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• Restart and/or graphics problem in Ubuntu 12.04

  - by kara

  I having been using 12.04 for a couple of months now, with v. little problems. The other day I restarted my computer, and though I think it rebooted, the screen would be black. I could not even get a visual from a live cd. Finally, I was able to get it to load, but the resolution has been completely off. The computer thinks I have a laptop screen, when I actually have a ViewSonic VP2330wb, and it detects only two resolutions. And still, I have a problem with rebooting. If the screen locks after I leave it for a while, I can't get a visual back, and then when I force a shutdown, it takes 3 times for me to get a grub screen. Then I have to boot in recovery mode, and then finally in normal mode, but the screen is still always off. This is my video card: description: VGA compatible controller product: 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 2 bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0 version: 09 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list configuration: latency=0 resources: memory:fe000000-fe3fffff memory:d0000000-dfffffff ioport:f000(size=64) I am a new ubuntu user, and am at my wits end. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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• How to Extract the images from the doc file without Having Microsoft office ?

  - by Anirudha

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/anirugu/archive/2013/06/29/how-to-extract-the-images-from-the-doc-file-without.aspxMany time we got the doc file who have some images. We need to try to extract them in Microsoft word which come with Windows 7 (not Microsoft office word). Looking to this article http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/itdojo/save-images-in-microsoft-word-documents-as-separate-files/135 This article is only useful when you have Microsoft word installed. Now if I don’t have Microsoft office then what ? No problem, here is a trick. when you open the doc file in Word  then select the image and right click on image and choose cut. open the Microsoft paint. paste them here. Without clicking anywhere click on crop icon on toolbar.   Now you got your image in the same size as you have in word file. Don’t worry about Image format. Microsoft paint have support for save them in PNG format.

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• DataContractSerializer truncated string when used with MemoryStream,but works with StringWriter

  - by Michael Freidgeim

  We've used the following DataContractSerializeToXml method for a long time, but recently noticed, that it doesn't return full XML for a long object, but  truncated it and returns XML string with the length of  multiple-of-1024 , but the reminder is not included. internal static string DataContractSerializeToXml<T>(T obj) { string strXml = ""; Type type= obj.GetType();//typeof(T) DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(type); System.IO.MemoryStream aMemStr = new System.IO.MemoryStream(); System.Xml.XmlTextWriter writer = new System.Xml.XmlTextWriter(aMemStr, null); serializer.WriteObject(writer, obj); strXml = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(aMemStr.ToArray()); return strXml; }   I tried to debug and searched Google for similar problems, but didn't find explanation of the error. The most closed http://forums.codeguru.com/showthread.php?309479-MemoryStream-allocates-size-multiple-of-1024-( talking about incorrect length, but not about truncated string.fortunately replacing MemoryStream to StringWriter according to http://billrob.com/archive/2010/02/09/datacontractserializer-converting-objects-to-xml-string.aspxfixed the issue.   1: var serializer = new DataContractSerializer(tempData.GetType());   2: using (var backing = new System.IO.StringWriter())   3: using (var writer = new System.Xml.XmlTextWriter(backing))   4: {   5:     serializer.WriteObject(writer, tempData);   6:     data.XmlData = backing.ToString();   7: }v

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• anti-virus / malware solution for small non-profit network

  - by Jason

  I'm an IT volunteer at a local non-profit. I'm looking for a good AV/malware solution. We currently use a mishmash of different client solutions, and want to move to something centralized. There is no full time IT staff. What I'm looking for: centralized administration - server is Windows Server 2003 minimal admin overhead ability to do e-mail notification/alerts/reporting would be very cool 10-25 XP Clients (P3/P4 hardware) free or discounted solution for non-profits We can get a cheap license for Symantec Endpoint Protection. My past experience with Symantec has been bad, but I've heard good things about this product. However, I've also read that it's kind of a nightmare to setup and administer, and may not be worth it for the size of our network.

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• TraceTune: Larger Files and History

  - by Bill Graziano

  I updated TraceTune over the weekend.  I increased the trace file upload size to 20MB.  We’ve processed over half a million rows of trace data so far and I’m confident this won’t kill the server. I added average CPU and average disk reads to the screen that lists the SQL statements in a trace file. I only added these two.  I’m pretty sure average writes isn’t that import.  I’m still thinking about average duration.  I’m trying to balance showing you what you need with a clean, simple interface.  Plus I have a way to see the averages that I describe further down. TraceTune now keeps the last 10 files that you’ve uploaded and will give you some basic details about each file. I think the last change I made is the most interesting. For each SQL statement, I show the history of that statement. You’ll see each trace file where this statement was found.  It will list the averages for CPU, reads, writes and duration.  This will quickly show you if you’re improving the performance of that query.  In my screen shot above you can that even though the execution counts are very different the averages are consistent. If you want to see what queries are consuming the most resources on your server give TraceTune a try.

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• Increase memory to memcached

  - by Petrus

  I need to increase the memory size for memcached. I have done this before, but I cannot remember all the steps that I took. If I remember correctly, I downloaded /etc/sysconfig/memcached and changed CACHESIZE=64 to CACHESIZE=1024. However I am not sure if that is how it is supposed to be done. Anyone that could guide me into how I do this? Also a command that confirms the change would be useful. I am running RedHat x86_64 es5.

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• rsync doesn't use delta transfer on first run

  - by ockzon

  I'm trying to synchronize a large local directory (with a batch file using rsync 3.0.7 on Cygwin, Windows 7 x64, 30k files, 200gb size) to a remote server (Debian x64 with kernel 2.6, rsyncd 3.0.7) over a slow internet connection (90kbyte/s upload). I know almost all files are identical and I verified that using md5sum locally and remotely. However when executing rsync from my local machine every file gets transferred completely for the first time. When I terminate the batch file after a few transfers and run it again then the already transferred files are skipped. But as soon as it gets to a file not yet transferred it uploads the file as a whole again instead of noticing that the checksum is the same locally and remotely. The batch file calling rsync looks like this (backslashes and line brakes added here for readability): c:\cygwin\bin\rsync.exe --verbose --human-readable --progress --stats \ --recursive --ignore-times --password-file pwd.txt \ /cygdrive/d/ftp/data/ \ rsync://[email protected]:33400/data/ | \ c:\cygwin\bin\tee.exe --append rsync.log I experimented using the following parameters in varying combinations but that didn't help either: --checksum --partial --partial-dir=/tmp/.rsync-partial --compress

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• How to determine if a file has been backed up?

  - by Console

  I try to consolidate old drives to new ones of larger capacity. Sometimes files have been renamed, but are otherwise identical. Sometimes an old directory has just a few more files in it than a newer directory with the same name. Sometimes a file has the same name but the size differs. So I often find myself asking the question: Are there any files on this old drive or directory that I haven't already copied to the new drive? I just want to know that I have the files, I don't want to try and sync stuff automatically (Syncing tools tend to just sync, creating duplicate folder structures and other problems, so I prefer to do it by hand). Basically, if an old drive has a file called "foo.bar" ten directories deep, and my new big drive has an identical file called "oldstuff.zip" in the root, I just want a "yes you have it" or "no, unique files exist". Is there a free tool, a script or a quick and easy method (Mac/Unix or Windows) to get the answer?

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• Trancoding a video with vlc and the MPEG-4 codec with a video bit rate

  - by Nicolas

  When I try to trancode a video with vlc using the MPEG-4 codec and a video bit rate, I get the following error : Either both buffer size and max rate or neither must be specified Here is the command line I used : vlc -vvv myvideo.m2ts --sout-ffmpeg-strict=-2 --sout '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,vb=2000,acodec=mp4a,ab=96}:standard{access=file,mux=mp4,dst=/path/file.mp4}' It seems that I can't specify a video bit rate with the MPEG-4 codec. (If I remove the vb option, it works). So how can I specify a video bit rate with the MPEG-4 codec ?

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• Collision checking problem on a Tiled map

  - by nosferat

  I'm working on a pacman styled dungeon crawler, using the free oryx sprites. I've created the map using Tiled, separating the floor, walls and treasure in three different layers. After importing the map in libGDX, it renders fine. I also added the player character, for now it just moves into one direction, the player cannot control it yet. I wanted to add collision and I was planning to do this by checking if the player's new position is on a wall tile. Therefore as you can see in the following code snippet, I get the tile type of the appropriate tile and if it is not zero (since on that layer there is nothing except the wall tile) it is a collision and the player cannot move further: final Vector2 newPos = charController.move(warrior.getX(), warrior.getY()); if(!collided(newPos)) { warrior.setPosition(newPos.x, newPos.y); warrior.flip(charController.flipX(), charController.flipY()); } [..] private boolean collided(Vector2 newPos) { int row = (int) Math.floor((newPos.x / 32)); int col = (int) Math.floor((newPos.y / 32)); int tileType = tiledMap.layers.get(1).tiles[row][col]; if (tileType == 0) { return false; } return true; } The character only moves one tile with this code: If I reduce the col value by two it two more tiles. I think the problem will be around indexing, but I'm totally confused because the zero in the coordinate system of libGDX is in the bottom left corner of the screen, and I don't know the tiles array's indexing is similair or not. The size of the map is 19x21 tiles and looks like the following (the starting position of the player is marked with blue:

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• Citrix and WPF, blue window

  - by Ian

  We are building WPF applications which will be deployed on Citrix. Currently you simply see a blue window under Citrix, although the app runs fine on the server itself. There do seem to be some issues detailed on the net. Citrix forum discussion Microsoft hot fix We've applied the hot fix but this does not appear to fix the problem for us at least. Also, found this identical question on this site, but it had been removed by the author, so no answers. I'm running citrix 4.5 on a Windows 2003 server. I am trying to publish a WPF app (any WPF app has this problem) and all I get is a blue rectangle where the app is supposed to be. The rectangle is the exact size and shape of the window I expect, but it is just blue (looks like the color of the citrix desktop background). Any ideas?

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• What does dd conv=sync,noerror do?

  - by dding

  So what is the case when adding conv=sync,noerror makes a difference when backing up an entire hard disk onto an image file? Is conv=sync,noerror a requirement when doing forensic stuff? If so, why is it the case with reference to linux fedora? Edit: OK, so if I do dd without conv=sync,noerror, and dd encounters read error when reading the block (let's size 100M), does dd just skip 100M block and reads the next block without writing something (dd conv=sync,noerror writes zeros to 100M of output - so what about this case?)? And if is hash of original hard disk and output file different if done without conv=sync,noerror? Or is this only when read error occurred?

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• Oracle Logical Standby redo generation

  - by DCookie

  Oracle 10.2.0.4 database with a logical standby on Win2K3. Recently a rather large delete operation was carried out on the production instance. I'm experiencing difficulty with the logical standby, in that it gets a couple of hundred (58M size) archive logs into the operation and the apply process fails with an out-of-memory error. Unfortunately, every time it fails it has to restart the apply from the beginning of the transaction. This is taking a couple of days each time. Anyway, in trying to resolve this problem, I've noticed that each archive log from the production system generates 5 or 6 log switches on the standby. I don't understand why this should be. Anyone have any ideas? A related question that I've not found the answer for: does anyone know if the logical standby must be running in archivelog mode? I really don't have a need to keep the logs.

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• Investigating Strategies For Functional Decomposition

  - by Liam McLennan

  Introducing Functional Decomposition Before I begin I must apologise. I think I am using the term ‘functional decomposition’ loosely, and probably incorrectly. For the purpose of this article I use functional decomposition to mean the recursive splitting of a large problem into increasingly smaller ones, so that the one large problem may be solved by solving a set of smaller problems. The justification for functional decomposition is that the decomposed problem is more easily solved. As software developers we recognise that the smaller pieces are more easily tested, since they do less and are more cohesive. Functional decomposition is important to all scientific pursuits. Once we understand natural selection we can start to look for humanities ancestral species, once we understand the big bang we can trace our expanding universe back to its origin. Isaac Newton acknowledged the compositional nature of his scientific achievements: If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants   The Two Strategies For Functional Decomposition of Computer Programs Private Methods When I was working on my undergraduate degree I was taught to functionally decompose problems by using private methods. Consider the problem of painting a house. The obvious solution is to solve the problem as a single unit: public void PaintAHouse() { // all the things required to paint a house ... } We decompose the problem by breaking it into parts: public void PaintAHouse() { PaintUndercoat(); PaintTopcoat(); } private void PaintUndercoat() { // everything required to paint the undercoat } private void PaintTopcoat() { // everything required to paint the topcoat } The problem can be recursively decomposed until a sufficiently granular level of detail is reached: public void PaintAHouse() { PaintUndercoat(); PaintTopcoat(); } private void PaintUndercoat() { prepareSurface(); fetchUndercoat(); paintUndercoat(); } private void PaintTopcoat() { fetchPaint(); paintTopcoat(); } According to Wikipedia, at least one computer programmer has referred to this process as “the art of subroutining”. The practical issues that I have encountered when using private methods for decomposition are: To preserve the top level API all of the steps must be private. This means that they can’t easily be tested. The private methods often have little cohesion except that they form part of the same solution. Decomposing to Classes The alternative is to decompose large problems into multiple classes, effectively using a class instead of each private method. The API delegates to related classes, so the API is not polluted by the sub-steps of the problem, and the steps can be easily tested because they are each in their own highly cohesive class. Additionally, I think that this technique facilitates better adherence to the Single Responsibility Principle, since each class can be decomposed until it has precisely one responsibility. Revisiting my previous example using class composition: public class HousePainter { private undercoatPainter = new UndercoatPainter(); private topcoatPainter = new TopcoatPainter(); public void PaintAHouse() { undercoatPainter.Paint(); topcoatPainter.Paint(); } } Summary When decomposing a problem there is more than one way to represent the sub-problems. Using private methods keeps the logic in one place and prevents a proliferation of classes (thereby following the four rules of simple design) but the class decomposition is more easily testable and more compatible with the Single Responsibility Principle.

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• Is Oracle Database Appliance (ODA) A Best Kept Secret?

  - by Ravi.Sharma

  There is something about Oracle Database Appliance that underscores the tremendous value customers see in the product. Repeat purchases. When you buy “one” of something and come back to buy another, it confirms that the product met your expectations, you found good value in it, and perhaps you will continue to use it. But when you buy “one” and come back to buy many more on your very next purchase, it tells something else. It tells that you truly believe that you have found the best value out there. That you are convinced! That you are sold on the great idea and have discovered a product that far exceeds your expectations and delivers tremendous value! Many Oracle Database Appliance customers are such larger-volume-repeat-buyers. It is no surprise, that the product has a deeper penetration in many accounts where a customer made an initial purchase. The value proposition of Oracle Database Appliance is undeniably strong and extremely compelling. This is especially true for customers who are simply upgrading or “refreshing” their hardware (and reusing software licenses). For them, the ability to acquire world class, highly available database hardware along with leading edge management software and all of the automation is absolutely a steal. One customer DBA recently said, “Oracle Database Appliance is the best investment our company has ever made”. Such extreme statements do not come out of thin air. You have to experience it to believe it. Oracle Database Appliance is a low cost product. Not many sales managers may be knocking on your doors to sell it. But the great value it delivers to small and mid-size businesses and database implementations should not be underestimated. 

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• Hibernation to a swap file 12.04, fragfile output

  - by MrHug10

  I've been trying for some time now, to get hibernation working in Ubuntu 12.04 on my Dell XPS17. I dualboot Windows 7 and Ubuntu, each having their own partition and one shared partition for all my data and documents. As I would like to be able to swtich from ubuntu to windows without losing all the things I was currently doing in Ubuntu, I would like to be able to use hibernation. In order to achieve this I've followed the information at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1042946. Only instead of creating my swap file on my linux partition (which is formatted: ext4), I've chosen to create one on my shared partition (which is formatted: ntfs). There is a problem with this though (at least, that's what I think the problem is), because when I call: sudo filefrag -v /media/data/Ubuntu_Swap_Space/6GiB.swap, I get the following output: Filesystem type is: 65735546 File size of /media/Data/Ubuntu_Swap_Space/6GiB.swap is 6442450944 (1572864 blocks, blocksize 4096) Discontinuity: Block 22 is at 25829097 (was 232498) /media/Data/Ubuntu_Swap_Space/6GiB.swap: 2 extents found So I'm not sure what I need to fill in as an offset to follow the rest of the earlier mentioned information. I've tried both the location of block 22 and the number that is listed after that, but when I then try sudo pm-hibernate nothing happens and this shows up in my /var/log/pm-suspend.log s2disk: Could not use the resume device (try swapon -a). Reason: No such device Hope someone can help me out with this! If you need more information about anything, please let me know!

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• Mirroring MySQL server with diffrent configuration

  - by HTF

  I have to migrate MySQL server to a different data centre so I would like to create another MySQL slave server in new DC and then promote it to a master later on. I previously used LVM snapshots and Percona Xtrabackup for this purpose but this time I've optimized MySQL configuration file that prevents me from using these methods. Old server (backup): innodb_log_file_size = 256M innodb_log_files_in_group = 3 New server (restore): innodb_log_file_size = 512M innodb_log_files_in_group = 2 The Xtrabackup script and LVM snapshots copy the whole directory structure so the MySQL server won't start because there is a different size for InnoDB logs. Is there any solution to avoid a downtime in this case? I can't use mysqldumps as there is around 8000 databases so I would have to take the server down for a couple of hours. I was also thinking to use the old settings with Xtrabackup and then change it once the new server is promoted to a master - less downtime but I'm not sure if this will work? Thank you Regards

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• How to print 4 index cards on a single A4 sheet in Word 2003

  - by Anna

  I have an index card designed in Word. It's fairly complicated with graphics, borders and background. The page layout has been set to landscape and with size set to 4x6. How can I print this, 4x per A4 landscape sheet? I cannot for the life of me work it out. The printer always seems to do a single card per A4 sheet, wasting 3/4 of the page. "Pages 1,1,1,1" will result in 4 sheets being printed. What am I doing wrong?

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• User reduced LVM logical volume without resizing filesystem

  - by Matthew

  I received an email yesterday that one of our users was trying to make room for a heartbeat/clustering package which requires its own partition to act as a voting disk. To do this, he attempted to reduce the size of the root partition's logical volume, and then create a new logical volume for this purpose. However, he forgot to resize the filesystem first (or include the -r switch in the command). He also forgot to unmount the root partition by running this process from a rescue cd. The system is now refusing to boot into the OS with the following error: Either the superblock or the partition table is likely to be corrupt! Unexpected Inconsistency; run fsck manually. The system them drops the user into single user mode. Is it possible to rescue the filesystem, or is it hosed? Its running ext3.

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• Function calls to calls in windows api

  - by Apeee

  I am a beginner, and learning C, I find it hard to grasp the whole programming concept. so hopefully this would help to clear up some things along the way. When programming in windows, which is my aim for the time being, it is really hard for me to understand how windows communicate with the programs that run on it. A question i have been pondering about is how when you incorporate a function call which is in another memory location on the disk or memory(not a function you yourself wrote and is included in the compilation), especially the windows API, does the compiler know where the function location is so when the program is run it can call that function? For example, a very simple program that displays a window which reads hello world. You would have to call windows API functions to achieve such features as creating the window, its size, colors and so on... So basically what I am struggling to grasp is how the programs I write communicate with the platform, framework they are run on(generally windows for Windows API). Apart from clarification on this one above, i would love a resource that explains this concept further. Thanks for your time!

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• Unix tool for splitting archives

  - by Richo

  I'm dumping an svn repository to a giant USB disk that is formatted FAT due to necessity (treat this as unchangeable). It conks out when you try to create a file larger than 4 gb. I need a tool that I can pipe data to that will create files of arbitrary size that when catted together will be the original file. I can write a tool to do this, but if one already exists I'd rather use it. Cheers EDIT: A second look at the split man page looks like it might work.

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• PostgreSQL disaster recovery options

  - by Alex

  My customer has quite a large (the total "data" folder size is 200G) PostgreSQL database and we are working on a disaster recovery plan. We have identified three different types of disasters so far: hardware outage, too much load and unintentional data loss due to erroneously executed bad migration (like DELETE or ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN). First two types seem to be easy to mitigate but we can't elaborate a good mitigation plan for the third type. I proposed to use ZFS and frequent (hourly) snapshots but "ZFS" means "OpenIndiana" these days and our Ops engineers do not have much expertise in it, so using OpenIndiana imposes another risk. Colleagues try to convince me that restoring from PostgreSQL PITR backup can be as fast as restoring from a ZFS snapshot but I highly doubt that replaying, say, 50G of archived WALs can be considered "fast". What other options are we missing? Is ZFS an only viable alternative? Can we get a fast Pg DB restore time in the Linux environment?

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• Sustainability at Oracle OpenWorld

  - by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team

  By Evelyn Neumayr Leading businesses - not to mention individuals - recognize that environmental responsibility is good business. Well-thought out and well-structured environmental practices deliver triple benefit: to people, profits, and our planet. IT, as a central part of most organizations' business strategies, plays a pivotal role in developing environmental initiatives. Any Oracle OpenWorld attendee interested in learning how to use Oracle products to reduce both their organization’s environmental footprint, as well as their costs, should attend one of the many sustainability sessions being held at the conference. If you can only attend one sustainability-focused session, this is the one not to miss, where you can learn about innovative sustainability practices from customers on the leading edge. Eco-Enterprise Innovation Awards and the Business Case for SustainabilityWednesday, October 3, Moscone West 300510:15 - 11:15 a.m. If you can attend several sessions that have a sustainability focus, look here to find the listing of sessions that drill down into a specific product, where the discussion will focus on how that product can help achieve sustainability while improving enterprise operational efficiencies. Regardless of size and scope, all efforts are worthwhile. To learn more, go to the Sustainability Matters blog.

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• Video lags/freezes in SMPlayer and VLC

  - by RanRag

  When I try to play my video files in SMPlayer it works fine but as soon as I switch to fullscreen mode(16:9) following thing happens: 1) Video starts lagging. 2) Audio and video goes out of sync. 3) CPU usage rises to ~50%. 4) SMPlayer starts to hang. My current SMPlayer configuration: 1)Video Output Driver = x11(slow) 2)Audio Output Driver = alsa(0.0-HDA Intel) 3)Cache = 8192 KB 4)Threads for decoding(MPEG-1/2 and H.264 only = 2 Things I tried solve this problem: 1) Tried changing video o/p driver to xv,gl. 2) Tried changing audio o/p driver to pulse. 3) Tried increasing cache size and also tried using nocache. Everything works fine on windows but I don't want to switch to windows just to play video files. My system config: Acer Aspire One D270 Atom N2600(Cedar Trail) 1.6GHz 2GB Memory Intel GMA 3600 graphics. Ubuntu 12.04 Kernel Release: 3.2.0-23-generic-pae Rest all things are working fine I have no resolution issue, bluetooth, wireless also working fine. Just ask me to submit any other log file I will be happy to post. SMPlayer log MPlayer Terminal output Codec Information(currently playing file):

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• What are they buying &ndash; work or value?

  - by Jamie Kurtz

  When was the last time you ordered a pizza like this: “I want the high school kid in the back to do the following… make a big circle with some dough, curl up the edges, then put some sauce on it using a small ladle, then I want him to take a handful of shredded cheese from the metal container and spread it over the circle and sauce, then finally I want the kid to place 36 pieces of pepperoni over the top of the cheese” ?? Probably never. My typical pizza order usually goes more like this: “I want a large pepperoni pizza”. In the world of software development, we try so hard to be all things agile. We: Write lots of unit tests We refactor our code, then refactor it some more We avoid writing lengthy requirements documents We try to keep processes to a minimum, and give developers freedom And we are proud of our constantly shifting focus (i.e. we’re “responding to change”) Yet, after all this, we fail to really lean and capitalize on one of agile’s main differentiators (from the twelve principles behind the Agile Manifesto): “Working software is the primary measure of progress.” That is, we foolishly commit to delivering tasks instead of features and bug fixes. Like my pizza example above, we fall into the trap of signing contracts that bind us to doing tasks – rather than delivering working software. And the biggest problem here… by far the most troubling outcome… is that we don’t let working software be a major force in all the work we do. When teams manage to ruthlessly focus on the end product, it puts them on the path of true agile. It doesn’t let them accidentally write too much documentation, or spend lots of time and money on processes and fancy tools. It forces early testing that reveals problems in the feature or bug fix. And it forces lots and lots of customer interaction.  Without that focus on the end product as your deliverable… by committing to a list of tasks instead of a list features and bug fixes… you are doomed to NOT be agile. You will end up just doing stuff, spending time on the keyboard, burning time on timesheets. Doing tasks doesn’t force you to minimize documentation. It makes it much harder to respond to change. And it will eventually force you and the client into contract haggling. Because the customer isn’t really paying you to do stuff. He’s ultimately paying for features and bug fixes. And when the customer doesn’t get what they want, responding with “well, look at the contract - we did all the tasks we committed to” doesn’t typically generate referrals or callbacks. In short, if you’re trying to deliver real value to the customer by going agile, you will most certainly fail if all you commit to is a list of things you’re going to do. Give agile what it needs by committing to features and bug fixes – not a list of ToDo items. So the next time you are writing up a contract, remember that the customer should be buying this: Not this:

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