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Looking into CSS3 Multiple backgrounds

- by nikolaosk

In this post I will be looking into a great feature in CSS3 called multiple backgrounds.With CSS3 ourselves as web designers we can specify multiple background images for box elements, using nothing more than a simple comma-separated list. This is a very nice feature that can be useful in many websites.In this hands-on example I will be using Expression Web 4.0.This application is not a free application. You can use any HTML editor you like.You can use Visual Studio 2012 Express edition. You can download it here.Before I go on with the actual demo I will use the (http://www.caniuse.com) to see the support for CSS 3 Multiple backgrounds from the latest versions of modern browsers.Please have a look in this link All modern browsers support this feature. I am typing this very simple HTML 5 markup with an internal CSS style.<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"> <head> <title>Sold items</title> <style> #box{ border:1px solid #afafaf; width:260px; height:290px; background-image:url(shirt.png), url(sold.jpg); background-position: center bottom, right top; background-repeat: no-repeat, no-repeat; </style> </head> <body> <header> <h1>CSS3 Multiple backgrounds</h1> </header> <div id="box"> </div> <footer> <p>All Rights Reserved</p> </footer> </body> </html> Let me explain what I do here, multiple background images are specified using a comma-separated list of values for the background-image property.A comma separated list is also used for the other background properties such as background-repeat, background-position .So in the next three lines of CSS code background-image:url(shirt.png), url(sold.jpg); background-position: center bottom, right top; background-repeat: no-repeat, no-repeat; we have 2 images placed in the div element. The first is placed center bottom in the div element and the second is placed at right top position inside the div element.Both images do not get repeated.I view the page in IE 10 and all the latest versions of Opera,Chrome and Firefox.Have a look at the picture below. Hope it helps!!!!

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How can I best implement 'cache until further notice' with memcache in multiple tiers?

- by ajreal

the term "client" used here is not referring to client's browser, but client server Before cache workflow 1. client make a HTTP request --> 2. server process --> 3. store parsed results into memcache for next use (cache indefinitely) --> 4. return results to client --> 5. client get the result, store into client's local memcache with TTL After cache workflow 1. another client make a HTTP request --> 2. memcache found return memcache results to client --> 3. client get the result, store into client's local memcache with TTL TTL = time to live Is possible for me to know when the data was updated, and to expire relevant memcache(s) accordingly. However, the pitfalls on client site cache TTL Any data update before the TTL is not pick-up by client memcache. In reverse manner, where there is no update, client memcache still expire after the TTL First request (or concurrent requests) after cache TTL will get throttle as it need to repeat the "Before cache workflow" In the event where client require several HTTP requests on a single web page, it could be very bad in performance. Ideal solution should be client to cache indefinitely until further notice. Here are the three proposals about futher notice Proposal 1 : Make use on HTTP header (current implementation) 1. client sent HTTP request last modified time header 2. server check if last data modified time=last cache time return status 304 3. client based on header to decide further processing GOOD? ---- - save some parsing for client - lesser data transfer BAD? ---- - fire a HTTP request is still slow - server end still need to process lots of requests Proposal 2 : Consistently issue a HTTP request to check all data group last modified time 1. client fire a HTTP request 2. server to return last modified time for all data group 3. client compare local last cache time with the result 4. if data group last cache time < server last modified time then request again for that data group only GOOD? ---- - only fetch what is no up-to-date - less requests for server BAD? ---- - every web page require a HTTP request Proposal 3 : Tell client when new data is available (Push) 1. when server end notice there is a change on a data group 2. notify clients on the changes 3. help clients to fetch again data 4. then reset client local memcache after data is parsed GOOD? ---- - let the cache act/behave like a true cache BAD? ---- - encourage race condition My preference is on proposal 3, and something like Gearman could be ideal Where there is a change, Gearman server to sent the task to multiple clients (workers). Am I crazy? (I know my first question is a bit crazy)

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Perfect End to a Bad Day

- by TehGrumpyCoder

Yesterday's post about A Bad Day at Work actually had an addendum to it. There were apparently a bunch of guys on ice skates last night competing in some sport way the hell and gone over on the other side of the valley, and enough people couldn't live without seeing them that they had all major arteries heading west honked. I mean honked... the traffic guy reported the 101 had 16 miles of backup... yikes. Since I worked downtown for a number of years, my fallback is to cut across the city on surface streets to get to one of my old 'haunts' and just drive it home from there. Of course with the 101 backed up, then I17 would logically be as well, so I kept the news on rather than my Zune and heard where the bad stuff was going North. I popped out on the freeway about 7 miles south of my exit. Got to the exit which is about a mile from the house without killing or maiming me or anyone else. Waited patiently at the light in the inside lane to make a left and go under the freeway proceeding West. The light changed, I had full green, I started through and whoa... I've got someone in a little rat car crossing my bow! A little explanation... I drive a 3/4 ton pickup with a V-10, extended cab and shell on the back. It's not jacked up, but it sits up pretty good and is longer than any parking place I've ever tried to put it into. I consider this truck to be the consolation prize for paying uninsured motorist coverage for 45 years and having Pilar Martinez totally destroy a 3/4 ton Silverado on March 1, 2007 by plowing into me at traffic speed while I was stopped at a light. If you pay for uninsured motorist coverage, ask your insurance agent *exactly* what that means... I bet it's different than what you think it means. But I digress, sorry... So here I am with a car that is shorter from top to road than the hood on my truck, and the driver thought it would be safe to run a red light and see if they could get past me before I got into the lane. The right side of my front bumper was almost into the driver's window when I hit the brakes and wheeled it left. Fortunately for all involved, I saw it soon enough, and pulled into the 2nd lane for making a left to go back South. I looked in my mirror, signalled a move, then moved over behind the yuck in the rat car. I then punched it, and the future hood ornament and I both made it through the next light. I pulled alongside to let her know that she was DEFINITELY Number 1 in my book, and it's a middle-age woman looking at me with a "sorry, it was an accident" show of pouty face and arms held up. Tough $hit lady... that may have worked when you were 18, but it's not working anymore, and it wasn't an accident... you ran a freakin' red light and almost got yourself killed. That just about put a bow on the day... I was home later than usual, pissed off about work stuff, pissed off at traffic, and now that. I ate dinner, watched a little TV, and was asleep about 9:30 exhausted. Hope today is better.

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3 Incredibly Useful Projects to jump-start your Kinect Development.

- by mbcrump

I’ve been playing with the Kinect SDK Beta for the past few days and have noticed a few projects on CodePlex worth checking out. I decided to blog about them to help spread awareness. If you want to learn more about Kinect SDK then you check out my”Busy Developer’s Guide to the Kinect SDK Beta”. Let’s get started: KinectContrib is a set of VS2010 Templates that will help you get started building a Kinect project very quickly. Once you have it installed you will have the option to select the following Templates: KinectDepth KinectSkeleton KinectVideo Please note that KinectContrib requires the Kinect for Windows SDK beta to be installed. Kinect Templates after installing the Template Pack. The reference to Microsoft.Research.Kinect is added automatically. Here is a sample of the code for the MainWindow.xaml in the “Video” template: <Window x:Class="KinectVideoApplication1.MainWindow" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Title="MainWindow" Height="480" Width="640"> <Grid> <Image Name="videoImage"/> </Grid> </Window> and MainWindow.xaml.cs using System; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Media; using System.Windows.Media.Imaging; using Microsoft.Research.Kinect.Nui; namespace KinectVideoApplication1 { public partial class MainWindow : Window { //Instantiate the Kinect runtime. Required to initialize the device. //IMPORTANT NOTE: You can pass the device ID here, in case more than one Kinect device is connected. Runtime runtime = new Runtime(); public MainWindow() { InitializeComponent(); //Runtime initialization is handled when the window is opened. When the window //is closed, the runtime MUST be unitialized. this.Loaded += new RoutedEventHandler(MainWindow_Loaded); this.Unloaded += new RoutedEventHandler(MainWindow_Unloaded); //Handle the content obtained from the video camera, once received. runtime.VideoFrameReady += new EventHandler<Microsoft.Research.Kinect.Nui.ImageFrameReadyEventArgs>(runtime_VideoFrameReady); } void MainWindow_Unloaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { runtime.Uninitialize(); } void MainWindow_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { //Since only a color video stream is needed, RuntimeOptions.UseColor is used. runtime.Initialize(Microsoft.Research.Kinect.Nui.RuntimeOptions.UseColor); //You can adjust the resolution here. runtime.VideoStream.Open(ImageStreamType.Video, 2, ImageResolution.Resolution640x480, ImageType.Color); } void runtime_VideoFrameReady(object sender, Microsoft.Research.Kinect.Nui.ImageFrameReadyEventArgs e) { PlanarImage image = e.ImageFrame.Image; BitmapSource source = BitmapSource.Create(image.Width, image.Height, 96, 96, PixelFormats.Bgr32, null, image.Bits, image.Width * image.BytesPerPixel); videoImage.Source = source; } } } You will find this template pack is very handy especially for those new to Kinect Development. Next up is The Coding4Fun Kinect Toolkit which contains extension methods and a WPF control to help you develop with the Kinect SDK. After downloading the package simply add a reference to the .dll using either the WPF or WinForms version. Now you will have access to several methods that can help you save an image: (for example) For a full list of extension methods and properties, please visit the site at http://c4fkinect.codeplex.com/. Kinductor – This is a great application for just learning how to use the Kinect SDK. The project uses MVVM Light and is a great start for those looking how to structure their first Kinect Application. Conclusion: Things are already getting easier for those working with the Kinect SDK. I imagine that after a few more months we will see the SDK go out of beta and allow commercial applications to run using it. I am very excited and hope that you continue reading my blog for more Kinect, WPF and Silverlight news. Subscribe to my feed

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Why Are We Here?

- by Jonathan Mills

Back in the early 2000s, Toyota had a vision of building the number one best selling minivan in North America. Their current minivan, the Sienna, was small, underpowered, and badly needed help. Yuji Yokoya was given the job of re-engineering the Sienna. There was just one problem, Yuji, lived in Japan. He did not know the people or places that he would be engineering for. Believe it or not, Japan is nothing like North America. So, what does a chief engineer do in a situation like that? He packed up his team and flew halfway around the world. He made a commitment to drive through every state in the US, every province in Canada, and Mexico. He met the people and drove the roads that the Sienna would be driving. And guess what, what he learned on that trip revolutionized the Sienna. The innovations he made, sent the Sienna to number one. Why? Because he knew who he was building his product for. He knew, why he was there.Let me ask you this, do you know why you are building what you are building? As a member of a product team, can you tell me how your product will be used in the real world? As you are writing code, building test plans, writing stories, or any of the other project tasks, can you picture the face of a person who will be using what you are building? All to often, the answer to those questions is, no. Why is it important? Because, every day, project team members make assumptions. Over a given project, it is safe to say project team members will make thousands of assumptions about what they are doing. And all to often, those assumptions are not quite right. Its not that they are not good at their job, its just that they don’t really know why they are there.So, what to do? First and foremost, stop doing what you are doing. Yes, really. Schedule some time to go visit the people who will be using your product. Don’t invite them to you, go to them. Watch them work. Interact with them. Ask them questions. Maybe even try it out yourself. This serves two purposes. One, It shows them that you care about them. They will be far more engaged in your project if they feel like you care. And nothing says you care more that spending some time. Second, if gives you the proper frame of reference for you work. It gives you something tangible to go back to as you are building your product. As you make the thousands of assumptions that you will make over the life of your project, it gives you something to see in your mind that makes it real to you.Ultimately, setting a proper frame of reference is critical to the overall success of a project. The funny thing is, it really does not even take that long. In most cases, a 2-3 hour session will give you most of what you need to get the right insight. For the project, it will be the best 2 hours you could spend.

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The Minimalist Approach to Content Governance - Request Phase

- by Kellsey Ruppel

Originally posted by John Brunswick. For each project, regardless of size, it is critical to understand the required ownership, business purpose, prerequisite education / resources needed to execute and success criteria around it. Without doing this, there is no way to get a handle on the content life-cyle, resulting in a mass of orphaned material. This lowers the quality of end user experiences. The good news is that by using a simple process in this request phase - we will not have to revisit this phase unless something drastic changes in the project. For each of the elements mentioned above in this stage, the why, how (technically focused) and impact are outlined with the intent of providing the most value to a small team. 1. Ownership Why - Without ownership information it will not be possible to track and manage any of the content and take advantage of many features of enterprise content management technology. To hedge against this, we need to ensure that both a individual and their group or department within the organization are associated with the content. How - Apply metadata that indicates the owner and department or group that has responsibility for the content. Impact - It is possible to keep the content system optimized by running native reports against the meta-data and acting on them based on what has been outlined for success criteria. This will maximize end user experience, as content will be faster to locate and more relevant to the user by virtue of working through a smaller collection. 2. Business Purpose Why - This simple step will weed out requests that have tepid justification, as users will most likely not spend the effort to request resources if they do not have a real need. How - Use a simple online form to collect and workflow the request to management native to the content system. Impact - Minimizes the amount user generated content that is of low value to the organization. 3. Prerequisite Education Resources Needed Why - If a project cannot be properly staffed the probability of its success is going to be low. By outlining the resources needed - in both skill set and duration - it will cause the requesting party to think critically about the commitment needed to complete their project and what gap must be closed with regard to education of those resources. How - In the simple request form outlined above, resources and a commitment to fulfilling any needed education should be included with a brief acceptance clause that outlines the requesting party's commitment. Impact - This stage acts as a formal commitment to ensuring that resources are able to execute on the vision for the project. 4. Success Criteria Why - Similar to the business purpose, this is a key element in helping to determine if the project and its respective content should continue to exist if it does not meet its intended goal. How - Set a review point for the project content that will check the progress against the originally outlined success criteria and then determine the fate of the content. This can even include logic that will tell the content system to remove items that have not been opened by any users in X amount of time. Impact - This ensures that projects and their contents do not live past their useful lifespans. Just as with orphaned content, non-relevant information will slow user's access to relevant materials for the jobs. Request Phase Summary With a simple form that outlines the ownership of a project and its content, business purpose, education and resources, along with success criteria, we can ensure that an enterprise content management system will stay clean and relevant to end users - allowing it to deliver the most value possible. The key here is to make it straightforward to make the request and let the content management technology manage as much as possible through metadata, retention policies and workflow. Doing these basic steps will allow project content to get off to a great start in the enterprise! Stay tuned for the next installment - the "Create Phase" - covering security access and workflow involved in content creation, enabling a practical layer of governance over our enterprise content repository.

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Juggling with JDKs on Apple OS X

- by Blueberry Coder

I recently got a shiny new MacBook Pro to help me support our ADF Mobile customers. It is really a wonderful piece of hardware, although I am still adjusting to Apple's peculiar keyboard layout. Did you know, for example, that the « delete » key actually performs a « backspace »? But I disgress... As you may know, ADF Mobile development still requires JDeveloper 11gR2, which in turn runs on Java 6. On the other hand, JDeveloper 12c needs JDK 7. I wanted to install both versions, and wasn't sure how to do it. If you remember, I explained in a previous blog entry how to install JDeveloper 11gR2 on Apple's OS X. The trick was to use the /usr/libexec/java_home command in order to invoke the proper JDK. In this case, I could have done the same thing; the two JDKs can coexist without any problems, since they install in completely different locations. But I wanted more than just installing JDeveloper. I wanted to be able to select my JDK when using the command line as well. On Windows, this is easy, since I keep all my JDKs in a central location. I simply have to move to the appropriate folder or type the folder name in the command I want to execute. Problem is, on OS X, the paths to the JDKs are... let's say convoluted. Here is the one for Java 6. /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home The Java 7 path is not better, just different. /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_45.jdk/Contents/Home Intuitive, isn't it? Clearly, I needed something better... On OS X, the default command shell is bash. It is possible to configure the shell environment by creating a file named « .profile » in a user's home folder. Thus, I created such a file and put the following inside: export JAVA_7_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v1.7) export JAVA_6_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v1.6) export JAVA_HOME=$JAVA_7_HOME alias java6='export JAVA_HOME=$JAVA_6_HOME' alias java7='export JAVA_HOME=$JAVA_7_HOME' The first two lines retrieve the current paths for Java 7 and Java 6 and store them in two environment variables. The third line marks Java 7 as the default. The last two lines create command aliases. Thus, when I type java6, the value for JAVA_HOME is set to JAVA_6_HOME, for example. I now have an environment which works even better than the one I have on Windows, since I can change my active JDK on a whim. Here a sample, fresh from my terminal window. fdesbien-mac:~ fdesbien$ java6 fdesbien-mac:~ fdesbien$ java -version java version "1.6.0_65" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_65-b14-462-11M4609) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.65-b04-462, mixed mode) fdesbien-mac:~ fdesbien$ fdesbien-mac:~ fdesbien$ java7 fdesbien-mac:~ fdesbien$ java -version java version "1.7.0_45" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_45-b18) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.45-b08, mixed mode) fdesbien-mac:~ fdesbien$ Et voilà! Maximum flexibility without downsides, just I like it.

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Dependency injection: How to sell it

- by Mel

Let it be known that I am a big fan of dependency injection (DI) and automated testing. I could talk all day about it. Background Recently, our team just got this big project that is to built from scratch. It is a strategic application with complex business requirements. Of course, I wanted it to be nice and clean, which for me meant: maintainable and testable. So I wanted to use DI. Resistance The problem was in our team, DI is taboo. It has been brought up a few times, but the gods do not approve. But that did not discourage me. My Move This may sound weird but third-party libraries are usually not approved by our architect team (think: "thou shalt not speak of Unity, Ninject, NHibernate, Moq or NUnit, lest I cut your finger"). So instead of using an established DI container, I wrote an extremely simple container. It basically wired up all your dependencies on startup, injects any dependencies (constructor/property) and disposed any disposable objects at the end of the web request. It was extremely lightweight and just did what we needed. And then I asked them to review it. The Response Well, to make it short. I was met with heavy resistance. The main argument was, "We don't need to add this layer of complexity to an already complex project". Also, "It's not like we will be plugging in different implementations of components". And "We want to keep it simple, if possible just stuff everything into one assembly. DI is an uneeded complexity with no benefit". Finally, My Question How would you handle my situation? I am not good in presenting my ideas, and I would like to know how people would present their argument. Of course, I am assuming that like me, you prefer to use DI. If you don't agree, please do say why so I can see the other side of the coin. It would be really interesting to see the point of view of someone who disagrees. Update Thank you for everyone's answers. It really puts things into perspective. It's nice enough to have another set of eyes to give you feedback, fifteen is really awesome! This are really great answers and helped me see the issue from different sides, but I can only choose one answer, so I will just pick the top voted one. Thanks everyone for taking the time to answer. I have decided that it is probably not the best time to implement DI, and we are not ready for it. Instead, I will concentrate my efforts on making the design testable and attempt to present automated unit testing. I am aware that writing tests is additional overhead and if ever it is decided that the additional overhead is not worth it, personally I would still see it as a win situation since the design is still testable. And if ever testing or DI is a choice in future, the design can easily handle it.

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Violation of the DRY Principle

- by Onorio Catenacci

I am sure there's a name for this anti-pattern somewhere; however I am not familiar enough with the anti-pattern literature to know it. Consider the following scenario: or0 is a member function in a class. For better or worse, it's heavily dependent on class member variables. Programmer A comes along and needs functionality like or0 but rather than calling or0, Programmer A copies and renames the entire class. I'm guessing that she doesn't call or0 because, as I say, it's heavily dependent on member variables for its functionality. Or maybe she's a junior programmer and doesn't know how to call it from other code. So now we've got or0 and c0 (c for copy). I can't completely fault Programmer A for this approach--we all get under tight deadlines and we hack code to get work done. Several programmers maintain or0 so it's now version orN. c0 is now version cN. Unfortunately most of the programmers that maintained the class containing or0 seemed to be completely unaware of c0--which is one of the strongest arguments I can think of for the wisdom of the DRY principle. And there may also have been independent maintainance of the code in c. Either way it appears that or0 and c0 were maintained independent of each other. And, joy and happiness, an error is occurring in cN that does not occur in orN. So I have a few questions: 1.) Is there a name for this anti-pattern? I've seen this happen so often I'd find it hard to believe this is not a named anti-pattern. 2.) I can see a few alternatives: a.) Fix orN to take a parameter that specifies the values of all the member variables it needs. Then modify cN to call orN with all of the needed parameters passed in. b.) Try to manually port fixes from orN to cN. (Mind you I don't want to do this but it is a realistic possibility.) c.) Recopy orN to cN--again, yuck but I list it for sake of completeness. d.) Try to figure out where cN is broken and then repair it independently of orN. Alternative a seems like the best fix in the long term but I doubt the customer will let me implement it. Never time or money to fix things right but always time and money to repair the same problem 40 or 50 times, right? Can anyone suggest other approaches I may not have considered? If you were in my place, which approach would you take? If there are other questions and answers here along these lines, please post links to them. I don't mind removing this question if it's a dupe but my searching hasn't turned up anything that addresses this question yet. EDIT: Thanks everyone for all the thoughtful responses. I asked about a name for the anti-pattern so I could research it further on my own. I'm surprised this particular bad coding practice doesn't seem to have a "canonical" name for it.

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Pinterest and the Rising Power of Imagery

- by Mike Stiles

If images keep you glued to a screen, you’re hardly alone. Countless social users are letting their eyes do the walking, waiting for that special photo to grab their attention. And perhaps more than any other social network, Pinterest has been giving those eyes plenty of room to walk. Pinterest came along in 2010. Its play was that users could simply create topic boards and pin pictures to the appropriate boards for sharing. Yes there are some words, captions mostly, but not many. The speed of its growth raised eyebrows. Traffic quadrupled in the last quarter of 2011, with 7.51 million unique visitors in December alone. It now gets 1.9 billion monthly page views. And it was sticky. In the US, the average time a user spends strolling through boards and photos on Pinterest is 15 minutes, 50 seconds. Proving the concept of browsing a catalogue is not dead, it became a top 5 referrer for several apparel retailers like Land’s End, Nordstrom, and Bergdorfs. Now a survey of online shoppers by BizRate Insights says that Pinterest is responsible for more purchases online than Facebook. Over 70% of its users are going there specifically to keep up with trends and get shopping ideas. And when they buy, the average order value is $179. Pinterest is also scoring better in terms of user engagement. 66% of pinners regularly follow and repin retailers, whereas 17% of Facebook fans turn to that platform for purchase ideas. (Facebook still wins when it comes to reach and driving traffic to 3rd-party sites by the way). Social posting best practices have consistently shown that posts with photos are rewarded with higher engagement levels. You may be downright Shakespearean in your writing, but what makes images in the digital world so much more powerful than prose? 1. They transcend language barriers. 2. They’re fun and addictive to look at. 3. They can be consumed in fractions of a second, important considering how fast users move through their social content (admit it, you do too). 4. They’re efficient gateways. A good picture might get them to the headline. A good headline might then get them to the written content. 5. The audience for them surpasses demographic limitations. 6. They can effectively communicate and trigger an emotion. 7. With mobile use soaring, photos are created on those devices and easily consumed and shared on them. Pinterest’s iPad app hit #1 in the Apple store in 1 day. Even as far back as 2009, over 2.5 billion devices with cameras were on the streets generating in just 1 year, 10% of the number of photos taken…ever. But let’s say you’re not a retailer. What if you’re a B2B whose products or services aren’t visual? Should you worry about your presence on Pinterest? As with all things, you need a keen awareness of who your audience is, where they reside online, and what they want to do there. If it doesn’t make sense to put a tent stake in Pinterest, fine. But ignore the power of pictures at your own peril. If not visually, how are you going to attention-grab social users scrolling down their News Feeds at top speed? You’re competing with every other cool image out there from countless content sources. Bore us and we’ll fly right past you.

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Parameterized StreamInsight Queries

- by Roman Schindlauer

The changes in our APIs enable a set of scenarios that were either not possible before or could only be achieved through workarounds. One such use case that people ask about frequently is the ability to parameterize a query and instantiate it with different values instead of re-deploying the entire statement. I’ll demonstrate how to do this in StreamInsight 2.1 and combine it with a method of using subjects for dynamic query composition in a mini-series of (at least) two blog articles. Let’s start with something really simple: I want to deploy a windowed aggregate to a StreamInsight server, and later use it with different window sizes. The LINQ statement for such an aggregate is very straightforward and familiar: var result = from win in stream.TumblingWindow(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5)) select win.Avg(e => e.Value); Obviously, we had to use an existing input stream object as well as a concrete TimeSpan value. If we want to be able to re-use this construct, we can define it as a IQStreamable: var avg = myApp .DefineStreamable((IQStreamable<SourcePayload> s, TimeSpan w) => from win in s.TumblingWindow(w) select win.Avg(e => e.Value)); The DefineStreamable API lets us define a function, in our case from a IQStreamable (the input stream) and a TimeSpan (the window length) to an IQStreamable (the result). We can then use it like a function, with the input stream and the window length as parameters: var result = avg(stream, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5)); Nice, but you might ask: what does this save me, except from writing my own extension method? Well, in addition to defining the IQStreamable function, you can actually deploy it to the server, to make it re-usable by another process! When we deploy an artifact in V2.1, we give it a name: var avg = myApp .DefineStreamable((IQStreamable<SourcePayload> s, TimeSpan w) => from win in s.TumblingWindow(w) select win.Avg(e => e.Value)) .Deploy("AverageQuery"); When connected to the same server, we can now use that name to retrieve the IQStreamable and use it with our own parameters: var averageQuery = myApp .GetStreamable<IQStreamable<SourcePayload>, TimeSpan, double>("AverageQuery"); var result = averageQuery(stream, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5)); Convenient, isn’t it? Keep in mind that, even though the function “AverageQuery” is deployed to the server, its logic will still be instantiated into each process when the process is created. The advantage here is being able to deploy that function, so another client who wants to use it doesn’t need to ask the author for the code or assembly, but just needs to know the name of deployed entity. A few words on the function signature of GetStreamable: the last type parameter (here: double) is the payload type of the result, not the actual result stream’s type itself. The returned object is a function from IQStreamable<SourcePayload> and TimeSpan to IQStreamable<double>. In the next article we will integrate this usage of IQStreamables with Subjects in StreamInsight, so stay tuned! Regards, The StreamInsight Team

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SharePoint Content and Site Editing Tips

- by Bil Simser

A few content management and site editing tips for power users on this bacon flavoured unicorn morning. The theme here is keep it clean!Write "friendly" email addressesRemember it's human beings reading your content. So seeing something like "If you have questions please send an email to [email protected]" breaks up the readiblity. Instead just do the simple steps of writing the content in plain English and going back, highlighting the name and insert a link (note: you might have to prefix the link with mailto:[email protected]). It makes for a friendlier looking page and hides the ugliness that are sometimes in email addresses.Use friendly column and list namesThis is a big pet peeve of mine. When you first create a column or list with spaces the internal name is changed. The display name might be "My Amazing List of Animals with Large Testicles" but the internal (and link) name becomes "My_x00x20_Amazing_x00x20_List_x00x20_of_x00x20_Animals_x00x20_with_x00x20_Large_x00x20_Testicles". What's worse is if you create a publishing page named "This Website is Fueled By a Dolphin's Spleen". Not only is it incorrect grammar, but the apostrophe wreaks havoc on both the internal name for the list (with lots of crazy hex codes) as well as the hyperlink (where everything is uuencoded). Instead create the list with a distinct and compact name then go back and change it to whatever you want. The end result is a better formed name that you can both script and access in code easier.Keep your Views CleanWhen you add a column to a list or create a new list the default is to add it to the default view. Do everyone a favour and don't check this box! The default view of a list should be something similar to the Title field and nothing else. Keep it clean. If you want to set a defalt view that's different, go back and create one with all the fields and filtering and sorting columns you want and set it as default. It's a good idea to keep the original AllItems.aspx (note the lack of space in the filename!) easy and unfiltered. It's also a good idea to keep your column count down in views. Don't let every column be added by default and don't add every column just because you can. Create separate views for distinct responsibilities and try to keep the number of columns down to a single screen to prevent horizontal scrolling.Simple NavigationThe Quick Launch is a great tool for navigating around your site but don't use the default of adding all lists to it. Uncheck that box and keep navigation simple. Create custom groupings that make sense so if you don't have a site with "Documents and Lists" but "Reports and Notices" makes more sense then do it. Also hide internal lists from the Quick Launch. For example, if most users don't need to see all the lookup tables you might have on a site don't show them. You can use audience filtering on the Quick Launch if you want to hide admin items from non-admin users so consider that as an option.Enjoy!

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Why Apple’s New SDK Limitation is So Offensive

- by TStewartDev

I am not an Apple fanboy, nor have I ever been. However, I have owned a Mac, an iPod, and an iPhone in my lifetime, and for more than a decade, I have defended Apple against the untruths that the haters so enjoy spewing. I encouraged my wife to buy a MacBook when she needed a new laptop two years ago, and I often recommend them to my friends and relatives. I have proudly and happily used my first generation iPhone for nearly three years. Now, for the first time in well over ten years, I find myself ready to swear off Apple and encourage everyone I know to do the same. I was disappointed when Apple wouldn't allow native apps, but I still bought the iPhone. I've stomached their ambiguous app approval process even though it's apparent that Steve may just reject your app because he doesn't like you or feels threatened by you (I'm still lamenting the rejection of the Google Voice app). But, as a developer, I can no longer tolerate Apple's terms and the kind of totalitarian control they indicate Apple wants. In case you are not already familiar, Apple has dictated in their OS 4.0 SDK license agreement (the now infamous Section 3.3.1) that all apps developed for the iPhone must be coded in C, C++, or Objective C, and moreover, that using any cross-compiling platforms is a violation of the agreement. For those of you who aren't developers, let me try to illustrate why this angers those of us who are. Imagine you're a professional writer. You've had articles published in some journals and magazines, and you've got a couple popular books out there, too. You've got an idea for a new book, and so you take it to your publisher. Your publisher agrees that it's a good idea. "But," says the publisher, "we want to hold our books to a tighter standard so that our readers get the experience we want them to have. Therefore, from now on, all our writers may only use words from this list of the 10,000 most common English words. Furthermore, if you cite any other works or quote anyone, they must comply with that same list, or you'll have to rewrite the entire work as well in case our readers want to look up your citation." What do you do? If your work is a children's book, this probably isn't a big deal to you. If it's an autobiography, textbook, or even a novel, though, you're going to have a lot of trouble describing your content with only common words. It's going to take you longer to complete your book, too, since you'll be looking up less common words frequently to see if you can use them. You could always go to another publisher, but this one has the best ability to distribute your book. The next largest distributor can only do a quarter as much. You could abandon the project altogether, but then everyone loses. Isn't this a silly scenario? Who would put such a limitation on writers? Yet this is very much what Apple is doing. They are using their dominant position in the market to coerce developers to write their apps exclusively for the iPhone OS by making it too expensive to write for multiple platforms. It is at least a threefold attack, striking at Adobe who is set to release a compiler that lets Flash source be compiled to iPhone binaries; striking at Google whose Android platform stands the best chance at the moment of providing serious competition to the iPhone; and reinforcing their own strong position by keeping popular apps exclusively to iPhone. And while developers are already very upset about this, the sad fact is that most of us will cave and give in to Apple because consumers don't know any better. They will continue to buy Apple's toy forcing developers to play Apple's maniacal game in order to make any money, at least until Steve Jobs decides he doesn't like them or he intends to release a competing application (bye-bye OpenFeint). Apple has been kept in check on the desktop front by a very dominant Microsoft, but I'm afraid that their success with iPods, iTunes, and iPhones has created a monster that we may have to bear until it is slain by an anti-trust suit or dies with the retirement of Steve Jobs.

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Dual monitor not working completely in 12.10 after upgrade

- by Mark Baldridge

At 12.04, dual monitors worked perfectly. After upgrading to 12.10, the primary monitor works, the second monitor only partly works. I am sure there is some difference between the releases that I have missed setting properly. System settings - Displays show both correctly as Acer 22" monitors at 1680x1050 (16:10). An icon on monitor 2 is present, but elongated; almost an artifact, since other icons on the primary screen are absent, but this one icon is there on th second monitor. Selecting the icons on both screens exist. Painting is weird on monitor 2. Launcher exists and works on both screens, but even with sticky edges off, the cursor stops at the left edge of monitor 2. Clicking on text editor on screen 2 launcer will launch gedit there. If I drag it, it leaves a trail of after images like repaint is failing. If I drive the cursor on the launcher, the help tags like "LibreOffice Writer" appear, but stay on screen unless I drag the active gedit window over them. Then part of the help bubbles are overwritten, leaving behind after images of the gedit window on screen. What is really fascinating is that the System settings - Displays is now ignoring monitor selection, after allowing it earlier. Just before this, the help popup which said "Select a monitor to change its properties; drag to rearrange its placement" actually let me do that. Maybe a trick of where I grab the edge of the monitor in the Displays setting. I just found a working handle. When I drag monitor 1 to the right of monitor 2, "Apply" and confirm, both monitors work normally (although the right monitor lets the cursor slide off the right edge onto the left edge of monitor 1 - which sounds correct). Painting of windows does not leave an after image. However, success is only temporary. The setting survives the reboot, but painting on the left monitor, now monitor 2, now replicates the issues from before. The after image of the gedit window and the small window for "Are you sure you want to close all programs and restart the computer?" are still on monitor 2 (on the left now), even though they are not real windows, nor do they have processes behind them. Curiously, in Displays, the "green" monitor on the left in the display window is matched by the right monitor color in the monitor upper left corner. Probably makes sense as the one on the right is now monitor 1. If I repeat the "drag the left monitor to the right of the right monitor on the "Displays" window, things are oriented properly, with no display artifacts as I drag windows around either screen. Also the description bubbles that pop up are overwritten on both screens, so none of those artifacts either. This goodness does not survive a reboot, however. Have not tried logging out and back in. All of this after positing that the motherboard VGA and HDMI ports could have been the issue. So, I installed an e-GeForce 7600 GT Dual DVI (I know the web thinks it is not DVI, but VGA, but the connectors are DVI). No change to the weird behavior. The good parts continue to work, the weirdness also works, and swapping monitor positions seems to cure the issue. So, is there a setting I have missed? Given "swapping" monitor 1 and 2 on the System Settings... - Displays makes it work, just not across boot, I suspect so.

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Dynamically Changing the Display Names of Menus and Popups

- by Geertjan

Very interesting thing and handy to know when needed is the fact that "menuText" and "popupText" (from org.openide.awt.ActionRegistration) can be changed dynamically, via "putValue" as shown below for "popupText". The Action class, in this case, needs to be eager, hence you won't receive the object of interest via the constructor, but you can easily use the global Lookup for that purpose instead, as also shown below. import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.text.DateFormat; import java.text.SimpleDateFormat; import javax.swing.AbstractAction; import org.netbeans.api.project.Project; import org.netbeans.api.project.ProjectInformation; import org.netbeans.api.project.ProjectUtils; import org.openide.awt.ActionID; import org.openide.awt.ActionReference; import org.openide.awt.ActionRegistration; import org.openide.util.Utilities; @ActionID( category = "Project", id = "org.ptt.DemoProjectAction") @ActionRegistration( lazy = false, displayName = "NOT-USED") @ActionReference(path = "Projects/Actions", position = 0) public final class DemoProjectAction extends AbstractAction{ private final ProjectInformation context; public DemoProjectAction() { putValue("popupText", "Select Me To See Current Time!"); context = ProjectUtils.getInformation( Utilities.actionsGlobalContext().lookup(Project.class)); } @Override public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) { refresh(); } protected void refresh() { DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm:ss"); String formatted = formatter.format(System.currentTimeMillis()); putValue("popupText", "Time: " + formatted + " (" + context.getDisplayName() +")"); } } Now, let's do something semi useful and display, in the popup, which is available when you right-click a project, the time since the last change was made anywhere in the project, i.e., we can listen recursively to any changes done within a project and then update the popup with the newly acquired information, dynamically: import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.text.DateFormat; import java.text.SimpleDateFormat; import javax.swing.AbstractAction; import org.netbeans.api.project.Project; import org.netbeans.api.project.ProjectUtils; import org.openide.awt.ActionID; import org.openide.awt.ActionReference; import org.openide.awt.ActionRegistration; import org.openide.filesystems.FileAttributeEvent; import org.openide.filesystems.FileChangeListener; import org.openide.filesystems.FileEvent; import org.openide.filesystems.FileRenameEvent; import org.openide.util.Utilities; @ActionID( category = "Project", id = "org.ptt.TrackProjectTimerAction") @ActionRegistration( lazy = false, displayName = "NOT-USED") @ActionReference( path = "Projects/Actions", position = 0) public final class TrackProjectTimerAction extends AbstractAction implements FileChangeListener { private final Project context; private Long startTime; private Long changedTime; private DateFormat formatter; public TrackProjectTimerAction() { putValue("popupText", "Enable project time tracker"); this.formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm:ss"); context = Utilities.actionsGlobalContext().lookup(Project.class); context.getProjectDirectory().addRecursiveListener(this); } @Override public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) { startTimer(); } protected void startTimer() { startTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); String formattedStartTime = formatter.format(startTime); putValue("popupText", "Timer started: " + formattedStartTime + " (" + ProjectUtils.getInformation(context).getDisplayName() + ")"); } @Override public void fileChanged(FileEvent fe) { changedTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("mm:ss"); String formattedLapse = formatter.format(changedTime - startTime); putValue("popupText", "Time since last change: " + formattedLapse + " (" + ProjectUtils.getInformation(context).getDisplayName() + ")"); startTime = changedTime; } @Override public void fileFolderCreated(FileEvent fe) {} @Override public void fileDataCreated(FileEvent fe) {} @Override public void fileDeleted(FileEvent fe) {} @Override public void fileRenamed(FileRenameEvent fre) {} @Override public void fileAttributeChanged(FileAttributeEvent fae) {} }

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Squibbly: LibreOffice Integration Framework for the Java Desktop

- by Geertjan

Squibbly is a new framework for Java desktop applications that need to integrate with LibreOffice, or more generally, need office features as part of a Java desktop solution that could include, for example, JavaFX components. Here's what it looks like, right now, on Ubuntu 13.04: Why is the framework called Squibbly? Because I needed a unique-ish name, because "squibble" sounds a bit like "scribble" (which is what one does with text documents, etc), and because of the many absurd definitions in the Urban Dictionary for the apparently real word "squibble", e.g., "A name for someone who is squibblish in nature." And, another e.g., "A squibble is a small squabble. A squabble is a little skirmish." But the real reason is the first definition (and definitely not the fourth definition): "Taking a small portion of another persons something, such as a small hit off of a pipe, a bite of food, a sip of a drink, or drag of a cigarette." In other words, I took (or "squibbled") a small portion of LibreOffice, i.e., OfficeBean, and integrated it into a NetBeans Platform application. Now anyone can add new features to it, to do anything they need, such as create a legislative software system as Propylon has done with their own solution on the NetBeans Platform: For me, the starting point was Chuk Munn Lee's similar solution from some years ago. However, he uses reflection a lot in that solution, because he didn't want to bundle the related JARs with the application. I understand that benefit but I find it even more beneficial to not need to require the user to specify the location of the LibreOffice location, since all the necessary JARs and native libraries (currently 32-bit Linux only, by the way) are bundled with the application. Plus, hundreds of lines of reflection code, as in Chuk's solution, is not fun to work with at all. Switching between applications is done like this: It's a work in progress, a proof of concept only. Just the result of a few hours of work to get the basic integration to work. Several problems remain, some of them potentially unsolvable, starting with these, but others will be added here as I identify them: Window management problems. I'd like to let the user have multiple LibreOffice applications and documents open at the same time, each in a new TopComponent. However, I haven't figured out how to do that. Right now, each application is opened into the same TopComponent, replacing the currently open application. I don't know the OfficeBean API well enough, e.g., should a single OfficeBean be shared among multiple TopComponents or should each of them have their own instance of it? Focus problems. When putting the application behind other applications and then switching back to the application, typing text becomes impossible. When closing a TopComponent and reopening it, the content is lost completely. Somehow the loss of focus, and then the return of focus, disables something. No idea how to fix that. The project is checked into this location, which isn't public yet, so you can't access it yet. Once it's publicly available, it would be great to get some code contributions and tweaks, etc. https://java.net/projects/squibbly Here's the source structure, showing especially how the OfficeBean JARs and native libraries (currently for Linux 32-bit only) fit in: Ultimately, would be cool to integrate or share code with http://joeffice.com!

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Consumer Oriented Search In Oracle Endeca Information Discovery - Part 2

- by Bob Zurek

As discussed in my last blog posting on this topic, Information Discovery, a core capability of the Oracle Endeca Information Discovery solution enables businesses to search, discover and navigate through a wide variety of big data including structured, unstructured and semi-structured data. With search as a core advanced capabilities of our product it is important to understand some of the key differences and capabilities in the underlying data store of Oracle Endeca Information Discovery and that is our Endeca Server. In the last post on this subject, we talked about Exploratory Search capabilities along with support for cascading relevance. Additional search capabilities in the Endeca Server, which differentiate from simple keyword based "search boxes" in other Information Discovery products also include: The Endeca Server Supports Set Search. The Endeca Server is organized around set retrieval, which means that it looks at groups of results (all the documents that match a search), as well as the relationship of each individual result to the set. Other approaches only compute the relevance of a document by comparing the document to the search query – not by comparing the document to all the others. For example, a search for “U.S.” in another approach might match to the title of a document and get a high ranking. But what if it were a collection of government documents in which “U.S.” appeared in many titles, making that clue less meaningful? A set analysis would reveal this and be used to adjust relevance accordingly. The Endeca Server Supports Second-Order Relvance. Unlike simple search interfaces in traditional BI tools, which provide limited relevance ranking, such as a list of results based on key word matching, Endeca enables users to determine the most salient terms to divide up the result. Determining this second-order relevance is the key to providing effective guidance. Support for Queries and Filters. Search is the most common query type, but hardly complete, and users need to express a wide range of queries. Oracle Endeca Information Discovery also includes navigation, interactive visualizations, analytics, range filters, geospatial filters, and other query types that are more commonly associated with BI tools. Unlike other approaches, these queries operate across structured, semi-structured and unstructured content stored in the Endeca Server. Furthermore, this set is easily extensible because the core engine allows for pluggable features to be added. Like a search engine, queries are answered with a results list, ranked to put the most likely matches first. Unlike “black box” relevance solutions, which generalize one strategy for everyone, we believe that optimal relevance strategies vary across domains. Therefore, it provides line-of-business owners with a set of relevance modules that let them tune the best results based on their content. The Endeca Server query result sets are summarized, which gives users guidance on how to refine and explore further. Summaries include Guided Navigation® (a form of faceted search), maps, charts, graphs, tag clouds, concept clusters, and clarification dialogs. Users don’t explicitly ask for these summaries; Oracle Endeca Information Discovery analytic applications provide the right ones, based on configurable controls and rules. For example, the analytic application might guide a procurement agent filtering for in-stock parts by visualizing the results on a map and calculating their average fulfillment time. Furthermore, the user can interact with summaries and filters without resorting to writing complex SQL queries. The user can simply just click to add filters. Within Oracle Endeca Information Discovery, all parts of the summaries are clickable and searchable. We are living in a search driven society where business users really seem to enjoy entering information into a search box. We do this everyday as consumers and therefore, we have gotten used to looking for that box. However, the key to getting the right results is to guide that user in a way that provides additional Discovery, beyond what they may have anticipated. This is why these important and advanced features of search inside the Endeca Server have been so important. They have helped to guide our great customers to success.

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There are 2 jobs available - which one sounds better all round [closed]

- by Steve Gates

I am currently employed at a company where we scrape by each year breaking even, sometimes having a little profit. The development environment is very relaxed and we have a laugh. My colleagues are not interested in improving their knowledge unless they have to, so trying to get them to adopt things like TDD is a non-starter. My development manager is stuck in .Net 2 land and refuses to use things like LINQ. He over complicates architecture and writes very unreadable code, heres an example SortedList<int,<SortedList<int,SortedList<int, MyClass>>>> The MD of the company has no drive and lets the one sales guy bring in the contracts. We are not busy all the time and this allows me time to look at new technology and learn. In terms of using things like TDD, my development manager has no problem with it and can kind of see the purpose of it, he just wont use it himself. This means I am alone in learning new things and am often resorting to StackOverflow to make sure I get things right. The company has a lot of flexibility, I can work from home if needs be and when my daughter was born they let me work from home 1 day a week however they expect this flexibility in return often asking me to travel occasionally on a Friday afternoon for the following week. Sometimes its abroad. We are also pretty much on call 24/5 as we have engineers in various countries. Also we have no testers so most of the testing is done by us developers and some testing by engineers. Either way no-one likes testing! I have been offered a role at a company I worked at 5 years ago. They were quite Victorian in their working practices but it appears to have relaxed now although I suspect still reasonably formal. There is a new team of developers I don't know and they are about to move to new offices. The team lead is a guy that was there when I was and I get the impression he takes his role seriously and likes his formal procedures and documentation. I think some of the Victorian practices may have rubbed off on him. However he did say if things crop up then as long as I can trust the person they can work at home although he prefers people in the office. The team uses SCRUM, TDD and SOLID design principles so they are quite up to date in technology. They are reasonably Microsoft focused. It appears the Technical Director might be the R&D man and research new technology on his own not allowing developers to play with new technology. He possibly might be a super developer and makes all the decisions that no can argue with. They are currently moving to Entity Framework away from NHibernate based on issues that their queries seem to fail sometimes and they feel NHibernate is stagnant. They have analysts and a QA team. The MD is focused and they are an expanding company making profit each year. I'm not sure what the team morale is and whether they have a laugh. When I had a tour around the office they were there in dead silence. I'm really unsure which role is the best for me and going with my gut instinct is useless as I'm not sure what my gut is telling me. Based on the information above which role would you choose and why?

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“Apparently, you signed a software services agreement without fully understanding it.”

- by Dave Ballantyne

I am not a lawyer. Let me say that again, I am not a lawyer. Todays Dilbert has prompted me to post about my recent experience with SqlServer licensing. I'm in the technical realm and rarely have much to do with purchasing and licensing. I say “I need” , budget realities will state weather I actually get. However, I do keep my ear to the ground and due to my community involvement, I know, or at least have an understanding of, some licensing restrictions. Due to a misunderstanding, Microsoft Licensing stated that we needed licenses for our standby servers. I knew that that was not the case, and a quick tweet confirmed this. So after composing an email stating exactly what the machines in question were used for ie Log shipped to and used in a disaster recover scenario only, and posting several Technet articles to back this up, we saved 2 enterprise edition licences, a not inconsiderable cost. However during this discussion, I was made aware of another ‘legalese’ document that could completely override the referenced articles, and anything I knew, or thought i knew, about SqlServer licensing. Personally, I had no knowledge of this. The “Purchase Use Rights” agreement would appear to be the volume licensing equivalent of the “End User License Agreement” , click throughs we all know and ignore. Here is a direct quote from Microsoft licensing, when asked for clarification. “Thanks for your email. Just to give some background on the Product Use Rights (PUR), licenses acquired through volume licensing are bound by the most recent PUR at the time of license acquisition. The link for the current PUR and PUR archive is http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/product-licensing.aspx. Further to this, products acquired through boxed product or pre-installed on hardware (OEM) are bound by the End User License Agreement (EULA). The PUR will explain limitations, license requirements and rulings on areas like multiplexing, virtualization, processor licensing, etc. When an article will appear on a Microsoft site or blog describing the licensing of a product, it will be using the PUR as a base. Due to the writing style or language used by the person writing areas of the website or technical blogs, the PUR is what you should use as a rule and not any of the other media. The PUR is updated quarterly and will reference every product available at that time working on the latest version unless otherwise stated. The crux of this is that the PUR is written after extensive discussions between the different branches of Microsoft (legal, technical, etc) and the wording is then approved. This is not always the case for some pages explaining licensing as they are merely intended to advise and not subject to the intense scrutiny as the PUR.” So, exactly what does that mean ? My take : This is a living document, “updated quarterly” , though presumably this could be done on a whim and a fancy. It could state , you are only licensed if ,that during install you stand in a corner juggling and that photographic evidence is required. A plainly ridiculous demand but, what else could it override or new requirements could it state that change your existing understanding of the product or your legal usage of it. As i say, im not a lawyer, but are you checking the PURA prior to purchase ?

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Getting Started with Cloud Computing

- by juanlarios

You’ve likely heard about how Office 365 and Windows Intune are great applications to get you started with Cloud Computing. Many of you emailed me asking for more info on what Cloud Computing is, including the distinction between "Public Cloud" and "Private Cloud". I want to address these questions and help you get started. Let's begin with a brief set of definitions and some places to find more info; however, an excellent place where you can always learn more about Cloud Computing is the Microsoft Virtual Academy. Public Cloud computing means that the infrastructure to run and manage the applications users are taking advantage of is run by someone else and not you. In other words, you do not buy the hardware or software to run your email or other services being used in your organization – that is done by someone else. Users simply connect to these services from their computers and you pay a monthly subscription fee for each user that is taking advantage of the service. Examples of Public Cloud services include Office 365, Windows Intune, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Hotmail, and others. Private Cloud computing generally means that the hardware and software to run services used by your organization is run on your premises, with the ability for business groups to self-provision the services they need based on rules established by the IT department. Generally, Private Cloud implementations today are found in larger organizations but they are also viable for small and medium-sized businesses since they generally allow an automation of services and reduction in IT workloads when properly implemented. Having the right management tools, like System Center 2012, to implement and operate Private Cloud is important in order to be successful. So – how do you get started? The first step is to determine what makes the most sense to your organization. The nice thing is that you do not need to pick Public or Private Cloud – you can use elements of both where it makes sense for your business – the choice is yours. When you are ready to try and purchase Public Cloud technologies, the Microsoft Volume Licensing web site is a good place to find links to each of the online services. In particular, if you are interested in a trial for each service, you can visit the following pages: Office 365, CRM Online, Windows Intune, and Windows Azure. For Private Cloud technologies, start with some of the courses on Microsoft Virtual Academy and then download and install the Microsoft Private Cloud technologies including Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and System Center 2012 in your own environment and take it for a spin. Also, keep up to date with the Canadian IT Pro blog to learn about events Microsoft is delivering such as the IT Virtualization Boot Camps and more to get you started with these technologies hands on. Finally, I want to ask for your help to allow the team at Microsoft to continue to provide you what you need. Twice a year through something we call "The Global Relationship Study" – they reach out and contact you to see how they're doing and what Microsoft could do better. If you get an email from "Microsoft Feedback" with the subject line "Help Microsoft Focus on Customers and Partners" between March 5th and April 13th, please take a little time to tell them what you think. Cloud Computing Resources: Microsoft Server and Cloud Computing site – information on Microsoft's overall cloud strategy and products. Microsoft Virtual Academy – for free online training to help improve your IT skillset. Office 365 Trial/Info page – get more information or try it out for yourself. Office 365 Videos – see how businesses like yours have used Office 365 to transition to the cloud. Windows Intune Trial/Info – get more information or try it out for yourself. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online page – information on trying and licensing Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. Additional Resources You May Find Useful: Springboard Series Your destination for technical resources, free tools and expert guidance to ease the deployment and management of your Windows-based client infrastructure. TechNet Evaluation Center Try some of our latest Microsoft products for free, Like System Center 2012 Pre-Release Products, and evaluate them before you buy. AlignIT Manager Tech Talk Series A monthly streamed video series with a range of topics for both infrastructure and development managers. Ask questions and participate real-time or watch the on-demand recording. Tech·Days Online Discover what's next in technology and innovation with Tech·Days session recordings, hands-on labs and Tech·Days TV.

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Red Meat's Music is Rare - and Well Done

- by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team

By Karen Shamban The blogger has questions; San Francisco-based country band Red Meat has answers. Although we forgot to ask how they got their band name, dang it. Read on and enjoy the honesty and insight. Q. What do you like best about performing in front of a live audience?A. Probably just having fun and entertaining the audience. We've been together for almost two decades, and in that time we've played for crowds of five people, and for crowds of more than 15,000. Both are equally important to us, and just as fun. We turn Jill and Smelley loose on the between-songs repartee, and let the songs shine through. On the best night, we feed on the audience's love and vice-versa. It's emotional vampirism of the best sort. [Blogger's note: now that whole "red meat" thing is starting to make sense ...] Q. Do you prefer smaller, intimate venues or larger, louder ones? Why?A. We love both. Whether it's a chance to connect with a small room or huge audience, we always try to hit 'em between the eyes! Q. What about your fans surprises you?A. Since we've been together for so long, we're pretty much on our third generation of fans now. We're excited that the Bakersfield sound has that same effect on the new, younger fans as it did on the punk rockers that we played to 20 years ago. And we still see them at our shows too! Q. What about your live act surprises your fans?A. For people who haven't seen Red Meat before, they may be dragged to a show thinking they don't like country music. But they're surprised to hear it done in a way that excites them so much. We get a lot of first-timers coming up to us after a performance and asking, "Wait, THAT'S what country music can sound like?" Q. There are going to be a lot of technical people (you could call them geeks) in the Oracle crowd - what are they going to love about your performance?A. Just what everyone loves about a Red Meat show - the chance to drink beer, dance, get rowdy, and have a great time. Q. Have you been on tour recently? If so, what do you like about touring, and what do you dislike?A. Actually, we're going to be coming off the road immediately into the Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival, having just played some Texas dates. On tour, we love playing for fans who don't get to see us as often as our California fans do. And food. Most of our conversations in the van center around food. Q. Ever think about playing another kind of music? If so, what, and why?A. Our tastes and influences in the band run all over the place. Obviously we love the Bakersfield artists - Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam - but we love other types of roots music as well, along with the Beatles, NRBQ, MC5, punk/new wave, and countless bar bands that we've had the privilege of playing with through the years. But as far as playing a different kind of music as Red Meat? Nah. We love what we're doing. Q. What are the top three things people should know about your music?A1. Country music, done right, has unlimited soul.A2. Red Meat is a modern band, playing original material, with a great debt to the Bakersfield sound of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.A3. It's FUN. More details on the Festival and the band: Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival Red Meat

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GameStateManagement and inputs not being recognized

- by Dave Voyles

EDIT: I've removed a bit of code from the input class to make this more readable, and updated my StartScreen class, which is now at the bottom. I have the same issues though, but they are explained in my comments on the bottom of this page. It won't let me paste my additional code here (the format comes out crazy), so I've linked to pastebin with the code pastebin I've been trying to implement the MS provided GameStateManagement sample with my game, but it has proven a bit difficult. Really, I'm using Oneksoft's Starter Kit, which uses the MS provided sample, so they are identical, except for my splash screen. I'm able to get the splash screen to launch, where it informs the player to press A to advance the screen, but this doesn't seem to accept any of my inputs. I’ve also added Console.Writeline(“Pressing A”) under the IsMenuPressed method in Input.cs to verify that it is getting called, but for some reason it is constantly spamming my log, rather than just appearing each time I press it. Not sure why this is happening. I have a bit too much code to post it all here, so I’ve attached a link to my .rar with my classes, but I’ll also leave a bit here which I thinkmay be applicable. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6ek4uru2jc2ch0k/JTeBWN_3PQ What do you guys think the issue is? namespace Pong { public class Input { public const int MaxInputs = 4; public readonly KeyboardState[] CurrentKeyboardState; public readonly GamePadState[] CurrentGamePadState; public KeyboardState[] LastKeyboardState; public GamePadState[] LastGamePadState; public readonly bool[] GamePadWasConnected; public Input() { // Get input state CurrentKeyboardState = new KeyboardState[MaxInputs]; CurrentGamePadState = new GamePadState[MaxInputs]; // Preserving last states to check for isKeyUp events LastKeyboardState = CurrentKeyboardState; LastGamePadState = CurrentGamePadState; } /// <summary> /// Checks for a "menu select" input action. /// The controllingPlayer parameter specifies which player to read input for. /// If this is null, it will accept input from any player. When the action /// is detected, the output playerIndex reports which player pressed it. /// </summary> public bool IsMenuSelect(PlayerIndex? controllingPlayer, out PlayerIndex playerIndex) { Console.WriteLine("Pressing A"); return IsNewKeyPress(Keys.Space, controllingPlayer, out playerIndex) || IsNewKeyPress(Keys.Enter, controllingPlayer, out playerIndex) || IsNewButtonPress(Buttons.A, controllingPlayer, out playerIndex) || IsNewButtonPress(Buttons.Start, controllingPlayer, out playerIndex); } /// <summary> /// Checks for a "menu cancel" input action. /// The controllingPlayer parameter specifies which player to read input for. /// If this is null, it will accept input from any player. When the action /// is detected, the output playerIndex reports which player pressed it. /// </summary> public bool IsMenuCancel(PlayerIndex? controllingPlayer, out PlayerIndex playerIndex) { return IsNewKeyPress(Keys.Escape, controllingPlayer, out playerIndex) || IsNewButtonPress(Buttons.B, controllingPlayer, out playerIndex) || IsNewButtonPress(Buttons.Back, controllingPlayer, out playerIndex); }

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Obfuscation is not a panacea

- by simonc

So, you want to obfuscate your .NET application. My question to you is: Why? What are your aims when your obfuscate your application? To protect your IP & algorithms? Prevent crackers from breaking your licensing? Your boss says you need to? To give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside? Obfuscating code correctly can be tricky, it can break your app if applied incorrectly, it can cause problems down the line. Let me be clear - there are some very good reasons why you would want to obfuscate your .NET application. However, you shouldn't be obfuscating for the sake of obfuscating. Security through Obfuscation? Once your application has been installed on a user’s computer, you no longer control it. If they do not want to pay for your application, then nothing can stop them from cracking it, even if the time cost to them is much greater than the cost of actually paying for it. Some people will not pay for software, even if it takes them a month to crack a $30 app. And once it is cracked, there is nothing stopping them from putting the result up on the internet. There should be nothing suprising about this; there is no software protection available for general-purpose computers that cannot be cracked by a sufficiently determined attacker. Only by completely controlling the entire stack – software, hardware, and the internet connection, can you have even a chance to be uncrackable. And even then, someone somewhere will still have a go, and probably succeed. Even high-end cryptoprocessors have known vulnerabilities that can be exploited by someone with a scanning electron microscope and lots of free time. So, then, why use obfuscation? Well, the primary reason is to protect your IP. What obfuscation is very good at is hiding the overall structure of your program, so that it’s very hard to figure out what exactly the code is doing at any one time, what context it is running in, and how it fits in with the rest of the application; all of which you need to do to understand how the application operates. This is completely different to cracking an application, where you simply have to find a single toggle that determines whether the application is licensed or not, and flip it without the rest of the application noticing. However, again, there are limitations. An obfuscated application still has to run in the same way, and do the same thing, as the original unobfuscated application. This means that some of the protections applied to the obfuscated assembly have to be undone at runtime, else it would not run on the CLR and do the same thing. And, again, since we don’t control the environment the application is run on, there is nothing stopping a user from undoing those protections manually, and reversing some of the obfuscation. It’s a perpetual arms race, and it always will be. We have plenty of ideas lined about new protections, and the new protections added in SA 6.6 (method parent obfuscation and a new control flow obfuscation level) are specifically designed to be harder to reverse and reconstruct the original structure. So then, by all means, obfuscate your application if you want to protect the algorithms and what the application does. That’s what SmartAssembly is designed to do. But make sure you are clear what a .NET obfuscator can and cannot protect you against, and don’t expect your obfuscated application to be uncrackable. Someone, somewhere, will crack your application if they want to and they don’t have anything better to do with their time. The best we can do is dissuade the casual crackers and make it much more difficult for the serious ones. Cross posted from Simple Talk.

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JEP 124: Enhance the Certificate Revocation-Checking API

- by smullan

Revocation checking is the mechanism to determine the revocation status of a certificate. If it is revoked, it is considered invalid and should not be used. Currently as of JDK 7, the PKIX implementation of java.security.cert.CertPathValidator includes a revocation checking implementation that supports both OCSP and CRLs, the two main methods of checking revocation. However, there are very few options that allow you to configure the behavior. You can always implement your own revocation checker, but that's a lot of work. JEP 124 (Enhance the Certificate Revocation-Checking API) is one of the 11 new security features in JDK 8. This feature enhances the java.security.cert API to support various revocation settings such as best-effort checking, end-entity certificate checking, and mechanism-specific options and parameters. Let's describe each of these in more detail and show some examples. The features are provided through a new class named PKIXRevocationChecker. A PKIXRevocationChecker instance is returned by a PKIX CertPathValidator as follows: CertPathValidator cpv = CertPathValidator.getInstance("PKIX"); PKIXRevocationChecker prc = (PKIXRevocationChecker)cpv.getRevocationChecker(); You can now set various revocation options by calling different methods of the returned PKIXRevocationChecker object. For example, the best-effort option (called soft-fail) allows the revocation check to succeed if the status cannot be obtained due to a network connection failure or an overloaded server. It is enabled as follows: prc.setOptions(Enum.setOf(Option.SOFT_FAIL)); When the SOFT_FAIL option is specified, you can still obtain any exceptions that may have been thrown due to network issues. This can be useful if you want to log this information or treat it as a warning. You can obtain these exceptions by calling the getSoftFailExceptions method: List<CertPathValidatorException> exceptions = prc.getSoftFailExceptions(); Another new option called ONLY_END_ENTITY allows you to only check the revocation status of the end-entity certificate. This can improve performance, but you should be careful using this option, as the revocation status of CA certificates will not be checked. To set more than one option, simply specify them together, for example: prc.setOptions(Enum.setOf(Option.SOFT_FAIL, Option.ONLY_END_ENTITY)); By default, PKIXRevocationChecker will try to check the revocation status of a certificate using OCSP first, and then CRLs as a fallback. However, you can switch the order using the PREFER_CRLS option, or disable the fallback altogether using the NO_FALLBACK option. For example, here is how you would only use CRLs to check the revocation status: prc.setOptions(Enum.setOf(Option.PREFER_CRLS, Option.NO_FALLBACK)); There are also a number of other useful methods which allow you to specify various options such as the OCSP responder URI, the trusted OCSP responder certificate, and OCSP request extensions. However, one of the most useful features is the ability to specify a cached OCSP response with the setOCSPResponse method. This can be quite useful if the OCSPResponse has already been obtained, for example in a protocol that uses OCSP stapling. After you have set all of your preferred options, you must add the PKIXRevocationChecker to your PKIXParameters object as one of your custom CertPathCheckers before you validate the certificate chain, as follows: PKIXParameters params = new PKIXParameters(keystore); params.addCertPathChecker(prc); CertPathValidatorResult result = cpv.validate(path, params); Early access binaries of JDK 8 can be downloaded from http://jdk8.java.net/download.html

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Hopping/Tumbling Windows Could Introduce Latency.

This is a pre-article to one I am going to be writing on adjusting an event’s time and duration to satisfy business process requirements but it is one that I think is really useful when understanding the way that Hopping/Tumbling windows work within StreamInsight. A Tumbling window is just a special shortcut version of a Hopping window where the width of the window is equal to the size of the hop Here is the simplest and often used definition for a Hopping Window. You can find them all here public static CepWindowStream<CepWindow<TPayload>> HoppingWindow<TPayload>( this CepStream<TPayload> source, TimeSpan windowSize, TimeSpan hopSize, WindowInputPolicy inputPolicy, HoppingWindowOutputPolicy outputPolicy ) And here is the definition for a Tumbling Window public static CepWindowStream<CepWindow<TPayload>> TumblingWindow<TPayload>( this CepStream<TPayload> source, TimeSpan windowSize, WindowInputPolicy inputPolicy, HoppingWindowOutputPolicy outputPolicy ) These methods allow you to group events into windows of a temporal size. It is a really useful and simple feature in StreamInsight. One of the downsides though is that the windows cannot be flushed until an event in a following window occurs. This means that you will potentially never see some events or see them with a delay. Let me explain. Remember that a stream is a potentially unbounded sequence of events. Events in StreamInsight are given a StartTime. It is this StartTime that is used to calculate into which temporal window an event falls. It is best practice to assign a timestamp from the source system and not one from the system clock on the processing server. StreamInsight cannot know when a window is over. It cannot tell whether you have received all events in the window or whether some events have been delayed which means that StreamInsight cannot flush the stream for you. Imagine you have events with the following Timestamps 12:10:10 PM 12:10:20 PM 12:10:35 PM 12:10:45 PM 11:59:59 PM And imagine that you have defined a 1 minute Tumbling Window over this stream using the following syntax var HoppingStream = from shift in inputStream.TumblingWindow(TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1),HoppingWindowOutputPolicy.ClipToWindowEnd) select new WindowCountPayload { CountInWindow = (Int32)shift.Count() }; The events between 12:10:10 PM and 12:10:45 PM will not be seen until the event at 11:59:59 PM arrives. This could be a real problem if you need to react to windows promptly This can always be worked around by using a different design pattern but a lot of the examples I see assume there is a constant, very frequent stream of events resulting in windows always being flushed. Further examples of using windowing in StreamInsight can be found here

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