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• Active Directory Password Policy Problem

  - by Will

  To Clarify: my question is why isn't my password policy applying to people in the domain. Hey guys, having trouble with our password policy in Active Directory. Sometimes it just helps me to type out what I’m seeing It appears to not be applying properly across the board. I am new to this environment and AD in general but I think I have a general grasp of what should be going on. It’s a pretty simple AD setup without too many Group Policies being applied. It looks something like this DOMAIN Default Domain Policy (link enabled) Password Policy (link enabled and enforce) Personal OU Force Password Change (completely empty nothing in this GPO) IT OU Lockout Policy (link enabled and enforced) CS OU Lockout Policy Accouting OU Lockout Policy The password policy and default domain policy both define the same things under Computer ConfigWindows seetings sec settings Account Policies / Password Policy Enforce password History : 24 passwords remembered Maximum Password age : 180 days Min password age: 14 days Minimum Password Length: 6 characters Password must meet complexity requirements: Enabled Store Passwords using reversible encryption: Disabled Account Policies / Account Lockout Policy Account Lockout Duration 10080 Minutes Account Lockout Threshold: 5 invalid login attempts Reset Account Lockout Counter after : 30 minutes IT lockout This just sets the screen saver settings to lock computers when the user is Idle. After running Group Policy modeling it seems like the password policy and default domain policy is getting applied to everyone. Here is the results of group policy modeling on MO-BLANCKM using the mblanck account, as you can see the policies are both being applied , with nothing important being denied Group Policy Results NCLGS\mblanck on NCLGS\MO-BLANCKM Data collected on: 12/29/2010 11:29:44 AM Summary Computer Configuration Summary General Computer name NCLGS\MO-BLANCKM Domain NCLGS.local Site Default-First-Site-Name Last time Group Policy was processed 12/29/2010 10:17:58 AM Group Policy Objects Applied GPOs Name Link Location Revision Default Domain Policy NCLGS.local AD (15), Sysvol (15) WSUS-52010 NCLGS.local/WSUS/Clients AD (54), Sysvol (54) Password Policy NCLGS.local AD (58), Sysvol (58) Denied GPOs Name Link Location Reason Denied Local Group Policy Local Empty Security Group Membership when Group Policy was applied BUILTIN\Administrators Everyone S-1-5-21-507921405-1326574676-682003330-1003 BUILTIN\Users NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK NT AUTHORITY\Authenticated Users NCLGS\MO-BLANCKM$ NCLGS\Admin-ComputerAccounts-GP NCLGS\Domain Computers WMI Filters Name Value Reference GPO(s) None Component Status Component Name Status Last Process Time Group Policy Infrastructure Success 12/29/2010 10:17:59 AM EFS recovery Success (no data) 10/28/2010 9:10:34 AM Registry Success 10/28/2010 9:10:32 AM Security Success 10/28/2010 9:10:34 AM User Configuration Summary General User name NCLGS\mblanck Domain NCLGS.local Last time Group Policy was processed 12/29/2010 11:28:56 AM Group Policy Objects Applied GPOs Name Link Location Revision Default Domain Policy NCLGS.local AD (7), Sysvol (7) IT-Lockout NCLGS.local/Personal/CS AD (11), Sysvol (11) Password Policy NCLGS.local AD (5), Sysvol (5) Denied GPOs Name Link Location Reason Denied Local Group Policy Local Empty Force Password Change NCLGS.local/Personal Empty Security Group Membership when Group Policy was applied NCLGS\Domain Users Everyone BUILTIN\Administrators BUILTIN\Users NT AUTHORITY\INTERACTIVE NT AUTHORITY\Authenticated Users LOCAL NCLGS\MissingSkidEmail NCLGS\Customer_Service NCLGS\Email_Archive NCLGS\Job Ticket Users NCLGS\Office Staff NCLGS\CUSTOMER SERVI-1 NCLGS\Prestige_Jobs_Email NCLGS\Telecommuters NCLGS\Everyone - NCL WMI Filters Name Value Reference GPO(s) None Component Status Component Name Status Last Process Time Group Policy Infrastructure Success 12/29/2010 11:28:56 AM Registry Success 12/20/2010 12:05:51 PM Scripts Success 10/13/2010 10:38:40 AM Computer Configuration Windows Settings Security Settings Account Policies/Password Policy Policy Setting Winning GPO Enforce password history 24 passwords remembered Password Policy Maximum password age 180 days Password Policy Minimum password age 14 days Password Policy Minimum password length 6 characters Password Policy Password must meet complexity requirements Enabled Password Policy Store passwords using reversible encryption Disabled Password Policy Account Policies/Account Lockout Policy Policy Setting Winning GPO Account lockout duration 10080 minutes Password Policy Account lockout threshold 5 invalid logon attempts Password Policy Reset account lockout counter after 30 minutes Password Policy Local Policies/Security Options Network Security Policy Setting Winning GPO Network security: Force logoff when logon hours expire Enabled Default Domain Policy Public Key Policies/Autoenrollment Settings Policy Setting Winning GPO Enroll certificates automatically Enabled [Default setting] Renew expired certificates, update pending certificates, and remove revoked certificates Disabled Update certificates that use certificate templates Disabled Public Key Policies/Encrypting File System Properties Winning GPO [Default setting] Policy Setting Allow users to encrypt files using Encrypting File System (EFS) Enabled Certificates Issued To Issued By Expiration Date Intended Purposes Winning GPO SBurns SBurns 12/13/2007 5:24:30 PM File Recovery Default Domain Policy For additional information about individual settings, launch Group Policy Object Editor. Public Key Policies/Trusted Root Certification Authorities Properties Winning GPO [Default setting] Policy Setting Allow users to select new root certification authorities (CAs) to trust Enabled Client computers can trust the following certificate stores Third-Party Root Certification Authorities and Enterprise Root Certification Authorities To perform certificate-based authentication of users and computers, CAs must meet the following criteria Registered in Active Directory only Administrative Templates Windows Components/Windows Update Policy Setting Winning GPO Allow Automatic Updates immediate installation Enabled WSUS-52010 Allow non-administrators to receive update notifications Enabled WSUS-52010 Automatic Updates detection frequency Enabled WSUS-52010 Check for updates at the following interval (hours): 1 Policy Setting Winning GPO Configure Automatic Updates Enabled WSUS-52010 Configure automatic updating: 4 - Auto download and schedule the install The following settings are only required and applicable if 4 is selected. Scheduled install day: 0 - Every day Scheduled install time: 03:00 Policy Setting Winning GPO No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations Disabled WSUS-52010 Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations Enabled WSUS-52010 Wait the following period before prompting again with a scheduled restart (minutes): 30 Policy Setting Winning GPO Reschedule Automatic Updates scheduled installations Enabled WSUS-52010 Wait after system startup (minutes): 1 Policy Setting Winning GPO Specify intranet Microsoft update service location Enabled WSUS-52010 Set the intranet update service for detecting updates: http://lavender Set the intranet statistics server: http://lavender (example: http://IntranetUpd01) User Configuration Administrative Templates Control Panel/Display Policy Setting Winning GPO Hide Screen Saver tab Enabled IT-Lockout Password protect the screen saver Enabled IT-Lockout Screen Saver Enabled IT-Lockout Screen Saver executable name Enabled IT-Lockout Screen Saver executable name sstext3d.scr Policy Setting Winning GPO Screen Saver timeout Enabled IT-Lockout Number of seconds to wait to enable the Screen Saver Seconds: 1800 System/Power Management Policy Setting Winning GPO Prompt for password on resume from hibernate / suspend Enabled IT-Lockout

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• Implementing Unit Testing on the iPhone

  - by james.ingham

  Hi, So I've followed this tutorial to setup unit testing on my app when I got a little stuck. At bullet point 8 in that tutorial it shows this image, which is what I should be expecting when I build: However this isn't what I get when I build. I get this error message: Command /bin/sh failed with exit code 1 as well as the error message the unit test has created. Then, when I expand on the first error I get this: PhaseScriptExecution "Run Script" "build/3D Pool.build/Debug-iphonesimulator/LogicTests.build/Script-1A6BA6AE10F28F40008AC2A8.sh" cd "/Users/james/Desktop/FYP/3D Pool" setenv ACTION build setenv ALTERNATE_GROUP staff ... setenv XCODE_VERSION_MAJOR 0300 setenv XCODE_VERSION_MINOR 0320 setenv YACC /Developer/usr/bin/yacc /bin/sh -c "\"/Users/james/Desktop/FYP/3D Pool/build/3D Pool.build/Debug-iphonesimulator/LogicTests.build/Script-1A6BA6AE10F28F40008AC2A8.sh\"" /Developer/Tools/RunPlatformUnitTests.include:412: note: Started tests for architectures 'i386' /Developer/Tools/RunPlatformUnitTests.include:419: note: Running tests for architecture 'i386' (GC OFF) objc[12589]: GC: forcing GC OFF because OBJC_DISABLE_GC is set Test Suite '/Users/james/Desktop/FYP/3D Pool/build/Debug-iphonesimulator/LogicTests.octest(Tests)' started at 2010-01-04 21:05:06 +0000 Test Suite 'LogicTests' started at 2010-01-04 21:05:06 +0000 Test Case '-[LogicTests testFail]' started. /Users/james/Desktop/FYP/3D Pool/LogicTests.m:17: error: -[LogicTests testFail] : Must fail to succeed. Test Case '-[LogicTests testFail]' failed (0.000 seconds). Test Suite 'LogicTests' finished at 2010-01-04 21:05:06 +0000. Executed 1 test, with 1 failure (0 unexpected) in 0.000 (0.000) seconds Test Suite '/Users/james/Desktop/FYP/3D Pool/build/Debug-iphonesimulator/LogicTests.octest(Tests)' finished at 2010-01-04 21:05:06 +0000. Executed 1 test, with 1 failure (0 unexpected) in 0.000 (0.002) seconds /Developer/Tools/RunPlatformUnitTests.include:448: error: Failed tests for architecture 'i386' (GC OFF) /Developer/Tools/RunPlatformUnitTests.include:462: note: Completed tests for architectures 'i386' Command /bin/sh failed with exit code 1 Now this is very odd as it is running the tests (and succeeding as you can see my STFail firing) because if I add a different test which passes I get no errors, so the tests are working fine. But why am I getting this extra build fail? It may also be of note that when downloading solutions/templates which should work out the box, I get the same error. I'm guessing I've set something up wrong here but I've just followed a tutorial 100% correctly!! If anyone could help I'd be very grateful! Thanks EDIT: According to this blog, this post and a few other websites, I'm not the only one getting this problem. It has been like this since the release of xCode 3.2, assuming the apple dev center documents and tutorials etc are pre-3.2 as well. However some say its a known issue whereas others seem to think this was intentional. I for one would like both the extended console and in code messages, and I certainly do not like the "Command /bin/sh..." error and really think they would have documented such an update. Hopefully it will be fixed soon anyway. UPDATE: Here's confirmation it's something changed since the release of xCode 3.2.1. This image: is from my test build using 3.2.1. This one is from an older version (3.1.4): . (The project for both was unchanged).

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• NRF Online Merchandising Workshop: Where Online Retailers Are Focusing for Holiday and Beyond

  - by Rose Spicer-Oracle

  0 0 1 1204 6863 Oracle Corporation 57 16 8051 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Last month we attended the NRF Online Merchandising Workshop in LA, and it was a great opportunity to catch up with our customers, meet new retailers, and hear some great presentations from VF Corporation, Zazzle, Julep Beauty, Backcountry, eBags and more. The one-on-one conversations with Merchants and the keynote presentations carry the same themes across companies of all sizes and across verticals. With only 125 days left (and counting) until Black Friday, these conversations provided some great insight in to what’s top of mind for retailers during the most stressful time of their year, and a sneak peek in to what they will deliver this holiday season.  Some of the most popular topics were: When to start promoting for holiday: seems like a funny conversation to have in July, but a number of retailers said they already had their holiday shopping gift guides live on their site, and it was attracting a significant portion of their onsite traffic. When it comes to timing, most retailers were questioning when to begin their holiday promotions -- carefully balancing when to release pricing and specials, and knowing that customers are holding out for last-minute deals and price drops. Many retailers noted the frustrations around transparent pricing by Amazon and a few other mega-retailers last year, publishing their “lowest prices of the season” as early as October – ensuring shoppers that those prices were the best they could get all season long. Many retailers felt their hands were forced to drop prices. Others kept their set pricing with negative customer reaction, causing some to miss their holiday goals. The pressure is on, and most retailers identified November 1 as their target start date for the holiday promotions blitz. Some are even waiting for the big guys to release their “lowest prices of the season” guides and will then follow suit.      Attribution is tough – and a huge focus: understanding the path to conversion is a tough nut to crack, especially in the new omnichannel world where consumers use multiple touchpoints to make a single purchase, and internal management wants to know hard data. This has lead many retailers to invest in attribution; carefully tracking their online marketing efforts to determine what gets “credit” for the sale, instead of giving credit to the “last click.” Retailers noted that it is very difficult to determine the numbers when online and offline worlds collide – like when a shopper uses digital channels for research and then makes a purchase in a store. As one of the presenters from The North Face mentioned in her keynote, a key to enabling better customer service and satisfaction when it comes to converged online and offline sales is training the in-store staff, and creating a culture where it eventually “doesn’t matter what group gets the credit” if they all add to the sale. No doubt, the area of attribution will be a big area of retail investment in the coming years.      How to plan for the converged world: planning to ensure inventory gets where it needs to be was another concern. In conversations with retailers, we advised them to analyze customer patterns: where shoppers purchase items, where the items were sourced from and even where items are returned. This analysis is very valuable in determining inventory plans. From there, retailers can more accurately plan and allocate inventory to support both the online and offline customer behavior. As we head into the holiday season, the need for accurate enterprise-wide inventory visibility, and providing that information to associates, is even more critical to the brand-wide customer experience.       Improving the search / navigation / usability of the site(s): Aside from some of the big ideas and standard holiday pricing pressure, most conversations we had centered around continuing to improve the basics of the site. Reinvesting in search and navigation came up time and time again (FitForCommerce blogged about what a big topic it was at the event as well). Obviously getting shoppers on their path quickly and allowing them to find what they need fast is critical, but it was definitely interesting to hear just how much effort is still going in to honing the search and navigation experience. Adding new elements to search and navigation like typeahed, inventive navigation refinements, and new navigation categories like gift guides, specialized boutiques and flash sales were top of mind, in addition to searchandising and making search-driven product recommendations. (Oracle can help!)       Reducing cart abandonment: always a hot topic that is top of mind for every online retailer. Getting shoppers to the cart is often less then half the battle; getting them to click “buy” and complete the transaction is much more difficult. While retailers carefully study the checkout process and where shoppers tend to bounce, they know that how they design their checkout page is critical. We’re all online shoppers in our personal lives and we know how frustrating it can be when total prices are not transparent (i.e. shipping, processing, taxes is not included until the very last possible screen before clicking that buy button). Online retailers are struggling with where in the checkout process to surface the total price to be charged to reduce cart abandonment, while not showing the total figure too early in the process that it keeps shoppers from getting to checkout altogether. Recent research shows that providing total pricing prior to the checkout process dramatically reduces cart abandonment – as it serves as a filter to those shopping within a specific price band. Much of the cart abandonment discussion leads us to…       The free shipping / free returns question: it’s no secret that because of Amazon and programs like Prime, consumers expect free shipping, much to the chagrin of the smaller retailer. The reality is that if you’re not a mega-retailer, shipping is an expensive part of doing business that doesn’t allow most retailers to keep their prices low and offer free shipping. This has many retailers venturing out on the “free returns” path, especially in apparel. A number of retailers we spoke with are testing a flat rate shipping fee with free returns to see if they can crack the price threshold where shoppers are willing to pay for shipping with an added service. But, free shipping remains king.      Social ads and retargeting: they are working, but do they turn off consumers? That’s the big question. Every retailer we spoke with during a roundtable on the topic said that social ads and retargeting (where that pair of boots you’re been eyeing on a site magically follows you around the Internet) work and are meeting campaign goals. The larger question many retailers are asking is if this type of tactic is turning off a large number of shoppers, even if these campaigns are meeting their early goals. Retailers also mentioned that Facebook ads are working very well for them, especially when it comes to new customer acquisition, serving as a complimentary a channel to SEO when it comes to engaging new customers. While there are always new things to experiment with in retail, standard challenges are top of mind as retailers scramble to get ready for holiday. It will undoubtedly be another record-breaking online shopping season, but as retailers get more and more advanced with each Black Friday, expect some exciting things. This excitement needs to be backed by sound solutions and optimized operations. Then again, consumers are expecting more than ever, so I don’t doubt that retailers are already thinking about the possibilities of holiday 2015… and beyond. Customers who read this article, also found value in the following stories: Personalization for Retail: http://blogs.oracle.com/retail/entry/personalization_for_retailShop Direct User Experience Focus Drives Sales:https://blogs.oracle.com/retail/entry/shop_direct_user_experience_focusMaking Waves: Australian Online Retailer SurfStitch: https://blogs.oracle.com/oracleretail/entry/surf_stitchWhat’s new in Oracle Commerce v11.1 for RetailWhat the Content+Commerce Equation is Missing

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• Making a Case For The Command Line

  - by Jesse Taber

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2013/06/30/making-a-case-for-the-command-line.aspxI have had an idea percolating in the back of my mind for over a year now that I’ve just recently started to implement. This idea relates to building out “internal tools” to ease the maintenance and on-going support of a software system. The system that I currently work on is (mostly) web-based, so we traditionally we have built these internal tools in the form of pages within the app that are only accessible by our developers and support personnel. These pages allow us to perform tasks within the system that, for one reason or another, we don’t want to let our end users perform (e.g. mass create/update/delete operations on data, flipping switches that turn paid modules of the system on or off, etc). When we try to build new tools like this we often struggle with the level of effort required to build them. Effort Required Creating a whole new page in an existing web application can be a fairly large undertaking. You need to create the page and ensure it will have a layout that is consistent with the other pages in the app. You need to decide what types of input controls need to go onto the page. You need to ensure that everything uses the same style as the rest of the site. You need to figure out what the text on the page should say. Then, when you figure out that you forgot about an input that should really be present you might have to go back and re-work the entire thing. Oh, and in addition to all of that, you still have to, you know, write the code that actually performs the task. Everything other than the code that performs the task at hand is just overhead. We don’t need a fancy date picker control in a nicely styled page for the vast majority of our internal tools. We don’t even really need a page, for that matter. We just need a way to issue a command to the application and have it, in turn, execute the code that we’ve written to accomplish a given task. All we really need is a simple console application! Plumbing Problems A former co-worker of mine, John Sonmez, always advocated the Unix philosophy for building internal tools: start with something that runs at the command line, and then build a UI on top of that if you need to. John’s idea has a lot of merit, and we tried building out some internal tools as simple Console applications. Unfortunately, this was often easier said that done. Doing a “File –> New Project” to build out a tool for a mature system can be pretty daunting because that new project is totally empty.  In our case, the web application code had a lot of of “plumbing” built in: it managed authentication and authorization, it handled database connection management for our multi-tenanted architecture, it managed all of the context that needs to follow a user around the application such as their timezone and regional/language settings. In addition, the configuration file for the web application  (a web.config in our case because this is an ASP .NET application) is large and would need to be reproduced into a similar configuration file for a Console application. While most of these problems are could be solved pretty easily with some refactoring of the codebase, building Console applications for internal tools still potentially suffers from one pretty big drawback: you’d have to execute them on a machine with network access to all of the needed resources. Obviously, our web servers can easily communicate the the database servers and can publish messages to our service bus, but the same is not true for all of our developer and support personnel workstations. We could have everyone run these tools remotely via RDP or SSH, but that’s a bit cumbersome and certainly a lot less convenient than having the tools built into the web application that is so easily accessible. Mix and Match So we need a way to build tools that are easily accessible via the web application but also don’t require the overhead of creating a user interface. This is where my idea comes into play: why not just build a command line interface into the web application? If it’s part of the web application we get all of the plumbing that comes along with that code, and we’re executing everything on the web servers which means we’ll have access to any external resources that we might need. Rather than having to incur the overhead of creating a brand new page for each tool that we want to build, we can create one new page that simply accepts a command in text form and executes it as a request on the web server. In this way, we can focus on writing the code to accomplish the task. If the tool ends up being heavily used, then (and only then) should we consider spending the time to build a better user experience around it. To be clear, I’m not trying to downplay the importance of building great user experiences into your system; we should all strive to provide the best UX possible to our end users. I’m only advocating this sort of bare-bones interface for internal consumption by the technical staff that builds and supports the software. This command line interface should be the “back end” to a highly polished and eye-pleasing public face. Implementation As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this is an idea that I’ve had for awhile but have only recently started building out. I’ve outlined some general guidelines and design goals for this effort as follows: Text in, text out: In the interest of keeping things as simple as possible, I want this interface to be purely text-based. Users will submit commands as plain text, and the application will provide responses in plain text. Obviously this text will be “wrapped” within the context of HTTP requests and responses, but I don’t want to have to think about HTML or CSS when taking input from the user or displaying responses back to the user. Task-oriented code only: After building the initial “harness” for this interface, the only code that should need to be written to create a new internal tool should be code that is expressly needed to accomplish the task that the tool is intended to support. If we want to encourage and enable ourselves to build good tooling, we need to lower the barriers to entry as much as possible. Built-in documentation: One of the great things about most command line utilities is the ‘help’ switch that provides usage guidelines and details about the arguments that the utility accepts. Our web-based command line utility should allow us to build the documentation for these tools directly into the code of the tools themselves. I finally started trying to implement this idea when I heard about a fantastic open-source library called CLAP (Command Line Auto Parser) that lets me meet the guidelines outlined above. CLAP lets you define classes with public methods that can be easily invoked from the command line. Here’s a quick example of the code that would be needed to create a new tool to do something within your system: 1: public class CustomerTools 2: { 3: [Verb] 4: public void UpdateName(int customerId, string firstName, string lastName) 5: { 6: //invoke internal services/domain objects/hwatever to perform update 7: } 8: } This is just a regular class with a single public method (though you could have as many methods as you want). The method is decorated with the ‘Verb’ attribute that tells the CLAP library that it is a method that can be invoked from the command line. Here is how you would invoke that code: Parser.Run(args, new CustomerTools()); Note that ‘args’ is just a string[] that would normally be passed passed in from the static Main method of a Console application. Also, CLAP allows you to pass in multiple classes that define [Verb] methods so you can opt to organize the code that CLAP will invoke in any way that you like. You can invoke this code from a command line application like this: SomeExe UpdateName -customerId:123 -firstName:Jesse -lastName:Taber ‘SomeExe’ in this example just represents the name of .exe that is would be created from our Console application. CLAP then interprets the arguments passed in order to find the method that should be invoked and automatically parses out the parameters that need to be passed in. After a quick spike, I’ve found that invoking the ‘Parser’ class can be done from within the context of a web application just as easily as it can from within the ‘Main’ method entry point of a Console application. There are, however, a few sticking points that I’m working around: Splitting arguments into the ‘args’ array like the command line: When you invoke a standard .NET console application you get the arguments that were passed in by the user split into a handy array (this is the ‘args’ parameter referenced above). Generally speaking they get split by whitespace, but it’s also clever enough to handle things like ignoring whitespace in a phrase that is surrounded by quotes. We’ll need to re-create this logic within our web application so that we can give the ‘args’ value to CLAP just like a console application would. Providing a response to the user: If you were writing a console application, you might just use Console.WriteLine to provide responses to the user as to the progress and eventual outcome of the command. We can’t use Console.WriteLine within a web application, so I’ll need to find another way to provide feedback to the user. Preferably this approach would allow me to use the same handler classes from both a Console application and a web application, so some kind of strategy pattern will likely emerge from this effort. Submitting files: Often an internal tool needs to support doing some kind of operation in bulk, and the easiest way to submit the data needed to support the bulk operation is in a file. Getting the file uploaded and available to the CLAP handler classes will take a little bit of effort. Mimicking the console experience: This isn’t really a requirement so much as a “nice to have”. To start out, the command-line interface in the web application will probably be a single ‘textarea’ control with a button to submit the contents to a handler that will pass it along to CLAP to be parsed and run. I think it would be interesting to use some javascript and CSS trickery to change that page into something with more of a “shell” interface look and feel. I’ll be blogging more about this effort in the future and will include some code snippets (or maybe even a full blown example app) as I progress. I also think that I’ll probably end up either submitting some pull requests to the CLAP project or possibly forking/wrapping it into a more web-friendly package and open sourcing that.

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• How to properly deny Railo directory access through Apache

  - by Sn3akyP3t3

  I've been battle tested on this and failed to achieve my goal which is to deny all access to all directories except the Public directory and only allow access to all all other directories with specific IP addresses. To get Railo+Apache+Tomcat installed I pretty much followed this script: https://github.com/talltroym/Railo-Ubuntu-Installer-Script then verified settings with this tutorial: http://blog.nictunney.com/2012/03/railo-tomcat-and-apache-on-amazon-ec2.html From the installation script these mods are enabled: sudo a2enmod ssl sudo a2enmod proxy sudo a2enmod proxy_http sudo a2enmod rewrite sudo a2ensite default-ssl Outside of the script I copied the sites-available to sites-enabled then reloaded Apache. I have a directory created for Railo cmfl located at /var/www/Railo/ Navigating the browser to http ://Server_IP_Address/Railo forces ssl and relocates to https ://Server_IP_Address/Railo which shows off index.cfm. Not providing index.cfm and omitting https indicates that the DirectoryIndex directive and RewriteCond of Apache appears to be working for the sites-enabled VirtualHost. The problem I'm encountering is that I cannot seem to deny access to all directories except Public. My directory structure is rather simple and looks like this: Railo error Public NotPublic Sandbox These are my sites-enabled configurations: <VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost DocumentRoot /var/www #Default Deny All to prevent walking backwards in file system Alias /Railo/ "/var/www/Railo/" <Directory ~ ".*/Railo/(?!Public).*"> Order Deny,Allow Deny from All </Directory> ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/ <Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin"> AllowOverride None Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit, # alert, emerg. LogLevel warn CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/" <Directory "/usr/share/doc/"> Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None Order deny,allow Deny from all Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128 </Directory> DirectoryIndex index.cfm index.cfml default.cfm default.cfml index.htm index.html index.cfc RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} !^443$ RewriteRule ^.*$ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R] </VirtualHost> and <IfModule mod_ssl.c> <VirtualHost _default_:443> ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost DocumentRoot /var/www Alias /Railo/ "/var/www/Railo/" <Directory ~ "/var/www/Railo/(?!Public).*"> Order Deny,Allow Deny from All </Directory> ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/ <Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin"> AllowOverride None Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit, # alert, emerg. LogLevel warn CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/ssl_access.log combined Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/" <Directory "/usr/share/doc/"> Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None Order deny,allow Deny from all Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128 </Directory> # SSL Engine Switch: # Enable/Disable SSL for this virtual host. SSLEngine on # A self-signed (snakeoil) certificate can be created by installing # the ssl-cert package. See # /usr/share/doc/apache2.2-common/README.Debian.gz for more info. # If both key and certificate are stored in the same file, only the # SSLCertificateFile directive is needed. SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key # Server Certificate Chain: # Point SSLCertificateChainFile at a file containing the # concatenation of PEM encoded CA certificates which form the # certificate chain for the server certificate. Alternatively # the referenced file can be the same as SSLCertificateFile # when the CA certificates are directly appended to the server # certificate for convinience. #SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/apache2/ssl.crt/server-ca.crt # Certificate Authority (CA): # Set the CA certificate verification path where to find CA # certificates for client authentication or alternatively one # huge file containing all of them (file must be PEM encoded) # Note: Inside SSLCACertificatePath you need hash symlinks # to point to the certificate files. Use the provided # Makefile to update the hash symlinks after changes. #SSLCACertificatePath /etc/ssl/certs/ #SSLCACertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl.crt/ca-bundle.crt # Certificate Revocation Lists (CRL): # Set the CA revocation path where to find CA CRLs for client # authentication or alternatively one huge file containing all # of them (file must be PEM encoded) # Note: Inside SSLCARevocationPath you need hash symlinks # to point to the certificate files. Use the provided # Makefile to update the hash symlinks after changes. #SSLCARevocationPath /etc/apache2/ssl.crl/ #SSLCARevocationFile /etc/apache2/ssl.crl/ca-bundle.crl # Client Authentication (Type): # Client certificate verification type and depth. Types are # none, optional, require and optional_no_ca. Depth is a # number which specifies how deeply to verify the certificate # issuer chain before deciding the certificate is not valid. #SSLVerifyClient require #SSLVerifyDepth 10 # Access Control: # With SSLRequire you can do per-directory access control based # on arbitrary complex boolean expressions containing server # variable checks and other lookup directives. The syntax is a # mixture between C and Perl. See the mod_ssl documentation # for more details. #<Location /> #SSLRequire ( %{SSL_CIPHER} !~ m/^(EXP|NULL)/ \ # and %{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_O} eq "Snake Oil, Ltd." \ # and %{SSL_CLIENT_S_DN_OU} in {"Staff", "CA", "Dev"} \ # and %{TIME_WDAY} >= 1 and %{TIME_WDAY} <= 5 \ # and %{TIME_HOUR} >= 8 and %{TIME_HOUR} <= 20 ) \ # or %{REMOTE_ADDR} =~ m/^192\.76\.162\.[0-9]+$/ #</Location> # SSL Engine Options: # Set various options for the SSL engine. # o FakeBasicAuth: # Translate the client X.509 into a Basic Authorisation. This means that # the standard Auth/DBMAuth methods can be used for access control. The # user name is the `one line' version of the client's X.509 certificate. # Note that no password is obtained from the user. Every entry in the user # file needs this password: `xxj31ZMTZzkVA'. # o ExportCertData: # This exports two additional environment variables: SSL_CLIENT_CERT and # SSL_SERVER_CERT. These contain the PEM-encoded certificates of the # server (always existing) and the client (only existing when client # authentication is used). This can be used to import the certificates # into CGI scripts. # o StdEnvVars: # This exports the standard SSL/TLS related `SSL_*' environment variables. # Per default this exportation is switched off for performance reasons, # because the extraction step is an expensive operation and is usually # useless for serving static content. So one usually enables the # exportation for CGI and SSI requests only. # o StrictRequire: # This denies access when "SSLRequireSSL" or "SSLRequire" applied even # under a "Satisfy any" situation, i.e. when it applies access is denied # and no other module can change it. # o OptRenegotiate: # This enables optimized SSL connection renegotiation handling when SSL # directives are used in per-directory context. #SSLOptions +FakeBasicAuth +ExportCertData +StrictRequire <FilesMatch "\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php)$"> SSLOptions +StdEnvVars </FilesMatch> <Directory /usr/lib/cgi-bin> SSLOptions +StdEnvVars </Directory> # SSL Protocol Adjustments: # The safe and default but still SSL/TLS standard compliant shutdown # approach is that mod_ssl sends the close notify alert but doesn't wait for # the close notify alert from client. When you need a different shutdown # approach you can use one of the following variables: # o ssl-unclean-shutdown: # This forces an unclean shutdown when the connection is closed, i.e. no # SSL close notify alert is send or allowed to received. This violates # the SSL/TLS standard but is needed for some brain-dead browsers. Use # this when you receive I/O errors because of the standard approach where # mod_ssl sends the close notify alert. # o ssl-accurate-shutdown: # This forces an accurate shutdown when the connection is closed, i.e. a # SSL close notify alert is send and mod_ssl waits for the close notify # alert of the client. This is 100% SSL/TLS standard compliant, but in # practice often causes hanging connections with brain-dead browsers. Use # this only for browsers where you know that their SSL implementation # works correctly. # Notice: Most problems of broken clients are also related to the HTTP # keep-alive facility, so you usually additionally want to disable # keep-alive for those clients, too. Use variable "nokeepalive" for this. # Similarly, one has to force some clients to use HTTP/1.0 to workaround # their broken HTTP/1.1 implementation. Use variables "downgrade-1.0" and # "force-response-1.0" for this. BrowserMatch "MSIE [2-6]" \ nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \ downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0 # MSIE 7 and newer should be able to use keepalive BrowserMatch "MSIE [17-9]" ssl-unclean-shutdown DirectoryIndex index.cfm index.cfml default.cfm default.cfml index.htm index.html #Proxy .cfm and cfc requests to Railo ProxyPassMatch ^/(.+.cf[cm])(/.*)?$ http://127.0.0.1:8888/$1 ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:8888/ #Deny access to admin except for local clients <Location /railo-context/admin/> Order deny,allow Deny from all # Allow from <Omitted> # Allow from <Omitted> Allow from 127.0.0.1 </Location> </VirtualHost> </IfModule> The apache2.conf includes the following: # Include the virtual host configurations: Include sites-enabled/ <IfModule !mod_jk.c> LoadModule jk_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_jk.so </IfModule> <IfModule mod_jk.c> JkMount /*.cfm ajp13 JkMount /*.cfc ajp13 JkMount /*.do ajp13 JkMount /*.jsp ajp13 JkMount /*.cfchart ajp13 JkMount /*.cfm/* ajp13 JkMount /*.cfml/* ajp13 # Flex Gateway Mappings # JkMount /flex2gateway/* ajp13 # JkMount /flashservices/gateway/* ajp13 # JkMount /messagebroker/* ajp13 JkMountCopy all JkLogFile /var/log/apache2/mod_jk.log </IfModule> I believe I understand most of this except the jk_module inclusion which I've noticed has an error that shows up in the logs that I can't sort out: [warn] No JkShmFile defined in httpd.conf. Using default /etc/apache2/logs/jk-runtime-status I've checked my Regular expression against the paths of the directories with RegexBuddy just to be sure that I wasn't correct. The problem doesn't appear to be Regex related although I may have something incorrect in the Directory directive. The Location directive seems to be working correctly for blocking out Railo admin site access.

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• Tools of the Trade

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  I got pretty excited a couple of days ago when my new laptop arrived. “The new phone books are here!  The new phone books are here!  I’m a somebody!” - Steve Martin in The Jerk It is a Dell Precision M4500 with an Intel i7 Core 2.8 GHZ running 64-bit Windows 7 with a 15.6” widescreen, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD.  For some of you high fliers, this may be nothing to write home about, but compared to the 32–bit Windows XP laptop with 2 GB of RAM and a regular hard disk that I’m coming from, it’s a really nice step forward.  I won’t even bore you with the details of the desktop PC I was first given when I started here 5 1/2 years ago.  Let’s just say that things have improved.  One really nice thing is that while we are definitely running a lean and mean department in terms of staffing, my boss believes in supporting that lean staff with good tools in order to stay lean instead of having to spend even more money on additional employees.  Of course, that only goes so far, and at some point you have to add more people in order to get more work done, which is why we are bringing on-board a new employee and a new contract developer next week.  But that’s a different story for a different time. But the main topic for this post is to highlight the variety of tools that I use in my job and that you might find useful, too.  This is easy to do right now because the process of building up my new laptop from scratch has forced me to assemble a list of software that had to be installed and configured.  Keep in mind as you look through this list that I play many roles in our company.  My official title is Software Engineering Manager, but in addition to managing the team, I am also an active ASP.NET and SQL developer, the Database Administrator, and 50% of the SAN Administrator team.  So, without further ado, here are the tools and some comments about why I use them: Tool Purpose Virtual Clone Drive Easily mount an ISO image as a DVD Drive.  This is particularly handy when you are downloading disk images from Microsoft for your tools. SQL Server 2008 R2 Developer Edition We are migrating all of our active systems to SQL 2008 R2.  Developer Edition has all the features of Enterprise Edition, but intended for development use. SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition (BIDS ONLY) The migration to SSRS 2008 R2 is just getting started, and in the meantime, maintenance work still has to be done on the reports on our SQL 2005 server.  For some reason, you can’t use BIDS from 2008 to write reports for a 2005 server.  There is some different format and when you open 2005 reports in 2008 BIDS, it forces you to upgrade, and they can no longer be uploaded to a 2005 server.  Hopefully Microsoft will fix this soon in some manner similar to Visual Studio now allows you to pick which version of the .NET Framework you are coding against. Visual Studio 2010 Premium All of our application development is in ASP.NET, and we might as well use the tool designed for it. I’ve used a version of Visual Studio going all the way back to VB 6.0 and Visual Interdev. Vault Professional Client Several years ago we replaced Visual Source Safe with SourceGear Vault (then Fortress, and now Vault Pro), and I love it.  It is very reliable with low overhead - perfect for a small to medium size development team.  And being a small ISV, their support is exceptional. Red-Gate Developer Bundle with the SQL Source Control update for Vault I first used, and fell in love with, SQL Prompt shortly before Red-Gate bought it, and then Red-Gate’s first release made me love it even more.  SQL Refactor (which has since been rolled into the latest version of SQL Prompt) has saved me many hours and migraine’s trying to understand somebody else’s code when their indenting was nonexistant, or worse, irrational.  SQL Compare has been awesome for troubleshooting potential schema issues between different instances of system databases.  SQL Data Compare helped us identify the cause behind a bug which appeared in PROD but could not be reproduced in a nearly (but not quite exactly) identical copy in UAT.  And the newest tool we are embracing: SQL Source Control.  I blogged about it here (and here, and here) last December.  This is really going to help us keep each developer’s copy of the database in sync with one another. Fiddler Helps you watch the whole traffic stream on web visits.  Haven’t used it a lot, but it did help me track down some odd 404 errors we were finding in our own application logs.  Has some other JavaScript troubleshooting capabilities, but some of its usefulness has been supplanted by the Developer Tools option in IE8. Funduc Search & Replace Find any string anywhere in a mound of source code really, really fast.  Does RegEx searches, if you understand that foreign language.  Has really helped with some refactoring work to pinpoint, for example, everywhere a particular stored procedure is referenced, whether in .NET code or other SQL procedures (which we have in script files).  Provides in-context preview of the search results.  Fantastic tool, and a bargain price. SciTE SciTE is a Scintilla based Text Editor and it is a fantastic, light-weight tool for quickly reviewing (or writing) program code, SQL scripts, and extract files.  It has language-specific syntax highlighting.  I used it to write several batch and CMD programs a year ago, and to examine data extract files for exchanging information with other systems.  Extremely handy are the options to View End of Line and View Whitespace.  Ever receive a file that is supposed to use CRLF as an end-of-line marker, but really only has CRs?  SciTE will quickly make that visible. Infragistics Controls We do a lot of ASP.NET development, and frequently use the WebGrid, WebTab, and date picker controls.  We will likely be implementing the Hierarchical Data Grid soon.  Infragistics has control suites for WebForms, WinForms, Silverlight, and coming soon MVC/JQuery. WinZip - WITH Command-Line add-in The classic compression program with a great command-line interface that allows me to build those CMD (and soon PowerShell) programs for automated compression jobs.  Our versioned Build packages are zip files. XML Notepad Haven’t used this a lot myself, but one of my team really likes it for examining large XML files. LINQPad Again, haven’t used this one a lot, but it was recommended to me for learning and practicing my LINQ skills which will come in handy as we implement Entity Framework. SQL Sentry Plan Explorer SQL Server Show Plan on steroids.  Great for helping you focus on the parts of a large query that are of most importance.  Also great for just compressing the graphical plan into more readable layout. Araxis Merge A great DIFF and Merge tool.  SourceGear provides a great tool called DiffMerge that we use all the time, but occasionally, I like the cross-edit capabilities of Araxis Merge.  For a while, we also produced DIFF reports in HTML that showed all the changes that occurred between two releases.  This was most important when we were putting out very small, but very important hot fixes on a very politically hot system.  The reports produced by Araxis Merge gave the Director of IS assurance that we were not accidentally introducing ripples throughout the system with our releases. Idera SQL Admin Toolset A great collection of tools including a password checker to help analyze your SQL Server for weak user passwords, a Backup Status tool to quickly scan a large list of servers and databases to identify any that are overdue for backups.  Particularly helpful for highlighting new databases that have been deployed without getting included in your backup processing.  I also like Space Analyzer to keep an eye on disk space consumed by database files. Idera SQL Job Manager This free tool provides a nice calendar view of SQL Server Job Schedules, but to a degree, you also get what you pay for.  We will be purchasing SQL Sentry Event Manager later this year as an even better job schedule reviewer/manager.  But in the meantime, this at least gives me a good view on potential resource conflicts across multiple instances of SQL Server. DBFViewer 2000 I inherited a couple of FoxPro databases that I have to keep an eye on occasionally and have not yet been able to migrate them to SQL Server. Balsamiq Mockups We are still in evaluation-mode on this tool, but I really like it as a quick UI mockup tool that does not require Visual Studio, so someone other than a programmer can do UI design.  The interface looks hand-drawn which definitely has some psychological benefits when communicating to users, too. FeedDemon I have to stay on top of my WAY TOO MANY blog subscriptions somehow.  I may read blogs on a couple of different computers, and FeedDemon’s integration with Google Reader allows me to keep them all in sync.  I don’t particularly like the Google Reader interface, or the fact that it always wanted to mark articles as read just because I scrolled past them.  FeedDemon solves this problem for me, and provides a multi-tabbed interface which is good because fairly frequently one blog will link to something else I want to read, and I can end up with a half-dozen open tabs all from one article. Synergy+ In my office, I run four monitors across two computers all with one mouse and keyboard.  Synergy is the magic software that makes this work. TweetDeck I’m not the most active Tweeter in the world, but when I want to check-in with the Twitterverse, this really helps.  I have found the #sqlhelp and #PoshHelp hash tags particularly useful, and I also have columns setup to make it easy to monitor #sqlpass, #PASSProfDev, and short term events like #sqlsat68.   Whew!  That’s a lot.  No wonder it took me a couple of days to get everything setup the way I wanted it.  Oh, that and actually getting some work accomplished at the same time.  Anyway, I know that is a huge dump of info, and most people never make it here to the end, so for those who did, let me say, CONGRATULATIONS, you made it! I hope you’ll find a new tool or two to make your work life a little easier.

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• Microsoft&rsquo;s new technical computing initiative

  - by Randy Walker

  I made a mental note from earlier in the year.  Microsoft literally buys computers by the truckload.  From what I understand, it’s a typical practice amongst large software vendors.  You plug a few wires in, you test it, and you instantly have mega tera tera flops (don’t hold me to that number).  Microsoft has been trying to plug away at their cloud services (named Azure).  Which, for the layman, means Microsoft runs your software on their computers, and as demand increases you can allocate more computing power on the fly. With this in mind, it doesn’t surprise me that I was recently sent an executive email concerning Microsoft’s new technical computing initiative.  I find it to be a great marketing idea with actual substance behind their real work.  From the programmer academic perspective, in college we dreamed about this type of processing power.  This has decades of computer science theory behind it. A copy of the email received.  (note that I almost deleted this email, thinking it was spam due to it’s length) We don't often think about how complex life really is. Take the relatively simple task of commuting to and from work: it is, in fact, a complicated interplay of variables such as weather, train delays, accidents, traffic patterns, road construction, etc. You can however, take steps to shorten your commute - using a good, predictive understanding of a few of these variables. In fact, you probably are already taking these inputs and instinctively building a predictive model that you act on daily to get to your destination more quickly. Now, when we apply the same method to very complex tasks, this modeling approach becomes much more challenging. Recent world events clearly demonstrated our inability to process vast amounts of information and variables that would have helped to more accurately predict the behavior of global financial markets or the occurrence and impact of a volcano eruption in Iceland. To make sense of issues like these, researchers, engineers and analysts create computer models of the almost infinite number of possible interactions in complex systems. But, they need increasingly more sophisticated computer models to better understand how the world behaves and to make fact-based predictions about the future. And, to do this, it requires a tremendous amount of computing power to process and examine the massive data deluge from cameras, digital sensors and precision instruments of all kinds. This is the key to creating more accurate and realistic models that expose the hidden meaning of data, which gives us the kind of insight we need to solve a myriad of challenges. We have made great strides in our ability to build these kinds of computer models, and yet they are still too difficult, expensive and time consuming to manage. Today, even the most complicated data-rich simulations cannot fully capture all of the intricacies and dependencies of the systems they are trying to model. That is why, across the scientific and engineering world, it is so hard to say with any certainty when or where the next volcano will erupt and what flight patterns it might affect, or to more accurately predict something like a global flu pandemic. So far, we just cannot collect, correlate and compute enough data to create an accurate forecast of the real world. But this is about to change. Innovations in technology are transforming our ability to measure, monitor and model how the world behaves. The implication for scientific research is profound, and it will transform the way we tackle global challenges like health care and climate change. It will also have a huge impact on engineering and business, delivering breakthroughs that could lead to the creation of new products, new businesses and even new industries. Because you are a subscriber to executive e-mails from Microsoft, I want you to be the first to know about a new effort focused specifically on empowering millions of the world's smartest problem solvers. Today, I am happy to introduce Microsoft's Technical Computing initiative. Our goal is to unleash the power of pervasive, accurate, real-time modeling to help people and organizations achieve their objectives and realize their potential. We are bringing together some of the brightest minds in the technical computing community across industry, academia and science at www.modelingtheworld.com to discuss trends, challenges and shared opportunities. New advances provide the foundation for tools and applications that will make technical computing more affordable and accessible where mathematical and computational principles are applied to solve practical problems. One day soon, complicated tasks like building a sophisticated computer model that would typically take a team of advanced software programmers months to build and days to run, will be accomplished in a single afternoon by a scientist, engineer or analyst working at the PC on their desktop. And as technology continues to advance, these models will become more complete and accurate in the way they represent the world. This will speed our ability to test new ideas, improve processes and advance our understanding of systems. Our technical computing initiative reflects the best of Microsoft's heritage. Ever since Bill Gates articulated the then far-fetched vision of "a computer on every desktop" in the early 1980's, Microsoft has been at the forefront of expanding the power and reach of computing to benefit the world. As someone who worked closely with Bill for many years at Microsoft, I am happy to share with you that the passion behind that vision is fully alive at Microsoft and is carried out in the creation of our new Technical Computing group. Enabling more people to make better predictions We have seen the impact of making greater computing power more available firsthand through our investments in high performance computing (HPC) over the past five years. Scientists, engineers and analysts in organizations of all sizes and sectors are finding that using distributed computational power creates societal impact, fuels scientific breakthroughs and delivers competitive advantages. For example, we have seen remarkable results from some of our current customers: Malaria strikes 300,000 to 500,000 people around the world each year. To help in the effort to eradicate malaria worldwide, scientists at Intellectual Ventures use software that simulates how the disease spreads and would respond to prevention and control methods, such as vaccines and the use of bed nets. Technical computing allows researchers to model more detailed parameters for more accurate results and receive those results in less than an hour, rather than waiting a full day. Aerospace engineering firm, a.i. solutions, Inc., needed a more powerful computing platform to keep up with the increasingly complex computational needs of its customers: NASA, the Department of Defense and other government agencies planning space flights. To meet that need, it adopted technical computing. Now, a.i. solutions can produce detailed predictions and analysis of the flight dynamics of a given spacecraft, from optimal launch times and orbit determination to attitude control and navigation, up to eight times faster. This enables them to avoid mistakes in any areas that can cause a space mission to fail and potentially result in the loss of life and millions of dollars. Western & Southern Financial Group faced the challenge of running ever larger and more complex actuarial models as its number of policyholders and products grew and regulatory requirements changed. The company chose an actuarial solution that runs on technical computing technology. The solution is easy for the company's IT staff to manage and adjust to meet business needs. The new solution helps the company reduce modeling time by up to 99 percent - letting the team fine-tune its models for more accurate product pricing and financial projections. Our Technical Computing direction Collaborating closely with partners across industry and academia, we must now extend the reach of technical computing even further to help predictive modelers and data explorers make faster, more accurate predictions. As we build the Technical Computing initiative, we will invest in three core areas: Technical computing to the cloud: Microsoft will play a leading role in bringing technical computing power to scientists, engineers and analysts through the cloud. Existing high- performance computing users will benefit from the ability to augment their on-premises systems with cloud resources that enable 'just-in-time' processing. This platform will help ensure processing resources are available whenever they are needed-reliably, consistently and quickly. Simplify parallel development: Today, computers are shipping with more processing power than ever, including multiple cores, but most modern software only uses a small amount of the available processing power. Parallel programs are extremely difficult to write, test and trouble shoot. However, a consistent model for parallel programming can help more developers unlock the tremendous power in today's modern computers and enable a new generation of technical computing. We are delivering new tools to automate and simplify writing software through parallel processing from the desktop... to the cluster... to the cloud. Develop powerful new technical computing tools and applications: We know scientists, engineers and analysts are pushing common tools (i.e., spreadsheets and databases) to the limits with complex, data-intensive models. They need easy access to more computing power and simplified tools to increase the speed of their work. We are building a platform to do this. Our development efforts will yield new, easy-to-use tools and applications that automate data acquisition, modeling, simulation, visualization, workflow and collaboration. This will allow them to spend more time on their work and less time wrestling with complicated technology. Thinking bigger There is so much left to be discovered and so many questions yet to be answered in the fascinating world around us. We believe the technical computing community will show us that we have not seen anything yet. Imagine just some of the breakthroughs this community could make possible: Better predictions to help improve the understanding of pandemics, contagion and global health trends. Climate change models that predict environmental, economic and human impact, accessible in real-time during key discussions and debates. More accurate prediction of natural disasters and their impact to develop more effective emergency response plans. With an ambitious charter in hand, this new team is ready to build on our progress to-date and execute Microsoft's technical computing vision over the months and years ahead. We will steadily invest in the right technologies, tools and talent, and work to bring together the technical computing community. I invite you to visit www.modelingtheworld.com today. We welcome your ideas and feedback. I look forward to making this journey with you and others who want to answer the world's biggest questions, discover solutions to problems that seem impossible and uncover a host of new opportunities to change the world we live in for the better. Bob

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• Oracle on Oracle: Is that all?

  - by Darin Pendergraft

  On October 17th, I posted a short blog and a podcast interview with Chirag Andani, talking about how Oracle IT uses its own IDM products. Blog link here. In response, I received a comment from reader Jaime Cardoso ([email protected]) who posted: “- You could have talked about how by deploying Oracle's Open standards base technology you were able to integrate any new system in your infrastructure in days. - You could have talked about how by deploying federation you were enabling the business side to keep all their options open in terms of companies to buy and sell while maintaining perfect employee and customer's single view. - You could have talked about how you are now able to cut response times to your audit and security teams into 1/10th of your former times Instead you spent 6 minutes talking about single sign on and self provisioning? If I didn't knew your IDM offer so well I would now be wondering what its differences from Microsoft's offer was. Sorry for not giving a positive comment here but, please your IDM suite is very good and, you simply aren't promoting it well enough” So I decided to send Jaime a note asking him about his experience, and to get his perspective on what makes the Oracle products great. What I found out is that Jaime is a very experienced IDM Architect with several major projects under his belt. Darin Pendergraft: Can you tell me a bit about your experience? How long have you worked in IT, and what is your IDM experience? Jaime Cardoso: I started working in "serious" IT in 1998 when I became Netscape's technical specialist in Portugal. Netscape Portugal didn't exist so, I was working for their VAR here. Most of my work at the time was with Netscape's mail server and LDAP server. Since that time I've been bouncing between the system's side like Sun resellers, Solaris stuff and even worked with Sun's Engineering in the making of an Hierarchical Storage Product (Sun CIS if you know it) and the application's side, mostly in LDAP and IDM. Over the years I've been doing support, service delivery and pre-sales / architecture design of IDM solutions in most big customers in Portugal, to name a few projects: - The first European deployment of Sun Access Manager (SAPO – Portugal Telecom) - The identity repository of 5/5 of the Biggest Portuguese banks - The Portuguese government federation of services project DP: OK, in your blog response, you mentioned 3 topics: 1. Using Oracle's standards based architecture; (you) were able to integrate any new system in days: can you give an example? What systems, how long did it take, number of apps/users/accounts/roles etc. JC: It's relatively easy to design a user management strategy for a static environment, or if you simply assume that you're an <insert vendor here> shop and all your systems will bow to that vendor's will. We've all seen that path, the use of proprietary technologies in interoperability solutions but, then reality kicks in. As an ISP I recall that I made the technical decision to use Active Directory as a central authentication system for the entire IT infrastructure. Clients, systems, apps, everything was there. As a good part of the systems and apps were running on UNIX, then a connector became needed in order to have UNIX boxes to authenticate against AD. And, that strategy worked but, each new machine required the component to be installed, monitoring had to be made for that component and each new app had to be independently certified. A self care user portal was an ongoing project, AD access assumes the client is inside the domain, something the ISP's customers (and UNIX boxes) weren't nor had any intention of ever being. When the Windows 2008 rollout was done, Microsoft changed the Active Directory interface. The Windows administrators didn't have enough know-how about directories and the way systems outside the MS world behaved so, on the go live, things weren't properly tested and a general outage followed. Several hours and 1 roll back later, everything was back working. But, the ISP still had to change all of its applications to work with the new access methods and reset the effort spent on the self service user portal. To keep with the same strategy, they would also have to trust Microsoft not to change interfaces again. Simply by putting up an Oracle LDAP server in the middle and replicating the user info from the AD into LDAP, most of the problems went away. Even systems for which no AD connector existed had PAM in them so, integration was made at the OS level, fully supported by the OS supplier. Sun Identity Manager already had a self care portal, combined with a user workflow so, all the clearances had to be given before the account was created or updated. Adding a new system as a client for these authentication services was simply a new checkbox in the OS installer and, even True64 systems were, for the first time integrated also with a 5 minute work of a junior system admin. True, all the windows clients and MS apps still went to the AD for their authentication needs so, from the start everybody knew that they weren't 100% free of migration pains but, now they had a single point of problems to look at. If you're looking for numbers: - 500K directory entries (users) - 2-300 systems After the initial setup, I personally integrated about 20 systems / apps against LDAP in 1 day while being watched by the different IT teams. The internal IT staff did the rest. DP: 2. Using Federation allows the business to keep options open for buying and selling companies, and yet maintain a single view for both employee and customer. What do you mean by this? Can you give an example? JC: The market is dynamic. The company that's being bought today tomorrow will be sold again. Companies that spread on different markets may see the regulator forcing a sale of part of a company due to monopoly reasons and companies that are in multiple countries have to comply with different legislations. Our job, as IT architects, while addressing the customers and employees authentication services, is quite hard and, quite contrary. On one hand, we need to give access to all of our employees to the relevant systems, apps and resources and, we already have marketing talking with us trying to find out who's a customer of the bough company but not from ours to address. On the other hand, we have to do that and keep in mind we may have to break up all that effort and that different countries legislation may became a problem with a full integration plan. That's a job for user Federation. you don't want to be the one who's telling your President that he will sell that business unit without it's customer's database (making the deal worth a lot less) or that the buyer will take with him a copy of your entire customer's database. Federation enables you to start controlling permissions to users outside of your traditional authentication realm. So what if the people of that company you just bought are keeping their old logins? Do you want, because of that, to have a dedicated system for their expenses reports? And do you want to keep their sales (and pre-sales) people out of the loop in terms of your group's path? Control the information flow, establish a Federation trust circle and give access to your apps to users that haven't (yet?) been brought into your internal login systems. You can still see your users in a unified view, you obviously control if a user has access to any particular application, either that user is in your local database or stored in a directory on the other side of the world. DP: 3. Cut response times of audit and security teams to 1/10. Is this a real number? Can you give an example? JC: No, I don't have any backing for this number. One of the companies I did system Administration for has a SOX compliance policy in place (I remind you that I live in Portugal so, this definition of SOX may be somewhat different from what you're used to) and, every time the audit team says they'll do another audit, we have to negotiate with them the size of the sample and we spend about 15 man/days gathering all the required info they ask. I did some work with Sun's Identity auditor and, from what I've been seeing, Oracle's product is even better and, I've seen that most of the information they ask would have been provided in a few hours with the help of this tool. I do stand by what I said here but, to be honest, someone from Identity Auditor team would do a much better job than me explaining this time savings. Jaime is right: the Oracle IDM products have a lot of business value, and Oracle IT is using them for a lot more than I was able to cover in the short podcast that I posted. I want to thank Jaime for his comments and perspective. We want these blog posts to be informative and honest – so if you have feedback for the Oracle IDM team on any topic discussed here, please post your comments below.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, October 01, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, October 01, 2012Popular ReleasesD3 Loot Tracker: 1.4.1: This version will automatically save a recording session on application exit if the user didn't stop the current session.CRM 2011 Visual Ribbon Editor: Visual Ribbon Editor (1.2.1001.1): Visual Ribbon Editor 1.2.1001.1 What's New: Ability to hide currently selected tab Password in the connection file is now being encrypted Esc and Enter keyboard keys are now supported in all dialogs Extended width of Prefix and Id fields in New Button and New Group dialogs Minor UI enchancements for Hide Button button Minor UI enchancements for View XML button and dialog File/assembly versioning for executable file Notes: Existing plain-text password will be automatically encrypt...Untangler: Untangler: First version of Untangler application available now.SubExtractor: Release 1029: Feature: Added option to make i and ¡ characters movie-specific for improved OCR on Spanish subs (Special Characters tab in Options) Feature: Allow switch to Word Spacing dialog directly from Spell Check dialog Fix: Added more default word spacings for accented characters Fix: Changed Word Spacing dialog to show all OCR'd characters in current sub Fix: Removed application focus grab during OCR Fix: Tightened HD subs fuzzy logic to reduce false matches in small characters Fix: Improved Arrow k...MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.2.18: Reccomended download Changelog for 2.2.18 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Added support for checking if Showanalyzer has hung and cancelling it 2. New version of comskip, 0.81.48 3. Speeding up comskip 4. Fixed a build bug in 64bit 2.2.17 5. Added a new comkip.ini, better commercial detection for international channels and less aggressive. Old one has been retained as comskip_old.ini 6. Added support for Audio Offset on Conversion Task page in GUI (this overrides the profiles AudioDelay when specified)Mugen Injection: Mugen Injection 3.0: Added a generic version of the fluent syntax. Big changes in fluent-syntax. Added support to resolve a parameters: - Factory: AnyCustomFunc{T}, AnyCustomFunc{IEnumerable<IInjectionParameters>,T}, AnyCustomFunc{IDictionary<string, object>,T}, AnyCustomFunc{IEnumerable<IInjectionParameters>,IDictionary<string, object>,T} - Lazy: AnyCustomLazy<T> - Binding metadata: ISetting Change binding builders, now you can configure them through the string settings. Increase performance. F...Aggravation: Version 1.0: This version 1.0 release is pretty stable. You need the Silverlight 4 runtime, developer tools, and Experssion Blend 4 installed.Tube++: Tube++ 4.0.0.43: Fix parser for downloading and add new default slate gray styleReadable Passphrase Generator: KeePass Plugin 0.7.1: See the KeePass Plugin Step By Step Guide for instructions on how to install the plugin. Changes Built against KeePass 2.20Windows 8 Toolkit - Charts and More: Beta 1.0: The First Compiled Version of my LibraryCatchThatException: Release 1.0: This is the first relase for CatchThatException library at 29-9-2012CardPlay: a Solitaire Framework for .Net: 0.3.0: Added 5 games: Blockade, Chessboard, Colorado, Sly Fox, TwentyUltraFluid Modeling Suite: Beta 1: This release is experimental but contains a lot of features like: - xml serialization - multiple selection - clipboard copy/cut/paste on context menu There is the debug and the release (recommanded default) versions.PDF.NET: PDF.NET.Ver4.5-OpenSourceCode: PDF.NET Ver4.5 ????，????Web??????。 PDF.NET Ver4.5 Open Source Code,include a sample Web application project.Visual Studio Icon Patcher: Version 1.5.2: This version contains no new images from v1.5.1 Contains the following improvements: Better support for detecting the installed languages The extract & inject commands won’t run if Visual Studio is running You may now run in extract or inject mode The p/invoke code was cleaned up based on Code Analysis recommendations When a p/invoke method fails the Win32 error message is now displayed Error messages use red text Status messages use green textZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.9.0.0: On the way to a release 1.0 the API should be stable now with this version. sync with rev. 2393 of the java version improved api better Unity support Windows RT binaries Windows CE binaries new Windows Service demo new WPF demo WindowsCE Hotfix: Fixes an error with ISO8859-1 encoding and scannning of QR-Codes. The hotfix is only needed for the WindowsCE platform.C.B.R. : Comic Book Reader: CBR 0.7: Synthesis since 0.6 : ePUB : Complete refactoring Add a new dedicated feed viewer for opds stream PDF conversion : improved with image merge Make all backstage panel scrollable Integrate the new AvalonDock 2 library. Support multi-document. Library explorer and Table of content are now toolboxes Designer for dynamic books is now mvvm and much better New BrowserForControl Customized xps viewer to suppress toolbars and bind it to cbr commands Add quick start manual and button ...sosoft: sosoft source: sosoft source include alarm clockRawr: Rawr 5.0.0: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.26: The zh-CN issue has been solved. We also add a project management module.New ProjectsAmazonGlacierGUI - GUI Client for Amazon Glacier | WPF: a GUI client for amazon glacier , Written in .NET 4, C#,WPF,MVVM & RavenDB for storageAthene: UML editor.Basic Helpdesk Application: Develop a simple application to be used in a network environment to aid support staff while working remotely with users to resolve problems in their local PC.CAPTCHA Solver: CSolver, is a CAPTCHA Solver for Simple CAPTCHAs.ComicExt: ComicExt Works with CBZ files decompress them into a folder of the same name and convert them into zip files and vice versa from a single folder.Copy Your Table Storage: Tool to permit copy table storage dotCMS: it is a content management system base on BlogEngine.NET and Ext.NETihongma??: ?????????????????????????，????????????????、??????，?????????????????????????????，??????????????????????。 ??????????????，??????；???????????????，???????Liam F: Basic mathematical functions implemented using AVX/AVX2MVC Solution: MVC Solution, including many mvc best practicesopengltest: opengl testsample project: Testing...Sériethèque: A small tvshow organizer with viewed option, link to addict7ed.com, rename file etc ...SHOIC (SUPER HIGH ORBIT ION CANION): SHOIC (Super Hight Orbit Ion Canion) es una aplicación derivada de LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Canion)SignalRServerTry: signal r trySilverlight Datagrid Plus: Silverlight Datagrid plus adds basic features to the Silverlight toolkit datagrid such as grouping, filtering, new record and formatting of the datagrid.Sitecore Modules: This is a home for all the Sitecore Shared Source modules distributed by 5 Limes. Over time we expect this solution to contain several projects.Spiritual Chanting Utility: A quick media loop utilitySQL Web Studio Pad: A Simple Web Based SQL Management IDE for managing Database objectsStockmarket Simulation: Stockmarket Simulationtest_proj: ok testTISSEAN.NET: This project is based on: TISEAN 3.0.1 Nonlinear Time Series Analysis Rainer Hegger,Holger Kantz, Thomas Schreiber With major contributions by Eckehard OlbrichUntangler: Class hierarchy viewer for .Net assemblyValarmathi Hospital: Patient management.Windows 8 App For SharePoint Online: Windows 8 app to SharePoint 2013 OnlineWPF Anti-DataBinding Anti-DataTemplate Extensions: WPF Anti-DataBinding Anti-DataTemplate Extensions offers a pure C# code-behind (no XAML) approach to working with WPF controls, starting with the WPF ListBox.Yandex Positions Parser: ?????? ??????? ????? ? ?????? ??????? ?? ???????? ???????? ??????.YunCMS: A simple CMS for build protal site.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, August 14, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, August 14, 2012Popular ReleasesMicrosoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.60: Allow for CSS3 grid-column and grid-row repeat syntax. Provide option for -analyze scope-report output to be in XML for easier programmatic processing; also allow for report to be saved to a separate output file.Diablo III Drop Statistics Service: 1.0: Client OnlyClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.67.2: v0.67.2 Fix when copying conditional formats with relative formulas v0.67.1 Misc fixes to the conditional formats v0.67.0 Conditional formats now accept formulas. Major performance improvement when opening files with merged ranges. Misc fixes.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.8.1: Whats newBug fixes: Fixed: When upgrading to 4.8.0, the database upgrade didn't run The changes to the <imaging> section in umbracoSettings.config caused errors when you didn't apply them during the upgrade. Defaults will now be used if any keys are missing Scheduled unpublishes now only unpublishes nodes set to published rather than newest Work item: 30937 - Fixed problem with FileHanderData in intranet environment in IE Work item: 3098 - Fix for null exception issue when using 'umbr...MySqlBackup.NET - MySQL Backup Solution for C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET: MySqlBackup.NET 1.4.4 Beta: MySqlBackup.NET 1.4.4 beta Fix bug: If the target database's default character set is not UTF8, UTF8 character will be encoded wrongly during Import. Now, database default character set will be recorded into Dump File at line of "SET NAMES". During import(restore), MySqlBackup will again detect and use the target database default character char set. MySqlBackup.NET 1.4.2 beta Fix bug: MySqlConnection is not closed when AutoCloseConnection set to true after Export or Import completed/halted. M...patterns & practices - Unity: Unity 3.0 for .NET 4.5 and WinRT - Preview: The Unity 3.0.1208.0 Preview enables Unity to work on .NET 4.5 with both the WinRT and desktop profiles. This is an updated version of the port after the .NET Framework 4.5 and Windows 8 have RTM'ed. Please see the Release Notes Providing feedback Post your feedback on the Unity forum Submit and vote on new features for Unity on our Uservoice site.LiteBlog (MVC): LiteBlog 1.31: Features of this release Windows8 styled UI Namespace and code refactoring Resolved the deployment issues in the previous release Added documentation Help file Help file is HTML based built using SandCastle Help file works in all browsers except IE10Self-Tracking Entity Generator for WPF and Silverlight: Self-Tracking Entity Generator v 2.0.0 for VS11: Self-Tracking Entity Generator for WPF and Silverlight v 2.0.0 for Entity Framework 5.0 and Visual Studio 2012Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.6.0: New Stuff ImageTile Control - think People Tile MicrophoneRecorder - Coding4Fun.Phone.Audio GzipWebClient - Coding4Fun.Phone.Net Serialize - Coding4Fun.Phone.Storage this is code I've written countless times. JSON.net is another alternative ChatBubbleTextBox - Added in Hint TimeSpan languages added: Pl Bug Fixes RoundToggleButton - Enable Visual State not being respected OpacityToggleButton - Enable Visual State not being respected Prompts VS Crash fix for IsPrompt=true More...AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.2 Unnamed: Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we try to pack it. Try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compile your own for Linux (source included) Added 3rd person Added mario jumps Fixed nextprimary code exploit ...NPOI: NPOI 2.0: New features a. Implement OpenXml4Net (same as System.Packaging from Microsoft). It supports both .NET 2.0 and .NET 4.0 b. Excel 2007 read/write library (NPOI.XSSF) c. Word 2007 read/write library(NPOI.XWPF) d. NPOI.SS namespace becomes the interface shared between XSSF and HSSF e. Load xlsx template and save as new xlsx file (partially supported) f. Diagonal line in cell both in xls and xlsx g. Support isRightToLeft and setRightToLeft on the common spreadsheet Sheet interface, as per existin...BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 1.1: This release includes bug fixes from the 1.0 release for email notifications, RSS feeds, and several other issues. Please see the change log for a full list of changes. http://support.bugnetproject.com/Projects/ReleaseNotes.aspx?pid=1&m=76 Upgrade Notes The following changes to the web.config in the profile section have occurred: Removed <add name="NotificationTypes" type="String" defaultValue="Email" customProviderData="NotificationTypes;nvarchar;255" />Added <add name="ReceiveEmailNotifi...Visual Rx: V 2.0.20622.9: help will be available at my blog http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/bnaya/archive/2012/08/12/visual-rx-toc.aspx the SDK is also available though NuGet (search for VisualRx) http://nuget.org/packages/VisualRx if you want to make sure that the Visual Rx Viewer can monitor on your machine, you can install the Visual Rx Tester and run it while the Viewer is running.????: ????2.0.5: 1、?????????????。RiP-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.01: changes NEW: Added Support for Clipboard Function in Mono Version NEW: Added Support for "ImgBox.com" links FIXED: "PixHub.eu" links FIXED: "ImgChili.com" links FIXED: Kitty-Kats Forum loginPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (Preview 5): Support for Smooth Streaming SDK beta 2 Support for live playback New bitrate meter and SD/HD indicators Auto smooth streaming track restriction for snapped mode to conserve bandwidth New "Go Live" button and SeekToLive API Support for offset start times Support for Live position unique from end time Support for multiple audio streams (smooth and progressive content) Improved intellisense in JS version Support for Windows 8 RTM ADDITIONAL DOWNLOADSSmooth Streaming Client SD...Windows Uninstaller: Windows Uninstaller v1.0: Delete Windows once You click on it. Your Anti Virus may think It is Virus because it delete Windows. Prepare a installation disc of any operating system before uninstall. ---Steps--- 1. Prepare a installation disc of any operating system. 2. Backup your files if needed. (Optional) 3. Run winuninstall.bat . 4. Your Computer will shut down, When Your Computer is shutting down, it is uninstalling Windows. 5. Re-Open your computer and quickly insert the installation disc and install the new ope...WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.1.2 (Win 8 RP) - Source: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Release Preview SDK. For compiled version use NuGet. From View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console enter: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit http://nuget.org/packages/winrtxamltoolkit Features Controls Converters Extensions IO helpers VisualTree helpers AsyncUI helpers New since 1.0.2 WatermarkTextBox control ImageButton control updates ImageToggleButton control WriteableBitmap extensions - darken, grayscale Fade in/out method and prope...Media Companion: Media Companion 3.506b: This release includes an update to the XBMC scrapers, for those who prefer to use this method. There were a number of behind-the-scene tweaks to make Media Companion compatible with the new TMDb-V3 API, so it was considered important to get it out to the users to try it out. Please report back any important issues you might find. For this reason, unless you use the XBMC scrapers, there probably isn't any real necessity to download this one! The only other minor change was one to allow the mc...JSON C# Class Generator: JSON CSharp Class Generator 1.3: Support for native JSON.net serializer/deserializer (POCO) New classes layout option: nested classes Better handling of secondary classesNew Projects.NET MSI Install Manager: MSI Install Manager is an API that allows you to install an MSI within a .NET application. You can create a WPF install experience and drive the execution of thArchi Simple: ArchiSimple is a project to create simple house plans.Arduino Installer For Atmel Studio 6: Deploy libraries and project templates to Atmel Studio 6 to allow the creation of Arduino sketches and libraries.BDD Editor: The editor list the text from already created file in the feature folder.Binary Times: Binary TimesCaliburn.Micro.FrameworkContentElement: A library to enable attaching Caliburn.Micro messages to FrameworkContentElement descendant objects. Target platform: WPF.CoinChoue2: .CustomEDMX: Prover *customização* da geração automática de código do EntityFramework, gerando objetos de acordo com os padrões de nomenclatura da equipe de desenvolvimento.DeForm: DeForm is a WinRT component that allows you to apply a pipeline of effects to a picture.DeTaiCS2012_Srmdep: Ð? tài CS nam 2012 v? qu?n lý kinh doanh có di?u ki?nEMSolution: This is only a porject for me, a .net beginner, to practise .net programming skills. SO any suggestion or help is welcome. On going...Facebook SDK Orchard module: Orchard module containing the Facebook C# SDK (http://csharpsdk.org/) for simple installation to an Orchard site.Federation Metadata Signing: This is a console application (to give a feeling as if we are doing something serious on black screen) built using .NET 4 (to signify that we work on latest .neGit-TF: Git-TF is a set of cross-platform, command line tools that facilitate sharing of changes between TFS and Git.mobx.mobi: mobx.mobi - mobile CMS. Good for beginners learning MVC and mobile, or webforms programmer seeking to switch to MVC. Simple and friendly design.PdfExtractor: PdfExtractorSpeed Run: Speed Run for WP7technoschool: Aplikasi sistem informasi sekolah baik SD, SMP maupun SMA. Dimana aplikasi ini telah mencakup akademik, perpustakaan, keuangan, dan kepegawaianThe LogNut logging library and facilities: LogNut is a comprehensive logging facility written in C# for C# developers. It provides a simple way to write something from within your program, as it runs.Visual Studio File Cleanup: Visual Studio File Cleaner Good code examples on how to do a poor man’s obfuscation of your solutionWeatherSpark: Sprarkline-inspired graphs provide a comprehensive view of each day’s temperature, humidity, precipitation, and cloud cover.Windows Phone Interprocess Messaging API: Message passing sample WinLogCheck - Eventlogs Scanner: WinLogCheck is a command line windows eventlogs scanner. The main goal is get a report about the events in the eventlog, except for repetitive events.WinUnleaked Image Uploader: WinUnleaked Image Uploader for WinUnleaked Staff members

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• What precautions should you take when a senior employee leaves?

  - by Mahin

  EDIT : I agree one should check the reasons, why a senior level employee is leaving. But I am interested in knowing the official/management/technical/legal steps one should take after its decided that he is leaving, so that the life after him is smooth. What are the steps management should take when a senior programmer/team lead leaves your company. Some of them which I have thought about are : 1) If He used to manage hosting and domains stuff, change passwords of domain control panels and hosting panels. 2) If your published web sites have maintenance account and he is aware of credentials of that account then change this details also. 3) Suspend mail account for some time and forward all eMails of that account to some ex-employee account. After some time close that account. What are the other things one should check. I am expecting the answer to be a general check list one should follow. It should include both technical scenarios and management scenarios. Notable Suggestions so far : Effectively transfer the responsibilities of that employee to another one without causing any potential delay in your work. Protect your source code. If possible Make them to sign something to say that they don't have copies of source code.. You can also consider NDA here. Use the Notice Period to train his replacement. Now any new code to the project will be done by replacement with the help of Guy who is leaving. Ask him to create a document of things he thinks you should know. Make sure he checks everything in now and then any checkout will only be done by the replacement. Emails, copy off his email account to a pst.file (this assumes Outlook), Make this file available to his replacement. the employee should probably be given a chance to scrub the email. if you are going to keep his account open for whatever reason, check that no rules are created that forward incoming emails to an alternate address. Copy the hard drive of his computer to a network location and have someone senior go through and see if there are any files (drafts of performance reviews or other sensitive issues ) on it that someone else might need. Clearance from Accounts,Finance,Security,Library etc departments.Obtain all company property, laptops, keys, etc. If there is no reason not to, you should reward a departing person for their many years of service. Write them letters of recommendation (even if they already have a new job lined up).Say goodbye, and keep the door open. Make sure any outside clients know that the departing employee is not their main contact anymore. Never neglect the exit interview/debriefing. Confirm the last day of employment so that there is no misunderstanding Inform H/R if the employee is on H1B status, there is paperwork required to notify the government when an H1B employee leaves. Depending on how senior / what position, you might spend some time convincing him not to take the rest of the engineering staff with him. Make sure he spends his last days on a good note, because if he is not leaving on a good note, he can easily pollute the mind of his colleagues. Best Regards, Mahin Gupta EDIT : Now offered a bounty on it to get more detailed responses and practical suggestions.

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• WinQual: Why would WER not accept code-signing certificates?

  - by Ian Boyd

  In 2005 i tried to establish a WinQual account with Microsoft, so i could pick up our (if any) crash dump files submitted automatically through Windows Error Reporting (WER). i was not allowed to have my crash dumps, because i don't have a Verisign certificate. Instead i have a cheaper one, generated by a Verisign subsidiary: Thawte. The method in which you join is: you digitally sign a sample exe they provide. This proves that you are the same signer that signed apps that they got crash dumps from in the wild. Cryptographically, the private key is needed to generate a digital signature on an executable. Only the holder of that private key can create a signature with for the matching public key. It doesn't matter who generated that private key. That includes certificates that are generated from: self-signing Wells Fargo DigiCert SecureTrust Trustware QuoVadis GoDaddy Entrust Cybertrust GeoTrust GlobalSign Comodo Thawte Verisign Yet Microsof's WinQual only accepts digital certificates generated by Verisign. Not even Verisign's subsidiaries are good enough (Thawte). Can anyone think of any technical, legal or ethical reason why Microsoft doesn't want to accept code-signing certificates? The WinQual site says: Why Is a Digital Certificate Required for Winqual Membership? A digital certificate helps protect your company from individuals who seek to impersonate members of your staff or who would otherwise commit acts of fraud against your company. Using a digital certificate enables proof of an identity for a user or an organization. Is somehow a Thawte digital certificate not secure? Two years later, i sent a reminder notice to WinQual that i've been waiting to be able to get at my crash dumps. The response from WinQual team was: Hello, Thanks for the reminder. We have notified the appropriate people that this is still a request. In 2008 i asked this question in a Microsoft support forum, and the response was: We are only setup to accept VeriSign Certificates at this point. We have not had an overwhelming demand to support other types of certificates. What can it possibly mean to not be "setup" to accept other kinds of certificates? If the thumbprint of the key that signed the WinQual.exe test app is the same as the thumbprint that signed the executable who's crash dump you got in the wild: it is proven - they are my crash dumps, give them to me. And it's not like there's a special API to check if a Verisign digital signature is valid, as opposed to all other digital signatures. A valid signature is valid no matter who generated the key. Microsoft is free to not trust the signer, but that's not the same as identity. So that is my question, can anyone think of any practical reason why WinQual isn't setup to support digital signatures? One person theorized that the answer is that they're just lazy: Not that I know but I would assume that the team running the winQual system is a live team and not a dev team - as in, personality and skillset geared towards maintenance of existing systems. I could be wrong though. They don't want to do work to change it. But can anyone think of anything that would need to be changed? It's the same logic no matter what generated the key: "does the thumbprint match". What am i missing?

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 06, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 06, 2013Popular ReleasesReliability Modeling and Prediction: Reliability Prediction v2.0.1: Including the reliability modeling schema and the reliability prediction tool. Including case studies (Reporting service and WebScan system). Check Readme.txt for a quick tutorial.Virtual Sport for Sport Team: Virtual Sport Website: This is the website to manage a sports team. Through this website you can manage the members of the team, from players to staff, schedules, and more. and for supporter, be able more easily get to know team through the this websiteChristoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: DotNetNuke 7 Project Templates V2.3 for VS2012: V2.3 - Release Date 6/5/2013 Items addressed in this 2.3 release Fixed bad namespace for BusinessController in one of the C# templates. Updated documentation in all templates. Setting up your DotNetNuke Module Development Environment Installing Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Templates Customizing the latest DotNetNuke Module Development Project TemplatesPulse: Pulse 0.6.7.0: A number of small bug fixes to stabilize the previous Beta. Sorry about the never ending "New Version" bug!ZXMAK2: Version 2.7.5.3: - debugger: add LPC indicator (last executed opcode pc) - add host joystick support (written by Eltaron) - change file extension for CMOS PENTEVO to "cmos" - add hardware value monitor (see Memory Map for PENTEVO/ATM/PROFI)QlikView Extension - Animated Scatter Chart: Animated Scatter Chart - v1.0: Version 1.0 including Source Code qar File Example QlikView application Tested With: Browser Firefox 20 (x64) Google Chrome 27 (x64) Internet Explorer 9 QlikView QlikView Desktop 11 - SR2 (x64) QlikView Desktop 11.2 - SR1 (x64) QlikView Ajax Client 11.2 - SR2 (based on x64)BarbaTunnel: BarbaTunnel 7.2: Warning: HTTP Tunnel is not compatible with version 6.x and prior, HTTP packet format has been changed. Check Version History for more information about this release.Harvester - Debug Viewer for Trace, NLog & Log4Net: v2.0.1 (.NET 4.0): Minor Updates Fixed incorrect process naming being displayed if process ID reassigned before cache invalidated. Fixed incorrect event type/source for TraceListener.TraceData methods. Updated NLog package references. Official Documentation Moved to GitHub http://cbaxter.github.com/Harvester Official Source Moved to GitHub https://github.com/cbaxter/HarvesterSuperWebSocket, a .NET WebSocket Server: SuperWebSocket 0.8: This release includes these changes below: Upgrade SuperSocket to 1.5.3 which is much more stable Added handshake request validating api (WebSocketServer.ValidateHandshake(TWebSocketSession session, string origin)) Fixed a bug that the m_Filters in the SubCommandBase can be null if the command's method LoadSubCommandFilters(IEnumerable<SubCommandFilterAttribute> globalFilters) is not invoked Fixed the compatibility issue on Origin getting in the different version protocols Marked ISub...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.0: 2013.06.04 Ver5.9.0 (1) ?????????????????????????????????($Remote.ini Tmp.ini) (2) ThreadBaseTest?? (3) ????POP3??????SMTP???????????????? (4) Web???????、?????????URL??????????????? (5) Ftp???????、LIST?????????????? (6) ?????????????????????Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.569b: New* Movies - Autoscrape/Batch Rescrape extra fanart and or extra thumbs. * Movies - Alternative editor can add manually actors. * TV - Batch Rescraper, AutoScrape extrafanart, if option enabled. Fixed* Movies - Slow performance switching to movie tab by adding option 'Disable "Not Matching Rename Pattern"' to Movie Preferences - General. * Movies - Fixed only actors with images were scraped and added to nfo * Movies - Fixed filter reset if selected tab was above Home Movies. * Updated Medi...Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v9.0: Version 9.0 of Nearforums with great new features for users and developers: SQL Azure support Admin UI for Forum Categories Avoid html validation for certain roles Improve profile picture moderation and support Warn, suspend, and ban users Web administration of site settings Extensions support Visit the Roadmap for more details. Webdeploy package sha1 checksum: 9.0.0.0: e687ee0438cd2b1df1d3e95ecb9d66e7c538293b Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.93: Added -esc:BOOL switch (CodeSettings.AlwaysEscapeNonAscii property) to always force non-ASCII character (ch > 0x7f) to be escaped as the JavaScript \uXXXX sequence. This switch should be used if creating a Symbol Map and outputting the result to the a text encoding other than UTF-8 or UTF-16 (ASCII, for instance). Fixed a bug where a complex comma operation is the operand of a return statement, and it was looking at the wrong variable for possible optimization of = to just .Document.Editor: 2013.22: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.22: Improved Bullet List support Improved Number List support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsPHPExcel: PHPExcel 1.7.9: See Change Log for details of the new features and bugfixes included in this release, and methods that are now deprecated.Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.10 Beta: Fixed issue with some people having a folder called "android-4.2.2" in their build-tools path. - 16223 Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.5.402: Magick.NET compiled against ImageMagick 6.8.5.4. These zip files are also available as a NuGet package: https://nuget.org/profiles/dlemstra/patterns & practices: Data Access Guidance: Data Access Guidance Drop3 2013.05.31: Drop 3DotNet.Highcharts: DotNet.Highcharts 2.0 with Examples: DotNet.Highcharts 2.0 Tested and adapted to the latest version of Highcharts 3.0.1 Added new chart types: Arearange, Areasplinerange, Columnrange, Gauge, Boxplot, Waterfall, Funnel and Bubble Added new type PercentageOrPixel which represents value of number or number with percentage. Used for sizes, width, height, length, etc. Removed inheritances in YAxis option classes. Closed issues: 682: Missing property - XAxisPlotLinesLabel.Text 688: backgroundColor and plotBackgroundColor are...DirectX Tool Kit: May 2013: May 30, 2013 Added more GeometricPrimitives: Cone, Tetrahedron, Octahedron, Dodecahedron, Icosahedron Updated to support loading new metadata from DDS files (if present) Fixed bug with loading of WIC 32bpp RGBE format images Fixed bug when skipping mipmaps in a 1D or 2D array texture DDS fileNew Projectsabang: ????????Alex Develop Kit: ????????C#?????????。AnaLog - Analyse Logique: Software for logical equations analyse. App Excess: App Platform for Windows.Associativy Frontend Engines Administration: Frontend Engines Administration module for the Associativy (http://associativy.com) Orchard graph platform.ATDD Applied (Example): Sample code for Nordic Testing Days 2013 workshop - Acceptance Test Driven Development Applied: An Intro to ATDD using Jasmine and SpecFlowAzCAD: AzCAD is a free CAD program.BVVD Project: SOURCE CODECrzy Engine: C# and XNA ORPG Game Development engine.Custom Pong: Custom PongEDID Puller: Simple C# application showing how to get the EDIDs of the connected monitors to a PC, in particular the manufacturer and model of the display device.GooMUI: A desktop player for the Google Play Music service that runs on Windows.Had: HadIIS Express GUI: The GUI for IISExpress (version 7.5 and 8.0) jean0605jabbrchangbranch: ddjQueryBuddy Port to .Net 4.0+: Upgrading the project to current dot net will make using this app easier for some folks!Kinopoly: Dieses Projekt ist eine Arbeit der Berufschule Bern, GIBB. Das Ziel ist es das berühmte Spiel Monopoly im Film Theme als eine Clientapplikation zu realisieren.Magic Engine - 2D and 3D engine developed by school students: Magic Engine - 2D and 3D engine developed by school studentsMetrics calculation: Calculates metrics with the use of Driven Metrics.Metro WPF: Metro WPF provides a set of controls and styles for you to build your metro style WPF applications.mysitie: this is unknown error site Native API Test Command-Line Utility: A command-line utility that allows the user to call native API function interactively and experiment with how they function.prakark06052013Hg01: *bold* _italics_ +underline+ ! Heading 1 !! Heading 2 * Bullet List ** Bullet List 2 # Number List ## Number List 2 [another wiki page] [url:http://www.example.prakark06052013Tfs01: *bold* _italics_ +underline+ ! Heading 1 !! Heading 2 * Bullet List ** Bullet List 2 # Number List ## Number List 2 [another wiki page] [url:http://www.example.prakarkGit06052013Git01: *bold* _italics_ +underline+ ! Heading 1 !! Heading 2 * Bullet List ** Bullet List 2 # Number List ## Number List 2 [url:http://www.example.com] {"Do QlikView Extension - Animated Scatter Chart: Animated scatter chart for QlikView, inspired by D3js.orgREADPDB(Program Database Reader): This tool uses the Microsoft Debug Interface Access Software Development Kit (DIA SDK) to parser PDB file SelfProject: Just For TestSlWfDesign: 11212SSZZ: SSZZ is a tool for Data Analysistest project codeplex: This is a testtesttom06052013git01: dfdstesttom06052013hg01: *bold* _italics_ +underline+ ! Heading 1 !! Heading 2 * Bullet List ** Bullet List 2 # Number List ## Number List 2 [another wiki page] [url:http://www.example.testtom06052013tfs01: gfdgfdthree: It's a personal project.Validation Rules Framework for C++: C++ framework for rule creation, validation and management.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 05, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 05, 2013Popular ReleasesQlikView Extension - Animated Scatter Chart: Animated Scatter Chart - v1.0: Version 1.0 including Source Code qar File Example QlikView application Tested With: Browser Firefox 20 (x64) Google Chrome 27 (x64) Internet Explorer 9 QlikView QlikView Desktop 11 - SR2 (x64) QlikView Desktop 11.2 - SR1 (x64) QlikView Ajax Client 11.2 - SR2 (based on x64)BarbaTunnel: BarbaTunnel 7.2: Warning: HTTP Tunnel is not compatible with version 6.x and prior, HTTP packet format has been changed. Check Version History for more information about this release.Web Pages CMS: 0.5: First public releaseHarvester - Debug Viewer for Trace, NLog & Log4Net: v2.0.1 (.NET 4.0): Minor Updates Fixed incorrect process naming being displayed if process ID reassigned before cache invalidated. Fixed incorrect event type/source for TraceListener.TraceData methods. Updated NLog package references. Official Documentation Moved to GitHub http://cbaxter.github.com/Harvester Official Source Moved to GitHub https://github.com/cbaxter/HarvesterSuperWebSocket, a .NET WebSocket Server: SuperWebSocket 0.8: This release includes these changes below: Upgrade SuperSocket to 1.5.3 which is much more stable Added handshake request validating api (WebSocketServer.ValidateHandshake(TWebSocketSession session, string origin)) Fixed a bug that the m_Filters in the SubCommandBase can be null if the command's method LoadSubCommandFilters(IEnumerable<SubCommandFilterAttribute> globalFilters) is not invoked Fixed the compatibility issue on Origin getting in the different version protocols Marked ISub...Impulse Media Player: Impulse Media Player 3.3.1.0: EchoNest Analyzer introduced Similar track feature (social tab) Last played tracks can be removed permanently pitch / tempo bar can be hiddenBlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.0: 2013.06.04 Ver5.9.0 (1) ?????????????????????????????????($Remote.ini Tmp.ini) (2) ThreadBaseTest?? (3) ????POP3??????SMTP???????????????? (4) Web???????、?????????URL??????????????? (5) Ftp???????、LIST?????????????? (6) ?????????????????????Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.569b: New* Movies - Autoscrape/Batch Rescrape extra fanart and or extra thumbs. * Movies - Alternative editor can add manually actors. * TV - Batch Rescraper, AutoScrape extrafanart, if option enabled. Fixed* Movies - Slow performance switching to movie tab by adding option 'Disable "Not Matching Rename Pattern"' to Movie Preferences - General. * Movies - Fixed only actors with images were scraped and added to nfo * Movies - Fixed filter reset if selected tab was above Home Movies. * Updated Medi...Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v9.0: Version 9.0 of Nearforums with great new features for users and developers: SQL Azure support Admin UI for Forum Categories Avoid html validation for certain roles Improve profile picture moderation and support Warn, suspend, and ban users Web administration of site settings Extensions support Visit the Roadmap for more details. Webdeploy package sha1 checksum: 9.0.0.0: e687ee0438cd2b1df1d3e95ecb9d66e7c538293b eReading: eReading: ????，??CPU???????。 ??????????。Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.93: Added -esc:BOOL switch (CodeSettings.AlwaysEscapeNonAscii property) to always force non-ASCII character (ch > 0x7f) to be escaped as the JavaScript \uXXXX sequence. This switch should be used if creating a Symbol Map and outputting the result to the a text encoding other than UTF-8 or UTF-16 (ASCII, for instance). Fixed a bug where a complex comma operation is the operand of a return statement, and it was looking at the wrong variable for possible optimization of = to just .VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.42: changes NEW: Added Support for "GatASexyCity.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgCloud.co" links NEW: Added Support for "ImGirl.info" links NEW: Added Support for "SexyImg.com" links FIXED: "ImageBam.com" linksDocument.Editor: 2013.22: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.22: Improved Bullet List support Improved Number List support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsCarrotCake, an ASP.Net WebForms CMS: Binaries and PDFs - Zip Archive (v. 4.3 20130528): Features include a content management system and a robust featured blogging engine. This includes configurable date based blog post URLs, blog post content association with categories and tags, assignment/customization of category and tag URL patterns, simple blog post feedback collection and review, blog post pagination/indexes, designation of default blog page (required to make search, category links, or tag links function), URL date formatting patterns, RSS feed support for posts and pages...PHPExcel: PHPExcel 1.7.9: See Change Log for details of the new features and bugfixes included in this release, and methods that are now deprecated.Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.10 Beta: Fixed issue with some people having a folder called "android-4.2.2" in their build-tools path. - 16223 patterns & practices: Data Access Guidance: Data Access Guidance Drop3 2013.05.31: Drop 3DotNet.Highcharts: DotNet.Highcharts 2.0 with Examples: DotNet.Highcharts 2.0 Tested and adapted to the latest version of Highcharts 3.0.1 Added new chart types: Arearange, Areasplinerange, Columnrange, Gauge, Boxplot, Waterfall, Funnel and Bubble Added new type PercentageOrPixel which represents value of number or number with percentage. Used for sizes, width, height, length, etc. Removed inheritances in YAxis option classes. Closed issues: 682: Missing property - XAxisPlotLinesLabel.Text 688: backgroundColor and plotBackgroundColor are...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 6.1.1: Source codeLooking for the source code? We're not uploading that as a zip file any more because you can already get it from CodePlex, click this link and hit the "Download" link. BlogRead the release blog post for 6.1.0. Read the release blog post for 6.1.1. Getting Started Read the installation documentation: http://our.umbraco.org/documentation/Installation/ Check the free foundation videos on how to get started building Umbraco sites. They're available from: Introduction for webmasters:...Composite C1 CMS - Open Source on .NET: Composite C1 4.0 (release candidate): Composite C1 4.0 (4.0.4897.31550) (release candidate) Write a review for this release Getting started If you are new to Composite C1 and want to install it: http://docs.composite.net/Getting-started What's new in Composite C1 4.0 The following are highlights of major changes since Composite C1 3.2: General user features: Uploads up to 512MB accepted in the media archive New “Block Selector” in Visual Editor – enable users to create styled div, blockquote etc. elements (not yet availabl...New ProjectsApiDoc: ApiDoc is a library for creating your own API documentation similar to the MSDN directly from your assembly and /// Xml comments without source code.Associativy Internal Link Graph Builder: Orchard module for automatically creating Associativy graphs (http://associativy.com/) from internal links.Azure Business App Scale Proof of Concepts: This is actually a series of proof of concept demo applications built to demonstrate scale of particular architecture or application designs. Badr: .Net Web Framework: Simple, Database-driven, Multiplatform, .Net web frameworkCalcolo di Integrali con approssimazioni: Integrali Metodo dei Trapezi Metodo dei Rettangoli Metodo delle Parabole Metodo di Montecarlo Integralsconfiguration: a full function configuration system based on .netCron Expression Descriptor: "Translate" a Cron Expression in a human readable format. Support databinding, and creation of the expression and Quartz.NET jobs schedulerDaphne Web Edition: The Daphne Web Edition of software for professional checkers players running in a browser.Entity framework T4 NHibernate mapping generator: This project contains T4 templates to create POCOs + NHibernate mappings from an Entity Framework Model (.edmx).EWS Streaming Notification Sample Application: Sample application showing how to handle multiple subscriptions using streaming notifications, specifically for Exchange 2013 (or Wave 15 of Office 365).EXACT_EXTENSION: This is project to support Account System in International SchoolsIPS Training: Playing around with Joe to teach some programming.jean0604wordpressmercurial: dfdafdaLenic.DI: Lenic.DI -- Another IOC Container Library Using DelegateManage Azure Srevice: This project is a windows form application to manage azure service and deployments.Microsoft dot Net Lab: This project concentrates into a Lab a large web project based on Microsoft Best Practices and info on “what works” and more what should be avoided in Prod env.Miris Human Milk Analyser: This is a DEMO project ONLYMultilingual call each other: Multilingual call each othernBlade: A Dependency Injection Container.nChart: A JavaScript Chart Library Base on D3.jsnCMS: A Content Management System.nReport: A JavaScript Report Library.nTemplate: A Template Engine.searchLocal: search localT4 Unit Test Constructor: T4 Unit Test Constructor is a Text Transform file that generates complete Unit Testing project based on siblings projects inside a solution.v3r137: m0l3cUL4r dyN4MiC2 5iMul47i0N u5IN9 V3Rl37 iN739r47I0N. vi5U4li23 p4R7ICL32 8y 0P3n9l P0iN7 5prI73. U23 0P3NMp 4nd 0p3NCl f0r 5p33D.Virtual Sport for Sport Team: This is the website to manage a sports team. Through this website you can manage the members of the team, from players to staff, schedules, and more. and for suWindows Azure MultiSite Role: This web role allows you to host multiple websites on the same VM instances, and synchronising the files automatically.WuvOverlay: An overlay for the game Guild Wars 2 to display useful information obtained from the public API.XYZ: XYZ

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• WebSphere Application Server EJB Optimization

  - by Chris Aldrich

  We are working on developing a Java EE based application. Our application is Java 1.5 compatible and will be deployed to WAS ND 6.1.0.21 with EBJ 3.0 and Web Services feature packs. The configuration is currently one cell with two clusters. Each cluster will have two nodes. Our application, or our system, as I should rather say, comes in two or three parts. Part 1: An ear deployed to one cluster that contains 3rd party vendor code combined with customization code. Their code is EJB 2.0 compliant and has a lot of Remote Home interfaces. Part 2: An ear deployed to the same cluster as the first ear. This ear contains EBJ 3's that make calls into the EJB 2's supplied by the vendor and the custom code. These EJB 3's are used by the JSF UI also packaged with the EAR, and some of them are also exposed as web services (JAX-WS 2.0 with SOAP 1.2 compliance) for other clients. Part 3: There may be other services that do not depend on our vendor/custom code app. These services will be EJB 3.0's and web services that are deployed to the other cluster. Per a recommendation from some IBM staff on site here, communication between nodes in a cluster can be EJB RMI. But if we are going across clusters and/or other cells, then the communication should be web services. That said, some of us are wondering about performance and optimizing communication for speed of our applications that will use our web services and EJB's. Right now most EJB's are exposed as remote. (and our vendor set theirs up that way, rather than also exposing local home interfaces). We are wondering if WAS does any optimizations between apps in the same node/cluster node space. If two apps are installed in the same area and they call each other via remote home interface, is WAS smart enough to make it a local home interface call? Are their other optimization techniques? Should we consider them? Should we not? What are the costs/benefits? Here is the question from one of our team members as sent in their email: The question is: Supposing we develop our EJBs as remote EJBs, where our UI controller code is talking to our EXT java services via EJB3...what are our options for performance optimization when both the EJB server and client are running in the same container? As one point of reference, google has given me some oooooold websphere performance tuning documentation from 2000 that explains a tuning configuration you can set to enable Call By Reference for EJB communication when they're in the same application server JVM. It states the following: Because EJBs are inherently location independent, they use a remote programming model. Method parameters and return values are serialized over RMI-IIOP and returned by value. This is the intrinsic RMI "Call By Value" model. WebSphere provides the "No Local Copies" performance optimization for running EJBs and clients (typically servlets) in the same application server JVM. The "No Local Copies" option uses "Call By Reference" and does not create local proxies for called objects when both the client and the remote object are in the same process. Depending on your workload, this can result in a significant overhead savings. Configure "No Local Copies" by adding the following two command line parameters to the application server JVM: * -Djavax.rmi.CORBA.UtilClass=com.ibm.CORBA.iiop.Util * -Dcom.ibm.CORBA.iiop.noLocalCopies=true CAUTION: The "No Local Copies" configuration option improves performance by changing "Call By Value" to "Call By Reference" for clients and EJBs in the same JVM. One side effect of this is that the Java object derived (non-primitive) method parameters can actually be changed by the called enterprise bean. Consider Figure 16a: Also, we will also be using Process Server 6.2 and WESB 6.2 as well in the future. Any ideas? recommendations? Thanks

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• Implementing Unit Testing with the iPhone SDK

  - by ing0

  Hi, So I've followed this tutorial to setup unit testing on my app when I got a little stuck. At bullet point 8 in that tutorial it shows this image, which is what I should be expecting when I build: However this isn't what I get when I build. I get this error message: Command /bin/sh failed with exit code 1 as well as the error message the unit test has created. Then, when I expand on the first error I get this: PhaseScriptExecution "Run Script" "build/3D Pool.build/Debug-iphonesimulator/LogicTests.build/Script-1A6BA6AE10F28F40008AC2A8.sh" cd "/Users/james/Desktop/FYP/3D Pool" setenv ACTION build setenv ALTERNATE_GROUP staff ... setenv XCODE_VERSION_MAJOR 0300 setenv XCODE_VERSION_MINOR 0320 setenv YACC /Developer/usr/bin/yacc /bin/sh -c "\"/Users/james/Desktop/FYP/3D Pool/build/3D Pool.build/Debug-iphonesimulator/LogicTests.build/Script-1A6BA6AE10F28F40008AC2A8.sh\"" /Developer/Tools/RunPlatformUnitTests.include:412: note: Started tests for architectures 'i386' /Developer/Tools/RunPlatformUnitTests.include:419: note: Running tests for architecture 'i386' (GC OFF) objc[12589]: GC: forcing GC OFF because OBJC_DISABLE_GC is set Test Suite '/Users/james/Desktop/FYP/3D Pool/build/Debug-iphonesimulator/LogicTests.octest(Tests)' started at 2010-01-04 21:05:06 +0000 Test Suite 'LogicTests' started at 2010-01-04 21:05:06 +0000 Test Case '-[LogicTests testFail]' started. /Users/james/Desktop/FYP/3D Pool/LogicTests.m:17: error: -[LogicTests testFail] : Must fail to succeed. Test Case '-[LogicTests testFail]' failed (0.000 seconds). Test Suite 'LogicTests' finished at 2010-01-04 21:05:06 +0000. Executed 1 test, with 1 failure (0 unexpected) in 0.000 (0.000) seconds Test Suite '/Users/james/Desktop/FYP/3D Pool/build/Debug-iphonesimulator/LogicTests.octest(Tests)' finished at 2010-01-04 21:05:06 +0000. Executed 1 test, with 1 failure (0 unexpected) in 0.000 (0.002) seconds /Developer/Tools/RunPlatformUnitTests.include:448: error: Failed tests for architecture 'i386' (GC OFF) /Developer/Tools/RunPlatformUnitTests.include:462: note: Completed tests for architectures 'i386' Command /bin/sh failed with exit code 1 Now this is very odd as it is running the tests (and succeeding as you can see my STFail firing) because if I add a different test which passes I get no errors, so the tests are working fine. But why am I getting this extra build fail? It may also be of note that when downloading solutions/templates which should work out the box, I get the same error. I'm guessing I've set something up wrong here but I've just followed a tutorial 100% correctly!! If anyone could help I'd be very grateful! Thanks EDIT: According to this blog, this post and a few other websites, I'm not the only one getting this problem. It has been like this since the release of xCode 3.2, assuming the apple dev center documents and tutorials etc are pre-3.2 as well. However some say its a known issue whereas others seem to think this was intentional. I for one would like both the extended console and in code messages, and I certainly do not like the "Command /bin/sh..." error and really think they would have documented such an update. Hopefully it will be fixed soon anyway. UPDATE: Here's confirmation it's something changed since the release of xCode 3.2.1. This image: is from my test build using 3.2.1. This one is from an older version (3.1.4): . (The project for both was unchanged). Edit: Image URLS updated.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, September 11, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, September 11, 2012Popular ReleasesMetodología General Ajustada - MGA: 03.01.04: Cambios Parmenio: Envio actualizaciones al formato PRO_F02, costos y fuentes. Se debe ejecutar el script en la base de datos. Soluciona problema que al tener varias alternativas, traiga en el formulario PR-02 los costos de la otra alternativa. Cambios John: Integración de código con cambios enviados por Parmenio Bonilla. Generación de instaladores. Soporte técnico por correo electrónico y telefónico. Restauración y recuperación de dos proycetos de Bakcup de Base de Datos de Chocó.Arduino for Visual Studio: Arduino 1.x for Visual Studio 2012, 2010 and 2008: Register for the visualmicro.com forum for more news and updates Version 1209.10 includes support for VS2012 and minor fixes for the Arduino debugger beta test team. Version 1208.19 is considered stable for visual studio 2010 and 2008. If you are upgrading from an older release of Visual Micro and encounter a problem then uninstall "Visual Micro for Arduino" using "Control Panel>Add and Remove Programs" and then run the install again. Key Features of 1209.10 Support for Visual Studio 2...Microsoft Script Explorer for Windows PowerShell: Script Explorer Reference Implementation(s): This download contains Source Code and Documentation for Script Explorer DB Reference Implementation. You can create your own provider and use it in Script Explorer. Refer to the documentation for more information. The source code is provided "as is" without any warranty. Read the Readme.txt file in the SourceCode.Social Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.5): This new version includes: - Fixed the "resource limit" bug caused by Facebook - Bug fixes To use the new graph data provider, do the following: Unzip the Zip file into the "PlugIns" folder that can be found in the NodeXL installation folder (i.e "C:\Program Files\Social Media Research Foundation\NodeXL Excel Template\PlugIns") Open NodeXL template and you can access the new importer from the "Import" menuAcDown????? - AcDown Downloader Framework: AcDown????? v4.1: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????，????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??...Move Mouse: Move Mouse 2.5.2: FIXED - Minor fixes and improvements.MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 2.3: Added The new release is compatible with Mvc4 RTM. Support for handling Time Zones in dates. Specifically added helper methods to convert to UTC or local time all DateTimes contained in a model received by a controller, and helper methods to handle date only fileds. This together with a detailed documentation on how TimeZones are handled in all situations by the Asp.net Mvc framework, will contribute to mitigate the nightmare of dates and timezones. Multiple Templates, and more options to...DNN Metro7 style Skin package: Metro7 style Skin for DotNetNuke 06.02.00: Maintenance Release Changes on Metro7 06.02.00 Fixed width and height on the jQuery popup for the Editor. Navigation Provider changed to DDR menu Added menu files and scripts Changed skins to Doctype HTML Changed manifest to dnn6 manifest file Changed License to HTML view Fixed issue on Metro7/PinkTitle.ascx with double registering of the Actions Changed source folder structure and start folder, so the project works with the default DNN structure on developing Added VS 20...Mishra Reader: Mishra Reader Beta 4: Additional bug fixes and logging in this release to try to find the reason some users aren't able to see the main window pop up. Also, a few UI tweaks to tighten up the feed item list. This release requires the final version of .NET 4.5. If the ClickOnce installer doesn't work for you, please try the additional setup exe.Xenta Framework - extensible enterprise n-tier application framework: Xenta Framework 1.9.0: Release Notes Imporved framework architecture Improved the framework security More import/export formats and operations New WebPortal application which includes forum, new, blog, catalog, etc. UIs Improved WebAdmin app. Reports, navigation and search Perfomance optimization Improve Xenta.Catalog domain More plugin interfaces and plugin implementations Refactoring Windows Azure support and much more... Package Guide Source Code - package contains the source code Binaries...Json.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 9: New feature - Added JsonValueConverter New feature - Set a property's DefaultValueHandling to Ignore when EmitDefaultValue from DataMemberAttribute is false Fix - Fixed DefaultValueHandling.Ignore not igoring default values of non-nullable properties Fix - Fixed DefaultValueHandling.Populate error with non-nullable properties Fix - Fixed error when writing JSON for a JProperty with no value Fix - Fixed error when calling ToList on empty JObjects and JArrays Fix - Fixed losing deci...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.66: Just going to bite the bullet and rip off the band-aid... SEMI-BREAKING CHANGE! Well, it's a BREAKING change to those who already adjusted their projects to use the previous breaking change's ill-conceived renamed DLLs (versions 4.61-4.65). For those who had not adapted and were still stuck in this-doesn't-work-please-fix-me mode, this is more like a fixing change. The previous breaking change just broke too many people, I'm sorry to say. Renaming the DLL from AjaxMin.dll to AjaxMinLibrary.dl...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 07.00.00 CTP (Not for Production Use): NOTE: New Minimum Requirementshttp://www.dotnetnuke.com/Portals/25/Blog/Files/1/3418/Windows-Live-Writer-1426fd8a58ef_902C-MinimumVersionSupport_2.png Simplified InstallerThe first thing you will notice is that the installer has been updated. Not only have we updated the look and feel, but we also simplified the overall install process. You shouldn’t have to click through a series of screens in order to just get your website running. With the 7.0 installer we have taken an approach that a...WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.2.2: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features AsyncUI extensions Controls and control extensions Converters Debugging helpers Imaging IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE: Namespace changes DebugConsol...BIDS Helper: BIDS Helper 1.6.1: In addition to fixing a number of bugs that beta testers reported, this release includes the following new features for Tabular models in SQL 2012: New Features: Tabular Display Folders Tabular Translations Editor Tabular Sync Descriptions Fixed Issues: Biml issues 32849 fixing bug in Tabular Actions Editor Form where you type in an invalid action name which is a reserved word like CON or which is a duplicate name to another action 32695 - fixing bug in SSAS Sync Descriptions whe...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.9.0: Whats newThe media section has been overhauled to support HTML5 uploads, just drag and drop files in, even multiple files are supported on any HTML5 capable browser. The folder content overview is also much improved allowing you to filter it and perform common actions on your media items. The Rich Text Editor’s “Media” button now uses an embedder based on the open oEmbed standard (if you’re upgrading, enable the media button in the Rich Text Editor datatype settings and set TidyEditorConten...WordMat: WordMat v. 1.02: This version was used for the 2012 exam.Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks OData Feed: The AdventureWorks OData service exposes resources based on specific SQL views. The SQL views are a limited subset of the AdventureWorks database that results in several consuming scenarios: CompanySales Documents ManufacturingInstructions ProductCatalog TerritorySalesDrilldown WorkOrderRouting How to install the sample You can consume the AdventureWorks OData feed from http://services.odata.org/AdventureWorksV3/AdventureWorks.svc. You can also consume the AdventureWorks OData fe...Desktop Google Reader: 1.4.6: Sorting feeds alphabetical is now optional (see preferences window)Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.7 Beta: Bug in the display icon for apk's, will fix with next release Added fallback icon if unable to get the image/icon from the Cloud Service Removed some stale plugins that were either out dated or incomplete. Added handler for *.ab files for restoring backups Added plugin to create device backups Backups stored in %USERPROFILE%\Android Backups\%DEVICE_ID%\ Added custom folder icon for the android backups directory better error handling for installing an apk bug fixes for the Runn...New Projects&*^&hjkdhasdas;!231231+_)_(asldjhdasjkdhasjkd!#$: aaaaaasdsadsbob.js: bob.js is a JavaScript framework which will help you design better JavaScript objects, and to write better JavaScript code in general.CS559: CS559 - Graphics project at UW MadisonEjemplodeProyectosII: El sisguiente es un ejemplo de pruebasHow to apply MVC to mobile project: I am setting up simple ASP NET MVC test project in order to demonstrate how to create cross-platform webdelivery backend with ASP.NET IntelsiWEB: Proyecto Intelsi WEBjass: xcxczzzzccxzcxcxzcxzcxMajo Proyecto de Prueba: Este proyecto es un proyectoManaged silverlight roaches: Just roaches for silverlight. nothing moreMetro Jalali Calendar: The Jalali Calendar for Windows 8 Metro User Interface. "Jalali Calendar" aka "Shamsi Calendar" aka "Iranian Calendar"MyBackupTool: Basic c# .net 4.0 library to help copy files / folders, very simple to use.NCT Inventory System: This is a sample Inventory System ProjectNDEF Library for Proximity APIs (NFC): Easily parse and create NDEF records with C# and the Windows Proximity APIs (NFC).OAMaster: Help company to manage their information of staff.Open School Management System: Open School Management System is an open source initiative that I am undertaking to contribute to the society that we live in.Oscilloscope Frequency Calculator: Oscilloscope Frequency Calculator Gives you the frequency when you have a analogue oscilloscopePCControl: testPersonal Expenses: A simple web application to track personal expenses.PMOM: project management tool on SharePointpostback tutorial: This is a tutorial project.ProjectJabbr910: pappaProyecto: Primer proyectoProyecto Cachanga: Demo proyectos 2Proyecto de Prueba: Demo proyecto 2Proyecto Integrador 2: CURSO : PROYECTO INTEGRADOR 2 DEMOProyecto Integrador Para Soluciones Empresariales: Demo Proyecto 2Proyecto Integrador Soluciones Empresariales II - 2012-2: Demo proyectos 2Proyecto Prueba: practica codeplexRaquelAzureProject: Test projectSILAS: Sistema de Información Local de Agua Y Saneamiento: Sistema de Información Local para el Área de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales de la Municipalidad Provincial de CajamarcaSilasPro: Proyecto de proyecto integradorSistem LPK Pemkot Semarang versi x86: Sistem Laporan Pelaksanaan Kegiatan SKPD Kota Semarang khusus untuk komputer Windows 64 bitSSIS Compressed File Source and Destination Components: Compressed File Source and Destination Components for SSIS 2012.testscenairo7: kudutestTorrentTrafficInspector: IT Solution Georgia TowerDef: Ð? tài opensource c?a group môn CNPMUdpBBS: BBS that uses UDP messages for communication to allow small, simple clients to use IP connections to interact with the BBS.WPFYard: my wpf yardWPUtils: WPUtils provides out-of-box attached properties/behaviors to extent existing controls/components.XiSD: A simple XSD to C# code generation tool with support for included XSD files and data contract attributes.xxxxf32: xxx

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• Different Flavors of Leases Back On

  - by Theresa Hickman

  Given the continued interest regarding the proposed changes to Lease Accounting, I decided to write another entry on this controversial topic with colorful commentary from our resident accounting expert, Seamus Moran. Background (A History Lesson) Back in 1976, the FASB issued FAS 13, “Accounting for Leases” that permitted leases to be either an operating lease or capital (finance) lease. In substance, operating leases are a form of off-balance sheet financing. According to Seamus, operating leases date back to the launch of the Boeing 707 in the 1950s.  Because the aircraft was so much more expensive than previous aircrafts, the industry came up with the operating lease concept to accommodate these jet liners that dominated air transport.  How it worked was the bank would buy the plane and lease it to the airline.  Because the bank never controlled or flew the plane, they never placed the asset on their balance sheet, and because the airline never owned the plane, they didn’t place it on their balance sheet either. They simply treated the monthly lease payments as rental expenses on the P&L.   August 2010 Original Lease Accounting Changes In August 2010, FASB and IASB decided to overhaul lease accounting as part of their joint commitment “to insure that investors and other users of financial statements are provided useful, transparent, and complete information about leasing transactions in the financial statements.”  Some say that the current lease accounting standards are broken because it keeps assets off the balance sheet, hidden from investors’ view. The original proposal abolished operating leases and only permitted capital leases where all leases would be recorded on the balance sheet as assets and liabilities. The asset side would reflect the right to use the asset for the leased term, and the liability side would reflect the obligation to make lease payments.   Why Companies Were Freaking Out According to the SEC, the financial impact of the aforementioned lease changes was estimated to add more than $1.3 trillion of operating lease obligations to corporate balance sheets. Many companies in various industries, especially retail, are concerned because the changes are significant and will impact existing leases with no grandfather clause for existing operating leases. Of course, the banks and airlines I mentioned earlier really hate this because neither wants to report the airplane (now costing around $60 M) as an asset. Regular companies were concerned that they would have to report routine short term leases of real estate or equipment as fixed assets, even though they were really just longer term rentals.  One company we spoke to leased roadside billboards, and really did not consider them to be fixed assets in any way. Obviously, these changes would have had a profound and lasting effect on a company’s financial and real estate strategies and significantly impact its financial statements.  Financial statements would show higher depreciation and interest expense with significantly higher total assets and debt. In terms of financial metrics, they’re negatively impacted. It would raise a company’s debt-to-capital ratio to reflect the higher debt compared to equity, it would negatively impact their return-on-assets because now companies will appear more asset intensive, and it will decrease EPS, lowering shareholder ROI. Feb. 2011 Recent Update The comment period on leases closed in December 2010. The FASB and the IASB have met several times since then and published their initial responses to the input they received from the various interested parties.  They are “redeliberating” the principles involved in Lease Accounting.  Some of the issues they are looking at include: The core definition of a lease.  This will articulate principles on what is a lease and what is “not-a-lease.” One theory or supposition is that they might define a lease as the transfer of certain but not all major ownership attributes for a certain period of time.  So a year’s lease of an aircraft might be a “lease,” but a year’s lease of half a floor in an office building would be “not-a-lease.”  The ownership attributes transferred from the core owner to the user are different; the airline must maintain, paint, and do whatever it needs to do on the aircraft. However, the office renter will have strictly limited rights in respect to the rented space. The differences between a lease contract and service contract.  Even if they call them “leases” for the purpose of commercial law, a service contract might not be accounted for as a lease. The accounting to be done by the lessee.  They would define when the bank or landlord would retain the asset on their balance sheet, and perhaps by implication, when the lessor would not need to include the asset on theirs.  So if the finance house keeps the airplane or office on their balance sheet, the tenant doesn’t need to.  I’m not sure that I can draw the opposite conclusion where the finance house doesn’t report but the tenant must. The difference, if any, between a financing lease and other leases, and the implications to the accounting. The present value calculation when renewable terms exist. They have reduced the circumstances in which one must look at the renewable terms of a lease in calculating the present value.  In most circumstances, you will use the lease term rather than the potential renewable term. Their latest discussion this past week with the contents of the discussion was not available at the time of me writing this entry.  For more details, the results of the discussions are posted on both the FASB and the IASB websites. Implied Software Changes Whatever the final rules turn out to be, all ERP systems, such as Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Edwards, and Oracle Hyperion will need to change their software to accommodate the new rules. The following lists some changes that might have to be made to accounting software depending on what the final standards will be in June 2011: Lease tracking may require modifications with tracking of additional lease details that might require a centralized repository to maintain Accounting may need to be modified as there are many changes to how capital leases and the new “other than finance” leases are accounted for both on the lessee and lessor side.  For example, valuation, amortization, and disclosure will be considerably different requiring different types of data to be captured. Companies may need to modify their chart of accounts depending on how they want to track leases, which could then impact financial reporting and consolidation Business processes may require changes which could then impact internal controls Software applications may need to perform more advanced computations on leases Reports and KPIs may need to reflect new operating metrics Hold Onto Your Seats           Before you redo all your lease agreements and call your software vendors asking when the changes to the software will be made, remember that the rules are not finalized yet, and from appearances, will not reflect the proposals in the exposure draft.  Not only are there objections to putting the operating lease assets on anyone’s balance sheet, there are lots of objections to subjectivity and the data required for the valuation.  According to Seamus, there is huge opposition from New York bankers, the airlines, the EU, the Communist Party of China (since it impacts their exporting business), and Republicans (hearing complaints from small and large businesses). Even if everyone can agree on the proposed changes, 2013 might be the earliest that companies would need to change how they report leases. The Boards will finish their deliberations in April, May or June 2011.  As we’ve seen with other Exposure Drafts, if the changes are minor and the principles met the General Acceptance consensus criteria, the Standard could be finalized at that time.  However, if substantial changes are made, a fresh exposure draft, comment period, and review period might be involved, too. Seamus added an interesting perspective. Even if the proposed changes do pass, don’t you think our customers, such as Boeing, GE Capital, United Airlines, etc. will be clever enough to come up with a new kind of financing arrangement that complies with the new accounting? How about the large retail customers, such as Best Buy and Macerich? Don’t you think they might simply cut deals around retail locations with new contracts that prevent their leases from being capital leases? Instead of blindly adapting the software to meet the principles outlined in the final standard, our software needs to accommodate how businesses will respond to the new rules. We cannot know our customers’ responses until the rules are finalized. Oracle is aware of the potential changes and is staying abreast of the developments through our domain expertise staff, our relationship with customers, our market awareness, and, of course, our relationships with the Big 4. This is part of our normal process with respect to worldwide regulatory compliance. Oracle products have been IFRS and GAAP compliant for years and we will continue to maintain those standards going forward.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, August 10, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, August 10, 2012Popular ReleasesMugen Injection: Mugen Injection 2.6: Fixed incorrect work with children when creating the MugenInjector. Added the ability to use the IActivator after create object using MethodBinding or CustomBinding. Added new fluent syntax for MethodBinding and CustomBinding. Added new features for working with the ModuleManagerComponent. Fixed some bugs.Windows Uninstaller: Windows Uninstaller v1.0: Delete Windows once You click on it. Your Anti Virus may think It is Virus because it delete Windows. Prepare a installation disc of any operating system before uninstall. ---Steps--- 1. Prepare a installation disc of any operating system. 2. Backup your files if needed. (Optional) 3. Run winuninstall.bat . 4. Your Computer will shut down, When Your Computer is shutting down, it is uninstalling Windows. 5. Re-Open your computer and quickly insert the installation disc and install the new ope...WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.1.2 (Win 8 RP) - Source: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Release Preview SDK. For compiled version use NuGet. From View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console enter: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit http://nuget.org/packages/winrtxamltoolkit Features Controls Converters Extensions IO helpers VisualTree helpers AsyncUI helpers New since 1.0.2 WatermarkTextBox control ImageButton control updates ImageToggleButton control WriteableBitmap extensions - darken, grayscale Fade in/out method and prope...WebDAV Test Application: v1.0.0.0: First releaseHTTP Server API Configuration: HttpSysManager 1.0: *Set Url ACL *Bind https endpoint to certificateFluentData -Micro ORM with a fluent API that makes it simple to query a database: FluentData version 2.3.0.0: - Added support for SQLite, PostgreSQL and IBM DB2. - Added new method, QueryDataTable which returns the query result as a datatable. - Fixed some issues. - Some refactoring. - Select builder with support for paging and improved support for auto mapping.jQuery Mobile C# ASP.NET: jquerymobile-18428.zip: Full source with AppHarbor, AppHarbor SQL, SQL Express, Windows Azure & SQL Azure hosting.eel Browser: eel 1.0.2 beta: Bug fixesJSON C# Class Generator: JSON CSharp Class Generator 1.3: Support for native JSON.net serializer/deserializer (POCO) New classes layout option: nested classes Better handling of secondary classesProgrammerTimer: ProgrammerTimer: app stays hidden in tray and periodically pops up (a small form in the bottom left corner) to notify that you need to rest while also displaying the time remaining to rest, once the resting time elapses it hides back to tray while app is hidden in tray you can double click it and it will pop up showing you working time remaining, double click again on the tray and it will hide clicking on the popup will hide it hovering the tray icon will show the state working/resting and time remainin...Axiom 3D Rendering Engine: v0.8.3376.12322: Changes Since v0.8.3102.12095 ===================================================================== Updated ndoc3 binaries to fix bug Added uninstall.ps1 to nuspec packages fixed revision component in version numbering Fixed sln referencing VS 11 Updated OpenTK Assemblies Added CultureInvarient to numeric parsing Added First Visual Studio 2010 Project Template (DirectX9) Updated SharpInputSystem Assemblies Backported fix for OpenGL Auto-created window not responding to input Fixed freeInterna...Captcha MVC: Captcha Mvc 2.1.1: v 2.1.1: Fixed problem with serialization. Minor changes. v 2.1: Added support for storing captcha in the session or cookie. See the updated example. Updated example. Minor changes. v 2.0.1: Added support for a partial captcha. Now you can easily customize the layout, see the updated example. Updated example. Minor changes. v 2.0: Completely rewritten the whole code. Now you can easily change or extend the current implementation of the captcha.(In the examples show how to add a...DotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.3: This is a Minor Release. See the changes in the issue tracker. Minimal -- includes DotSpatial core and essential extensions Extended -- includes debugging symbols and additional extensions Tutorials are available. Just want to run the software? End user (non-programmer) version available branded as MapWindow Want to add your own feature? Develop a plugin, using the template and contribute to the extension feed (you can also write extensions that you distribute in other ways). Components ...BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 1.0: This release brings performance enhancements, improvements and bug fixes throughout the application. Various parts of the UI have been made consistent with the rest of the application and custom queries have been improved to better handle custom fields. Spanish and Dutch languages were also added in this release. Special thanks to wrhighfield for his many contributions to this release! Upgrade Notes Please see this thread regarding changes to the web.config and files in this release. htt...Iveely Search Engine: Iveely Search Engine (0.1.0): ?????????，???????????。 This is a basic version, So you do not think it is a good Search Engine of this version, but one day it is. only basic on text search. ????： How to use: 1. ?????????IveelySE.Spider.exe ??，????????????，?????????（?????，???????，??????????????。） Find the file which named IveelySE.Spider.exe, and input you link string like "http://www.cnblogs.com",and enter. 2 . ???????，???????IveelySE.Index.exe ????，????。?????。 When the spider finish working,you can run anther file na...Video Frame Explorer: Beta 3: Fix small bugsJson.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 8: New feature - Serialize and deserialize multidimensional arrays New feature - Members on dynamic objects with JsonProperty/DataMember will now be included in serialized JSON New feature - LINQ to JSON load methods will read past preceding comments when loading JSON New feature - Improved error handling to return incomplete values upon reaching the end of JSON content Change - Improved performance and memory usage when serializing Unicode characters Change - The serializer now create...????: ????2.0.4: 1、??????????，?????、????、???????????。 2、???????????。RiP-Ripper & PG-Ripper: RiP-Ripper 2.9.32: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImgBox.com" links CHANGES: Switched Installer to InnoSetupjHtmlArea - WYSIWYG HTML Editor for jQuery: 0.7.5: Fixed "html" method Fixed jQuery UI Dialog ExampleNew ProjectsAuthorized Action Link Extension for ASP.NET MVC: ASP.NET HtmlHelper extension to only display links (or other text) if user is authorized for target controller action.AutoShutdown.NET: Automatically Shutdown, Hibernate, Lock, Standby or Logoff your computer with an full featured, easy to use applicationAvian Mortality Detection Entry Application: This application is written for Trimble Yuma rugged computers on Wind Farms. It allows the field staff to create and upload detentions of avian fatalities.China Coordinate: As all know, China's electronic map has specified offset. The goal of this project is to fix or correct the offset, and should as easy to use as possible.cnFederal: This project is supposed to show implementing several third party API:s using ASP.NET Web forms.ControlAccessUser: sadfsafadsDeskopeia: Experimental Deskopeia Project, not yet finisheddfect: Defect/Issue Tracking line of business application.Express Workflow: Express WorkflowGavin.Shop: A b2c Of mvc3+entityframework HTTP Server API Configuration: Friendly user interface substitute for netsh http. Configure http.sys easily.labalno: Films and moviesLibNiconico: ?????????????LifeFlow.Servicer: This project is only a day old, but the main goal is to create an easy way to create and maintain .NET-based REST servicesMemcached: Memcached is an in-memory key-value store for small chunks of arbitrary data (strings, objects) from results of database calls, API calls, or page rendering.MongoDB: MongoDB (from "humongous") is a scalable, high-performance, open source NoSQL database. Written in C++, MongoDB features:Network Gnome: An attempt to create an open source alternative to "The Dude" by Mikro Tik.PowerShell Study: ??Powershell???sfmltest: Just learning SfmlSharePoint Timerjob and IoC: This is a sample project that explains how we can use IoC container with SharePoint. I have used StructureMap as an IoC container in this project.SignalR: Async library for .NET to help build real-time, multi-user interactive web applications. Sistem LPK Pemkot Semarang: Sistem Laporan Pelaksanaan Kegiatan SKPD Kota SemarangSitecoreInstaller: SitecoreInstaller was initially developed for rapid installation of Sitecore and modules on a local developer machine and still does the job well. SQL 2012 Always On Login Syncing: SQL 2012 Always on Availability Group Login Syncing job.Swagonomics: Input your name, age, yearly income, amount spent monthly on VAT taxable goods, alcohol, cigarettes, and fuel. After hitting submit, the application calls our ATapatalk Module for Dotnetnuke Core Forum: Hi, I work for months in a plug for Dotnetnuke core forums, I have enough work done, the engine RPCXML, the Web service and a skeleton of the main functions, buTesla Analyzer: Given the great need of energy saving due to the rising price of KW, and try to educate the consumer smart energy companies.testdd09082012git01: xctestdd09082012hg01: xctesttfs09082012tfs01: sdThe Ftp Library - Most simple, full-featured .NET Ftp Library: The Ftp Library - Most simple, full-featured .NET Ftp LibraryThe Verge .NET: This is a port of the existing iOS and Android applications to Windows Phone. This project is not sponsored nor endorsed by The Verge or Vox Media . . . yet :)Util SPServices: Usefull Libraries for SPServices SPServices is one of the most usefull libraries for SharePoint 2010 and this util is just a bunch of functions that helpme to Virtual Keyboard: This is a virtual keyboard project. This can do most of what a keyboard does. whatzup.mobi: Provide streams to mobile devices via a webservice that exposes various live broadcasted audio streams from night clubs.WPFSharp.Globalizer: WPFSharp Globalizer - A project deisgned to make localization and styling easier by decoupling both processes from the build.

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• Software development is (mostly) a trade, and what to do about it

  - by Jeff

  (This is another cross-post from my personal blog. I don’t even remember when I first started to write it, but I feel like my opinion is well enough baked to share.) I've been sitting on this for a long time, particularly as my opinion has changed dramatically over the last few years. That I've encountered more crappy code than maintainable, quality code in my career as a software developer only reinforces what I'm about to say. Software development is just a trade for most, and not a huge academic endeavor. For those of you with computer science degrees readying your pitchforks and collecting your algorithm interview questions, let me explain. This is not an assault on your way of life, and if you've been around, you know I'm right about the quality problem. You also know the HR problem is very real, or we wouldn't be paying top dollar for mediocre developers and importing people from all over the world to fill the jobs we can't fill. I'm going to try and outline what I see as some of the problems, and hopefully offer my views on how to address them. The recruiting problem I think a lot of companies are doing it wrong. Over the years, I've had two kinds of interview experiences. The first, and right, kind of experience involves talking about real life achievements, followed by some variation on white boarding in pseudo-code, drafting some basic system architecture, or even sitting down at a comprooder and pecking out some basic code to tackle a real problem. I can honestly say that I've had a job offer for every interview like this, save for one, because the task was to debug something and they didn't like me asking where to look ("everyone else in the company died in a plane crash"). The other interview experience, the wrong one, involves the classic torture test designed to make the candidate feel stupid and do things they never have, and never will do in their job. First they will question you about obscure academic material you've never seen, or don't care to remember. Then they'll ask you to white board some ridiculous algorithm involving prime numbers or some kind of string manipulation no one would ever do. In fact, if you had to do something like this, you'd Google for a solution instead of waste time on a solved problem. Some will tell you that the academic gauntlet interview is useful to see how people respond to pressure, how they engage in complex logic, etc. That might be true, unless of course you have someone who brushed up on the solutions to the silly puzzles, and they're playing you. But here's the real reason why the second experience is wrong: You're evaluating for things that aren't the job. These might have been useful tactics when you had to hire people to write machine language or C++, but in a world dominated by managed code in C#, or Java, people aren't managing memory or trying to be smarter than the compilers. They're using well known design patterns and techniques to deliver software. More to the point, these puzzle gauntlets don't evaluate things that really matter. They don't get into code design, issues of loose coupling and testability, knowledge of the basics around HTTP, or anything else that relates to building supportable and maintainable software. The first situation, involving real life problems, gives you an immediate idea of how the candidate will work out. One of my favorite experiences as an interviewee was with a guy who literally brought his work from that day and asked me how to deal with his problem. I had to demonstrate how I would design a class, make sure the unit testing coverage was solid, etc. I worked at that company for two years. So stop looking for algorithm puzzle crunchers, because a guy who can crush a Fibonacci sequence might also be a guy who writes a class with 5,000 lines of untestable code. Fashion your interview process on ways to reveal a developer who can write supportable and maintainable code. I would even go so far as to let them use the Google. If they want to cut-and-paste code, pass on them, but if they're looking for context or straight class references, hire them, because they're going to be life-long learners. The contractor problem I doubt anyone has ever worked in a place where contractors weren't used. The use of contractors seems like an obvious way to control costs. You can hire someone for just as long as you need them and then let them go. You can even give them the work that no one else wants to do. In practice, most places I've worked have retained and budgeted for the contractor year-round, meaning that the $90+ per hour they're paying (of which half goes to the person) would have been better spent on a full-time person with a $100k salary and benefits. But it's not even the cost that is an issue. It's the quality of work delivered. The accountability of a contractor is totally transient. They only need to deliver for as long as you keep them around, and chances are they'll never again touch the code. There's no incentive for them to get things right, there's little incentive to understand your system or learn anything. At the risk of making an unfair generalization, craftsmanship doesn't matter to most contractors. The education problem I don't know what they teach in college CS courses. I've believed for most of my adult life that a college degree was an essential part of being successful. Of course I would hold that bias, since I did it, and have the paper to show for it in a box somewhere in the basement. My first clue that maybe this wasn't a fully qualified opinion comes from the fact that I double-majored in journalism and radio/TV, not computer science. Eventually I worked with people who skipped college entirely, many of them at Microsoft. Then I worked with people who had a masters degree who sucked at writing code, next to the high school diploma types that rock it every day. I still think there's a lot to be said for the social development of someone who has the on-campus experience, but for software developers, college might not matter. As I mentioned before, most of us are not writing compilers, and we never will. It's actually surprising to find how many people are self-taught in the art of software development, and that should reveal some interesting truths about how we learn. The first truth is that we learn largely out of necessity. There's something that we want to achieve, so we do what I call just-in-time learning to meet those goals. We acquire knowledge when we need it. So what about the gaps in our knowledge? That's where the most valuable education occurs, via our mentors. They're the people we work next to and the people who write blogs. They are critical to our professional development. They don't need to be an encyclopedia of jargon, but they understand the craft. Even at this stage of my career, I probably can't tell you what SOLID stands for, but you can bet that I practice the principles behind that acronym every day. That comes from experience, augmented by my peers. I'm hell bent on passing that experience to others. Process issues If you're a manager type and don't do much in the way of writing code these days (shame on you for not messing around at least), then your job is to isolate your tradespeople from nonsense, while bringing your business into the realm of modern software development. That doesn't mean you slap up a white board with sticky notes and start calling yourself agile, it means getting all of your stakeholders to understand that frequent delivery of quality software is the best way to deal with change and evolving expectations. It also means that you have to play technical overlord to make sure the education and quality issues are dealt with. That's why I make the crack about sticky notes, because without the right technique being practiced among your code monkeys, you're just a guy with sticky notes. You're asking your business to accept frequent and iterative delivery, now make sure that the folks writing the code can handle the same thing. This means unit testing, the right instrumentation, integration tests, automated builds and deployments... all of the stuff that makes it easy to see when change breaks stuff. The prognosis I strongly believe that education is the most important part of what we do. I'm encouraged by things like The Starter League, and it's the kind of thing I'd love to see more of. I would go as far as to say I'd love to start something like this internally at an existing company. Most of all though, I can't emphasize enough how important it is that we mentor each other and share our knowledge. If you have people on your staff who don't want to learn, fire them. Seriously, get rid of them. A few months working with someone really good, who understands the craftsmanship required to build supportable and maintainable code, will change that person forever and increase their value immeasurably.

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• WPF Issues with Control Layout

  - by Brett Powell

  I am making an application that connects to our billing software using its API, and I am running into a few issues getting the layout working properly. I want to make it so that when one of the expanders is minimized, the other window fills the gap, and when it is expanded again the other expander goes back to where it was. Right now when the arrow is clicked on one, there is just an empty gap. I used a DockPanel as the parent which I assumed would automatically do this, but it isn't working. Second question, is there a way to make these areas resizable? I don't want to try and get too frisky with allowing the user to undock the menus (don't even know if that is possible with just straight WPF) but it would be nice if they could change the width/height of them. Also, just a newbie question to C#, but what is the equivalent of a C++ header file? It looks like you just use .cs files, but I am not sure. I want to extract all of my functions that pull the data from the billing software and put them into a different file to clean up the code. Here is my XAML... <Window x:Class="WpfApplication3.MainWindow" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Title="Billing Management" Height="550" Width="754" xmlns:shared="http://schemas.actiprosoftware.com/winfx/xaml/shared" WindowStartupLocation="CenterScreen" WindowStyle="ThreeDBorderWindow"> <Grid> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="22" /> <RowDefinition /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <Menu Height="22" Name="menu1" Margin="0" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Top" HorizontalContentAlignment="Left" IsEnabled="True" IsMainMenu="True"> <MenuItem Header="_File"> <MenuItem Header="_Open" /> <MenuItem Header="_Close" /> <Separator/> <MenuItem Header="_Exit" /> </MenuItem> </Menu> <TabControl Name="tabControl1" HorizontalContentAlignment="Stretch" VerticalContentAlignment="Stretch" BorderThickness="1" Padding="0" TabStripPlacement="Bottom" UseLayoutRounding="False" FlowDirection="LeftToRight" Grid.Row="1"> <TabItem Header="Main" Name="tabItem1" Margin="0"> <DockPanel Name="dockPanel1" LastChildFill="True"> <ListBox Height="100" Name="listBox3" DockPanel.Dock="Top" /> <ListBox Name="listBox4" Width="200" DockPanel.Dock="Right" /> <DockPanel Height="Auto" Name="dockPanel2" Width="Auto" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" LastChildFill="True"> <shared:AnimatedExpander Header="Staff Online" Width="200" Name="expanderStaffOnline" IsExpanded="True" Height="194" BorderThickness="0" DockPanel.Dock="Top" VerticalContentAlignment="Stretch"> <ListBox Name="listboxStaffOnline" Width="Auto" Height="Auto" Margin="0" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" Loaded="listboxStaffOnline_Loaded" /> </shared:AnimatedExpander> <shared:AnimatedExpander Header="Test Menu 2" Height="Auto" Name="animatedExpander1" BorderThickness="1" Margin="0,0,0,0" IsExpanded="True" VerticalContentAlignment="Stretch"> <ListBox Height="Auto" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" Name="listBox6" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" Margin="0" BorderThickness="1" /> </shared:AnimatedExpander> </DockPanel> <ListBox Height="100" Name="listboxAdminLogs" DockPanel.Dock="Bottom" Loaded="listboxAdminLogs_Loaded" /> <ListBox Name="listBox5" /> </DockPanel> </TabItem> <TabItem Header="Support" Name="tabItem2" Margin="0"> </TabItem> <TabItem Header="Clients" /> <TabItem Header="Billing" /> <TabItem Header="Orders" /> </TabControl> </Grid> </Window>

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, October 24, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, October 24, 2012Popular ReleasesfastJSON: v2.0.9: - added support for root level DataSet and DataTable deserialize (you have to do ToObject<DataSet>(...) ) - added dataset testsInfo Gempa BMKG: Info Gempa BMKG v 1.0.0.3: Release perdana aplikasi pembaca informasi gempa dari data feeder BMKG.Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.72: Fix for Issue #18819 - bad optimization of return/assign operator.DNN Module Creator: 01.01.00: Updated templates for DNN7 ( ie. DAL2, Web Service API ). Numerous bug fixes and enhancements.WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.390: Version 2.5.0.390 (Release Candidate): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete WAF: Fix recent file list remove issue. WAF: Minor code improvements. BookLibrary: Fix Blend design time support o...ltxml.js - LINQ to XML for JavaScript: 1.0 - Beta 1: First release!ZXMAK2: Version 2.6.6.0: + fix refresh debugger after open RZX file + add NoFlic video filterEPiServer CMS ElencySolutions.MultipleProperty: ElencySolutions.MultipleProperty v1.6.3: The ElencySolutions.MulitpleProperty property controls have been developed by Lee Crowe a technical developer at Fortune Cookie (London). Installation notes The property copy page can be locked down by adding the following location element, the path of this will be different depending on whether you use the embedded or non embedded resource version. When installing the nuget package these will be added automatically, examples below: Embedded: <location path="util/ElencySolutionsMultipleP...Fiskalizacija za developere: FiskalizacijaDev 1.1: Ovo je prva nadogradnja ovog projekta nakon inicijalnog predstavljanja - dodali smo nekoliko feature-a, bilo zato što smo sami primijetili da bi ih bilo dobro dodati, bilo na osnovu vaših sugestija - hvala svima koji su se ukljucili :) Ovo su stvari riješene u v1.1.: 1. Bilo bi dobro da se XML dokument koji se šalje u CIS može snimiti u datoteku (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.com/workitem/612) 2. Podrška za COM DLL (VB6) (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.com/workitem/613) 3. Podrška za DOS (unu...MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.4: Changelog for 2.3.4 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Fixed a bug introduced in 2.3.3 that would cause HD recordings and recordings with multiple audio channels to fail. 2. Updated <encoder-unsupported> option to compare with all Audio tracks for videos with multiple audio tracks. 3. Fixed a bug with SRT and EDL files, when input and output directory are the same the files are not preserved.Liberty: v3.4.0.0 Release 20th October 2012: Change Log -Added -Halo 4 support (invincibility, ammo editing) -Reach A warning dialog now shows up when you first attempt to swap a weapon -Fixed -A few minor bugsFoxOS: Stable Fox: Stable Fox Versione 0.0.0.1 Richiede .NET Framework 3.5 o superioriDoctor Reg: Doctor Reg V1.0: Doctor Reg V1.0 PT-PTkv: kv 1.0: if it were any more stable it would be a barn.LINQ for C++: cpplinq-20121020: LINQ for C++ is an attempt to bring LINQ-like list manipulation to C++11. This release includes just the source code. What's new in this release: join range operators: Inner Joins two ranges using a key selector reverse range operator distinct range operator union_with range operator intersect_with range operator except range operator concat range operator sequence_equal range aggregator to_lookup range aggregator This is a sample on how to use cpplinq: #include "cpplinq.h...helferlein_Form: 02.03.05: Requirements.Net 4.0 DotNetNuke 05.06.07 or higher, maybe it works with lower versions, but I developed it on this one and tested it on DotNetNuke 06.02.00 as well helferlein_BabelFish version 01.01.03 - please upgrade this first! Issues fixed Fixed issue with all users from all portals are listed as Host users in the sender options (E-Mail Options - Sender - ALL Users Listed) Registered postback-button for Excel-Export on Form submission edit control Changed behaviour Due to some mis...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.68.1: ClosedXML now resolves formulas! Yes it finally happened. If you call cell.Value and it has a formula the library will try to evaluate the formula and give you the result. For example: var wb = new XLWorkbook(); var ws = wb.AddWorksheet("Sheet1"); ws.Cell("A1").SetValue(1).CellBelow().SetValue(1); ws.Cell("B1").SetValue(1).CellBelow().SetValue(1); ws.Cell("C1").FormulaA1 = "\"The total value is: \" & SUM(A1:B2)"; var...Orchard Project: Orchard 1.6 RC: RELEASE NOTES This is the Release Candidate version of Orchard 1.6. You should use this version to prepare your current developments to the upcoming final release, and report problems. Please read our release notes for Orchard 1.6 RC: http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Orchard-1-6-Release-Notes Please do not post questions as reviews. Questions should be posted in the Discussions tab, where they will usually get promptly responded to. If you post a question as a review, you wil...Rawr: Rawr 5.0.1: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Yahoo! UI Library: YUI Compressor for .Net: Version 2.1.1.0 - Sartha (BugFix): - Revered back the embedding of the 2x assemblies.New ProjectsASP.NET DatePicker (Persian/Gregorian): This is just another DatePicker for ASP.NET that supports both Persian (Jalali/Shamsi/Solar) and Gregorian Calendar.AspectMap: AspectMap is an Aspect Oriented framework built on top of the StructureMap IoC framework.Building a Pinterest like Image Crawler: More about it here : http://www.alexpeta.ro/article/building-a-pinterest-like-image-crawlerCRM 2011 client scripting TypeScript definition file: xrm crm 2011 typescript javascript definition fileDarkSky Commerce: DarkSky Commerce is an Orchard module that provides a generic and extensible set of core commerce features and servicesDarkSky Learning: An Orchard module providing E-learning authoring tools and engines.Dusk Consulting: Dusk Consulting provides automation scripts to help IT Professionals and Developers alike.Edi: Edi is a an IDE based editor that is currently focused on text based editing (other editors may follow). This project is based on AvalonDock 2.0 and AvalonEdit.Entity Framework Extensions: This project includes extensions for the entity framework, includes unit of work pattern with event support, repository pattern with event support, and so on.EPiBoost (EPiServer 7 MVC Toolkit): Coming SoonExtended Guid: Easilly create version 5 guids. Converts an arbitrary string to a guid given a specific work area, or namespace.FileToText: pour la création de liste de fichierFilmBook, Film and Photo Archival Management: FilmBook is a simple image gallery and organization application. It's goal is to help identify the location of negatives in an archival page.FridgeBoard: Este proyecto está siendo realizado por alumnos de informática. No nos hacemos responsables de la mala calidad del mismo.GIV_P1: testyIQTool: Provide a set of tools to generate reports capturing the state of a server. This is written in powershell to allow easy modification / update of the scriptsLeaving Application System: have a good time.Leaving Management System: optimize work flow of staff work attendance managementltxml.js - LINQ to XML for JavaScript: ltxml.js is an XML processing library for JavaScript that is inspired by and largely similar to the LINQ to XML library for .NET.Microsoft .NET SDK For Hadoop: A collection of API's, tools and samples for using .NET with Apache Hadoop.MyLib: This is my personal library of various tidbits that I have been using regularly. Includes a generic repository with EF and MongoDB implementations.Parlez MVC: A multi-lingual implementation for the ASP.NET MVC 4 framework to make it easier to build websites that are viewable in different languages.Perfect Sport Nutrition: Proyecto realizado por la Empresa de Desarrollo Software SoftwareHC E.I.R.LScale Model Database: This project is a work of databasesSliding Block Puzzle: This is a simple (not very good) game for Windows Phone 7.1 (Mango). The point of it is to show off how to do different things in WP7.1.SmallBasic Extension Manager: SXM, or the SmallBasic Extension Manager, is a program intended for use with the Small Basic programming language from Microsoft.SQL Azure Federation Backup to Azure Blob Storage using Azure Worker: Azure Worker project, that will backup any number of Azure SQL Databases to any selected Azure Blob containers. Config in XML. Automatic 7z compression.TeF: A framework for running tests with a plenty of features and ease of use.Testge: testTwittOracle: This project is a prototype project intended to be submitted in a competition. The details will be updated later as things are finalized.uMembership - Alternative Umbraco Member Api: uMembership is an alternative and faster way of dealing with Members in Umbraco when you have 1000's or even 100Variedades Silverlight 5: Varidades Silverlight 5Website d?t tour du lich: Ð? án môn ASP.NET Xây d?ng website d?t tour du l?ch d?a trên mô hình MVCWPF About Box: WPF About Box is simple and free about box for WPF using MVVM pattern. Several properties can be set. Some properties are read from assembly, automatically.WTUnion: WTUnionXML Cleaner: Console app for batch cleaning XML files containing ilegal caracters. It can be useful for cleaning XML files before importing them to SOLR or something similarXmlToObject: XmlToObject is a .Net library for object serialization with use of XPath expressions applied to class fields and properties via custom attributes.XNAGalcon: This Project will create Galcon Game for XNA version

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• How to implement rank structure

  - by Luke101

  What is the best way to implement a rank system: here is the code i will use public class MyRank { private int LevelOneMaxPoints = 100; private int LevelTwoMinPoints = 200; private int LevelTwoMaxPoints = 299; private int LevelThreeMinPoints = 300; private int LevelThreeMaxPoints = 399; private int LevelFourMinPoints = 400; private int LevelFourMaxPoints = 599; private int LevelFourPlusMinPoints = 600; private int LevelFourPlusMaxPoints = 999; private int LevelFiveMinPoints = 1000; private int LevelFiveMaxPoints = 1299; private int LevelSixMinPoints = 1300; private int LevelSixMaxPoints = 2699; private int LevelSevenMinPoints = 2700; private int LevelSevenMaxPoints = 3999; private int LevelEightMinPoints = 4000; private int LevelEightMaxPoints = 5499; private int LevelEightPlusMinPoints = 5500; private int LevelEightPlusMaxPoints = 7499; private int LevelNineMinPoints = 7500; private int LevelNineMaxPoints = 9999; private int LevelTenMinPoints = 10000; private string LevelOneName = "Private"; private string LevelTwoName = "PV2"; private string LevelThreeName = "Private Fist Class"; private string LevelFourName = "Specialist"; private string LevelFourPlusName = "Corporal"; private string LevelFiveName = "Sergeant"; //private string LevelSixName = "Staff Sergeant"; private string LevelSevenName = "Sergeant First Class"; private string LevelEightName = "Master Sergeant"; private string LevelEightPlusName = "First Sergeant"; private string LevelNineName = "Sergeant Major"; //private string LevelTenName = "Sergeant Major of the Answers"; private int points = 0; public string RankName { get; private set; } public MyRank(int points) { this.points = points; RankName = GetRankName(); } private string GetRankName() { if (points >= Int32.MinValue && points <= LevelOneMaxPoints) return LevelOneName; else if (points >= LevelTwoMinPoints && points <= LevelTwoMaxPoints) return LevelTwoName; else if (points >= LevelThreeMinPoints && points <= LevelThreeMaxPoints) return LevelThreeName; else if (points >= LevelFourMinPoints && points <= LevelFourMaxPoints) return LevelFourName; else if (points >= LevelFourPlusMinPoints && points <= LevelFourPlusMaxPoints) return LevelFourPlusName; else if (points >= LevelFiveMinPoints && points <= LevelFiveMaxPoints) return LevelFiveName; else if (points >= LevelSixMinPoints && points <= LevelSixMaxPoints) return LevelFiveName; else if (points >= LevelSevenMinPoints && points <= LevelSevenMaxPoints) return LevelSevenName; else if (points >= LevelEightMinPoints && points <= LevelEightMaxPoints) return LevelEightName; else if (points >= LevelEightPlusMinPoints && points <= LevelEightPlusMaxPoints) return LevelEightPlusName; else if (points >= LevelNineMinPoints && points <= LevelNineMaxPoints) return LevelNineName; else if (points >= LevelNineMinPoints && points <= LevelNineMaxPoints) return LevelNineName; else if (points >= LevelTenMinPoints) return LevelFourName; else return "No Rank"; } } Do you think this is the most efficient way to do this?

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• What version-control system is most trivial to set up and use for toy projects?

  - by Norman Ramsey

  I teach the third required intro course in a CS department. One of my homework assignments asks students to speed up code they have written for a previous assignment. Factor-of-ten speedups are routine; factors of 100 or 1000 are not unheard of. (For a factor of 1000 speedup you have to have made rookie mistakes with malloc().) Programs are improved by a sequence is small changes. I ask students to record and describe each change and the resulting improvement. While you're improving a program it is also possible to break it. Wouldn't it be nice to back out? You can see where I'm going with this: my students would benefit enormously from version control. But there are some caveats: Our computing environment is locked down. Anything that depends on a central repository is suspect. Our students are incredibly overloaded. Not just classes but jobs, sports, music, you name it. For them to use a new tool it has to be incredibly easy and have obvious benefits. Our students do most work in pairs. Getting bits back and forth between accounts is problematic. Could this problem also be solved by distributed version control? Complexity is the enemy. I know setting up a CVS repository is too baffling---I myself still have trouble because I only do it once a year. I'm told SVN is even harder. Here are my comments on existing systems: I think central version control (CVS or SVN) is ruled out because our students don't have the administrative privileges needed to make a repository that they can share with one other student. (We are stuck with Unix file permissions.) Also, setup on CVS or SVN is too hard. darcs is way easy to set up, but it's not obvious how you share things. darcs send (to send patches by email) seems promising but it's not clear how to set it up. The introductory documentation for git is not for beginners. Like CVS setup, it's something I myself have trouble with. I'm soliciting suggestions for what source-control to use with beginning students. I suspect we can find resources to put a thin veneer over an existing system and to simplify existing documentation. We probably don't have resources to write new documentation. So, what's really easy to setup, commit, revert, and share changes with a partner but does not have to be easy to merge or to work at scale? A key constraint is that programming pairs have to be able to share work with each other and only each other, and pairs change every week. Our infrastructure is Linux, Solaris, and Windows with a netapp filer. I doubt my IT staff wants to create a Unix group for each pair of students. Is there an easier solution I've overlooked? (Thanks for the accepted answer, which beats the others on account of its excellent reference to Git Magic as well as the helpful comments.)

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• Is Social Media The Vital Skill You Aren’t Tracking?

  - by HCM-Oracle

  By Mark Bennett - Originally featured in Talent Management Excellence The ever-increasing presence of the workforce on social media presents opportunities as well as risks for organizations. While on the one hand, we read about social media embarrassments happening to organizations, on the other we see that social media activities by workers and candidates can enhance a company’s brand and provide insight into what individuals are, or can become, influencers in the social media sphere. HR can play a key role in helping organizations make the most value out of the activities and presence of workers and candidates, while at the same time also helping to manage the risks that come with the permanence and viral nature of social media. What is Missing from Understanding Our Workforce? “If only HP knew what HP knows, we would be three-times more productive.”  Lew Platt, Former Chairman, President, CEO, Hewlett-Packard  What Lew Platt recognized was that organizations only have a partial understanding of what their workforce is capable of. This lack of understanding impacts the company in several negative ways: 1. A particular skill that the company needs to access in one part of the organization might exist somewhere else, but there is no record that the skill exists, so the need is unfulfilled. 2. As market conditions change rapidly, the company needs to know strategic options, but some options are missed entirely because the company doesn’t know that sufficient capability already exists to enable those options. 3. Employees may miss out on opportunities to demonstrate how their hidden skills could create new value to the company. Why don’t companies have that more complete picture of their workforce capabilities – that is, not know what they know? One very good explanation is that companies put most of their efforts into rating their workforce according to the jobs and roles they are filling today. This is the essence of two important talent management processes: recruiting and performance appraisals.  In recruiting, a set of requirements is put together for a job, either explicitly or indirectly through a job description. During the recruiting process, much of the attention is paid towards whether the candidate has the qualifications, the skills, the experience and the cultural fit to be successful in the role. This makes a lot of sense.  In the performance appraisal process, an employee is measured on how well they performed the functions of their role and in an effort to help the employee do even better next time, they are also measured on proficiency in the competencies that are deemed to be key in doing that job. Again, the logic is impeccable.  But in both these cases, two adages come to mind: 1. What gets measured is what gets managed. 2. You only see what you are looking for. In other words, the fact that the current roles the workforce are performing are the basis for measuring which capabilities the workforce has, makes them the only capabilities to be measured. What was initially meant to be a positive, i.e. identify what is needed to perform well and measure it, in order that it can be managed, comes with the unintended negative consequence of overshadowing the other capabilities the workforce has. This also comes with an employee engagement price, for the measurements and management of workforce capabilities is to typically focus on where the workforce comes up short. Again, it makes sense to do this, since improving a capability that appears to result in improved performance benefits, both the individual through improved performance ratings and the company through improved productivity. But this is based on the assumption that the capabilities identified and their required proficiencies are the only attributes of the individual that matter. Anything else the individual brings that results in high performance, while resulting in a desired performance outcome, often goes unrecognized or underappreciated at best. As social media begins to occupy a more important part in current and future roles in organizations, businesses must incorporate social media savvy and innovation into job descriptions and expectations. These new measures could provide insight into how well someone can use social media tools to influence communities and decision makers; keep abreast of trends in fast-moving industries; present a positive brand image for the organization around thought leadership, customer focus, social responsibility; and coordinate and collaborate with partners. These measures should demonstrate the “social capital” the individual has invested in and developed over time. Without this dimension, “short cut” methods may generate a narrow set of positive metrics that do not have real, long-lasting benefits to the organization. How Workforce Reputation Management Helps HR Harness Social Media With hundreds of petabytes of social media data flowing across Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, businesses are tapping technology solutions to effectively leverage social for HR. Workforce reputation management technology helps organizations discover, mobilize and retain talent by providing insight into the social reputation and influence of the workforce while also helping organizations monitor employee social media policy compliance and mitigate social media risk.  There are three major ways that workforce reputation management technology can play a strategic role to support HR: 1. Improve Awareness and Decisions on Talent Many organizations measure the skills and competencies that they know they need today, but are unaware of what other skills and competencies their workforce has that could be essential tomorrow. How about whether your workforce has the reputation and influence to make their skills and competencies more effective? Many organizations don’t have insight into the social media “reach” their workforce has, which is becoming more critical to business performance. These features help organizations, managers, and employees improve many talent processes and decision making, including the following: Hiring and Assignments. People and teams with higher reputations are considered more valuable and effective workers. Someone with high reputation who refers a candidate also can have high credibility as a source for hires.   Training and Development. Reputation trend analysis can impact program decisions regarding training offerings by showing how reputation and influence across the workforce changes in concert with training. Worker reputation impacts development plans and goal choices by helping the individual see which development efforts result in improved reputation and influence.   Finding Hidden Talent. Managers can discover hidden talent and skills amongst employees based on a combination of social profile information and social media reputation. Employees can improve their personal brand and accelerate their career development.  2. Talent Search and Discovery The right technology helps organizations find information on people that might otherwise be hidden. By leveraging access to candidate and worker social profiles as well as their social relationships, workforce reputation management provides companies with a more complete picture of what their knowledge, skills, and attributes are and what they can in turn access. This more complete information helps to find the right talent both outside the organization as well as the right, perhaps previously hidden talent, within the organization to fill roles and staff projects, particularly those roles and projects that are required in reaction to fast-changing opportunities and circumstances. 3. Reputation Brings Credibility Workforce reputation management technology provides a clearer picture of how candidates and workers are viewed by their peers and communities across a wide range of social reputation and influence metrics. This information is less subject to individual bias and can impact critical decision-making. Knowing the individual’s reputation and influence enables the organization to predict how well their capabilities and behaviors will have a positive effect on desired business outcomes. Many roles that have the highest impact on overall business performance are dependent on the individual’s influence and reputation. In addition, reputation and influence measures offer a very tangible source of feedback for workers, providing them with insight that helps them develop themselves and their careers and see the effectiveness of those efforts by tracking changes over time in their reputation and influence. The following are some examples of the different reputation and influence measures of the workforce that Workforce Reputation Management could gather and analyze: Generosity – How often the user reposts other’s posts. Influence – How often the user’s material is reposted by others.  Engagement – The ratio of recent posts with references (e.g. links to other posts) to the total number of posts.  Activity – How frequently the user posts. (e.g. number per day)  Impact – The size of the users’ social networks, which indicates their ability to reach unique followers, friends, or users.   Clout – The number of references and citations of the user’s material in others’ posts.  The Vital Ingredient of Workforce Reputation Management: Employee Participation “Nothing about me, without me.” Valerie Billingham, “Through the Patient’s Eyes”, Salzburg Seminar Session 356, 1998 Since data resides primarily in social media, a question arises: what manner is used to collect that data? While much of social media activity is publicly accessible (as many who wished otherwise have learned to their chagrin), the social norms of social media have developed to put some restrictions on what is acceptable behavior and by whom. Disregarding these norms risks a repercussion firestorm. One of the more recognized norms is that while individuals can follow and engage with other individual’s public social activity (e.g. Twitter updates) fairly freely, the more an organization does this unprompted and without getting permission from the individual beforehand, the more likely the organization risks a totally opposite outcome from the one desired. Instead, the organization must look for permission from the individual, which can be met with resistance. That resistance comes from not knowing how the information will be used, how it will be shared with others, and not receiving enough benefit in return for granting permission. As the quote above about patient concerns and rights succinctly states, no one likes not feeling in control of the information about themselves, or the uncertainty about where it will be used. This is well understood in consumer social media (i.e. permission-based marketing) and is applicable to workforce reputation management. However, asking permission leaves open the very real possibility that no one, or so few, will grant permission, resulting in a small set of data with little usefulness for the company. Connecting Individual Motivation to Organization Needs So what is it that makes an individual decide to grant an organization access to the data it wants? It is when the individual’s own motivations are in alignment with the organization’s objectives. In the case of workforce reputation management, when the individual is motivated by a desire for increased visibility and career growth opportunities to advertise their skills and level of influence and reputation, they are aligned with the organizations’ objectives; to fill resource needs or strategically build better awareness of what skills are present in the workforce, as well as levels of influence and reputation. Individuals can see the benefit of granting access permission to the company through multiple means. One is through simple social awareness; they begin to discover that peers who are getting more career opportunities are those who are signed up for workforce reputation management. Another is where companies take the message directly to the individual; we think you would benefit from signing up with our workforce reputation management solution. Another, more strategic approach is to make reputation management part of a larger Career Development effort by the company; providing a wide set of tools to help the workforce find ways to plan and take action to achieve their career aspirations in the organization. An effective mechanism, that facilitates connecting the visibility and career growth motivations of the workforce with the larger context of the organization’s business objectives, is to use game mechanics to help individuals transform their career goals into concrete, actionable steps, such as signing up for reputation management. This works in favor of companies looking to use workforce reputation because the workforce is more apt to see how it fits into achieving their overall career goals, as well as seeing how other participation brings additional benefits.  Once an individual has signed up with reputation management, not only have they made themselves more visible within the organization and increased their career growth opportunities, they have also enabled a tool that they can use to better understand how their actions and behaviors impact their influence and reputation. Since they will be able to see their reputation and influence measurements change over time, they will gain better insight into how reputation and influence impacts their effectiveness in a role, as well as how their behaviors and skill levels in turn affect their influence and reputation. This insight can trigger much more directed, and effective, efforts by the individual to improve their ability to perform at a higher level and become more productive. The increased sense of autonomy the individual experiences, in linking the insight they gain to the actions and behavior changes they make, greatly enhances their engagement with their role as well as their career prospects within the company. Workforce reputation management takes the wide range of disparate data about the workforce being produced across various social media platforms and transforms it into accessible, relevant, and actionable information that helps the organization achieve its desired business objectives. Social media holds untapped insights about your talent, brand and business, and workforce reputation management can help unlock them. Imagine - if you could find the hidden secrets of your businesses, how much more productive and efficient would your organization be? Mark Bennett is a Director of Product Strategy at Oracle. Mark focuses on setting the strategic vision and direction for tools that help organizations understand, shape, and leverage the capabilities of their workforce to achieve business objectives, as well as help individuals work effectively to achieve their goals and navigate their own growth. His combination of a deep technical background in software design and development, coupled with a broad knowledge of business challenges and thinking in today’s globalized, rapidly changing, technology accelerated economy, has enabled him to identify and incorporate key innovations that are central to Oracle Fusion’s unique value proposition. Mark has over the course of his career been in charge of the design, development, and strategy of Talent Management products and the design and development of cutting edge software that is better equipped to handle the increasingly complex demands of users while also remaining easy to use. Follow him @mpbennett

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