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• Windows Desktop Virtualization Gets Easier

  - by andrewbrust

  This past Thursday, Microsoft announced that Windows (7) Virtual PC (WVPC) and its XP Mode feature would no longer require hardware assisted virtualization (HAV).  That means any PC running Windows 7 Pro, or higher, can now run this software.  And that’s a great thing because, as I noted in a post almost five month ago, determining whether a given PC you might be planning to buy actually offers HAV can be extremely difficult.  That meant even dedicated, sophisticated PC users, with a budget for new hardware, might be blocked from using this technology.  And that was just plain silly. One of the features offered by WVPC, and utilized heavily by XP Mode, is the concept of virtual applications: apps within a guest VM that can actually run within the host’s desktop environment.  I find this feature so powerful that my February Redmond Review column entertained the notion of a future version of Windows that runs all applications in this manner. The elimination of the HAV requirement for XP Mode and WVPC was just one of many virtualization-related announcements Microsoft made on Thursday.  And, interestingly, most of the others were also desktop-related, rather than server-related.  This is a welcome change from the multi-year period in which Microsoft enhanced its server virtualization lineup (in Hyper-V) and let the desktop platform fester.  Microsoft now seems to understand desktop virtualization is in high-demand and strengthens the Windows franchise.  As I explained in the column, even cloud computing can have a desktop spin if desktop virtualization is part of the equation. One company that knows this well is Citrix, and a closer alliance between Microsoft and Citrix was one of the many announcements from Thursday.  In fact, there’s a whole Web site dedicated to the alliance at http://www.citrixandmicrosoft.com/. I’d love to see virtual applications and entire virtual desktops offered as Azure-branded services.  This could allow me to run, for example, the full Office client on a variety of desktops I might use, and for large organizations it could easily reduce the expense, burden and duration of the deployment cycle for new versions of Office.  Business Intelligence providers, including my own firm, twentysix New York, would find great relief in enabling their customers to run the newest version of Excel, with the latest BI capabilities, instead of having to wait the requisite two to three years it takes for many Fortune 500 customers to upgrade. Microsoft should do more, and faster.  WVPC still does not support 64-bit guest images, even on 64-bit hosts.  That needs to be fixed.  File access from the guest to the host needs to be improved (right now, it’s done through Terminal Services/Remote Desktop file sharing, and it’s slow) and VM load times need to be significantly reduced before virtualized apps can become the norm.  (I suppose the advance of solid state drive technology will help there.) I do think these improvements will come, because Microsoft is focused on the virtual desktop now.  And that’s a smart focus to have.

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• How to tell whether your programmers are under-performing?

  - by A Team Lead

  I am a team lead with 5+ developers. I have a developer (let's call him A) who is a good programmer, who writes good clean, easy to understand code. However he is somewhat difficult to manage, and sometimes I wonder whether he is really under-performing or not. Our company requires the developers to indicate the work progress in the bug tracker we use, not so much as to monitor the programmers but to let the stackholders know the progress. The thing is, A only updates a task progress when it is done ( maybe 3 weeks after it is first worked on) and this leaves everyone wondering what is going on in the middle of the development week. He wouldn't change his habit despite repeated probing. ( It's OK, developers hate paperwork, I do, too) Recent 2-3 months he on leave quite often due to various events-- either he is sick, or have to attend a lot of personal events etc. ( It's OK, bad things happen in a string. It's just a coincidence) We define sprints, or roadmaps for each month. And in the beginning of the sprint, we will discuss the amount of work each of the developers have to do in a sprint and the developers get to set the amount of time they need for each task. He usually won't be able to complete all of them. (It's OK, the developers are regularly missing deadlines not due to their fault). If only one or two of the above events happen, I won't feel that A is under-performing, but they all happen together. So I have the feeling that A is under-performing and maybe-- God forbid--- slacking off. This is just a feeling based on my years of experience as programmer. But I could be wrong. It is notoriously hard to measure the work of a programmer, given that not all two tasks are alike, and there lacks a standard objective to measure the commitment of a programmer to your company. It is downright impossible to tell whether the programmer is doing his job or slacking off. All you can do, is to trust them-- yeah, trusting and giving them autonomy is the best way for programmers to work, I know that, so don't start a lecture on why you need to trust your programmers, thank you every much-- but if they abuse your trust, can you know? My question is, how can you tell whether your programmers are under-performing? Surely there are experience team leads who know better than me on this? Outcome: I've a straight talk with him regarding my perception on his performance. He was indignant when I suggested that I had the feeling that he wasn't performing at his best level. He felt that this was a completely unfair feeling. I then replied that this was my feeling and I didn't know whether my feeling was right or not. He would have none of this and ended the discussion immediately. Before he left he said that he "would try to give more to the company" in a very cold tone. I was taken aback by his reaction. I am sure that I offended him in some ways. Not too sure whether that was the right thing to do for me to be so frank with him, though. Extra notes: I hate micromanaging. So all that we have for our software process is Sprint ( where tasks get prioritized and assigned, and at the end of the month, a review of the amount of work done). Developers would require to update the tasks as they go along everyday. There is no standup meeting, or anything of the sort. Mainly because we have the freedom to work from home and everyone cherishes this freedom. Although I am the one who sets the deadline, but the developers will provide the estimate for each tasks and I will decide-- based on the estimate-- the tasks that go into a particular sprint. If they can't finish the tasks at the end of the sprint, I will push them to the next. So theoretically one can just do only 1 or 2 tasks during the whole sprint and then push the remaining 99 tasks to the next sprint and still he will be fine as long as justifies this-- in the form of daily work progress updates

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• How can I attach a model to the bone of another model?

  - by kaykayman

  I am trying to attach one animated model to one of the bones of another animated model in an XNA game. I've found a few questions/forum posts/articles online which explain how to attach a weapon model to the bone of another model (which is analogous to what I'm trying to achieve), but they don't seem to work for me. So as an example: I want to attach Model A to a specific bone in Model B. Question 1. As I understand it, I need to calculate the transforms which are applied to the bone on Model B and apply these same transforms to every bone in Model A. Is this right? Question 2. This is my code for calculating the Transforms on a specific bone. private Matrix GetTransformPaths(ModelBone bone) { Matrix result = Matrix.Identity; while (bone != null) { result = result * bone.Transform; bone = bone.Parent; } return result; } The maths of Matrices is almost entirely lost on me, but my understanding is that the above will work its way up the bone structure to the root bone and my end result will be the transform of the original bone relative to the model. Is this right? Question 3. Assuming that this is correct I then expect that I should either apply this to each bone in Model A, or in my Draw() method: private void DrawModel(SceneModel model, GameTime gametime) { foreach (var component in model.Components) { Matrix[] transforms = new Matrix[component.Model.Bones.Count]; component.Model.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(transforms); Matrix parenttransform = Matrix.Identity; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(component.ParentBone)) parenttransform = GetTransformPaths(model.GetBone(component.ParentBone)); component.Player.Update(gametime.ElapsedGameTime, true, Matrix.Identity); Matrix[] bones = component.Player.GetSkinTransforms(); foreach (SkinnedEffect effect in mesh.Effects) { effect.SetBoneTransforms(bones); effect.EnableDefaultLighting(); effect.World = transforms[mesh.ParentBone.Index] * Matrix.CreateRotationY(MathHelper.ToRadians(model.Angle)) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(model.Position) * parenttransform; effect.View = getView(); effect.Projection = getProjection(); effect.Alpha = model.Opacity; } } mesh.Draw(); } I feel as though I have tried every conceivable way of incorporating the parenttransform value into the draw method. The above is my most recent attempt. Is what I'm trying to do correct? And if so, is there a reason it doesn't work? The above Draw method seems to transpose the models x/z position - but even at these wrong positions, they do not account for the animation of Model B at all. Note: As will be evident from the code my "model" is comprised of a list of "components". It is these "components" that correspond to a single "Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.Model"

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• Encrypting your SQL Server Passwords in Powershell

  - by laerte

  A couple of months ago, a friend of mine who is now bewitched by the seemingly supernatural abilities of Powershell (+1 for the team) asked me what, initially, appeared to be a trivial question: "Laerte, I do not have the luxury of being able to work with my SQL servers through Windows Authentication, and I need a way to automatically pass my username and password. How would you suggest I do this?" Given that I knew he, like me, was using the SQLPSX modules (an open source project created by Chad Miller; a fantastic library of reusable functions and PowerShell scripts), I merrily replied, "Simply pass the Username and Password in SQLPSX functions". He rather pointed responded: "My friend, I might as well pass: Username-'Me'-password 'NowEverybodyKnowsMyPassword'" As I do have the pleasure of working with Windows Authentication, I had not really thought this situation though yet (and thank goodness I only revealed my temporary ignorance to a friend, and the embarrassment was minimized). After discussing this puzzle with Chad Miller, he showed me some code for saving passwords on SQL Server Tables, which he had demo'd in his Powershell ETL session at Tampa SQL Saturday (and you can download the scripts from here). The solution seemed to be pretty much ready to go, so I showed it to my Authentication-impoverished friend, only to discover that we were only half-way there: "That's almost what I want, but the details need to be stored in my local txt file, together with the names of the servers that I'll actually use the Powershell scripts on. Something like: Server1,UserName,Password Server2,UserName,Password" I thought about it for just a few milliseconds (Ha! Of course I'm not telling you how long it actually took me, I have to do my own marketing, after all) and the solution was finally ready. First , we have to download Library-StringCripto (with many thanks to Steven Hystad), which is composed of two functions: One for encryption and other for decryption, both of which are used to manage the password. If you want to know more about the library, you can see more details in the help functions. Next, we have to create a txt file with your encrypted passwords:$ServerName = "Server1" $UserName = "Login1" $Password = "Senha1" $PasswordToEncrypt = "YourPassword" $UserNameEncrypt = Write-EncryptedString -inputstring $UserName -Password $PasswordToEncrypt $PasswordEncrypt = Write-EncryptedString -inputstring $Password -Password $PasswordToEncrypt "$($Servername),$($UserNameEncrypt),$($PasswordEncrypt)" | Out-File c:\temp\ServersSecurePassword.txt -Append $ServerName = "Server2" $UserName = "Login2" $Password = "senha2" $PasswordToEncrypt = "YourPassword" $UserNameEncrypt = Write-EncryptedString -inputstring $UserName -Password $PasswordToEncrypt $PasswordEncrypt = Write-EncryptedString -inputstring $Password -Password $PasswordToEncrypt "$($Servername),$($UserNameEncrypt),$($PasswordEncrypt)" | Out-File c:\temp\ ServersSecurePassword.txt -Append .And in the c:\temp\ServersSecurePassword.txt file which we've just created, you will find your Username and Password, all neatly encrypted. Let's take a look at what the txt looks like: .and in case you're wondering, Server names, Usernames and Passwords are all separated by commas. Decryption is actually much more simple:Read-EncryptedString -InputString $EncryptString -password "YourPassword" (Just remember that the Password you're trying to decrypt must be exactly the same as the encrypted phrase.) Finally, just to show you how smooth this solution is, let's say I want to use the Invoke-DBMaint function from SQLPSX to perform a checkdb on a system database: it's just a case of split, decrypt and be happy!Get-Content c:\temp\ServerSecurePassword.txt | foreach { [array] $Split = ($_).split(",") Invoke-DBMaint -server $($Split[0]) -UserName (Read-EncryptedString -InputString $Split[1] -password "YourPassword" ) -Password (Read-EncryptedString -InputString $Split[2] -password "YourPassword" ) -Databases "SYSTEM" -Action "CHECK_DB" -ReportOn c:\Temp } This is why I love Powershell.

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• Calling functions from different classes

  - by A Ron Hubbard Clevenger

  I'm writing a program and I'm supposed to check and see if a certain object is in the list before I call it. I set up the contains() method which is supposed to use the equals() method of the Comparable interface I implemented on my Golfer class but it doesn't seem to call it (I put print statements in to check). I can't seem to figure out whats wrong with the code, the ArrayUnsortedList class I'm using to go through the list even uses the correct toString() method I defined in my Golfer class but for some reason it won't use the equals() method I implemented. //From "GolfApp.java" public class GolfApp{ ListInterface <Golfer>golfers = new ArraySortedList<Golfer> (20); Golfer golfer; //..*snip*.. if(this.golfers.contains(new Golfer(name,score))) System.out.println("The list already contains this golfer"); else{ this.golfers.add(this.golfer = new Golfer(name,score)); System.out.println("This golfer is already on the list"); } //From "ArrayUnsortedList.java" protected void find(T target){ location = 0; found = false; while (location < numElements){ if (list[location].equals(target)) //Where I think the problem is { found = true; return; } else location++; } } public boolean contains(T element){ find(element); return found; } //From "Golfer.java" public class Golfer implements Comparable<Golfer>{ //..irrelavant code sniped..// public boolean equals(Golfer golfer) { String thisString = score + ":" + name; String otherString = golfer.getScore() + ":" + golfer.getName() ; System.out.println("Golfer.equals() has bee called"); return thisString.equalsIgnoreCase(otherString); } public String toString() { return (score + ":" + name); } My main problem seems to be getting the find function of the ArrayUnsortedList to call my equals function in the find() part of the List but I'm not exactly sure why, like I said when I have it printed out it works with the toString() method I implemented perfectly. I'm almost positive the problem has to do with the find() function in the ArraySortedList not calling my equals() method. I tried using some other functions that relied on the find() method and got the same results.

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• Determining cause of random latency and loading issues

  - by Sherwin Flight

  I'm not sure exactly what details to post in regards to my issue, because I'm not sure what is relevant. Prior to the end of September my websites all loaded quickly, in almost all cases. Loading time wasn't usually more than a few seconds. However, since the end of September I noticed a big increase in page loading times. In some cases pages were taking 30 seconds or more to load. I do have a remote monitoring service monitoring some of the sites as well, and the image below shows the response times over the past month. The response times shown at the beginning of this graph were what the usual response times were prior to this issue occurring. You can see that there has been a significant increase in response times from the beginning to the end of this graph. The thing is, the problem is not happening 100% of the time. If I click through the site, or even just keep refreshing the page, about 25% of the time the pages load quickly, the remaining 75% of the time they load slowly. Sometimes the pages take so long to load that they time out, and don't load at all. I have contacted my hosting provider, and they said things at their end was fine. I don't believe the problem is my home internet provider, because all other websites load without a problem. The server is located in Texas, USA. This also raises another interesting point. My remote monitor checks my site from two locations, California, USA, and London, England. As you can see in the chart below the response time is actually shorter when checked from London, which doesn't seem to make sense, since the server is physically closer to the California monitoring location. I would have expected the London monitoring location to have higher response times since they are physically farther away. I should also point out that in some traceroute test I've done it seem like the first connection to the server seems to take the longest, then after that the rest of the page loads quickly. Below is a little chart showing the times for the first connection to the server. So, what could be causing this problem, and what steps can I take to resolve it or at least narrow down the problem? Sending the request to the server was very quick, and receiving the reply back seems pretty quick, but the WAIT time is really long. So it connects, sends the request, but then waits close to 30 seconds before it starts receiving data back. I am also aware that there are things I can do to speed up page loading times, like reducing the number of CSS and JS files used on a page, compressing images, etc. This is not really what the source of the problem is though, because nothing has really changed on the site since before the problem started, and other sites on the same server are loading slowly as well.

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• Will polishing my current project be a better learning experience than starting a new one?

  - by Alejandro Cámara

  I started programming many years ago. Now I'm trying to make games. I have read many recommendations to start cloning some well known games like galaga, tetris, arkanoid, etc. I have also read that I should go for the whole game (including menus, sound, score, etc.). Yesterday I finished the first complete version of my arkanoid clone. But it is far from over. I can still work on it for months (I program as a hobby in my free time) implementing a screen resolution switcher, remap of the control keys, power-ups falling from broken bricks, and a huge etc. But I do not want to be forever learning how to clone ONE game. I have the urge to get to the next clone in order to apply some design ideas I have come upon while developing this arkanoid clone (at the same time I am reading the GoF book and much source code from Ludum Dare 21 game contest). So the question is: Should I keep improving the arkanoid clone until it has all the features the original game had? or should I move to the next clone (there are almost infinite games to clone) and start mending the things I did wrong with the previous clone? This can be a very subjective question, so please restrain the answers to the most effective way to learn how to make my own games (not cloning someone ideas). Thank you! CLARIFICATION In order to clarify what I have implemented I make this list: Features implemented: Bouncing capabilities (the ball bounces on walls, on bricks, and on the bar). Sounds when bouncing on bricks and the bar, and when the player wins or loses. Basic title menu (new game and exit only). Also in-game menu and win/lose menus. Only three levels, but the map system is so easy I do not think it will teach me much (am I wrong?). Features not-implemented: Power-ups when breaking the bricks. Complex bricks (with more than one "hit point" and invincible). Better graphics (I am not really good at it). Programming polishing (use more intensively the design patterns). Here's a link to its (minimal) webpage: http://blog.acamara.es/piperine/ I kind of feel ashamed to show it, so please do not hit me too hard :-) My question was related to the not-implemented features. I wondered what was the fastest (optimal) path to learn. 1) implement the not-implemented features in this project which is getting big, or 2) make a new game which probably will teach me those lessons and new ones. ANSWER I choose @ashes999 answer because, in my case, I think I should polish more and try to "ship" the game. I think all the other answers are also important to bear in mind, so if you came here having the same question, before taking a rush decision read all the discussion. Thank you all!

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• How Microsoft Market DotNet?

  - by Fendy

  I just read an Joel's article about Microsoft's breaking change (non-backwards compatibility) with dot net's introduction. It is interesting and explicitly reflected the condition during that time. But now almost 10 years has passed. The breaking change It is mainly on how bad is Microsoft introducing non-backwards compatibility development tools, such as dot net, instead of improving the already-widely used asp classic or VB6. As much have known, dot net is not natively embedded in windows XP (yes in vista or 7), so in order to use the .net apps, you need to install the .net framework of over 300mb (it's big that day). However, as we see that nowadays many business use .net as their main development tools, with asp.net or mvc as their web-based applications. C# nowadays be one of tops programming languages (the most questions in stackoverflow). The more interesing part is, win32api still alive even there is newer technology out there (and still widely used). Imagine if microsoft does not introduce the breaking change, there will many corporates still uses asp classic or vb-based applications (there still is, but not that much). There are many corporates use additional services such as azure or sharepoint (beside how expensive is it). Please note that I also know there are many flagships applications (maybe adobe's and blizzard's) still use C-based or older language and not porting to newer high-level language. The question How can Microsoft persuade the users to migrate their old applications into dot net? As we have known it is very hard and give no immediate value when rewrite the applications (netscape story), and it is very risky. I am more interested in Microsoft's way and not opinion such as "because dot net is OOP, or dot net is dll-embedable, etc". This question may be constructive, as the technology is vastly changes over times lately. As we can see, Microsoft changes Asp.Net webform to MVC, winform is legacy now, it is starting to change to use windows store rather than basic-installment, touchscreen and later on we will have see-through applications such as google class. And that will be breaking changes. We will need to account portability as an issue nowadays. We will need other than just mere technology choice, but also migration plans. Even maybe as critical as we might need multiplatform language compiler, as approached by Joel's Wasabi. (hey, I read his articles too much!)

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• viable part-time career in IT/programming?

  - by Rider

  Hi, I'd like to ask for some career advice from you people. Is there a viable job/career that can be done in programming/IT for the long term? Right now, I am thinking about website (PHP?) developer path. My background: I have a degree in computer science and have been a programmer/system analyst for almost 10 years. Lately I took a big break from programming and studied for a B.arch. degree (yes architecture), only to discover that architecture offers zero (0) jobs where I'm from, for 3 years already (and no, I am not going to move and the grass in not greener in other places). I have never been particularly interested in programming, in fact I was bored by it. But I was always quite good at both programming and system analysis, and very valued by practically all my employers. On the other hand, I have never been valued or offered a good job in any other field (although I can do many things, like design, architecture, translations, documentation, teaching, etc etc.) I guess the human component has been always more important for me in programming jobs - I value all the good people I worked with, but not projects. However, I have about zero skills or desire to be a project manager. I also have close to zero skills for selling myself. I like it best when I can do "my thing", have my niche, have an ownership of some project. Right now my career perspective is to do part time programming and to part time teach yoga. I have already started the yoga teaching part. Do you think that part time programming is viable? And what niche works best for that? I have considered web development, QA, or software development in a company like I did before. However, my fear is that when you do programming part-time, you get the most boring coding work, only to see your colleagues move to more interesting projects and up their respective career ladders. I also fear that part-timers are not especially needed either. And, since I don't share much enthusiasm at programming, I'd rather not be around young programmers boiling with geeky enthusiasm about coding, but rather QA mindset with people from different backgrounds and life paths might work better for me. Thanks for any advice, --Rider

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• Unit Testing with NUnit and Moles Redux

  - by João Angelo

  Almost two years ago, when Moles was still being packaged alongside Pex, I wrote a post on how to run NUnit tests supporting moled types. A lot has changed since then and Moles is now being distributed independently of Pex, but maintaining support for integration with NUnit and other testing frameworks. For NUnit the support is provided by an addin class library (Microsoft.Moles.NUnit.dll) that you need to reference in your test project so that you can decorate yours tests with the MoledAttribute. The addin DLL must also be placed in the addins folder inside the NUnit installation directory. There is however a downside, since Moles and NUnit follow a different release cycle and the addin DLL must be built against a specific NUnit version, you may find that the release included with the latest version of Moles does not work with your version of NUnit. Fortunately the code for building the NUnit addin is supplied in the archive (moles.samples.zip) that you can found in the Documentation folder inside the Moles installation directory. By rebuilding the addin against your specific version of NUnit you are able to support any version. Also to note that in Moles 0.94.51023.0 the addin code did not support the use of TestCaseAttribute in your moled tests. However, if you need this support, you need to make just a couple of changes. Change the ITestDecorator.Decorate method in the MolesAddin class: Test ITestDecorator.Decorate(Test test, MemberInfo member) { SafeDebug.AssumeNotNull(test, "test"); SafeDebug.AssumeNotNull(member, "member"); bool isTestFixture = true; isTestFixture &= test.IsSuite; isTestFixture &= test.FixtureType != null; bool hasMoledAttribute = true; hasMoledAttribute &= !SafeArray.IsNullOrEmpty( member.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(MoledAttribute), false)); if (!isTestFixture && hasMoledAttribute) { return new MoledTest(test); } return test; } Change the Tests property in the MoledTest class: public override System.Collections.IList Tests { get { if (this.test.Tests == null) { return null; } var moled = new List<Test>(this.test.Tests.Count); foreach (var test in this.test.Tests) { moled.Add(new MoledTest((Test)test)); } return moled; } } Disclaimer: I only tested this implementation against NUnit 2.5.10.11092 version. Finally you just need to run the NUnit console runner through the Moles runner. A quick example follows: moles.runner.exe [Tests.dll] /r:nunit-console.exe /x86 /args:[NUnitArgument1] /args:[NUnitArgument2]

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• Virtual Lab part 2&ndash;Templates, Patterns, Baselines

  - by Geoff N. Hiten

  Once you have a good virtualization platform chosen, whether it is a desktop, server or laptop environment, the temptation is to build “X”.  “X” may be a SharePoint lab, a Virtual Cluster, an AD test environment or some other cool project that you really need RIGHT NOW.  That would be doing it wrong. My grandfather taught woodworking and cabinetmaking for twenty-seven years at a trade school in Alabama.  He was the first instructor hired at that school and the only teacher for the first two years.  His students built tables, chairs, and workbenches so the school could start its HVAC courses.   Visiting as a child, I also noticed many extra “helper” stands, benches, holders, and gadgets all built from wood.  What does that have to do with a virtual lab, you ask?  Well, that is the same approach you should take.  Build stuff that you will use.  Not for solving a particular problem, but to let the Virtual Lab be part of your normal troubleshooting toolkit. Start with basic copies of various Operating Systems.  Load and patch server and desktop OS environments.  This also helps build your collection of ISO files, another essential element of a virtual Lab.  Once you have these “baseline” images, you can use your Virtualization software’s snapshot capability to freeze the image.  Clone the snapshot and you have a brand new fully patched machine in mere moments.  You may have to sysprep some of the Microsoft OS environments if you are going to create a domain environment or experiment with clustering.  That is still much faster than loading and patching from scratch. So once you have a stock of raw materials (baseline images in this case) where should you start.  Again, my grandfather’s workshop gives us the answer.  In the shop it was workbenches and tables to hold large workpieces that made the equipment more useful.  In a Windows environment the same role falls to the fundamental network services:  DHCP, DNS, Active Directory, Routing, File Services, and Storage services.  Plan your internal network setup.  Build out an AD controller with all the features listed.  Make the actual domain an isolated domain so it will not care about where you take it.  Add the Microsoft iSCSI target.  Once you have this single system, you can leverage it for almost any network environment beyond a simple stand-alone system. Having these templates and fundamental infrastructure elements ready to run means I can build a quick lab in minutes instead of hours.  My solutions are well-tested, my processes fully documented with screenshots, and my plans validated well before I have to make any changes to client systems.  the work I put in is easily returned in increased value and client satisfaction.

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• Map and fill texture using PBO (OpenGL 3.3)

  - by NtscCobalt

  I'm learning OpenGL 3.3 trying to do the following (as it is done in D3D)... Create Texture of Width, Height, Pixel Format Map texture memory Loop write pixels Unmap texture memory Set Texture Render Right now though it renders as if the entire texture is black. I can't find a reliable source for information on how to do this though. Almost every tutorial I've found just uses glTexSubImage2D and passes a pointer to memory. Here is basically what my code does... (In this case it is generating an 1-byte Alpha Only texture but it is rendering it as the red channel for debugging) GLuint pixelBufferID; glGenBuffers(1, &pixelBufferID); glBindBuffer(GL_PIXEL_UNPACK_BUFFER, pixelBufferID); glBufferData(GL_PIXEL_UNPACK_BUFFER, 512 * 512 * 1, nullptr, GL_STREAM_DRAW); glBindBuffer(GL_PIXEL_UNPACK_BUFFER, 0); GLuint textureID; glGenTextures(1, &textureID); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, textureID); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_R8, 512, 512, 0, GL_RED, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, nullptr); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, textureID); glBindBuffer(GL_PIXEL_UNPACK_BUFFER, pixelBufferID); void *Memory = glMapBuffer(GL_PIXEL_UNPACK_BUFFER, GL_WRITE_ONLY); // Memory copied here, I know this is valid because it is the same loop as in my working D3D version glUnmapBuffer(GL_PIXEL_UNPACK_BUFFER); glBindBuffer(GL_PIXEL_UNPACK_BUFFER, 0); And then here is the render loop. // This chunk left in for completeness glUseProgram(glProgramId); glBindVertexArray(glVertexArrayId); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, glVertexBufferId); glEnableVertexAttribArray(0); glVertexAttribPointer(0, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 20, 0); glVertexAttribPointer(0, 2, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 20, 12); GLuint transformLocationID = glGetUniformLocation(3, 'transform'); glUniformMatrix4fv(transformLocationID , 1, true, somematrix) // Not sure if this is all I need to do glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, pTex->glTextureId); GLuint textureLocationID = glGetUniformLocation(glProgramId, "texture"); glUniform1i(textureLocationID, 0); glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLES, Offset*3, Triangles*3); Vertex Shader #version 330 core in vec3 Position; in vec2 TexCoords; out vec2 TexOut; uniform mat4 transform; void main() { TexOut = TexCoords; gl_Position = vec4(Position, 1.0) * transform; } Pixel Shader #version 330 core uniform sampler2D texture; in vec2 TexCoords; out vec4 fragColor; void main() { // Output color fragColor.r = texture2D(texture, TexCoords).r; fragColor.g = 0.0f; fragColor.b = 0.0f; fragColor.a = 1.0; }

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• Started wrong with a project. Should I start over?

  - by solidsnake

  I'm a beginner web developer (one year of experience). A couple of weeks after graduating, I got offered a job to build a web application for a company whose owner is not much of a tech guy. He recruited me to avoid theft of his idea, the high cost of development charged by a service company, and to have someone young he can trust onboard to maintain the project for the long run (I came to these conclusions by myself long after being hired). Cocky as I was back then, with a diploma in computer science, I accepted the offer thinking I can build anything. I was calling the shots. After some research I settled on PHP, and started with plain PHP, no objects, just ugly procedural code. Two months later, everything was getting messy, and it was hard to make any progress. The web application is huge. So I decided to check out an MVC framework that would make my life easier. That's where I stumbled upon the cool kid in the PHP community: Laravel. I loved it, it was easy to learn, and I started coding right away. My code looked cleaner, more organized. It looked very good. But again the web application was huge. The company was pressuring me to deliver the first version, which they wanted to deploy, obviously, and start seeking customers. Because Laravel was fun to work with, it made me remember why I chose this industry in the first place - something I forgot while stuck in the shitty education system. So I started working on small projects at night, reading about methodologies and best practice. I revisited OOP, moved on to object-oriented design and analysis, and read Uncle Bob's book Clean Code. This helped me realize that I really knew nothing. I did not know how to build software THE RIGHT WAY. But at this point it was too late, and now I'm almost done. My code is not clean at all, just spaghetti code, a real pain to fix a bug, all the logic is in the controllers, and there is little object oriented design. I'm having this persistent thought that I have to rewrite the whole project. However, I can't do it... They keep asking when is it going to be all done. I can not imagine this code deployed on a server. Plus I still know nothing about code efficiency and the web application's performance. On one hand, the company is waiting for the product and can not wait anymore. On the other hand I can't see myself going any further with the actual code. I could finish up, wrap it up and deploy, but god only knows what might happen when people start using it. What do you think I should do?

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• Obtaining positional information in the IEnumerable Select extension method

  - by Kyle Burns

  This blog entry is intended to provide a narrow and brief look into a way to use the Select extension method that I had until recently overlooked. Every developer who is using IEnumerable extension methods to work with data has been exposed to the Select extension method, because it is a pretty critical piece of almost every query over a collection of objects.  The method is defined on type IEnumerable and takes as its argument a function that accepts an item from the collection and returns an object which will be an item within the returned collection.  This allows you to perform transformations on the source collection.  A somewhat contrived example would be the following code that transforms a collection of strings into a collection of anonymous objects: 1: var media = new[] {"book", "cd", "tape"}; 2: var transformed = media.Select( item => 3: { 4: Media = item 5: } ); This code transforms the array of strings into a collection of objects which each have a string property called Media. If every developer using the LINQ extension methods already knows this, why am I blogging about it?  I’m blogging about it because the method has another overload that I hadn’t seen before I needed it a few weeks back and I thought I would share a little about it with whoever happens upon my blog.  In the other overload, the function defined in the first overload as: 1: Func<TSource, TResult> is instead defined as: 1: Func<TSource, int, TResult>   The additional parameter is an integer representing the current element’s position in the enumerable sequence.  I used this information in what I thought was a pretty cool way to compare collections and I’ll probably blog about that sometime in the near future, but for now we’ll continue with the contrived example I’ve already started to keep things simple and show how this works.  The following code sample shows how the positional information could be used in an alternating color scenario.  I’m using a foreach loop because IEnumerable doesn’t have a ForEach extension, but many libraries do add the ForEach extension to IEnumerable so you can update the code if you’re using one of these libraries or have created your own. 1: var media = new[] {"book", "cd", "tape"}; 2: foreach (var result in media.Select( 3: (item, index) => 4: new { Item = item, Index = index })) 5: { 6: Console.ForegroundColor = result.Index % 2 == 0 7: ? ConsoleColor.Blue : ConsoleColor.Yellow; 8: Console.WriteLine(result.Item); 9: }

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• Ubuntu hangs on booting up after a update

  - by alFReD NSH

  I've made a clean install yesterday, for the first time restarted, everything went good and then after I updated packages and copied my old home directory to replace the new one, when I restarted it hung when it was booting. I tried reinstalling again and doing the same thing, but again same thing happened. Here's what I see, before when the Ubuntu logo with the five dots is shown: Then after that, 3 or 4 of the dots will load and hangs there. If I press arrow up before that, this will be shown I started my laptop again today(the pictures are for the day before) and after that, boot up with live CD and got the logs. dmesg: http://pastebin.com/aVxV7BQF syslog: http://pastebin.com/4E2BrRUK And some info: alfred@alFitop:~$ uname -a Linux alFitop 3.2.0-24-generic #39-Ubuntu SMP Mon May 21 16:52:17 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux lshw: http://pastebin.com/AZbKJmsT sources.list : http://pastebin.com/2HazmuyV My problem is a bit similar to here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1918271 Though I didn't change my x.org config. Only changed home directory and updated packages. I've tried memtest and fschk, both passed. In the recovery mode boot option, I've also realized that same things happen in failsafe graphical mode. But when I go into the network mode, I can boot up my system, but of course same the graphics are just basic. Adding blacklist intel_ips to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf solves the first message, but still I get the broken pipe and CPU stack traces. The current kernel version is 3.2.0-25, I've tried booting up in the 3.2.0-23(the one the installer came with, but same results.) Also uninstalled apparmor, didn't help. I've installed Ubuntu again, this time without copying the home directory, also same result. --- UPDATE --- This problem was solved before with removing backports, but its back again! I've updated my laptop last night and the problem came back. It's definitely one of these packages. My /var/log/apt/term.log and /var/log/apt/history.log. I'm almost having the same situation. --- UPDATE --- I realized this also have happened on times that I have updated(haven't restarted after it) and my computer power has been cut off and its shutdown due to lack of power. And I realized if I just do as I answered but not in somewhere without GUI(networking mode has the GUI) it wouldn't work.

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• Becoming the well-integrated content company (and combating AIUTLVFS)

  - by Lance Shaw

  Every single day, each of us create more and more content. Sometimes it is brand new material and many times it is iterations of existing content, but no one would argue that information and content growth is growing at an almost exponential rate. With all this content being created and stored, a number of problems naturally arise. One of the most common issues that users run into is "Am I Using The Latest Version of this File Syndrome", or AIUTLVFS. This insidious syndrome is all too common and results in ineffective, poor or downright wrong business decisions being made.  When content or files are unavailable or incorrect within the scope of key business processes, the chance for erroneous and costly business decisions is magnified even further. For many companies, the ideal scenario is to be able to connect multiple business systems, both old and new, into one common content repository.  Not only does this reduce content duplication, it also helps guarantee that everyone in various departments is working off the proverbial "same page".  Sounds simple - but for many organizations, the proliferation of file shares, SharePoint sites, and other storage silos of content keep the dream of a more efficient business a distant one. We've created some online assets to help you in your evaluation and eventual improvement of your current content management and delivery systems. Take a few minutes to check out our Online Assessment Tool.  It's quick, easy and just might provide you with insights into how you can improve your current content ecosystem. While you are there, check out our new Infographic that outlines common issues faced by companies today. Feel free to save our informative Infographic PDF and share it with business colleagues and your management to help them understand the business costs and impact of inaction. Together we can stop AIUTLVFS in its tracks and run our businesses more effectively than ever. Additionally, we hope you will take a few minutes to visit our new and informative webpages dedicated to the value of a well connected, fully integrated content management system. It's a great place to learn more about how integrating WebCenter Content into your infrastructure can lower your operational costs while boosting process and worker efficiency.

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• SOA Community Newsletter June 2012

  - by JuergenKress

  Dear SOA partner community member Happy New fiscal Year FY13 - thanks for the FY12 middleware business! Our SOA & BPM Partner Community continued to grow to almost 4000 members. Additional we launched the WebLogic Partner Community which grew very fast to 800+ members! To continue our joint successful business in the new fiscal year our Top priorities FY13 are: Become trained:the next opportunity are the summer camps in Lisbon & Munich or our on-demand training SOA & BPM and see our detailed training calendar below. Run your marketing & sales campaign: sales kits, marketing kits, solution catalog add your services to oracle.com, add your events to oracle.com and advertisement Get recognized: OFM awards, partner excellence awards & references & plaques Become Specialized: All of the above makes the Oracle Specialization! Make sure you get your Specialization benefits! Topics: Key product focus areas will be: SOA as the foundation for clouds, integration platform 2.0 for industrial SOA including BAM & CEP, BPM & adaptive case management & migrate legacy solutions to the strategic offerings. The new Oracle VM VirtualBox image is available to test SOA Suite and BPM Suite. To start your BPM 11g project a new BPM Standard Edition a license entry version is available. EAIESB published a post with all BPMN2.0 notations. If you want to learn more please visit the Oracle Learning Library. We want to promote your SOA 11g & BPM 11g success let us know where you are in production! And nominate this success for our Middleware Oracle Excellence Awards 2012. Douwe P. van den Bos published at his blog a SOA governance series: Principles of Service-Oriented Architecture & The Maturity of a Service-Oriented Architecture & SOA Maturity Models. Please let us know if you published interesting papers! Would be great to see you at the SOA, Cloud + Service Technology Symposium by Thomas Erl. Please feel free to get your conference pass with the oracle discount code “DJMXZ370”. See you in Lisbon & London at our summer camps! Jürgen Kress Oracle SOA & BPM Partner Adoption EMEA To read the newsletter please visit http://tinyurl.com/soanewsJune2012 (OPN Account required) To become a member of the SOA Partner Community please register at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: SOA Community newsletter,SOA Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress,SOA Demo System,BPM

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• Stop trying to be perfect

  - by Kyle Burns

  Yes, Bob is my uncle too.  I also think the points in the Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship (manifesto.softwarecraftsmanship.org) are all great.  What amazes me is that tend to confuse the term “well crafted” with “perfect”.  I'm about to say something that will make Quality Assurance managers and many development types as well until you think about it as a craftsman – “Stop trying to be perfect”. Now let me explain what I mean.  Building software, as with building almost anything, often involves a series of trade-offs where either one undesired characteristic is accepted as necessary to achieve another desired one (or maybe stave off one that is even less desirable) or a desirable characteristic is sacrificed for the same reasons.  This implies that perfection itself is unattainable.  What is attainable is “sufficient” and I think that this really goes to the heart both of what people are trying to do with Agile and with the craftsmanship movement.  Simply put, sufficient software drives the greatest business value.   I've been in many meetings where “how can we keep anything from ever going wrong” has become the thing that holds us in analysis paralysis.  I've also been the guy trying way too hard to perfect some function to make sure that every edge case is accounted for.  Somewhere in there, something a drill instructor said while I was in boot camp occurred to me.  In response to being asked a question by another recruit having to do with some edge case (I can barely remember the context), he said “What if grasshoppers had machine guns?  Would the birds still **** with them?”  It sounds funny, but there's a lot of wisdom in those words.   “Sufficient” is different for every situation and it’s important to understand what sufficient means in the context of the work you’re doing.  If I’m writing a timesheet application (and please shoot me if I am), I’m going to have a much higher tolerance for imperfection than if you’re writing software to control life support systems on spacecraft.  I’m also likely to have less need for high volume performance than if you’re writing software to control stock trading transactions.   I’d encourage anyone who has read this far to instead of trying to be perfect, try to create software that is sufficient in every way.  If you’re working to make a component that is sufficient “better”, ask yourself if there is any component left that is not yet sufficient.  If the answer is “yes” you’re working on the wrong thing and need to adjust.  If the answer is “no”, why aren’t you shipping and delivering business value?

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• Help with Collision of spawned object(postion fixed) with objects that there are translating on screen

  - by Amrutha

  Hey guys I am creating a game using Corona SDK and so coding it in Lua. So there are 2 separate functions, To translate the hit objects and change their color when they are tapped The link below is the code I am using to for the first function http://developer.anscamobile.com/sample-code/fishies Spawn objects that will hit the translating objects on collision. Alos on collision the spawned object disappears and the translating object bears a color(indicating the collision). In addition the size of this spawned object is dependent on i/p volume level. The function I have written is as follows, --VOICE INPUT CODE local r = media.newRecording() r:startRecording() r:startTuner() --local function newBar() -- local bar = display.newLine( 0, 0, 1, 0 ) -- bar:setColor( 0, 55, 100, 20 ) -- bar.width = 5 -- bar.y=400 -- bar.x=20 -- return bar --end local c1 = display.newImage("str-minion-small.png") c1.isVisible=false local c2 = display.newImage("str-minion-mid.png") c2.isVisible=false local c3 = display.newImage("str-minion-big.png") c3.isVisible=false --SPAWNING local function spawnDisk( event ) local phase = event.phase local volumeBar = display.newLine( 0, 0, 1, 0 ) volumeBar.y = 400 volumeBar.x = 20 -- volumeBar.isVisible=false local v = 20*math.log(r:getTunerVolume()) local MINTHRESH = 30 local LEFTMARGIN = 20 local v2 = MINTHRESH + math.max (v, -MINTHRESH) v2 = (display.contentWidth - 1 * LEFTMARGIN ) * v2 / MINTHRESH volumeBar.xScale = math.max ( 20, v2 ) local l = volumeBar.xScale local cnt1 = 0 local cnt2 = 0 local cnt3 = 0 local ONE =1 local val = event.numTaps --local px=event.x --local py=event.y if "ended" == phase then --audio.play( popSound ) --myLabel.isVisible = false if l > 50 and l <=150 then -- c1:setFillColor(10,105,0) -- c1.isVisible=false c1.x=math.random( 10, 450 ) c1.y=math.random( 10, 300 ) physics.addBody( c1, { density=1, radius=10.0 } ) c1.isVisible=true cnt1= cnt1+ ONE return c1 elseif l > 100 and l <=250 then --c2:setFillColor(200,10,0) c2.x=math.random( 10, 450 ) c2.y=math.random( 10, 300 ) physics.addBody( c2, { density=2, radius=9000.0 } ) c2.isVisible=true cnt2= cnt2+ ONE return c2 elseif l >=250 then c3.x=math.random( 40, 450 ) c3.y=math.random( 40, 300 ) physics.addBody( c3, { density=2, radius=7000.0 , bounce=0.0 } ) c3.isVisible=true cnt3= cnt3+ ONE return c3 end end end buzzR:addEventListener( "touch", spawnDisk ) -- touch the screen to create disks Now both functions work fine independently but there is no collision happening. Its almost as if the translating object and the spawn object are on different layers. The translating object passes through the spawn object freely. Can anyone please tell me how to resolve this problem. And how can I get them to collide. Its my first attempt at game development, that too for a mobile platform so would appreciate all help. Also if I have not been specific do let me know. I ll try to frame the query better :). Thanks in advance.

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• Cloud Computing: Start with the problem

  - by BuckWoody

  At one point in my life I would build my own computing system for home use. I wanted a particular video card, a certain set of drives, and a lot of memory. Not only could I not find those things in a vendor’s pre-built computer, but those were more expensive – by a lot. As time moved on and the computing industry matured, I actually find that I can buy a vendor’s system as cheaply – and in some cases far more cheaply – than I can build it myself.   This paradigm holds true for almost any product, even clothing and furniture. And it’s also held true for software… Mostly. If you need an office productivity package, you simply buy one or use open-sourced software for that. There’s really no need to write your own Word Processor – it’s kind of been done a thousand times over. Even if you need a full system for customer relationship management or other needs, you simply buy one. But there is no “cloud solution in a box”.  Sure, if you’re after “Software as a Service” – type solutions, like being able to process video (Windows Azure Media Services) or running a Pig or Hive job in Hadoop (Hadoop on Windows Azure) you can simply use one of those, or if you just want to deploy a Virtual Machine (Windows Azure Virtual Machines) you can get that, but if you’re looking for a solution to a problem your organization has, you may need to mix Software, Infrastructure, and perhaps even Platforms (such as Windows Azure Computing) to solve the issue. It’s all about starting from the problem-end first. We’ve become so accustomed to looking for a box of software that will solve the problem, that we often start with the solution and try to fit it to the problem, rather than the other way around.  When I talk with my fellow architects at other companies, one of the hardest things to get them to do is to ignore the technology for a moment and describe what the issues are. It’s interesting to monitor the conversation and watch how many times we deviate from the problem into the solution. So, in your work today, try a little experiment: watch how many times you go after a problem by starting with the solution. Tomorrow, make a conscious effort to reverse that. You might be surprised at the results.

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• TechEd 2012: Recap

  - by Tim Murphy

  TechEd this week was a great experience and I wanted to wrap it up with a summary post. First let me say a thank you to John and Jeff from GWB for supplying power, connectivity and a place to work in between sessions.  The blogging hub was a great experience in itself.  Getting to talk with other bloggers and other conference goers turned into a series of interesting conversations.  And where else can you almost end up in the day 1 highlights video? The sessions at TechEd were a mixed bag of value.  The Keynotes rocked, both figuratively and literally and most of the sessions that I want to were a good experience and had gems of information to take away.  There were a few exceptions though.  A couple of the sessions turned out to be sales jobs.  Nothing turns me off more than that (there will be some really honest comments on those surveys). TechEd re-enforced for me that much of the value is not in the sessions, but in the networking opportunities. I got to talk with several Microsoft team members and MVPs as well as some of the vendor representative for companies like Inrule and ComponentOne. Also got to expand both my local and extended community with discussions at meal times and waiting for sessions to start. I think this is one of the benefits that a lot of people don’t take advantage of in these conferences that should be a bigger part of the advertising. Exposure to a wide variety of topics, many of which I had not been able to make time for up to this point was envigorating.  The list of topic includes: Office 365, Windows Server 2012, Windows 8, Metro, Azure.  I can’t wait to get back to work and dig into these subjects in more depth. The one complaint that I had and heard from other attendees was that there weren’t enough sessions that were actually about development.  I realize that TechEd started as an event for IT Pros, but there needs to be more value for the Devs.  It all went by too fast and it will take a couple more days to digest the material, but the batteries are and I’m ready to leverage what I’ve learned.  Hopefully we will do it again next year. del.icio.us Tags: TechEd,TechEd 2012

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• Confusion about inheritance

  - by Samuel Adam

  I know I might get downvoted for this, but I'm really curious. I was taught that inheritance is a very powerful polymorphism tool, but I can't seem to use it well in real cases. So far, I can only use inheritance when the base class is an abstract class. Examples : If we're talking about Product and Inventory, I quickly assumed that a Product is an Inventory because a Product must be inventorized as well. But a problem occured when user wanted to sell their Inventory item. It just doesn't seem to be right to change an Inventory object to it's subtype (Product), it's almost like trying to convert a parent to it's child. Another case is Customer and Member. It is logical (at least for me) to think that a Member is a Customer with some more privileges. Same problem occurred when user wanted to upgrade an existing Customer to become a Member. A very trivial case is the Employee case. Where Manager, Clerk, etc can be derived from Employee. Still, the same upgrading issue. I tried to use composition instead for some cases, but I really wanted to know if I'm missing something for inheritance solution here. My composition solution for those cases : Create a reference of Inventory inside a Product. Here I'm making an assumption about that Product and Inventory is talking in a different context. While Product is in the context of sales (price, volume, discount, etc), Inventory is in the context of physical management (stock, movement, etc). Make a reference of Membership instead inside Customer class instead of previous inheritance solution. Therefor upgrading a Customer is only about instantiating the Customer's Membership property. This example is keep being taught in basic programming classes, but I think it's more proper to have those Manager, Clerk, etc derived from an abstract Role class and make it a property in Employee. I found it difficult to find an example of a concrete class deriving from another concrete class. Is there any inheritance solution in which I can solve those cases? Being new in this OOP thing, I really really need a guidance. Thanks!

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• Latency Matters

  - by Frederic P

  A lot of interest in low latencies has been expressed within the financial services segment, most especially in the stock trading applications where every millisecond directly influences the profitability of the trader. These days, much of the trading is executed by software applications which are trained to respond to each other almost instantaneously. In fact, you could say that we are in an arms race where traders are using any and all options to cut down on the delay in executing transactions, even by moving physically closer to the trading venue. The Solaris OS network stack has traditionally been engineered for high throughput, at the expense of higher latencies. Knowledge of tuning parameters to redress the imbalance is critical for applications that are latency sensitive. We are presenting in this blog how to configure further a default Oracle Solaris 10 installation to reduce network latency. There are many parameters in fact that can be altered, but the most effective ones are intr_blank_time and intr_blank_packets. These parameters affect on-board network throughput and latency on Solaris systems. If interrupt blanking is disabled, packets are processed by the driver as soon as they arrive, resulting in higher network throughput and lower latency, but with higher CPU utilization. With interrupt blanking disabled, processor utilization can be as high as 80–90% in some high-load web server environments. If interrupt blanking is enabled, packets are processed when the interrupt is issued. Enabling interrupt blanking can result in reduced processor utilization and network throughput, but higher network latency. Both parameters should be set at the same time. You can set these parameters by using the ndd command as follows: # ndd -set /dev/eri intr_blank_time 0 # ndd -set /dev/eri intr_blank_packets 0 You can add them to the /etc/system file as follows: set eri:intr_blank_time 0 set eri:intr_blank_packets 0 The value of the interrupt blanking parameter is a trade-off between network throughput and processor utilization. If higher processor utilization is acceptable for achieving higher network throughput, then disable interrupt blanking. If lower processor utilization is preferred and higher network latency is the penalty, then enable interrupt blanking. Our experience at ISV Engineering is that under controlled experiments the above settings result in reduction of network latency by at least 50%; on a two-socket 3GHz Sun Fire X4170 M2 running Solaris 10 Update 9, the above settings improved ping-pong latency from 60µs to 25-30µs with the on-board NIC.

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• Writing or extending existing emacs packages: is it worth or should I move to Netbeans/Eclipse?

  - by Andrea

  I'm finishing my master degree course in CS and I've almost become addicted to Emacs. I've used it to write in C, Latex, Java, JSP,XML, CommonLisp, Ada and other languages no other editor supported, like AMPL. I'd like to improve the packages I've been using the most or create new ones, but, in practice, I find that the implementation of Emacs leaves a lot to be desired. There are a lot of poorly-featured/poorly-maintained packages with either overlapping functionalities or obscure incompatibilities, and Elisp just seems to foster the situation by lacking the common features modern lisps have. In contrast Eclipse and Netbeans are actively improved and it does seem they can be effective for non-mainstream languages. I tried Hibachi for Ada in Eclipse and it worked well, there's CUPS for Lisp in Eclipse and LambdaBeans built using NetBeans components. On the other hand those plugins seem to be less active than their Emacs' counterparts, for example Hibachi was archived last year. What's your opinion on this? Which editor should I write extension for? EDIT: To answer Larry Coleman (see comment below): I like Emacs as a user because it is efficient both for me and the computer I'm using. It's fast and the textual interface (i.e. minibuffer) allows for quick interaction. It's solid and packages are usually small and easy to manage. If I need to correct or remove something I usually just have to change a row in my .emacs or an elisp file, or delete a directory. Eclipse plugins rely on a more complicated process that screwed my Eclipse configuration a couple of times, forcing me to do a clean reinstall. Emacs works as long as I use the basic packages. If I need something more complicated the situation gets pretty hairy. As a "power user" I think that the best I can hope for is to write a severely crippled version of the extensions I'd actually like to have; in other words, that it's not worth the trouble. I'd like to write extensions for the things I'd like to have automated in Emacs, for example project support with automated tag-table update on file writing. There are a few projects on this that lack integration, documentation, extensibility and so forth. The best one is probably CEDET, for which I believe the Greenspun's 10th rule can be applied. EDIT: To comment Larry Coleman's answer I'm pretty sure I can pick elisp programming but the extensions I have in mind don't exist yet despite their relative simplicity and the effort more knowledgeable people poured into related projects.This makes me wonder whether it is so because of the way emacs is developed, i.e. people tend to write their own little extensions without coordination, or its implementation, its extension language not being able to keep up with the growing complexity.

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• What's My Problem? What's Your Problem?

  - by Jacek Ziabicki

  Software installers are not made for building demo environments. I can say this much after 12 years (on and off) of supporting my fellow sales consultants with environments for software demonstrations. When we release software, we include installation programs and procedures that are designed for use by our clients – to build a production environment and a limited number of testing, training and development environments. Different Objectives Your priorities when building an environment for client use vs. building a demo environment are very different. In a production environment, security, stability, and performance concerns are paramount. These environments are built on a specific server and rarely, if ever, moved to a different server or different network address. There is typically just one application running on a particular server (physical or virtual). Once built, the environment will be used for months or years at a time. Because of security considerations, the installation program wants to make these environments very specific to the organization using the software and the use case, encoding a fully qualified name of the server, or even the IP address on the network, in the configuration. So you either go through the installation procedure for each environment, or learn how to clone and reconfigure the software as a separate instance to build all your non-production environments. This may not matter much if the installation is as simple as clicking on the Setup program. But for enterprise applications, you have a number of configuration settings that you need to get just right – so whether you are installing from scratch or reconfiguring an existing installation, this requires both time and expertise in the particular piece of software. If you need a setup of several applications that are integrated to talk to one another, it is a whole new level of complexity. Now you need the expertise in all of the applications involved (plus the supporting technology products), and in addition to making each application work, you also have to configure the integration endpoints. Each application needs the URLs and credentials to call the integration layer, and the integration must be able to call each application. Then you have to make sure that each app has the right data so a business process initiated in one application can continue in the next. And, you will need to check that each application has the correct version and patch level for the integration to work. When building demo environments, your #1 concern is agility. If you can get away with a small number of long-running environments, you are lucky. More likely, you may get a request for a dedicated environment for a demonstration that is two weeks away: how quickly can you make this available so we still have the time to build the client-specific data? We are running a hands-on workshop next month, and we’ll need 15 instances of application X environment so each student can have a separate server for the exercises. We cannot connect to our data center from the client site, the client’s security policy won’t allow our VPN to go through – so we need a portable environment that we can bring with us. Our consultants need to be able to work at the hotel, airport, and the airplane, so we really want an environment that can run on a laptop. The client will need two playpen environments running in the cloud, accessible from their network, for a series of workshops that start two weeks from now. We have seen all of these scenarios and more. Here you would be much better served by a generic installation that would be easy to clone. Welcome to the Wonder Machine The reason I started this blog is to share a particular design of a demo environment, a special way to install software, that can address the above requirements, even for integrated setups. This design was created by a team at Oracle Utilities Global Business Unit, and we are using this setup for most of our demo environments. In a bout of modesty we called it the Wonder Machine. Over the next few posts – think of it as a novel in parts – I will tell you about the big idea, how it was implemented and what you can do with it. After we have laid down the groundwork, I would like to share some tips and tricks for users of our Wonder Machine implementation, as well as things I am learning about building portable, cloneable environments. The Wonder Machine is by no means a closed specification, it is under active development! I am hoping this blog will be of interest to two groups of readers – the users of the Wonder Machine we have built at Oracle Utilities, who want to get the most out of their demo environments and be able to reconfigure it to their needs – and to people who need to build environments for demonstration, testing, training, development and would like to make them cloneable and portable to maximize the reuse of their effort. Surely we are not the only ones facing this problem? If you can think of a better way to solve it, or if you can help us improve on our concept, I will appreciate your comments!

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