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• Windows Azure: Announcing release of Windows Azure SDK 2.2 (with lots of goodies)

  - by ScottGu

  Earlier today I blogged about a big update we made today to Windows Azure, and some of the great new features it provides. Today I’m also excited to also announce the release of the Windows Azure SDK 2.2. Today’s SDK release adds even more great features including: Visual Studio 2013 Support Integrated Windows Azure Sign-In support within Visual Studio Remote Debugging Cloud Services with Visual Studio Firewall Management support within Visual Studio for SQL Databases Visual Studio 2013 RTM VM Images for MSDN Subscribers Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET Updated Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets and ScriptCenter The below post has more details on what’s available in today’s Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release.  Also head over to Channel 9 to see the new episode of the Visual Studio Toolbox show that will be available shortly, and which highlights these features in a video demonstration. Visual Studio 2013 Support Version 2.2 of the Window Azure SDK is the first official version of the SDK to support the final RTM release of Visual Studio 2013. If you installed the 2.1 SDK with the Preview of Visual Studio 2013 we recommend that you upgrade your projects to SDK 2.2.  SDK 2.2 also works side by side with the SDK 2.0 and SDK 2.1 releases on Visual Studio 2012: Integrated Windows Azure Sign In within Visual Studio Integrated Windows Azure Sign-In support within Visual Studio is one of the big improvements added with this Windows Azure SDK release.  Integrated sign-in support enables developers to develop/test/manage Windows Azure resources within Visual Studio without having to download or use management certificates.  You can now just right-click on the “Windows Azure” icon within the Server Explorer inside Visual Studio and choose the “Connect to Windows Azure” context menu option to connect to Windows Azure: Doing this will prompt you to enter the email address of the account you wish to sign-in with: You can use either a Microsoft Account (e.g. Windows Live ID) or an Organizational account (e.g. Active Directory) as the email.  The dialog will update with an appropriate login prompt depending on which type of email address you enter: Once you sign-in you’ll see the Windows Azure resources that you have permissions to manage show up automatically within the Visual Studio Server Explorer (and you can start using them): With this new integrated sign in experience you are now able to publish web apps, deploy VMs and cloud services, use Windows Azure diagnostics, and fully interact with your Windows Azure services within Visual Studio without the need for a management certificate.  All of the authentication is handled using the Windows Azure Active Directory associated with your Windows Azure account (details on this can be found in my earlier blog post). Integrating authentication this way end-to-end across the Service Management APIs + Dev Tools + Management Portal + PowerShell automation scripts enables a much more secure and flexible security model within Windows Azure, and makes it much more convenient to securely manage multiple developers + administrators working on a project.  It also allows organizations and enterprises to use the same authentication model that they use for their developers on-premises in the cloud.  It also ensures that employees who leave an organization immediately lose access to their company’s cloud based resources once their Active Directory account is suspended. Filtering/Subscription Management Once you login within Visual Studio, you can filter which Windows Azure subscriptions/regions are visible within the Server Explorer by right-clicking the “Filter Services” context menu within the Server Explorer.  You can also use the “Manage Subscriptions” context menu to mange your Windows Azure Subscriptions: Bringing up the “Manage Subscriptions” dialog allows you to see which accounts you are currently using, as well as which subscriptions are within them: The “Certificates” tab allows you to continue to import and use management certificates to manage Windows Azure resources as well.  We have not removed any functionality with today’s update – all of the existing scenarios that previously supported management certificates within Visual Studio continue to work just fine.  The new integrated sign-in support provided with today’s release is purely additive. Note: the SQL Database node and the Mobile Service node in Server Explorer do not support integrated sign-in at this time. Therefore, you will only see databases and mobile services under those nodes if you have a management certificate to authorize access to them.  We will enable them with integrated sign-in in a future update. Remote Debugging Cloud Resources within Visual Studio Today’s Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release adds support for remote debugging many types of Windows Azure resources. With live, remote debugging support from within Visual Studio, you are now able to have more visibility than ever before into how your code is operating live in Windows Azure.  Let’s walkthrough how to enable remote debugging for a Cloud Service: Remote Debugging of Cloud Services To enable remote debugging for your cloud service, select Debug as the Build Configuration on the Common Settings tab of your Cloud Service’s publish dialog wizard: Then click the Advanced Settings tab and check the Enable Remote Debugging for all roles checkbox: Once your cloud service is published and running live in the cloud, simply set a breakpoint in your local source code: Then use Visual Studio’s Server Explorer to select the Cloud Service instance deployed in the cloud, and then use the Attach Debugger context menu on the role or to a specific VM instance of it: Once the debugger attaches to the Cloud Service, and a breakpoint is hit, you’ll be able to use the rich debugging capabilities of Visual Studio to debug the cloud instance remotely, in real-time, and see exactly how your app is running in the cloud. Today’s remote debugging support is super powerful, and makes it much easier to develop and test applications for the cloud.  Support for remote debugging Cloud Services is available as of today, and we’ll also enable support for remote debugging Web Sites shortly. Firewall Management Support with SQL Databases By default we enable a security firewall around SQL Databases hosted within Windows Azure.  This ensures that only your application (or IP addresses you approve) can connect to them and helps make your infrastructure secure by default.  This is great for protection at runtime, but can sometimes be a pain at development time (since by default you can’t connect/manage the database remotely within Visual Studio if the security firewall blocks your instance of VS from connecting to it). One of the cool features we’ve added with today’s release is support that makes it easy to enable and configure the security firewall directly within Visual Studio.  Now with the SDK 2.2 release, when you try and connect to a SQL Database using the Visual Studio Server Explorer, and a firewall rule prevents access to the database from your machine, you will be prompted to add a firewall rule to enable access from your local IP address: You can simply click Add Firewall Rule and a new rule will be automatically added for you. In some cases, the logic to detect your local IP may not be sufficient (for example: you are behind a corporate firewall that uses a range of IP addresses) and you may need to set up a firewall rule for a range of IP addresses in order to gain access. The new Add Firewall Rule dialog also makes this easy to do.  Once connected you’ll be able to manage your SQL Database directly within the Visual Studio Server Explorer: This makes it much easier to work with databases in the cloud. Visual Studio 2013 RTM Virtual Machine Images Available for MSDN Subscribers Last week we released the General Availability Release of Visual Studio 2013 to the web.  This is an awesome release with a ton of new features. With today’s Windows Azure update we now have a set of pre-configured VM images of VS 2013 available within the Windows Azure Management Portal for use by MSDN customers.  This enables you to create a VM in the cloud with VS 2013 pre-installed on it in with only a few clicks: Windows Azure now provides the fastest and easiest way to get started doing development with Visual Studio 2013. Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET (Preview) Having the ability to automate the creation, deployment, and tear down of resources is a key requirement for applications running in the cloud.  It also helps immensely when running dev/test scenarios and coded UI tests against pre-production environments. Today we are releasing a preview of a new set of Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET.  These new libraries make it easy to automate tasks using any .NET language (e.g. C#, VB, F#, etc).  Previously this automation capability was only available through the Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets or to developers who were willing to write their own wrappers for the Windows Azure Service Management REST API. Modern .NET Developer Experience We’ve worked to design easy-to-understand .NET APIs that still map well to the underlying REST endpoints, making sure to use and expose the modern .NET functionality that developers expect today: Portable Class Library (PCL) support targeting applications built for any .NET Platform (no platform restriction) Shipped as a set of focused NuGet packages with minimal dependencies to simplify versioning Support async/await task based asynchrony (with easy sync overloads) Shared infrastructure for common error handling, tracing, configuration, HTTP pipeline manipulation, etc. Factored for easy testability and mocking Built on top of popular libraries like HttpClient and Json.NET Below is a list of a few of the management client classes that are shipping with today’s initial preview release: .NET Class Name Supports Operations for these Assets (and potentially more) ManagementClient Locations Credentials Subscriptions Certificates ComputeManagementClient Hosted Services Deployments Virtual Machines Virtual Machine Images & Disks StorageManagementClient Storage Accounts WebSiteManagementClient Web Sites Web Site Publish Profiles Usage Metrics Repositories VirtualNetworkManagementClient Networks Gateways Automating Creating a Virtual Machine using .NET Let’s walkthrough an example of how we can use the new Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET to fully automate creating a Virtual Machine. I’m deliberately showing a scenario with a lot of custom options configured – including VHD image gallery enumeration, attaching data drives, network endpoints + firewall rules setup - to show off the full power and richness of what the new library provides. We’ll begin with some code that demonstrates how to enumerate through the built-in Windows images within the standard Windows Azure VM Gallery.  We’ll search for the first VM image that has the word “Windows” in it and use that as our base image to build the VM from.  We’ll then create a cloud service container in the West US region to host it within: We can then customize some options on it such as setting up a computer name, admin username/password, and hostname.  We’ll also open up a remote desktop (RDP) endpoint through its security firewall: We’ll then specify the VHD host and data drives that we want to mount on the Virtual Machine, and specify the size of the VM we want to run it in: Once everything has been set up the call to create the virtual machine is executed asynchronously In a few minutes we’ll then have a completely deployed VM running on Windows Azure with all of the settings (hard drives, VM size, machine name, username/password, network endpoints + firewall settings) fully configured and ready for us to use: Preview Availability via NuGet The Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET are now available via NuGet. Because they are still in preview form, you’ll need to add the –IncludePrerelease switch when you go to retrieve the packages. The Package Manager Console screen shot below demonstrates how to get the entire set of libraries to manage your Windows Azure assets: You can also install them within your .NET projects by right clicking on the VS Solution Explorer and using the Manage NuGet Packages context menu command.  Make sure to select the “Include Prerelease” drop-down for them to show up, and then you can install the specific management libraries you need for your particular scenarios: Open Source License The new Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET make it super easy to automate management operations within Windows Azure – whether they are for Virtual Machines, Cloud Services, Storage Accounts, Web Sites, and more.  Like the rest of the Windows Azure SDK, we are releasing the source code under an open source (Apache 2) license and it is hosted at https://github.com/WindowsAzure/azure-sdk-for-net/tree/master/libraries if you wish to contribute. PowerShell Enhancements and our New Script Center Today, we are also shipping Windows Azure PowerShell 0.7.0 (which is a separate download). You can find the full change log here. Here are some of the improvements provided with it: Windows Azure Active Directory authentication support Script Center providing many sample scripts to automate common tasks on Windows Azure New cmdlets for Media Services and SQL Database Script Center Windows Azure enables you to script and automate a lot of tasks using PowerShell.  People often ask for more pre-built samples of common scenarios so that they can use them to learn and tweak/customize. With this in mind, we are excited to introduce a new Script Center that we are launching for Windows Azure. You can learn about how to scripting with Windows Azure with a get started article. You can then find many sample scripts across different solutions, including infrastructure, data management, web, and more: All of the sample scripts are hosted on TechNet with links from the Windows Azure Script Center. Each script is complete with good code comments, detailed descriptions, and examples of usage. Summary Visual Studio 2013 and the Windows Azure SDK 2.2 make it easier than ever to get started developing rich cloud applications. Along with the Windows Azure Developer Center’s growing set of .NET developer resources to guide your development efforts, today’s Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release should make your development experience more enjoyable and efficient. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• What's up with LDoms: Part 1 - Introduction & Basic Concepts

  - by Stefan Hinker

  LDoms - the correct name is Oracle VM Server for SPARC - have been around for quite a while now.  But to my surprise, I get more and more requests to explain how they work or to give advise on how to make good use of them.  This made me think that writing up a few articles discussing the different features would be a good idea.  Now - I don't intend to rewrite the LDoms Admin Guide or to copy and reformat the (hopefully) well known "Beginners Guide to LDoms" by Tony Shoumack from 2007.  Those documents are very recommendable - especially the Beginners Guide, although based on LDoms 1.0, is still a good place to begin with.  However, LDoms have come a long way since then, and I hope to contribute to their adoption by discussing how they work and what features there are today.  In this and the following posts, I will use the term "LDoms" as a common abbreviation for Oracle VM Server for SPARC, just because it's a lot shorter and easier to type (and presumably, read). So, just to get everyone on the same baseline, lets briefly discuss the basic concepts of virtualization with LDoms.  LDoms make use of a hypervisor as a layer of abstraction between real, physical hardware and virtual hardware.  This virtual hardware is then used to create a number of guest systems which each behave very similar to a system running on bare metal:  Each has its own OBP, each will install its own copy of the Solaris OS and each will see a certain amount of CPU, memory, disk and network resources available to it.  Unlike some other type 1 hypervisors running on x86 hardware, the SPARC hypervisor is embedded in the system firmware and makes use both of supporting functions in the sun4v SPARC instruction set as well as the overall CPU architecture to fulfill its function. The CMT architecture of the supporting CPUs (T1 through T4) provide a large number of cores and threads to the OS.  For example, the current T4 CPU has eight cores, each running 8 threads, for a total of 64 threads per socket.  To the OS, this looks like 64 CPUs.  The SPARC hypervisor, when creating guest systems, simply assigns a certain number of these threads exclusively to one guest, thus avoiding the overhead of having to schedule OS threads to CPUs, as do typical x86 hypervisors.  The hypervisor only assigns CPUs and then steps aside.  It is not involved in the actual work being dispatched from the OS to the CPU, all it does is maintain isolation between different guests. Likewise, memory is assigned exclusively to individual guests.  Here,  the hypervisor provides generic mappings between the physical hardware addresses and the guest's views on memory.  Again, the hypervisor is not involved in the actual memory access, it only maintains isolation between guests. During the inital setup of a system with LDoms, you start with one special domain, called the Control Domain.  Initially, this domain owns all the hardware available in the system, including all CPUs, all RAM and all IO resources.  If you'd be running the system un-virtualized, this would be what you'd be working with.  To allow for guests, you first resize this initial domain (also called a primary domain in LDoms speak), assigning it a small amount of CPU and memory.  This frees up most of the available CPU and memory resources for guest domains.  IO is a little more complex, but very straightforward.  When LDoms 1.0 first came out, the only way to provide IO to guest systems was to create virtual disk and network services and attach guests to these services.  In the meantime, several different ways to connect guest domains to IO have been developed, the most recent one being SR-IOV support for network devices released in version 2.2 of Oracle VM Server for SPARC. I will cover these more advanced features in detail later.  For now, lets have a short look at the initial way IO was virtualized in LDoms: For virtualized IO, you create two services, one "Virtual Disk Service" or vds, and one "Virtual Switch" or vswitch.  You can, of course, also create more of these, but that's more advanced than I want to cover in this introduction.  These IO services now connect real, physical IO resources like a disk LUN or a networt port to the virtual devices that are assigned to guest domains.  For disk IO, the normal case would be to connect a physical LUN (or some other storage option that I'll discuss later) to one specific guest.  That guest would be assigned a virtual disk, which would appear to be just like a real LUN to the guest, while the IO is actually routed through the virtual disk service down to the physical device.  For network, the vswitch acts very much like a real, physical ethernet switch - you connect one physical port to it for outside connectivity and define one or more connections per guest, just like you would plug cables between a real switch and a real system. For completeness, there is another service that provides console access to guest domains which mimics the behavior of serial terminal servers. The connections between the virtual devices on the guest's side and the virtual IO services in the primary domain are created by the hypervisor.  It uses so called "Logical Domain Channels" or LDCs to create point-to-point connections between all of these devices and services.  These LDCs work very similar to high speed serial connections and are configured automatically whenever the Control Domain adds or removes virtual IO. To see all this in action, now lets look at a first example.  I will start with a newly installed machine and configure the control domain so that it's ready to create guest systems. In a first step, after we've installed the software, let's start the virtual console service and downsize the primary domain.  root@sun # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-c-- UART 512 261632M 0.3% 2d 13h 58m root@sun # ldm add-vconscon port-range=5000-5100 \ primary-console primary root@sun # svcadm enable vntsd root@sun # svcs vntsd STATE STIME FMRI online 9:53:21 svc:/ldoms/vntsd:default root@sun # ldm set-vcpu 16 primary root@sun # ldm set-mau 1 primary root@sun # ldm start-reconf primary root@sun # ldm set-memory 7680m primary root@sun # ldm add-config initial root@sun # shutdown -y -g0 -i6 So what have I done: I've defined a range of ports (5000-5100) for the virtual network terminal service and then started that service.  The vnts will later provide console connections to guest systems, very much like serial NTS's do in the physical world. Next, I assigned 16 vCPUs (on this platform, a T3-4, that's two cores) to the primary domain, freeing the rest up for future guest systems.  I also assigned one MAU to this domain.  A MAU is a crypto unit in the T3 CPU.  These need to be explicitly assigned to domains, just like CPU or memory.  (This is no longer the case with T4 systems, where crypto is always available everywhere.) Before I reassigned the memory, I started what's called a "delayed reconfiguration" session.  That avoids actually doing the change right away, which would take a considerable amount of time in this case.  Instead, I'll need to reboot once I'm all done.  I've assigned 7680MB of RAM to the primary.  That's 8GB less the 512MB which the hypervisor uses for it's own private purposes.  You can, depending on your needs, work with less.  I'll spend a dedicated article on sizing, discussing the pros and cons in detail. Finally, just before the reboot, I saved my work on the ILOM, to make this configuration available after a powercycle of the box.  (It'll always be available after a simple reboot, but the ILOM needs to know the configuration of the hypervisor after a power-cycle, before the primary domain is booted.) Now, lets create a first disk service and a first virtual switch which is connected to the physical network device igb2. We will later use these to connect virtual disks and virtual network ports of our guest systems to real world storage and network. root@sun # ldm add-vds primary-vds root@sun # ldm add-vswitch net-dev=igb2 switch-primary primary You are free to choose whatever names you like for the virtual disk service and the virtual switch.  I strongly recommend that you choose names that make sense to you and describe the function of each service in the context of your implementation.  For the vswitch, for example, you could choose names like "admin-vswitch" or "production-network" etc. This already concludes the configuration of the control domain.  We've freed up considerable amounts of CPU and RAM for guest systems and created the necessary infrastructure - console, vts and vswitch - so that guests systems can actually interact with the outside world.  The system is now ready to create guests, which I'll describe in the next section. For further reading, here are some recommendable links: The LDoms 2.2 Admin Guide The "Beginners Guide to LDoms" The LDoms Information Center on MOS LDoms on OTN

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• How to create art assets for a 3d avatar editor

  - by Andrew Garrison

  I am currently prototyping an idea for an iPhone game. I'd like to create an avatar editor inside the game so that the player can create a 3d avatar face and modify certain features (using slider controls), such as nose shape, eye color, mouth size, etc. This has been done in several games, but what I'm looking to do would be fairly cartoon-ish/caricature-ish, similar to the Mii editor on the Nintendo Wii (http://www.myavatareditor.com/). I'd also like the final result to have the ability to use some canned animations, such as simple speech animations, smiling, frowning, etc. I am not an artist, so I would be unable to create these assets, but what kind of effort is required for an artist to create the 3d models necessary for this type of game? Also what mechanism would be required to tweak the face's characteristics? Would you use bones or morph targets? How would the final result be animated? Would facial animation use bones or morph targets? I've seen several tools that do this sort of thing too, such as FacialStudio. Are there any facial generation tools out there you'd recommend for generating some base content for this game, or should I just hire an artist to do this type of work. Thanks!

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• How to Fix "Read-only file system" error when I run something as sudo and try to make a folder/file?

  - by Andrew

  When I try to save something or rename a file/folder it say this error " Read-only file system" or run something as root in the terminal it say this error sudo: unable to open /var/lib/sudo/"My User Name"/0: Read-only file system W: Not using locking for read only lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock E: Unable to write to /var/cache/apt/ E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened. When I make a Folder the error dialog in the details with Nautilus is this: Error creating directory: Read-only file system I would show you I picture of it but it isn't even letting my save onto my flash drive. Please help me.

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• How can I automatically change the system keyboard layout when plugging in an external keyboard?

  - by Andrew Bolster

  I have a US-Style laptop, which is fine, but I also have a UK-style Ergonomic USB keyboard. As such I usually have the US key layout set, but when I settle in at my desk and use the UK USB keyboard I find myself making stupid mistakes on symbols (normally a pretty good touch typist on either ergo or standard kbd). Can anyone think of a clean way of setting the keyboard layout based on the inferred layout/USBID of any plugged in Keyboard? Even having a custom setting such as adding a specific USB ID to a runtime script that checks if its plugged in or not. Can this be done without the user having to logout/in? I remember doing something similar with xorg.conf, but that required logout.

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• What is the best aproach for coding in a slow compilation environment

  - by Andrew

  I used to coding in C# in a TDD style - write/or change a small chunk of code, re-compile in 10 seconds the whole solution, re-run the tests and again. Easy... That development methodology worked very well for me for a few years, until a last year when I had to go back to C++ coding and it really feels that my productivity has dramatically decreased since. The C++ as a language is not a problem - I had quite a lot fo C++ dev experience... but in the past. My productivity is still OK for a small projects, but it gets worse when with the increase of the project size and once compilation time hits 10+ minutes it gets really bad. And if I find the error I have to start compilation again, etc. That is just purely frustrating. Thus I concluded that in a small chunks (as before) is not acceptable - any recommendations how can I get myself into the old gone habit of coding for an hour or so, when reviewing the code manually (without relying on a fast C# compiler), and only recompiling/re-running unit tests once in a couple of hours. With a C# and TDD it was very easy to write a code in a evolutionary way - after a dozen of iterations whatever crap I started with was ending up in a good code, but it just does not work for me anymore (in a slow compilation environment). Would really appreciate your inputs and recos. p.s. not sure how to tag the question - anyone is welcome to re-tag the question appropriately. Cheers.

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• First steps into css - aligning data insite one DIV [on hold]

  - by Andrew

  I am trying to move away from tables, and start doing CSS. Here is my HTML code that I currently trying to place into a nice looking container. <div> <div> <h2>ID: 4000 | SSN#: 4545</h2> </div> <div> <img src="./images/tenant/unknown.png"> </div> <div> <h3>Names Used</h3> Will Smith<br> Bill Smmith<br> John Smith<br> Will Smith<br> Bill Smmith<br> John Smith<br> Will Smith<br> Bill Smmith<br> John Smith<br> </div> <div> <h3>Phones Used</h3> 123456789<br> 123456789<br> 123456789<br> 123456789<br> 123456789<br> 123456789<br> 123456789<br> 123456789<br> </div> <div> <h3>Addresses Used</h3> 125 Main Evanston IL 60202<br> 465 Greenwood St. Schaumburg null 60108<br> 125 Main Evanston IL 60202<br> 465 Greenwood St. Schaumburg null 60108<br> 125 Main Evanston IL 60202<br> 465 Greenwood St. Schaumburg null 60108<br> 125 Main Evanston IL 60202<br> 465 Greenwood St. Schaumburg null 60108<br> 125 Main Evanston IL 60202<br> 465 Greenwood St. Schaumburg null 60108<br> </div> </div> I now understand now I create classes and assign classes to elements. I have no issues doing colors. But I am very confused with elements alignments. Could you suggest a nice way to pack it together with some CSS which I can analyze and take as a CSS starting learning point?

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• Coding in large chunks ... Code verification skills

  - by Andrew

  As a follow up to my prev question: What is the best aproach for coding in a slow compilation environment To recap: I am stuck with a large software system with which a TDD ideology of "test often" does not work. And to make it even worse the features like pre-compiled headers/multi-threaded compilation/incremental linking, etc is not available to me - hence I think that the best way out would be to add the extensive logging into the system and to start "coding in large chunks", which I understand as code for a two-three hours first (as opposed to 15-20 mins in TDD) - thoroughly eyeball the code for a 15 minutes and only after all that do the compilation and run the tests. As I have been doing TDD for a quite a while, my code eyeballing / code verification skills got rusty (you don't really need this that much if you can quickly verify what you've done in 5 seconds by running a test or two) - so I am after a recommendations on how to learn these source code verification/error spotting skills again. I know I was able to do that easily some 5-10 years ago when I din't have much support from the compiler/unit testing tools I had until recently, thus there should be a way to get back to the basics.

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• Do professional software developers still dream of creating industry/world-changing apps?

  - by Andrew Heath

  I'm a hobby programmer. The absence of real world deadlines, customer feedback, or performance reviews leaves me free to daydream about having and implementing The Next Great Idea That Changes the World. Of course I'm aware I probably have a better chance of winning the lottery, but it's fun to imagine knocking out some fully-homebrewed app that destroys the status quo. I know many professional programmers have side projects, some for profit others not. I was wondering on the way to work this morning (non-IT boring work) if having to code for your food tended to dampen the dreaming? Does greater experience leave you jaded and more focused on the projects at hand? Not trying to be a downer, just interested in the mindset of the real software professional :-)

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• Subversion 1.7 on 12.04 precise: libsasl error, compiling from source?

  - by Andrew Mao

  Background: I am a longtime Gentoo user, and this is my first time using Ubuntu (installed on a VM to avoid compiling everything from scratch). I am familiar with a Linux environment but somewhat unfamiliar with Ubuntu. I am trying to install Subversion 1.7 on Ubuntu and saw this post: Where can I find a Subversion 1.7 binary? The above post recommends using the PPA ppa:dominik-stadler/subversion-1.7. I also found the PPA ppa:svn/ppa from another link. They both cause problems for me. The issue is that any svn operation using the remote server causes the following error: svn: E170001: Unable to connect to a repository at URL 'svn+ssh://my_repo' svn: E170001: Could not create SASL context: generic failure: No such file or directory This seems to arise from a recent bug involving SVN dependency on the libsasl library, as documented by Debian users here: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=683555 and also Mac users here: https://trac.macports.org/ticket/34861 Resolution seems to involve either updating the cyrus-sasl or libsasl library to a newer version (neither of which is in the latest apt packages), or compiling subversion without SASL support. As a Gentoo user I started looking into how to compile svn from source, but it looks way more complicated on Ubuntu than I'm used to and I'm not sure what the canonical way is. My questions: Is there an obvious fix for this problem that I am overlooking? Is there a way to update the dependencies for SVN to something that works through using synaptic or apt-get? If I want to compile from scratch, how do I use the sources in the PPA instead of downloading my own source copy (i.e. the PPA has both binary and sources?)

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• Setting up Google Analytics for multiple subdomains

  - by Andrew G. Johnson

  so first here's a snippet of my current Analytics javascript: var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-30490730-1']); _gaq.push(['_setDomainName', '.apartmentjunkie.com']); _gaq.push(['_setSiteSpeedSampleRate', 100]); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); So if you wanna have a quick peak at the site the url is ApartmentJunkie.com, keep in mind the site is pretty bare bones but you'll get the idea -- basically it's very similar to craigslist in the sense that it's in the local space so people pick a city then get sent to a subdomain that is specific for that city, e.g. winnipeg.mb.apartmentjunkie.com. I put that up late last night then had a look at the analytics and found that I am seeing only the request uri portion of the URLs in analytics as I would with any other site only with this one it's a problem as winnipeg.mb.apartmentjunkie.com/map/ and brandon.mb.apartmentjunkie.com/map/ are two different pages and shouldn't be lumped together as /map/ I know the kneejerk response is likely going to be "hey just setup a different google analytics profile for each subdomain" but there will eventually be a lot of subdomains so google's cap of 50 is going to be too limited and even more important I want to see the data in aggregate for the most part. I am thinking of making a change to the javascript, to something like: _gaq.push(['_trackPageview',String(document.domain) + String(document.location)]); But am unsure if this is the best way and figured someone else on wm.se would have had a similar situation that they could talk a bit about.

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• Right-Time Retail Part 3

  - by David Dorf

  This is part three of the three-part series.  Read Part 1 and Part 2 first. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Right-Time Marketing Real-time isn’t just about executing faster; it extends to interactions with customers as well. As an industry, we’ve spent many years analyzing all the data that’s been collected. Yes, that data has been invaluable in helping us make better decisions like where to open new stores, how to assort those stores, and how to price our products. But the recent advances in technology are now making it possible to analyze and deliver that data very quickly… fast enough to impact a potential sale in near real-time. Let me give you two examples. Salesmen in car dealerships get pretty good at sizing people up. When a potential customer walks in the door, it doesn’t take long for the salesman to figure out the revenue at stake. Is this person a real buyer, or just looking for a fun test drive? Will this person buy today or three months from now? Will this person opt for the expensive packages, or go bare bones? While the salesman certainly asks some leading questions, much of information is discerned through body language. But body language doesn’t translate very well over the web. Eloqua, which was acquired by Oracle earlier this year, reads internet body language. By tracking the behavior of the people visiting your web site, Eloqua categorizes visitors based on their propensity to buy. While Eloqua’s roots have been in B2B, we’ve been looking at leveraging the technology with ATG to target B2C. Knowing what sites were previously visited, how often the customer has been to your site recently, and how long they’ve spent searching can help understand where the customer is in their purchase journey. And knowing that bit of information may be enough to help close the deal with a real-time offer, follow-up email, or online customer service pop-up. This isn’t so different from the days gone by when the clerk behind the counter of the corner store noticed you were lingering in a particular aisle, so he walked over to help you compare two products and close the sale. You appreciated the personalized service, and he knew the value of the long-term relationship. Move that same concept into the digital world and you have Oracle’s CX Suite, a cloud-based offering of end-to-end customer experience tools, assembled primarily from acquisitions. Those tools are Oracle Marketing (Eloqua), Oracle Commerce (ATG, Endeca), Oracle Sales (Oracle CRM On Demand), Oracle Service (RightNow), Oracle Social (Collective Intellect, Vitrue, Involver), and Oracle Content (Fatwire). We are providing the glue that binds the CIO and CMO together to unleash synergies that drive the top-line higher, and by virtue of the cloud-approach, keep costs at bay. My second example of real-time marketing takes place in the store but leverages the concepts of Web marketing. In 1962 the decline of personalized service in retail began. Anyone know the significance of that year? That’s when Target, K-Mart, and Walmart each opened their first stores, and over the succeeding years the industry chose scale over personal service. No longer were you known as “Jane with the snotty kid so make sure we check her out fast,” but you suddenly became “time-starved female age 20-30 with kids.” I’m not saying that was a bad thing – it was the right thing for our industry at the time, and it enabled a huge amount of growth, cheaper prices, and more variety of products. But scale alone is no longer good enough. Today’s sophisticated consumer demands scale, experience, and personal attention. To some extent we’ve delivered that on websites via the magic of cookies, your willingness to log in, and sophisticated data analytics. What store manager wouldn’t love a report detailing all the visitors to his store, where they came from, and which products that examined? People trackers are getting more sophisticated, incorporating infrared, video analytics, and even face recognition. (Next time you walk in front on a mannequin, don’t be surprised if it’s looking back.) But the ultimate marketing conduit is the mobile phone. Since each mobile phone emits a unique number on WiFi networks, it becomes the cookie of the physical world. Assuming congress keeps privacy safeguards reasonable, we’ll have a win-win situation for both retailers and consumers. Retailers get to know more about the consumer’s purchase journey, and consumers get higher levels of service with the retailer. When I call my bank, a couple things happen before the call is connected. A reverse look-up on my phone number identifies me so my accounts can be retrieved from Siebel CRM. Then the system anticipates why I’m calling based on recent transactions. In this example, it sees that I was just charged a foreign currency fee, so it assumes that’s the reason I’m calling. It puts all the relevant information on the customer service rep’s screen as it connects the call. When I complain about the fee, the rep immediately sees I’m a great customer and I travel lots, so she suggests switching me to their traveler’s card that doesn’t have foreign transaction fees. That technology is powered by a product called Oracle Real-Time Decisions, a rules engine built to execute very quickly, basically in the time it takes the phone to ring once. So let’s combine the power of that product with our new-found mobile cookie and provide contextual customer interactions in real-time. Our first opportunity comes when a customer crosses a pre-defined geo-fence, typically a boundary around the store. Context is the key to our interaction: that’s the customer (known or anonymous), the time of day and day of week, and location. Thomas near the downtown store on a Wednesday at noon means he’s heading to lunch. If he were near the mall location on a Saturday morning, that’s a completely different context. But on his way to lunch, we’ll let Thomas know that we’ve got a new shipment of ASICS running shoes on display with a simple text message. We used the context to look-up Thomas’ past purchases and understood he was an avid runner. We used the fact that this was lunchtime to select the type of message, in this case an informational message instead of an offer. Thomas enters the store, phone in hand, and walks to the shoe department. He scans one of the new ASICS shoes using the convenient QR Codes we provided on the shelf-tags, but then he starts scanning low-end Nikes. Each scan is another opportunity to both learn from Thomas and potentially interact via another message. Since he historically buys low-end Nikes and keeps scanning them, he’s likely falling back into his old ways. Our marketing rules are currently set to move loyal customer to higher margin products. We could have set the dials to increase visit frequency, move overstocked items, increase basket size, or many other settings, but today we are trying to move Thomas to higher-margin products. We send Thomas another text message, this time it’s a personalized offer for 10% off ASICS good for 24 hours. Offering him a discount on Nikes would be throwing margin away since he buys those anyway. We are using our marketing dollars to change behavior that increases the long-term value of Thomas. He decides to buy the ASICS and scans the discount code on his phone at checkout. Checkout is yet another opportunity to interact with Thomas, so the transaction is sent back to Oracle RTD for evaluation. Since Thomas didn’t buy anything with the shoes, we’ll print a bounce-back coupon on the receipt offering 30% off ASICS socks if he returns within seven days. We have successfully started moving Thomas from low-margin to high-margin products. In both of these marketing scenarios, we are able to leverage data in near real-time to decide how best to interact with the customer and lead to an increase in the lifetime value of the customer. The key here is acting at the moment the customer shows interest using the context of the situation. We aren’t pushing random products at haphazard times. We are tailoring the marketing to be very specific to this customer, and it’s the technology that allows this to happen in near real-time. Conclusion As we enable more right-time integrations and interactions, retailers will begin to offer increased service to their customers. Localized and personalized service at scale will drive loyalty and lead to meaningful revenue growth for the retailers that execute well. Our industry needs to support Commerce Anywhere…and commerce anytime as well.

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• help animating a player in Corona SDK

  - by andrew McCutchan

  Working on a game in the Corona SDK with Lua and I need help so the player animates on the line drawn. Right now he animates at the beggining and the end but not on the line. Here is the player code: function spawnPlayerObject(xPlayerSpawn,yPlayerSpawn,richTurn) --spawns Rich where we need him. -- riches sprite sheet and all his inital spirites. We need to adjust this so that animations 3-6 are the only ones that animate when moving horizontally local richPlayer = sprite.newSpriteSet(richSheet1,1,6) sprite.add(richPlayer, "rich", 1,6,500,1) rich = sprite.newSprite(richPlayer) rich.x = xPlayerSpawn rich.y = yPlayerSpawn rich:scale(_W*0.0009, _W*0.0009) -- scale is used to adjust the size of the object. richDir = richTurn rich.rotation = richDir rich:prepare("rich") rich:play() physics.addBody( rich, "static", { friction=1, radius = 15 } ) -- needs a better physics body for collision detection. end And here is the code for the line: function movePlayerOnLine(event) --for the original image replace all rich with player. if posCount ~= linePart then richDir = math.atan2(ractgangle_hit[posCount].y-rich.y,ractgangle_hit[posCount].x-rich.x)*180/math.pi playerSpeed = 5 rich.x = rich.x + math.cos(richDir*math.pi/180)*playerSpeed rich.y = rich.y + math.sin(richDir*math.pi/180)*playerSpeed if rich.x < ractgangle_hit[posCount].x+playerSpeed*10 and rich.x > ractgangle_hit[posCount].x-playerSpeed*10 then if rich.y < ractgangle_hit[posCount].y+playerSpeed*10 and rich.y > ractgangle_hit[posCount].y-playerSpeed*10 then posCount = posCount + 1 end end I don't think anything has changed recently but I have been getting an error when testing of "attempt to upvalue "rich" a nil value" on the second line, richDir = etc.

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• wubi dual-boot installation of ubuntu 12.04 on Windows 7 fails to boot

  - by Andrew

  I am trying to use the wubi installation process to create a Ubuntu 12.04 / Windows 7 dual boot setup on my Windows 7 machine (Dell Inspiron 17R). The installation initially works fine, and I am able to load Ubuntu several times after selecting it from the boot menu. However, when I boot into Windows 7 it seems to corrupt the Ubuntu boot process, because after running Windows 7, Ubuntu won't boot on the machine. It is still listed as an option in the boot menu, but when it is selected, the machine does one of the following: -hangs at the load-screen and says that Ubuntu is preparing to run for the first time (although it isn't the first time the OS has been loaded) -hangs with a black screen and does nothing I have uninstalled Ubuntu and then reinstalled it (using wubi) three times. Each time Ubuntu initially boots okay (including rebooting the laptop into Ubuntu several times.) However, whenever I switch over and boot into Windows 7 it breaks the Ubuntu installation. Windows 7 continues to boot and work fine without issues. I have successfully installed Ubuntu using wubi onto a different Windows 7 machine before without problems...it seems that there is something different about this laptop configuration. I am not sure how to debug the issue. I see no error messages during the Ubuntu boot process when it hangs and am not sure how to debug this.

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• help animating player in corona sdk

  - by andrew McCutchan

  working on a game in the corona sdk with lua and I need help so the player animates on the line drawn. Right now he animates at the beggining and the end but not on the line. here is the player code function spawnPlayerObject(xPlayerSpawn,yPlayerSpawn,richTurn) --spawns Rich where we need him. -- riches sprite sheet and all his inital spirites. We need to adjust this so that animations 3-6 are the only ones that animate when moving horizontally local richPlayer = sprite.newSpriteSet(richSheet1,1,6) sprite.add(richPlayer, "rich", 1,6,500,1) rich = sprite.newSprite(richPlayer) rich.x = xPlayerSpawn rich.y = yPlayerSpawn rich:scale(_W*0.0009, _W*0.0009) -- scale is used to adjust the size of the object. richDir = richTurn rich.rotation = richDir rich:prepare("rich") rich:play() physics.addBody( rich, "static", { friction=1, radius = 15 } ) -- needs a better physics body for collision detection. end and here is the code for the line function movePlayerOnLine(event) --for the original image replace all rich with player. if posCount ~= linePart then richDir = math.atan2(ractgangle_hit[posCount].y-rich.y,ractgangle_hit[posCount].x-rich.x)*180/math.pi playerSpeed = 5 rich.x = rich.x + math.cos(richDir*math.pi/180)*playerSpeed rich.y = rich.y + math.sin(richDir*math.pi/180)*playerSpeed if rich.x < ractgangle_hit[posCount].x+playerSpeed*10 and rich.x > ractgangle_hit[posCount].x-playerSpeed*10 then if rich.y < ractgangle_hit[posCount].y+playerSpeed*10 and rich.y > ractgangle_hit[posCount].y-playerSpeed*10 then posCount = posCount + 1 end end I don't think anything has changed recently but I have been getting an error when testing of " attempt to upvalue "rich" a nil value" on the second line, richDir = etc.

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• Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Remix on Asus Eee PC 701 4G - boot process hangs up

  - by Andrew

  I've got an old Eee PC 701 4G with the following specifications: 512 MB RAM 4GB SSD drive SM223AC 8GB SD card extension Screen resolution: 800 x 480 BIOS Revision 1101 (05/16/2008) EC Firmware version: EPC-079 Windows XP SP3 works fine on it, but I decided to switch my OS to Ubuntu. I have downloaded an Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Remix ISO and wrote it to my FAT32 SD card using Universal-USB-Installer-1.8.3.3, as described on ubuntu.com During standard load from the SD card the boot process hangs up with black screen. If I'll press F6 while preloading Ubuntu, it sucessfully displays the boot menu, selecting language and showing 2 main commands: "Run ubuntu from USB drive" and "Insall Ubuntu". Selecting either of these commands leading to the same result - after some background work the main loading indicator is displayed ("Ubuntu" text with dotted progress bar under it), and it's progressing forever without any effect. Is Ubuntu 10.10 compatible with my Eee PC at all? How to boot it correctly?

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• Speaking in Raleigh NC June 15th

  - by Andrew Kelly

  Just a heads up to those in the area that I will be speaking at the (TriPASS) Raleigh SQL Server user group on the 15th of June 2010. The topic is Storage & I/O Best Practices. The abstract is listed below: SQL Server relies heavily on a well configured storage sub-system to perform at its peak but unfortunately this is one of the most neglected or mis-configured areas of a SQL Server instance. Here we will focus on the best practices related to how SQL Server works with the underlying storage...(read more)

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• Java language book for an experienced programmer?

  - by Andrew

  I am looking for book to get up to speed with (start with) a Java language. I am experienced (more than 15 years) C# and C++ programmer with a bit of Python, so I don't need a book which starts with a programming concepts for a beginner. In fact I think I need a "Java language specification" sort of book. I checked the answers to questions similar to mine and found that there two books which is being recommended most: "Effective Java" and "Sun Certified Java Programmer". After a quick look at the "Effective Java" I realised it should not be a book to start with, it is a good book (I read all books in Effective C++, STL series and liked them but they are more "good practices" books, rather than a book for a beginners) "Sun Certified Java Programmer" looks closer to what I am after - but goes too slow for me. So I did some more search and found these two books: The Java(TM) Language Specification by Gosling himself Java™ Programming Language, The (4th Edition) by Ken Arnold I gather the first one a little bit dated and the second one is the best Java Language Reference books up to date, but I am not sure - as I am not a Java person to make such judgements. After reading the language reference book I will start learning the basic libraries / packages / namespaces (collections, algorithms, IO, etc) and then something about UI architecture. But that will come later. Question: - which Java Language reference book for an experienced programmer you can recomend ? and why? Cheers.

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• When pointing to new DNS servers is there any chance of E-mails being lost if the old E-mail hosting service is still up?

  - by LaserBeak

  I am changing webhosts and will be using the new hosts mail servers instead of the old ones. I have created all the correctly named mailboxes on the new service but have also not yet cut ties with the old webhost. I am expecting that even if the new DNS values which point to the new hosts DNS servers and respective SOA\zone file with the new MX values have not yet propagated and an E-mail is directed at the old hosts mail servers as per the mx records in the SOA\zone records which the old hosting provider holds, the E-mail would still come through to the mailbox that's on the old host providers mail servers. So I am just trying to reaffirm if I got this right and it's essentially impossible for me to loose an E-mail since it will hit either the old hosts mail servers or the new ones ? Also is it possible to configure the same E-mail account to check and collect mail from different mail servers by entering multiple pop3 addresses ? And if I choose to keep the old web hosts mail hosting services as a backup by specifying the mx records for it with a lower priority in the SOA records hosted by the new webhost, is it possible to have any incoming E-mails sent to both servers by the mail daemon so I have two copies? Or is my only option having the primary mail server forward the E-mail somehow to the old mailserver ?

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• How add cpu frequency that should be available?

  - by Andrew Redd

  I have a system with an Intel Core i7 970 that should be able to run at 3.2 GHz. I'm running ubuntu 12.04 and installed the cpufreq indicator to be able to change the governor and noticed that I only had frequencies up to 2.0 GHz available to me. I set to performance and checked with cpufreq-info cpufreq-info -c 0 cpufrequtils 007: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2009 Report errors and bugs to [email protected], please. analyzing CPU 0: driver: acpi-cpufreq CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0 maximum transition latency: 10.0 us. hardware limits: 1.60 GHz - 2.00 GHz available frequency steps: 2.00 GHz, 1.86 GHz, 1.73 GHz, 1.60 GHz available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance current policy: frequency should be within 1.60 GHz and 2.00 GHz. The governor "performance" may decide which speed to use within this range. current CPU frequency is 2.00 GHz (asserted by call to hardware). cpufreq stats: 2.00 GHz:4.93%, 1.86 GHz:0.03%, 1.73 GHz:0.02%, 1.60 GHz:95.02% (718654) And to double check: $ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_available_frequencies 1995000 1862000 1729000 1596000 How do I get all the frequencies that I should have available to me, all up to the 3.2 GHz?

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• Installing gdm on headless Server Edition

  - by Andrew Koester

  I have Ubuntu Server running on a headless box, which is right now, almost entirely doing only software RAID and feels a little underused. I'd like to get into using Ubuntu as a desktop a little more. What do I need to do (install/etc.) to get Gnome while keeping the box itself headless? I'm not sure which packages to install or which steps to take. I figure I'll just use X over the network (Xming or the like) but something like NX might work.

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• Latest SolidQ Journal Plus Giveaways

  - by Andrew Kelly

    You can find the latest edition of the SolidQ Journal here that is always good reading but if you register over the next 3 weeks you may be eligible for a prize including:  One $500 Amazon gift card and 5 $150 gift cards; books from Itzik Ben-Gan, Greg Low, and Erik Veerman/Jay Hackney/Dejan Sarka; and chats with MarkTab and Kevin Boles.   The deadline for the giveaway is January 7th and you can register for it HERE .  So be a good little boy or girl and maybe Santa will bring...(read more)

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• Closer Aero-snap in ubuntu

  - by Andrew Redd

  Before I get screamed at for duplicating a question. Ive read windows 7-like snap window maximize and vertical feature and http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2009/11/get-aero-snap-in-ubuntu/ There are two problems with this solution that I am trying to get around. It's not sensitive to dragging a window It's not intelligent for Twin-view monitors. The first problem is the more pressing. I have the compiz settings with wmctrl, but this is not sensitive to dragging windows if I have a window with the focus and place my mouse in the panel I get the window maximized, even though I'm not dragging the window. A good solution would be sensitive to the state of the mouse, clicked, right clicked, middle clicked. An ideal solution would be sensitive to dragging a window or not. Second is a minor annoyance to me at least. With the commands as they are listed are equivalent to maximizing the windows since I have a Twinview monitors setup. Is there any way to add these sensitivities to the commands?

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• Class Design -- Multiple Calls from One Method or One Call from Multiple Methods?

  - by Andrew

  I've been working on some code recently that interfaces with a CMS we use and it's presented me with a question on class design that I think is applicable in a number of situations. Essentially, what I am doing is extracting information from the CMS and transforming this information into objects that I can use programatically for other purposes. This consists of two steps: Retrieve the data from the CMS (we have a DAL that I use, so this is essentially just specifying what data from the CMS I want--no connection logic or anything like that) Map the parsed data to my own [C#] objects There are basically two ways I can approach this: One call from multiple methods public void MainMethodWhereIDoStuff() { IEnumerable<MyObject> myObjects = GetMyObjects(); // Do other stuff with myObjects } private static IEnumerable<MyObject> GetMyObjects() { IEnumerable<CmsDataItem> cmsDataItems = GetCmsDataItems(); List<MyObject> mappedObjects = new List<MyObject>(); // do stuff to map the CmsDataItems to MyObjects return mappedObjects; } private static IEnumerable<CmsDataItem> GetCmsDataItems() { List<CmsDataItem> cmsDataItems = new List<CmsDataItem>(); // do stuff to get the CmsDataItems I want return cmsDataItems; } Multiple calls from one method public void MainMethodWhereIDoStuff() { IEnumerable<CmsDataItem> cmsDataItems = GetCmsDataItems(); IEnumerable<MyObject> myObjects = GetMyObjects(cmsDataItems); // do stuff with myObjects } private static IEnumerable<MyObject> GetMyObjects(IEnumerable<CmsDataItem> itemsToMap) { // ... } private static IEnumerable<CmsDataItem> GetCmsDataItems() { // ... } I am tempted to say that the latter is better than the former, as GetMyObjects does not depend on GetCmsDataItems, and it is explicit in the calling method the steps that are executed to retrieve the objects (I'm concerned that the first approach is kind of an object-oriented version of spaghetti code). On the other hand, the two helper methods are never going to be used outside of the class, so I'm not sure if it really matters whether one depends on the other. Furthermore, I like the fact that in the first approach the objects can be retrieved from one line-- most likely anyone working with the main method doesn't care how the objects are retrieved, they just need to retrieve the objects, and the "daisy chained" helper methods hide the exact steps needed to retrieve them (in practice, I actually have a few more methods but am still able to retrieve the object collection I want in one line). Is one of these methods right and the other wrong? Or is it simply a matter of preference or context dependent?

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• Adding a forum to an existing site

  - by Andrew Heath

  I've got a site with ~500 registered members, 300 of which are what you'd call "active". Site data is kept in a MySQL dbase. I'd like to add a myBB forum to the site, but this question applies to any forum really. What I very much want to avoid is requiring my users to register both on the site and on the forum because my userbase is not technically literate and this would confuse a lot of them. However the forum software has its own registration, login, cookie, and password management system which naturally are different from the site's mechanics. I envision the following possibilities: install myBB into the existing database and customize the login code to unify the two systems. This would probably mean changing the site's code to use the myBB system as that would likely be less painful to refactor and wouldn't hurt future myBB upgrade ability. install myBB into separate database and write a bridging script of some sort that auto-registers existing site users with the forum if they elect to participate. Also check new forum registrations against the site's username list to prevent newcomers from taking existing names. run them fully separate and force users to re-register (easiest for ME, but least desirable for them) I would like a suggested course of action from those who have trod this path before... Thank you.

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