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• Windows 8 install from USB freezes

  - by Rafael Almeida

  I'm trying to install Windows 8 from an 8GB Kingston Data Traveler. I'm currently using the Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool to put the iso into the flash drive. It copies the files, but in the end it says it 'had a problem with bootsect' and could not make the flash drive bootable. This seems to be because my current system is Windows 7 32bits, and the bootsect.exe in the ISO is a 64-bit executable. Then I downloaded the 32-bit bootsect.exe and made the drive bootable by running: bootsect /nt60 E: /mbr Then I restarted and managed to boot via the flash drive, but now everything is very slow. It takes about two minutes for the initial black screen with the Windows logo and the spinner go away, then it goes to a purple-ish blank screen that stays on for about five more minutes and then it finally shows a dialog asking for the installation, date/time and keyboard languages. I input then, click "Install Now" and it takes about three more minutes with a "Setup is starting" screen. After that, the PC apparently reboots, the CPU fan speeds up considerably, and there's no video and nothing more happens even after more than ten minutes. What is happening? I already tried using another USB port and even installing from a Samsung G3 Station 2TB external hard disk, but the same thing happens. The file transfer speed to the Kingston drive was about only 3 megabytes per second.

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• Why just splitting an Ethernet cable does not work?

  - by Sin Jeong-hun

  I thought the Ethernet is logically one-line communication bus (for argument's sake, I am excluding hubs). All machines attached in the bus hears the same signals and the machines themselves try to avoid collisions by randomly backing off. http://computer.howstuffworks.com/ethernet6.htm If so, why splitting one Ethernet line from my home router into two and connecting two computers would not work? Why do I have to add a switch to it? *What the Internet said would not work. [4 port home router] ------[one Ethernet cable]-----[simple splitter]======[two computers] *What the Internet said I should do [4 port home router] ------[one Ethernet cable]-----[switch]======[two computers] Is this because of the signal degradation (reduced electric current)? Thank you for all the answers! The reason why I did not just use the two ports of my home router is... The 4-port gigabit router is in my room and I had put a computer in another room (also my room, though). Since wired network is far more reliable and secure, I had bought a long Ethernet cable and and connected the computer to the router. Now I was thinking about adding another computer to that room. I could buy another long Ethernet cable, but then there will be two cables between the rooms. The one line already is a minor annoyance, so I thought if I could share the one line between the two computers in that room. A switch would work, but it requires power and is a little bit pricey. That is why I wondered why it would not work to simply split the physical Ethernet cable. Apparently I do not completely understand how Ethernet and a switch work. I just have some bit of knowledge I heard in my college class.

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• File corruption (bad checksums) in large files copied to VMware guest

  - by AllanA

  In setting up a development lab, I've got a desktop system running ESXi 4.1.0 (free license) on SATA RAID 0 (already purchased and configured when I started this job; I'm open to hardware input as it pertains to my problem.) Its guests so far include two Win2008 Server R2 64-bit VMs and on Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit VM. I'm installing onto the Windows servers. We've been copying off some fairly large files (over a gigabyte) for an installation, hoping to install more quickly from a (virtual) hard drive than from the network for from BD-ROM. The problem is that they keep coming up with different checksums from the originals. The file sizes are the same, but md5sum reports different numbers (and so does the installer, as it refuses to continue when the checksums don't match.) I've tried copying directly from the BD-ROM (attaching the OS drive to the host system's physical drive). I've tried copying the large files onto a co-worker's Windows machine from his Blu-Ray drive; when I do that, the checksums match. But when I copy from his machine to the VM guest over a network share, the checksums no longer match. Thinking this meant a corrupt destination drive, I deleted it in vSphere and added another freshly created drive. The problem persists. I'm not sure what to try next.

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• windows 2008 r2 iis worker proccess memory usage increase

  - by nLL

  I have this web site written in c#. around 400-500 users online at any time. it was on windows 2008 32 bit machine before and never ever locked/slowed down due to increased memory consumption up until i upgraded it's server to win 2008 r2 64 bit. Old server had only 4 gig ram and quad core cpu at 2ghz. site was working just fine. since i've upgraded the server i noticed (2 times with in 10 days) it started to eat ram. last night it went up to 4 gb ram. with ram increase response slows down quite a lot. recycling app pool doesn't help. I have to restart it's worker process to recover. i've noticed this usually happens if there are continuous errors. as i didn't change anything in the code am i safe to assume it is not related to memory leak in the code? did anyone came across something like that? same thing happens if i create continuous errors with classic asp. thanks

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• Strange boot problems on 6 month old setup

  - by Balefire

  I've already exhausted my knowledge on this one, so forgive me if this post is a bit long. I built a computer 6 months ago for my wife and it worked fine until last week. Then it randomly shut down and would lock up while trying to boot on the boot screen. I cleared cmos and it allowed me to do startup recovery, but it "failed to fix the issue" so I reinstalled windows on the HD (moving the old install to windows_old). It worked, so I started installing drivers again, but then when I restarted to finalize installations it locked up again. This time, I took the hard drive and hooked it up to my computer, backed up all her files, and then formatted the hard drive before reinstalling it. (again had to clear cmos to let me boot from disk) It installed windows, I installed drivers, and it worked for a few hours but then died during startup again. So, then I got a new HD, cleared cmos, and installed clean again, with the same result as the time before, it worked for a few hours, installed windows updates, then crashed on the 3rd or 4th time turning it on. I decided next to try reinstalling and then going online to see if there were any updates for the BIOS or drivers on the Motherboard, but now I can't get it to even bring up the boot menu, so now I'm just left wondering was it the motherboard, or is it the CPU, or the RAM? The problem was strangely intermittent so I thought it had to be a software issue, since a hardware issue would ALWAYS fail to boot, right? But now it seems to be a hardware issue, because it's not bringing up anything. Any suggestions? System: Windows 7 64-bit 970A-DS3 Gigabyte Motherboard AMD Phenom II X4 955 Deneb 3.2GHz Quad core Proc GeForce GT 430 (Fermi) 1GB Video Card 500W PSU 2 x G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 1600 RAM

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• Are there any benchmarks showing difference between hardware virtualisation enabled/disabled?

  - by Wil

  I have a 13" sub-laptop/large-netbook, it has an AMD Athlon Neo X2 L335, and I chose this one because it supports hardware virtualisation. In the end, I hardly do any virtualisation on it, however, when I do... it is fast. To my shock, I went in to the BIOS and saw that virtualisation was disabled! I turned this on and, I see no speed difference.... or at least none that I can tell. I do not have time to do a full set of benchmarks - and I run quite a bit of software on the host, so it wouldn't be scientific. I have searched quite a few places and I just can not find any benchmarks showing the difference of virtualisation bit enabled/disabled on the same hardware. Does anyone have any benchmarks they have seen that they can share? In addition, I know there was an uproar a while ago as Sony disable the hardware virtualisation on some models and only offer it in their higher models as a premium feature, however, apart from forcing an up-sell, are there any benefits to having it disabled e.g. battery/heat? I just can't find any information and can't work out why it would be disabled by default. Edit--- To add, The only thing I can find is that without it, you can not perform x64 virtualisation as fast. This is the only down side I can find. However, if this is the only difference, then I am still interested in the second part of the question - why offer the option to disable it?

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• Can I use HP Recovery Discs for a different hard drive capacity and make?

  - by Fasih Khatib

  About two years ago I created HP Recovery Discs (3 of them). Now my hard drive has crashed and new one is still a week from delivery. I was reading up on how to reinstall the genuine OS using the Recovery Discs as i was not given any Windows 7 installation discs. I did my bit of research after getting answers from the community on what these discs do and found out on other sites that people experience issues when recovering their OS from the disc. Especially when they change the make or capacity of the harddrive. Unfortunately I had to change the make as the hard drive that came built in has gone out of production. This question is just a part of my checklist to avoid problems when recovering the OS. I have: HP DV4-2126TX (available only in India I guess) I had: Seagate Momentus 320 GB I ordered: Western Digital Scorpio Black 500 GB Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit Is there a possibility to encounter any problems due to the changed capacity and make? I only want my genuine OS and drivers – not my data. I was told that Disc 1 contained the OS and drivers, and the rest of the discs contained data. I couldn't verify that.

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• Out of memory errors but not actually out of memory...

  - by commradepolski

  So, myself and my fellow support techs have been fighting with this issue and we still dont know what the problem is. Lets start off with the system specs: Windows XP 32 bit Corporate (SP2 and SP3) Intel D975XBX2 Mobo 4gb of ram Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 ATI Radeon HD 3600 - 512mb After a few hours of working on the machine, the end user will begin to see the following symptoms: Out of memory messages Title bars and menus dont draw in properly Problems accessing network resources Problems opening up documents such as MSWord and MSPowerpoint and text files Problems opening up explorer windows General instability We have looked at task manager while this issue was occurring, and all indicators, like PF usage, threads, handles, etc. are normal. We have been having trouble pinpointing the root cause of this issue. It is also not situated with one user, it affects 8-10. So far we have tried: Resetting CMOS (Waiting to see results) Replacing video card (didnt help) Windows updates (didnt help) Updating network drivers (didnt help) Switching user from 1gbps to 100mbps network connection (awaiting results) Swapping the affected user's hardware (waiting for results) Increasing desktop heap size (helped for a bit but then the issue became more frequent) Applying the /3 switch to XP (didnt help) Increasing and decreasing and setting PF to system managed state (didnt help) We did have a power outage at the office a couple weeks ago, and all these issues became more frequent. Prior to the power outage it may take a week or so for the users to experience the issues but since the power outage it takes 3-4 hours or less. We havent had reports of the above issues causing BSODs, although that would be easier to diagnose :). Any help is greatly appreciated.

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• What is the risk of introducing non standard image machines to a corporate environment

  - by Troy Hunt

  I’m after some feedback from those in the managed desktop or network security space on the risks of introducing machines that are not built on a standard desktop image into a large corporate environment. This particular context relates to the standard corporate image (32 bit Win XP) in a large multi-national not being suitable for a particular segment of users. In short, I’m looking at what hurdles we might come across by proposing the introduction of machines which are built and maintained by a handful of software developers and not based on the corporate desktop image (proposing 64 bit Win 7). I suspect the barriers are primarily around virus definition updates, the rollout of service packs and patches and the compatibility of existing applications with the newer OS. In terms of viruses and software updates, if machines were using common virus protection software with automated updates and using Windows Update for service packs and patches, is there still a viable risk to the corporate environment? For that matter, are large corporate environments normally vulnerable to the introduction of a machine not based on a standard image? I’m trying to get my head around how real the risk of infection and other adverse events are from machines being plugged into the network. There are multiple scenarios outside of just the example above where this might happen (i.e. a vendor plugging in a machine for internet access during a presentation). Would a large corporate network normally be sufficiently hardened against such innocuous activity? I appreciate the theory as to why policies such as standard desktop images exist, I’m just interested in the actual, practical risk and how much a network should be protected by means other than what is managed on individual PCs.

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• What are the advantages of registered memory?

  - by odd parity

  I'm browsing for a few low-end servers for a startup and I'm a bit confused about the different memory types. The advantage of ECC is clear - single-bit error correction. When it comes to registered memory it seems more vague, especially in systems that support both registered and unbuffered memory. A Google search mostly finds copies of the Wikipedia article, which states that registered memory chips "...place less electrical load on the memory controller and allow single systems to remain stable with more memory modules than they would have otherwise". However I can't find any quantification of this. What I'm wondering about is: Is registered memory an improvement over unbuffered when it comes to soft error rate, or is it purely about the maximum number of modules supported? If yes, at what point (amount of modules or GB of memory) do these improvements start to become noticeable? For a specific example, the HP ProLiant DL 120 G6 server manual states that maximum supported memory configuration is 16 GB unbuffered (4x4GB) or 12 GB registered (6x2GB). In this case I'd rather have the extra 4GB of memory if the reliability difference is negligible.

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• Why am I getting programs stuck in log_wait_commit under Linux?

  - by staticsan

  There is something subtly wrong with my Linux install that I just can't locate. It is Ubuntu Lucid Lynx (10.04) 64-bit. Hardware is a Dell Optiplex 960: Intel Core 2 Quad CPU, 8Gb of RAM, 2x 300Gb HDDs. /home is ext2 on one disk and everything else is on the other (/ is also ext3). I have VirtualBox running a 64-bit Vista image for Outlook calendaring, but the heavyweight apps are IntelliJ, NetBeans, MySQL and Opera. Opera also loads my mail (IMAP) of which there is over 10,000 messages. The problem is that Opera stalls for a few seconds from time-to-time. Watching the process list shows it's in log_wait_commit which means (as far as I have figured out) the filesystem is holding things up. Sometimes I can make this happen by doing a subversion update, but usually it happens for no reason I can see. It usually happens to Opera, but I've seen NetBeans go under, too. It doesn't make the app crash - it's just completely unresponsive for a few seconds. Googling has not helped. The closest I got was to remove the sync attribute in the file system. This achieved nothing. On the advice of a Linux guru friend, I lowered /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs to 300, but that didn't do anything, either. And it was all he could think of. What is going on and can I fix it? (And how?)

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• Problems with Net::FTP slowing down

  - by c0bra

  I'm running into an issue with using Net::FTP (latest version 2.77) to transfer files to a remote host where a process is waiting to take the file and feed into some other system. The remote process does this every 5 minutes but ignores files that were modified in the last 0.2 seconds (that's right, 1/5th of a second). The problem is that for some reason the transfer seems to halt or slow down a bit and no data is transferred for several seconds and during this time the process picks up the incomplete file and removes it. The weird thing is that manually using the ftp binary the file seems to transfer fine. I've tried messing with all of the Net::FTP switches (Active/Passive, different Blocksizes) and nothing seems to help. What's also weird is that the file seems to transfer fairly quickly at first and on occasion a bit into the transfer. Like 300-500k will go up immediately, but then it slows down to where the file size is only increasing by 2,896 bytes every several seconds. It doesn't seem to happen when I try sending the file to a different remote host, but since a regular manual ftp transfer works with this host I don't know what to think. Some combination of Net::FTP and possibly a slow or wonky connection?

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• Windows XP Freezes

  - by Jim Fell

  Hello. I'm running a machine with Windows XP Professional 64-bit. Every so often, it will freeze for no apparent reason. That is, everything stops responding, except the mouse. I can move the mouse around, but I can't click on anything. Keyboard input is also not accepted/received when this problem occurs. The three-finger salute fails to bring up the Task Manager. Even pressing the power button on my computer fails to shut it down. The only way out of this that I have found is to hard-reboot the machine (i.e. pull power or hold power button in for 10 seconds). This problem was occurring on the system when it had all its updates and after a fresh install when not everthing was quite yet updated. I've run the Scandisk utility and the latest version Memtest86 that supports 64-bit architecture; neither found any errors. The last time this happened was on a fresh install of Windows. Only Nero Essentials, Avast antivirus (disabled), Firefox, and Spybot were installed. I was not running Nero, Firefox, or Spybot at the time, and Avast was disabled, so I'm pretty certain this is a Windows issue. Is anybody familiar with this problem or have any pointers? Thanks.

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• How To Completely Move Users/Program Files/Program Files (x86)/ProgramData (Folders) To Another Partition(s) On Windows 8?

  - by Enigma83

  I am attempting to move folders Users Program Files Program Files (x86), ProgramData (at the root of the C drive) to at least 2 other partitions, preferably on a fresh install. I have read that there are methods for doing this post-install, but it seems like it would be a bit more tedious to do things that way. I want to move the 2 Program Files folders to another partition on the same HDD, and Users/ProgramData will go to yet another partition on same HDD. I have done a bit of research on this, read up on some things that involved booting into Audit Mode, using the RoboCopy command to copy folders via booting into my Windows 8 USB drive, creating NTFS junctions/symbolic links, Registry edits, as well as accomplishing this automatically by creating an auto-attend file which Windows Setup processes automatically before the user is ever booted in for the 1st time. I tried this morning and now have a basic installation in which programs like Internet Explorer fail to open, certain files can't be found/opened (even if I click on them directly), an example is Regedit. Also, I can't run the Command/DOS (CMD) prompt as Administrator (or otherwise, as any other user), can't activate the real Administrator account or open any of the Administrative Tools (despite having added them to my Start Screen). So far I have only tried RoboCopy-ing Program Files and Program Files (x86) so far, creating junction points for them, and editing the Registry in the relevant locations. This is what I'm left with now. I also found the following blog article which describes how to do this for Windows 7 So, where should I go from here and where can I find more information? And how can this be done without disabling the Metro apps, which I've read will stop working if you move ProgramData. Once I have everything moved, where do I install programs to? Do I tell them to install to C:\Program Files\Program Files (x86) or to the junctioned/symbolic-linked partition/drive? I plan to test in VMware virtual machines from here on until things are working correctly, while using a baseline default install for daily tasks.

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• Windows Update broke Wirless driver - Can't get it working again

  - by private_meta

  I naively installed a driver update incoming from Windows Updates yesterday. That caused my Wifi on my Notebook (HP ELitebook 2740p) to break. The network is working as I tried it with my other mobile devices. When installing said driver, it told me that the installation failed. I tried to do a system restore, which did not help getting wifi connectivity back. The device said it was working, but did not get any wifi connection and did not discover any networks. What I tried next was to uninstall the device from my Device Manager and install either the current drivers found through windows, then I tried the same with the current drivers on the HP driver page. both of those attempts failed. It always tells me that installation failed when I uninstall and reinstall drivers. If I try to update the broken driver via internet, it tells me it is up to date, and in the device manager it still views as broken. Next, I 'played' around a bit and reinstalled drivers, and I managed to install drivers from 2012, and when trying to update drivers manually and picking drivers that match the device, it lets me choose between drivers from 2010 and 2014. 2014 would be the current one, picking the 2010 driver leads to the driver being accepted. However, no wireless network can be found. I'm pretty much out of ideas by now, short of reinstalling. The only option I can still think of was that the device broke at the exact moment I installed the new windows driver, but I find that a bit unlikely. Any help would be appreciated fixing this issue.

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• Inexpensive (used) hardware for Xen virtualization test?

  - by Jason Antman

  Virtualization is one of the areas where I could really use some experience. I also run quite a few services (web, mail, dns, etc.) out of my home. Since most of my hardware is getting a bit old (I'm running on stuff that was surplused years ago...) I decided that it's about time I start renewing some things, and also play around with virtualization a bit more. My plan is to setup a SAN box (simple iSCSI target, relatively inexpensive gigE switch), get a pair (for starters) of new servers, and start building some new stuff with Xen, specifically planning on playing with live migration and full virtualization. Does anyone have recommendations for used, older "servers" (really anything in a rack-mount form factor, I'm not too worried about things like iLO/iLOM for the test nodes) that support VT-x/AMD-V? I'm biased to HP, but it looks like they didn't make Proliants with VT-x/Vanderpool processors until G6 (for the DL360) or so, which is way out of my price range. I'm looking in the sub-$300 range (or less, if possible), used, probably Ebay. Any recommendations are greatly appreciated. Edit:And, to catch this before the comments start coming - these are personal systems. I have first-generation Proliants still in use (I got them as corporate surplus in 05, they've been running since then, and probably were running since 01 or 02 prior to being sold). I don't need anything shiny and new - I've got a bunch of old boxes, at least one complete replacement for every model in use, and that's fine for me (and easy on the wallet).

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• fglrx-legacy-driver not seeing Radeon HD 4650 AGP

  - by Rocket Hazmat

  I am running Debian Squeeze on an old Dell Dimension 8300 box. It has an AGP Radeon HD 4650 card. I use this machine to mine bitcoins, and today I noticed that the machine had rebooted! My precious uptime! Anyway, my miner wouldn't start, so I figured might as well update my graphics driver, maybe that would fix the issue. I went to amd.com and downloaded the newest driver (12.6 legacy), but after installing it, aticonfig gave an error: aticonfig: No supported adapters detected I uninstalled the driver and figured I'd try to install it from apt. AMD has dropped support for the HD 4000 series in fglrx, forcing me to use fglrx-legacy-driver (currently only in experimental). In order to install this, I had to update libc6 (and some other important packages, like gcc), I had to use their wheezy versions. I finally got glrx-legacy-driver installed, but I still got: aticonfig: No supported adapters detected Why isn't the driver finding my video card? I have a hunch it has something to do with the fact that it's an AGP video card. Here is the output of lspci -v (why does it say Kernel driver in use: fglrx_pci?): 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV730 Pro AGP [Radeon HD 4600 Series] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Device 0028 Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 16 Memory at e0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M] I/O ports at de00 [size=256] Memory at fe9f0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K] Expansion ROM at fea00000 [disabled] [size=128K] Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [58] AGP version 3.0 Kernel driver in use: fglrx_pci

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• How do you get linux to honor setuid directories?

  - by Takigama

  Some time ago while in a conversation in IRC, one user in a channel I was in suggested someone setuid a directory in order for it to inherit the userid on files to solve a problem someone else was having. At the time I spoke up and said "linux doesn't support setuid directories". After that, the person giving the advice showed me a pastebin (http://codepad.org/4In62f13) of his system honouring the setuid permission set on a directory. Just to explain, when i say "linux doesnt support setuid directories" what I mean is that you can go "chmod u+s directory" and it will set the bit on the directory. However, linux (as i understood it) ignores this bit (on directories). Try as I might, I just cant quite replicate that pastebin. Someone suggested to me once that it might be possible to emulate the behaviour with selinux - and playing around with rules, its possible to force a uid on a file, but not from a setuid directory permission (that I can see). Reading around on the internet has been fairly uninformative - most places claim "no, setuid on directories does not work with linux" with the occasional "it can be done under specific circumstances" (such as this: http://arstechnica.com/etc/linux/2003/linux.ars-12032003.html) I dont remember who the original person was, but the original system was a debian 6 system, and the filesystem it was running was xfs mounted with "default,acl". I've tried replicating that, but no luck so far (tried so far with various versions of debian, ubuntu, fedora and centos) Can anyone clue me in on what or how you get a system to honor setuid on a directory?

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• Raspberry Pi how to format HDD

  - by Speed

  Hi I am very new to Raspberry Pi environment, so looking for a bit of help to format a usb hard disk drive. I ran lsblk and got sda 8:0 0 37.3G 0 disk sda1 8:1 0 37.3G 0 part looking on web, if tried the following "sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1 -L USB40gb" it did something but when I tried to mount the drive again, it still showed the files that were there before and I can not create new file/folder "Error creating directory: Permission denied" I am writing this from my windows 8.1 pc so can not cut and paste from the pi. trying to format its output is a bit hard. Oh, there is Nothing written after the word "part" above. There use to be /media/USB40gb so I have done something because this has disappeared. I am using PCManFM 0.9.10 It does not have a format option, which would make life a lot easier, but then its not windows. I think I am running the basic linux os for the pi. It boots to a graphic environment, but I do not know how to advise what it is. I think its OpenBox 2.0.4 Thanks in advance Speed PS: I reran the format string above but this time I changed the label to read USB37gb. I did this to confirm that I was in fact formatting the right drive. Low and behold, it actually formatted the drive, wiping everything from it. Great ... testing it by creating a new folder on the drive and get error msg Permission Denied! So I have fixed the formatting issue by trial and error but still can't use the drive... Suggestions anyone?

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• how to store data in ram in verilog

  - by anum

  i am having a bit stream of 128 bits @ each posedge of clk,i.e.total 10 bit streams each of length 128 bits. i want to divide the 128 bit stream into 8, 8 bits n hve to store them in a ram / memory of width 8 bits. i did it by assigning 8, 8 bits to wires of size 8 bit.in this way there are 16 wires. and i am using dual port ram...wen i cal module of memory in stimulus.i don know how to give input....as i am hving 16 different wires naming from k1 to k16. **codeeee** // this is stimulus file module final_stim; reg [7:0] in,in_data; reg clk,rst_n,rd,wr,rd_data,wr_data; wire [7:0] out,out_wr, ouut; wire[7:0] d; integer i; //wire[7:0] xor_out; reg kld,f; reg [127:0]key; wire [127:0] key_expand; wire [7:0]out_data; reg [7:0] k; //wire [7:0] k1,k2,k3,k4,k5,k6,k7,k8,k9,k10,k11,k12,k13,k14,k15,k16; wire [7:0] out_data1; **//key_expand is da output which is giving 10 streams of size 128 bits.** assign k1=key_expand[127:120]; assign k2=key_expand[119:112]; assign k3=key_expand[111:104]; assign k4=key_expand[103:96]; assign k5=key_expand[95:88]; assign k6=key_expand[87:80]; assign k7=key_expand[79:72]; assign k8=key_expand[71:64]; assign k9=key_expand[63:56]; assign k10=key_expand[55:48]; assign k11=key_expand[47:40]; assign k12=key_expand[39:32]; assign k13=key_expand[31:24]; assign k14=key_expand[23:16]; assign k15=key_expand[15:8]; assign k16=key_expand[7:0]; **// then the module of memory is instanciated. //here k1 is sent as input.but i don know how to save the other values of k. //i tried to use for loop but it dint help** memory m1(clk,rst_n,rd, wr,k1,out_data1); aes_sbox b(out,d); initial begin clk=1'b1; rst_n=1'b0; #20 rst_n = 1; //rd=1'b1; wr_data=1'b1; in=8'hd4; #20 //rst_n=1'b1; in=8'h27; rd_data=1'b0; wr_data=1'b1; #20 in=8'h11; rd_data=1'b0; wr_data=1'b1; #20 in=8'hae; rd_data=1'b0; wr_data=1'b1; #20 in=8'he0; rd_data=1'b0; wr_data=1'b1; #20 in=8'hbf; rd_data=1'b0; wr_data=1'b1; #20 in=8'h98; rd_data=1'b0; wr_data=1'b1; #20 in=8'hf1; rd_data=1'b0; wr_data=1'b1; #20 in=8'hb8; rd_data=1'b0; wr_data=1'b1; #20 in=8'hb4; rd_data=1'b0; wr_data=1'b1; #20 in=8'h5d; rd_data=1'b0; wr_data=1'b1; #20 in=8'he5; rd_data=1'b0; wr_data=1'b1; #20 in=8'h1e; rd_data=1'b0; wr_data=1'b1; #20 in=8'h41; rd_data=1'b0; wr_data=1'b1; #20 in=8'h52; rd_data=1'b0; wr_data=1'b1; #20 in=8'h30; rd_data=1'b0; wr_data=1'b1; #20 wr_data=1'b0; #380 rd_data=1'b1; #320 rd_data = 1'b0; /////////////// #10 kld = 1'b1; key=128'h 2b7e151628aed2a6abf7158809cf4f3c; #20 kld = 1'b0; key = 128'h 2b7e151628aed2a6abf7158809cf4f3c; wr = 1'b1; rd = 1'b0; #10 wr = 1'b1; rd = 1'b1; #20 kld = 1'b0; key = 128'h 2b7e151628aed2a6abf7158809cf4f3c; #20 kld = 1'b0; key = 128'h 2b7e151628aed2a6abf7158809cf4f3c; wr = 1'b1; rd = 1'b1; #20 kld = 1'b0; key = 128'h 2b7e151628aed2a6abf7158809cf4f3c; wr = 1'b1; rd = 1'b1; #20 kld = 1'b0; key = 128'h 2b7e151628aed2a6abf7158809cf4f3c; wr = 1'b1; rd = 1'b1; #20 kld = 1'b0; key = 128'h 2b7e151628aed2a6abf7158809cf4f3c; wr = 1'b1; rd = 1'b1; #20 kld = 1'b0; key = 128'h 2b7e151628aed2a6abf7158809cf4f3c; wr = 1'b1; rd = 1'b1; #20 kld = 1'b0; key = 128'h 2b7e151628aed2a6abf7158809cf4f3c; wr = 1'b1; rd = 1'b1; #20 kld = 1'b0; key = 128'h 2b7e151628aed2a6abf7158809cf4f3c; wr = 1'b1; rd = 1'b1; #20 kld = 1'b0; key = 128'h 2b7e151628aed2a6abf7158809cf4f3c; wr = 1'b1; rd = 1'b1; #20 kld = 1'b0; key = 128'h 2b7e151628aed2a6abf7158809cf4f3c; wr = 1'b1; rd = 1'b1; #20 wr = 1'b0; #20 rd = 1'b1; #4880 f=1'b1; ///////////////////////////////////////////////// // out_data[i] end /*always@(*) begin while(i) mem[i]^mem1[i] ; i<=16; break; end*/ always #10 clk=~clk; always@(posedge clk) begin //$monitor($time," out_wr=%h,out_rd=%h\n ",out_wr,out); #10000 $stop; end endmodule

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• Upgrading from TFS 2010 RC to TFS 2010 RTM done

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Today is the big day, with the Launch of Visual Studio 2010 already done in Asia, and rolling around the world towards us, we are getting ready for the RTM (Released). We have had TFS 2010 in Production for nearly 6 months and have had only minimal problems. Update 12th April 2010  – Added Scott Hanselman’s tweet about the MSDN download release time. SSW was the first company in the world outside of Microsoft to deploy Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server to production, not once, but twice. I am hoping to make it 3 in a row, but with all the hype around the new version, and with it being a production release and not just a go-live, I think there will be a lot of competition. Developers: MSDN will be updated with #vs2010 downloads and details at 10am PST *today*! @shanselman - Scott Hanselman Same as before, we need to Uninstall 2010 RC and install 2010 RTM. The installer will take care of all the complexity of actually upgrading any schema changes. If you are upgrading from TFS 2008 to TFS2010 you can follow our Rules To Better TFS 2010 Migration and read my post on our successes.   We run TFS 2010 in a Hyper-V virtual environment, so we have the advantage of running a snapshot as well as taking a DB backup. Done - Snapshot the hyper-v server Microsoft does not support taking a snapshot of a running server, for very good reason, and Brian Harry wrote a post after my last upgrade with the reason why you should never snapshot a running server. Done - Uninstall Visual Studio Team Explorer 2010 RC You will need to uninstall all of the Visual Studio 2010 RC client bits that you have on the server. Done - Uninstall TFS 2010 RC Done - Install TFS 2010 RTM Done - Configure TFS 2010 RTM Pick the Upgrade option and point it at your existing “tfs_Configuration” database to load all of the existing settings Done - Upgrade the SharePoint Extensions Upgrade Build Servers (Pending) Test the server The back out plan, and you should always have one, is to restore the snapshot. Upgrading to Team Foundation Server 2010 – Done The first thing you need to do is off the TFS server and then log into the Hyper-v server and create a snapshot. Figure: Make sure you turn the server off and delete all old snapshots before you take a new one I noticed that the snapshot that was taken before the Beta 2 to RC upgrade was still there. You should really delete old snapshots before you create a new one, but in this case the SysAdmin (who is currently tucked up in bed) asked me not to. I guess he is worried about a developer messing up his server Turn your server on and wait for it to boot in anticipation of all the nice shiny RTM’ness that is coming next. The upgrade procedure for TFS2010 is to uninstal the old version and install the new one. Figure: Remove Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server RC from the system.   Figure: Most of the heavy lifting is done by the Uninstaller, but make sure you have removed any of the client bits first. Specifically Visual Studio 2010 or Team Explorer 2010.  Once the uninstall is complete, this took around 5 minutes for me, you can begin the install of the RTM. Running the 64 bit OS will allow the application to use more than 2GB RAM, which while not common may be of use in heavy load situations. Figure: It is always recommended to install the 64bit version of a server application where possible. I do not think it is likely, with SharePoint 2010 and Exchange 2010  and even Windows Server 2008 R2 being 64 bit only, I do not think there will be another release of a server app that is 32bit. You then need to choose what it is you want to install. This depends on how you are running TFS and on how many servers. In our case we run TFS and the Team Foundation Build Service (controller only) on out TFS server along with Analysis services and Reporting Services. But our SharePoint server lives elsewhere. Figure: This always confuses people, but in reality it makes sense. Don’t install what you do not need. Every extra you install has an impact of performance. If you are integrating with SharePoint you will need to run this install on every Front end server in your farm and don’t forget to upgrade your Build servers and proxy servers later. Figure: Selecting only Team Foundation Server (TFS) and Team Foundation Build Services (TFBS)   It is worth noting that if you have a lot of builds kicking off, and hence a lot of get operations against your TFS server, you can use a proxy server to cache the source control on another server in between your TFS server and your build servers. Figure: Installing Microsoft .NET Framework 4 takes the most time. Figure: Now run Windows Update, and SSW Diagnostic to make sure all your bits and bobs are up to date. Note: SSW Diagnostic will check your Power Tools, Add-on’s, Check in Policies and other bits as well. Configure Team Foundation Server 2010 – Done Now you can configure the server. If you have no key you will need to pick “Install a Trial Licence”, but it is only £500, or free with a MSDN subscription. Anyway, if you pick Trial you get 90 days to get your key. Figure: You can pick trial and add your key later using the TFS Server Admin. Here is where the real choices happen. We are doing an Upgrade from a previous version, so I will pick Upgrade the same as all you folks that are using the RC or TFS 2008. Figure: The upgrade wizard takes your existing 2010 or 2008 databases and upgraded them to the release.   Once you have entered your database server name you can click “List available databases” and it will show what it can upgrade. Figure: Select your database from the list and at this point, make sure you have a valid backup. At this point you have not made ANY changes to the databases. At this point the configuration wizard will load configuration from your existing database if you have one. If you are upgrading TFS 2008 refer to Rules To Better TFS 2010 Migration. Mostly during the wizard the default values will suffice, but depending on the configuration you want you can pick different options. Figure: Set the application tier account and Authentication method to use. We use NTLM to keep things simple as we host our TFS server externally for our remote developers.  Figure: Setting your TFS server URL’s to be the remote URL’s allows the reports to be accessed without using VPN. Very handy for those remote developers. Figure: Detected the existing Warehouse no problem. Figure: Again we love green ticks. It gives us a warm fuzzy feeling. Figure: The username for connecting to Reporting services should be a domain account (if you are on a domain that is). Figure: Setup the SharePoint integration to connect to your external SharePoint server. You can take the option to connect later.   You then need to run all of your readiness checks. These check can save your life! it will check all of the settings that you have entered as well as checking all the external services are configures and running properly. There are two reasons that TFS 2010 is so easy and painless to install where previous version were not. Microsoft changes the install to two steps, Install and configuration. The second reason is that they have pulled out all of the stops in making the install run all the checks necessary to make sure that once you start the install that it will complete. if you find any errors I recommend that you report them on http://connect.microsoft.com so everyone can benefit from your misery.   Figure: Now we have everything setup the configuration wizard can do its work.  Figure: Took a while on the “Web site” stage for some point, but zipped though after that.  Figure: last wee bit. TFS Needs to do a little tinkering with the data to complete the upgrade. Figure: All upgraded. I am not worried about the yellow triangle as SharePoint was being a little silly Exception Message: TF254021: The account name or password that you specified is not valid. (type TfsAdminException) Exception Stack Trace:    at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Management.Controls.WizardCommon.AccountSelectionControl.TestLogon(String connectionString)    at System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker.WorkerThreadStart(Object argument) [Info   @16:10:16.307] Benign exception caught as part of verify: Exception Message: TF255329: The following site could not be accessed: http://projects.ssw.com.au/. The server that you specified did not return the expected response. Either you have not installed the Team Foundation Server Extensions for SharePoint Products on this server, or a firewall is blocking access to the specified site or the SharePoint Central Administration site. For more information, see the Microsoft Web site (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=161206). (type TeamFoundationServerException) Exception Stack Trace:    at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.SharePoint.WssUtilities.VerifyTeamFoundationSharePointExtensions(ICredentials credentials, Uri url)    at Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Admin.VerifySharePointSitesUrl.Verify() Inner Exception Details: Exception Message: TF249064: The following Web service returned an response that is not valid: http://projects.ssw.com.au/_vti_bin/TeamFoundationIntegrationService.asmx. This Web service is used for the Team Foundation Server Extensions for SharePoint Products. Either the extensions are not installed, the request resulted in HTML being returned, or there is a problem with the URL. Verify that the following URL points to a valid SharePoint Web application and that the application is available: http://projects.ssw.com.au. If the URL is correct and the Web application is operating normally, verify that a firewall is not blocking access to the Web application. (type TeamFoundationServerInvalidResponseException) Exception Data Dictionary: ResponseStatusCode = InternalServerError I’ll look at SharePoint after, probably the SharePoint box just needs a restart or a kick If there is a problem with SharePoint it will come out in testing, But I will definatly be passing this on to Microsoft.   Upgrading the SharePoint connector to TFS 2010 You will need to upgrade the Extensions for SharePoint Products and Technologies on all of your SharePoint farm front end servers. To do this uninstall  the TFS 2010 RC from it in the same way as the server, and then install just the RTM Extensions. Figure: Only install the SharePoint Extensions on your SharePoint front end servers. TFS 2010 supports both SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010.   Figure: When you configure SharePoint it uploads all of the solutions and templates. Figure: Everything is uploaded Successfully. Figure: TFS even remembered the settings from the previous installation, fantastic.   Upgrading the Team Foundation Build Servers to TFS 2010 Just like on the SharePoint servers you will need to upgrade the Build Server to the RTM. Just uninstall TFS 2010 RC and then install only the Team Foundation Build Services component. Unlike on the SharePoint server you will probably have some version of Visual Studio installed. You will need to remove this as well. (Coming Soon) Connecting Visual Studio 2010 / 2008 / 2005 and Eclipse to TFS2010 If you have developers still on Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 you will need do download the respective compatibility pack: Visual Studio Team System 2005 Service Pack 1 Forward Compatibility Update for Team Foundation Server 2010 Visual Studio Team System 2008 Service Pack 1 Forward Compatibility Update for Team Foundation Server 2010 If you are using Eclipse you can download the new Team Explorer Everywhere install for connecting to TFS. Get your developers to check that you have the latest version of your applications with SSW Diagnostic which will check for Service Packs and hot fixes to Visual Studio as well.   Technorati Tags: TFS,TFS2010,TFS 2010,Upgrade

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• Day 2 - Game Design Documentation

  - by dapostolov

  So yesterday I didn't cut any code for my game but I was able to do a tiny bit of research on the XNA Game Development Technology and the communities out there and do you know what? I feel I'm a bit closer to my goal. The bad news is today I didn't cut code either. However, not all is lost because I wanted to get my ideas on paper and today I just did that.  Today, I began to jot down notes about the game and how I felt the visual elements would interact with each other. Unlike my workplace, my personal level of documentation is nothing more than a task list or a mind map of my ideas; it helps me streamline my solutions quiet effectively and circumvent the long process of articulating each thought to the n-th degree. I truly dislike documentation (because I have an extremely hard time articulating my thought and solutions); however, because I tend to do a really good job with documentation I tend to get stuck writing the buggers. But as a generalist remark: 'No Developer likes documentation.' For now let's stick with my basic notes and call this post a living document. Here are my notes, fresh, from after watching the new first episode of Merlin second season! Actually, a quick recommendation to anyone who is reading this (if anyone is): I truly recommend you envelope yourself in the medium or task you're trying to tackle. Be one with moment and feel it! For instance: Are you writing a fantasy script / game? What would the music of the genre sound like? For me the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack by Basil Poledouris is frackin awesome. There are many other good CD's out there, which I listen to (some who even use medival instruments, but Conan I keep returning to. It's a creative trigger for me. Ask yourself what would the imagery look like? Time to surf google for artist renditions of fantasy! What would the game feel like? Start playing some of your favorite games that inspire you, be wary though, have some self control and don't let it absorb your time. Anyhow, onto the documentation... Screens, Scenes, and Sprites. Oh My! (groan...) The first thing that came to mind were the screens, I thought the following would suffice: Menu Screen Character Customisation Screen Loading Screen? Battle Ground The Menu Screen Ok. So, the thought here is when the game loads a huge title is displayed: Wizard Wars. The player is prompted with 3 menu items: 1 Player Game, 2 Player Game, and Exit. Since I'm targetting the PC platform, as a non-networked game to start, I picture myself running my mouse over each menu option and the visual element of the menu item changes, along with a sound to indicate that I am over a curent menu item. And as I move my mouse away, it changes back, and possibly an exit mouse sound. Maybe on the screen somewhere is a brazier alit with a magical tome open right beside it, OR, maybe the tome is the menu! I hear the menu music as mellow, not obtrusive or piercing. On a menu item select, a confirmation sound bellows to indicate the players selection. The Esc key will always return me to the previous screens or desktop. The menu screen must feel...dark, like a really important ritual is about to happen and thus the music should build up. 1 Player Game - > Customize Character(s) 2 Player Game - > Customize Character(s) Exit - > Back to Windows Notes: So the first thing I pick up here are a couple things: First and foremost, my artistic abilities suck crap, so I may have to hire an artist (now that i've said that, lets get techy) graphical objects will be positioned within a scene on each screen / window. Menu items will be represented grapically, possibly animated, and have sound / animation effects triggered by user input or a time line. I have an animated scene involving a brazier or fire on a stick IF I was to move this game to the xbox, I'd have to track which menu item is currently selected (unless I do a mouse pointer type thing.) WindowObject has a scene A Scene has many GameObjects GameObject has a position graphic or animation MenuObject is a GameObject which has a mouse in, mouse out, and click event which either does something graphically (animation), does something with sound, or moves to another screen.  Character Customisation Screen With either the 1 or 2 player option selected, both selections will come to this screen; a wizard requires a name, powers, and vestements of course! Player one will configure his character first and then player two. I considered a split screen for PC but to have two people fighting over a keyboard would probably suck. For XBox, a split screen could work; maybe when I get into the networking portion (phase 2 blog?) of this game I will remove the 2 player option for PC and provide only multiplayer and I will leave 2 player for xbox...hmm... Anyhow...I picture the creation process as follows: Name: (textbox / keyboard entry) - for xbox, this would have to be different. Robe Color: (color box, or something) Stats: Speed, Oomph, and Health. (as sliders) 1 as minimum and 10 as maximum. Ok, Back, and Cancel buttons / options. Each stat has a benefit which are listed below. The idea is the player decides if he wants his wizard to run fast, be a tank and ... hit with a purse.Regardless, the player will have a pool of 12 points to use. Ideally, A balanced wizard will have 5 in each attribute. Spells? The only spell of choice is a ball of fire which comes without question. The music and screen should still feel like a ritual. The Character Speed Basically, how fast your character moves and casts. Oomph (Best Monster Truck Voice): PURE POWAH!!! The damage output of your fireball. Health How much damage you can take. Notes: I realise the game dynamics may sound uninteresting at the moment; but I think after a couple releases, we could have some other grand ideas such as: saved profiles, gold to upgrade arsenal of spells, talents, etc...but for now...a vanilla fireball thrower mage will suffice for this experiment. OK. So... a MenuObject  may need to be loosely coupled to allow future items such as networking? may be a button? a CharacterObject has a name speed oomph health and a funky robe color. cap on the three stats (1-10) an arsenal of 1 spell (possibly could expand this) The Loading Screen As is. The Battleground Screen For now, I'm keeping the screen as max resolution for the PC. The screen isn't going to move or even be a split screen. I'm not aiming high here because I want to see what level of change is involved when new features / concepts are added to game content. I'm interested to find out if we could apply techniques such as MVC or MVVM to this type of development or is it too tightly coupled? This reminds me when when my best friend and I were brainstorming our game idea (this is going back a while...1994, 6?) and he cringed at the thought of bringing business technology into games, especially when I suggested a database to store character information and COM / DCOM as the medium, but it seems I wasn't far off (reflecting); just like his implementation of a xml "config file" for dynamic direct-x menus back before .net in 1999...anyhow...i digress... The Battle One screen, two characters lobing balls of fire at each other...It doesn't get better than that. Every so often a scroll appears...and the fireballs bounce off walls, or the wizard has rapid fire, or even scrolls of healing! The scroll options are endless. Two bars at the top, each the color of the wizard (with their name beside the bar) indicate how much health they have. Possibly the appearance of the scrolls means the battle is taking too long? I'm thinking 1 player controls: up, down, left, right and space to fire the button. Or even possibly, mouse click and shift - mouse button to fire a spell in the direction they are facing. Two player controls: a, s, d, f and space AND arrows (up, down, left, right) and Del key or Crtl. The game ends when a player has 0 health and a dialog box appears asking for a rematch / reconfigure / exit. Health goes down when a fireball (friendly or not), connects with a wizard. When a wizard connects with a scroll, a countdown clock / icon appears near the health bar and the wizard begins to glow. For the most part, a wizard can have only scroll 1 effect on him at a time. Notes: Ok, there's alot to cover here. a CharacterObject is a GameObject it travels at a set velocity it travels in a direction it has sounds (walking, running, casting, impact, dying, laughing, whistling, other?) it has animations (walking, running, casting, impact, dying, laughing, idle, other?) it has a lifespan (determined by health) it is alive or dead it has a position a ScrollObject is a GameObject it carries a transferance of points "damage" (or healing, bad scroll effect?) (determinde by caster) it carries a transferance of "other" it is stationary it has a sound on impact it has a stationary animation it has an impact animation / or transfers an impact animation it has a fade animation? it has a lifespan (determined by game) it is alive or dead it has a position a WallObject is a GameObject it has a sound on fireball impact? it is a still image / stationary it has an impact animation / or transfers an impact animation it is dead it has a position A FireBall is a GameObject it carries a transferance of poinst "damage" (or healing, bad scroll effect?) (determinde by caster) it travels at a set velocity it travels in a direction it has a sound it has a travel animation it has an impact animation / or transfers an impact animation it has a fade animation? it has a lifespan (determined by caster) it is alive or dead it has a position As I look at this, I can see some common attributes in each object that I can carry up to the GameObject. I think I'm going to end the documentation here, it's taken me a bit of time to type this all out, tomorrow. I'll load up my IDE and my paint studio to get some good old fashioned cowboy hacking going!   D.

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• Mr Flibble: As Seen Through a Lens, Darkly

  - by Phil Factor

  One of the rewarding things about getting involved with Simple-Talk has been in meeting and working with some pretty daunting talents. I’d like to say that Dom Reed’s talents are at the end of the visible spectrum, but then there is Richard, who pops up on national radio occasionally, presenting intellectual programs, Andrew, master of the ukulele, with his pioneering local history work, and Tony with marathon running and his past as a university lecturer. However, Dom, who is Red Gate’s head of creative design and who did the preliminary design work for Simple-Talk, has taken the art photography to an extreme that was impossible before Photoshop. He’s not the first person to take a photograph of himself every day for two years, but he is definitely the first to weave the results into a frightening narrative that veers from comedy to pathos, using all the arts of Photoshop to create a fictional character, Mr Flibble.   Have a look at some of the Flickr pages. Uncle Spike The B-Men – Woolverine The 2011 BoyZ iN Sink reunion tour turned out to be their last Error 404 – Flibble not found Mr Flibble is not a normal type of alter-ego. We generally prefer to choose bronze age warriors of impossibly magnificent physique and stamina; superheroes who bestride the world, scorning the forces of evil and anarchy in a series noble and righteous quests. Not so Dom, whose Mr Flibble is vulnerable, and laid low by an addiction to toxic substances. His work has gained an international cult following and is used as course material by several courses in photography. Although his work was for a while ignored by the more conventional world of ‘art’ photography they became famous through the internet. His photos have received well over a million views on Flickr. It was definitely time to turn this work into a book, because the whole sequence of images has its maximum effect when seen in sequence. He has a Kickstarter project page, one of the first following the recent UK launch of the crowdfunding platform. The publication of the book should be a major event and the £45 I shall divvy up will be one of the securest investments I shall ever make. The local news in Cambridge picked up on the project and I can quote from the report by the excellent Cabume website , the source of Tech news from the ‘Cambridge cluster’ Put really simply Mr Flibble likes to dress up and take pictures of himself. One of the benefits of a split personality, however is that Mr Flibble is supported in his endeavour by Reed’s top notch photography skills, supreme mastery of Photoshop and unflinching dedication to the cause. The duo have collaborated to take a picture every day for the past 730-plus days. It is not a big surprise that neither Mr Flibble nor Reed watches any TV: In addition to his full-time role at Cambridge software house,Red Gate Software as head of creativity and the two to five hours a day he spends taking the Mr Flibble shots, Reed also helps organise the . And now Reed is using Kickstarter to see if the world is ready for a Mr Flibble coffee table book. Judging by the early response it is. At the time of writing, just a few days after it went live, ‘I Drink Lead Paint: An absurd photography book by Mr Flibble’ had raised £1,545 of the £10,000 target it needs to raise by the Friday 30 November deadline from 37 backers. Following the standard Kickstarter template, Reed is offering a series of rewards based on the amount pledged, ranging from a Mr Flibble desktop wallpaper for pledges of £5 or more to a signed copy of the book for pledges of £45 or more, right up to a starring role in the book for £1,500. Mr Flibble is unquestionably one of the more deranged Kickstarter hopefuls, but don’t think for a second that he doesn’t have a firm grasp on the challenges he faces on the road to immortalisation on 150 gsm stock. Under the section ‘risks and challenges’ on his Kickstarter page his statement begins: “An angry horde of telepathic iguanas discover the world’s last remaining stock of vintage lead paint and hold me to ransom. Gosh how I love to guzzle lead paint. Anyway… faced with such brazen bravado, I cower at the thought of taking on their combined might and die a sad and lonely Flibble deprived of my one and only true liquid love.” At which point, Reed manages to wrestle away the keyboard, giving him the opportunity to present slightly more cogent analysis of the obstacles the project must still overcome. We asked Reed a few questions about Mr Flibble’s Kickstarter adventure and felt that his responses were worth publishing in full: Firstly, how did you manage it – holding down a full time job and also conceiving and executing these ideas on a daily basis? I employed a small team of ferocious gerbils to feed me ideas on a daily basis. Whilst most of their ideas were incomprehensibly rubbish and usually revolved around food, just occasionally they’d give me an idea like my B-Men series. As a backup plan though, I found that the best way to generate ideas was to actually start taking photos. If I were to stand in front of the camera, pull a silly face, place a vegetable on my head or something else equally stupid, the resulting photo of that would typically spark an idea when I came to look at it. Sitting around idly trying to think of an idea was doomed to result in no ideas. I admit that I really struggled with time. I’m proud that I never missed a day, but it was definitely hard when you were late from work, tired or doing something socially on the same day. I don’t watch TV, which I guess really helps, because I’d frequently be spending 2-5 hours taking and processing the photos every day. Are there any overlaps between software development and creative thinking? Software is an inherently creative business and the speed that it moves ensures you always have to find solutions to new things. Everyone in the team needs to be a problem solver. Has it helped me specifically with my photography? Probably. Working within teams that continually need to figure out new stuff keeps the brain feisty I suppose, and I guess I’m continually exposed to a lot of possible sources of inspiration. How specifically will this Kickstarter project allow you to test the commercial appeal of your work and do you plan to get the book into shops? It’s taken a while to be confident saying it, but I know that people like the work that I do. I’ve had well over a million views of my pictures, many humbling comments and I know I’ve garnered some loyal fans out there who anticipate my next photo. For me, this Kickstarter is about seeing if there’s worth to my work beyond just making people smile. In an online world where there’s an abundance of freely available content, can you hope to receive anything from what you do, or would people just move onto the next piece of content if you happen to ask for some support? A book has been the single-most requested thing that people have asked me to produce and it’s something that I feel would showcase my work well. It’s just hard to convince people in the publishing industry just now to take any kind of risk – they’ve been hit hard. If I can show that people would like my work enough to buy a book, then it sends a pretty clear picture that publishers might hear, or it gives me the confidence enough to invest in myself a bit more – hard to do when you’re riddled with self-doubt! I’d love to see my work in the shops, yes. I could see it being the thing that someone flips through idly as they’re Christmas shopping and recognizing that it’d be just the perfect gift for their difficult to buy for friend or relative. That said, working in the software industry means I’m clearly aware of how I could use technology to distribute my work, but I can’t deny that there’s something very appealing to having a physical thing to hold in your hands. If the project is successful is there a chance that it could become a full-time job? At the moment that seems like a distant dream, as should this be successful, there are many more steps I’d need to take to reach any kind of business viability. Kickstarter seems exactly that – a way for people to help kick start me into something that could take off. If people like my work and want me to succeed with it, then taking a look at my Kickstarter page (and hopefully pledging a bit of support) would make my elbows blush considerably. So there is is. An opportunity to open the wallet just a bit to ensure that one of the more unusual talents sees the light in the format it deserves.  

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• Windows Azure: Import/Export Hard Drives, VM ACLs, Web Sockets, Remote Debugging, Continuous Delivery, New Relic, Billing Alerts and More

  - by ScottGu

  Two weeks ago we released a giant set of improvements to Windows Azure, as well as a significant update of the Windows Azure SDK. This morning we released another massive set of enhancements to Windows Azure.  Today’s new capabilities include: Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to your Storage Accounts HDInsight: General Availability of our Hadoop Service in the cloud Virtual Machines: New VM Gallery, ACL support for VIPs Web Sites: WebSocket and Remote Debugging Support Notification Hubs: Segmented customer push notification support with tag expressions TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics Billing: New Billing Alert Service that sends emails notifications when your bill hits a threshold you define All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note that some features are still in preview).  Below are more details about them. Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to Windows Azure I am excited to announce the preview of our new Windows Azure Import/Export Service! The Windows Azure Import/Export Service enables you to move large amounts of on-premises data into and out of your Windows Azure Storage accounts. It does this by enabling you to securely ship hard disk drives directly to our Windows Azure data centers. Once we receive the drives we’ll automatically transfer the data to or from your Windows Azure Storage account.  This enables you to import or export massive amounts of data more quickly and cost effectively (and not be constrained by available network bandwidth). Encrypted Transport Our Import/Export service provides built-in support for BitLocker disk encryption – which enables you to securely encrypt data on the hard drives before you send it, and not have to worry about it being compromised even if the disk is lost/stolen in transit (since the content on the transported hard drives is completely encrypted and you are the only one who has the key to it).  The drive preparation tool we are shipping today makes setting up bitlocker encryption on these hard drives easy. How to Import/Export your first Hard Drive of Data You can read our Getting Started Guide to learn more about how to begin using the import/export service.  You can create import and export jobs via the Windows Azure Management Portal as well as programmatically using our Server Management APIs. It is really easy to create a new import or export job using the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Simply navigate to a Windows Azure storage account, and then click the new Import/Export tab now available within it (note: if you don’t have this tab make sure to sign-up for the Import/Export preview): Then click the “Create Import Job” or “Create Export Job” commands at the bottom of it.  This will launch a wizard that easily walks you through the steps required: For more comprehensive information about Import/Export, refer to Windows Azure Storage team blog.  You can also send questions and comments to the [email protected] email address. We think you’ll find this new service makes it much easier to move data into and out of Windows Azure, and it will dramatically cut down the network bandwidth required when working on large data migration projects.  We hope you like it. HDInsight: 100% Compatible Hadoop Service in the Cloud Last week we announced the general availability release of Windows Azure HDInsight. HDInsight is a 100% compatible Hadoop service that allows you to easily provision and manage Hadoop clusters for big data processing in Windows Azure.  This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported 24x7 by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production scenarios. HDInsight allows you to use Apache Hadoop tools, such as Pig and Hive, to process large amounts of data in Windows Azure Blob Storage. Because data is stored in Windows Azure Blob Storage, you can choose to dynamically create Hadoop clusters only when you need them, and then shut them down when they are no longer required (since you pay only for the time the Hadoop cluster instances are running this provides a super cost effective way to use them).  You can create Hadoop clusters using either the Windows Azure Management Portal (see below) or using our PowerShell and Cross Platform Command line tools: The import/export hard drive support that came out today is a perfect companion service to use with HDInsight – the combination allows you to easily ingest, process and optionally export a limitless amount of data.  We’ve also integrated HDInsight with our Business Intelligence tools, so users can leverage familiar tools like Excel in order to analyze the output of jobs.  You can find out more about how to get started with HDInsight here. Virtual Machines: VM Gallery Enhancements Today’s update of Windows Azure brings with it a new Virtual Machine gallery that you can use to create new VMs in the cloud.  You can launch the gallery by doing New->Compute->Virtual Machine->From Gallery within the Windows Azure Management Portal: The new Virtual Machine Gallery includes some nice enhancements that make it even easier to use: Search: You can now easily search and filter images using the search box in the top-right of the dialog.  For example, simply type “SQL” and we’ll filter to show those images in the gallery that contain that substring. Category Tree-view: Each month we add more built-in VM images to the gallery.  You can continue to browse these using the “All” view within the VM Gallery – or now quickly filter them using the category tree-view on the left-hand side of the dialog.  For example, by selecting “Oracle” in the tree-view you can now quickly filter to see the official Oracle supplied images. MSDN and Supported checkboxes: With today’s update we are also introducing filters that makes it easy to filter out types of images that you may not be interested in. The first checkbox is MSDN: using this filter you can exclude any image that is not part of the Windows Azure benefits for MSDN subscribers (which have highly discounted pricing - you can learn more about the MSDN pricing here). The second checkbox is Supported: this filter will exclude any image that contains prerelease software, so you can feel confident that the software you choose to deploy is fully supported by Windows Azure and our partners. Sort options: We sort gallery images by what we think customers are most interested in, but sometimes you might want to sort using different views. So we’re providing some additional sort options, like “Newest,” to customize the image list for what suits you best. Pricing information: We now provide additional pricing information about images and options on how to cost effectively run them directly within the VM Gallery. The above improvements make it even easier to use the VM Gallery and quickly create launch and run Virtual Machines in the cloud. Virtual Machines: ACL Support for VIPs A few months ago we exposed the ability to configure Access Control Lists (ACLs) for Virtual Machines using Windows PowerShell cmdlets and our Service Management API. With today’s release, you can now configure VM ACLs using the Windows Azure Management Portal as well. You can now do this by clicking the new Manage ACL command in the Endpoints tab of a virtual machine instance: This will enable you to configure an ordered list of permit and deny rules to scope the traffic that can access your VM’s network endpoints. For example, if you were on a virtual network, you could limit RDP access to a Windows Azure virtual machine to only a few computers attached to your enterprise. Or if you weren’t on a virtual network you could alternatively limit traffic from public IPs that can access your workloads: Here is the default behaviors for ACLs in Windows Azure: By default (i.e. no rules specified), all traffic is permitted. When using only Permit rules, all other traffic is denied. When using only Deny rules, all other traffic is permitted. When there is a combination of Permit and Deny rules, all other traffic is denied. Lastly, remember that configuring endpoints does not automatically configure them within the VM if it also has firewall rules enabled at the OS level.  So if you create an endpoint using the Windows Azure Management Portal, Windows PowerShell, or REST API, be sure to also configure your guest VM firewall appropriately as well. Web Sites: Web Sockets Support With today’s release you can now use Web Sockets with Windows Azure Web Sites.  This feature enables you to easily integrate real-time communication scenarios within your web based applications, and is available at no extra charge (it even works with the free tier).  Higher level programming libraries like SignalR and socket.io are also now supported with it. You can enable Web Sockets support on a web site by navigating to the Configure tab of a Web Site, and by toggling Web Sockets support to “on”: Once Web Sockets is enabled you can start to integrate some really cool scenarios into your web applications.  Check out the new SignalR documentation hub on www.asp.net to learn more about some of the awesome scenarios you can do with it. Web Sites: Remote Debugging Support The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 we released two weeks ago introduced remote debugging support for Windows Azure Cloud Services. With today’s Windows Azure release we are extending this remote debugging support to also work with Windows Azure Web Sites. With live, remote debugging support inside of Visual Studio, you are able to have more visibility than ever before into how your code is operating live in Windows Azure. It is now super easy to attach the debugger and quickly see what is going on with your application in the cloud. Remote Debugging of a Windows Azure Web Site using VS 2013 Enabling the remote debugging of a Windows Azure Web Site using VS 2013 is really easy.  Start by opening up your web application’s project within Visual Studio. Then navigate to the “Server Explorer” tab within Visual Studio, and click on the deployed web-site you want to debug that is running within Windows Azure using the Windows Azure->Web Sites node in the Server Explorer.  Then right-click and choose the “Attach Debugger” option on it: When you do this Visual Studio will remotely attach the debugger to the Web Site running within Windows Azure.  The debugger will then stop the web site’s execution when it hits any break points that you have set within your web application’s project inside Visual Studio.  For example, below I set a breakpoint on the “ViewBag.Message” assignment statement within the HomeController of the standard ASP.NET MVC project template.  When I hit refresh on the “About” page of the web site within the browser, the breakpoint was triggered and I am now able to debug the app remotely using Visual Studio: Note above how we can debug variables (including autos/watchlist/etc), as well as use the Immediate and Command Windows. In the debug session above I used the Immediate Window to explore some of the request object state, as well as to dynamically change the ViewBag.Message property.  When we click the the “Continue” button (or press F5) the app will continue execution and the Web Site will render the content back to the browser.  This makes it super easy to debug web apps remotely. Tips for Better Debugging To get the best experience while debugging, we recommend publishing your site using the Debug configuration within Visual Studio’s Web Publish dialog. This will ensure that debug symbol information is uploaded to the Web Site which will enable a richer debug experience within Visual Studio.  You can find this option on the Web Publish dialog on the Settings tab: When you ultimately deploy/run the application in production we recommend using the “Release” configuration setting – the release configuration is memory optimized and will provide the best production performance.  To learn more about diagnosing and debugging Windows Azure Web Sites read our new Troubleshooting Windows Azure Web Sites in Visual Studio guide. Notification Hubs: Segmented Push Notification support with tag expressions In August we announced the General Availability of Windows Azure Notification Hubs - a powerful Mobile Push Notifications service that makes it easy to send high volume push notifications with low latency from any mobile app back-end.  Notification hubs can be used with any mobile app back-end (including ones built using our Mobile Services capability) and can also be used with back-ends that run in the cloud as well as on-premises. Beginning with the initial release, Notification Hubs allowed developers to send personalized push notifications to both individual users as well as groups of users by interest, by associating their devices with tags representing the logical target of the notification. For example, by registering all devices of customers interested in a favorite MLB team with a corresponding tag, it is possible to broadcast one message to millions of Boston Red Sox fans and another message to millions of St. Louis Cardinals fans with a single API call respectively. New support for using tag expressions to enable advanced customer segmentation With today’s release we are adding support for even more advanced customer targeting.  You can now identify customers that you want to send push notifications to by defining rich tag expressions. With tag expressions, you can now not only broadcast notifications to Boston Red Sox fans, but take that segmenting a step farther and reach more granular segments. This opens up a variety of scenarios, for example: Offers based on multiple preferences—e.g. send a game day vegetarian special to users tagged as both a Boston Red Sox fan AND a vegetarian Push content to multiple segments in a single message—e.g. rain delay information only to users who are tagged as either a Boston Red Sox fan OR a St. Louis Cardinal fan Avoid presenting subsets of a segment with irrelevant content—e.g. season ticket availability reminder to users who are tagged as a Boston Red Sox fan but NOT also a season ticket holder To illustrate with code, consider a restaurant chain app that sends an offer related to a Red Sox vs Cardinals game for users in Boston. Devices can be tagged by your app with location tags (e.g. “Loc:Boston”) and interest tags (e.g. “Follows:RedSox”, “Follows:Cardinals”), and then a notification can be sent by your back-end to “(Follows:RedSox || Follows:Cardinals) && Loc:Boston” in order to deliver an offer to all devices in Boston that follow either the RedSox or the Cardinals. This can be done directly in your server backend send logic using the code below: var notification = new WindowsNotification(messagePayload); hub.SendNotificationAsync(notification, "(Follows:RedSox || Follows:Cardinals) && Loc:Boston"); In your expressions you can use all Boolean operators: AND (&&), OR (||), and NOT (!).  Some other cool use cases for tag expressions that are now supported include: Social: To “all my group except me” - group:id && !user:id Events: Touchdown event is sent to everybody following either team or any of the players involved in the action: Followteam:A || Followteam:B || followplayer:1 || followplayer:2 … Hours: Send notifications at specific times. E.g. Tag devices with time zone and when it is 12pm in Seattle send to: GMT8 && follows:thaifood Versions and platforms: Send a reminder to people still using your first version for Android - version:1.0 && platform:Android For help on getting started with Notification Hubs, visit the Notification Hub documentation center.  Then download the latest NuGet package (or use the Notification Hubs REST APIs directly) to start sending push notifications using tag expressions.  They are really powerful and enable a bunch of great new scenarios. TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services With today’s Windows Azure release we are making it really easy to enable continuous delivery support with Windows Azure and Team Foundation Services.  Team Foundation Services is a cloud based offering from Microsoft that provides integrated source control (with both TFS and Git support), build server, test execution, collaboration tools, and agile planning support.  It makes it really easy to setup a team project (complete with automated builds and test runners) in the cloud, and it has really rich integration with Visual Studio. With today’s Windows Azure release it is now really easy to enable continuous delivery support with both TFS and Git based repositories hosted using Team Foundation Services.  This enables a workflow where when code is checked in, built successfully on an automated build server, and all tests pass on it – I can automatically have the app deployed on Windows Azure with zero manual intervention or work required. The below screen-shots demonstrate how to quickly setup a continuous delivery workflow to Windows Azure with a Git-based ASP.NET MVC project hosted using Team Foundation Services. Enabling Continuous Delivery to Windows Azure with Team Foundation Services The project I’m going to enable continuous delivery with is a simple ASP.NET MVC project whose source code I’m hosting using Team Foundation Services.  I did this by creating a “SimpleContinuousDeploymentTest” repository there using Git – and then used the new built-in Git tooling support within Visual Studio 2013 to push the source code to it.  Below is a screen-shot of the Git repository hosted within Team Foundation Services: I can access the repository within Visual Studio 2013 and easily make commits with it (as well as branch, merge and do other tasks).  Using VS 2013 I can also setup automated builds to take place in the cloud using Team Foundation Services every time someone checks in code to the repository: The cool thing about this is that I don’t have to buy or rent my own build server – Team Foundation Services automatically maintains its own build server farm and can automatically queue up a build for me (for free) every time someone checks in code using the above settings.  This build server (and automated testing) support now works with both TFS and Git based source control repositories. Connecting a Team Foundation Services project to Windows Azure Once I have a source repository hosted in Team Foundation Services with Automated Builds and Testing set up, I can then go even further and set it up so that it will be automatically deployed to Windows Azure when a source code commit is made to the repository (assuming the Build + Tests pass).  Enabling this is now really easy.  To set this up with a Windows Azure Web Site simply use the New->Compute->Web Site->Custom Create command inside the Windows Azure Management Portal.  This will create a dialog like below.  I gave the web site a name and then made sure the “Publish from source control” checkbox was selected: When we click next we’ll be prompted for the location of the source repository.  We’ll select “Team Foundation Services”: Once we do this we’ll be prompted for our Team Foundation Services account that our source repository is hosted under (in this case my TFS account is “scottguthrie”): When we click the “Authorize Now” button we’ll be prompted to give Windows Azure permissions to connect to the Team Foundation Services account.  Once we do this we’ll be prompted to pick the source repository we want to connect to.  Starting with today’s Windows Azure release you can now connect to both TFS and Git based source repositories.  This new support allows me to connect to the “SimpleContinuousDeploymentTest” respository we created earlier: Clicking the finish button will then create the Web Site with the continuous delivery hooks setup with Team Foundation Services.  Now every time someone pushes source control to the repository in Team Foundation Services, it will kick off an automated build, run all of the unit tests in the solution , and if they pass the app will be automatically deployed to our Web Site in Windows Azure.  You can monitor the history and status of these automated deployments using the Deployments tab within the Web Site: This enables a really slick continuous delivery workflow, and enables you to build and deploy apps in a really nice way. Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services With today’s Windows Azure release we are making it really easy to enable Developer Analytics and Monitoring support with both Windows Azure Web Site and Windows Azure Mobile Services.  We are partnering with New Relic, who provide a great dev analytics and app performance monitoring offering, to enable this - and we have updated the Windows Azure Management Portal to make it really easy to configure. Enabling New Relic with a Windows Azure Web Site Enabling New Relic support with a Windows Azure Web Site is now really easy.  Simply navigate to the Configure tab of a Web Site and scroll down to the “developer analytics” section that is now within it: Clicking the “add-on” button will display some additional UI.  If you don’t already have a New Relic subscription, you can click the “view windows azure store” button to obtain a subscription (note: New Relic has a perpetually free tier so you can enable it even without paying anything): Clicking the “view windows azure store” button will launch the integrated Windows Azure Store experience we have within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can use this to browse from a variety of great add-on services – including New Relic: Select “New Relic” within the dialog above, then click the next button, and you’ll be able to choose which type of New Relic subscription you wish to purchase.  For this demo we’ll simply select the “Free Standard Version” – which does not cost anything and can be used forever:  Once we’ve signed-up for our New Relic subscription and added it to our Windows Azure account, we can go back to the Web Site’s configuration tab and choose to use the New Relic add-on with our Windows Azure Web Site.  We can do this by simply selecting it from the “add-on” dropdown (it is automatically populated within it once we have a New Relic subscription in our account): Clicking the “Save” button will then cause the Windows Azure Management Portal to automatically populate all of the needed New Relic configuration settings to our Web Site: Deploying the New Relic Agent as part of a Web Site The final step to enable developer analytics using New Relic is to add the New Relic runtime agent to our web app.  We can do this within Visual Studio by right-clicking on our web project and selecting the “Manage NuGet Packages” context menu: This will bring up the NuGet package manager.  You can search for “New Relic” within it to find the New Relic agent.  Note that there is both a 32-bit and 64-bit edition of it – make sure to install the version that matches how your Web Site is running within Windows Azure (note: you can configure your Web Site to run in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode using the Web Site’s “Configuration” tab within the Windows Azure Management Portal): Once we install the NuGet package we are all set to go.  We’ll simply re-publish the web site again to Windows Azure and New Relic will now automatically start monitoring the application Monitoring a Web Site using New Relic Now that the application has developer analytics support with New Relic enabled, we can launch the New Relic monitoring portal to start monitoring the health of it.  We can do this by clicking on the “Add Ons” tab in the left-hand side of the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Then select the New Relic add-on we signed-up for within it.  The Windows Azure Management Portal will provide some default information about the add-on when we do this.  Clicking the “Manage” button in the tray at the bottom will launch a new browser tab and single-sign us into the New Relic monitoring portal associated with our account: When we do this a new browser tab will launch with the New Relic admin tool loaded within it: We can now see insights into how our app is performing – without having to have written a single line of monitoring code.  The New Relic service provides a ton of great built-in monitoring features allowing us to quickly see: Performance times (including browser rendering speed) for the overall site and individual pages.  You can optionally set alert thresholds to trigger if the speed does not meet a threshold you specify. Information about where in the world your customers are hitting the site from (and how performance varies by region) Details on the latency performance of external services your web apps are using (for example: SQL, Storage, Twitter, etc) Error information including call stack details for exceptions that have occurred at runtime SQL Server profiling information – including which queries executed against your database and what their performance was And a whole bunch more… The cool thing about New Relic is that you don’t need to write monitoring code within your application to get all of the above reports (plus a lot more).  The New Relic agent automatically enables the CLR profiler within applications and automatically captures the information necessary to identify these.  This makes it super easy to get started and immediately have a rich developer analytics view for your solutions with very little effort. If you haven’t tried New Relic out yet with Windows Azure I recommend you do so – I think you’ll find it helps you build even better cloud applications.  Following the above steps will help you get started and deliver you a really good application monitoring solution in only minutes. Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics With today’s release, we are enabling support within Service Bus for partitioned queues and topics. Enabling partitioning enables you to achieve a higher message throughput and better availability from your queues and topics. Higher message throughput is achieved by implementing multiple message brokers for each partitioned queue and topic.  The  multiple messaging stores will also provide higher availability. You can create a partitioned queue or topic by simply checking the Enable Partitioning option in the custom create wizard for a Queue or Topic: Read this article to learn more about partitioned queues and topics and how to take advantage of them today. Billing: New Billing Alert Service Today’s Windows Azure update enables a new Billing Alert Service Preview that enables you to get proactive email notifications when your Windows Azure bill goes above a certain monetary threshold that you configure.  This makes it easier to manage your bill and avoid potential surprises at the end of the month. With the Billing Alert Service Preview, you can now create email alerts to monitor and manage your monetary credits or your current bill total.  To set up an alert first sign-up for the free Billing Alert Service Preview.  Then visit the account management page, click on a subscription you have setup, and then navigate to the new Alerts tab that is available: The alerts tab allows you to setup email alerts that will be sent automatically once a certain threshold is hit.  For example, by clicking the “add alert” button above I can setup a rule to send myself email anytime my Windows Azure bill goes above $100 for the month: The Billing Alert Service will evolve to support additional aspects of your bill as well as support multiple forms of alerts such as SMS.  Try out the new Billing Alert Service Preview today and give us feedback. Summary Today’s Windows Azure release enables a ton of great new scenarios, and makes building applications hosted in the cloud even easier. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 10, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 10, 2012Popular ReleasesPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 Metro (BETA): Player Framework for HTML/JavaScript and XAML/C# Metro Style Applications.WPF Application Framework (WAF): WAF for .NET 4.5 (Experimental): Version: 2.5.0.440 (Experimental): This is an experimental release! It can be used to investigate the new .NET Framework 4.5 features. The ideas shown in this release might come in a future release (after 2.5) of the WPF Application Framework (WAF). More information can be found in this dicussion post. Requirements .NET Framework 4.5 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 11) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 11 Professional Changelog All: Upgrade all proje...SSH.NET Library: 2012.3.9: There are still few outstanding issues I wanted to include in this release but since its been a while and there are few new features already I decided to create a new release now. New Features Add SOCKS4, SOCKS5 and HTTP Proxy support when connecting to remote server. For silverlight only IP address can be used for server address when using proxy. Add dynamic port forwarding support using ForwardedPortDynamic class. Add new ShellStream class to work with SSH Shell. Add supports for mu...Test Case Import Utilities for Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 11 Beta: V1.2 RTM: This release (V1.2 RTM) includes: Support for connecting to Hosted Team Foundation Server Preview. Support for connecting to Team Foundation Server 11 Beta. Fix to issue with read-only attribute being set for LinksMapping-ReportFile which may have led to problems when saving the report file. Fix to issue with “related links” not being set properly in certain conditions. Fix to ensure that tool works fine when the Excel file contained rich text data. Note: Data is still imported in pl...Audio Pitch & Shift: Audio Pitch And Shift 3.5.0: Modules (mod, xm, it, etc..) supportcallisto: callisto 2.0.19: BUG FIX: Autorun.load() function in scripting now has sandboxed path (Thanks Mikey!) BUG FIX: UserObject.Name property now allows full 20 byte string replacements. FEATURE REQUEST: File.* script functions now allow file extensions.EntitiesToDTOs - Entity Framework DTO Generator: EntitiesToDTOs.v2.1: Changelog Fixed template file access issue on Win7. Fix on configuration load when target project was not found and "Use project default namespace" was checked. Minor fix on loading latest configuration at startup. Minor fix in VisualStudioHelper class. DTO's properties accessors are now in one line. Improvements in PropertyHelper to get a cleaner and more performant code. Added Website project type as a not supported project type. Using Error List pane from VS IDE to show Enti...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.01.04: Major Highlights Fixed issue with loading the splash page skin in the login, privacy and terms of use pages Fixed issue when searching for words with special characters in them Fixed redirection issue when the user does not have permissions to access a resource Fixed issue when clearing the cache using the ClearHostCache() function Fixed issue when displaying the site structure in the link to page feature Fixed issue when inline editing the title of modules Fixed issue with ...Mayhem: Mayhem Developer Preview: This is the developer preview of Mayhem. Enjoy!Team Foundation Server Process Template Customization Guidance: v1 - For Visual Studio 11: Welcome to the BETA release of the Team Foundation Server Process Template Customization preview. As this is a BETA release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these BETA artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has not been through an independent technical review Documentation has not been rev...Magelia WebStore Open-source Ecommerce software: Magelia WebStore 1.2: Medium trust compliant lot of small change for medium trust compliance full refactoring of user management refactoring of Client Refactoring of user management Magelia.WebStore.Client no longer reference Magelia.WebStore.Services.Contract Refactoring page category multi parent category added copy category feature added Refactoring page catalog copy catalog feature added variant management improvement ability to define a default variant for a variable product ability to ord...PDFsharp - A .NET library for processing PDF: PDFsharp and MigraDoc Foundation 1.32: PDFsharp and MigraDoc Foundation 1.32 is a stable version that fixes a few bugs that were found with version 1.31. Version 1.32 includes solutions for Visual Studio 2010 only (but it should be possible to add the project files to existing solutions for VS 2005 or VS 2008). Users of VS 2005 or VS 2008 can still download version 1.31 with the solutions for those versions that allow them to easily try the samples that are included. While it may create smaller PDF files than version 1.30 because...Terminals: Version 2.0 - Release: Changes since version 1.9a:New art works New usability in Organize favorites window Improved usability of imports/exports and scans Large number of fixes Improvements in single instance mode Comparing November beta 4, this corrects: New application icons Doesn't show Logon error codes Fixed command line arguments exception for single instance mode Fixed detaching of tabs improved usability in detached window Fixed option settings for Capture manager Fixed system tray noti...MFCMAPI: March 2012 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1032 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeTortoiseHg: TortoiseHg 2.3.1: bugfix releaseSimple Injector: Simple Injector v1.4.1: This release adds two small improvements to the SimpleInjector.Extensions.dll. No changes have been made to the core library. New features and improvements in this release for the SimpleInjector.Extensions.dll The RegisterManyForOpenGeneric extension methods now accept non-generic decorator, as long as they implement the given open generic service type. GetTypesToRegister methods added to the OpenGenericBatchRegistrationExtensions class which allows to customize the behavior. Note that the...CommonLibrary: Code: CodeVidCoder: 1.3.1: Updated HandBrake core to 0.9.6 release (svn 4472). Removed erroneous "None" container choice. Change some logic and help text to stop assuming you have to pick the VIDEO_TS folder for a DVD scan. This should make previewing DVD titles on the Queue Multiple Titles window possible when you've picked the root DVD directory.Google Books Downloader for Windows: Google Books Downloader: Google Books Downloader 1.8ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.0: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-03-04 v3.1.0 -??Hidden???????（〓?〓）。 -?PageManager??...New ProjectsAres Backup: Ares Backup is a Backup software which can save bytediffs and provides several storage plugins.BackItUp: Backup-Tool für Visual Studio Projektebinbin domain: binbin domain Blexus Service Plattform: Some cool stuff about Wcf Services. - can communicate files - can communicate xaml objects (generate dynamically Gui) CardPlay - a Solitaire Framework for .Net: CardPlay is a C# framework for developing Solitaire card games. The solution includes a sample WPF client along with over 100 games.Cloud Files Upload: Windows application to script cloud file uploads.Code First API Library, Scaffolding & Guidance for Coded UI Tests: Code first Coded UI Tests for web apps. Library, Scaffolding and Guidance.CPEBook by FMUG & TPAY: CPEBook by MUG & TPAY Projet dot NET CPEBookDot Net Application String Resources Viewer: Dot Net Application String Resources ViewerFilter for SharePoint Web Settings Page: This solution show a simple way to integrate a filter box by using jquery, a global farm feature and a simple delegate control for AdditionalPageHead.Google Books Downloader for Windows: Save Google books in PDF, JPEG or PNG format.GUIToolkit: C++ Windowless GUI，DirectUIHarvest Sports: Harvest SportsInfoPath Analyzer: InfoPath Analyzer makes InfoPath form development and troubleshooting much easier. You're easy to find the relationship between controls and data fields, search data fields or controls by name, edit InfoPath inner html directly.Kinectsignlanguage project: This project will help kinect be used for sign language to speech so that sign language people can be understood while talking to important people. LotteryVote: ????manager123: Trying out CodePlexMcRegister: McRegister is an asp.net mvc 3 razor website that enables you to register users on your minecraft server it works in conjunction with a minecraft mod called EasyAuth.MetroTipi: HelloTipi Sous l'interface Metro de Windows 8Microsoft AppFactory: AppFactory is a powerful data-driven build system for Windows Phone (and soon Windows 8) projects. Its purpose is to help developers start with template projects and turn them into suites of applications.MiniStock: MiniStock is an experimental reference architecture for scalable cloud-based architectures. Implemented in .net.online book shopping: online book shoppingScopa: Carousel Team Scopa per WP7 XNA testtom03092012tfs01: testtom03092012tfs01UsingLib: A library of automatically removed utilities: 1.Changing cursor to hourglass in Windows Forms 2.Logging It's developed in C#WHMCS Library: WHMCS is an all-in-one client management, billing & support solution for online businesses. Handling everything from signup to termination, WHMCS is a powerful business automation tool that puts you firmly in control. The WHMCS Library is a .NET wrapper for the WHMCS API. Written entirely in C# but really easy to port over to VB.NET. Coming from a VB.NET background we tried hard to make sure porting would be simple for VB.NET community members. ZoneEditService: Windows service to update ZoneEdit for dynamic dns.

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