gov/fiar/index.html)   The FIAR stresses the "...improve(ment of) the Department's financial processes, controls and information." The entire conference, one set of solutions kept popping into my head around, "how can Oracle's solutions assist the Department of Defense", or any other Federal Agency, improve their financial processes and controls?   One answer came to mind:  Oracle Governance, Risk, and Compliance Management. Commonly referred to as "GRC". Let me summarize the main components around Oracle's GRC solution: GRC Manager: This solution is the central repository for documenting business processes, policies, and established controls.  All identified risks and issues are documented within the repository as well as action plans necessary for mitigation. GRC Controls:  This solution consists of a set of tools which are embedded with your ERP (financial, human resource, supply chain, etc.) applications to detect, prevent, and/or enforce the policies and procedures established by your Agency.  Components of the solution include:- Application Access Control Governor: a robust tool for managing application roles and responsibilities; simplify segregation of duty maintenance- Configuration Controls Governor: complete audit trail for changes made to configurations- Transactions Control Governor: track violations of internal controls; alert management to suspicious activities; be warned when high dollar transactions are occurring on an irregular basis; - Preventative Controls Governor: prevent sensitive information from being viewed by unauthorized parties; enforce field, block, and form change control If you are in the financial or resource management community and are concerned about auditability within your organization I suggest you follow up this post by reading about Oracle's GRC solutions.  www.oracle.com/grc Please feel free to follow up with thought and questions in the comments section below.  Also, if you have a topic you would like addressed in this blog, just drop me a note at [email protected]  or leave the suggestion in the comment section as well. Thank you for reading.

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• Introducing Oracle Retail Mobile Point-of-Service

  - by user801960

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Oracle recently announced the introduction of Oracle Retail Mobile Point-of-Service, a mobile extension to the Oracle Retail Point-of-Service (POS) used by many retailers internationally. Oracle Retail Mobile POS offers wide ranging cost and efficiency benefits by allowing staff resource to be used more effectively whilst also reducing spend associated with fixed POS solutions. For retailers utilising Oracle Retail Stores Solutions, additional benefits can be realised. Oracle Retail Mobile POS works with these solutions to allow store personnel to check in-store inventory, access product information and specifications, and perform tasks such as the printing or emailing of receipts and the activation of gift cards.  As Oracle Retail Mobile POS is an extension of Oracle Retail Point-of-Service, retailers can benefit from seamless integration with existing systems, simple upgrade procedures and seamless delivery across the business. However, the solution’s scalable and flexible architecture also supports multiple mobile operators and systems, so retailers are not locked into particular vendors. As well as being popular with retailers, Mobile POS has also proved to be well liked by consumers as it facilitates improved customer service levels. Retail staff are able to spend more time with consumers on the shop floor, access requested inventory information, and perform tasks that would traditionally have needed to be completed at a fixed cash register. Additional information can be accessed on Oracle Retail Point-of-Service or read the press announcement Oracle Introduces Mobile Point-of-Service for Retailers. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE

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• Northwind now available on SQL Azure

  - by jamiet

  Two weeks ago I made available a copy of [AdventureWorks2012] on SQL Azure and published credentials so that anyone from the SQL community could connect up and experience SQL Azure, probably for the first time. One of the (somewhat) popular requests thereafter was to make the venerable Northwind database available too so I am pleased to say that as of right now, Northwind is up there too. You will notice immediately that all of the Northwind tables (and the stored procedures and views too) have been moved into a schema called [Northwind] – this was so that they could be easily differentiated from the existing [AdventureWorks2012] objects. I used an SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) project to publish the schema and data up to this SQL Azure database; if you are at all interested in poking around that SSDT project then I have made it available on Codeplex for your convenience under the MS-PL license – go and get it from https://northwindssdt.codeplex.com/. Using SSDT proved particularly useful as it alerted me to some aspects of Northwind that were not compatible with SQL Azure, namely that five of the tables did not have clustered indexes: The beauty of using SSDT is that I am alerted to these issues before I even attempt a connection to SQL Azure. Pretty cool, no? Fixing this situation was of course very easy, I simply changed the following primary keys from being nonclustered to clustered: [PK_Region] [PK_CustomerDemographics] [PK_EmployeeTerritories] [PK_Territories] [PK_CustomerCustomerDemo]   If you want to connect up then here are the credentials that you will need: Server mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net Database AdventureWorks2012 User sqlfamily Password sqlf@m1ly You will need SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 2008R2 installed in order to connect or alternatively simply use this handy website: https://mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net which provides a web interface to a SQL Azure server. Do remember that hosting this database is not free so if you find that you are making use of it please help to keep it available by visiting Paypal and donating any amount at all to [email protected]. To make this easy you can simply hit this link and the details will be completed for you – all you have to do is login and hit the “Send” button. If you are already a PayPal member then it should take you all of about 20 seconds! I hope this is useful to some of you folks out there. Don’t forget that we also have more data up there than in the conventional [AdventureWorks2012], read more at Big AdventureWorks2012. @Jamiet  AdventureWorks on Azure - Provided by the SQL Server community, for the SQL Server community!

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• Orchestrating the Virtual Enterprise

  - by John Murphy

  During the American Industrial Revolution, the Ford Motor Company did it all. It turned raw materials into a showroom full of Model Ts. It owned a steel mill, a glass factory, and an automobile assembly line. The company was both self-sufficient and innovative and went on to become one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world. Nowadays, it's unusual for any business to follow this vertical integration model because its much harder to be best in class across such a wide a range of capabilities and services. Instead, businesses focus on their core competencies and outsource other business functions to specialized suppliers. They exchange vertical integration for collaboration. When done well, all parties benefit from this arrangement and the collaboration leads to the creation of an agile, lean and successful "virtual enterprise." Case in point: For Sun hardware, Oracle outsources most of its manufacturing and all of its logistics to third parties. These are vital activities, but ones where Oracle doesn't have a core competency, so we shift them to business partners who do. Within our enterprise, we always retain the core functions of product development, support, and most of the sales function, because that's what constitutes our core value to our customers. This is a perfect example of a virtual enterprise.  What are the implications of this? It means that we must exchange direct internal control for indirect external collaboration. This fundamentally changes the relative importance of different business processes, the boundaries of security and information sharing, and the relationship of the supply chain systems to the ERP. The challenge is that the systems required to support this virtual paradigm are still mired in "island enterprise" thinking. But help is at hand. Developments such as the Web, social networks, collaboration, and rules-based orchestration offer great potential to fundamentally re-architect supply chain systems to better support the virtual enterprise.  Supply Chain Management Systems in a Virtual Enterprise Historically enterprise software was constructed to automate the ERP - and then the supply chain systems extended the ERP. They were joined at the hip. In virtual enterprises, the supply chain system needs to be ERP agnostic, sitting above each of the ERPs that are distributed across the virtual enterprise - most of which are operating in other businesses. This is vital so that the supply chain system can manage the flow of material and the related information through the multiple enterprises. It has to have strong collaboration tools. It needs to be highly flexible. Users need to be able to see information that's coming from multiple sources and be able to react and respond to events across those sources.  Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO) is a perfect example of a supply chain system designed to operate in this virtual way. DOO embraces the idea that a company's fulfillment challenge is a distributed, multi-enterprise problem. It enables users to manage the process and the trading partners in a uniform way and deliver a consistent user experience while operating over a heterogeneous, virtual enterprise. This is a fundamental shift at the core of managing supply chains. It forces virtual enterprises to think architecturally about how best to construct their supply chain systems.  Case in point, almost everyone has ordered from Amazon.com at one time or another. Our orders are as likely to be fulfilled by third parties as they are by Amazon itself. To deliver the order promptly and efficiently, Amazon has to send it to the right fulfillment location and know the availability in that location. It needs to be able to track status of the fulfillment and deal with exceptions. As a virtual enterprise, Amazon's operations, using thousands of trading partners, requires a very different approach to fulfillment than the traditional 'take an order and ship it from your own warehouse' model. Amazon had no choice but to develop a complex, expensive and custom solution to tackle this problem as there used to be no product solution available. Now, other companies who want to follow similar models have a better off-the-shelf choice -- Oracle Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO).  Consider how another of our customers is using our distributed orchestration solution. This major airplane manufacturer has a highly complex business and interacts regularly with the U.S. Government and major airlines. It sits in the middle of an intricate supply chain and needed to improve visibility across its many different entities. Oracle Fusion DOO gives the company an orchestration mechanism so it could improve quality, speed, flexibility, and consistency without requiring an organ transplant of these highly complex legacy systems. Many retailers face the challenge of dealing with brick and mortar, Web, and reseller channels. They all need to be knitted together into a virtual enterprise experience that is consistent for their customers. When a large U.K. grocer with a strong brick and mortar retail operation added an online business, they turned to Oracle Fusion DOO to bring these entities together. Disturbing the Peace with Acquisitions Quite often a company's ERP system is disrupted when it acquires a new company. An acquisition can inject a new set of processes and systems -- or even introduce an entirely new business like Sun's hardware did at Oracle. This challenge has been a driver for some of our DOO customers. A large power management company is using Oracle Fusion DOO to provide the flexibility to rapidly integrate additional products and services into its central fulfillment operation. The Flip Side of Fulfillment Meanwhile, we haven't ignored similar challenges on the supply side of the equation. Specifically, how to manage complex supply in a flexible way when there are multiple trading parties involved? How to manage the supply to suppliers? How to manage critical components that need to merge in a tier two or tier three supply chain? By investing in supply orchestration solutions for the virtual enterprise, we plan to give users better visibility into their network of suppliers to help them drive down costs. We also think this technology and full orchestration process can be applied to the financial side of organizations. An example is transactions that flow through complex internal structures to minimize tax exposure. We can help companies manage those transactions effectively by thinking about the internal organization as a virtual enterprise and bringing the same solution set to this internal challenge.  The Clear Front Runner No other company is investing in solving the virtual enterprise supply chain issues like Oracle is. Oracle is in a unique position to become the gold standard in this market space. We have the infrastructure of Oracle technology. We already have an Oracle Fusion DOO application which embraces the best of what's required in this area. And we're absolutely committed to extending our Fusion solution to other use cases and delivering even more business value.

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• The most dangerous SQL Script in the world!

  - by DrJohn

  In my last blog entry, I outlined how to automate SQL Server database builds from concatenated SQL Scripts. However, I did not mention how I ensure the database is clean before I rebuild it. Clearly a simple DROP/CREATE DATABASE command would suffice; but you may not have permission to execute such commands, especially in a corporate environment controlled by a centralised DBA team. However, you should at least have database owner permissions on the development database so you can actually do your job! Then you can employ my universal "drop all" script which will clear down your database before you run your SQL Scripts to rebuild all the database objects. Why start with a clean database? During the development process, it is all too easy to leave old objects hanging around in the database which can have unforeseen consequences. For example, when you rename a table you may forget to delete the old table and change all the related views to use the new table. Clearly this will mean an end-user querying the views will get the wrong data and your reputation will take a nose dive as a result! Starting with a clean, empty database and then building all your database objects using SQL Scripts using the technique outlined in my previous blog means you know exactly what you have in your database. The database can then be repopulated using SSIS and bingo; you have a data mart "to go". My universal "drop all" SQL Script To ensure you start with a clean database run my universal "drop all" script which you can download from here: 100_drop_all.zip By using the database catalog views, the script finds and drops all of the following database objects: Foreign key relationships Stored procedures Triggers Database triggers Views Tables Functions Partition schemes Partition functions XML Schema Collections Schemas Types Service broker services Service broker queues Service broker contracts Service broker message types SQLCLR assemblies There are two optional sections to the script: drop users and drop roles. You may use these at your peril, particularly as you may well remove your own permissions! Note that the script has a verbose mode which displays the SQL commands it is executing. This can be switched on by setting @debug=1. Running this script against one of the system databases is certainly not recommended! So I advise you to keep a USE database statement at the top of the file. Good luck and be careful!!

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• Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness and Capacity Assessment for SQL Server

  - by SQLOS Team

  Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness and Capacity Assessment for Windows Server Machine Running SQL Server With the release of MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta, we have added a new scenario to assess your Windows Azure Virtual Machine Readiness. The MAP 8.0 Beta performs a comprehensive assessment of Windows Servers running SQL Server to determine you level of readiness to migrate an on-premise physical or virtual machine to Windows Azure Virtual Machines. The MAP Toolkit then offers suggested changes to prepare the machines for migration, such as upgrading the operating system or SQL Server. MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta is available for download here Your participation and feedback is very important to make the MAP Toolkit work better for you. We encourage you to participate in the beta program and provide your feedback at [email protected] or through one of our surveys. Now, let’s walk through the MAP Toolkit task for completing the Windows Azure Virtual Machine assessment and capacity planning. The tasks include the following: Perform an inventory View the Windows Azure VM Readiness results and report Collect performance data for determine VM sizing View the Windows Azure Capacity results and report Perform an inventory: 1. To perform an inventory against a single machine or across a complete environment, choose Perform an Inventory to launch the Inventory and Assessment Wizard as shown below: 2. After the Inventory and Assessment Wizard launches, select either the Windows computers or SQL Server scenario to inventory Windows machines. HINT: If you don’t care about completely inventorying a machine, just select the SQL Server scenario. Click Next to Continue. 3. On the Discovery Methods page, select how you want to discover computers and then click Next to continue. Description of Discovery Methods: Use Active Directory Domain Services -- This method allows you to query a domain controller via the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and select computers in all or specific domains, containers, or OUs. Use this method if all computers and devices are in AD DS. Windows networking protocols --  This method uses the WIN32 LAN Manager application programming interfaces to query the Computer Browser service for computers in workgroups and Windows NT 4.0–based domains. If the computers on the network are not joined to an Active Directory domain, use only the Windows networking protocols option to find computers. System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) -- This method enables you to inventory computers managed by System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). You need to provide credentials to the System Center Configuration Manager server in order to inventory the managed computers. When you select this option, the MAP Toolkit will query SCCM for a list of computers and then MAP will connect to these computers. Scan an IP address range -- This method allows you to specify the starting address and ending address of an IP address range. The wizard will then scan all IP addresses in the range and inventory only those computers. Note: This option can perform poorly, if many IP addresses aren’t being used within the range. Manually enter computer names and credentials -- Use this method if you want to inventory a small number of specific computers. Import computer names from a files -- Using this method, you can create a text file with a list of computer names that will be inventoried. 4. On the All Computers Credentials page, enter the accounts that have administrator rights to connect to the discovered machines. This does not need to a domain account, but needs to be a local administrator. I have entered my domain account that is an administrator on my local machine. Click Next after one or more accounts have been added. NOTE: The MAP Toolkit primarily uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to collect hardware, device, and software information from the remote computers. In order for the MAP Toolkit to successfully connect and inventory computers in your environment, you have to configure your machines to inventory through WMI and also allow your firewall to enable remote access through WMI. The MAP Toolkit also requires remote registry access for certain assessments. In addition to enabling WMI, you need accounts with administrative privileges to access desktops and servers in your environment. 5. On the Credentials Order page, select the order in which want the MAP Toolkit to connect to the machine and SQL Server. Generally just accept the defaults and click Next. 6. On the Enter Computers Manually page, click Create to pull up at dialog to enter one or more computer names. 7. On the Summary page confirm your settings and then click Finish. After clicking Finish the inventory process will start, as shown below: Windows Azure Readiness results and report After the inventory progress has completed, you can review the results under the Database scenario. On the tile, you will see the number of Windows Server machine with SQL Server that were analyzed, the number of machines that are ready to move without changes and the number of machines that require further changes. If you click this Azure VM Readiness tile, you will see additional details and can generate the Windows Azure VM Readiness Report. After the report is generated, select View | Saved Reports and Proposals to view the location of the report. Open up WindowsAzureVMReadiness* report in Excel. On the Windows tab, you can see the results of the assessment. This report has a column for the Operating System and SQL Server assessment and provides a recommendation on how to resolve, if there a component is not supported. Collect Performance Data Launch the Performance Wizard to collect performance information for the Windows Server machines that you would like the MAP Toolkit to suggest a Windows Azure VM size for. Windows Azure Capacity results and report After the performance metrics are collected, the Azure VM Capacity title will display the number of Virtual Machine sizes that are suggested for the Windows Server and Linux machines that were analyzed. You can then click on the Azure VM Capacity tile to see the capacity details and generate the Windows Azure VM Capacity Report. Within this report, you can view the performance data that was collected and the Virtual Machine sizes.   MAP Toolkit 8.0 Beta is available for download here Your participation and feedback is very important to make the MAP Toolkit work better for you. We encourage you to participate in the beta program and provide your feedback at [email protected] or through one of our surveys. Useful References: Windows Azure Homepage How to guides for Windows Azure Virtual Machines Provisioning a SQL Server Virtual Machine on Windows Azure Windows Azure Pricing     Peter Saddow Senior Program Manager – MAP Toolkit Team

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• .Net Application & Database Modularity/Reuse

  - by Martaver

  I'm looking for some guidance on how to architect an app with regards to modularity, separation of concerns and re-usability. I'm working on an application (ASP.Net, C#) that has distinctly generic chunks of functionality, that I'd love to be able to lift out, all layers, into re-usable components. This means the module handles the database schema, data access, API, everything so that the next time I want to use it I can just register the module and hook into it. Developing modules of re-usable functionality is a no-brainer, but what is really confusing me is what to do when it comes to handling a core re-usable database schema that serves the module's functionality. In an ideal world, I would register a module and it would ensure that the associated database schema exists in the DB. I would code on the assumption that the tables exist, calling the module's functionality through the DLL, agnostic of the database layer. Kind of like Enterprise Library's Caching/Logging Application Block, which can create a DB schema in the target DB to use as a data store. My Questions is: What do you think is the best way to achieve this, firstly, in terms design architecture, and secondly solution structure. What patterns/frameworks do you know that exist & support this kind of thing? My thoughts so far: I mostly use Entity Framework and SQL Server DB Projects. I thought about a 'black box' approach to modules of functionality. I could use use a code-first approach in EF4, and use the ObjectContext to create a database when the module is initialized. However this means that all of the entities that my module encapsulates would be disconnected from the rest of the application because they belonged to an abstracted ObjectContext. Further - Creating appropriate indexes and references between domain entities and the module's entities would be impossible to do practically. I've thought of adopting Enterprise Library and creating my own Application Blocks. I'm not sure how this would play nice with Entity Framework (if at all) though. I like the idea of building on proven patterns & practices to encapsulate established, reusable functionality. I thought of abandoning Entity Framework for the Module, and just creating a separate DB schema for the module with its own set of stored procedures & ADO.Net. Then deploying the script at run-time if interrogation shows that it doesn't exist. But once again, for application developing outside of the application, I would want to use Entity Framework and I would have to use the module separately, disconnected from the domain ObjectContext. Has anyone had experience developing these sorts of full-stack modules? What advice can you offer? Am I biting off more than I can chew?

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• I Clobbered a Leopard with a Window Last Night

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  I’ve had my 15” Mac Book Pro for a little over a year now, and its hands-down the best laptop I’ve ever owned…hardware wise. And I tried, I really really tried, to like OSX. I even bought Parallels so I could run Windows 7 and all my development tools while still trying to live in an OSX world. But in the end, I missed Windows too much. There were just too many shortcomings with OSX that kept me from being productive. For one thing, Office for Mac is *not* Office for Windows. The applications are written by different teams, and Excel on the Mac is just different enough to be painful. The VM experience was adequate, but my MBP would heat up like crazy when running it and the experience trying to get Windows apps to interact with an OSX file system was awkward. And I found I was in the VM more than I thought I’d be. iMovie is not as easy to use for doing simple movie editing as Windows Movie Maker. There’s no free blog editing software for OSX that’s on par with Windows Live Writer. And really, all I was using OSX for was Twitter (which I can use a Windows client for) and web browsing (also something Windows can provide obviously). So I had to ask myself – why am I forcing myself to use an operating system I don’t like, on a laptop that can support Windows 7? And so I paved my MBP and am happily running Windows 7 on it…and its fantastic! All the good stuff with the hardware is still there with the goodness of Win 7. Happy happy. I did run into some snags doing this though, and that’s really what this blog post is about – things to be aware of if you want to install Win 7 directly on your MBP metal. First, Ensure You Have Your Original Mac Install Disk This was a warning my buddy Dylan, who’s been running Win 7 on his MBP for a while now, gave me early on. The reason you need that original disk is that the hardware drivers you need are all located there. Apparently you can’t easily download them, so make sure you have them ahead of time. Second, Forget BootCamp The only reason you need BootCamp is if you still want the option to boot into OSX. If you don’t, then you don’t need BootCamp. In fact, you don’t even need BootCamp to install Win 7. What you *will* need though is a DVD with Win 7 burnt on it. Apple doesn’t support bootable USB drives. Well, actually they do for Mac Book Airs which don’t come with optical drives…but to get it working you’ll need to edit a system file of BootCamp so your make of MBP is included in an XML document, and even then you *still* are using BootCamp meaning you’ll be making an OSX partition. So don’t worry about BootCamp, just burn a Windows 7 disc, put it into the DVD drive, and restart your MBP. Third, Know The Secret Commands So after putting in the Windows 7 DVD and restarting your MBP, you’ll want to hold down the ‘C’ key during boot up. This tells the MBP that it should boot from the DVD drive instead of the hard drive. Interestingly, it appears you don’t have to do this if its the Mac OSX install disc (more on that in a second), but regardless – hold down C and Windows will start the install process. Next up is the partition process. You’ll notice that there’s a partition called ETI or something like that. This has to do with the drive format that Apple uses and how they partition their system drives. What I did – I blew it away! At first I didn’t, but I was told I couldn’t install Windows on the remaining space due to the different drive format. Blowing away the ETI partition (and all other partitions) allowed me to continue the Windows install. *REMEMBER –  No warranty is provided or implied, just telling you what I did and how I got it to work. Ok, so now Windows is installed and I’m rebooting. Everything looks good, but I need drivers! So I put in the OSX install DVD and run the BootCamp assistant which installs all the Windows drivers I need. Fantastic! Oh, I need to restart – no problem. OH NO, PROBLEM! I left the OSX install DVD in the drive and now the MBP wants to boot from the drive and install OSX! I’m not holding down the C key, what the heck?! Ok, well there must be a way to eject this disk…hmm…no physical button on the side…the eject button doesn’t seem to work on the keyboard…no little pin hole to insert something to force the disc out…well what the…?! It turns out, if you want to eject a disc at boot up, you need (and I kid you not) to plug a mouse into the laptop and hold down the right-click button while its booting. This ejected the disc for me. Seriously. Finally, Things You Should Be Aware Of Once you have Windows up and running there’s a few things you need to be aware of, mainly new keyboard shortcuts. For instance, on the Mac keyboard there is no Home, End, PageUp or PageDown. There’s also no obvious way to do something like select large amounts of text (like you would by holding Shift-Home at the end of a line of text for instance). So here’s some shortcuts you need to know: Home – fn + left arrow End – fn + right arrow Select a line of text as you would with the Home key – Shift + fn + left arrow Select a line of text as you would with the End key – Shift + fn + right arrow Page Up – fn + up arrow Page Down – fn + down arrow Also, you’ll notice that the awesome Mac track pad doesn’t respond to taps as clicks. No fear, this is just a setting that needs to be altered in the BootCamp control panel (that controls the Mac Hardware-specific settings within Windows, you can access it easily from the system tray icon) One other thing, battery life seems a bit lower than with OSX, but then again I’m also doing more than Twitter or web browsing on this thing now. Conclusion My laptop runs awesome now that I have Windows 7 on there. It’s obviously up to individual taste, but for me I just didn’t see benefits to living in an OSX world when everything I needed lived in Windows. And also, I finally am back to an operating system that doesn’t require me to eject a USB drive before physically removing it! It’s 2012 folks, how has this not been fixed?! D

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