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• How do I get more separation between the end of the 1st div and the start of the 2nd div?

  - by user3075987

  I'm trying to get the 2nd div (the picture of the orange and copy) to go below the 1st div (the picture of the pear and copy), but see how the Orange copy is going up into the Pear copy. How can I have the Orange copy start below the Pear picture? Here's my jsfiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/huskydawgs/g8mbgr1e/4/ Here's my code: <div class="alignleft"> <p><img alt="Pear" src="http://eofdreams.com/data_images/dreams/pear/pear-01.jpg" width="144" height="150" /></p> The pear is native to coastal and mildly temperate regions of the Old World, from western Europe and north Africa east right across Asia. It is a medium-sized tree, reaching 10–17 metres (33–56 ft) tall, often with a tall, narrow crown; a few species are shrubby. The fruit is composed of the receptacle or upper end of the flower-stalk (the so-called calyx tube) greatly dilated. Enclosed within its cellular flesh is the true fruit: five cartilaginous carpels, known colloquially as the "core". From the upper rim of the receptacle are given off the five sepals[vague], the five petals, and the very numerous stamens. In ancient Egypt, artists used an orange mineral pigment called realgar for tomb paintings, as well as other uses. It was also used later by Medieval artists for the colouring of manuscripts. Pigments were also made in ancient times from a mineral known as orpiment. Orpiment was an important item of trade in the Roman Empire and was used as a medicine in China although it contains arsenic and is highly toxic. It was also used as a fly poison and to poison arrows. Because of its yellow-orange colour, it was also a favourite with alchemists searching for a way to make gold, both in China and the West. The pineapple is a herbaceous perennial which grows to 1.0 to 1.5 meters (3.3 to 4.9 ft) tall, although sometimes it can be taller. In appearance, the plant itself has a short, stocky stem with tough, waxy leaves. When creating its fruit, it usually produces up to 200 flowers, although some large-fruited cultivars can exceed this. Once it flowers, the individual fruits of the flowers join together to create what is commonly referred to as a pineapple. After the first fruit is produced, side shoots (called 'suckers' by commercial growers) are produced in the leaf axils of the main stem. These may be removed for propagation, or left to produce additional fruits on the original plant.[4] Commercially, suckers that appear around the base are cultivated. It has 30 or more long, narrow, fleshy, trough-shaped leaves with sharp spines along the margins that are 30 to 100 centimeters (1.0 to 3.3 ft) long, surrounding a thick stem. In the first year of growth, the axis lengthens and thickens, bearing numerous leaves in close spirals. After 12 to 20 months, the stem grows into a spike-like inflorescence up to 15 cm (6 in) long with over 100 spirally arranged, trimerous flowers, each subtended by a bract. Flower colors vary, depending on variety, from lavender, through light purple to red. Here's my CSS: .alignleft { float: left; margin: 0px 30px 20px 0px; } .alignright { float: right; margin: 0px 0px 20px 30px; }

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• Why is FubuMVC new()ing up my view model in PartialForEach?

  - by Jon M

  I'm getting started with FubuMVC and I have a simple Customer - Order relationship I'm trying to display using nested partials. My domain objects are as follows: public class Customer { private readonly IList<Order> orders = new List<Order>(); public string Name { get; set; } public IEnumerable<Order> Orders { get { return orders; } } public void AddOrder(Order order) { orders.Add(order); } } public class Order { public string Reference { get; set; } } I have the following controller classes: public class CustomersController { public IndexViewModel Index(IndexInputModel inputModel) { var customer1 = new Customer { Name = "John Smith" }; customer1.AddOrder(new Order { Reference = "ABC123" }); return new IndexViewModel { Customers = new[] { customer1 } }; } } public class IndexInputModel { } public class IndexViewModel { public IEnumerable<Customer> Customers { get; set; } } public class IndexView : FubuPage<IndexViewModel> { } public class CustomerPartial : FubuControl<Customer> { } public class OrderPartial : FubuControl<Order> { } IndexView.aspx: (standard html stuff trimmed) <div> <%= this.PartialForEach(x => x.Customers).Using<CustomerPartial>() %> </div> CustomerPartial.ascx: <%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="FubuDemo.Controllers.Customers.CustomerPartial" %> <div> Customer Name: <%= this.DisplayFor(x => x.Name) %> <br /> Orders: (<%= Model.Orders.Count() %>) <br /> <%= this.PartialForEach(x => x.Orders) %> </div> OrderPartial.ascx: <%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="FubuDemo.Controllers.Customers.OrderPartial" %> <div> Order <br /> Ref: <%= this.DisplayFor(x => x.Reference) %> </div> When I view Customers/Index, I see the following: Customers Customer Name: John Smith Orders: (1) It seems that in CustomerPartial.ascx, doing Model.Orders.Count() correctly picks up that 1 order exists. However PartialForEach(x = x.Orders) does not, as nothing is rendered for the order. If I set a breakpoint on the Order constructor, I see that it initially gets called by the Index method on CustomersController, but then it gets called by FubuMVC.Core.Models.StandardModelBinder.Bind, so it is getting re-instantiated by FubuMVC and losing the content of the Orders collection. This isn't quite what I'd expect, I would think that PartialForEach would just pass the domain object directly into the partial. Am I missing the point somewhere? What is the 'correct' way to achieve this kind of result in Fubu?

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• Windows Mobile 6.5 GPS Device - WaitForMultipleObjects returns 258 (timeout)

  - by wizmagister

  I’ve created a GPS program that track positions in realtime in the background for Windows mobile 6.1 in 2008-2009. It ran fine on these devices for many years. For some reason, the same code never worked perfectly on Windows Mobile 6.5. After many hour of operations (mostly when nobody use the device), I receive a “Timeout” (code 258) from the function "WaitForMultipleObjects": this.GPSEvent_WaitValue = WaitForMultipleObjects(2, this.GPSEvent_Handles, 0, 45000); Again, this can work for hours and suddenly, it's just impossible to get another position without : UPDATE: - Restarting the device (GoogleMap confirms that there's no GPS device present!) It has something to do with Windows Mobile going to sleep and slowing up my thread. Here's the core code (adapted from Microsoft SDK Sample): /// <summary> /// When "WindowsMobile" wake up the program to check for a new position /// </summary> private void OnNextGPSEvent_Callback() { int SecondsToNextWakeUp = ETL.Mobile.Device.ScheduledCallback.MINIMUM_SECONDTONEXTWAKEUP; switch (this.SleepingState) { case SleepingStateType.SleepingForNextPosition: // Get position this.GPSEvent_WaitValue = (WaitForEventThreadResultType)WaitForMultipleObjects(2, this.GPSEvent_Handles, 0, 45000); switch (this.GPSEvent_WaitValue) { case WaitForEventThreadResultType.Event_LocationChanged: // Got a new position this.FireLocationChanged(this.GetCurrentPosition()); // Manage device shutdown (save battery) if (this.PositionFrequency > MIN_SECONDS_FREQUENCY_FORDEVICE_SHUTDOWN) { // Close device this.CloseDevice(); SecondsToNextWakeUp = (this.PositionFrequency - GPSDEVICE_LOAD_SECONDS_LOAD_TIME); this.SleepingState = SleepingStateType.SleepingBeforeDeviceWakeUp; } else { // Default Wait Time this.SleepingState = SleepingStateType.SleepingForNextPosition; } break; case WaitForEventThreadResultType.Event_StateChanged: break; case WaitForEventThreadResultType.Timeout: case WaitForEventThreadResultType.Failed: case WaitForEventThreadResultType.Stop: // >>>>>>>>>>>>>> This is where the error happens <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< // >>>>>>>>>>>>>> This is where the error happens <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< // >>>>>>>>>>>>>> This is where the error happens <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< // Too many errors this.ConsecutiveErrorReadingDevice++; if (this.ConsecutiveErrorReadingDevice > MAX_ERRORREADINGDEVICE) { this.CloseDevice(); SecondsToNextWakeUp = (this.PositionFrequency - GPSDEVICE_LOAD_SECONDS_LOAD_TIME); this.SleepingState = SleepingStateType.SleepingBeforeDeviceWakeUp; } else { // Default Wait Time this.SleepingState = SleepingStateType.SleepingForNextPosition; } break; } #endregion break; case SleepingStateType.SleepingBeforeDeviceWakeUp: this.OpenDevice(); SecondsToNextWakeUp = GPSDEVICE_LOAD_SECONDS_LOAD_TIME; this.SleepingState = SleepingStateType.SleepingForNextPosition; break; } if (this.IsListeningGPSEvent) { // Ajustement du prochain rappel this.NextGPSEvent_Callback.SecondToNextWakeUp = SecondsToNextWakeUp; this.NextGPSEvent_Callback.RequestWakeUpCallback(); } } /// <summary> ///Create Thread /// </summary> private void StartListeningThreadForGPSEvent() { // We only want to create the thread if we don't have one created already and we have opened the gps device if (this._GPSEventThread == null) { // Create and start thread to listen for GPS events this._GPSEventThread = new System.Threading.Thread(new System.Threading.ThreadStart(this.ListeningThreadForGPSEvent)); this._GPSEventThread.Start(); } } private void ListeningThreadForGPSEvent() { this.GPSEvent_WaitValue = WaitForEventThreadResultType.Stop; this.IsListeningGPSEvent = true; // Allocate handles worth of memory to pass to WaitForMultipleObjects this.GPSEvent_Handles = Helpers.LocalAlloc(12); Marshal.WriteInt32(this.GPSEvent_Handles, 0, this._StopHandle.ToInt32()); Marshal.WriteInt32(this.GPSEvent_Handles, 4, this._NewLocationHandle.ToInt32()); Marshal.WriteInt32(this.GPSEvent_Handles, 8, this._GPSDeviceStateChanged.ToInt32()); this.Start_NextGPSEvent_Timer(this.PositionFrequency); this.SleepingState = SleepingStateType.SleepingBeforeDeviceWakeUp; this.OnNextGPSEvent_Callback(); }

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• Merge XML files with configurable rules (context: Maven POMs, Java)

  - by Patrick Bergner

  Hi, I'm currently writing some kind of a Maven POM preprocessor that assembles a POM for a project from multiple input files (basically a template and a module specific file). The files are hierarchically ordered (template = most general, module specific = least general). The problem is now to merge these files into a single POM file. Long story short or if you're not familiar with Maven: a POM looks like this (shortened): <project> <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>org.apache.maven</groupId> <artifactId>maven-core</artifactId> </dependency> </dependencies> </project> Basically the merger shall replace all values of the more general file with the values of the more specific file (i.e. singletons, e.g. the <modelVersion> above) but there are certain elements where the merger shall add the more certain element to a parent (i.e. collections, e.g. <dependency> elements shall always be added to the <dependencies> element and no <dependency> element shall be replaced by another). A more detailed example with definition of desired output: File A: <project> <modelVersion>A</modelVersion> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>groupIdA</groupId> <artifactId>artifactIdA</artifactId> </dependency> </dependencies> </project> File B: <project> <modelVersion>B</modelVersion> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>groupIdB</groupId> <artifactId>artifactIdB</artifactId> </dependency> </dependencies> </project> Desired output: <project> <modelVersion>B</modelVersion> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>groupIdA</groupId> <artifactId>artifactIdA</artifactId> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>groupIdB</groupId> <artifactId>artifactIdB</artifactId> </dependency> </dependencies> </project> The set of collection type elements are known and should be configurable (preferably via a set of XPath expressions). A Java based solution is appreciated. What looked most promising so far was the tool mentioned here but the MERGE action produces something like <dependency> <groupId>groupIdAgroupIdB</groupId> <artifactId>artifactIdAartifactIdB</artifactId> </dependency> when merging, which is not what I need. Any ideas? Thanks for your help!

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• Can I execute a "variable statements" within a function and without defines.

  - by René Nyffenegger

  I am facing a problem that I cannot see how it is solvable without #defines or incuring a performance impact although I am sure that someone can point me to a solution. I have an algorithm that sort of produces a (large) series of values. For simplicity's sake, in the following I pretend it's a for loop in a for loop, although in my code it's more complex than that. In the core of the loop I need to do calculations with the values being produced. Although the algorithm for the values stays the same, the calculations vary. So basically, what I have is: void normal() { // "Algorithm" producing numbers (x and y): for (int x=0 ; x<1000 ; x++) { for (int y=0 ; y<1000 ; y++) { // Calculation with numbers being produced: if ( x+y == 800 && y > 790) { std::cout << x << ", " << y << std::endl; } // end of calculation }} } So, the only part I need to change is if ( x+y == 800 && y > 790) { std::cout << x << ", " << y << std::endl; } So, in order to solve that, I could construct an abstract base class: class inner_0 { public: virtual void call(int x, int y) = 0; }; and derive a "callable" class from it: class inner : public inner_0 { public: virtual void call(int x, int y) { if ( x+y == 800 && y > 790) { std::cout << x << ", " << y << std::endl; } } }; I can then pass an instance of the class to the "algorithm" like so: void O(inner i) { for (int x=0 ; x<1000 ; x++) { for (int y=0 ; y<1000 ; y++) { i.call(x,y); }} } // somewhere else.... inner I; O(I); In my case, I incur a performance hit because there is an indirect call via virtual function table. So I was thinking about a way around it. It's possible with two #defines: #define OUTER \ for (int x=0 ; x<1000 ; x++) { \ for (int y=0 ; y<1000 ; y++) { \ INNER \ }} // later... #define INNER \ if (x + y == 800 && y > 790) \ std::cout << x << ", " << y << std::endl; OUTER While this certainly works, I am not 100% happy with it because I don't necessarly like #defines. So, my question: is there a better way for what I want to achieve?

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• Return NSArray from NSDictionary

  - by Jon

  I have a fetch that returns an array with dictionary in it of an attribute of a core data object. Here is my previous question: Create Array From Attribute of NSObject From NSFetchResultsController This is the fetch: NSFetchRequest *request = [[NSFetchRequest alloc] init]; [request setEntity:entity]; [request setResultType:NSDictionaryResultType]; [request setReturnsDistinctResults:NO]; //set to YES if you only want unique values of the property [request setPropertiesToFetch :[NSArray arrayWithObject:@"timeStamp"]]; //name(s) of properties you want to fetch // Execute the fetch. NSError *error; NSArray *objects = [managedObjectContext executeFetchRequest:request error:&error]; When I log the NSArray data, I get this: The content of data is( { timeStamp = "2011-06-14 21:30:03 +0000"; }, { timeStamp = "2011-06-16 21:00:18 +0000"; }, { timeStamp = "2011-06-11 21:00:18 +0000"; }, { timeStamp = "2011-06-23 19:53:35 +0000"; }, { timeStamp = "2011-06-21 19:53:35 +0000"; } ) What I want is an array with this format: [NSArray arrayWithObjects: @"2011-11-01 00:00:00 +0000", @"2011-12-01 00:00:00 +0000", nil];' Edit: This is the method for which I want to replace the data array with my new data array: - (NSArray*)calendarMonthView:(TKCalendarMonthView *)monthView marksFromDate:(NSDate *)startDate toDate:(NSDate *)lastDate { NSLog(@"calendarMonthView marksFromDate toDate"); NSLog(@"Make sure to update 'data' variable to pull from CoreData, website, User Defaults, or some other source."); // When testing initially you will have to update the dates in this array so they are visible at the // time frame you are testing the code. NSArray *data = [NSArray arrayWithObjects: @"2011-01-01 00:00:00 +0000", @"2011-12-01 00:00:00 +0000", nil]; // Initialise empty marks array, this will be populated with TRUE/FALSE in order for each day a marker should be placed on. NSMutableArray *marks = [NSMutableArray array]; // Initialise calendar to current type and set the timezone to never have daylight saving NSCalendar *cal = [NSCalendar currentCalendar]; [cal setTimeZone:[NSTimeZone timeZoneForSecondsFromGMT:0]]; // Construct DateComponents based on startDate so the iterating date can be created. // Its massively important to do this assigning via the NSCalendar and NSDateComponents because of daylight saving has been removed // with the timezone that was set above. If you just used "startDate" directly (ie, NSDate *date = startDate;) as the first // iterating date then times would go up and down based on daylight savings. NSDateComponents *comp = [cal components:(NSMonthCalendarUnit | NSMinuteCalendarUnit | NSYearCalendarUnit | NSDayCalendarUnit | NSWeekdayCalendarUnit | NSHourCalendarUnit | NSSecondCalendarUnit) fromDate:startDate]; NSDate *d = [cal dateFromComponents:comp]; // Init offset components to increment days in the loop by one each time NSDateComponents *offsetComponents = [[NSDateComponents alloc] init]; [offsetComponents setDay:1]; // for each date between start date and end date check if they exist in the data array while (YES) { // Is the date beyond the last date? If so, exit the loop. // NSOrderedDescending = the left value is greater than the right if ([d compare:lastDate] == NSOrderedDescending) { break; } // If the date is in the data array, add it to the marks array, else don't if ([data containsObject:[d description]]) { [marks addObject:[NSNumber numberWithBool:YES]]; } else { [marks addObject:[NSNumber numberWithBool:NO]]; } // Increment day using offset components (ie, 1 day in this instance) d = [cal dateByAddingComponents:offsetComponents toDate:d options:0]; } [offsetComponents release]; return [NSArray arrayWithArray:marks]; }

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• JSF - Random Number using Beans (JAVA)

  - by Alex Encore Tr

  I am trying to create a jsf application which, upon page refresh increments the hit counter and generates two random numbers. What should be displayed on the window may look something like this: On your On your roll x you have thrown x and x For this program I decided to create two Beans, one to hold the page refresh counter and one to generate a random number. Those look like this for the moment: CounterBean.java package diceroll; public class CounterBean { int count=0; public CounterBean() { } public void setCount(int count) { this.count=count; } public int getCount() { count++; return count; } } RandomNumberBean.java package diceroll; import java.util.Random; public class RandomNumberBean { int rand=0; Random r = new Random(); public RandomNumberBean() { rand = r.nextInt(6); } public void setNextInt(int rand) { this.rand=rand; } public int getNextInt() { return rand; } } I have then created an index.jsp to display the above message. <html> <%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core" prefix="f"%> <%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html" prefix="h"%> <f:view> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> <title>Roll the Dice</title> </head> <body> <h:form> <p> On your roll # <h:outputText value="#{CounterBean.count} " /> you have thrown <h:outputText value="#{RandomNumberBean.rand}" />and <h:outputText value="#{RandomNumberBean.rand} " /> </p> </h:form> </body> </f:view> </html> However, when I run the application, I get the following message: org.apache.jasper.el.JspPropertyNotFoundException: /index.jsp(14,20) '#{RandomNumberBean.rand}' Property 'rand' not found on type diceroll.RandomNumberBean Caused by: org.apache.jasper.el.JspPropertyNotFoundException - /index.jsp(14,20) '#{RandomNumberBean.rand}' Property 'rand' not found on type diceroll.RandomNumberBean I suppose there's a mistake with my faces-config.xml file, so I will post this here as well, see if somebody can provide some help: faces-config.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <faces-config xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-facesconfig_2_0.xsd" version="2.0"> <managed-bean> <managed-bean-name>CounterBean</managed-bean-name> <managed-bean-class>diceroll.CounterBean</managed-bean-class> <managed-bean-scope>session</managed-bean-scope> </managed-bean> <managed-bean> <managed-bean-name>RandomNumberBean</managed-bean-name> <managed-bean-class>diceroll.RandomNumberBean</managed-bean-class> <managed-bean-scope>session</managed-bean-scope> </managed-bean> </faces-config>

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• HMTL5 Anti Aliasing Browser Disable

  - by Tappa Tappa

  I am forced to consider writing a library to handle the fundamental basics of drawing lines, thick lines, circles, squares etc. of an HTML5 canvas because I can't disable a feature embedded in the browser rendering of the core canvas algorithms. Am I forced to build the HTML5 Canvas rendering process from the ground up? If I am, who's in with me to do this? Who wants to change the world? Imagine a simple drawing application written in HTML5... you draw a shape... a closed shape like a rudimentary circle, free hand, more like an onion than a circle (well, that's what mine would look like!)... then imagine selecting a paint bucket icon and clicking inside that shape you drew and expecting it to be filled with a color of your choice. Imagine your surprise as you selected "Paint Bucket" and clicked in the middle of your shape and it filled your shape with color... BUT, not quite... HANG ON... this isn't right!!! On the inside of the edge of the shape you drew is a blur between the background color and your fill color and the edge color... the fill seems to be flawed. You wanted a straight forward "Paint Bucket" / "Fill"... you wanted to draw a shape and then fill it with a color... no fuss.... fill the whole damned inside of your shape with the color you choose. Your web browser has decided that when you draw the lines to define your shape they will be anti-aliased. If you draw a black line for your shape... well, the browser will draw grey pixels along the edges, in places... to make it look like a "better" line. Yeah, a "better" line that **s up the paint / flood fill process. How much does is cost to pay off the browser developers to expose a property to disable their anti-aliasing rendering? Disabling would save milliseconds for their rendering engine, surely! Bah, I really don't want to have to build my own canvas rendering engine using Bresenham line rendering algorithm... WHAT CAN BE DONE... HOW CAN THIS BE CHANGED!!!??? Do I need to start a petition aimed at the WC3???? Will you include your name if you are interested??? UPDATED function DrawLine(objContext, FromX, FromY, ToX, ToY) { var dx = Math.abs(ToX - FromX); var dy = Math.abs(ToY - FromY); var sx = (FromX < ToX) ? 1 : -1; var sy = (FromY < ToY) ? 1 : -1; var err = dx - dy; var CurX, CurY; CurX = FromX; CurY = FromY; while (true) { objContext.fillRect(CurX, CurY, objContext.lineWidth, objContext.lineWidth); if ((CurX == ToX) && (CurY == ToY)) break; var e2 = 2 * err; if (e2 > -dy) { err -= dy; CurX += sx; } if (e2 < dx) { err += dx; CurY += sy; } } }

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• Same source, multiple targets with different resources (Visual Studio .Net 2008)

  - by Mike Bell

  A set of software products differ only by their resource strings, binary resources, and by the strings / graphics / product keys used by their Visual Studio Setup projects. What is the best way to create, organize, and maintain them? i.e. All the products essentially consist of the same core functionality customized by graphics, strings, and other resource data to form each product. Imagine you are creating a set of products like "Excel for Bankers", Excel for Gardeners", "Excel for CEOs", etc. Each product has the the same functionality, but differs in name, graphics, help files, included templates etc. The environment in which these are being built is: vanilla Windows.Forms / Visual Studio 2008 / C# / .Net. The ideal solution would be easy to maintain. e.g. If I introduce a new string / new resource projects I haven't added the resource to should fail at compile time, not run time. (And subsequent localization of the products should also be feasible). Hopefully I've missed the blindingly-obvious and easy way of doing all this. What is it? ============ Clarification(s) ================ By "product" I mean the package of software that gets installed by the installer and sold to the end user. Currently I have one solution, consisting of multiple projects, (including a Setup project), which builds a set of assemblies and create a single installer. What I need to produce are multiple products/installers, all with similar functionality, which are built from the same set of assemblies but differ in the set of resources used by one of the assemblies. What's the best way of doing this? ------------ The 95% Solution ----------------- Based upon Daminen_the_unbeliever's answer, a resource file per configuration can be achieved as follows: Create a class library project ("Satellite"). Delete the default .cs file and add a folder ("Default") Create a resource file in the folder "MyResources" Properties - set CustomToolNamespace to something appropriate (e.g. "XXX") Make sure the access modifier for the resources is "Public". Add the resources. Edit the source code. Refer to the resources in your code as XXX.MyResources.ResourceName) Create Configurations for each product variant ("ConfigN") For each product variant, create a folder ("VariantN") Copy and Paste the MyResources file into each VariantN folder Unload the "Satellite" project, and edit the .csproj file For each "VariantN/MyResources" <Compile> or <EmbeddedResource> tag, add a Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'ConfigN'" attribute. Save, Reload the .csproj, and you're done... This creates a per-configuration resource file, which can (presumably) be further localized. Compile error messages are produced for any configuration that where a a resource is missing. The resource files can be localized using the standard method (create a second resources file (MyResources.fr.resx) and edit .csproj as before). The reason this is a 95% solution is that resources used to initialize forms (e.g. Form Titles, button texts) can't be easily handled in the same manner - the easiest approach seems to be to overwrite these with values from the satellite assembly.

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• Dynamic JSON Parsing in .NET with JsonValue

  - by Rick Strahl

  So System.Json has been around for a while in Silverlight, but it's relatively new for the desktop .NET framework and now moving into the lime-light with the pending release of ASP.NET Web API which is bringing a ton of attention to server side JSON usage. The JsonValue, JsonObject and JsonArray objects are going to be pretty useful for Web API applications as they allow you dynamically create and parse JSON values without explicit .NET types to serialize from or into. But even more so I think JsonValue et al. are going to be very useful when consuming JSON APIs from various services. Yes I know C# is strongly typed, why in the world would you want to use dynamic values? So many times I've needed to retrieve a small morsel of information from a large service JSON response and rather than having to map the entire type structure of what that service returns, JsonValue actually allows me to cherry pick and only work with the values I'm interested in, without having to explicitly create everything up front. With JavaScriptSerializer or DataContractJsonSerializer you always need to have a strong type to de-serialize JSON data into. Wouldn't it be nice if no explicit type was required and you could just parse the JSON directly using a very easy to use object syntax? That's exactly what JsonValue, JsonObject and JsonArray accomplish using a JSON parser and some sweet use of dynamic sauce to make it easy to access in code. Creating JSON on the fly with JsonValue Let's start with creating JSON on the fly. It's super easy to create a dynamic object structure. JsonValue uses the dynamic  keyword extensively to make it intuitive to create object structures and turn them into JSON via dynamic object syntax. Here's an example of creating a music album structure with child songs using JsonValue:[TestMethod] public void JsonValueOutputTest() { // strong type instance var jsonObject = new JsonObject(); // dynamic expando instance you can add properties to dynamic album = jsonObject; album.AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; album.Artist = "AC/DC"; album.YearReleased = 1977; album.Songs = new JsonArray() as dynamic; dynamic song = new JsonObject(); song.SongName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; song.SongLength = "4:11"; album.Songs.Add(song); song = new JsonObject(); song.SongName = "Love at First Feel"; song.SongLength = "3:10"; album.Songs.Add(song); Console.WriteLine(album.ToString()); } This produces proper JSON just as you would expect: {"AlbumName":"Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap","Artist":"AC\/DC","YearReleased":1977,"Songs":[{"SongName":"Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap","SongLength":"4:11"},{"SongName":"Love at First Feel","SongLength":"3:10"}]} The important thing about this code is that there's no explicitly type that is used for holding the values to serialize to JSON. I am essentially creating this value structure on the fly by adding properties and then serialize it to JSON. This means this code can be entirely driven at runtime without compile time restraints of structure for the JSON output. Here I use JsonObject() to create a new object and immediately cast it to dynamic. JsonObject() is kind of similar in behavior to ExpandoObject in that it allows you to add properties by simply assigning to them. Internally, JsonValue/JsonObject these values are stored in pseudo collections of key value pairs that are exposed as properties through the DynamicObject functionality in .NET. The syntax gets a little tedious only if you need to create child objects or arrays that have to be explicitly defined first. Other than that the syntax looks like normal object access sytnax. Always remember though these values are dynamic - which means no Intellisense and no compiler type checking. It's up to you to ensure that the values you create are accessed consistently and without typos in your code. Note that you can also access the JsonValue instance directly and get access to the underlying type. This means you can assign properties by string, which can be useful for fully data driven JSON generation from other structures. Below you can see both styles of access next to each other:// strong type instance var jsonObject = new JsonObject(); // you can explicitly add values here jsonObject.Add("Entered", DateTime.Now); // expando style instance you can just 'use' properties dynamic album = jsonObject; album.AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; JsonValue internally stores properties keys and values in collections and you can iterate over them at runtime. You can also manipulate the collections if you need to to get the object structure to look exactly like you want. Again, if you've used ExpandoObject before JsonObject/Value are very similar in the behavior of the structure. Reading JSON strings into JsonValue The JsonValue structure supports importing JSON via the Parse() and Load() methods which can read JSON data from a string or various streams respectively. Essentially JsonValue includes the core JSON parsing to turn a JSON string into a collection of JsonValue objects that can be then referenced using familiar dynamic object syntax. Here's a simple example:[TestMethod] public void JsonValueParsingTest() { var jsonString = @"{""Name"":""Rick"",""Company"":""West Wind"",""Entered"":""2012-03-16T00:03:33.245-10:00""}"; dynamic json = JsonValue.Parse(jsonString); // values require casting string name = json.Name; string company = json.Company; DateTime entered = json.Entered; Assert.AreEqual(name, "Rick"); Assert.AreEqual(company, "West Wind"); } The JSON string represents an object with three properties which is parsed into a JsonValue object and cast to dynamic. Once cast to dynamic I can then go ahead and access the object using familiar object syntax. Note that the actual values - json.Name, json.Company, json.Entered - are actually of type JsonPrimitive and I have to assign them to their appropriate types first before I can do type comparisons. The dynamic properties will automatically cast to the right type expected as long as the compiler can resolve the type of the assignment or usage. The AreEqual() method oesn't as it expects two object instances and comparing json.Company to "West Wind" is comparing two different types (JsonPrimitive to String) which fails. So the intermediary assignment is required to make the test pass. The JSON structure can be much more complex than this simple example. Here's another example of an array of albums serialized to JSON and then parsed through with JsonValue():[TestMethod] public void JsonArrayParsingTest() { var jsonString = @"[ { ""Id"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""AlbumName"": ""Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"", ""Artist"": ""AC/DC"", ""YearReleased"": 1977, ""Entered"": ""2012-03-16T00:13:12.2810521-10:00"", ""AlbumImageUrl"": ""http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61kTaH-uZBL._AA115_.jpg"", ""AmazonUrl"": ""http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00008BXJ4/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=westwindtechn-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00008BXJ4"", ""Songs"": [ { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"", ""SongLength"": ""4:11"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Love at First Feel"", ""SongLength"": ""3:10"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Big Balls"", ""SongLength"": ""2:38"" } ] }, { ""Id"": ""67280fb8"", ""AlbumName"": ""Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace"", ""Artist"": ""Foo Fighters"", ""YearReleased"": 2007, ""Entered"": ""2012-03-16T00:13:12.2810521-10:00"", ""AlbumImageUrl"": ""http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41mtlesQPVL._SL500_AA280_.jpg"", ""AmazonUrl"": ""http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000UFAURI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=westwindtechn-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000UFAURI"", ""Songs"": [ { ""AlbumId"": ""67280fb8"", ""SongName"": ""The Pretender"", ""SongLength"": ""4:29"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""67280fb8"", ""SongName"": ""Let it Die"", ""SongLength"": ""4:05"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""67280fb8"", ""SongName"": ""Erase/Replay"", ""SongLength"": ""4:13"" } ] }, { ""Id"": ""7b919432"", ""AlbumName"": ""End of the Silence"", ""Artist"": ""Henry Rollins Band"", ""YearReleased"": 1992, ""Entered"": ""2012-03-16T00:13:12.2800521-10:00"", ""AlbumImageUrl"": ""http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FO3rb1tuL._SL160_AA160_.jpg"", ""AmazonUrl"": ""http://www.amazon.com/End-Silence-Rollins-Band/dp/B0000040OX/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1302232195&sr=8-5"", ""Songs"": [ { ""AlbumId"": ""7b919432"", ""SongName"": ""Low Self Opinion"", ""SongLength"": ""5:24"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""7b919432"", ""SongName"": ""Grip"", ""SongLength"": ""4:51"" } ] } ]"; dynamic albums = JsonValue.Parse(jsonString); foreach (dynamic album in albums) { Console.WriteLine(album.AlbumName + " (" + album.YearReleased.ToString() + ")"); foreach (dynamic song in album.Songs) { Console.WriteLine("\t" + song.SongName ); } } Console.WriteLine(albums[0].AlbumName); Console.WriteLine(albums[0].Songs[1].SongName);}   It's pretty sweet how easy it becomes to parse even complex JSON and then just run through the object using object syntax, yet without an explicit type in the mix. In fact it looks and feels a lot like if you were using JavaScript to parse through this data, doesn't it? And that's the point…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in .NET  Web Api  JSON   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Parallelism in .NET – Part 7, Some Differences between PLINQ and LINQ to Objects

  - by Reed

  In my previous post on Declarative Data Parallelism, I mentioned that PLINQ extends LINQ to Objects to support parallel operations.  Although nearly all of the same operations are supported, there are some differences between PLINQ and LINQ to Objects.  By introducing Parallelism to our declarative model, we add some extra complexity.  This, in turn, adds some extra requirements that must be addressed. In order to illustrate the main differences, and why they exist, let’s begin by discussing some differences in how the two technologies operate, and look at the underlying types involved in LINQ to Objects and PLINQ . LINQ to Objects is mainly built upon a single class: Enumerable.  The Enumerable class is a static class that defines a large set of extension methods, nearly all of which work upon an IEnumerable<T>.  Many of these methods return a new IEnumerable<T>, allowing the methods to be chained together into a fluent style interface.  This is what allows us to write statements that chain together, and lead to the nice declarative programming model of LINQ: double min = collection .Where(item => item.SomeProperty > 6 && item.SomeProperty < 24) .Min(item => item.PerformComputation()); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Other LINQ variants work in a similar fashion.  For example, most data-oriented LINQ providers are built upon an implementation of IQueryable<T>, which allows the database provider to turn a LINQ statement into an underlying SQL query, to be performed directly on the remote database. PLINQ is similar, but instead of being built upon the Enumerable class, most of PLINQ is built upon a new static class: ParallelEnumerable.  When using PLINQ, you typically begin with any collection which implements IEnumerable<T>, and convert it to a new type using an extension method defined on ParallelEnumerable: AsParallel().  This method takes any IEnumerable<T>, and converts it into a ParallelQuery<T>, the core class for PLINQ.  There is a similar ParallelQuery class for working with non-generic IEnumerable implementations. This brings us to our first subtle, but important difference between PLINQ and LINQ – PLINQ always works upon specific types, which must be explicitly created. Typically, the type you’ll use with PLINQ is ParallelQuery<T>, but it can sometimes be a ParallelQuery or an OrderedParallelQuery<T>.  Instead of dealing with an interface, implemented by an unknown class, we’re dealing with a specific class type.  This works seamlessly from a usage standpoint – ParallelQuery<T> implements IEnumerable<T>, so you can always “switch back” to an IEnumerable<T>.  The difference only arises at the beginning of our parallelization.  When we’re using LINQ, and we want to process a normal collection via PLINQ, we need to explicitly convert the collection into a ParallelQuery<T> by calling AsParallel().  There is an important consideration here – AsParallel() does not need to be called on your specific collection, but rather any IEnumerable<T>.  This allows you to place it anywhere in the chain of methods involved in a LINQ statement, not just at the beginning.  This can be useful if you have an operation which will not parallelize well or is not thread safe.  For example, the following is perfectly valid, and similar to our previous examples: double min = collection .AsParallel() .Select(item => item.SomeOperation()) .Where(item => item.SomeProperty > 6 && item.SomeProperty < 24) .Min(item => item.PerformComputation()); However, if SomeOperation() is not thread safe, we could just as easily do: double min = collection .Select(item => item.SomeOperation()) .AsParallel() .Where(item => item.SomeProperty > 6 && item.SomeProperty < 24) .Min(item => item.PerformComputation()); In this case, we’re using standard LINQ to Objects for the Select(…) method, then converting the results of that map routine to a ParallelQuery<T>, and processing our filter (the Where method) and our aggregation (the Min method) in parallel. PLINQ also provides us with a way to convert a ParallelQuery<T> back into a standard IEnumerable<T>, forcing sequential processing via standard LINQ to Objects.  If SomeOperation() was thread-safe, but PerformComputation() was not thread-safe, we would need to handle this by using the AsEnumerable() method: double min = collection .AsParallel() .Select(item => item.SomeOperation()) .Where(item => item.SomeProperty > 6 && item.SomeProperty < 24) .AsEnumerable() .Min(item => item.PerformComputation()); Here, we’re converting our collection into a ParallelQuery<T>, doing our map operation (the Select(…) method) and our filtering in parallel, then converting the collection back into a standard IEnumerable<T>, which causes our aggregation via Min() to be performed sequentially. This could also be written as two statements, as well, which would allow us to use the language integrated syntax for the first portion: var tempCollection = from item in collection.AsParallel() let e = item.SomeOperation() where (e.SomeProperty > 6 && e.SomeProperty < 24) select e; double min = tempCollection.AsEnumerable().Min(item => item.PerformComputation()); This allows us to use the standard LINQ style language integrated query syntax, but control whether it’s performed in parallel or serial by adding AsParallel() and AsEnumerable() appropriately. The second important difference between PLINQ and LINQ deals with order preservation.  PLINQ, by default, does not preserve the order of of source collection. This is by design.  In order to process a collection in parallel, the system needs to naturally deal with multiple elements at the same time.  Maintaining the original ordering of the sequence adds overhead, which is, in many cases, unnecessary.  Therefore, by default, the system is allowed to completely change the order of your sequence during processing.  If you are doing a standard query operation, this is usually not an issue.  However, there are times when keeping a specific ordering in place is important.  If this is required, you can explicitly request the ordering be preserved throughout all operations done on a ParallelQuery<T> by using the AsOrdered() extension method.  This will cause our sequence ordering to be preserved. For example, suppose we wanted to take a collection, perform an expensive operation which converts it to a new type, and display the first 100 elements.  In LINQ to Objects, our code might look something like: // Using IEnumerable<SourceClass> collection IEnumerable<ResultClass> results = collection .Select(e => e.CreateResult()) .Take(100); If we just converted this to a parallel query naively, like so: IEnumerable<ResultClass> results = collection .AsParallel() .Select(e => e.CreateResult()) .Take(100); We could very easily get a very different, and non-reproducable, set of results, since the ordering of elements in the input collection is not preserved.  To get the same results as our original query, we need to use: IEnumerable<ResultClass> results = collection .AsParallel() .AsOrdered() .Select(e => e.CreateResult()) .Take(100); This requests that PLINQ process our sequence in a way that verifies that our resulting collection is ordered as if it were processed serially.  This will cause our query to run slower, since there is overhead involved in maintaining the ordering.  However, in this case, it is required, since the ordering is required for correctness. PLINQ is incredibly useful.  It allows us to easily take nearly any LINQ to Objects query and run it in parallel, using the same methods and syntax we’ve used previously.  There are some important differences in operation that must be considered, however – it is not a free pass to parallelize everything.  When using PLINQ in order to parallelize your routines declaratively, the same guideline I mentioned before still applies: Parallelization is something that should be handled with care and forethought, added by design, and not just introduced casually.

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• Dependency Injection in ASP.NET MVC NerdDinner App using Unity 2.0

  - by shiju

  In my previous post Dependency Injection in ASP.NET MVC NerdDinner App using Ninject, we did dependency injection in NerdDinner application using Ninject. In this post, I demonstrate how to apply Dependency Injection in ASP.NET MVC NerdDinner App using Microsoft Unity Application Block (Unity) v 2.0.Unity 2.0Unity 2.0 is available on Codeplex at http://unity.codeplex.com . In earlier versions of Unity, the ObjectBuilder generic dependency injection mechanism, was distributed as a separate assembly, is now integrated with Unity core assembly. So you no longer need to reference the ObjectBuilder assembly in your applications. Two additional Built-In Lifetime Managers - HierarchicalifetimeManager and PerResolveLifetimeManager have been added to Unity 2.0.Dependency Injection in NerdDinner using UnityIn my Ninject post on NerdDinner, we have discussed the interfaces and concrete types of NerdDinner application and how to inject dependencies controller constructors. The following steps will configure Unity 2.0 to apply controller injection in NerdDinner application. Step 1 – Add reference for Unity Application BlockOpen the NerdDinner solution and add  reference to Microsoft.Practices.Unity.dll and Microsoft.Practices.Unity.Configuration.dllYou can download Unity from at http://unity.codeplex.com .Step 2 – Controller Factory for Unity The controller factory is responsible for creating controller instances.We extend the built in default controller factory with our own factory for working Unity with ASP.NET MVC. public class UnityControllerFactory : DefaultControllerFactory {     protected override IController GetControllerInstance(RequestContext reqContext, Type controllerType)     {         IController controller;         if (controllerType == null)             throw new HttpException(                     404, String.Format(                         "The controller for path '{0}' could not be found" +         "or it does not implement IController.",                     reqContext.HttpContext.Request.Path));           if (!typeof(IController).IsAssignableFrom(controllerType))             throw new ArgumentException(                     string.Format(                         "Type requested is not a controller: {0}",                         controllerType.Name),                         "controllerType");         try         {             controller = MvcUnityContainer.Container.Resolve(controllerType)                             as IController;         }         catch (Exception ex)         {             throw new InvalidOperationException(String.Format(                                     "Error resolving controller {0}",                                     controllerType.Name), ex);         }         return controller;     }   }   public static class MvcUnityContainer {     public static IUnityContainer Container { get; set; } }  Step 3 – Register Types and Set Controller Factory private void ConfigureUnity() {     //Create UnityContainer               IUnityContainer container = new UnityContainer()     .RegisterType<IFormsAuthentication, FormsAuthenticationService>()     .RegisterType<IMembershipService, AccountMembershipService>()     .RegisterInstance<MembershipProvider>(Membership.Provider)     .RegisterType<IDinnerRepository, DinnerRepository>();     //Set container for Controller Factory     MvcUnityContainer.Container = container;     //Set Controller Factory as UnityControllerFactory     ControllerBuilder.Current.SetControllerFactory(                         typeof(UnityControllerFactory));            } Unity 2.0 provides a fluent interface for type configuration. Now you can call all the methods in a single statement.The above Unity configuration specified in the ConfigureUnity method tells that, to inject instance of DinnerRepositiry when there is a request for IDinnerRepositiry and  inject instance of FormsAuthenticationService when there is a request for IFormsAuthentication and inject instance of AccountMembershipService when there is a request for IMembershipService. The AccountMembershipService class has a dependency with ASP.NET Membership provider. So we configure that inject the instance of Membership Provider.After the registering the types, we set UnityControllerFactory as the current controller factory. //Set container for Controller Factory MvcUnityContainer.Container = container; //Set Controller Factory as UnityControllerFactory ControllerBuilder.Current.SetControllerFactory(                     typeof(UnityControllerFactory)); When you register a type  by using the RegisterType method, the default behavior is for the container to use a transient lifetime manager. It creates a new instance of the registered, mapped, or requested type each time you call the Resolve or ResolveAll method or when the dependency mechanism injects instances into other classes. The following are the LifetimeManagers provided by Unity 2.0ContainerControlledLifetimeManager - Implements a singleton behavior for objects. The object is disposed of when you dispose of the container.ExternallyControlledLifetimeManager - Implements a singleton behavior but the container doesn't hold a reference to object which will be disposed of when out of scope.HierarchicalifetimeManager - Implements a singleton behavior for objects. However, child containers don't share instances with parents.PerResolveLifetimeManager - Implements a behavior similar to the transient lifetime manager except that instances are reused across build-ups of the object graph.PerThreadLifetimeManager - Implements a singleton behavior for objects but limited to the current thread.TransientLifetimeManager - Returns a new instance of the requested type for each call. (default behavior)We can also create custome lifetime manager for Unity container. The following code creating a custom lifetime manager to store container in the current HttpContext. public class HttpContextLifetimeManager<T> : LifetimeManager, IDisposable {     public override object GetValue()     {         return HttpContext.Current.Items[typeof(T).AssemblyQualifiedName];     }     public override void RemoveValue()     {         HttpContext.Current.Items.Remove(typeof(T).AssemblyQualifiedName);     }     public override void SetValue(object newValue)     {         HttpContext.Current.Items[typeof(T).AssemblyQualifiedName]             = newValue;     }     public void Dispose()     {         RemoveValue();     } }  Step 4 – Modify Global.asax.cs for configure Unity container In the Application_Start event, we call the ConfigureUnity method for configuring the Unity container and set controller factory as UnityControllerFactory void Application_Start() {     RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);       ViewEngines.Engines.Clear();     ViewEngines.Engines.Add(new MobileCapableWebFormViewEngine());     ConfigureUnity(); }Download CodeYou can download the modified NerdDinner code from http://nerddinneraddons.codeplex.com

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• Parallelism in .NET – Part 9, Configuration in PLINQ and TPL

  - by Reed

  Parallel LINQ and the Task Parallel Library contain many options for configuration.  Although the default configuration options are often ideal, there are times when customizing the behavior is desirable.  Both frameworks provide full configuration support. When working with Data Parallelism, there is one primary configuration option we often need to control – the number of threads we want the system to use when parallelizing our routine.  By default, PLINQ and the TPL both use the ThreadPool to schedule tasks.  Given the major improvements in the ThreadPool in CLR 4, this default behavior is often ideal.  However, there are times that the default behavior is not appropriate.  For example, if you are working on multiple threads simultaneously, and want to schedule parallel operations from within both threads, you might want to consider restricting each parallel operation to using a subset of the processing cores of the system.  Not doing this might over-parallelize your routine, which leads to inefficiencies from having too many context switches. In the Task Parallel Library, configuration is handled via the ParallelOptions class.  All of the methods of the Parallel class have an overload which accepts a ParallelOptions argument. We configure the Parallel class by setting the ParallelOptions.MaxDegreeOfParallelism property.  For example, let’s revisit one of the simple data parallel examples from Part 2: Parallel.For(0, pixelData.GetUpperBound(0), row => { for (int col=0; col < pixelData.GetUpperBound(1); ++col) { pixelData[row, col] = AdjustContrast(pixelData[row, col], minPixel, maxPixel); } }); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Here, we’re looping through an image, and calling a method on each pixel in the image.  If this was being done on a separate thread, and we knew another thread within our system was going to be doing a similar operation, we likely would want to restrict this to using half of the cores on the system.  This could be accomplished easily by doing: var options = new ParallelOptions(); options.MaxDegreeOfParallelism = Math.Max(Environment.ProcessorCount / 2, 1); Parallel.For(0, pixelData.GetUpperBound(0), options, row => { for (int col=0; col < pixelData.GetUpperBound(1); ++col) { pixelData[row, col] = AdjustContrast(pixelData[row, col], minPixel, maxPixel); } }); Now, we’re restricting this routine to using no more than half the cores in our system.  Note that I included a check to prevent a single core system from supplying zero; without this check, we’d potentially cause an exception.  I also did not hard code a specific value for the MaxDegreeOfParallelism property.  One of our goals when parallelizing a routine is allowing it to scale on better hardware.  Specifying a hard-coded value would contradict that goal. Parallel LINQ also supports configuration, and in fact, has quite a few more options for configuring the system.  The main configuration option we most often need is the same as our TPL option: we need to supply the maximum number of processing threads.  In PLINQ, this is done via a new extension method on ParallelQuery<T>: ParallelEnumerable.WithDegreeOfParallelism. Let’s revisit our declarative data parallelism sample from Part 6: double min = collection.AsParallel().Min(item => item.PerformComputation()); Here, we’re performing a computation on each element in the collection, and saving the minimum value of this operation.  If we wanted to restrict this to a limited number of threads, we would add our new extension method: int maxThreads = Math.Max(Environment.ProcessorCount / 2, 1); double min = collection .AsParallel() .WithDegreeOfParallelism(maxThreads) .Min(item => item.PerformComputation()); This automatically restricts the PLINQ query to half of the threads on the system. PLINQ provides some additional configuration options.  By default, PLINQ will occasionally revert to processing a query in parallel.  This occurs because many queries, if parallelized, typically actually cause an overall slowdown compared to a serial processing equivalent.  By analyzing the “shape” of the query, PLINQ often decides to run a query serially instead of in parallel.  This can occur for (taken from MSDN): Queries that contain a Select, indexed Where, indexed SelectMany, or ElementAt clause after an ordering or filtering operator that has removed or rearranged original indices. Queries that contain a Take, TakeWhile, Skip, SkipWhile operator and where indices in the source sequence are not in the original order. Queries that contain Zip or SequenceEquals, unless one of the data sources has an originally ordered index and the other data source is indexable (i.e. an array or IList(T)). Queries that contain Concat, unless it is applied to indexable data sources. Queries that contain Reverse, unless applied to an indexable data source. If the specific query follows these rules, PLINQ will run the query on a single thread.  However, none of these rules look at the specific work being done in the delegates, only at the “shape” of the query.  There are cases where running in parallel may still be beneficial, even if the shape is one where it typically parallelizes poorly.  In these cases, you can override the default behavior by using the WithExecutionMode extension method.  This would be done like so: var reversed = collection .AsParallel() .WithExecutionMode(ParallelExecutionMode.ForceParallelism) .Select(i => i.PerformComputation()) .Reverse(); Here, the default behavior would be to not parallelize the query unless collection implemented IList<T>.  We can force this to run in parallel by adding the WithExecutionMode extension method in the method chain. Finally, PLINQ has the ability to configure how results are returned.  When a query is filtering or selecting an input collection, the results will need to be streamed back into a single IEnumerable<T> result.  For example, the method above returns a new, reversed collection.  In this case, the processing of the collection will be done in parallel, but the results need to be streamed back to the caller serially, so they can be enumerated on a single thread. This streaming introduces overhead.  IEnumerable<T> isn’t designed with thread safety in mind, so the system needs to handle merging the parallel processes back into a single stream, which introduces synchronization issues.  There are two extremes of how this could be accomplished, but both extremes have disadvantages. The system could watch each thread, and whenever a thread produces a result, take that result and send it back to the caller.  This would mean that the calling thread would have access to the data as soon as data is available, which is the benefit of this approach.  However, it also means that every item is introducing synchronization overhead, since each item needs to be merged individually. On the other extreme, the system could wait until all of the results from all of the threads were ready, then push all of the results back to the calling thread in one shot.  The advantage here is that the least amount of synchronization is added to the system, which means the query will, on a whole, run the fastest.  However, the calling thread will have to wait for all elements to be processed, so this could introduce a long delay between when a parallel query begins and when results are returned. The default behavior in PLINQ is actually between these two extremes.  By default, PLINQ maintains an internal buffer, and chooses an optimal buffer size to maintain.  Query results are accumulated into the buffer, then returned in the IEnumerable<T> result in chunks.  This provides reasonably fast access to the results, as well as good overall throughput, in most scenarios. However, if we know the nature of our algorithm, we may decide we would prefer one of the other extremes.  This can be done by using the WithMergeOptions extension method.  For example, if we know that our PerformComputation() routine is very slow, but also variable in runtime, we may want to retrieve results as they are available, with no bufferring.  This can be done by changing our above routine to: var reversed = collection .AsParallel() .WithExecutionMode(ParallelExecutionMode.ForceParallelism) .WithMergeOptions(ParallelMergeOptions.NotBuffered) .Select(i => i.PerformComputation()) .Reverse(); On the other hand, if are already on a background thread, and we want to allow the system to maximize its speed, we might want to allow the system to fully buffer the results: var reversed = collection .AsParallel() .WithExecutionMode(ParallelExecutionMode.ForceParallelism) .WithMergeOptions(ParallelMergeOptions.FullyBuffered) .Select(i => i.PerformComputation()) .Reverse(); Notice, also, that you can specify multiple configuration options in a parallel query.  By chaining these extension methods together, we generate a query that will always run in parallel, and will always complete before making the results available in our IEnumerable<T>.

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• Bug Triage

  In this blog post brain dump, I'll attempt to describe the process my team tries to follow when dealing with new bug reports (specifically, code defect reports). This is not official Microsoft policy, just the way we do things… if you do things differently and want to share, you can do so at the bottom in the comments (or on your blog).Feature Triage TeamA subset of the feature crew, the triage team (which has representations from the PM, Dev and QA disciplines), looks at all unassigned bugs at regular intervals. This can be weekly or daily (or other frequency) dependent on which part of the product cycle we are in and what the untriaged bug load looks like. They discuss each bug considering the evidence and make a decision of whether the bug goes from Not Yet Assigned to Assigned (plus the name of the DEV to fix this) or whether it goes from Active to Resolved (which means it gets assigned back to the requestor for closure or further debate if they were not present at the triage meeting). Close to critical milestones, the feature triage team needs to further justify bugs they take to additional higher-level triage teams.Bug Opened = Not Yet AssignedSomeone (typically an SDET from the QA team) creates the bug item (e.g. in TFS), ensuring they populate all the relevant fields including: Title, Description, Repro Steps (including the Actual Result at the end of the steps), attachments of code and/or screenshots, Build number that they observed the issue in, regression details if applicable, how it was found, if a test case exists or needs to be created etc. They also indicate their opinion on the Priority and Severity. The bug status is left as Not Yet Assigned."Issue" versus "Fix for issue"The solution to some bugs is easy to determine, e.g. "bug: the column name is misspelled". Obviously the fix is to correct the spelling – still, the triage team should be explicit and enter the correct spelling in the bug's Description. Note that a bad bug name here would be "bug: fix the spelling of the column" (it describes the solution, rather than the problem).Other solutions are trickier to establish, e.g. "bug: the column header is not accessible (can only be clicked on with the mouse, not reached via keyboard)". What is the correct solution here? The last thing to do is leave this undetermined and just assign it to a developer. The solution has to be entered in the description. Behind this type of a bug usually hides a spec defect or a new feature request.The person opening the bug should focus on describing the issue, rather than the solution. The person indicates what the fix is in their opinion by stating the Expected Result (immediately after stating the Actual Result). If they have a complex suggested solution, that should be split out in a separate part, but the triage team has the final say before assigning it. If the solution is lengthy/complicated to describe, the bug can be assigned to the PM. Note: the strict interpretation suggests that any bug with no clear, obvious solution is always a hole in the spec and should always go to the PM. This also ensures the spec gets updated.Not Yet Assigned - Not Yet Assigned (on someone else's plate)If the bug is observed in our feature, but the cause is actually another team, we change the Area Path (which is the way we identify teams in TFS) and leave it as Not Yet Assigned. The triage team may add more comments as appropriate including potentially changing the repro steps. In some cases, we may even resolve the bug in our area path and open a new bug in the area path of the other team.Even though there is no action on a dev on the team, the bug still needs to be tracked. One way of doing this is to implement some notification system that informs the team when the tracked bug changed status; another way is to occasionally run a global query (against all area paths) for bugs that have been opened by a member of the team and follow up with the current owners for stale bugs.Not Yet Assigned - ResolvedThis state transition can only be made by the Feature Triage Team.0. Sometimes the bug description is not clear and in that case it gets Resolved as More Information Needed, so the original requestor can provide it.After understanding what the bug item is about, the first decision is to determine whether it needs to go to a dev.1. If it is a known bug, it gets resolved as "Duplicate" and linked to the existing bug.2. If it is "By Design" it gets resolved as such, indicating that the triage team does not think this is a bug.3. If the bug does not repro on latest bits, it is resolved as "No Repro"4. The most painful: If it is decided that we cannot fix it for this release it gets resolved as "Postponed" or "Won't Fix". The former is typically due to resources and time constraints, while the latter is due to deciding that it is not important enough to consume our resources in any release (yes, not all bugs must be fixed!). For both cases, there are other factors that contribute to the decision such as: existence of a reasonable workaround, frequency we expect users to encounter the issue, dependencies on other team to offer a solution, whether it breaks a core scenario, whether it prohibits customer feedback on a major feature, is it a regression from a previous release, impact of the fix on other partner teams (e.g. User Education, User Experience, Localization/Globalization), whether this is the right fix, does the fix impact performance goals, and last but not least, severity of bug (e.g. loss of customer data, security threat, crash, hang). The bar for fixing a bug goes up as the release date approaches. The triage team becomes hardnosed about which bugs to take, while the developers are busy resolving assigned bugs thus everyone drives for Zero Bug Bounce (ZBB). ZBB is when you have 0 active bugs older than 48 hours.Not Yet Assigned - AssignedIf the bug is something we decide to fix in this release and the solution is known, then it is assigned to a DEV. This is either the developer that will do the work, or a Lead that can further assign it to one of his developer team based on a load balancing algorithm of their choosing.Sometimes, the triage team needs the dev to do some investigation work before deciding whether to take the fix; similarly, the checkin for the fix may be gated on code review by the triage team. In these cases, these instructions are provided in the comments section of the bug and when the developer is done they notify the triage team for final decision.Additionally, a Priority and Severity (from 0 to 4) has to be entered, e.g. a P0 means "drop anything you are doing and fix this now" whereas a P4 is something you get to after all P0,1,2,3 bugs are fixed.From a testing perspective, if the bug was found through ad-hoc testing or an external team, the decision is made whether test cases should be added to avoid future regressions. This is communicated to the QA team.Assigned - ResolvedWhen the developer receives the bug (they should be checking daily for new bugs on their plate looking at bugs in order of priority and from older to newer) they can send it back to triage if the information is not clear. Otherwise, they investigate the bug, setting the Sub Status to "Investigating"; if they cannot make progress, they set the Sub Status to "Blocked" and discuss this with triage or whoever else can help them get unblocked. Once they are unblocked, they set the Sub Status to "Working on Solution"; once they are code complete they send a code review request, setting the Sub Status to "Fix Available". After the iterative code review process is over and everyone is happy with the fix, the developer checks it in and changes the state of the bug from Active (and Assigned to them) to Resolved (and Assigned to someone else).The developer needs to ensure that when the status is changed to Resolved that it is assigned to a QA person. For example, maybe the PM opened the bug, but it should be a QA person that will verify the fix - the developer needs to manually change the assignee in that case. Typically the QA person will send an email to the original requestor notifying them that the fix is verified.Resolved - ??In all cases above, note that the final state was Resolved. What happens after that? The final step should be Closed. The bug is closed once the QA person verifying the fix is happy with it. If the person is not happy, then they change the state from Resolved to Active, thus sending it back to the developer. If the developer and QA person cannot reach agreement, then triage can be brought into it. An easy way to do that is change the status back to Not Yet Assigned with appropriate comments so the triage team can re-review.It is important to note that only QA can close a bug. That means that if the opener of the bug was a PM, when the bug gets resolved by the dev it may land on the PM's plate and after a quick review, the PM would re-assign to an SDET, which is the only role that can close bugs. One exception to this is if the person that filed the bug is external: in that case, we leave it Resolved and assigned to them and also send them a notification that they need to verify the fix. Another exception is if specialized developer knowledge is needed for verifying the bug fix (e.g. it was a refactoring suggestion bug typically not observable by the user) in which case it is fine to have a developer verify the fix, and ideally a different developer to the one that opened the bug.Other links on bug triageA quick search reveals that others have talked about this subject, e.g. here, here, here, here and here.Your take?If you have other best practices your team uses to deal with incoming bug reports, feel free to share in the comments below or on your blog. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• Why does my laptop resume immediately after suspend?

  - by Igor Zinov'yev

  I seem to be having some problem with suspend mode. Every time I try to suspend my laptop, it just locks the screen. Or maybe it successfully suspends just to resume only an instant after. What could cause such a behaviour? I'm running 32-bit Ubuntu 12.04 with the 3.2.0-25 kernel on a HP dv5-1178er Pavilion laptop (Intel Core 2 Duo). Here are the relevant log sections: kern.log: Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.131171] PM: Syncing filesystems ... done. Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.141222] PM: Preparing system for mem sleep Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.141239] Freezing user space processes ... (elapsed 0.01 seconds) done. Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.156171] Freezing remaining freezable tasks ... (elapsed 0.01 seconds) done. Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.172139] PM: Entering mem sleep Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.172169] Suspending console(s) (use no_console_suspend to debug) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.172895] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Synchronizing SCSI cache Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.181767] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Stopping disk Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.251089] ene_ir 00:0a: wake-up capability enabled by ACPI Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.251115] i8042 aux 00:09: wake-up capability disabled by ACPI Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.251133] i8042 kbd 00:08: wake-up capability enabled by ACPI Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.251286] jmb38x_ms 0000:06:00.3: PCI INT A disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.252491] sdhci-pci 0000:06:00.1: PCI INT A disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.264130] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: PCI INT D disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.264142] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: PCI INT B disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.264325] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.1: PCI INT B disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.288059] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: PCI INT A disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.288097] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: PCI INT C disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.288135] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: PCI INT A disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.316051] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: PCI INT A disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.316068] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.7: PCI INT D disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522872] PM: suspend of drv:sd dev:0:0:0:0 complete after 349.979 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522901] PM: suspend of drv:scsi dev:target0:0:0 complete after 349.955 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522927] PM: suspend of drv:scsi dev:host0 complete after 272.260 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522969] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: BIOS update required for suspend/resume Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522976] pci_legacy_suspend(): ahci_pci_device_suspend+0x0/0x80 returns -5 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522981] pm_op(): pci_pm_suspend+0x0/0x110 returns -5 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522984] PM: suspend of drv:ahci dev:0000:00:1f.2 complete after 258.932 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.522987] PM: Device 0000:00:1f.2 failed to suspend async: error -5 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.576228] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: PCI INT A disabled Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.576270] ACPI handle has no context! Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592136] PM: suspend of drv:snd_hda_intel dev:0000:00:1b.0 complete after 327.889 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592206] PM: Some devices failed to suspend Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592291] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592298] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.0: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592325] usb usb3: root hub lost power or was reset Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592339] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.1: PCI INT B -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 21 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592345] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1a.1: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592371] usb usb4: root hub lost power or was reset Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592387] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.7: PCI INT D -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592395] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1a.7: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592843] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 20 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592851] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592854] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: PCI INT B -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592863] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592878] usb usb5: root hub lost power or was reset Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592892] usb usb6: root hub lost power or was reset Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592895] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: PCI INT D -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592903] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592906] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: PCI INT C -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592915] uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592930] usb usb7: root hub lost power or was reset Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592946] usb usb8: root hub lost power or was reset Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592949] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: PCI INT A -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 20 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592957] ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.592963] pci 0000:00:1e.0: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.597106] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Starting disk Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608138] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: BAR 0: set to [mem 0xdf300000-0xdf303fff 64bit] (PCI address [0xdf300000-0xdf303fff]) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608180] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: restoring config space at offset 0xf (was 0x100, writing 0x10b) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608233] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: restoring config space at offset 0x3 (was 0x0, writing 0x10) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608248] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: restoring config space at offset 0x1 (was 0x100000, writing 0x100002) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608299] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 22 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608313] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.608420] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: irq 50 for MSI/MSI-X Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612095] firewire_ohci 0000:06:00.0: restoring config space at offset 0x1 (was 0x100000, writing 0x100006) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612181] sdhci-pci 0000:06:00.1: restoring config space at offset 0x1 (was 0x100003, writing 0x100007) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612211] sdhci-pci 0000:06:00.1: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612225] sdhci-pci 0000:06:00.1: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612296] jmb38x_ms 0000:06:00.3: restoring config space at offset 0x1 (was 0x100003, writing 0x100007) Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612326] jmb38x_ms 0000:06:00.3: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.612332] jmb38x_ms 0000:06:00.3: setting latency timer to 64 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.699170] PM: resume of drv:uvcvideo dev:2-4:1.0 complete after 101.965 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.699179] PM: resume of drv:uvcvideo dev:2-4:1.1 complete after 101.932 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.699186] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 101.917 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.699197] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_83 complete after 101.972 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716148] PM: resume of drv:hub dev:3-0:1.0 complete after 119.543 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716155] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 119.544 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716161] PM: resume of drv:hub dev:5-0:1.0 complete after 119.420 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716168] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 119.381 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716174] PM: resume of drv:hub dev:8-0:1.0 complete after 119.141 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716181] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 119.104 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716186] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 119.579 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716191] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 119.427 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.716197] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 119.143 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.747148] firewire_core: skipped bus generations, destroying all nodes Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.776093] PM: resume of drv:hp_accel dev:HPQ0004:00 complete after 167.225 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.777243] i8042 kbd 00:08: wake-up capability disabled by ACPI Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.777278] ene_ir 00:0a: wake-up capability disabled by ACPI Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820100] PM: resume of drv:hub dev:4-0:1.0 complete after 223.436 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820115] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 223.444 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820123] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 223.456 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820206] PM: resume of drv:hub dev:7-0:1.0 complete after 223.266 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820221] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 223.260 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820238] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 223.255 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820295] PM: resume of drv:hub dev:6-0:1.0 complete after 223.453 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820302] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 223.415 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.820321] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 223.457 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2225.932108] usb 4-2: reset full-speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.086714] PM: resume of drv:usbhid dev:4-2:1.0 complete after 489.393 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.086728] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 489.384 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.086745] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 489.329 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.086753] PM: resume of drv:usbhid dev:4-2:1.1 complete after 489.384 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.086764] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_82 complete after 489.373 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.180555] usb 7-2: reset full-speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.244858] firewire_core: rediscovered device fw0 Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.335066] btusb 7-2:1.0: no reset_resume for driver btusb? Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.335068] btusb 7-2:1.1: no reset_resume for driver btusb? Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.432082] usb 6-1: reset full-speed USB device number 2 using uhci_hcd Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.578280] PM: resume of drv:nvidia dev:0000:01:00.0 complete after 985.301 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584296] PM: resume of drv:usb dev:7-2:1.0 complete after 986.693 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584308] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 986.452 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584311] PM: resume of drv:usb dev:7-2:1.1 complete after 986.616 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584315] PM: resume of drv:usb dev:7-2:1.3 complete after 986.483 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584320] PM: resume of drv:usb dev:7-2:1.2 complete after 986.556 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584328] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_03 complete after 986.588 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584331] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 986.704 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584334] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_83 complete after 986.617 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584337] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_82 complete after 986.688 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584340] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_02 complete after 986.667 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584344] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_84 complete after 986.558 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.584352] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_04 complete after 986.542 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.590883] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_00 complete after 993.327 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.590887] PM: resume of drv:usb dev:6-1:1.0 complete after 993.424 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.590927] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_82 complete after 993.395 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.590934] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_81 complete after 993.426 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.590940] PM: resume of drv: dev:ep_01 complete after 993.456 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.592450] PM: resume of drv:sd dev:0:0:0:0 complete after 995.343 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.592461] PM: resume of drv:scsi_disk dev:0:0:0:0 complete after 802.688 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.592472] PM: resume of drv:scsi_device dev:0:0:0:0 complete after 995.324 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.600339] PM: resume of devices complete after 1008.129 msecs Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.601293] PM: resume devices took 1.008 seconds Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.601330] PM: Finishing wakeup. Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.601332] Restarting tasks ... done. Jun 1 10:42:21 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2226.625660] video LNXVIDEO:01: Restoring backlight state Jun 1 10:42:22 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2227.478921] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S Jun 1 10:42:22 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2227.481981] iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: Radio type=0x1-0x2-0x0 Jun 1 10:42:22 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2227.527727] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready Jun 1 10:42:22 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2227.532468] r8169 0000:03:00.0: eth0: link down Jun 1 10:42:22 igor-laptop kernel: [ 2227.533967] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready pm_suspend.log: Fri Jun 1 10:42:14 MSK 2012: Running hooks for suspend. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/000kernel-change suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/000kernel-change suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00logging suspend suspend: Linux igor-laptop 3.2.0-25-generic #40-Ubuntu SMP Wed May 23 20:33:05 UTC 2012 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux Module Size Used by pci_stub 12550 1 vboxpci 22882 0 vboxnetadp 13328 0 vboxnetflt 27211 0 vboxdrv 252189 3 vboxpci,vboxnetadp,vboxnetflt dm_crypt 22528 0 snd_hda_codec_hdmi 31775 1 snd_hda_codec_idt 60251 1 arc4 12473 2 hp_wmi 13652 0 sparse_keymap 13658 1 hp_wmi rfcomm 38139 12 snd_hda_intel 32765 5 snd_hda_codec 109562 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_intel snd_hwdep 13276 1 snd_hda_codec bnep 17830 2 btusb 17912 2 bluetooth 158438 23 rfcomm,bnep,btusb joydev 17393 0 parport_pc 32114 0 snd_pcm 80845 4 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec ppdev 12849 0 uvcvideo 67203 0 binfmt_misc 17292 1 videodev 86588 1 uvcvideo snd_seq_midi 13132 0 snd_rawmidi 25424 1 snd_seq_midi nvidia 10958194 43 snd_seq_midi_event 14475 1 snd_seq_midi snd_seq 51567 2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event ir_lirc_codec 12739 0 lirc_dev 18700 1 ir_lirc_codec snd_timer 28931 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq snd_seq_device 14172 3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq ir_mce_kbd_decoder 12681 0 ir_sony_decoder 12462 0 ir_jvc_decoder 12459 0 ir_rc6_decoder 12459 0 psmouse 87213 0 ir_rc5_decoder 12459 0 serio_raw 13027 0 iwlwifi 287934 0 rc_rc6_mce 12454 0 ir_nec_decoder 12459 0 ene_ir 18019 0 rc_core 21263 10 ir_lirc_codec,ir_mce_kbd_decoder,ir_sony_decoder,ir_jvc_decoder,ir_rc6_decoder,ir_rc5_decoder,rc_rc6_mce,ir_nec_decoder,ene_ir mac80211 436455 1 iwlwifi snd 62064 19 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device cfg80211 178679 2 iwlwifi,mac80211 hp_accel 25728 0 lis3lv02d 19268 1 hp_accel input_polldev 13648 1 lis3lv02d mac_hid 13077 0 wmi 18744 1 hp_wmi jmb38x_ms 17406 0 soundcore 14635 1 snd snd_page_alloc 14115 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm memstick 15857 1 jmb38x_ms firewire_sbp2 18346 0 lp 17455 0 parport 40930 3 parport_pc,ppdev,lp vesafb 13516 1 usbhid 41906 0 hid 77367 1 usbhid firewire_ohci 40180 0 firewire_core 56906 2 firewire_sbp2,firewire_ohci crc_itu_t 12627 1 firewire_core sdhci_pci 18324 0 sdhci 28241 1 sdhci_pci r8169 56321 0 video 19068 0 total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 3095544 2364260 731284 0 159020 1280240 -/+ buffers/cache: 925000 2170544 Swap: 1718916 0 1718916 /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00logging suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00powersave suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00powersave suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/01PulseAudio suspend suspend: Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information. >>> >>> Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information. >>> >>> Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information. >>> >>> /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/01PulseAudio suspend suspend: success. Running hook /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_grub-common suspend suspend: /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_grub-common suspend suspend: success. Running hook /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_unattended-upgrades-hibernate suspend suspend: /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_unattended-upgrades-hibernate suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/55NetworkManager suspend suspend: Having NetworkManager put all interaces to sleep...Failed. /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/55NetworkManager suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/60_wpa_supplicant suspend suspend: Failed to connect to wpa_supplicant - wpa_ctrl_open: No such file or directory /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/60_wpa_supplicant suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/75modules suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/75modules suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/90clock suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/90clock suspend suspend: not applicable. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/94cpufreq suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/94cpufreq suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95anacron suspend suspend: stop: Unknown instance: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95anacron suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95hdparm-apm suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95hdparm-apm suspend suspend: not applicable. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95led suspend suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95led suspend suspend: not applicable. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/98video-quirk-db-handler suspend suspend: nVidia binary video drive detected, not using quirks. /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/98video-quirk-db-handler suspend suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/99video suspend suspend: kernel.acpi_video_flags = 0 /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/99video suspend suspend: success. Running hook /etc/pm/sleep.d/novatel_3g_suspend suspend suspend: /etc/pm/sleep.d/novatel_3g_suspend suspend suspend: success. Fri Jun 1 10:42:19 MSK 2012: performing suspend Fri Jun 1 10:42:21 MSK 2012: Awake. Fri Jun 1 10:42:21 MSK 2012: Running hooks for resume Running hook /etc/pm/sleep.d/novatel_3g_suspend resume suspend: /etc/pm/sleep.d/novatel_3g_suspend resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/99video resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/99video resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/98video-quirk-db-handler resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/98video-quirk-db-handler resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95led resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95led resume suspend: not applicable. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95hdparm-apm resume suspend: /dev/sda: setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254) APM_level = 254 /dev/sda: setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254) APM_level = 254 /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95hdparm-apm resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95anacron resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95anacron resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/94cpufreq resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/94cpufreq resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/90clock resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/90clock resume suspend: not applicable. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/75modules resume suspend: Reloaded unloaded modules. /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/75modules resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/60_wpa_supplicant resume suspend: Failed to connect to wpa_supplicant - wpa_ctrl_open: No such file or directory /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/60_wpa_supplicant resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/55NetworkManager resume suspend: Having NetworkManager wake interfaces back up...Failed. /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/55NetworkManager resume suspend: success. Running hook /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_unattended-upgrades-hibernate resume suspend: /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_unattended-upgrades-hibernate resume suspend: success. Running hook /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_grub-common resume suspend: /etc/pm/sleep.d/10_grub-common resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/01PulseAudio resume suspend: Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information. >>> >>> Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information. >>> >>> Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information. >>> >>> /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/01PulseAudio resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00powersave resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00powersave resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00logging resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/00logging resume suspend: success. Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/000kernel-change resume suspend: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/000kernel-change resume suspend: success. Fri Jun 1 10:42:22 MSK 2012: Finished.

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• When should I use Areas in TFS instead of Team Projects

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Well, it depends…. If you are a small company that creates a finite number of internal projects then you will find it easier to create a single project for each of your products and have TFS do the heavy lifting with reporting, SharePoint sites and Version Control. But what if you are not… Update 9th March 2010 Michael Fourie gave me some feedback which I have integrated. Ed Blankenship via @edblankenship offered encouragement and a nice quote. Ewald Hofman gave me a couple of Cons, and maybe a few more soon. Ewald’s company, Avanade, currently uses Areas, but it looks like the manual management is getting too much and the project is getting cluttered. What if you are likely to have hundreds of projects, possibly with a multitude of internal and external projects? You might have 1 project for a customer or 10. This is the situation that most consultancies find themselves in and thus they need a more sustainable and maintainable option. What I am advocating is that we should have 1 “Team Project” per customer, and use areas to create “sub projects” within that single “Team Project”. "What you describe is what we generally do internally and what we recommend. We make very heavy use of area path to categorize the work within a larger project." - Brian Harry, Microsoft Technical Fellow & Product Unit Manager for Team Foundation Server   "We tend to use areas to segregate multiple projects in the same team project and it works well." - Tiago Pascoal, Visual Studio ALM MVP   "In general, I believe this approach provides consistency [to multi-product engagements] and lowers the administration and maintenance costs. All good." - Michael Fourie, Visual Studio ALM MVP   “@MrHinsh BTW, I'm very much a fan of very large, if not huge, team projects in TFS. Just FYI :) Use Areas & Iterations.” Ed Blankenship, Visual Studio ALM MVP   This would mean that SSW would have a single Team Project called “SSW” that contains all of our internal projects and consequently all of the Areas and Iteration move down one hierarchy to accommodate this. Where we would have had “\SSW\Sprint 1” we now have “\SSW\SqlDeploy\Sprint1” with “SqlDeploy” being our internal project. At the moment SSW has over 70 internal projects and more than 170 total projects in TFS. This method has long term benefits that help to simplify the support model for companies that often have limited internal support time and many projects. But, there are implications as TFS does not provide this model “out-of-the-box”. These implications stretch across Areas, Iterations, Queries, Project Portal and Version Control. Michael made a good comment, he said: I agree with your approach, assuming that in a multi-product engagement with a client, they are happy to adopt the same process template across all products. If they are not, then it’ll either be easy to convince them or there is a valid reason for having a different template - Michael Fourie, Visual Studio ALM MVP   At SSW we have a standard template that we use and this is applied across the board, to all of our projects. We even apply any changes to the core process template to all of our existing projects as well. If you have multiple projects for the same clients on multiple templates and you want to keep it that way, then this approach will not work for you. However, if you want to standardise as we have at SSW then this approach may benefit you as well. Implications around Areas Areas should be used for topological classification/isolation of work items. You can think of this as architecture areas, organisational areas or even the main features of your application. In our scenario there is an additional top level item that represents the Project / Product that we want to chop our Team Project into. Figure: Creating a sub area to represent a product/project is easy. <teamproject> <teamproject>\<Functional Area/module whatever> Becomes: <teamproject> <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\ <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\<Functional Area/module whatever> Implications around Iterations Iterations should be used for chronological classification/isolation of work items. This could include isolated time boxes, milestones or release timelines and really depends on the logical flow of your project or projects. Due to the new level in Area we need to add the same level to Iteration. This is primarily because it is unlikely that the sprints in each of your projects/products will start and end at the same time. This is just a reality of managing multiple projects. Figure: Adding the same Area value to Iteration as the top level item adds flexibility to Iteration. <teamproject>\Sprint 1 Or <teamproject>\Release 1\Sprint 1 Becomes: <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\Sprint 1 Or <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\Release 1\Sprint 1 Implications around Queries Queries are used to filter your work items based on a specified level of granularity. There are a number of queries that are built into a project created using the MSF Agile 5.0 template, but we now have multiple projects and it would be a pain to have to edit all of the work items every time we changed project, and that would only allow one team to work on one project at a time.   Figure: The Queries that are created in a normal MSF Agile 5.0 project do not quite suit our new needs. In order for project contributors to be able to query based on their project we need a couple of things. The first thing I did was to create an “_Area Template” folder that has a copy of the project layout with all the queries setup to filter based on the “_Area Template” Area and the “_Sprint template” you can see in the Area and Iteration views. Figure: The template is currently easily drag and drop, but you then need to edit the queries to point at the right Area and Iteration. This needs a tool. I then created an “Areas” folder to hold all of the area specific queries. So, when you go to create a new TFS Sub-Project you just drag “_Area Template” while holding “Ctrl” and drop it onto “Areas”. There is a little setup here. That said I managed it in around 10 minutes which is not so bad, and I can imagine it being quite easy to build a tool to create these queries Figure: These new queries can be configured in around 10 minutes, which includes setting up the Area and Iteration as well. Version Control What about your source code? Well, that is the easiest of the lot. Just create a sub folder for each of your projects/products.   Figure: Creating sub folders in source control is easy as “Right click | Create new folder”. <teamproject>\DEV\Main\ Becomes: <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\DEV\Main\ Conclusion I think it is up to each company to make a call on how you want to configure your Team Projects and it depends completely on how many projects/products you are going to have for each customer including yourself. If we decide to utilise this route it will require some configuration to get our 170+ projects into this format, and I will probably be writing some tools to help. Pros You only have one project to upgrade when a process template changes – After going through an upgrade of over 170 project prior to the changes in the RC I can tell you that that many projects is no fun. Standardises your Process Template – You will always have the same Process implementation across projects/products without exception You get tighter control over the permissions – Yes, you can do this on a standard Team Project, but it gets a lot easier with practice. You can “move” work items from one “product” to another – Have we not always wanted to do that. You can rename your projects – Wahoo: everyone wants to do this, now you can. One set of Reporting Services reports to manage – You set an area and iteration to run reports anyway, so you may as well set both. Simplified Check-In Policies– There is only one set of check-in policies per client. This simplifies administration of policies. Simplified Alerts – As alerts are applied across multiple projects this simplifies your alert rules as per client. Cons All of these cons could be mitigated by a custom tool that helps automate creation of “Sub-projects” within Team Projects. This custom tool could create areas, Iteration, permissions, SharePoint and queries. It just does not exist yet :) You need to configure the Areas and Iterations You need to configure the permissions You may need to configure sub sites for SharePoint (depends on your requirement) – If you have two projects/products in the same Team Project then you will not see the burn down for each one out-of-the-box, but rather a cumulative for the Team Project. This is not really that much of a problem as you would have to configure your burndown graphs for your current iteration anyway. note: When you create a sub site to a TFS linked portal it will inherit the settings of its parent site :) This is fantastic as it means that you can easily create sub sites and then set the Area and Iteration path in each of the reports to be the correct one. Every team wants their own customization (via Ewald Hofman) - small teams of 2 persons against teams of 30 – or even outsourcing – need their own process, you cannot allow that because everybody gets the same work item types. note: Luckily at SSW this is not a problem as our template is standardised across all projects and customers. Large list of builds (via Ewald Hofman) – As the build list in Team Explorer is just a flat list it can get very cluttered. note: I would mitigate this by removing any build that has not been run in over 30 days. The build template and workflow will still be available in version control, but it will clean the list. Feedback Now that I have explained this method, what do you think? What other pros and cons can you see? What do you think of this approach? Will you be using it? What tools would you like to support you?   Technorati Tags: Visual Studio ALM,TFS Administration,TFS,Team Foundation Server,Project Planning,TFS Customisation

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• Parallelism in .NET – Part 11, Divide and Conquer via Parallel.Invoke

  - by Reed

  Many algorithms are easily written to work via recursion.  For example, most data-oriented tasks where a tree of data must be processed are much more easily handled by starting at the root, and recursively “walking” the tree.  Some algorithms work this way on flat data structures, such as arrays, as well.  This is a form of divide and conquer: an algorithm design which is based around breaking up a set of work recursively, “dividing” the total work in each recursive step, and “conquering” the work when the remaining work is small enough to be solved easily. Recursive algorithms, especially ones based on a form of divide and conquer, are often a very good candidate for parallelization. This is apparent from a common sense standpoint.  Since we’re dividing up the total work in the algorithm, we have an obvious, built-in partitioning scheme.  Once partitioned, the data can be worked upon independently, so there is good, clean isolation of data. Implementing this type of algorithm is fairly simple.  The Parallel class in .NET 4 includes a method suited for this type of operation: Parallel.Invoke.  This method works by taking any number of delegates defined as an Action, and operating them all in parallel.  The method returns when every delegate has completed: Parallel.Invoke( () => { Console.WriteLine("Action 1 executing in thread {0}", Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId); }, () => { Console.WriteLine("Action 2 executing in thread {0}", Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId); }, () => { Console.WriteLine("Action 3 executing in thread {0}", Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId); } ); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Running this simple example demonstrates the ease of using this method.  For example, on my system, I get three separate thread IDs when running the above code.  By allowing any number of delegates to be executed directly, concurrently, the Parallel.Invoke method provides us an easy way to parallelize any algorithm based on divide and conquer.  We can divide our work in each step, and execute each task in parallel, recursively. For example, suppose we wanted to implement our own quicksort routine.  The quicksort algorithm can be designed based on divide and conquer.  In each iteration, we pick a pivot point, and use that to partition the total array.  We swap the elements around the pivot, then recursively sort the lists on each side of the pivot.  For example, let’s look at this simple, sequential implementation of quicksort: public static void QuickSort<T>(T[] array) where T : IComparable<T> { QuickSortInternal(array, 0, array.Length - 1); } private static void QuickSortInternal<T>(T[] array, int left, int right) where T : IComparable<T> { if (left >= right) { return; } SwapElements(array, left, (left + right) / 2); int last = left; for (int current = left + 1; current <= right; ++current) { if (array[current].CompareTo(array[left]) < 0) { ++last; SwapElements(array, last, current); } } SwapElements(array, left, last); QuickSortInternal(array, left, last - 1); QuickSortInternal(array, last + 1, right); } static void SwapElements<T>(T[] array, int i, int j) { T temp = array[i]; array[i] = array[j]; array[j] = temp; } Here, we implement the quicksort algorithm in a very common, divide and conquer approach.  Running this against the built-in Array.Sort routine shows that we get the exact same answers (although the framework’s sort routine is slightly faster).  On my system, for example, I can use framework’s sort to sort ten million random doubles in about 7.3s, and this implementation takes about 9.3s on average. Looking at this routine, though, there is a clear opportunity to parallelize.  At the end of QuickSortInternal, we recursively call into QuickSortInternal with each partition of the array after the pivot is chosen.  This can be rewritten to use Parallel.Invoke by simply changing it to: // Code above is unchanged... SwapElements(array, left, last); Parallel.Invoke( () => QuickSortInternal(array, left, last - 1), () => QuickSortInternal(array, last + 1, right) ); } This routine will now run in parallel.  When executing, we now see the CPU usage across all cores spike while it executes.  However, there is a significant problem here – by parallelizing this routine, we took it from an execution time of 9.3s to an execution time of approximately 14 seconds!  We’re using more resources as seen in the CPU usage, but the overall result is a dramatic slowdown in overall processing time. This occurs because parallelization adds overhead.  Each time we split this array, we spawn two new tasks to parallelize this algorithm!  This is far, far too many tasks for our cores to operate upon at a single time.  In effect, we’re “over-parallelizing” this routine.  This is a common problem when working with divide and conquer algorithms, and leads to an important observation: When parallelizing a recursive routine, take special care not to add more tasks than necessary to fully utilize your system. This can be done with a few different approaches, in this case.  Typically, the way to handle this is to stop parallelizing the routine at a certain point, and revert back to the serial approach.  Since the first few recursions will all still be parallelized, our “deeper” recursive tasks will be running in parallel, and can take full advantage of the machine.  This also dramatically reduces the overhead added by parallelizing, since we’re only adding overhead for the first few recursive calls.  There are two basic approaches we can take here.  The first approach would be to look at the total work size, and if it’s smaller than a specific threshold, revert to our serial implementation.  In this case, we could just check right-left, and if it’s under a threshold, call the methods directly instead of using Parallel.Invoke. The second approach is to track how “deep” in the “tree” we are currently at, and if we are below some number of levels, stop parallelizing.  This approach is a more general-purpose approach, since it works on routines which parse trees as well as routines working off of a single array, but may not work as well if a poor partitioning strategy is chosen or the tree is not balanced evenly. This can be written very easily.  If we pass a maxDepth parameter into our internal routine, we can restrict the amount of times we parallelize by changing the recursive call to: // Code above is unchanged... SwapElements(array, left, last); if (maxDepth < 1) { QuickSortInternal(array, left, last - 1, maxDepth); QuickSortInternal(array, last + 1, right, maxDepth); } else { --maxDepth; Parallel.Invoke( () => QuickSortInternal(array, left, last - 1, maxDepth), () => QuickSortInternal(array, last + 1, right, maxDepth)); } We no longer allow this to parallelize indefinitely – only to a specific depth, at which time we revert to a serial implementation.  By starting the routine with a maxDepth equal to Environment.ProcessorCount, we can restrict the total amount of parallel operations significantly, but still provide adequate work for each processing core. With this final change, my timings are much better.  On average, I get the following timings: Framework via Array.Sort: 7.3 seconds Serial Quicksort Implementation: 9.3 seconds Naive Parallel Implementation: 14 seconds Parallel Implementation Restricting Depth: 4.7 seconds Finally, we are now faster than the framework’s Array.Sort implementation.

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• Entity Association Mapping with Code First Part 1 : Mapping Complex Types

  - by mortezam

  Last week the CTP5 build of the new Entity Framework Code First has been released by data team at Microsoft. Entity Framework Code-First provides a pretty powerful code-centric way to work with the databases. When it comes to associations, it brings ultimate flexibility. I’m a big fan of the EF Code First approach and am planning to explain association mapping with code first in a series of blog posts and this one is dedicated to Complex Types. If you are new to Code First approach, you can find a great walkthrough here. In order to build a solid foundation for our discussion, we will start by learning about some of the core concepts around the relationship mapping.   What is Mapping?Mapping is the act of determining how objects and their relationships are persisted in permanent data storage, in our case, relational databases. What is Relationship mapping?A mapping that describes how to persist a relationship (association, aggregation, or composition) between two or more objects. Types of RelationshipsThere are two categories of object relationships that we need to be concerned with when mapping associations. The first category is based on multiplicity and it includes three types: One-to-one relationships: This is a relationship where the maximums of each of its multiplicities is one. One-to-many relationships: Also known as a many-to-one relationship, this occurs when the maximum of one multiplicity is one and the other is greater than one. Many-to-many relationships: This is a relationship where the maximum of both multiplicities is greater than one. The second category is based on directionality and it contains two types: Uni-directional relationships: when an object knows about the object(s) it is related to but the other object(s) do not know of the original object. To put this in EF terminology, when a navigation property exists only on one of the association ends and not on the both. Bi-directional relationships: When the objects on both end of the relationship know of each other (i.e. a navigation property defined on both ends). How Object Relationships Are Implemented in POCO domain models?When the multiplicity is one (e.g. 0..1 or 1) the relationship is implemented by defining a navigation property that reference the other object (e.g. an Address property on User class). When the multiplicity is many (e.g. 0..*, 1..*) the relationship is implemented via an ICollection of the type of other object. How Relational Database Relationships Are Implemented? Relationships in relational databases are maintained through the use of Foreign Keys. A foreign key is a data attribute(s) that appears in one table and must be the primary key or other candidate key in another table. With a one-to-one relationship the foreign key needs to be implemented by one of the tables. To implement a one-to-many relationship we implement a foreign key from the “one table” to the “many table”. We could also choose to implement a one-to-many relationship via an associative table (aka Join table), effectively making it a many-to-many relationship. Introducing the ModelNow, let's review the model that we are going to use in order to implement Complex Type with Code First. It's a simple object model which consist of two classes: User and Address. Each user could have one billing address. The Address information of a User is modeled as a separate class as you can see in the UML model below: In object-modeling terms, this association is a kind of aggregation—a part-of relationship. Aggregation is a strong form of association; it has some additional semantics with regard to the lifecycle of objects. In this case, we have an even stronger form, composition, where the lifecycle of the part is fully dependent upon the lifecycle of the whole. Fine-grained domain models The motivation behind this design was to achieve Fine-grained domain models. In crude terms, fine-grained means “more classes than tables”. For example, a user may have both a billing address and a home address. In the database, you may have a single User table with the columns BillingStreet, BillingCity, and BillingPostalCode along with HomeStreet, HomeCity, and HomePostalCode. There are good reasons to use this somewhat denormalized relational model (performance, for one). In our object model, we can use the same approach, representing the two addresses as six string-valued properties of the User class. But it’s much better to model this using an Address class, where User has the BillingAddress and HomeAddress properties. This object model achieves improved cohesion and greater code reuse and is more understandable. Complex Types: Splitting a Table Across Multiple Types Back to our model, there is no difference between this composition and other weaker styles of association when it comes to the actual C# implementation. But in the context of ORM, there is a big difference: A composed class is often a candidate Complex Type. But C# has no concept of composition—a class or property can’t be marked as a composition. The only difference is the object identifier: a complex type has no individual identity (i.e. no AddressId defined on Address class) which make sense because when it comes to the database everything is going to be saved into one single table. How to implement a Complex Types with Code First Code First has a concept of Complex Type Discovery that works based on a set of Conventions. The convention is that if Code First discovers a class where a primary key cannot be inferred, and no primary key is registered through Data Annotations or the fluent API, then the type will be automatically registered as a complex type. Complex type detection also requires that the type does not have properties that reference entity types (i.e. all the properties must be scalar types) and is not referenced from a collection property on another type. Here is the implementation: public class User{    public int UserId { get; set; }    public string FirstName { get; set; }    public string LastName { get; set; }    public string Username { get; set; }    public Address Address { get; set; }} public class Address {     public string Street { get; set; }     public string City { get; set; }            public string PostalCode { get; set; }        }public class EntityMappingContext : DbContext {     public DbSet<User> Users { get; set; }        } With code first, this is all of the code we need to write to create a complex type, we do not need to configure any additional database schema mapping information through Data Annotations or the fluent API. Database SchemaThe mapping result for this object model is as follows: Limitations of this mappingThere are two important limitations to classes mapped as Complex Types: Shared references is not possible: The Address Complex Type doesn’t have its own database identity (primary key) and so can’t be referred to by any object other than the containing instance of User (e.g. a Shipping class that also needs to reference the same User Address). No elegant way to represent a null reference There is no elegant way to represent a null reference to an Address. When reading from database, EF Code First always initialize Address object even if values in all mapped columns of the complex type are null. This means that if you store a complex type object with all null property values, EF Code First returns a initialized complex type when the owning entity object is retrieved from the database. SummaryIn this post we learned about fine-grained domain models which complex type is just one example of it. Fine-grained is fully supported by EF Code First and is known as the most important requirement for a rich domain model. Complex type is usually the simplest way to represent one-to-one relationships and because the lifecycle is almost always dependent in such a case, it’s either an aggregation or a composition in UML. In the next posts we will revisit the same domain model and will learn about other ways to map a one-to-one association that does not have the limitations of the complex types. References ADO.NET team blog Mapping Objects to Relational Databases Java Persistence with Hibernate

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• Toorcon14

  - by danx

  Toorcon 2012 Information Security Conference San Diego, CA, http://www.toorcon.org/ Dan Anderson, October 2012 It's almost Halloween, and we all know what that means—yes, of course, it's time for another Toorcon Conference! Toorcon is an annual conference for people interested in computer security. This includes the whole range of hackers, computer hobbyists, professionals, security consultants, press, law enforcement, prosecutors, FBI, etc. We're at Toorcon 14—see earlier blogs for some of the previous Toorcon's I've attended (back to 2003). This year's "con" was held at the Westin on Broadway in downtown San Diego, California. The following are not necessarily my views—I'm just the messenger—although I could have misquoted or misparaphrased the speakers. Also, I only reviewed some of the talks, below, which I attended and interested me. MalAndroid—the Crux of Android Infections, Aditya K. Sood Programming Weird Machines with ELF Metadata, Rebecca "bx" Shapiro Privacy at the Handset: New FCC Rules?, Valkyrie Hacking Measured Boot and UEFI, Dan Griffin You Can't Buy Security: Building the Open Source InfoSec Program, Boris Sverdlik What Journalists Want: The Investigative Reporters' Perspective on Hacking, Dave Maas & Jason Leopold Accessibility and Security, Anna Shubina Stop Patching, for Stronger PCI Compliance, Adam Brand McAfee Secure & Trustmarks — a Hacker's Best Friend, Jay James & Shane MacDougall MalAndroid—the Crux of Android Infections Aditya K. Sood, IOActive, Michigan State PhD candidate Aditya talked about Android smartphone malware. There's a lot of old Android software out there—over 50% Gingerbread (2.3.x)—and most have unpatched vulnerabilities. Of 9 Android vulnerabilities, 8 have known exploits (such as the old Gingerbread Global Object Table exploit). Android protection includes sandboxing, security scanner, app permissions, and screened Android app market. The Android permission checker has fine-grain resource control, policy enforcement. Android static analysis also includes a static analysis app checker (bouncer), and a vulnerablity checker. What security problems does Android have? User-centric security, which depends on the user to grant permission and make smart decisions. But users don't care or think about malware (the're not aware, not paranoid). All they want is functionality, extensibility, mobility Android had no "proper" encryption before Android 3.0 No built-in protection against social engineering and web tricks Alternative Android app markets are unsafe. Simply visiting some markets can infect Android Aditya classified Android Malware types as: Type A—Apps. These interact with the Android app framework. For example, a fake Netflix app. Or Android Gold Dream (game), which uploads user files stealthy manner to a remote location. Type K—Kernel. Exploits underlying Linux libraries or kernel Type H—Hybrid. These use multiple layers (app framework, libraries, kernel). These are most commonly used by Android botnets, which are popular with Chinese botnet authors What are the threats from Android malware? These incude leak info (contacts), banking fraud, corporate network attacks, malware advertising, malware "Hackivism" (the promotion of social causes. For example, promiting specific leaders of the Tunisian or Iranian revolutions. Android malware is frequently "masquerated". That is, repackaged inside a legit app with malware. To avoid detection, the hidden malware is not unwrapped until runtime. The malware payload can be hidden in, for example, PNG files. Less common are Android bootkits—there's not many around. What they do is hijack the Android init framework—alteering system programs and daemons, then deletes itself. For example, the DKF Bootkit (China). Android App Problems: no code signing! all self-signed native code execution permission sandbox — all or none alternate market places no robust Android malware detection at network level delayed patch process Programming Weird Machines with ELF Metadata Rebecca "bx" Shapiro, Dartmouth College, NH https://github.com/bx/elf-bf-tools @bxsays on twitter Definitions. "ELF" is an executable file format used in linking and loading executables (on UNIX/Linux-class machines). "Weird machine" uses undocumented computation sources (I think of them as unintended virtual machines). Some examples of "weird machines" are those that: return to weird location, does SQL injection, corrupts the heap. Bx then talked about using ELF metadata as (an uintended) "weird machine". Some ELF background: A compiler takes source code and generates a ELF object file (hello.o). A static linker makes an ELF executable from the object file. A runtime linker and loader takes ELF executable and loads and relocates it in memory. The ELF file has symbols to relocate functions and variables. ELF has two relocation tables—one at link time and another one at loading time: .rela.dyn (link time) and .dynsym (dynamic table). GOT: Global Offset Table of addresses for dynamically-linked functions. PLT: Procedure Linkage Tables—works with GOT. The memory layout of a process (not the ELF file) is, in order: program (+ heap), dynamic libraries, libc, ld.so, stack (which includes the dynamic table loaded into memory) For ELF, the "weird machine" is found and exploited in the loader. ELF can be crafted for executing viruses, by tricking runtime into executing interpreted "code" in the ELF symbol table. One can inject parasitic "code" without modifying the actual ELF code portions. Think of the ELF symbol table as an "assembly language" interpreter. It has these elements: instructions: Add, move, jump if not 0 (jnz) Think of symbol table entries as "registers" symbol table value is "contents" immediate values are constants direct values are addresses (e.g., 0xdeadbeef) move instruction: is a relocation table entry add instruction: relocation table "addend" entry jnz instruction: takes multiple relocation table entries The ELF weird machine exploits the loader by relocating relocation table entries. The loader will go on forever until told to stop. It stores state on stack at "end" and uses IFUNC table entries (containing function pointer address). The ELF weird machine, called "Brainfu*k" (BF) has: 8 instructions: pointer inc, dec, inc indirect, dec indirect, jump forward, jump backward, print. Three registers - 3 registers Bx showed example BF source code that implemented a Turing machine printing "hello, world". More interesting was the next demo, where bx modified ping. Ping runs suid as root, but quickly drops privilege. BF modified the loader to disable the library function call dropping privilege, so it remained as root. Then BF modified the ping -t argument to execute the -t filename as root. It's best to show what this modified ping does with an example: $ whoami bx $ ping localhost -t backdoor.sh # executes backdoor $ whoami root $ The modified code increased from 285948 bytes to 290209 bytes. A BF tool compiles "executable" by modifying the symbol table in an existing ELF executable. The tool modifies .dynsym and .rela.dyn table, but not code or data. Privacy at the Handset: New FCC Rules? "Valkyrie" (Christie Dudley, Santa Clara Law JD candidate) Valkyrie talked about mobile handset privacy. Some background: Senator Franken (also a comedian) became alarmed about CarrierIQ, where the carriers track their customers. Franken asked the FCC to find out what obligations carriers think they have to protect privacy. The carriers' response was that they are doing just fine with self-regulation—no worries! Carriers need to collect data, such as missed calls, to maintain network quality. But carriers also sell data for marketing. Verizon sells customer data and enables this with a narrow privacy policy (only 1 month to opt out, with difficulties). The data sold is not individually identifiable and is aggregated. But Verizon recommends, as an aggregation workaround to "recollate" data to other databases to identify customers indirectly. The FCC has regulated telephone privacy since 1934 and mobile network privacy since 2007. Also, the carriers say mobile phone privacy is a FTC responsibility (not FCC). FTC is trying to improve mobile app privacy, but FTC has no authority over carrier / customer relationships. As a side note, Apple iPhones are unique as carriers have extra control over iPhones they don't have with other smartphones. As a result iPhones may be more regulated. Who are the consumer advocates? Everyone knows EFF, but EPIC (Electrnic Privacy Info Center), although more obsecure, is more relevant. What to do? Carriers must be accountable. Opt-in and opt-out at any time. Carriers need incentive to grant users control for those who want it, by holding them liable and responsible for breeches on their clock. Location information should be added current CPNI privacy protection, and require "Pen/trap" judicial order to obtain (and would still be a lower standard than 4th Amendment). Politics are on a pro-privacy swing now, with many senators and the Whitehouse. There will probably be new regulation soon, and enforcement will be a problem, but consumers will still have some benefit. Hacking Measured Boot and UEFI Dan Griffin, JWSecure, Inc., Seattle, @JWSdan Dan talked about hacking measured UEFI boot. First some terms: UEFI is a boot technology that is replacing BIOS (has whitelisting and blacklisting). UEFI protects devices against rootkits. TPM - hardware security device to store hashs and hardware-protected keys "secure boot" can control at firmware level what boot images can boot "measured boot" OS feature that tracks hashes (from BIOS, boot loader, krnel, early drivers). "remote attestation" allows remote validation and control based on policy on a remote attestation server. Microsoft pushing TPM (Windows 8 required), but Google is not. Intel TianoCore is the only open source for UEFI. Dan has Measured Boot Tool at http://mbt.codeplex.com/ with a demo where you can also view TPM data. TPM support already on enterprise-class machines. UEFI Weaknesses. UEFI toolkits are evolving rapidly, but UEFI has weaknesses: assume user is an ally trust TPM implicitly, and attached to computer hibernate file is unprotected (disk encryption protects against this) protection migrating from hardware to firmware delays in patching and whitelist updates will UEFI really be adopted by the mainstream (smartphone hardware support, bank support, apathetic consumer support) You Can't Buy Security: Building the Open Source InfoSec Program Boris Sverdlik, ISDPodcast.com co-host Boris talked about problems typical with current security audits. "IT Security" is an oxymoron—IT exists to enable buiness, uptime, utilization, reporting, but don't care about security—IT has conflict of interest. There's no Magic Bullet ("blinky box"), no one-size-fits-all solution (e.g., Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs)). Regulations don't make you secure. The cloud is not secure (because of shared data and admin access). Defense and pen testing is not sexy. Auditors are not solution (security not a checklist)—what's needed is experience and adaptability—need soft skills. Step 1: First thing is to Google and learn the company end-to-end before you start. Get to know the management team (not IT team), meet as many people as you can. Don't use arbitrary values such as CISSP scores. Quantitive risk assessment is a myth (e.g. AV*EF-SLE). Learn different Business Units, legal/regulatory obligations, learn the business and where the money is made, verify company is protected from script kiddies (easy), learn sensitive information (IP, internal use only), and start with low-hanging fruit (customer service reps and social engineering). Step 2: Policies. Keep policies short and relevant. Generic SANS "security" boilerplate policies don't make sense and are not followed. Focus on acceptable use, data usage, communications, physical security. Step 3: Implementation: keep it simple stupid. Open source, although useful, is not free (implementation cost). Access controls with authentication & authorization for local and remote access. MS Windows has it, otherwise use OpenLDAP, OpenIAM, etc. Application security Everyone tries to reinvent the wheel—use existing static analysis tools. Review high-risk apps and major revisions. Don't run different risk level apps on same system. Assume host/client compromised and use app-level security control. Network security VLAN != segregated because there's too many workarounds. Use explicit firwall rules, active and passive network monitoring (snort is free), disallow end user access to production environment, have a proxy instead of direct Internet access. Also, SSL certificates are not good two-factor auth and SSL does not mean "safe." Operational Controls Have change, patch, asset, & vulnerability management (OSSI is free). For change management, always review code before pushing to production For logging, have centralized security logging for business-critical systems, separate security logging from administrative/IT logging, and lock down log (as it has everything). Monitor with OSSIM (open source). Use intrusion detection, but not just to fulfill a checkbox: build rules from a whitelist perspective (snort). OSSEC has 95% of what you need. Vulnerability management is a QA function when done right: OpenVas and Seccubus are free. Security awareness The reality is users will always click everything. Build real awareness, not compliance driven checkbox, and have it integrated into the culture. Pen test by crowd sourcing—test with logging COSSP http://www.cossp.org/ - Comprehensive Open Source Security Project What Journalists Want: The Investigative Reporters' Perspective on Hacking Dave Maas, San Diego CityBeat Jason Leopold, Truthout.org The difference between hackers and investigative journalists: For hackers, the motivation varies, but method is same, technological specialties. For investigative journalists, it's about one thing—The Story, and they need broad info-gathering skills. J-School in 60 Seconds: Generic formula: Person or issue of pubic interest, new info, or angle. Generic criteria: proximity, prominence, timeliness, human interest, oddity, or consequence. Media awareness of hackers and trends: journalists becoming extremely aware of hackers with congressional debates (privacy, data breaches), demand for data-mining Journalists, use of coding and web development for Journalists, and Journalists busted for hacking (Murdock). Info gathering by investigative journalists include Public records laws. Federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is good, but slow. California Public Records Act is a lot stronger. FOIA takes forever because of foot-dragging—it helps to be specific. Often need to sue (especially FBI). CPRA is faster, and requests can be vague. Dumps and leaks (a la Wikileaks) Journalists want: leads, protecting ourselves, our sources, and adapting tools for news gathering (Google hacking). Anonomity is important to whistleblowers. They want no digital footprint left behind (e.g., email, web log). They don't trust encryption, want to feel safe and secure. Whistleblower laws are very weak—there's no upside for whistleblowers—they have to be very passionate to do it. Accessibility and Security or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Halting Problem Anna Shubina, Dartmouth College Anna talked about how accessibility and security are related. Accessibility of digital content (not real world accessibility). mostly refers to blind users and screenreaders, for our purpose. Accessibility is about parsing documents, as are many security issues. "Rich" executable content causes accessibility to fail, and often causes security to fail. For example MS Word has executable format—it's not a document exchange format—more dangerous than PDF or HTML. Accessibility is often the first and maybe only sanity check with parsing. They have no choice because someone may want to read what you write. Google, for example, is very particular about web browser you use and are bad at supporting other browsers. Uses JavaScript instead of links, often requiring mouseover to display content. PDF is a security nightmare. Executible format, embedded flash, JavaScript, etc. 15 million lines of code. Google Chrome doesn't handle PDF correctly, causing several security bugs. PDF has an accessibility checker and PDF tagging, to help with accessibility. But no PDF checker checks for incorrect tags, untagged content, or validates lists or tables. None check executable content at all. The "Halting Problem" is: can one decide whether a program will ever stop? The answer, in general, is no (Rice's theorem). The same holds true for accessibility checkers. Language-theoretic Security says complicated data formats are hard to parse and cannot be solved due to the Halting Problem. W3C Web Accessibility Guidelines: "Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust" Not much help though, except for "Robust", but here's some gems: * all information should be parsable (paraphrasing) * if not parsable, cannot be converted to alternate formats * maximize compatibility in new document formats Executible webpages are bad for security and accessibility. They say it's for a better web experience. But is it necessary to stuff web pages with JavaScript for a better experience? A good example is The Drudge Report—it has hand-written HTML with no JavaScript, yet drives a lot of web traffic due to good content. A bad example is Google News—hidden scrollbars, guessing user input. Solutions: Accessibility and security problems come from same source Expose "better user experience" myth Keep your corner of Internet parsable Remember "Halting Problem"—recognize false solutions (checking and verifying tools) Stop Patching, for Stronger PCI Compliance Adam Brand, protiviti @adamrbrand, http://www.picfun.com/ Adam talked about PCI compliance for retail sales. Take an example: for PCI compliance, 50% of Brian's time (a IT guy), 960 hours/year was spent patching POSs in 850 restaurants. Often applying some patches make no sense (like fixing a browser vulnerability on a server). "Scanner worship" is overuse of vulnerability scanners—it gives a warm and fuzzy and it's simple (red or green results—fix reds). Scanners give a false sense of security. In reality, breeches from missing patches are uncommon—more common problems are: default passwords, cleartext authentication, misconfiguration (firewall ports open). Patching Myths: Myth 1: install within 30 days of patch release (but PCI §6.1 allows a "risk-based approach" instead). Myth 2: vendor decides what's critical (also PCI §6.1). But §6.2 requires user ranking of vulnerabilities instead. Myth 3: scan and rescan until it passes. But PCI §11.2.1b says this applies only to high-risk vulnerabilities. Adam says good recommendations come from NIST 800-40. Instead use sane patching and focus on what's really important. From NIST 800-40: Proactive: Use a proactive vulnerability management process: use change control, configuration management, monitor file integrity. Monitor: start with NVD and other vulnerability alerts, not scanner results. Evaluate: public-facing system? workstation? internal server? (risk rank) Decide:on action and timeline Test: pre-test patches (stability, functionality, rollback) for change control Install: notify, change control, tickets McAfee Secure & Trustmarks — a Hacker's Best Friend Jay James, Shane MacDougall, Tactical Intelligence Inc., Canada "McAfee Secure Trustmark" is a website seal marketed by McAfee. A website gets this badge if they pass their remote scanning. The problem is a removal of trustmarks act as flags that you're vulnerable. Easy to view status change by viewing McAfee list on website or on Google. "Secure TrustGuard" is similar to McAfee. Jay and Shane wrote Perl scripts to gather sites from McAfee and search engines. If their certification image changes to a 1x1 pixel image, then they are longer certified. Their scripts take deltas of scans to see what changed daily. The bottom line is change in TrustGuard status is a flag for hackers to attack your site. Entire idea of seals is silly—you're raising a flag saying if you're vulnerable.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, February 26, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, February 26, 2010New Projectsaion-gamecp: Aion Gamecp for aion Private server based on Aion UniqueAzure Email Queuer: Azure Email Queuer makes it easier for Developers Programming in the Cloud to Queue Emails to keep the UI Thread Clear for Requests. Developed w...BIG1: Bob and Ian's Game. Written using XNA Game Studio Express. Basically an update of David Braben and Ian Bell's classic game "Elite." This is a nonco...CMS7: CMS7 The CMS7 is composed of three module. (1)Main CMS Business (2)Process Customization (3)Role/Department CustomizationCoreSharp Networking Core: A simple to use framework to develop efficient client/server application. The framework is part of my project at school and I hope it will benefit ...Fullscreen Countdown: Small and basic countdown application. The countdown window can be resized to fit any size to display the minutes elapsed. Developped in C#, .NET F...IRC4N00bz: Learning sockets, events, delegates, SQL, and IRC commands all in one big project! It's written in C# (Csharp) and hope you find it helpfull, or ev...LjSystem: This project is a collection of my extensions to the BCLMP3 Tags Management: A software to manage the tags of MP3 filesnetone: All net in oneNext Dart (Dublin Area Rapid Transport): The shows the times of the next darts from a given station. It is a windows application that updates automatically and so is easier to use than th...PChat - An OCDotNet.Org Presentation: PChat is a multithreaded pinnable chat server and client. It is designed to be a demonstration of Visual Studio 2010 MVC 2, for ocdotnet.org Use...Pittsburgh Code Camp iPhone App: The Pittsburgh Code Camp iPhone Application is meant as a demonstration of the creation of an iPhone application while at the same time providing t...Radical: Radical is an infrastructure frameworkRadioAutomation: Windows application for radio automation.SilverSynth - Digital Audio Synthesis for Silverlight: SilverSynth is a digial audio synthesis library for Silverlight developers to create synthesized wave forms from code. It supports synthesis of sin...SkeinLibManaged: This implementation of the Skein Cryptographic Hash function is written entirely in Managed CSharp. It is posted here to share with the world at l...SpecExplorerEval: We are checking out spec explorer and presenting on its useSPOJemu: This is a SPOJ emulator. It allows you to define tests in xml and then check your application if it's working as you expected.The C# Skype Chat bot: A Skype bot in C# for managing Skype chats.VS 2010 Architecture Layers Patterns: Architecture layers patterns toolbox items for layers diagrams.Yakiimo3D: Mostly DirectX 11 programming tutorials.代码生成器: Project DetailsNew ReleasesArkSwitch: ArkSwitch v1.1.1: This release fixes a crash that occurs when certain processes with multiple primary windows are encountered.BTP Tools: CSB, CUV and HCSB e-Sword files 2010-02-26: include csb.bbl csb+.bbl csb.cmt csbc.dct cuv.bbl cuv+.bbl cuv.cmt cuvc.dct hcsb+.bbl hcsbc.dct files for e-Sword 8.0BubbleBurst: BubbleBurst v1.1: This is the second release of BubbleBurst, the subject of the book Advanced MVVM. This release contains a minor fix that was added after the book ...DevTreks -social budgeting that improves lives and livelihoods: Social Budgeting Web Software, alpha 3b: Alpha 3b simplifies and strengthens state management. With the exception of linked lists, the internal mechanics of addins have not been improved...Dragonrealms PvpStance plugin for Genie: 1.0.0.4: This updated is needed now that the DR server move broke the "profile soandso pvp" syntax. This version will capture the pvp stance out of the full...FastCode: FastCode 1.0: Definitions <integerType> : byte, sbyte, short, ushort, int, uint, long, ulond <floatType> : float, double, decimal Base types extensions Intege...Fullscreen Countdown: Fullscreen Countdown 1.0: First versionIRC4N00bz: IRC4N00bz_02252010.zip: I'm calling it a night. Here's the dll for where I'm at so far. It works, just lakcs some abilities. Anything not included can be pulled from th...Labrado: Labrado MiniTimer: Labrado MiniTimer is a convenient timer tool designed and implemented for GMAT test preparation.LINQ to VFP: LinqToVfp (v1.0.17.1): Cleaned up WCF Data Service Expression Tree. (details...) This build requires IQToolkit v0.17b.Microsoft Health Common User Interface: Release 8.0.200.000: This is version 8.0 of the Microsoft® Health Common User Interface Control Toolkit. The scope and requirements of this release are based on materia...Mini SQL Query: Mini SQL Query Funky Dev Build (RC1+): The "Funk Dev Build" bit is that I added a couple of features I think are pretty cool. It is a "dev" build but I class it as stable. Find Object...Neovolve: Neovolve.BlogEngine.Extensions 1.2: Updated extensions to work with BE 1.6. Updated Snippets extension to better handle excluded tags and fixed regex bug. Added SyntaxHighlighter exte...Neovolve: Neovolve.BlogEngine.Web 1.1: Update to support BE version 1.6 Neovolve.BlogEngine.Web 1.1 contains a redirector module that translates Community Server url formats into BlogEn...Next Dart (Dublin Area Rapid Transport): 1.0: There are 2 files NextDart 1.0.zip This contains just the files. Extract it to a folder and run NextDart.exe. NextDart 1.0 Intaller.zip This c...Powershell4SQL: Version 1.2: Changes from version 1.1 Added additional attributes to simplify syntax. Server and Database become optional. Defaulted to (local) and 'master' ...Radical: Radical (Desktop) 1.0: First stable dropRaidTracker: Raid Tracker: a few tweaksRaiser's Edge API Developer Toolkit: Alpha Release 1: This is an untested, alpha release. Contains RE API Toolkit built using 7.85 Dlls and 7.91 Dlls.SharePoint Enhanced Calendar by ArtfulBits: ArtfulBits.EnhancedCalendar v1.3: New Features: Simple to activate mechanism added (add Enhanced Calendar Web Part on the same page as standard calendar) Support for any type of S...Silverlight 4.0 Com Library for SQL Server Access: Version 1.0: This is the intial alpha release. It includes ExecuteQuery, ExecuteNonQuery and ExecuteScalar routines. See roadmap section of home page for detai...Silverlight HTML 5 Canvas: SLCanvas 1.1: This release enables <canvas renderMethod="auto" onload="runme(this)"></canvas> or <canvas renderMethod="Silverlight" onload="runme(this)"></ca...SilverSynth - Digital Audio Synthesis for Silverlight: SilverSynth 1.0: Source code including demo application.StringDefs: StringDefs Alpha Release 1.01: In this release of the Library few namespaces are added.STSDev 2008: STSDev 2008 2.1: Update to the StsDev 2008 project to correct Manifest Building issues.Text to HTML: 0.4.0.2: Cambios de la versión:Correcciones menores en el sistema de traducción. Controlada la excepción aparecida al suprimir los archivos de idioma. A...The Silverlight Hyper Video Player [http://slhvp.com]: Release 4 - Friendly User Release (Pre-Beta): Release 4 - Friendly User Release (Pre-Beta) This version of the code has much of the design that we plan to go forward with for Mix and utilizes a...TreeSizeNet: TreeSizeNet 0.10.2: - Assemblies merged in one executableVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30225.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30225.1: Automatic drop of latest buildVS 2010 Architecture Layers Patterns: VS 2010 RC Architecture Layers Patterns v1.0: Architecture layers patterns toolbox items based on the Microsoft Application Architecture Guide, 2nd Edition for the layer diagram designer of Vi...Yakiimo3D: DirectX11 BitonicSortCPU Source and Binary: DirectX11 BitonicSortCPU sample source and binary.Yakiimo3D: DirectX11 MandelbrotGPU Source and Binary: DirectX11 MandelbrotGPU source and binary.Most Popular ProjectsVSLabOSIS Interop TestsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsDinnerNow.netRawrBlogEngine.NETSLARToolkit - Silverlight Augmented Reality ToolkitInfoServiceSharpMap - Geospatial Application Framework for the CLRCommon Context AdaptersNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModulejQuery Library for SharePoint Web Servicespatterns & practices – Enterprise Library

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, May 21, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, May 21, 2010New Projects.Net wrapper around the Neo4j Rest Server: Neo4jRestSharp is a .Net API wrapper for the Neo4j Rest Server. Neo4j is an open sourced java based transactional graph database that stores data ...3D Editor Application Framework: A starting point for building 3D editing applications, such as video game editors, particle system editors, 3D modelling tools, visualization tools...Bulk Actions for SharePoint: This project aims to provide some essential and generic bulk actions for SharePoint lists. Idea is to include any custom actions that can be applie...CineRemote - The hometheater control board: CineRemote's purpose is to offer an alternative to expensive control system for dedicated hometheater rooms. CrmContrib: CrmContrib is a collection of useful items for developers and customizers working with the Dynamics CRM platform.db2xls: OleDb,Sql Server,Sqlite,....to excel, from sqlHappyNet - Silverlight reference application: HappyNet is a project using best practices to build an e-commerce web site. It is a full Silverlight application based on a solid architecture (PR...IP Multicast Library: IP Multicast Library makes it easier for developers to add Multicast, messaging to projects.Linkbutton Web Part: This Link Button Web Part can be installed in any SharePoint 2007 web site. You can onfigure a URL with query string that will be used by the Link...Majordomus pro Windows: Nástroj určený pro správce a vývojáře slouží k řízenému spuštění používaných a vypnutí nepotřebných služeb, procesů a aplikací ve Windows. Pomocí s...MRDS Samples: The MRDS Samples site hosts a variety of code samples for Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio (RDS).Mute4: Mute4 is a simple application that allows you to set a mute/vibration profile and it will switch back to your normal profile automatically after a ...Niko Neko Pureya: Niko Neko Pureya is a media player designed for people who watches a series of videos (like anime). It is very simple and easy to use & learn. And ...NVPX - VP8 Video Codec for .Net: NVPx allows you to use the now open-source VP8 codec on the .Net platform.openrs: openrs is an open-source RuneScape 2 emulator designed to be used with newer engine clients.Prism Evaluation: prism evaluationProj4Net: Proj4Net is a C#/.Net library to transform point coordinates from one geographic coordinate system to another, including datum transformation. The ...Read it to me!: Read it to me will allow you to load txt and rtf files and then speak them using SAPI 5 voices that are installed on your computer with an option t...sGSHOPedit: -SilverDice: SilverDice...SilverDude Toolkit for Silverlight: SilverDude Toolkit for Silverlight contains a collection of silverlight controls making life easier for developers. You'll no longer have to worry ...Silverlight Report: Open-Source Silverlight Reporting Engine. This project allows you to create and print reports using Silverlight 4.SimTrain5000: Train simulation project on University College of Northern Denmark.Springshield Sample Site for EPiServer CMS: City of Springshield - The accessible sample site for EPiServer CMS 6.Teach.Net: Teach.Net is a library/framework that can be used to create applications for testing and learning.The Amoeba Project: The Amoeba Project is a platform to be developed to embrace most of the latest Microsoft Technologies. Still in a conceptual stage however, it loo...The Fastcopy Helper: The Fastcopy Helper is a auxiliary tool for fastcopy.vow: vowWCF Client Generator: This code generator avoids the shortcomings of svcutil when generating proxies for services with a large number of methods.WebCycle: WebCycle is a screensaver application that cycles through web pages. This was originally created to cycle through Reporting Services reports so th...XGate2D - XNA 2D Game Engine: XGate2D is 2D game engine built using XNA Framework. XGate2D currently has 8 features: input handler, animation, Graphical User Interface (GUI), ...XNA Catapult Minigame for XNA 4: XNA 4 implementation of the Catapult Minigame Sample from XNA Creators Club.New ReleasesADefHelpDesk: ADefHelpDesk (Standard ASP.NET Version) 01.00.00: ADefHelpDesk a Help Desk / Ticket Tracker module * NOTE: This version is NOT a DotNetNuke module - It is a standard ASP.NET Application * SQL 2005...Bulk Actions for SharePoint: First Release: First Release - Includes following bulk list actions: *Delete *Checkin/Checkout *Publish/Unpublish *Move *Update MetadataCheck-in Wizard for ArenaChMS: v1.2.1: v 1.2.0 updated to work with Arena 2009.2 (see notes below). Added support for "At Kiosk" and "At Location" printing. Added support for print l...ConfigTray: 1.5: Version 1.5 will have a new UI for managing ConfigTray config. Instead of manually editing configtray.exe.config to add/delete/edit settings and fi...CrmContrib: CrmContribWorkflow 1.0 ALPHA1: This is an initial release of the CrmContribWorkflow 1.0 components. At the moment there are only two activities included in this release. Add Cont...DemotToolkit: DemotToolkit-0.1.0.50830: Initial release.DemotToolkit: DemotToolkit-0.1.1.51107: Fixed crashing in some circumstances.Dot Game: Dot Game Stable Release: Dot Game This is latest stable release without network play mode. (Network play mode is under development)Dynamic Survey Forms - SharePoint Web Part: Fix for missing dlls and documentation: Added missing assemblies to setup.zip. Installation instructions.EnhSim: V1.9.8.7: Added Sharpened Twilight ScaleEvent Scavenger: Viewer 3.2.2: Fixed a bug in the viewer where the previous view 'Top x' filter was not restored after the application was reopened.F# Project Extender: V0.9.2.0 (VS2008,VS2010): F# project extender for Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010. Fixed bugs: -VS2010 crash on MoveUp(MoveDown) of renamed file -Adding files brea...FlickrNet API Library: 3.0 Beta 2: The final Beta for the 3.0 release. Fixes a major issue with Photosets.GetList as well as a number of smaller bugs, and adds the new Usage extras ...Folder Bookmarks: Folder Bookmarks 1.5.7: The latest version of Folder Bookmarks (1.5.7), with the new Help feature - all the instructions needed to use the software (If you have any sugges...Linkbutton Web Part: V1.1: Use WinZip to unzip. See docs folder for installation instructions.Live-Exchange Calendar Sync: Live-Exchange Calendar Sync Final: Live-Exchange Calendar Sync Beta May 14, 2010 release of Live-Exchange Calendar Sync 1.0 . (Version 46127) Getting StartedInfo about installation ...MEFedMVVM: MEFedMVVM: This version contains the MEFedMVVM ViewModelLocator and also some basic services such as Mediator and StateManager. You can download the code fr...Mentor Text Database: May 2010 Release with instrumentation: This should function the same as the previous version. Some enhancements have been made, and additional instrumentation has been added to help anal...Merthin: SSF 2010: Code and documentation presented at the Student Science Fair of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Habana. The ma...NB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Module: NB_Store_02.01.00: NB_Store v2.1.0 THIS IS AN ALPHA RELEASE FOR TESTING ONLY......DO NOT USE IT ON A LIVE SYSTEM.NerdDinner.com - Where Geeks Eat: NerdDinner - Four Database Access Samples: Chris Sells worked with Nick Muhonen from Useable Concepts and Nick created four samples exploring how an ASP.NET MVC application can access databa...openrs: Devstart: Trunk release, empty project.Over Store: OverStore 1.19.0.0: - Version number is increased. - Add methods for specifying custom callback methods to TableMappingRepositoryConfiguration. - Object attaching fu...Rnwood.SmtpServer: Rnwood.SmtpServer 2.0: SmtpServer 2.0 is a .NET SMTP server component written in pure c#. It was written to power http://smtp4dev.codeplex.com/ but can easily be used by ...Scrum Sprint Monitor: v1.0.0.48524 (.NET 4-TFS 2010): What is new in this release? #6132 - Bug with open work hours; Added untested support for MSF for Agile process template; Improved data reporti...SharePoint Rsync List: 1.0.0.0: This initial 1.0 release includes a new feature which manages timer jobs on your sync listShould: Beta 1.1: Updated the namespaces. The extension methods are now in the root Should namespace. The other classes are not in child namespaces.SilverDude Toolkit for Silverlight: SilverDude Toolkit for Silverlight: Kindly give your comments about this project and tell how you feel about it. I'm still new in creating controls, hopefully you guys can support me....Silverlight Report: SilverlightReport_v0.1_alpha_bin: SilverlightReport v0.1 alphaSLARToolkit - Silverlight Augmented Reality Toolkit: SLARToolkit 1.0.2.0: Fixed a problem with long referenced DetectionResults that might have caused an IndexOutOfRangeException Added Marker.LoadFromResource to get rid...The Fastcopy Helper: My Fastcopy Helper 1.0: This Source Code Is use a method to run it . The method is thinked by my bain. So , The Performance maybe lower.Thinktecture.DataObjectModel: Thinktecture.DataObjectModel v0.12: Some bugs fixed. See ChangeLog.txt for more infos.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.0.4.1: A stability release fixing 13 issues based on feedback from 4.0.3 users. Most importantly is a fix to a serious date bug where day and month could ...Usa*Usa Libraly: Smart.Web.Mobile ver 0.2: Smart.Web.Mobile pictgram convert library for japanese galapagos k-tai( ﾟдﾟ) ver 0.2. - Custom encoding for HttpRequest.ContentEncoding / HttpResp...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30520.0: Automatic drop of latest buildvow: dream: I have a dreamvow: test: testWCF Client Generator: Version 0.9.1.42927: Initial feature set complete. Detailed UI pending.WebCycle: WebCycle 1.0.20: Initial CodePlex releaseWebCycle: WebCycle 1.0.21: Added Uri validataion before saving settingsWhois Application: 1.5 release: - uses the whois.iana.org to dynamically lookup the whois server for each top level domain - enables enter key press for searchWing Beats: Wing Beats 0.9: This first release is focused on the core functionality and XHTML 1.0 strict generation in Asp.NET MVC.Most Popular ProjectsWeb Service Software FactoryPlasmaAquisição de Sinais Vitais em Tempo Real (Vital signs realtime data acquisition)Octtree XNA-GS DrawableGameComponentRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)Most Active ProjectsRawrpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationPHPExcelBlogEngine.NETSQL Server PowerShell ExtensionsCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Modulepatterns & practices: Windows Azure Security GuidanceFluent Ribbon Control Suite

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• Fitting it together, database, reporting, applications in C#

  - by alvonellos

  Introduction Preamble I was hesitant to post this, since it's an application whose intricate details are defined elsewhere, and answers may not be helpful to others. Within the past few weeks (I was actually going to write a blog post about this after I finished) I've discovered that the barrier I'm encountering is one that's actually quite common for newer developers. This question is not so much about a specific thing as it is about piecing those things together. I've searched the internet far and wide, and found many tutorials on how to create applications that are kind of similar to what I'm looking for. I've also looked at hiring another, more experienced, developer to help me along, but all I've gotten are unqualified candidates that don't have the experience necessary and won't take care of the client or project like I will. I'd rather have the project never transpire than to release a solution that is half-baked. I've asked professors at my school, but they've not turned up answers to my question. I'm an experienced developer, and I've written many applications that are -- very abstractly -- close to what I'm doing, but my experiences from those applications aren't giving me enough leverage to solve this particular problem. I just hope that posting this article isn't a mistake for me to write. Project Description I have a project I'm working on for a client that is a rewrite of an application, originally written in Foxpro 2.6 by someone before me, that performs some analysis (which, sadly, I'm not allowed to disclose as per of my employment contract) on financial data. One day, after a long talk between the client and I -- where he intimately described his frustrations with all the bugs I've been hacking out of this code for 6 months now -- he told me to just rewrite it and gave me a month to write a good 1/8 of this 65k LOC Foxpro monstrosity. this 65k line of code foxpro monstrosity. It'll take me a good 3 - 6 months to rewrite this software (I know things the original programmer did not, like inheritance) going as I am right now, but I'm quickly discovering that I'm going to need to use databases. Prior to this contract I didn't even know about foxpro, and so I've had to learn foxpro on the fly, write procedures and make modifications to the database. I've actually come to like it, and this project would be rewritten in Foxpro if it were still a supported language, because over the past few months, I've come to like the features of Foxpro that make it so easy to develop data-driven applications. I once perfomed an experiment, comparing C# to Foxpro. What took me 45 minutes in C# took me two in Foxpro, and I knew C# prior to Foxpro. I was hoping to leverage the power of C#, but it intimidates me that in foxpro, you can have one line of code and be using a database. Prior to this, I have never written any serious database development from scratch. All the applications that I've written are in a different league. They are either completely data-naive or data-naive enough that I can get away with not using a database through serialization or by designing algorithms that work with the data in a manner that is stateless, so there is no need to worry about databases. I've come to realize, very quickly, that serialization and my efficacy with data structures has been my crutch all these years that's prevented me from adventuring into databases, and has consequently hindered my success in real-world programming. Sure, I've written some database stuff in Perl and Python, and I've done forms and worked with relational databases and tables, I'm a wizard in Access and Excel (seriously) and can do just about anything, but it just feels unnatural writing SQL code in another language... I don't mind writing SQL, and I don't It's that bridge between the database and the program code that drives me absolutely bonkers. I hope I'm not the only one to think this, but it bothers me that I have to create statements like the following string sSql = "SELECT * from tablename" When there's really no reason for that kind of unchecked language binding between two languages and two API's. Don't get my wrong, SQL is great, but I don't like the idea that, when executing commands on a SQL database, that one must intermix database and application software, and there's no database independence, which means that different versions of different databases can break code. This isn't very nice. The nicest thing about Foxpro is the cohesiveness between programming language and database. It's so easy, and Foxpro makes it easy, because the tool just fits the task. I can see why so many developers have created a career with this language, because it lowered the barrier of entry to data-driven applications that so many businesses need. It was wonderful. For my purposes today, with the demands and need for community support, extensibility, and language features, Foxpro isn't a solution that I feel would be the right tool for the job. I'm also worried about working too heavy with the database, because I've seen data-driven .NET applications have issues with database caches, running out of memory, and objects in the database not being collected. (Memory leaks) And OH the queries. Which one, how, and why? There are a plethora of different ways that a database can be setup, I think I counted 5 or 6 different kinds of database applications alone that I can chose from. That is a great mountain for me to climb when I don't even know where to begin when it comes to writing data-driven applications. The problem isn't that I don't know SQL or that I don't know C#. I know both and have worked with both extensively. It's making them work together that's the problem, and it's something I've never done in C# before. Reports The client likes paper. The data needs to be printed out in a format that is extensible, layered, and easy to use. I have never done reporting before, and so this is a bit of a problem. From the data source comes crystal reports, and so there's a dependency on the database, from what I understand. Code reuse A large part of the design decision that I've gone through so far is to break the task of writing a piece of this software into routines and modular DLL's and so forth such that much of the code can be reused. For example, when I setup this database, I want to be able to reuse the same database code over and over again. I also want to make sure that when the day comes that another developer is here, that he/she will be able to pick up just where I left off. The quicker I develop these applications, the better off I am. Tasks & Goals In my project, I need to write routines that apply algorithms and look for predefined patterns in financial data. Additionally, I need to simulate trading based on predefined algorithms and data. Then I need to prepare reports on that data. Additionally, I need to have a way to change the code base for this application quickly and effectively, without hacking together some band-aid solution for a problem that really needs a trauma ward. Special Considerations The solution must be fast, run quickly on existing hardware, and not be too much of a pain to maintain and write. I understand that anything I write I'm married to -- I'm responsible for the things that I write because my reputation and livelihood is dependent on it. Do I really need a database? What about performance? Performance was such a big issue that I hand wrote a data structure that is capable of performing 2 billion operations, using a total of 4 gigs of memory in under 1/4 of a second using the standard core two duo processor. I could not find a similar, pre-written data structure in C# to perform this task. What setup do I use in terms of database? What about reporting? I'd prefer to have PDF's generated, but I'd like to be able to visually sketch those reports and then just have a ReportFactory of some sort, that when I pass some variables in, it just does that data. About Me I'm a lone developer for a small business in this area. This is the first time I've done this and I've never had the breadth and depth of my knowledge tested. I'm incredibly frustrated with this project because I feel incredibly overwhelmed with the task at hand. I'm looking for that entry level point where I can draw a line and say "this is what I need to do" Conclusion I may have not been clear enough on my post. I'm still new to this whole thing, and I've been doing my best to contribute back to the community that I've leached so much knowledge from. I'd be glad to edit my post and add more information if possible. I'm looking for a big-picture solution or design process that helps me get off the ground in this world of data-driven applications, because I have a feeling that it's going to be concentric to my entire career as a programmer for some time. Specifically, if you didn't get it from the rest of the post (I may not have been clear enough) I really need some guidance as to where to go in terms of the design decisions for this project. Some things that'll be useful will be a pro/con list for the different kinds of database projects available in VS2010. I've tried, but generating that list has been as hard as solving the problem itself... If you could walk a developer writing a data-driven application for the first time in C#, how would you do that? Where would you point them to?

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• Azure Grid Computing - Worker Roles as HPC Compute Nodes

  - by JoshReuben

  Overview ·        With HPC 2008 R2 SP1 You can add Azure worker roles as compute nodes in a local Windows HPC Server cluster. ·        The subscription for Windows Azure like any other Azure Service - charged for the time that the role instances are available, as well as for the compute and storage services that are used on the nodes. ·        Win-Win ? - Azure charges the computer hour cost (according to vm size) amortized over a month – so you save on purchasing compute node hardware. Microsoft wins because you need to purchase HPC to have a local head node for managing this compute cluster grid distributed in the cloud. ·        Blob storage is used to hold input & output files of each job. I can see how Parametric Sweep HPC jobs can be supported (where the same job is run multiple times on each node against different input units), but not MPI.NET (where different HPC Job instances function as coordinated agents and conduct master-slave inter-process communication), unless Azure is somehow tunneling MPI communication through inter-WorkerRole Azure Queues. ·        this is not the end of the story for Azure Grid Computing. If MS requires you to purchase a local HPC license (and administrate it), what's to stop a 3rd party from doing this and encapsulating exposing HPC WCF Broker Service to you for managing compute nodes? If MS doesn’t  provide head node as a service, someone else will! Process ·        requires creation of a worker node template that specifies a connection to an existing subscription for Windows Azure + an availability policy for the worker nodes. ·        After worker nodes are added to the cluster, you can start them, which provisions the Windows Azure role instances, and then bring them online to run HPC cluster jobs. ·        A Windows Azure worker role instance runs a HPC compatible Azure guest operating system which runs on the VMs that host your service. The guest operating system is updated monthly. You can choose to upgrade the guest OS for your service automatically each time an update is released - All role instances defined by your service will run on the guest operating system version that you specify. see Windows Azure Guest OS Releases and SDK Compatibility Matrix (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=190549). ·        use the hpcpack command to upload file packages and install files to run on the worker nodes. see hpcpack (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=205514). Requirements ·        assuming you have an azure subscription account and the HPC head node installed and configured. ·        Install HPC Pack 2008 R2 SP 1 -  see Microsoft HPC Pack 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 Release Notes (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=202812). ·        Configure the head node to connect to the Internet - connectivity is provided by the connection of the head node to the enterprise network. You may need to configure a proxy client on the head node. Any cluster network topology (1-5) is supported). ·        Configure the firewall - allow outbound TCP traffic on the following ports: 80,       443, 5901, 5902, 7998, 7999 ·        Note: HPC Server  uses Admin Mode (Elevated Privileges) in Windows Azure to give the service administrator of the subscription the necessary privileges to initialize HPC cluster services on the worker nodes. ·        Obtain a Windows Azure subscription certificate - the Windows Azure subscription must be configured with a public subscription (API) certificate -a valid X.509 certificate with a key size of at least 2048 bits. Generate a self-sign certificate & upload a .cer file to the Windows Azure Portal Account page > Manage my API Certificates link. see Using the Windows Azure Service Management API (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=205526). ·        import the certificate with an associated private key on the HPC cluster head node - into the trusted root store of the local computer account. Obtain Windows Azure Connection Information for HPC Server ·        required for each worker node template ·        copy from azure portal - Get from: navigation pane > Hosted Services > Storage Accounts & CDN ·        Subscription ID - a 32-char hex string in the form xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx. In Properties pane. ·        Subscription certificate thumbprint - a 40-char hex string (you need to remove spaces). In Management Certificates > Properties pane. ·        Service name - the value of <ServiceName> configured in the public URL of the service (http://<ServiceName>.cloudapp.net). In Hosted Services > Properties pane. ·        Blob Storage account name - the value of <StorageAccountName> configured in the public URL of the account (http://<StorageAccountName>.blob.core.windows.net). In Storage Accounts > Properties pane. Import the Azure Subscription Certificate on the HPC Head Node ·        enable the services for Windows HPC Server  to authenticate properly with the Windows Azure subscription. ·        use the Certificates MMC snap-in to import the certificate to the Trusted Root Certification Authorities store of the local computer account. The certificate must be in PFX format (.pfx or .p12 file) with a private key that is protected by a password. ·        see Certificates (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=163918). ·        To open the certificates snapin: Run > mmc. File > Add/Remove Snap-in > certificates > Computer account > Local Computer ·        To import the certificate via wizard - Certificates > Trusted Root Certification Authorities > Certificates > All Tasks > Import ·        After the certificate is imported, it appears in the details pane in the Certificates snap-in. You can open the certificate to check its status. Configure a Proxy Client on the HPC Head Node ·        the following Windows HPC Server services must be able to communicate over the Internet (through the firewall) with the services for Windows Azure: HPCManagement, HPCScheduler, HPCBrokerWorker. ·        Create a Windows Azure Worker Node Template ·        Edit HPC node templates in HPC Node Template Editor. ·        Specify: 1) Windows Azure subscription connection info (unique service name) for adding a set of worker nodes to the cluster + 2)worker node availability policy – rules for deploying / removing worker role instances in Windows Azure o   HPC Cluster Manager > Configuration > Navigation Pane > Node Templates > Actions pane > New à Create Node Template Wizard or Edit à Node Template Editor o   Choose Node Template Type page - Windows Azure worker node template o   Specify Template Name page – template name & description o   Provide Connection Information page – Azure Subscription ID (text) & Subscription certificate (browse) o   Provide Service Information page - Azure service name + blob storage account name (optionally click Retrieve Connection Information to get list of available from azure – possible LRT). o   Configure Azure Availability Policy page - how Windows Azure worker nodes start / stop (online / offline the worker role instance -  add / remove) – manual / automatic o   for automatic - In the Configure Windows Azure Worker Availability Policy dialog -select days and hours for worker nodes to start / stop. ·        To validate the Windows Azure connection information, on the template's Connection Information tab > Validate connection information. ·        You can upload a file package to the storage account that is specified in the template - eg upload application or service files that will run on the worker nodes. see hpcpack (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=205514). Add Azure Worker Nodes to the HPC Cluster ·        Use the Add Node Wizard – specify: 1) the worker node template, 2) The number of worker nodes   (within the quota of role instances in the azure subscription), and 3)           The VM size of the worker nodes : ExtraSmall, Small, Medium, Large, or ExtraLarge.  ·        to add worker nodes of different sizes, must run the Add Node Wizard separately for each size. ·        All worker nodes that are added to the cluster by using a specific worker node template define a set of worker nodes that will be deployed and managed together in Windows Azure when you start the nodes. This includes worker nodes that you add later by using the worker node template and, if you choose, worker nodes of different sizes. You cannot start, stop, or delete individual worker nodes. ·        To add Windows Azure worker nodes o   In HPC Cluster Manager: Node Management > Actions pane > Add Node à Add Node Wizard o   Select Deployment Method page - Add Azure Worker nodes o   Specify New Nodes page - select a worker node template, specify the number and size of the worker nodes ·        After you add worker nodes to the cluster, they are in the Not-Deployed state, and they have a health state of Unapproved. Before you can use the worker nodes to run jobs, you must start them and then bring them online. ·        Worker nodes are numbered consecutively in a naming series that begins with the root name AzureCN – this is non-configurable. Deploying Windows Azure Worker Nodes ·        To deploy the role instances in Windows Azure - start the worker nodes added to the HPC cluster and bring the nodes online so that they are available to run cluster jobs. This can be configured in the HPC Azure Worker Node Template – Azure Availability Policy -  to be automatic or manual. ·        The Start, Stop, and Delete actions take place on the set of worker nodes that are configured by a specific worker node template. You cannot perform one of these actions on a single worker node in a set. You also cannot perform a single action on two sets of worker nodes (specified by two different worker node templates). ·        ·          Starting a set of worker nodes deploys a set of worker role instances in Windows Azure, which can take some time to complete, depending on the number of worker nodes and the performance of Windows Azure. ·        To start worker nodes manually and bring them online o   In HPC Node Management > Navigation Pane > Nodes > List / Heat Map view - select one or more worker nodes. o   Actions pane > Start – in the Start Azure Worker Nodes dialog, select a node template. o   the state of the worker nodes changes from Not Deployed to track the provisioning progress – worker node Details Pane > Provisioning Log tab. o   If there were errors during the provisioning of one or more worker nodes, the state of those nodes is set to Unknown and the node health is set to Unapproved. To determine the reason for the failure, review the provisioning logs for the nodes. o   After a worker node starts successfully, the node state changes to Offline. To bring the nodes online, select the nodes that are in the Offline state > Bring Online. ·        Troubleshooting o   check node template. o   use telnet to test connectivity: telnet <ServiceName>.cloudapp.net 7999 o   check node status - Deployment status information appears in the service account information in the Windows Azure Portal - HPC queries this -  see  node status information for any failed nodes in HPC Node Management. ·        When role instances are deployed, file packages that were previously uploaded to the storage account using the hpcpack command are automatically installed. You can also upload file packages to storage after the worker nodes are started, and then manually install them on the worker nodes. see hpcpack (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=205514). ·        to remove a set of role instances in Windows Azure - stop the nodes by using HPC Cluster Manager (apply the Stop action). This deletes the role instances from the service and changes the state of the worker nodes in the HPC cluster to Not Deployed. ·        Each time that you start a set of worker nodes, two proxy role instances (size Small) are configured in Windows Azure to facilitate communication between HPC Cluster Manager and the worker nodes. The proxy role instances are not listed in HPC Cluster Manager after the worker nodes are added. However, the instances appear in the Windows Azure Portal. The proxy role instances incur charges in Windows Azure along with the worker node instances, and they count toward the quota of role instances in the subscription.

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• A Nondeterministic Engine written in VB.NET 2010

  - by neil chen

  When I'm reading SICP (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs) recently, I'm very interested in the concept of an "Nondeterministic Algorithm". According to wikipedia:  In computer science, a nondeterministic algorithm is an algorithm with one or more choice points where multiple different continuations are possible, without any specification of which one will be taken. For example, here is an puzzle came from the SICP: Baker, Cooper, Fletcher, Miller, and Smith live on different floors of an apartment housethat contains only five floors. Baker does not live on the top floor. Cooper does not live onthe bottom floor. Fletcher does not live on either the top or the bottom floor. Miller lives ona higher floor than does Cooper. Smith does not live on a floor adjacent to Fletcher's.Fletcher does not live on a floor adjacent to Cooper's. Where does everyone live? After reading this I decided to build a simple nondeterministic calculation engine with .NET. The rough idea is that we can use an iterator to track each set of possible values of the parameters, and then we implement some logic inside the engine to automate the statemachine, so that we can try one combination of the values, then test it, and then move to the next. We also used a backtracking algorithm to go back when we are running out of choices at some point. Following is the core code of the engine itself: Code highlighting produced by Actipro CodeHighlighter (freeware)http://www.CodeHighlighter.com/--Public Class NonDeterministicEngine Private _paramDict As New List(Of Tuple(Of String, IEnumerator)) 'Private _predicateDict As New List(Of Tuple(Of Func(Of Object, Boolean), IEnumerable(Of String))) Private _predicateDict As New List(Of Tuple(Of Object, IList(Of String))) Public Sub AddParam(ByVal name As String, ByVal values As IEnumerable) _paramDict.Add(New Tuple(Of String, IEnumerator)(name, values.GetEnumerator())) End Sub Public Sub AddRequire(ByVal predicate As Func(Of Object, Boolean), ByVal paramNames As IList(Of String)) CheckParamCount(1, paramNames) _predicateDict.Add(New Tuple(Of Object, IList(Of String))(predicate, paramNames)) End Sub Public Sub AddRequire(ByVal predicate As Func(Of Object, Object, Boolean), ByVal paramNames As IList(Of String)) CheckParamCount(2, paramNames) _predicateDict.Add(New Tuple(Of Object, IList(Of String))(predicate, paramNames)) End Sub Public Sub AddRequire(ByVal predicate As Func(Of Object, Object, Object, Boolean), ByVal paramNames As IList(Of String)) CheckParamCount(3, paramNames) _predicateDict.Add(New Tuple(Of Object, IList(Of String))(predicate, paramNames)) End Sub Public Sub AddRequire(ByVal predicate As Func(Of Object, Object, Object, Object, Boolean), ByVal paramNames As IList(Of String)) CheckParamCount(4, paramNames) _predicateDict.Add(New Tuple(Of Object, IList(Of String))(predicate, paramNames)) End Sub Public Sub AddRequire(ByVal predicate As Func(Of Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Boolean), ByVal paramNames As IList(Of String)) CheckParamCount(5, paramNames) _predicateDict.Add(New Tuple(Of Object, IList(Of String))(predicate, paramNames)) End Sub Public Sub AddRequire(ByVal predicate As Func(Of Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Boolean), ByVal paramNames As IList(Of String)) CheckParamCount(6, paramNames) _predicateDict.Add(New Tuple(Of Object, IList(Of String))(predicate, paramNames)) End Sub Public Sub AddRequire(ByVal predicate As Func(Of Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Boolean), ByVal paramNames As IList(Of String)) CheckParamCount(7, paramNames) _predicateDict.Add(New Tuple(Of Object, IList(Of String))(predicate, paramNames)) End Sub Public Sub AddRequire(ByVal predicate As Func(Of Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Boolean), ByVal paramNames As IList(Of String)) CheckParamCount(8, paramNames) _predicateDict.Add(New Tuple(Of Object, IList(Of String))(predicate, paramNames)) End Sub Sub CheckParamCount(ByVal count As Integer, ByVal paramNames As IList(Of String)) If paramNames.Count <> count Then Throw New Exception("Parameter count does not match.") End If End Sub Public Property IterationOver As Boolean Private _firstTime As Boolean = True Public ReadOnly Property Current As Dictionary(Of String, Object) Get If IterationOver Then Return Nothing Else Dim _nextResult = New Dictionary(Of String, Object) For Each item In _paramDict Dim iter = item.Item2 _nextResult.Add(item.Item1, iter.Current) Next Return _nextResult End If End Get End Property Function MoveNext() As Boolean If IterationOver Then Return False End If If _firstTime Then For Each item In _paramDict Dim iter = item.Item2 iter.MoveNext() Next _firstTime = False Return True Else Dim canMoveNext = False Dim iterIndex = _paramDict.Count - 1 canMoveNext = _paramDict(iterIndex).Item2.MoveNext If canMoveNext Then Return True End If Do While Not canMoveNext iterIndex = iterIndex - 1 If iterIndex = -1 Then Return False IterationOver = True End If canMoveNext = _paramDict(iterIndex).Item2.MoveNext If canMoveNext Then For i = iterIndex + 1 To _paramDict.Count - 1 Dim iter = _paramDict(i).Item2 iter.Reset() iter.MoveNext() Next Return True End If Loop End If End Function Function GetNextResult() As Dictionary(Of String, Object) While MoveNext() Dim result = Current If Satisfy(result) Then Return result End If End While Return Nothing End Function Function Satisfy(ByVal result As Dictionary(Of String, Object)) As Boolean For Each item In _predicateDict Dim pred = item.Item1 Select Case item.Item2.Count Case 1 Dim p1 = DirectCast(pred, Func(Of Object, Boolean)) Dim v1 = result(item.Item2(0)) If Not p1(v1) Then Return False End If Case 2 Dim p2 = DirectCast(pred, Func(Of Object, Object, Boolean)) Dim v1 = result(item.Item2(0)) Dim v2 = result(item.Item2(1)) If Not p2(v1, v2) Then Return False End If Case 3 Dim p3 = DirectCast(pred, Func(Of Object, Object, Object, Boolean)) Dim v1 = result(item.Item2(0)) Dim v2 = result(item.Item2(1)) Dim v3 = result(item.Item2(2)) If Not p3(v1, v2, v3) Then Return False End If Case 4 Dim p4 = DirectCast(pred, Func(Of Object, Object, Object, Object, Boolean)) Dim v1 = result(item.Item2(0)) Dim v2 = result(item.Item2(1)) Dim v3 = result(item.Item2(2)) Dim v4 = result(item.Item2(3)) If Not p4(v1, v2, v3, v4) Then Return False End If Case 5 Dim p5 = DirectCast(pred, Func(Of Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Boolean)) Dim v1 = result(item.Item2(0)) Dim v2 = result(item.Item2(1)) Dim v3 = result(item.Item2(2)) Dim v4 = result(item.Item2(3)) Dim v5 = result(item.Item2(4)) If Not p5(v1, v2, v3, v4, v5) Then Return False End If Case 6 Dim p6 = DirectCast(pred, Func(Of Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Boolean)) Dim v1 = result(item.Item2(0)) Dim v2 = result(item.Item2(1)) Dim v3 = result(item.Item2(2)) Dim v4 = result(item.Item2(3)) Dim v5 = result(item.Item2(4)) Dim v6 = result(item.Item2(5)) If Not p6(v1, v2, v3, v4, v5, v6) Then Return False End If Case 7 Dim p7 = DirectCast(pred, Func(Of Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Boolean)) Dim v1 = result(item.Item2(0)) Dim v2 = result(item.Item2(1)) Dim v3 = result(item.Item2(2)) Dim v4 = result(item.Item2(3)) Dim v5 = result(item.Item2(4)) Dim v6 = result(item.Item2(5)) Dim v7 = result(item.Item2(6)) If Not p7(v1, v2, v3, v4, v5, v6, v7) Then Return False End If Case 8 Dim p8 = DirectCast(pred, Func(Of Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Object, Boolean)) Dim v1 = result(item.Item2(0)) Dim v2 = result(item.Item2(1)) Dim v3 = result(item.Item2(2)) Dim v4 = result(item.Item2(3)) Dim v5 = result(item.Item2(4)) Dim v6 = result(item.Item2(5)) Dim v7 = result(item.Item2(6)) Dim v8 = result(item.Item2(7)) If Not p8(v1, v2, v3, v4, v5, v6, v7, v8) Then Return False End If Case Else Throw New NotSupportedException End Select Next Return True End FunctionEnd Class    And now we can use the engine to solve the problem we mentioned above:   Code highlighting produced by Actipro CodeHighlighter (freeware)http://www.CodeHighlighter.com/--Sub Test2() Dim engine = New NonDeterministicEngine() engine.AddParam("baker", {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}) engine.AddParam("cooper", {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}) engine.AddParam("fletcher", {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}) engine.AddParam("miller", {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}) engine.AddParam("smith", {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}) engine.AddRequire(Function(baker) As Boolean Return baker <> 5 End Function, {"baker"}) engine.AddRequire(Function(cooper) As Boolean Return cooper <> 1 End Function, {"cooper"}) engine.AddRequire(Function(fletcher) As Boolean Return fletcher <> 1 And fletcher <> 5 End Function, {"fletcher"}) engine.AddRequire(Function(miller, cooper) As Boolean 'Return miller = cooper + 1 Return miller > cooper End Function, {"miller", "cooper"}) engine.AddRequire(Function(smith, fletcher) As Boolean Return smith <> fletcher + 1 And smith <> fletcher - 1 End Function, {"smith", "fletcher"}) engine.AddRequire(Function(fletcher, cooper) As Boolean Return fletcher <> cooper + 1 And fletcher <> cooper - 1 End Function, {"fletcher", "cooper"}) engine.AddRequire(Function(a, b, c, d, e) As Boolean Return a <> b And a <> c And a <> d And a <> e And b <> c And b <> d And b <> e And c <> d And c <> e And d <> e End Function, {"baker", "cooper", "fletcher", "miller", "smith"}) Dim result = engine.GetNextResult() While Not result Is Nothing Console.WriteLine(String.Format("baker: {0}, cooper: {1}, fletcher: {2}, miller: {3}, smith: {4}", result("baker"), result("cooper"), result("fletcher"), result("miller"), result("smith"))) result = engine.GetNextResult() End While Console.WriteLine("Calculation ended.")End Sub   Also, this engine can solve the classic 8 queens puzzle and find out all 92 results for me.   Code highlighting produced by Actipro CodeHighlighter (freeware)http://www.CodeHighlighter.com/--Sub Test3() ' The 8-Queens problem. Dim engine = New NonDeterministicEngine() ' Let's assume that a - h represents the queens in row 1 to 8, then we just need to find out the column number for each of them. engine.AddParam("a", {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8}) engine.AddParam("b", {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8}) engine.AddParam("c", {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8}) engine.AddParam("d", {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8}) engine.AddParam("e", {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8}) engine.AddParam("f", {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8}) engine.AddParam("g", {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8}) engine.AddParam("h", {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8}) Dim NotInTheSameDiagonalLine = Function(cols As IList) As Boolean For i = 0 To cols.Count - 2 For j = i + 1 To cols.Count - 1 If j - i = Math.Abs(cols(j) - cols(i)) Then Return False End If Next Next Return True End Function engine.AddRequire(Function(a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h) As Boolean Return a <> b AndAlso a <> c AndAlso a <> d AndAlso a <> e AndAlso a <> f AndAlso a <> g AndAlso a <> h AndAlso b <> c AndAlso b <> d AndAlso b <> e AndAlso b <> f AndAlso b <> g AndAlso b <> h AndAlso c <> d AndAlso c <> e AndAlso c <> f AndAlso c <> g AndAlso c <> h AndAlso d <> e AndAlso d <> f AndAlso d <> g AndAlso d <> h AndAlso e <> f AndAlso e <> g AndAlso e <> h AndAlso f <> g AndAlso f <> h AndAlso g <> h AndAlso NotInTheSameDiagonalLine({a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h}) End Function, {"a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f", "g", "h"}) Dim result = engine.GetNextResult() While Not result Is Nothing Console.WriteLine("(1,{0}), (2,{1}), (3,{2}), (4,{3}), (5,{4}), (6,{5}), (7,{6}), (8,{7})", result("a"), result("b"), result("c"), result("d"), result("e"), result("f"), result("g"), result("h")) result = engine.GetNextResult() End While Console.WriteLine("Calculation ended.")End Sub (Chinese version of the post: http://www.cnblogs.com/RChen/archive/2010/05/17/1737587.html) Cheers,  

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• Letter to Ballmer: Making Better Consumer Devices

  - by andrewbrust

  Last year, I wrote Steve Ballmer an email, and he was kind enough to write me back.  The email contained a scan of a column I wrote praising Microsoft’s BI strategy.  His reply contained three simple words: “Super nice  thanks.” Well, now I’d like to write to Steve again, in an open letter format, and this time the love may be a bit tougher.  But I’m still super earnest. The past two days have been eventful ones for Microsoft: The company announced the departure of company veterans Robbie Bach and J Allard and the market announced Apple is now besting Microsoft in market capitalization. Plus, announcements were made that make it plain that Ballmer will, in effect, be running Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division himself. With that in mind, I’d like to offer my list of a dozen things I think Microsoft’s CEO should do to improve that division’s offerings and, hopefully, its bottom line. So here goes:   1. On Windows Phone 7, Stay the Course The press is teeming with headlines and reader comments proclaiming the death-before-arrival of Windows Phone 7.  That’s plain silly.  You’ve got the makings of a great and unique SmartPhone platform, and you’re the only company (even considering RIM) that can offer full fidelity Exchange integration, not to mention implementing Office on the device.  Let the existing team finish this puppy and ship it. And then have them pump out a few updates, over-the-air, quickly.  Show them that Google Android’s not the only product that can do good, rapid dot releases. And another thing: make sure your OEMs’ devices have flawless touch screens.  If they don’t, then you shouldn’t certify them for delivery to customers.  Period. Oh, and kill the Kin, quietly.  It was DOA, and you know it.   2. Move Media Center to the Xbox Platform Media Center is, at its core, a good product.  But delivering a media distribution and DVR platform on a sophisticated PC operating system like Windows 7 just creates too many moving parts.  Xbox already functions as the best Media Center extender device – it should actually be the hub as well. Media Center is mostly based on .NET code – and XNA is a .NET environment for Xbox – find a way to bridge that small gap and make Media Center a joy to work with instead of a frustration.  Beating Apple TV out of this sub-market is the lowest hanging fruit on the tree (goofy pun, but it’s true).   3. Integrate Media Center with Mediaroom, or Kill the Latter You have two media products with almost identical names.  One is for standalone DVRs and the other is for IPTV cable set tops with DVR capabilities.  Can we merge these please?  My previous request of putting Media Center on Xbox would seem to tie into this nicely, since you’ve announced plans to do that with Mediaroom already.   4. Fix the Red Ring of Death People love the Xbox, but they really don’t love sending their consoles back every 18-24 months, when they get a bunch of red lights flashing on power up.  You’ve handled this defect about as gracefully as possible, but it’s been around for a long time now and it doesn’t seem to be fixed yet.  You can do better.  In fact, you must do better, or you insult your customers.   5. Add Blu Ray to Xbox I know, streaming movies are the future; physical media is legacy technology.  So if that’s true, why did you back HD DVD so hard?  You know why: for now, the film studios won’t allow a large selection of new release, HD, surround sound content be distributed on any medium other than Blu Ray or cable pay per view/on-demand.  Don’t you want home theater buffs to see the Xbox as a fantastic device for their rigs?  Don’t you want to put PlayStation 3 out of its misery?  And if you follow my suggestions above (move Media Center to the Xbox and fix the Red Ring problem), you’d have it all sewn up.  Do I think Blu Ray functionality will move a lot of units?  No.  Do I think that it would move more units with desperately needed influential home theater consumers?  You bet.  And you might sell more ZunePass subscriptions in the process. But while you’re at it, make the fan quieter, please.   6. Make More of Windows Home Server Home Server is a fantastic product.  And for reasons unknown to me, it seems like you’re letting it languish.  Development of the add-in ecosystem seems underfunded.  WHS’ unparalleled ease of use and reliability for home PC backup (and emergency restores) goes unsung.  Product cycles are slow.  Support for your OEMs, who are doing great work, especially in the green space with Atom CPUs, seems lacking.  You’ve married a trophy girl and you keep her cloistered at home!  That’s cruel, unusual and, um, incredibly ill-advised.  Make use of this ace card, and while you’re at it, give it real integration with Media Center.  The integration thus far proof-of-concept quality.  You should go way past that – both products will benefit immeasurably.   7. Set Up a Partner Platform for Custom Installers There’s a whole sub-industry of companies that install, integrate and configure home theater, security and connected home products.  They have an industry group. They are influential in the high-end of the consumer electronics industry, and so are their customers.  They love Media Center and they love Windows Home Server.  But I have talked to several of them at the Consumer Electronics Show and they tell me you don’t love them.  They find it very difficult to do business with Microsoft, even though they want nothing more than to sell and evangelize your platform.  This is a travesty.  Please fix it.  Get Allison Watson and the Microsoft Partner Network on board and have her hire someone who knows how to run a channel program for consumer electronics companies.  Problem solved.  Markets expanded.   8. Make Your Own Hardware In other areas, I know you love your partners.  I help run one, so I appreciate that.  But when it came to Xbox and Zune you built them it yourself (albeit on a contract basis, which is fine).  Windows Phone 7 has a chance to work as an OEM play, but it would work better if you produced the devices.  At least consider building a reference device that sells alongside your OEMs’ offerings.  That’s what Google did with the Nexxus One.  And while that phone was not itself a big seller, it catalyzed two wonderful things : (1) a quality bar was set and (2) partners exceeded it.  Before the Nexxus One, the best Android handset out there was the Motorola Droid. The Nexxus One was better, and the HTC Droid Incredible and Evo 4G are now even better than Google’s phone, which is why Verizon and Sprint decided not to carry it.  Imagine if all Windows Phone 6.x devices were on par with the HTC HD2.  I tend to believe you’d have a lot bigger market share than you do now.   9. Continue with Your Retail Initiative From what I hear, it sounds like it’s going well.  And this goes right along with making your own hardware.  When you build it, they will come.  And then it makes the likes of Best Buy and Staples do better.   10. Make an Acquisition (or Two) TiVo and/or Moxi look ripe for the picking.  With their ability to build stuff people love and your ability to run a business, you might just have something.  But do a better job than you did when you bought Danger.  Buy the ideas, not just the customers, eh?   11. Make Beautiful Stuff You’ve heard this one before, I know.  But I have some head-shrinking advice on this one.  You know that Apple obsesses over its industrial design.  You know that appeals to consumers.  But it seems you think doing so is Apple’s game exclusively and so you shouldn’t even try.  Bull dinky.  Come to New York and visit the Museum of Modern Art’s Architecture and Design gallery.  You’ll see that lots of companies and product categories have had very high design value well before Apple existed.  You can do this, and the Zune HD was a great start.  Now run with that.  Find those negative voices in your head that are telling you that you can’t and shut them up.  For good.   12. Burst the Bubble Some of the products you’ve built seem like they were conceived in a bizarro world.  That would appear to be the result of groupthink.  You must do better.  And there’s lots of people willing to advise you.  This includes just about everyone in the Regional Director program, and probably a bunch of MVPs.  Heck, I bet the guys at Engadget could help out too.  Imagine if you let them see the Kin before it shipped.  Talk to high-end gear consumers.  Talk to Best Buy and CostCo customers too.   Signing Off I hope this was of value to you.  As I wrote this I kept telling myself how obvious, even trite, some of these pieces of advice were and then, because of that, doubting they’d really help.  But I decided that they must not be obvious to Microsoft.  Sometimes when you get wrapped up in stuff, it’s hard to clear your head.  I think my head’s pretty clear here though (I’m wrapped up in other stuff), so maybe my perspective can help.  If not, well, then, I guess they all can’t be super nice.

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