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  • Friday Fun: Exit Searcher

    - by Asian Angel
    Have you had a long week at work and need something to alleviate the boredom while waiting for Friday to finish out? Then dive into this week’s game where your skills as an escape artist will be put to the test while trying to escape the rooms you are trapped in. Use Amazon’s Barcode Scanner to Easily Buy Anything from Your Phone How To Migrate Windows 7 to a Solid State Drive Follow How-To Geek on Google+

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  • From the Tips Box: Quick File Renaming in Windows 7, Fast Access to Web Sites on Android, and GPS-based Todo Lists

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Once a week we round up some reader tips and share them with the greater How-To Geek audience. This week we’re looking at speedy file renaming in Windows 7, fast access to bookmarks in Android, and a neat GPS-based todo list. How to Stress Test the Hard Drives in Your PC or Server How To Customize Your Android Lock Screen with WidgetLocker The Best Free Portable Apps for Your Flash Drive Toolkit

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  • Ask HTG: Dealing with Windows 8 CP Expiry, Nintendo DS Save Backups, Jumbled Audio Tracks in Windows Media Player

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Once a week we round up some great reader questions and share the answers with everyone. This week we’re looking at what to do when Windows 8 Consumer Preview expires, backing up your Nintendo DS saves, and how to sort out jumbled audio tracks in Windows Media Player movies. How To Be Your Own Personal Clone Army (With a Little Photoshop) How To Properly Scan a Photograph (And Get An Even Better Image) The HTG Guide to Hiding Your Data in a TrueCrypt Hidden Volume

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  • The Minimalist's Approach to Content Governance

    - by Kellsey Ruppel
    This week on the blog, we want to focus on the content lifecylce and how important it is to have the tools in place to be able to properly manage all te phases of the content lifecylce. John Brunswick has some great advice when it comes to this topic, so expect to hear a lot from him this week! Originally posted by John Brunswick. Let's be honest - content governance is far from an exciting topic. BUT the potential of a very small intranet team creating and maintaining a platform that provides an organization with relevant, high value information, helping workers to get their jobs done with greater accuracy and in less time is exciting. It is easy to quickly start producing content, but the challenge is ensuring that the environment is easy to navigate and use on the third week and during the third year.   What can be done to bridge this gap? Over the next few blog entries let's take a pragmatic, minimalistic view of a process that can help any team manage a wealth of unstructured information. Based on an earlier article that I wrote around Portal Governance, I am going to focus on using technology as much as possible to support the governance of content with minimal involvement from users. The only certainty about content production is that business users are not fans of maintaining content. Maintenance is overhead and is a long-term investment thats value will possibly not be realized under the current content creator's watch. To add context to how we will use technical tools in this process, each post will highlight one section of the content lifecycle process as outlined below Content Lifecycle Stages 1. Request - Understand the education, purpose, resource and success criteria for content 2. Create - Determine access and workflow for content 3. Manage - Understand ownership and review cycles 4. Retire - Act on thresholds established during the request stage Within each state we will also elaborate as to 1. Why - why would we entertain doing this? 2. How - the steps that are needed to make it happen 3. Impact - what is the net benefit or loss based on the process Over the course of this week, we will dive deep into the stages and the minimal amount of time, effort and process within each to make some meaningful gains in the improvement of user experience and productivity in their search for information. It might be a stretch to say that we can make content governance exciting, but hopefully it can end up being painless and paying dividends. And if you'd like to hear first hand from a customer that is managing their content lifecycle with Oracle WebCenter, be sure to join us on Wednesday for this webcast "ResCare Solves Content Lifecycle Challenges with Oracle WebCenter"!

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  • From the Tips Box: Free Kindle Books, Windows 3.1 On the iPad, and DIY HDTV Antennas

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Every week we round up some tips from our inbox and share them with everyone; this week we’re looking at more  kindle books, running Windows 3.1 on the iPad, and some DIY antenna builds. How to Make Your Laptop Choose a Wired Connection Instead of Wireless HTG Explains: What Is Two-Factor Authentication and Should I Be Using It? HTG Explains: What Is Windows RT and What Does It Mean To Me?

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  • From the Tips Box: Free Shipping with Amazon Filler, Repairing Ethernet Cables, and Emergency Stickers

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Once a week we round up some great tips from the tips box and share them with everyone. This week we’re looking at easy Amazon filler items, repairing the tab on Ethernet cable connectors, and a humorous data-security sticker. How to Own Your Own Website (Even If You Can’t Build One) Pt 1 What’s the Difference Between Sleep and Hibernate in Windows? Screenshot Tour: XBMC 11 Eden Rocks Improved iOS Support, AirPlay, and Even a Custom XBMC OS

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  • Wubi no longer supports install to fakeraid?

    - by Ryan
    About a week ago I used wubi to install ubuntu onto one of my two raid1 devices in windows 7. I tried to do the same this week on the same mobo/drive combo and now I can't get it to install. It gives me first an "invalid prefix" during the install and then says "completing install" followed by a crash into busybox with a warning that the raid can't be mounted because it already was mounted. Has there been a change in wubi or something in the recent past?

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  • From the Tips Box: Location-based To-Do Reminders, DIY Floppy Drive Music, and Easy Access to Product Manuals

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Once a week we round up some great tips from the HTG tip box and share them with you; this week we’re looking at location based to-do reminders for Android phones, how to make your own floppy drive symphony, and an easy way to enjoy anywhere access to your manuals and product documentation. HTG Explains: What The Windows Event Viewer Is and How You Can Use It HTG Explains: How Windows Uses The Task Scheduler for System Tasks HTG Explains: Why Do Hard Drives Show the Wrong Capacity in Windows?

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  • Ask HTG: Searching Within Websites, Google Play Alternatives, and Getting Started with Dual Booting

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Once a week we round up some of the reader letters we’ve answered and share the advice with everyone. This week we’re looking at how to search within web sites, downloading apps from places other than Google Play, and getting started with dual booting operating systems. The Best Free Portable Apps for Your Flash Drive Toolkit How to Own Your Own Website (Even If You Can’t Build One) Pt 3 How to Sync Your Media Across Your Entire House with XBMC

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  • Mix metrics for June 20, 2011

    - by tbonnema
    One of the busiest week's ever for Mix this past week, thanks to Suggest-a-Session contest, which just wrapped up at midnight Pacific last night. See for yourself: Registered Mix users (weekly growth) 76,378 (+1.7%) Active users (percent of total) Last 30 days: 4,383 (5.7%) Last 60 days: 5,232 (6.9%) Last 90 days: 6,240 (8.2%) Traffic (30-day) Visits: 17,368 Page views: 148,426 Twitter Followers: 7,116 List mentions: 380 User-generated content (30-day) New ideas: 10 New questions: 11 New comments: 30 New group messages: 34 New direct messages: 1,661 Groups There are currently 1,603 Mix groups (requires login).

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  • Speaker Prep Tip: Use the AV Studio Built into that Laptop

    - by merrillaldrich
    Over at erinstellato.com there is a great post this week about tips for new presenters. Ms. Stellato suggests, insightfully, that we record ourselves, which is really a fantastic piece of advice. What’s extra-cool is that today you don’t need any special equipment or expensive software to do just that. This week I “filmed” two run-throughs of my talk for SQL Saturday tomorrow. For me, the timing is the hardest thing – figuring out how much content I can really present in the time allowed without...(read more)

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  • From the Tips Box: Controlling Xbox Controllers in Windows, Keeping Your Computer Cool in the Summer, and a DIY Book Scanning Rig

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Once a week we round up some great reader tips from the tips box and reader comments, and share the with the rest of you. This week we’re looking at an alternate way to control Xbox controller in Windows, how to keep your computer cool in the summer heat, and how to build a power DIY book scanner. How to Use an Xbox 360 Controller On Your Windows PC Download the Official How-To Geek Trivia App for Windows 8 How to Banish Duplicate Photos with VisiPic

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  • Does anyone work 10 hours shifts as a developer?

    - by dah
    I would like to switch from a 5 day week to a 4 day, but maintain a 40 hour working week. Would the 10 hour days affect your ability to be productive? I hate our public transit system so if I could reduce my transportation by 20% I would be glad. If other developers who work 10 hours shifts could be clear as the their experiences with it that would help me. I think my boss is flexible enough that he would be cool with it.

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  • Upcoming Fedora Test Days: preupgrade and Xfce!

    <b>Tuxmachines:</b> "So this week we round out the Fedora 13 Test Day schedule, which has seen us run the gauntlet from NFS, through color management and SSSD, scale the heights of Graphics Test Week, and will see us come to a triumphant finish..."

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  • How to submit ideas for the Ubuntu Apps Showdown to reddit?

    - by wik
    I submitted 4 app ideas, but only one pass through to the list on reddit, the others 3 even not searchable: Medication Tracker TrelloChat TwilioPhone I also submitted the blog post, firstly it went through to the list, but disappeared the next day. Am I missed anything? UPDATE: At least I'm not alone with this issue, see comments on the following wrap-up's: Ubuntu App Showdown Week 1 Wrap-Up Ubuntu App Showdown Week 2 Wrap-Up

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  • Are we queueing and serializing properly?

    - by insta
    We process messages through a variety of services (one message will touch probably 9 services before it's done, each doing a specific IO-related function). Right now we have a combination of the worst-case (XML data contract serialization) and best-case (in-memory MSMQ) for performance. The nature of the message means that our serialized data ends up about 12-15 kilobytes, and we process about 4 million messages per week. Persistent messages in MSMQ were too slow for us, and as the data grows we are feeling the pressure from MSMQ's memory-mapped files. The server is at 16GB of memory usage and growing, just for queueing. Performance also suffers when the memory usage is high, as the machine starts swapping. We're already doing the MSMQ self-cleanup behavior. I feel like there's a part we're doing wrong here. I tried using RavenDB to persist the messages and just queueing an identifier, but the performance there was very slow (1000 messages per minute, at best). I'm not sure if that's a result of using the development version or what, but we definitely need a higher throughput[1]. The concept worked very well in theory but performance was not up to the task. The usage pattern has one service acting as a router, which does all reads. The other services will attach information based on their 3rd party hook, and forward back to the router. Most objects are touched 9-12 times, although about 10% are forced to loop around in this system for awhile until the 3rd parties respond appropriately. The services right now account for this and have appropriate sleeping behaviors, as we utilize the priority field of the message for this reason. So, my question, is what is an ideal stack for message passing between discrete-but-LAN'ed machines in a C#/Windows environment? I would normally start with BinaryFormatter instead of XML serialization, but that's a rabbit hole if a better way is to offload serialization to a document store. Hence, my question. [1]: The nature of our business means the sooner we process messages, the more money we make. We've empirically proven that processing a message later in the week means we are less likely to make that money. While performance of "1000 per minute" sounds plenty fast, we really need that number upwards of 10k/minute. Just because I'm giving numbers in messages per week doesn't mean we have a whole week to process those messages.

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  • From the Tips Box: Waterproof Boomboxes, Quick Access Laptop Stats, and Stockpiling Free Free Apps and Books

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Once a week we round up some great reader tips and share them with everyone. This week we’re looking at building a waterproof boombox, quick access to laptop stats in Windows 7, and how to stockpile free apps and books at Amazon. How to Banish Duplicate Photos with VisiPic How to Make Your Laptop Choose a Wired Connection Instead of Wireless HTG Explains: What Is Two-Factor Authentication and Should I Be Using It?

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  • Internet doesn't work by default

    - by Adam Martinez
    After upgrading to Precise, I am required to run 'sudo dhclient eth0' in a terminal in order to get the internet to work. Everything worked perfectly fine on Oneiric, so It's really puzzling me. I'm thinking it could possibly be something with the kernel, but who knows. Output of dmesg: [ 0.247891] system 00:01: [io 0x0290-0x030f] has been reserved [ 0.247896] system 00:01: [io 0x0290-0x0297] has been reserved [ 0.247901] system 00:01: [io 0x0880-0x088f] has been reserved [ 0.247908] system 00:01: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0c02 (active) [ 0.247931] pnp 00:02: [dma 4] [ 0.247935] pnp 00:02: [io 0x0000-0x000f] [ 0.247939] pnp 00:02: [io 0x0080-0x0090] [ 0.247943] pnp 00:02: [io 0x0094-0x009f] [ 0.247947] pnp 00:02: [io 0x00c0-0x00df] [ 0.248033] pnp 00:02: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0200 (active) [ 0.248125] pnp 00:03: [io 0x0070-0x0073] [ 0.248187] pnp 00:03: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0b00 (active) [ 0.248205] pnp 00:04: [io 0x0061] [ 0.248260] pnp 00:04: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0800 (active) [ 0.248277] pnp 00:05: [io 0x00f0-0x00ff] [ 0.248292] pnp 00:05: [irq 13] [ 0.248348] pnp 00:05: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0c04 (active) [ 0.248583] pnp 00:06: [io 0x03f0-0x03f5] [ 0.248588] pnp 00:06: [io 0x03f7] [ 0.248597] pnp 00:06: [irq 6] [ 0.248601] pnp 00:06: [dma 2] [ 0.248690] pnp 00:06: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0700 (active) [ 0.248998] pnp 00:07: [io 0x03f8-0x03ff] [ 0.249008] pnp 00:07: [irq 4] [ 0.249122] pnp 00:07: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0501 (active) [ 0.249479] pnp 00:08: [io 0x0400-0x04bf] [ 0.249584] system 00:08: [io 0x0400-0x04bf] has been reserved [ 0.249591] system 00:08: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0c02 (active) [ 0.249628] pnp 00:09: [mem 0xffb80000-0xffbfffff] [ 0.249690] pnp 00:09: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs INT0800 (active) [ 0.250049] pnp 00:0a: [mem 0xe0000000-0xefffffff] [ 0.250167] system 00:0a: [mem 0xe0000000-0xefffffff] has been reserved [ 0.250173] system 00:0a: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0c02 (active) [ 0.250302] pnp 00:0b: [mem 0x000f0000-0x000fffff] [ 0.250307] pnp 00:0b: [mem 0x7ff00000-0x7fffffff] [ 0.250311] pnp 00:0b: [mem 0xfed00000-0xfed000ff] [ 0.250316] pnp 00:0b: [mem 0x0000046e-0x0000056d] [ 0.250320] pnp 00:0b: [mem 0x7fee0000-0x7fefffff] [ 0.250324] pnp 00:0b: [mem 0x00000000-0x0009ffff] [ 0.250328] pnp 00:0b: [mem 0x00100000-0x7fedffff] [ 0.250332] pnp 00:0b: [mem 0xfec00000-0xfec00fff] [ 0.250336] pnp 00:0b: [mem 0xfed14000-0xfed1dfff] [ 0.250341] pnp 00:0b: [mem 0xfed20000-0xfed9ffff] [ 0.250345] pnp 00:0b: [mem 0xfee00000-0xfee00fff] [ 0.250349] pnp 00:0b: [mem 0xffb00000-0xffb7ffff] [ 0.250353] pnp 00:0b: [mem 0xfff00000-0xffffffff] [ 0.250357] pnp 00:0b: [mem 0x000e0000-0x000effff] [ 0.250409] pnp 00:0b: disabling [mem 0x0000046e-0x0000056d] because it overlaps 0000:01:00.0 BAR 6 [mem 0x00000000-0x0007ffff pref] [ 0.250419] pnp 00:0b: disabling [mem 0x0000046e-0x0000056d disabled] because it overlaps 0000:03:00.0 BAR 6 [mem 0x00000000-0x0000ffff pref] [ 0.250430] pnp 00:0b: disabling [mem 0x0000046e-0x0000056d disabled] because it overlaps 0000:04:00.0 BAR 6 [mem 0x00000000-0x0001ffff pref] [ 0.250524] system 00:0b: [mem 0x000f0000-0x000fffff] could not be reserved [ 0.250530] system 00:0b: [mem 0x7ff00000-0x7fffffff] has been reserved [ 0.250536] system 00:0b: [mem 0xfed00000-0xfed000ff] has been reserved [ 0.250541] system 00:0b: [mem 0x7fee0000-0x7fefffff] could not be reserved [ 0.250547] system 00:0b: [mem 0x00000000-0x0009ffff] could not be reserved [ 0.250552] system 00:0b: [mem 0x00100000-0x7fedffff] could not be reserved [ 0.250558] system 00:0b: [mem 0xfec00000-0xfec00fff] could not be reserved [ 0.250563] system 00:0b: [mem 0xfed14000-0xfed1dfff] has been reserved [ 0.250568] system 00:0b: [mem 0xfed20000-0xfed9ffff] has been reserved [ 0.250574] system 00:0b: [mem 0xfee00000-0xfee00fff] has been reserved [ 0.250579] system 00:0b: [mem 0xffb00000-0xffb7ffff] has been reserved [ 0.250585] system 00:0b: [mem 0xfff00000-0xffffffff] has been reserved [ 0.250590] system 00:0b: [mem 0x000e0000-0x000effff] has been reserved [ 0.250596] system 00:0b: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0c01 (active) [ 0.250614] pnp: PnP ACPI: found 12 devices [ 0.250617] ACPI: ACPI bus type pnp unregistered [ 0.250624] PnPBIOS: Disabled by ACPI PNP [ 0.288725] PCI: max bus depth: 1 pci_try_num: 2 [ 0.288786] pci 0000:01:00.0: BAR 6: assigned [mem 0xfb000000-0xfb07ffff pref] [ 0.288792] pci 0000:00:01.0: PCI bridge to [bus 01-01] [ 0.288797] pci 0000:00:01.0: bridge window [io 0xa000-0xafff] [ 0.288804] pci 0000:00:01.0: bridge window [mem 0xf8000000-0xfbffffff] [ 0.288811] pci 0000:00:01.0: bridge window [mem 0xd0000000-0xdfffffff 64bit pref] [ 0.288820] pci 0000:00:1c.0: PCI bridge to [bus 02-02] [ 0.288825] pci 0000:00:1c.0: bridge window [io 0x9000-0x9fff] [ 0.288833] pci 0000:00:1c.0: bridge window [mem 0xfdb00000-0xfdbfffff] [ 0.288840] pci 0000:00:1c.0: bridge window [mem 0xfd800000-0xfd8fffff 64bit pref] [ 0.288851] pci 0000:03:00.0: BAR 6: assigned [mem 0xfde00000-0xfde0ffff pref] [ 0.288856] pci 0000:00:1c.4: PCI bridge to [bus 03-03] [ 0.288861] pci 0000:00:1c.4: bridge window [io 0xd000-0xdfff] [ 0.288869] pci 0000:00:1c.4: bridge window [mem 0xfd700000-0xfd7fffff] [ 0.288876] pci 0000:00:1c.4: bridge window [mem 0xfde00000-0xfdefffff 64bit pref] [ 0.288887] pci 0000:04:00.0: BAR 6: assigned [mem 0xfdc00000-0xfdc1ffff pref] [ 0.288891] pci 0000:00:1c.5: PCI bridge to [bus 04-04] [ 0.288897] pci 0000:00:1c.5: bridge window [io 0xb000-0xbfff] [ 0.288904] pci 0000:00:1c.5: bridge window [mem 0xfdd00000-0xfddfffff] [ 0.288911] pci 0000:00:1c.5: bridge window [mem 0xfdc00000-0xfdcfffff 64bit pref] [ 0.288920] pci 0000:00:1e.0: PCI bridge to [bus 05-05] [ 0.288926] pci 0000:00:1e.0: bridge window [io 0xc000-0xcfff] [ 0.288933] pci 0000:00:1e.0: bridge window [mem 0xfda00000-0xfdafffff] [ 0.288940] pci 0000:00:1e.0: bridge window [mem 0xfd900000-0xfd9fffff 64bit pref] [ 0.288971] pci 0000:00:01.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 [ 0.288979] pci 0000:00:01.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.288991] pci 0000:00:1c.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 [ 0.288998] pci 0000:00:1c.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.289008] pci 0000:00:1c.4: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 [ 0.289014] pci 0000:00:1c.4: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.289030] pci 0000:00:1c.5: PCI INT B -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17 [ 0.289037] pci 0000:00:1c.5: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.289047] pci 0000:00:1e.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.289054] pci_bus 0000:00: resource 4 [io 0x0000-0x0cf7] [ 0.289058] pci_bus 0000:00: resource 5 [io 0x0d00-0xffff] [ 0.289063] pci_bus 0000:00: resource 6 [mem 0x000a0000-0x000bffff] [ 0.289067] pci_bus 0000:00: resource 7 [mem 0x000c0000-0x000dffff] [ 0.289072] pci_bus 0000:00: resource 8 [mem 0x7ff00000-0xfebfffff] [ 0.289077] pci_bus 0000:01: resource 0 [io 0xa000-0xafff] [ 0.289081] pci_bus 0000:01: resource 1 [mem 0xf8000000-0xfbffffff] [ 0.289086] pci_bus 0000:01: resource 2 [mem 0xd0000000-0xdfffffff 64bit pref] [ 0.289092] pci_bus 0000:02: resource 0 [io 0x9000-0x9fff] [ 0.289096] pci_bus 0000:02: resource 1 [mem 0xfdb00000-0xfdbfffff] [ 0.289101] pci_bus 0000:02: resource 2 [mem 0xfd800000-0xfd8fffff 64bit pref] [ 0.289106] pci_bus 0000:03: resource 0 [io 0xd000-0xdfff] [ 0.289110] pci_bus 0000:03: resource 1 [mem 0xfd700000-0xfd7fffff] [ 0.289115] pci_bus 0000:03: resource 2 [mem 0xfde00000-0xfdefffff 64bit pref] [ 0.289120] pci_bus 0000:04: resource 0 [io 0xb000-0xbfff] [ 0.289124] pci_bus 0000:04: resource 1 [mem 0xfdd00000-0xfddfffff] [ 0.289129] pci_bus 0000:04: resource 2 [mem 0xfdc00000-0xfdcfffff 64bit pref] [ 0.289134] pci_bus 0000:05: resource 0 [io 0xc000-0xcfff] [ 0.289138] pci_bus 0000:05: resource 1 [mem 0xfda00000-0xfdafffff] [ 0.289143] pci_bus 0000:05: resource 2 [mem 0xfd900000-0xfd9fffff 64bit pref] [ 0.289148] pci_bus 0000:05: resource 4 [io 0x0000-0x0cf7] [ 0.289152] pci_bus 0000:05: resource 5 [io 0x0d00-0xffff] [ 0.289157] pci_bus 0000:05: resource 6 [mem 0x000a0000-0x000bffff] [ 0.289161] pci_bus 0000:05: resource 7 [mem 0x000c0000-0x000dffff] [ 0.289166] pci_bus 0000:05: resource 8 [mem 0x7ff00000-0xfebfffff] [ 0.289233] NET: Registered protocol family 2 [ 0.289360] IP route cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes) [ 0.289754] TCP established hash table entries: 131072 (order: 8, 1048576 bytes) [ 0.290351] TCP bind hash table entries: 65536 (order: 7, 524288 bytes) [ 0.290670] TCP: Hash tables configured (established 131072 bind 65536) [ 0.290674] TCP reno registered [ 0.290680] UDP hash table entries: 512 (order: 2, 16384 bytes) [ 0.290703] UDP-Lite hash table entries: 512 (order: 2, 16384 bytes) [ 0.290868] NET: Registered protocol family 1 [ 0.290911] pci 0000:00:1a.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 [ 0.290932] pci 0000:00:1a.0: PCI INT A disabled [ 0.290956] pci 0000:00:1a.1: PCI INT B -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 21 [ 0.290975] pci 0000:00:1a.1: PCI INT B disabled [ 0.290992] pci 0000:00:1a.2: PCI INT D -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 [ 0.291012] pci 0000:00:1a.2: PCI INT D disabled [ 0.291031] pci 0000:00:1a.7: PCI INT C -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18 [ 0.291068] pci 0000:00:1a.7: PCI INT C disabled [ 0.291104] pci 0000:00:1d.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23 [ 0.291123] pci 0000:00:1d.0: PCI INT A disabled [ 0.291135] pci 0000:00:1d.1: PCI INT B -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 [ 0.291155] pci 0000:00:1d.1: PCI INT B disabled [ 0.291166] pci 0000:00:1d.2: PCI INT C -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18 [ 0.291185] pci 0000:00:1d.2: PCI INT C disabled [ 0.291198] pci 0000:00:1d.7: PCI INT A -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23 [ 0.291219] pci 0000:00:1d.7: PCI INT A disabled [ 0.291258] pci 0000:01:00.0: Boot video device [ 0.291273] PCI: CLS 4 bytes, default 64 [ 0.291857] audit: initializing netlink socket (disabled) [ 0.291876] type=2000 audit(1336753420.284:1): initialized [ 0.337724] highmem bounce pool size: 64 pages [ 0.337734] HugeTLB registered 2 MB page size, pre-allocated 0 pages [ 0.349241] VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.2 [ 0.349365] Dquot-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order 0, 4096 bytes) [ 0.350418] fuse init (API version 7.17) [ 0.350611] msgmni has been set to 1685 [ 0.351179] Block layer SCSI generic (bsg) driver version 0.4 loaded (major 253) [ 0.351229] io scheduler noop registered [ 0.351233] io scheduler deadline registered [ 0.351247] io scheduler cfq registered (default) [ 0.351450] pcieport 0000:00:01.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.351502] pcieport 0000:00:01.0: irq 40 for MSI/MSI-X [ 0.351585] pcieport 0000:00:1c.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.351639] pcieport 0000:00:1c.0: irq 41 for MSI/MSI-X [ 0.351728] pcieport 0000:00:1c.4: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.351779] pcieport 0000:00:1c.4: irq 42 for MSI/MSI-X [ 0.351875] pcieport 0000:00:1c.5: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.351927] pcieport 0000:00:1c.5: irq 43 for MSI/MSI-X [ 0.352094] pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5 [ 0.352143] pciehp: PCI Express Hot Plug Controller Driver version: 0.4 [ 0.352311] intel_idle: MWAIT substates: 0x22220 [ 0.352315] intel_idle: does not run on family 6 model 23 [ 0.352446] input: Power Button as /devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0C0C:00/input/input0 [ 0.352455] ACPI: Power Button [PWRB] [ 0.352556] input: Power Button as /devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXPWRBN:00/input/input1 [ 0.352562] ACPI: Power Button [PWRF] [ 0.352650] ACPI: Fan [FAN] (on) [ 0.355667] thermal LNXTHERM:00: registered as thermal_zone0 [ 0.355673] ACPI: Thermal Zone [THRM] (26 C) [ 0.355750] ERST: Table is not found! [ 0.355753] GHES: HEST is not enabled! [ 0.355898] Serial: 8250/16550 driver, 32 ports, IRQ sharing enabled [ 0.376332] serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A [ 0.376582] isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards... [ 0.709133] Freeing initrd memory: 13792k freed [ 0.729743] isapnp: No Plug & Play device found [ 0.816786] 00:07: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A [ 0.832385] Linux agpgart interface v0.103 [ 0.835605] brd: module loaded [ 0.837138] loop: module loaded [ 0.837452] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: version 2.13 [ 0.837473] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: PCI INT A -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 [ 0.837480] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: MAP [ P0 P2 P1 P3 ] [ 0.837546] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.838099] scsi0 : ata_piix [ 0.838253] scsi1 : ata_piix [ 0.839183] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xf900 ctl 0xf800 bmdma 0xf500 irq 19 [ 0.839192] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xf700 ctl 0xf600 bmdma 0xf508 irq 19 [ 0.839239] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.5: PCI INT A -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 [ 0.839246] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.5: MAP [ P0 -- P1 -- ] [ 0.839300] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.5: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.839708] scsi2 : ata_piix [ 0.839841] scsi3 : ata_piix [ 0.840301] ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xf200 ctl 0xf100 bmdma 0xee00 irq 19 [ 0.840308] ata4: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xf000 ctl 0xef00 bmdma 0xee08 irq 19 [ 0.840429] pata_acpi 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 [ 0.840467] pata_acpi 0000:03:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.840488] pata_acpi 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A disabled [ 0.841159] Fixed MDIO Bus: probed [ 0.841205] tun: Universal TUN/TAP device driver, 1.6 [ 0.841210] tun: (C) 1999-2004 Max Krasnyansky <[email protected]> [ 0.841322] PPP generic driver version 2.4.2 [ 0.841515] ehci_hcd: USB 2.0 'Enhanced' Host Controller (EHCI) Driver [ 0.841542] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.7: PCI INT C -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18 [ 0.841567] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.7: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.841573] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.7: EHCI Host Controller [ 0.841658] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.7: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1 [ 0.845582] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.7: cache line size of 4 is not supported [ 0.845610] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.7: irq 18, io mem 0xfdfff000 [ 0.860022] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.7: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00 [ 0.860264] hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found [ 0.860272] hub 1-0:1.0: 6 ports detected [ 0.860404] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: PCI INT A -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23 [ 0.860424] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.860430] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: EHCI Host Controller [ 0.860512] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2 [ 0.864413] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: cache line size of 4 is not supported [ 0.864438] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: irq 23, io mem 0xfdffe000 [ 0.880021] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00 [ 0.880227] hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found [ 0.880234] hub 2-0:1.0: 6 ports detected [ 0.880369] ohci_hcd: USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver [ 0.880396] uhci_hcd: USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver [ 0.880431] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 [ 0.880443] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.880449] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: UHCI Host Controller [ 0.880529] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3 [ 0.880574] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: irq 16, io base 0x0000ff00 [ 0.880803] hub 3-0:1.0: USB hub found [ 0.880811] hub 3-0:1.0: 2 ports detected [ 0.880929] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.1: PCI INT B -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 21 [ 0.880940] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.1: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.880946] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.1: UHCI Host Controller [ 0.881039] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 4 [ 0.881081] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.1: irq 21, io base 0x0000fe00 [ 0.881302] hub 4-0:1.0: USB hub found [ 0.881310] hub 4-0:1.0: 2 ports detected [ 0.881427] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.2: PCI INT D -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 [ 0.881438] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.2: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.881443] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.2: UHCI Host Controller [ 0.881523] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 5 [ 0.881551] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.2: irq 19, io base 0x0000fd00 [ 0.881774] hub 5-0:1.0: USB hub found [ 0.881781] hub 5-0:1.0: 2 ports detected [ 0.881899] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23 [ 0.881910] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.881915] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: UHCI Host Controller [ 0.881993] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 6 [ 0.882021] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: irq 23, io base 0x0000fc00 [ 0.882244] hub 6-0:1.0: USB hub found [ 0.882252] hub 6-0:1.0: 2 ports detected [ 0.882370] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: PCI INT B -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 [ 0.882381] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.882386] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: UHCI Host Controller [ 0.882467] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 7 [ 0.882495] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: irq 19, io base 0x0000fb00 [ 0.882735] hub 7-0:1.0: USB hub found [ 0.882742] hub 7-0:1.0: 2 ports detected [ 0.882858] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: PCI INT C -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18 [ 0.882869] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: setting latency timer to 64 [ 0.882875] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: UHCI Host Controller [ 0.882954] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 8 [ 0.882982] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: irq 18, io base 0x0000fa00 [ 0.883205] hub 8-0:1.0: USB hub found [ 0.883213] hub 8-0:1.0: 2 ports detected [ 0.883435] usbcore: registered new interface driver libusual [ 0.883535] i8042: PNP: No PS/2 controller found. Probing ports directly. [ 0.883926] serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1 [ 0.883936] serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12 [ 0.884187] mousedev: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice [ 0.884433] rtc_cmos 00:03: RTC can wake from S4 [ 0.884582] rtc_cmos 00:03: rtc core: registered rtc_cmos as rtc0 [ 0.884612] rtc0: alarms up to one month, 242 bytes nvram, hpet irqs [ 0.884719] device-mapper: uevent: version 1.0.3 [ 0.884854] device-mapper: ioctl: 4.22.0-ioctl (2011-10-19) initialised: [email protected] [ 0.884917] EISA: Probing bus 0 at eisa.0 [ 0.884921] EISA: Cannot allocate resource for mainboard [ 0.884925] Cannot allocate resource for EISA slot 1 [ 0.884929] Cannot allocate resource for EISA slot 2 [ 0.884932] Cannot allocate resource for EISA slot 3 [ 0.884936] Cannot allocate resource for EISA slot 4 [ 0.884940] Cannot allocate resource for EISA slot 5 [ 0.884943] Cannot allocate resource for EISA slot 6 [ 0.884947] Cannot allocate resource for EISA slot 7 [ 0.884950] Cannot allocate resource for EISA slot 8 [ 0.884954] EISA: Detected 0 cards. [ 0.884969] cpufreq-nforce2: No nForce2 chipset. [ 0.884973] cpuidle: using governor ladder [ 0.884976] cpuidle: using governor menu [ 0.884980] EFI Variables Facility v0.08 2004-May-17 [ 0.885476] TCP cubic registered [ 0.885708] NET: Registered protocol family 10 [ 0.886771] NET: Registered protocol family 17 [ 0.886799] Registering the dns_resolver key type [ 0.886837] Using IPI No-Shortcut mode [ 0.887028] PM: Hibernation image not present or could not be loaded. [ 0.887047] registered taskstats version 1 [ 0.902579] Magic number: 12:339:388 [ 0.902592] usb usb6: hash matches [ 0.902687] rtc_cmos 00:03: setting system clock to 2012-05-11 16:23:41 UTC (1336753421) [ 0.903185] BIOS EDD facility v0.16 2004-Jun-25, 0 devices found [ 0.903189] EDD information not available. [ 1.170710] ata3: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 1.181439] ata4: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 1.288020] Refined TSC clocksource calibration: 2499.999 MHz. [ 1.288028] Switching to clocksource tsc [ 1.292016] usb 1-5: new high-speed USB device number 3 using ehci_hcd [ 1.486745] ata2.00: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 1.486762] ata2.01: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 1.640115] ata1.00: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) [ 1.640130] ata1.01: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300) [ 1.648342] ata1.00: ATA-7: Maxtor 7Y250M0, YAR511W0, max UDMA/133 [ 1.648348] ata1.00: 490234752 sectors, multi 0: LBA48 [ 1.664325] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 [ 1.664531] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA Maxtor 7Y250M0 YAR5 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 [ 1.664745] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 490234752 512-byte logical blocks: (251 GB/233 GiB) [ 1.664809] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0 [ 1.664838] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off [ 1.664843] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00 [ 1.664884] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA [ 1.691699] sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4 [ 1.692348] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk [ 1.692461] Freeing unused kernel memory: 740k freed [ 1.692820] Write protecting the kernel text: 5828k [ 1.692851] Write protecting the kernel read-only data: 2376k [ 1.692854] NX-protecting the kernel data: 4412k [ 1.723980] udevd[92]: starting version 175 [ 1.865339] Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M [ 1.865429] pata_jmicron 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 [ 1.865478] pata_jmicron 0000:03:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 1.867875] sky2: driver version 1.30 [ 1.867926] sky2 0000:04:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17 [ 1.867942] sky2 0000:04:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 1.867979] sky2 0000:04:00.0: Yukon-2 EC chip revision 2 [ 1.868111] sky2 0000:04:00.0: irq 44 for MSI/MSI-X [ 1.868174] scsi4 : pata_jmicron [ 1.869802] sky2 0000:04:00.0: eth0: addr 00:01:29:a4:16:0a [ 1.869828] scsi5 : pata_jmicron [ 1.869943] ata5: PATA max UDMA/100 cmd 0xdf00 ctl 0xde00 bmdma 0xdb00 irq 16 [ 1.869949] ata6: PATA max UDMA/100 cmd 0xdd00 ctl 0xdc00 bmdma 0xdb08 irq 16 [ 1.880053] usb 4-1: new full-speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd [ 1.884052] FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077 [ 2.032611] ata5.00: ATAPI: _NEC DVD+/-RW ND-3450A, 103C, max UDMA/33 [ 2.048585] ata5.00: configured for UDMA/33 [ 2.049777] scsi 4:0:0:0: CD-ROM _NEC DVD+-RW ND-3450A 103C PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 [ 2.051048] sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 48x/48x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray [ 2.051054] cdrom: Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20 [ 2.051283] sr 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 [ 2.051483] sr 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 5 [ 2.079838] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbhid [ 2.079844] usbhid: USB HID core driver [ 2.236660] EXT4-fs (sda1): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null) [ 12.150230] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready [ 12.177342] udevd[333]: starting version 175 [ 12.195524] Adding 417684k swap on /dev/sda2. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:417684k [ 12.278032] lp: driver loaded but no devices found [ 12.516456] logitech-djreceiver 0003:046D:C52B.0003: hiddev0,hidraw0: USB HID v1.11 Device [Logitech USB Receiver] on usb-0000:00:1a.1-1/input2 [ 12.520297] input: Logitech Unifying Device. Wireless PID:1024 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.1/usb4/4-1/4-1:1.2/0003:046D:C52B.0003/input/input2 [ 12.520753] logitech-djdevice 0003:046D:C52B.0004: input,hidraw1: USB HID v1.11 Mouse [Logitech Unifying Device. Wireless PID:1024] on usb-0000:00:1a.1-1:1 [ 12.523286] input: Logitech Unifying Device. Wireless PID:2011 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.1/usb4/4-1/4-1:1.2/0003:046D:C52B.0003/input/input3 [ 12.524439] logitech-djdevice 0003:046D:C52B.0005: input,hidraw2: USB HID v1.11 Keyboard [Logitech Unifying Device. Wireless PID:2011] on usb-0000:00:1a.1-1:2 [ 12.545746] type=1400 audit(1336771433.137:2): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/sbin/dhclient" pid=502 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 12.546574] type=1400 audit(1336771433.137:3): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action" pid=502 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 12.547034] type=1400 audit(1336771433.137:4): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/connman/scripts/dhclient-script" pid=502 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 12.626869] Linux video capture interface: v2.00 [ 12.649104] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device <unnamed> (046d:081a) [ 12.668665] input: UVC Camera (046d:081a) as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.7/usb1/1-5/1-5:1.0/input/input4 [ 12.668909] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo [ 12.668914] USB Video Class driver (1.1.1) [ 12.697645] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 22 [ 12.697721] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: irq 45 for MSI/MSI-X [ 12.697760] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 12.706772] nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel. [ 12.706778] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint [ 12.735428] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro [ 13.350252] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 [ 13.350267] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 13.350275] vgaarb: device changed decodes: PCI:0000:01:00.0,olddecodes=io+mem,decodes=none:owns=io+mem [ 13.351464] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86 Kernel Module 295.40 Thu Apr 5 21:28:09 PDT 2012 [ 13.356785] hda_codec: ALC889A: BIOS auto-probing. [ 13.357267] init: failsafe main process (658) killed by TERM signal [ 13.372756] input: HDA Intel Line as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0/input5 [ 13.373173] input: HDA Intel Front Mic as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0/input6 [ 13.373568] input: HDA Intel Rear Mic as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0/input7 [ 13.373954] input: HDA Intel Front Headphone as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0/input8 [ 13.374339] input: HDA Intel Line-Out Side as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0/input9 [ 13.374715] input: HDA Intel Line-Out CLFE as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0/input10 [ 13.375109] input: HDA Intel Line-Out Surround as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0/input11 [ 13.375724] input: HDA Intel Line-Out Front as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0/input12 [ 13.475252] type=1400 audit(1336771434.065:5): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/sbin/dhclient" pid=735 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 13.477026] type=1400 audit(1336771434.069:6): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action" pid=735 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 13.477695] type=1400 audit(1336771434.069:7): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/connman/scripts/dhclient-script" pid=735 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 13.479048] type=1400 audit(1336771434.069:8): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm/lightdm-guest-session-wrapper" pid=734 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 13.488994] type=1400 audit(1336771434.081:9): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/telepathy/mission-control-5" pid=738 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 13.489972] type=1400 audit(1336771434.081:10): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/telepathy/telepathy-*" pid=738 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 13.

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  • 256 Windows Azure Worker Roles, Windows Kinect and a 90's Text-Based Ray-Tracer

    - by Alan Smith
    For a couple of years I have been demoing a simple render farm hosted in Windows Azure using worker roles and the Azure Storage service. At the start of the presentation I deploy an Azure application that uses 16 worker roles to render a 1,500 frame 3D ray-traced animation. At the end of the presentation, when the animation was complete, I would play the animation delete the Azure deployment. The standing joke with the audience was that it was that it was a “$2 demo”, as the compute charges for running the 16 instances for an hour was $1.92, factor in the bandwidth charges and it’s a couple of dollars. The point of the demo is that it highlights one of the great benefits of cloud computing, you pay for what you use, and if you need massive compute power for a short period of time using Windows Azure can work out very cost effective. The “$2 demo” was great for presenting at user groups and conferences in that it could be deployed to Azure, used to render an animation, and then removed in a one hour session. I have always had the idea of doing something a bit more impressive with the demo, and scaling it from a “$2 demo” to a “$30 demo”. The challenge was to create a visually appealing animation in high definition format and keep the demo time down to one hour.  This article will take a run through how I achieved this. Ray Tracing Ray tracing, a technique for generating high quality photorealistic images, gained popularity in the 90’s with companies like Pixar creating feature length computer animations, and also the emergence of shareware text-based ray tracers that could run on a home PC. In order to render a ray traced image, the ray of light that would pass from the view point must be tracked until it intersects with an object. At the intersection, the color, reflectiveness, transparency, and refractive index of the object are used to calculate if the ray will be reflected or refracted. Each pixel may require thousands of calculations to determine what color it will be in the rendered image. Pin-Board Toys Having very little artistic talent and a basic understanding of maths I decided to focus on an animation that could be modeled fairly easily and would look visually impressive. I’ve always liked the pin-board desktop toys that become popular in the 80’s and when I was working as a 3D animator back in the 90’s I always had the idea of creating a 3D ray-traced animation of a pin-board, but never found the energy to do it. Even if I had a go at it, the render time to produce an animation that would look respectable on a 486 would have been measured in months. PolyRay Back in 1995 I landed my first real job, after spending three years being a beach-ski-climbing-paragliding-bum, and was employed to create 3D ray-traced animations for a CD-ROM that school kids would use to learn physics. I had got into the strange and wonderful world of text-based ray tracing, and was using a shareware ray-tracer called PolyRay. PolyRay takes a text file describing a scene as input and, after a few hours processing on a 486, produced a high quality ray-traced image. The following is an example of a basic PolyRay scene file. background Midnight_Blue   static define matte surface { ambient 0.1 diffuse 0.7 } define matte_white texture { matte { color white } } define matte_black texture { matte { color dark_slate_gray } } define position_cylindrical 3 define lookup_sawtooth 1 define light_wood <0.6, 0.24, 0.1> define median_wood <0.3, 0.12, 0.03> define dark_wood <0.05, 0.01, 0.005>     define wooden texture { noise surface { ambient 0.2  diffuse 0.7  specular white, 0.5 microfacet Reitz 10 position_fn position_cylindrical position_scale 1  lookup_fn lookup_sawtooth octaves 1 turbulence 1 color_map( [0.0, 0.2, light_wood, light_wood] [0.2, 0.3, light_wood, median_wood] [0.3, 0.4, median_wood, light_wood] [0.4, 0.7, light_wood, light_wood] [0.7, 0.8, light_wood, median_wood] [0.8, 0.9, median_wood, light_wood] [0.9, 1.0, light_wood, dark_wood]) } } define glass texture { surface { ambient 0 diffuse 0 specular 0.2 reflection white, 0.1 transmission white, 1, 1.5 }} define shiny surface { ambient 0.1 diffuse 0.6 specular white, 0.6 microfacet Phong 7  } define steely_blue texture { shiny { color black } } define chrome texture { surface { color white ambient 0.0 diffuse 0.2 specular 0.4 microfacet Phong 10 reflection 0.8 } }   viewpoint {     from <4.000, -1.000, 1.000> at <0.000, 0.000, 0.000> up <0, 1, 0> angle 60     resolution 640, 480 aspect 1.6 image_format 0 }       light <-10, 30, 20> light <-10, 30, -20>   object { disc <0, -2, 0>, <0, 1, 0>, 30 wooden }   object { sphere <0.000, 0.000, 0.000>, 1.00 chrome } object { cylinder <0.000, 0.000, 0.000>, <0.000, 0.000, -4.000>, 0.50 chrome }   After setting up the background and defining colors and textures, the viewpoint is specified. The “camera” is located at a point in 3D space, and it looks towards another point. The angle, image resolution, and aspect ratio are specified. Two lights are present in the image at defined coordinates. The three objects in the image are a wooden disc to represent a table top, and a sphere and cylinder that intersect to form a pin that will be used for the pin board toy in the final animation. When the image is rendered, the following image is produced. The pins are modeled with a chrome surface, so they reflect the environment around them. Note that the scale of the pin shaft is not correct, this will be fixed later. Modeling the Pin Board The frame of the pin-board is made up of three boxes, and six cylinders, the front box is modeled using a clear, slightly reflective solid, with the same refractive index of glass. The other shapes are modeled as metal. object { box <-5.5, -1.5, 1>, <5.5, 5.5, 1.2> glass } object { box <-5.5, -1.5, -0.04>, <5.5, 5.5, -0.09> steely_blue } object { box <-5.5, -1.5, -0.52>, <5.5, 5.5, -0.59> steely_blue } object { cylinder <-5.2, -1.2, 1.4>, <-5.2, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <5.2, -1.2, 1.4>, <5.2, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <-5.2, 5.2, 1.4>, <-5.2, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <5.2, 5.2, 1.4>, <5.2, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <0, -1.2, 1.4>, <0, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <0, 5.2, 1.4>, <0, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue }   In order to create the matrix of pins that make up the pin board I used a basic console application with a few nested loops to create two intersecting matrixes of pins, which models the layout used in the pin boards. The resulting image is shown below. The pin board contains 11,481 pins, with the scene file containing 23,709 lines of code. For the complete animation 2,000 scene files will be created, which is over 47 million lines of code. Each pin in the pin-board will slide out a specific distance when an object is pressed into the back of the board. This is easily modeled by setting the Z coordinate of the pin to a specific value. In order to set all of the pins in the pin-board to the correct position, a bitmap image can be used. The position of the pin can be set based on the color of the pixel at the appropriate position in the image. When the Windows Azure logo is used to set the Z coordinate of the pins, the following image is generated. The challenge now was to make a cool animation. The Azure Logo is fine, but it is static. Using a normal video to animate the pins would not work; the colors in the video would not be the same as the depth of the objects from the camera. In order to simulate the pin board accurately a series of frames from a depth camera could be used. Windows Kinect The Kenect controllers for the X-Box 360 and Windows feature a depth camera. The Kinect SDK for Windows provides a programming interface for Kenect, providing easy access for .NET developers to the Kinect sensors. The Kinect Explorer provided with the Kinect SDK is a great starting point for exploring Kinect from a developers perspective. Both the X-Box 360 Kinect and the Windows Kinect will work with the Kinect SDK, the Windows Kinect is required for commercial applications, but the X-Box Kinect can be used for hobby projects. The Windows Kinect has the advantage of providing a mode to allow depth capture with objects closer to the camera, which makes for a more accurate depth image for setting the pin positions. Creating a Depth Field Animation The depth field animation used to set the positions of the pin in the pin board was created using a modified version of the Kinect Explorer sample application. In order to simulate the pin board accurately, a small section of the depth range from the depth sensor will be used. Any part of the object in front of the depth range will result in a white pixel; anything behind the depth range will be black. Within the depth range the pixels in the image will be set to RGB values from 0,0,0 to 255,255,255. A screen shot of the modified Kinect Explorer application is shown below. The Kinect Explorer sample application was modified to include slider controls that are used to set the depth range that forms the image from the depth stream. This allows the fine tuning of the depth image that is required for simulating the position of the pins in the pin board. The Kinect Explorer was also modified to record a series of images from the depth camera and save them as a sequence JPEG files that will be used to animate the pins in the animation the Start and Stop buttons are used to start and stop the image recording. En example of one of the depth images is shown below. Once a series of 2,000 depth images has been captured, the task of creating the animation can begin. Rendering a Test Frame In order to test the creation of frames and get an approximation of the time required to render each frame a test frame was rendered on-premise using PolyRay. The output of the rendering process is shown below. The test frame contained 23,629 primitive shapes, most of which are the spheres and cylinders that are used for the 11,800 or so pins in the pin board. The 1280x720 image contains 921,600 pixels, but as anti-aliasing was used the number of rays that were calculated was 4,235,777, with 3,478,754,073 object boundaries checked. The test frame of the pin board with the depth field image applied is shown below. The tracing time for the test frame was 4 minutes 27 seconds, which means rendering the2,000 frames in the animation would take over 148 hours, or a little over 6 days. Although this is much faster that an old 486, waiting almost a week to see the results of an animation would make it challenging for animators to create, view, and refine their animations. It would be much better if the animation could be rendered in less than one hour. Windows Azure Worker Roles The cost of creating an on-premise render farm to render animations increases in proportion to the number of servers. The table below shows the cost of servers for creating a render farm, assuming a cost of $500 per server. Number of Servers Cost 1 $500 16 $8,000 256 $128,000   As well as the cost of the servers, there would be additional costs for networking, racks etc. Hosting an environment of 256 servers on-premise would require a server room with cooling, and some pretty hefty power cabling. The Windows Azure compute services provide worker roles, which are ideal for performing processor intensive compute tasks. With the scalability available in Windows Azure a job that takes 256 hours to complete could be perfumed using different numbers of worker roles. The time and cost of using 1, 16 or 256 worker roles is shown below. Number of Worker Roles Render Time Cost 1 256 hours $30.72 16 16 hours $30.72 256 1 hour $30.72   Using worker roles in Windows Azure provides the same cost for the 256 hour job, irrespective of the number of worker roles used. Provided the compute task can be broken down into many small units, and the worker role compute power can be used effectively, it makes sense to scale the application so that the task is completed quickly, making the results available in a timely fashion. The task of rendering 2,000 frames in an animation is one that can easily be broken down into 2,000 individual pieces, which can be performed by a number of worker roles. Creating a Render Farm in Windows Azure The architecture of the render farm is shown in the following diagram. The render farm is a hybrid application with the following components: ·         On-Premise o   Windows Kinect – Used combined with the Kinect Explorer to create a stream of depth images. o   Animation Creator – This application uses the depth images from the Kinect sensor to create scene description files for PolyRay. These files are then uploaded to the jobs blob container, and job messages added to the jobs queue. o   Process Monitor – This application queries the role instance lifecycle table and displays statistics about the render farm environment and render process. o   Image Downloader – This application polls the image queue and downloads the rendered animation files once they are complete. ·         Windows Azure o   Azure Storage – Queues and blobs are used for the scene description files and completed frames. A table is used to store the statistics about the rendering environment.   The architecture of each worker role is shown below.   The worker role is configured to use local storage, which provides file storage on the worker role instance that can be use by the applications to render the image and transform the format of the image. The service definition for the worker role with the local storage configuration highlighted is shown below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="CloudRay" >   <WorkerRole name="CloudRayWorkerRole" vmsize="Small">     <Imports>     </Imports>     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString" />     </ConfigurationSettings>     <LocalResources>       <LocalStorage name="RayFolder" cleanOnRoleRecycle="true" />     </LocalResources>   </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition>     The two executable programs, PolyRay.exe and DTA.exe are included in the Azure project, with Copy Always set as the property. PolyRay will take the scene description file and render it to a Truevision TGA file. As the TGA format has not seen much use since the mid 90’s it is converted to a JPG image using Dave's Targa Animator, another shareware application from the 90’s. Each worker roll will use the following process to render the animation frames. 1.       The worker process polls the job queue, if a job is available the scene description file is downloaded from blob storage to local storage. 2.       PolyRay.exe is started in a process with the appropriate command line arguments to render the image as a TGA file. 3.       DTA.exe is started in a process with the appropriate command line arguments convert the TGA file to a JPG file. 4.       The JPG file is uploaded from local storage to the images blob container. 5.       A message is placed on the images queue to indicate a new image is available for download. 6.       The job message is deleted from the job queue. 7.       The role instance lifecycle table is updated with statistics on the number of frames rendered by the worker role instance, and the CPU time used. The code for this is shown below. public override void Run() {     // Set environment variables     string polyRayPath = Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), PolyRayLocation);     string dtaPath = Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), DTALocation);       LocalResource rayStorage = RoleEnvironment.GetLocalResource("RayFolder");     string localStorageRootPath = rayStorage.RootPath;       JobQueue jobQueue = new JobQueue("renderjobs");     JobQueue downloadQueue = new JobQueue("renderimagedownloadjobs");     CloudRayBlob sceneBlob = new CloudRayBlob("scenes");     CloudRayBlob imageBlob = new CloudRayBlob("images");     RoleLifecycleDataSource roleLifecycleDataSource = new RoleLifecycleDataSource();       Frames = 0;       while (true)     {         // Get the render job from the queue         CloudQueueMessage jobMsg = jobQueue.Get();           if (jobMsg != null)         {             // Get the file details             string sceneFile = jobMsg.AsString;             string tgaFile = sceneFile.Replace(".pi", ".tga");             string jpgFile = sceneFile.Replace(".pi", ".jpg");               string sceneFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, sceneFile);             string tgaFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, tgaFile);             string jpgFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, jpgFile);               // Copy the scene file to local storage             sceneBlob.DownloadFile(sceneFilePath);               // Run the ray tracer.             string polyrayArguments =                 string.Format("\"{0}\" -o \"{1}\" -a 2", sceneFilePath, tgaFilePath);             Process polyRayProcess = new Process();             polyRayProcess.StartInfo.FileName =                 Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), polyRayPath);             polyRayProcess.StartInfo.Arguments = polyrayArguments;             polyRayProcess.Start();             polyRayProcess.WaitForExit();               // Convert the image             string dtaArguments =                 string.Format(" {0} /FJ /P{1}", tgaFilePath, Path.GetDirectoryName (jpgFilePath));             Process dtaProcess = new Process();             dtaProcess.StartInfo.FileName =                 Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), dtaPath);             dtaProcess.StartInfo.Arguments = dtaArguments;             dtaProcess.Start();             dtaProcess.WaitForExit();               // Upload the image to blob storage             imageBlob.UploadFile(jpgFilePath);               // Add a download job.             downloadQueue.Add(jpgFile);               // Delete the render job message             jobQueue.Delete(jobMsg);               Frames++;         }         else         {             Thread.Sleep(1000);         }           // Log the worker role activity.         roleLifecycleDataSource.Alive             ("CloudRayWorker", RoleLifecycleDataSource.RoleLifecycleId, Frames);     } }     Monitoring Worker Role Instance Lifecycle In order to get more accurate statistics about the lifecycle of the worker role instances used to render the animation data was tracked in an Azure storage table. The following class was used to track the worker role lifecycles in Azure storage.   public class RoleLifecycle : TableServiceEntity {     public string ServerName { get; set; }     public string Status { get; set; }     public DateTime StartTime { get; set; }     public DateTime EndTime { get; set; }     public long SecondsRunning { get; set; }     public DateTime LastActiveTime { get; set; }     public int Frames { get; set; }     public string Comment { get; set; }       public RoleLifecycle()     {     }       public RoleLifecycle(string roleName)     {         PartitionKey = roleName;         RowKey = Utils.GetAscendingRowKey();         Status = "Started";         StartTime = DateTime.UtcNow;         LastActiveTime = StartTime;         EndTime = StartTime;         SecondsRunning = 0;         Frames = 0;     } }     A new instance of this class is created and added to the storage table when the role starts. It is then updated each time the worker renders a frame to record the total number of frames rendered and the total processing time. These statistics are used be the monitoring application to determine the effectiveness of use of resources in the render farm. Rendering the Animation The Azure solution was deployed to Windows Azure with the service configuration set to 16 worker role instances. This allows for the application to be tested in the cloud environment, and the performance of the application determined. When I demo the application at conferences and user groups I often start with 16 instances, and then scale up the application to the full 256 instances. The configuration to run 16 instances is shown below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="CloudRay" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*">   <Role name="CloudRayWorkerRole">     <Instances count="16" />     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString"         value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=cloudraydata;AccountKey=..." />     </ConfigurationSettings>   </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>     About six minutes after deploying the application the first worker roles become active and start to render the first frames of the animation. The CloudRay Monitor application displays an icon for each worker role instance, with a number indicating the number of frames that the worker role has rendered. The statistics on the left show the number of active worker roles and statistics about the render process. The render time is the time since the first worker role became active; the CPU time is the total amount of processing time used by all worker role instances to render the frames.   Five minutes after the first worker role became active the last of the 16 worker roles activated. By this time the first seven worker roles had each rendered one frame of the animation.   With 16 worker roles u and running it can be seen that one hour and 45 minutes CPU time has been used to render 32 frames with a render time of just under 10 minutes.     At this rate it would take over 10 hours to render the 2,000 frames of the full animation. In order to complete the animation in under an hour more processing power will be required. Scaling the render farm from 16 instances to 256 instances is easy using the new management portal. The slider is set to 256 instances, and the configuration saved. We do not need to re-deploy the application, and the 16 instances that are up and running will not be affected. Alternatively, the configuration file for the Azure service could be modified to specify 256 instances.   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="CloudRay" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*">   <Role name="CloudRayWorkerRole">     <Instances count="256" />     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString"         value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=cloudraydata;AccountKey=..." />     </ConfigurationSettings>   </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>     Six minutes after the new configuration has been applied 75 new worker roles have activated and are processing their first frames.   Five minutes later the full configuration of 256 worker roles is up and running. We can see that the average rate of frame rendering has increased from 3 to 12 frames per minute, and that over 17 hours of CPU time has been utilized in 23 minutes. In this test the time to provision 140 worker roles was about 11 minutes, which works out at about one every five seconds.   We are now half way through the rendering, with 1,000 frames complete. This has utilized just under three days of CPU time in a little over 35 minutes.   The animation is now complete, with 2,000 frames rendered in a little over 52 minutes. The CPU time used by the 256 worker roles is 6 days, 7 hours and 22 minutes with an average frame rate of 38 frames per minute. The rendering of the last 1,000 frames took 16 minutes 27 seconds, which works out at a rendering rate of 60 frames per minute. The frame counts in the server instances indicate that the use of a queue to distribute the workload has been very effective in distributing the load across the 256 worker role instances. The first 16 instances that were deployed first have rendered between 11 and 13 frames each, whilst the 240 instances that were added when the application was scaled have rendered between 6 and 9 frames each.   Completed Animation I’ve uploaded the completed animation to YouTube, a low resolution preview is shown below. Pin Board Animation Created using Windows Kinect and 256 Windows Azure Worker Roles   The animation can be viewed in 1280x720 resolution at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5jy6bvSxWc Effective Use of Resources According to the CloudRay monitor statistics the animation took 6 days, 7 hours and 22 minutes CPU to render, this works out at 152 hours of compute time, rounded up to the nearest hour. As the usage for the worker role instances are billed for the full hour, it may have been possible to render the animation using fewer than 256 worker roles. When deciding the optimal usage of resources, the time required to provision and start the worker roles must also be considered. In the demo I started with 16 worker roles, and then scaled the application to 256 worker roles. It would have been more optimal to start the application with maybe 200 worker roles, and utilized the full hour that I was being billed for. This would, however, have prevented showing the ease of scalability of the application. The new management portal displays the CPU usage across the worker roles in the deployment. The average CPU usage across all instances is 93.27%, with over 99% used when all the instances are up and running. This shows that the worker role resources are being used very effectively. Grid Computing Scenarios Although I am using this scenario for a hobby project, there are many scenarios where a large amount of compute power is required for a short period of time. Windows Azure provides a great platform for developing these types of grid computing applications, and can work out very cost effective. ·         Windows Azure can provide massive compute power, on demand, in a matter of minutes. ·         The use of queues to manage the load balancing of jobs between role instances is a simple and effective solution. ·         Using a cloud-computing platform like Windows Azure allows proof-of-concept scenarios to be tested and evaluated on a very low budget. ·         No charges for inbound data transfer makes the uploading of large data sets to Windows Azure Storage services cost effective. (Transaction charges still apply.) Tips for using Windows Azure for Grid Computing Scenarios I found the implementation of a render farm using Windows Azure a fairly simple scenario to implement. I was impressed by ease of scalability that Azure provides, and by the short time that the application took to scale from 16 to 256 worker role instances. In this case it was around 13 minutes, in other tests it took between 10 and 20 minutes. The following tips may be useful when implementing a grid computing project in Windows Azure. ·         Using an Azure Storage queue to load-balance the units of work across multiple worker roles is simple and very effective. The design I have used in this scenario could easily scale to many thousands of worker role instances. ·         Windows Azure accounts are typically limited to 20 cores. If you need to use more than this, a call to support and a credit card check will be required. ·         Be aware of how the billing model works. You will be charged for worker role instances for the full clock our in which the instance is deployed. Schedule the workload to start just after the clock hour has started. ·         Monitor the utilization of the resources you are provisioning, ensure that you are not paying for worker roles that are idle. ·         If you are deploying third party applications to worker roles, you may well run into licensing issues. Purchasing software licenses on a per-processor basis when using hundreds of processors for a short time period would not be cost effective. ·         Third party software may also require installation onto the worker roles, which can be accomplished using start-up tasks. Bear in mind that adding a startup task and possible re-boot will add to the time required for the worker role instance to start and activate. An alternative may be to use a prepared VM and use VM roles. ·         Consider using the Windows Azure Autoscaling Application Block (WASABi) to autoscale the worker roles in your application. When using a large number of worker roles, the utilization must be carefully monitored, if the scaling algorithms are not optimal it could get very expensive!

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  • Creating a thematic map

    - by jsharma
    This post describes how to create a simple thematic map, just a state population layer, with no underlying map tile layer. The map shows states color-coded by total population. The map is interactive with info-windows and can be panned and zoomed. The sample code demonstrates the following: Displaying an interactive vector layer with no background map tile layer (i.e. purpose and use of the Universe object) Using a dynamic (i.e. defined via the javascript client API) color bucket style Dynamically changing a layer's rendering style Specifying which attribute value to use in determining the bucket, and hence style, for a feature (FoI) The result is shown in the screenshot below. The states layer was defined, and stored in the user_sdo_themes view of the mvdemo schema, using MapBuilder. The underlying table is defined as SQL> desc states_32775  Name                                      Null?    Type ----------------------------------------- -------- ----------------------------  STATE                                              VARCHAR2(26)  STATE_ABRV                                         VARCHAR2(2) FIPSST                                             VARCHAR2(2) TOTPOP                                             NUMBER PCTSMPLD                                           NUMBER LANDSQMI                                           NUMBER POPPSQMI                                           NUMBER ... MEDHHINC NUMBER AVGHHINC NUMBER GEOM32775 MDSYS.SDO_GEOMETRY We'll use the TOTPOP column value in the advanced (color bucket) style for rendering the states layers. The predefined theme (US_STATES_BI) is defined as follows. SQL> select styling_rules from user_sdo_themes where name='US_STATES_BI'; STYLING_RULES -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?> <styling_rules highlight_style="C.CB_QUAL_8_CLASS_DARK2_1"> <hidden_info> <field column="STATE" name="Name"/> <field column="POPPSQMI" name="POPPSQMI"/> <field column="TOTPOP" name="TOTPOP"/> </hidden_info> <rule column="TOTPOP"> <features style="states_totpop"> </features> <label column="STATE_ABRV" style="T.BLUE_SERIF_10"> 1 </label> </rule> </styling_rules> SQL> The theme definition specifies that the state, poppsqmi, totpop, state_abrv, and geom columns will be queried from the states_32775 table. The state_abrv value will be used to label the state while the totpop value will be used to determine the color-fill from those defined in the states_totpop advanced style. The states_totpop style, which we will not use in our demo, is defined as shown below. SQL> select definition from user_sdo_styles where name='STATES_TOTPOP'; DEFINITION -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <?xml version="1.0" ?> <AdvancedStyle> <BucketStyle> <Buckets default_style="C.S02_COUNTRY_AREA"> <RangedBucket seq="0" label="10K - 5M" low="10000" high="5000000" style="C.SEQ6_01" /> <RangedBucket seq="1" label="5M - 12M" low="5000001" high="1.2E7" style="C.SEQ6_02" /> <RangedBucket seq="2" label="12M - 20M" low="1.2000001E7" high="2.0E7" style="C.SEQ6_04" /> <RangedBucket seq="3" label="&gt; 20M" low="2.0000001E7" high="5.0E7" style="C.SEQ6_05" /> </Buckets> </BucketStyle> </AdvancedStyle> SQL> The demo defines additional advanced styles via the OM.style object and methods and uses those instead when rendering the states layer.   Now let's look at relevant snippets of code that defines the map extent and zoom levels (i.e. the OM.universe),  loads the states predefined vector layer (OM.layer), and sets up the advanced (color bucket) style. Defining the map extent and zoom levels. function initMap() {   //alert("Initialize map view");     // define the map extent and number of zoom levels.   // The Universe object is similar to the map tile layer configuration   // It defines the map extent, number of zoom levels, and spatial reference system   // well-known ones (like web mercator/google/bing or maps.oracle/elocation are predefined   // The Universe must be defined when there is no underlying map tile layer.   // When there is a map tile layer then that defines the map extent, srid, and zoom levels.      var uni= new OM.universe.Universe(     {         srid : 32775,         bounds : new OM.geometry.Rectangle(                         -3280000, 170000, 2300000, 3200000, 32775),         numberOfZoomLevels: 8     }); The srid specifies the spatial reference system which is Equal-Area Projection (United States). SQL> select cs_name from cs_srs where srid=32775 ; CS_NAME --------------------------------------------------- Equal-Area Projection (United States) The bounds defines the map extent. It is a Rectangle defined using the lower-left and upper-right coordinates and srid. Loading and displaying the states layer This is done in the states() function. The full code is at the end of this post, however here's the snippet which defines the states VectorLayer.     // States is a predefined layer in user_sdo_themes     var  layer2 = new OM.layer.VectorLayer("vLayer2",     {         def:         {             type:OM.layer.VectorLayer.TYPE_PREDEFINED,             dataSource:"mvdemo",             theme:"us_states_bi",             url: baseURL,             loadOnDemand: false         },         boundingTheme:true      }); The first parameter is a layer name, the second is an object literal for a layer config. The config object has two attributes: the first is the layer definition, the second specifies whether the layer is a bounding one (i.e. used to determine the current map zoom and center such that the whole layer is displayed within the map window) or not. The layer config has the following attributes: type - specifies whether is a predefined one, a defined via a SQL query (JDBC), or in a json-format file (DATAPACK) theme - is the predefined theme's name url - is the location of the mapviewer server loadOnDemand - specifies whether to load all the features or just those that lie within the current map window and load additional ones as needed on a pan or zoom The code snippet below dynamically defines an advanced style and then uses it, instead of the 'states_totpop' style, when rendering the states layer. // override predefined rendering style with programmatic one    var theRenderingStyle =      createBucketColorStyle('YlBr5', colorSeries, 'States5', true);   // specify which attribute is used in determining the bucket (i.e. color) to use for the state   // It can be an array because the style could be a chart type (pie/bar)   // which requires multiple attribute columns     // Use the STATE.TOTPOP column (aka attribute) value here    layer2.setRenderingStyle(theRenderingStyle, ["TOTPOP"]); The style itself is defined in the createBucketColorStyle() function. Dynamically defining an advanced style The advanced style used here is a bucket color style, i.e. a color style is associated with each bucket. So first we define the colors and then the buckets.     numClasses = colorSeries[colorName].classes;    // create Color Styles    for (var i=0; i < numClasses; i++)    {         theStyles[i] = new OM.style.Color(                      {fill: colorSeries[colorName].fill[i],                        stroke:colorSeries[colorName].stroke[i],                       strokeOpacity: useGradient? 0.25 : 1                      });    }; numClasses is the number of buckets. The colorSeries array contains the color fill and stroke definitions and is: var colorSeries = { //multi-hue color scheme #10 YlBl. "YlBl3": {   classes:3,                  fill: [0xEDF8B1, 0x7FCDBB, 0x2C7FB8],                  stroke:[0xB5DF9F, 0x72B8A8, 0x2872A6]   }, "YlBl5": {   classes:5,                  fill:[0xFFFFCC, 0xA1DAB4, 0x41B6C4, 0x2C7FB8, 0x253494],                  stroke:[0xE6E6B8, 0x91BCA2, 0x3AA4B0, 0x2872A6, 0x212F85]   }, //multi-hue color scheme #11 YlBr.  "YlBr3": {classes:3,                  fill:[0xFFF7BC, 0xFEC44F, 0xD95F0E],                  stroke:[0xE6DEA9, 0xE5B047, 0xC5360D]   }, "YlBr5": {classes:5,                  fill:[0xFFFFD4, 0xFED98E, 0xFE9929, 0xD95F0E, 0x993404],                  stroke:[0xE6E6BF, 0xE5C380, 0xE58A25, 0xC35663, 0x8A2F04]     }, etc. Next we create the bucket style.    bucketStyleDef = {       numClasses : colorSeries[colorName].classes, //      classification: 'custom',  //since we are supplying all the buckets //      buckets: theBuckets,       classification: 'logarithmic',  // use a logarithmic scale       styles: theStyles,       gradient:  useGradient? 'linear' : 'off' //      gradient:  useGradient? 'radial' : 'off'     };    theBucketStyle = new OM.style.BucketStyle(bucketStyleDef);    return theBucketStyle; A BucketStyle constructor takes a style definition as input. The style definition specifies the number of buckets (numClasses), a classification scheme (which can be equal-ranged, logarithmic scale, or custom), the styles for each bucket, whether to use a gradient effect, and optionally the buckets (required when using a custom classification scheme). The full source for the demo <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> <title>Oracle Maps V2 Thematic Map Demo</title> <script src="http://localhost:8080/mapviewer/jslib/v2/oraclemapsv2.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> <script type="text/javascript"> //var $j = jQuery.noConflict(); var baseURL="http://localhost:8080/mapviewer"; // location of mapviewer OM.gv.proxyEnabled =false; // no mvproxy needed OM.gv.setResourcePath(baseURL+"/jslib/v2/images/"); // location of resources for UI elements like nav panel buttons var map = null; // the client mapviewer object var statesLayer = null, stateCountyLayer = null; // The vector layers for states and counties in a state var layerName="States"; // initial map center and zoom var mapCenterLon = -20000; var mapCenterLat = 1750000; var mapZoom = 2; var mpoint = new OM.geometry.Point(mapCenterLon,mapCenterLat,32775); var currentPalette = null, currentStyle=null; // set an onchange listener for the color palette select list // initialize the map // load and display the states layer $(document).ready( function() { $("#demo-htmlselect").change(function() { var theColorScheme = $(this).val(); useSelectedColorScheme(theColorScheme); }); initMap(); states(); } ); /** * color series from ColorBrewer site (http://colorbrewer2.org/). */ var colorSeries = { //multi-hue color scheme #10 YlBl. "YlBl3": { classes:3, fill: [0xEDF8B1, 0x7FCDBB, 0x2C7FB8], stroke:[0xB5DF9F, 0x72B8A8, 0x2872A6] }, "YlBl5": { classes:5, fill:[0xFFFFCC, 0xA1DAB4, 0x41B6C4, 0x2C7FB8, 0x253494], stroke:[0xE6E6B8, 0x91BCA2, 0x3AA4B0, 0x2872A6, 0x212F85] }, //multi-hue color scheme #11 YlBr. "YlBr3": {classes:3, fill:[0xFFF7BC, 0xFEC44F, 0xD95F0E], stroke:[0xE6DEA9, 0xE5B047, 0xC5360D] }, "YlBr5": {classes:5, fill:[0xFFFFD4, 0xFED98E, 0xFE9929, 0xD95F0E, 0x993404], stroke:[0xE6E6BF, 0xE5C380, 0xE58A25, 0xC35663, 0x8A2F04] }, // single-hue color schemes (blues, greens, greys, oranges, reds, purples) "Purples5": {classes:5, fill:[0xf2f0f7, 0xcbc9e2, 0x9e9ac8, 0x756bb1, 0x54278f], stroke:[0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3] }, "Blues5": {classes:5, fill:[0xEFF3FF, 0xbdd7e7, 0x68aed6, 0x3182bd, 0x18519C], stroke:[0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3] }, "Greens5": {classes:5, fill:[0xedf8e9, 0xbae4b3, 0x74c476, 0x31a354, 0x116d2c], stroke:[0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3] }, "Greys5": {classes:5, fill:[0xf7f7f7, 0xcccccc, 0x969696, 0x636363, 0x454545], stroke:[0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3] }, "Oranges5": {classes:5, fill:[0xfeedde, 0xfdb385, 0xfd8d3c, 0xe6550d, 0xa63603], stroke:[0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3] }, "Reds5": {classes:5, fill:[0xfee5d9, 0xfcae91, 0xfb6a4a, 0xde2d26, 0xa50f15], stroke:[0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3, 0xd3d3d3] } }; function createBucketColorStyle( colorName, colorSeries, rangeName, useGradient) { var theBucketStyle; var bucketStyleDef; var theStyles = []; var theColors = []; var aBucket, aStyle, aColor, aRange; var numClasses ; numClasses = colorSeries[colorName].classes; // create Color Styles for (var i=0; i < numClasses; i++) { theStyles[i] = new OM.style.Color( {fill: colorSeries[colorName].fill[i], stroke:colorSeries[colorName].stroke[i], strokeOpacity: useGradient? 0.25 : 1 }); }; bucketStyleDef = { numClasses : colorSeries[colorName].classes, // classification: 'custom', //since we are supplying all the buckets // buckets: theBuckets, classification: 'logarithmic', // use a logarithmic scale styles: theStyles, gradient: useGradient? 'linear' : 'off' // gradient: useGradient? 'radial' : 'off' }; theBucketStyle = new OM.style.BucketStyle(bucketStyleDef); return theBucketStyle; } function initMap() { //alert("Initialize map view"); // define the map extent and number of zoom levels. // The Universe object is similar to the map tile layer configuration // It defines the map extent, number of zoom levels, and spatial reference system // well-known ones (like web mercator/google/bing or maps.oracle/elocation are predefined // The Universe must be defined when there is no underlying map tile layer. // When there is a map tile layer then that defines the map extent, srid, and zoom levels. var uni= new OM.universe.Universe( { srid : 32775, bounds : new OM.geometry.Rectangle( -3280000, 170000, 2300000, 3200000, 32775), numberOfZoomLevels: 8 }); map = new OM.Map( document.getElementById('map'), { mapviewerURL: baseURL, universe:uni }) ; var navigationPanelBar = new OM.control.NavigationPanelBar(); map.addMapDecoration(navigationPanelBar); } // end initMap function states() { //alert("Load and display states"); layerName = "States"; if(statesLayer) { // states were already visible but the style may have changed // so set the style to the currently selected one var theData = $('#demo-htmlselect').val(); setStyle(theData); } else { // States is a predefined layer in user_sdo_themes var layer2 = new OM.layer.VectorLayer("vLayer2", { def: { type:OM.layer.VectorLayer.TYPE_PREDEFINED, dataSource:"mvdemo", theme:"us_states_bi", url: baseURL, loadOnDemand: false }, boundingTheme:true }); // add drop shadow effect and hover style var shadowFilter = new OM.visualfilter.DropShadow({opacity:0.5, color:"#000000", offset:6, radius:10}); var hoverStyle = new OM.style.Color( {stroke:"#838383", strokeThickness:2}); layer2.setHoverStyle(hoverStyle); layer2.setHoverVisualFilter(shadowFilter); layer2.enableFeatureHover(true); layer2.enableFeatureSelection(false); layer2.setLabelsVisible(true); // override predefined rendering style with programmatic one var theRenderingStyle = createBucketColorStyle('YlBr5', colorSeries, 'States5', true); // specify which attribute is used in determining the bucket (i.e. color) to use for the state // It can be an array because the style could be a chart type (pie/bar) // which requires multiple attribute columns // Use the STATE.TOTPOP column (aka attribute) value here layer2.setRenderingStyle(theRenderingStyle, ["TOTPOP"]); currentPalette = "YlBr5"; var stLayerIdx = map.addLayer(layer2); //alert('State Layer Idx = ' + stLayerIdx); map.setMapCenter(mpoint); map.setMapZoomLevel(mapZoom) ; // display the map map.init() ; statesLayer=layer2; // add rt-click event listener to show counties for the state layer2.addListener(OM.event.MouseEvent.MOUSE_RIGHT_CLICK,stateRtClick); } // end if } // end states function setStyle(styleName) { // alert("Selected Style = " + styleName); // there may be a counties layer also displayed. // that wll have different bucket ranges so create // one style for states and one for counties var newRenderingStyle = null; if (layerName === "States") { if(/3/.test(styleName)) { newRenderingStyle = createBucketColorStyle(styleName, colorSeries, 'States3', false); currentStyle = createBucketColorStyle(styleName, colorSeries, 'Counties3', false); } else { newRenderingStyle = createBucketColorStyle(styleName, colorSeries, 'States5', false); currentStyle = createBucketColorStyle(styleName, colorSeries, 'Counties5', false); } statesLayer.setRenderingStyle(newRenderingStyle, ["TOTPOP"]); if (stateCountyLayer) stateCountyLayer.setRenderingStyle(currentStyle, ["TOTPOP"]); } } // end setStyle function stateRtClick(evt){ var foi = evt.feature; //alert('Rt-Click on State: ' + foi.attributes['_label_'] + // ' with pop ' + foi.attributes['TOTPOP']); // display another layer with counties info // layer may change on each rt-click so create and add each time. var countyByState = null ; // the _label_ attribute of a feature in this case is the state abbreviation // we will use that to query and get the counties for a state var sqlText = "select totpop,geom32775 from counties_32775_moved where state_abrv="+ "'"+foi.getAttributeValue('_label_')+"'"; // alert(sqlText); if (currentStyle === null) currentStyle = createBucketColorStyle('YlBr5', colorSeries, 'Counties5', false); /* try a simple style instead new OM.style.ColorStyle( { stroke: "#B8F4FF", fill: "#18E5F4", fillOpacity:0 } ); */ // remove existing layer if any if(stateCountyLayer) map.removeLayer(stateCountyLayer); countyByState = new OM.layer.VectorLayer("stCountyLayer", {def:{type:OM.layer.VectorLayer.TYPE_JDBC, dataSource:"mvdemo", sql:sqlText, url:baseURL}}); // url:baseURL}, // renderingStyle:currentStyle}); countyByState.setVisible(true); // specify which attribute is used in determining the bucket (i.e. color) to use for the state countyByState.setRenderingStyle(currentStyle, ["TOTPOP"]); var ctLayerIdx = map.addLayer(countyByState); // alert('County Layer Idx = ' + ctLayerIdx); //map.addLayer(countyByState); stateCountyLayer = countyByState; } // end stateRtClick function useSelectedColorScheme(theColorScheme) { if(map) { // code to update renderStyle goes here //alert('will try to change render style'); setStyle(theColorScheme); } else { // do nothing } } </script> </head> <body bgcolor="#b4c5cc" style="height:100%;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,Verdana"> <h3 align="center">State population thematic map </h3> <div id="demo" style="position:absolute; left:68%; top:44px; width:28%; height:100%"> <HR/> <p/> Choose Color Scheme: <select id="demo-htmlselect"> <option value="YlBl3"> YellowBlue3</option> <option value="YlBr3"> YellowBrown3</option> <option value="YlBl5"> YellowBlue5</option> <option value="YlBr5" selected="selected"> YellowBrown5</option> <option value="Blues5"> Blues</option> <option value="Greens5"> Greens</option> <option value="Greys5"> Greys</option> <option value="Oranges5"> Oranges</option> <option value="Purples5"> Purples</option> <option value="Reds5"> Reds</option> </select> <p/> </div> <div id="map" style="position:absolute; left:10px; top:50px; width:65%; height:75%; background-color:#778f99"></div> <div style="position:absolute;top:85%; left:10px;width:98%" class="noprint"> <HR/> <p> Note: This demo uses HTML5 Canvas and requires IE9+, Firefox 10+, or Chrome. No map will show up in IE8 or earlier. </p> </div> </body> </html>

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  • Optimizing transition/movement smoothness for a 2D flash game.

    - by Tom
    Update 6: Fenomenas suggested me to re-create everything as simple as possible. I had my doubts that this would make any difference as the algorithm remains the same, and performance did not seem to be the issue. Anyway, it was the only suggestion I got so here it is: 30 FPS: http://www.feedpostal.com/test/simple/30/SimpleMovement.html 40 FPS: http://www.feedpostal.com/test/simple/40/SimpleMovement.html 60 FPS: http://www.feedpostal.com/test/simple/60/SimpleMovement.html 100 FPS: http://www.feedpostal.com/test/simple/100/SimpleMovement.html The code: package { import flash.display.Sprite; import flash.events.Event; import flash.events.KeyboardEvent; import flash.utils.getTimer; [SWF(width="800", height="600", frameRate="40", backgroundColor="#000000")] public class SimpleMovement extends Sprite { private static const TURNING_SPEED:uint = 180; private static const MOVEMENT_SPEED:uint = 400; private static const RADIAN_DIVIDE:Number = Math.PI/180; private var playerObject:Sprite; private var shipContainer:Sprite; private var moving:Boolean = false; private var turningMode:uint = 0; private var movementTimestamp:Number = getTimer(); private var turningTimestamp:Number = movementTimestamp; public function SimpleMovement() { //step 1: create player object playerObject = new Sprite(); playerObject.graphics.lineStyle(1, 0x000000); playerObject.graphics.beginFill(0x6D7B8D); playerObject.graphics.drawRect(0, 0, 25, 50); //make it rotate around the center playerObject.x = 0 - playerObject.width / 2; playerObject.y = 0 - playerObject.height / 2; shipContainer = new Sprite(); shipContainer.addChild(playerObject); shipContainer.x = 100; shipContainer.y = 100; shipContainer.rotation = 180; addChild(shipContainer); //step 2: install keyboard hook when stage is ready addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, stageReady, false, 0, true); //step 3: install rendering update poll addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, updatePoller, false, 0, true); } private function updatePoller(event:Event):void { var newTime:Number = getTimer(); //turning if (turningMode != 0) { var turningDeltaTime:Number = newTime - turningTimestamp; turningTimestamp = newTime; var rotation:Number = TURNING_SPEED * turningDeltaTime / 1000; if (turningMode == 1) shipContainer.rotation -= rotation; else shipContainer.rotation += rotation; } //movement if (moving) { var movementDeltaTime:Number = newTime - movementTimestamp; movementTimestamp = newTime; var distance:Number = MOVEMENT_SPEED * movementDeltaTime / 1000; var rAngle:Number = shipContainer.rotation * RADIAN_DIVIDE; //convert degrees to radian shipContainer.x += distance * Math.sin(rAngle); shipContainer.y -= distance * Math.cos(rAngle); } } private function stageReady(event:Event):void { //install keyboard hook stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, keyDown, false, 0, true); stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_UP, keyUp, false, 0, true); } private final function keyDown(event:KeyboardEvent):void { if ((event.keyCode == 87) && (!moving)) //87 = W { movementTimestamp = getTimer(); moving = true; } if ((event.keyCode == 65) && (turningMode != 1)) //65 = A { turningTimestamp = getTimer(); turningMode = 1; } else if ((event.keyCode == 68) && (turningMode != 2)) //68 = D { turningTimestamp = getTimer(); turningMode = 2; } } private final function keyUp(event:KeyboardEvent):void { if ((event.keyCode == 87) && (moving)) moving = false; //87 = W if (((event.keyCode == 65) || (event.keyCode == 68)) && (turningMode != 0)) turningMode = 0; //65 = A, 68 = D } } } The results were as I expected. Absolutely no improvement. I really hope that someone has another suggestion as this thing needs fixing. Also, I doubt it's my system as I have a pretty good one (8GB RAM, Q9550 QuadCore intel, ATI Radeon 4870 512MB). Also, everyone else I asked so far had the same issue with my client. Update 5: another example of a smooth flash game just to demonstrate that my movement definitely is different! See http://www.spel.nl/game/bumpercraft.html Update 4: I traced the time before rendering (EVENT.RENDER) and right after rendering (EVENT.ENTER_FRAME), the results: rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 24 ms rendering took: 18 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 232 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 16 ms rendering took: 12 ms rendering took: 14 ms rendering took: 12 ms The range is 12-16 ms. During these differences, the shocking/warping/flickering movement was already going on. There is also 1 peak of 232ms, at this time there was a relatively big warp. This is however not the biggest problme, the biggest problem are the continuous small warps during normal movement. Does this give anyone a clue? Update 3: After testing, I know that the following factors are not causing my problem: Bitmap's quality - changed with photoshop to an uglier 8 colours optimized graphic, no improvement at all. Constant rotation of image while turning - disabled it, no improvement at all Browser rendering - tried to use the flash player standalone, no improvement at all I am 100% convinced that the problem lies in either my code or in my algorithm. Please, help me out. It has been almost two weeks (1 week that I asked this question on SO) now and I still have to get my golden answer. Update 1: see bottom for full flex project source and a live demo demonstrating my problem. I'm working on a 2d flash game. Player ships are created as an object: ships[id] = new GameShip(); When movement and rotation information is available, this is being directed to the corresponding ship: ships[id].setMovementMode(1); //move forward Now, within this GameShip object movement works using the "Event.ENTER_FRAME" event: addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, movementHandler); The following function is then being run: private final function movementHandler(event:Event):void { var newTimeStamp:uint = UtilLib.getTimeStamp(); //set current timeStamp var distance:Number = (newTimeStamp - movementTimeStamp) / 1000 * movementSpeed; //speed = x pixels forward every 1 second movementTimeStamp = newTimeStamp; //update old timeStamp var diagonalChange:Array = getDiagonalChange(movementAngle, distance); //the diagonal position update based on angle and distance charX += diagonalChange[0]; charY += diagonalChange[1]; if (shipContainer) { //when the container is ready to be worked with shipContainer.x = charX; shipContainer.y = charY; } } private final function getDiagonalChange(angle:Number, distance:Number):Array { var rAngle:Number = angle * Math.PI/180; //convert degrees to radian return [Math.sin(rAngle) * distance, (Math.cos(rAngle) * distance) * -1]; } When the object is no longer moving, the event listener will be removed. The same method is being used for rotation. Everything works almost perfect. I've set the project's target FPS to 100 and created a FPS counter. According to the FPS counter, the average FPS in firefox is around 100, while the top is 1000 and the bottom is 22. I think that the bottom and top FPSs are only happening during the initialization of the client (startup). The problem is that the ship appears to be almost perfectly smooth, while it should be just that without the "almost" part. It's almost as if the ship is "flickering" very very fast, you can't actually see it but it's hard to focus on the object while it's moving with your eyes. Also, every now and then, there seems to be a bit of a framerate spike, as if the client is skipping a couple of frames, you then see it quickly warp. It is very difficult to explain what the real problem is, but in general it's that the movement is not perfectly smooth. So, do you have any suggestions on how to make the movement or transition of objects perfectly smooth? Update 1: I re-created the client to demonstrate my problem. Please check it out. The client: http://feedpostal.com/test/MovementTest.html The Actionscript Project (full source): http://feedpostal.com/test/MovementTest.rar An example of a smooth flash game (not created by me): http://www.gamesforwork.com/games/swf/Mission%20Racing_august_10th_2009.swf It took me a pretty long time to recreate this client side version, I hope this will help with solving the problem. Please note: yes, it is actually pretty smooth. But it is definitely not smooth enough.

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  • How do I get my code to read the spaces between longs?

    - by WahtsUpWorld
    I apologize for any inconvenience that may occur in answering my question, I'm fairly new to programming and I'm so far only in the last weeks of my community college Java I class. The problem I am facing is in my code of which I cannot seem to get the PrintWriter to address the spaces in between my longs' phone number and social security I.D. The entire code consists of two classes in which one pulls from the other the information needed to parse and present the file writer/print writer. Here is the entire code w/ the second class after it: public class FinalProjectGroup1 { public static void main(String[] args) { } public String name; public long ssid; public double pay; public String address; public long number; public void cleanUpConstructor() {} public FinalProjectGroup1(String name, String address, double pay, long ssid, long number){ this.name = name; this.pay = pay; this.ssid = ssid; this.address = address; this.number = number; cleanUpConstructor(); } public void setName(String name) { this.name = name; } public String getName() { return name; } public void setPay(double pay) { this.pay = pay; } public double getPay() { return pay; } public void setSSID(long ssid) { this.ssid = ssid; } public long getSSID() { return ssid; } public void setAddress(String address) { this.address = address; } public String getAddress() { return address; } public void setNumber(long number) { this.number = number; } public long getNumber() { return number; } } SECOND CLASS import java.awt.EventQueue; import javax.swing.JFrame; import javax.swing.JLabel; import java.awt.Font; import javax.swing.JFileChooser; import javax.swing.JButton; import javax.swing.JTextField; import FinalProjectGroup1; import java.awt.event.ActionListener; import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.io.FileWriter; import java.io.PrintWriter; public class FinalProjectGroup1Window { public JFrame frmTheBosssSecretary; public JTextField txtName; public JTextField txtSSID; public JTextField txtAddress; public JTextField txtNumber; public JTextField txtPay; public JTextField txtFindName; public JTextField txtFindSSID; public JTextField txtFindPay; public JTextField txtFolder; public static void main(String[] args) { EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() { public void run() { try { FinalProjectGroup1Window window = new FinalProjectGroup1Window(); window.frmTheBosssSecretary.setVisible(true); } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } }); } public FinalProjectGroup1Window() { initialize(); } private void initialize() { frmTheBosssSecretary = new JFrame(); frmTheBosssSecretary.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); frmTheBosssSecretary.setTitle("The Boss's Secretary: Employee Generator/Finder"); frmTheBosssSecretary.setBounds(100, 100, 547, 302); frmTheBosssSecretary.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().setLayout(null); JLabel lblFile = new JLabel("Employee Folder:"); lblFile.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); lblFile.setBounds(10, 10, 93, 14); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(lblFile); JLabel lblFindEmployee = new JLabel("Employee Finder"); lblFindEmployee.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.BOLD, 18)); lblFindEmployee.setBounds(194, 159, 142, 20); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(lblFindEmployee); JLabel lblEmployeeName = new JLabel("Employee Name:"); lblEmployeeName.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); lblEmployeeName.setBounds(10, 35, 93, 14); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(lblEmployeeName); JLabel lblSSID = new JLabel("Employee SSID:"); lblSSID.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); lblSSID.setBounds(10, 135, 85, 14); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(lblSSID); JLabel lblAddress = new JLabel("Employee Address:"); lblAddress.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); lblAddress.setBounds(10, 60, 105, 14); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(lblAddress); JLabel lblPhoneNumber = new JLabel("Employee Phone Number:"); lblPhoneNumber.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); lblPhoneNumber.setBounds(10, 85, 134, 14); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(lblPhoneNumber); JLabel lblPayRate = new JLabel("Employee Pay Rate:"); lblPayRate.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); lblPayRate.setBounds(10, 110, 105, 14); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(lblPayRate); JLabel lblFindEmployeeName = new JLabel("Find Employee Name:"); lblFindEmployeeName.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); lblFindEmployeeName.setBounds(10, 183, 115, 14); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(lblFindEmployeeName); JLabel lblFindSSID = new JLabel("Find Employee SSID:"); lblFindSSID.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); lblFindSSID.setBounds(10, 208, 105, 14); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(lblFindSSID); JLabel lblFindPay = new JLabel("Find Employee Address:"); lblFindPay.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); lblFindPay.setBounds(10, 233, 124, 14); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(lblFindPay); txtFolder = new JTextField(); txtFolder.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); txtFolder.setBounds(105, 7, 314, 20); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(txtFolder); txtFolder.setColumns(10); txtName = new JTextField(); txtName.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); txtName.setBounds(99, 32, 247, 20); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(txtName); txtName.setColumns(10); txtAddress = new JTextField(); txtAddress.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); txtAddress.setBounds(109, 57, 237, 20); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(txtAddress); txtAddress.setColumns(10); txtNumber = new JTextField(); txtNumber.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); txtNumber.setBounds(141, 82, 160, 20); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(txtNumber); txtNumber.setColumns(10); txtPay = new JTextField(); txtPay.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); txtPay.setBounds(116, 107, 105, 20); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(txtPay); txtPay.setColumns(10); txtSSID = new JTextField(); txtSSID.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); txtSSID.setBounds(97, 132, 124, 20); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(txtSSID); txtSSID.setColumns(10); txtFindName = new JTextField(); txtFindName.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); txtFindName.setBounds(122, 180, 314, 20); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(txtFindName); txtFindName.setColumns(10); txtFindSSID = new JTextField(); txtFindSSID.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); txtFindSSID.setBounds(122, 205, 122, 20); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(txtFindSSID); txtFindSSID.setColumns(10); txtFindPay = new JTextField(); txtFindPay.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); txtFindPay.setBounds(141, 230, 237, 20); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(txtFindPay); txtFindPay.setColumns(10); JButton btnAddEmployee = new JButton("Add Employee"); btnAddEmployee.addActionListener(new ActionListener() { public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent arg0) { try { String name = txtName.getText(); String address = txtAddress.getText(); double pay = Double.parseDouble(txtPay.getText()); long ssid = Long.parseLong(txtSSID.getText()); long number = Long.parseLong(txtNumber.getText()); FinalProjectGroup1 ee = new FinalProjectGroup1(name, address, pay, ssid, number); FileWriter writer = new FileWriter(txtFolder.getText(), true); PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(writer); pw.println(ee.getName() + ", " + ee.getAddress() + ", " + ee.getNumber() + ", " + ee.getPay() + ", " + ee.getSSID()); pw.close(); } catch (Exception e) { return; } } }); JButton btnFolder = new JButton("Folder"); btnFolder.addActionListener(new ActionListener() { public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent arg0) { JFileChooser bsearch = new JFileChooser(); int result = bsearch.showOpenDialog(null); if (result != JFileChooser.APPROVE_OPTION) return; txtFolder.setText(bsearch.getSelectedFile().getAbsolutePath()); } }); btnFolder.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); btnFolder.setBounds(429, 6, 75, 23); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(btnFolder); btnAddEmployee.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); btnAddEmployee.setBounds(356, 42, 159, 107); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(btnAddEmployee); JButton btnFindName = new JButton("Find"); btnFindName.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); btnFindName.setBounds(446, 179, 69, 23); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(btnFindName); JButton btnFindSSID = new JButton("Find"); btnFindSSID.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); btnFindSSID.setBounds(250, 204, 85, 23); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(btnFindSSID); JButton btnFindAddress = new JButton("Find"); btnFindAddress.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.PLAIN, 12)); btnFindAddress.setBounds(389, 229, 85, 23); frmTheBosssSecretary.getContentPane().add(btnFindAddress); } } The problem here lies in the JButton Add Employee. Where, as previously mentioned, the long's phone number and social security I.D. don't show the spaces in the text file.

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  • Is -1 a magic number? An anti-pattern? A code smell? Quotes and guidelines from authorities

    - by polygenelubricants
    I've seen -1 used in various APIs, most commonly when searching into a "collection" with zero-based indices, usually to indicate the "not found" index. This "works" because -1 is never a legal index to begin with. It seems that any negative number should work, but I think -1 is almost always used, as some sort of (unwritten?) convention. I would like to limit the scope to Java at least for now. My questions are: What are the official words from Sun regarding using -1 as a "special" return value like this? What quotes are there regarding this issue, from e.g. James Gosling, Josh Bloch, or even other authoritative figures outside of Java? What were some of the notable discussions regarding this issue in the past?

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  • Using a "white list" for extracting terms for Text Mining, Part 2

    - by [email protected]
    In my last post, we set the groundwork for extracting specific tokens from a white list using a CTXRULE index. In this post, we will populate a table with the extracted tokens and produce a case table suitable for clustering with Oracle Data Mining. Our corpus of documents will be stored in a database table that is defined as create table documents(id NUMBER, text VARCHAR2(4000)); However, any suitable Oracle Text-accepted data type can be used for the text. We then create a table to contain the extracted tokens. The id column contains the unique identifier (or case id) of the document. The token column contains the extracted token. Note that a given document many have many tokens, so there will be one row per token for a given document. create table extracted_tokens (id NUMBER, token VARCHAR2(4000)); The next step is to iterate over the documents and extract the matching tokens using the index and insert them into our token table. We use the MATCHES function for matching the query_string from my_thesaurus_rules with the text. DECLARE     cursor c2 is       select id, text       from documents; BEGIN     for r_c2 in c2 loop        insert into extracted_tokens          select r_c2.id id, main_term token          from my_thesaurus_rules          where matches(query_string,                        r_c2.text)>0;     end loop; END; Now that we have the tokens, we can compute the term frequency - inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) for each token of each document. create table extracted_tokens_tfidf as   with num_docs as (select count(distinct id) doc_cnt                     from extracted_tokens),        tf       as (select a.id, a.token,                            a.token_cnt/b.num_tokens token_freq                     from                        (select id, token, count(*) token_cnt                        from extracted_tokens                        group by id, token) a,                       (select id, count(*) num_tokens                        from extracted_tokens                        group by id) b                     where a.id=b.id),        doc_freq as (select token, count(*) overall_token_cnt                     from extracted_tokens                     group by token)   select tf.id, tf.token,          token_freq * ln(doc_cnt/df.overall_token_cnt) tf_idf   from num_docs,        tf,        doc_freq df   where df.token=tf.token; From the WITH clause, the num_docs query simply counts the number of documents in the corpus. The tf query computes the term (token) frequency by computing the number of times each token appears in a document and divides that by the number of tokens found in the document. The doc_req query counts the number of times the token appears overall in the corpus. In the SELECT clause, we compute the tf_idf. Next, we create the nested table required to produce one record per case, where a case corresponds to an individual document. Here, we COLLECT all the tokens for a given document into the nested column extracted_tokens_tfidf_1. CREATE TABLE extracted_tokens_tfidf_nt              NESTED TABLE extracted_tokens_tfidf_1                  STORE AS extracted_tokens_tfidf_tab AS              select id,                     cast(collect(DM_NESTED_NUMERICAL(token,tf_idf)) as DM_NESTED_NUMERICALS) extracted_tokens_tfidf_1              from extracted_tokens_tfidf              group by id;   To build the clustering model, we create a settings table and then insert the various settings. Most notable are the number of clusters (20), using cosine distance which is better for text, turning off auto data preparation since the values are ready for mining, the number of iterations (20) to get a better model, and the split criterion of size for clusters that are roughly balanced in number of cases assigned. CREATE TABLE km_settings (setting_name  VARCHAR2(30), setting_value VARCHAR2(30)); BEGIN  INSERT INTO km_settings (setting_name, setting_value) VALUES     VALUES (dbms_data_mining.clus_num_clusters, 20);  INSERT INTO km_settings (setting_name, setting_value)     VALUES (dbms_data_mining.kmns_distance, dbms_data_mining.kmns_cosine);   INSERT INTO km_settings (setting_name, setting_value) VALUES     VALUES (dbms_data_mining.prep_auto,dbms_data_mining.prep_auto_off);   INSERT INTO km_settings (setting_name, setting_value) VALUES     VALUES (dbms_data_mining.kmns_iterations,20);   INSERT INTO km_settings (setting_name, setting_value) VALUES     VALUES (dbms_data_mining.kmns_split_criterion,dbms_data_mining.kmns_size);   COMMIT; END; With this in place, we can now build the clustering model. BEGIN     DBMS_DATA_MINING.CREATE_MODEL(     model_name          => 'TEXT_CLUSTERING_MODEL',     mining_function     => dbms_data_mining.clustering,     data_table_name     => 'extracted_tokens_tfidf_nt',     case_id_column_name => 'id',     settings_table_name => 'km_settings'); END;To generate cluster names from this model, check out my earlier post on that topic.

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  • Seeking on a Heap, and Two Useful DMVs

    - by Paul White
    So far in this mini-series on seeks and scans, we have seen that a simple ‘seek’ operation can be much more complex than it first appears.  A seek can contain one or more seek predicates – each of which can either identify at most one row in a unique index (a singleton lookup) or a range of values (a range scan).  When looking at a query plan, we will often need to look at the details of the seek operator in the Properties window to see how many operations it is performing, and what type of operation each one is.  As you saw in the first post in this series, the number of hidden seeking operations can have an appreciable impact on performance. Measuring Seeks and Scans I mentioned in my last post that there is no way to tell from a graphical query plan whether you are seeing a singleton lookup or a range scan.  You can work it out – if you happen to know that the index is defined as unique and the seek predicate is an equality comparison, but there’s no separate property that says ‘singleton lookup’ or ‘range scan’.  This is a shame, and if I had my way, the query plan would show different icons for range scans and singleton lookups – perhaps also indicating whether the operation was one or more of those operations underneath the covers. In light of all that, you might be wondering if there is another way to measure how many seeks of either type are occurring in your system, or for a particular query.  As is often the case, the answer is yes – we can use a couple of dynamic management views (DMVs): sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats and sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats. Index Usage Stats The index usage stats DMV contains counts of index operations from the perspective of the Query Executor (QE) – the SQL Server component that is responsible for executing the query plan.  It has three columns that are of particular interest to us: user_seeks – the number of times an Index Seek operator appears in an executed plan user_scans – the number of times a Table Scan or Index Scan operator appears in an executed plan user_lookups – the number of times an RID or Key Lookup operator appears in an executed plan An operator is counted once per execution (generating an estimated plan does not affect the totals), so an Index Seek that executes 10,000 times in a single plan execution adds 1 to the count of user seeks.  Even less intuitively, an operator is also counted once per execution even if it is not executed at all.  I will show you a demonstration of each of these things later in this post. Index Operational Stats The index operational stats DMV contains counts of index and table operations from the perspective of the Storage Engine (SE).  It contains a wealth of interesting information, but the two columns of interest to us right now are: range_scan_count – the number of range scans (including unrestricted full scans) on a heap or index structure singleton_lookup_count – the number of singleton lookups in a heap or index structure This DMV counts each SE operation, so 10,000 singleton lookups will add 10,000 to the singleton lookup count column, and a table scan that is executed 5 times will add 5 to the range scan count. The Test Rig To explore the behaviour of seeks and scans in detail, we will need to create a test environment.  The scripts presented here are best run on SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition, but the majority of the tests will work just fine on SQL Server 2005.  A couple of tests use partitioning, but these will be skipped if you are not running an Enterprise-equivalent SKU.  Ok, first up we need a database: USE master; GO IF DB_ID('ScansAndSeeks') IS NOT NULL DROP DATABASE ScansAndSeeks; GO CREATE DATABASE ScansAndSeeks; GO USE ScansAndSeeks; GO ALTER DATABASE ScansAndSeeks SET ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION OFF ; ALTER DATABASE ScansAndSeeks SET AUTO_CLOSE OFF, AUTO_SHRINK OFF, AUTO_CREATE_STATISTICS OFF, AUTO_UPDATE_STATISTICS OFF, PARAMETERIZATION SIMPLE, READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT OFF, RESTRICTED_USER ; Notice that several database options are set in particular ways to ensure we get meaningful and reproducible results from the DMVs.  In particular, the options to auto-create and update statistics are disabled.  There are also three stored procedures, the first of which creates a test table (which may or may not be partitioned).  The table is pretty much the same one we used yesterday: The table has 100 rows, and both the key_col and data columns contain the same values – the integers from 1 to 100 inclusive.  The table is a heap, with a non-clustered primary key on key_col, and a non-clustered non-unique index on the data column.  The only reason I have used a heap here, rather than a clustered table, is so I can demonstrate a seek on a heap later on.  The table has an extra column (not shown because I am too lazy to update the diagram from yesterday) called padding – a CHAR(100) column that just contains 100 spaces in every row.  It’s just there to discourage SQL Server from choosing table scan over an index + RID lookup in one of the tests. The first stored procedure is called ResetTest: CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.ResetTest @Partitioned BIT = 'false' AS BEGIN SET NOCOUNT ON ; IF OBJECT_ID(N'dbo.Example', N'U') IS NOT NULL BEGIN DROP TABLE dbo.Example; END ; -- Test table is a heap -- Non-clustered primary key on 'key_col' CREATE TABLE dbo.Example ( key_col INTEGER NOT NULL, data INTEGER NOT NULL, padding CHAR(100) NOT NULL DEFAULT SPACE(100), CONSTRAINT [PK dbo.Example key_col] PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED (key_col) ) ; IF @Partitioned = 'true' BEGIN -- Enterprise, Trial, or Developer -- required for partitioning tests IF SERVERPROPERTY('EngineEdition') = 3 BEGIN EXECUTE (' DROP TABLE dbo.Example ; IF EXISTS ( SELECT 1 FROM sys.partition_schemes WHERE name = N''PS'' ) DROP PARTITION SCHEME PS ; IF EXISTS ( SELECT 1 FROM sys.partition_functions WHERE name = N''PF'' ) DROP PARTITION FUNCTION PF ; CREATE PARTITION FUNCTION PF (INTEGER) AS RANGE RIGHT FOR VALUES (20, 40, 60, 80, 100) ; CREATE PARTITION SCHEME PS AS PARTITION PF ALL TO ([PRIMARY]) ; CREATE TABLE dbo.Example ( key_col INTEGER NOT NULL, data INTEGER NOT NULL, padding CHAR(100) NOT NULL DEFAULT SPACE(100), CONSTRAINT [PK dbo.Example key_col] PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED (key_col) ) ON PS (key_col); '); END ELSE BEGIN RAISERROR('Invalid SKU for partition test', 16, 1); RETURN; END; END ; -- Non-unique non-clustered index on the 'data' column CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [IX dbo.Example data] ON dbo.Example (data) ; -- Add 100 rows INSERT dbo.Example WITH (TABLOCKX) ( key_col, data ) SELECT key_col = V.number, data = V.number FROM master.dbo.spt_values AS V WHERE V.[type] = N'P' AND V.number BETWEEN 1 AND 100 ; END; GO The second stored procedure, ShowStats, displays information from the Index Usage Stats and Index Operational Stats DMVs: CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.ShowStats @Partitioned BIT = 'false' AS BEGIN -- Index Usage Stats DMV (QE) SELECT index_name = ISNULL(I.name, I.type_desc), scans = IUS.user_scans, seeks = IUS.user_seeks, lookups = IUS.user_lookups FROM sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats AS IUS JOIN sys.indexes AS I ON I.object_id = IUS.object_id AND I.index_id = IUS.index_id WHERE IUS.database_id = DB_ID(N'ScansAndSeeks') AND IUS.object_id = OBJECT_ID(N'dbo.Example', N'U') ORDER BY I.index_id ; -- Index Operational Stats DMV (SE) IF @Partitioned = 'true' SELECT index_name = ISNULL(I.name, I.type_desc), partitions = COUNT(IOS.partition_number), range_scans = SUM(IOS.range_scan_count), single_lookups = SUM(IOS.singleton_lookup_count) FROM sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats ( DB_ID(N'ScansAndSeeks'), OBJECT_ID(N'dbo.Example', N'U'), NULL, NULL ) AS IOS JOIN sys.indexes AS I ON I.object_id = IOS.object_id AND I.index_id = IOS.index_id GROUP BY I.index_id, -- Key I.name, I.type_desc ORDER BY I.index_id; ELSE SELECT index_name = ISNULL(I.name, I.type_desc), range_scans = SUM(IOS.range_scan_count), single_lookups = SUM(IOS.singleton_lookup_count) FROM sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats ( DB_ID(N'ScansAndSeeks'), OBJECT_ID(N'dbo.Example', N'U'), NULL, NULL ) AS IOS JOIN sys.indexes AS I ON I.object_id = IOS.object_id AND I.index_id = IOS.index_id GROUP BY I.index_id, -- Key I.name, I.type_desc ORDER BY I.index_id; END; The final stored procedure, RunTest, executes a query written against the example table: CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.RunTest @SQL VARCHAR(8000), @Partitioned BIT = 'false' AS BEGIN -- No execution plan yet SET STATISTICS XML OFF ; -- Reset the test environment EXECUTE dbo.ResetTest @Partitioned ; -- Previous call will throw an error if a partitioned -- test was requested, but SKU does not support it IF @@ERROR = 0 BEGIN -- IO statistics and plan on SET STATISTICS XML, IO ON ; -- Test statement EXECUTE (@SQL) ; -- Plan and IO statistics off SET STATISTICS XML, IO OFF ; EXECUTE dbo.ShowStats @Partitioned; END; END; The Tests The first test is a simple scan of the heap table: EXECUTE dbo.RunTest @SQL = 'SELECT * FROM Example'; The top result set comes from the Index Usage Stats DMV, so it is the Query Executor’s (QE) view.  The lower result is from Index Operational Stats, which shows statistics derived from the actions taken by the Storage Engine (SE).  We see that QE performed 1 scan operation on the heap, and SE performed a single range scan.  Let’s try a single-value equality seek on a unique index next: EXECUTE dbo.RunTest @SQL = 'SELECT key_col FROM Example WHERE key_col = 32'; This time we see a single seek on the non-clustered primary key from QE, and one singleton lookup on the same index by the SE.  Now for a single-value seek on the non-unique non-clustered index: EXECUTE dbo.RunTest @SQL = 'SELECT data FROM Example WHERE data = 32'; QE shows a single seek on the non-clustered non-unique index, but SE shows a single range scan on that index – not the singleton lookup we saw in the previous test.  That makes sense because we know that only a single-value seek into a unique index is a singleton seek.  A single-value seek into a non-unique index might retrieve any number of rows, if you think about it.  The next query is equivalent to the IN list example seen in the first post in this series, but it is written using OR (just for variety, you understand): EXECUTE dbo.RunTest @SQL = 'SELECT data FROM Example WHERE data = 32 OR data = 33'; The plan looks the same, and there’s no difference in the stats recorded by QE, but the SE shows two range scans.  Again, these are range scans because we are looking for two values in the data column, which is covered by a non-unique index.  I’ve added a snippet from the Properties window to show that the query plan does show two seek predicates, not just one.  Now let’s rewrite the query using BETWEEN: EXECUTE dbo.RunTest @SQL = 'SELECT data FROM Example WHERE data BETWEEN 32 AND 33'; Notice the seek operator only has one predicate now – it’s just a single range scan from 32 to 33 in the index – as the SE output shows.  For the next test, we will look up four values in the key_col column: EXECUTE dbo.RunTest @SQL = 'SELECT key_col FROM Example WHERE key_col IN (2,4,6,8)'; Just a single seek on the PK from the Query Executor, but four singleton lookups reported by the Storage Engine – and four seek predicates in the Properties window.  On to a more complex example: EXECUTE dbo.RunTest @SQL = 'SELECT * FROM Example WITH (INDEX([PK dbo.Example key_col])) WHERE key_col BETWEEN 1 AND 8'; This time we are forcing use of the non-clustered primary key to return eight rows.  The index is not covering for this query, so the query plan includes an RID lookup into the heap to fetch the data and padding columns.  The QE reports a seek on the PK and a lookup on the heap.  The SE reports a single range scan on the PK (to find key_col values between 1 and 8), and eight singleton lookups on the heap.  Remember that a bookmark lookup (RID or Key) is a seek to a single value in a ‘unique index’ – it finds a row in the heap or cluster from a unique RID or clustering key – so that’s why lookups are always singleton lookups, not range scans. Our next example shows what happens when a query plan operator is not executed at all: EXECUTE dbo.RunTest @SQL = 'SELECT key_col FROM Example WHERE key_col = 8 AND @@TRANCOUNT < 0'; The Filter has a start-up predicate which is always false (if your @@TRANCOUNT is less than zero, call CSS immediately).  The index seek is never executed, but QE still records a single seek against the PK because the operator appears once in an executed plan.  The SE output shows no activity at all.  This next example is 2008 and above only, I’m afraid: EXECUTE dbo.RunTest @SQL = 'SELECT * FROM Example WHERE key_col BETWEEN 1 AND 30', @Partitioned = 'true'; This is the first example to use a partitioned table.  QE reports a single seek on the heap (yes – a seek on a heap), and the SE reports two range scans on the heap.  SQL Server knows (from the partitioning definition) that it only needs to look at partitions 1 and 2 to find all the rows where key_col is between 1 and 30 – the engine seeks to find the two partitions, and performs a range scan seek on each partition. The final example for today is another seek on a heap – try to work out the output of the query before running it! EXECUTE dbo.RunTest @SQL = 'SELECT TOP (2) WITH TIES * FROM Example WHERE key_col BETWEEN 1 AND 50 ORDER BY $PARTITION.PF(key_col) DESC', @Partitioned = 'true'; Notice the lack of an explicit Sort operator in the query plan to enforce the ORDER BY clause, and the backward range scan. © 2011 Paul White email: [email protected] twitter: @SQL_Kiwi

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