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• Can and should UDF be used as a hard drive format?

  - by dlamblin

  Several time recently I've seen UDF suggested as the solution to a cross platform format for a drive used on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows XP and above. I've searched here and not found the same suggestion (most are suggesting ntfs-3g which seems to cost money and isn't preinstalled on a Mac). So my question is: how is this done right, and has anyone done this? Have you then filled up the drive and deleted some files to make space finding that everything works like a real r/w format even though it seems to have been primarily a write once format?

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• Interpolation using a sprite's previous frame and current frame

  - by user22241

  Overview I'm currently using a method which has been pointed out to me is extrapolation rather than interolation. As a result, I'm also now looking into the possibility of using another method which is based on a sprite's position at it's last (rendered) frame and it's current one. Assuming an interpolation value of 0.5 this is, (visually), how I understand it should affect my sprite's position.... This is how I'm obtaining an inerpolation value: public void onDrawFrame(GL10 gl) { // Set/re-set loop back to 0 to start counting again loops=0; while(System.currentTimeMillis() > nextGameTick && loops < maxFrameskip) { SceneManager.getInstance().getCurrentScene().updateLogic(); nextGameTick += skipTicks; timeCorrection += (1000d / ticksPerSecond) % 1; nextGameTick += timeCorrection; timeCorrection %= 1; loops++; tics++; } interpolation = (float)(System.currentTimeMillis() + skipTicks - nextGameTick) / (float)skipTicks; render(interpolation); } I am then applying it like so (in my rendering call): render(float interpolation) { spriteScreenX = (spriteScreenX - spritePreviousX) * interpolation + spritePreviousX; spritePreviousX = spriteScreenX; // update and store this for next time } Results This unfortunately does nothing to smooth the movement of my sprite. It's pretty much the same as without the interpolation code. I can't get my head around how this is supposed to work and I honestly can't find any decent resources which explain this in any detail. My understanding of extrapolation is that when we arrive at the rendering call, we calculate the time between the last update call and the render call, and then adjust the sprite's position to reflect this time (moving the sprite forward) - And yet, this (Interpolation) is moving the sprite back, so how can this produce smooth results? Any advise on this would be very much appreciated. Edit I've implemented the code from OriginalDaemon's answer like so: @Override public void onDrawFrame(GL10 gl) { newTime = System.currentTimeMillis()*0.001; frameTime = newTime - currentTime; if ( frameTime > (dt*25)) frameTime = (dt*25); currentTime = newTime; accumulator += frameTime; while ( accumulator >= dt ) { SceneManager.getInstance().getCurrentScene().updateLogic(); previousState = currentState; t += dt; accumulator -= dt; } interpolation = (float) (accumulator / dt); render(); } Interpolation values are now being produced between 0 and 1 as expected (similar to how they were in my original loop) - however, the results are the same as my original loop (my original loop allowed frames to skip if they took too long to draw which I think this loop is also doing). I appear to have made a mistake in my previous logging, it is logging as I would expect it to (interpolated position does appear to be inbetween the previous and current positions) - however, the sprites are most definitely choppy when the render() skipping happens.

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• Quickly and Automatically Restart a Windows Program When it Crashes

  - by Lori Kaufman

  We’ve all had programs crash on us in Windows at one time or another. You can take the time to manually start the program again, or you can have a simple program like ReStartMe restart it automatically for you. ReStartMe is a free program that has one purpose in life, to restart processes. You tell it to watch specific processes and if any of those processes exit, whether they crashed or you accidentally closed them, ReStartMe will automatically restart them. To install the program, double-click on the restartmeinstaller.exe file you downloaded (see the link at the end of the article). Follow the easy installation process, accepting the default settings. How to Factory Reset Your Android Phone or Tablet When It Won’t Boot Our Geek Trivia App for Windows 8 is Now Available Everywhere How To Boot Your Android Phone or Tablet Into Safe Mode

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• New Themes New Benefits (WinForms)

  We believe that working hard on something can be great fun at the end when everything is done and the seeds have resulted in the sweetest fruits. This is the case with the new Theming Mechanism and the new Visual Style Builder which we introduced as of Q1 2010.   I am not going to dive into any details on the new concepts behind all this stuff, but will simply focus on the numbers: both in terms of loading speed and memory usage. As you may already know, the new approach we use to style our controls uses the so called Style Repository which stores style settings that can be reused throughout the whole theme. As a result, we have estimated that the size of our themes has been significantly reduced. For instance, the size of all XML files of the Desert theme sums up to 1.83 MB. The case with the new version of the Desert theme is drastically different. Despite the fact that the new theme consists of more XML files compared to the old, its size is only 707 KB!   Furthermore, we have performed a simple performance test since the common sense tells us that such a great improvement in terms of memory footprint should be followed by a great improvement in terms of speed. We have estimated that loading and applying the new Desert theme to a form containing all RadControls for WinForms takes roughly 30% less time compared to the same operation with the old version of the Desert theme. The following screenshots briefly demonstrate the scenario which we used to estimate the loading time difference between the old and the new Desert theme:     Here, the old Desert theme is applied to all controls on the Form which takes almost 1,3 seconds.     Applying the new Desert theme (based on the new Theming Mechanism) takes about 0,78 seconds.   On top of all these great improvements, we can add the fact that the new Visual Style Builder significantly reduces the time needed to style a control by entirely changing the approach compared to the old version of this tool. You can be sure that we have already prepared some great new stuff for Q1 2010 SP1 that will simplify things further so that designing themes with the new VSB will become more fun than ever!Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Friday Fun: Snow Crusher

  - by Asian Angel

  It has probably been a long week whether you have already returned to work or are finishing up the last of your vacation time. If you are in need of some stress relief, then we have we the perfect game for you. This week you get to be totally fiendish and use a monster size snowball to destroy as many cars as possible at the local snow lodge. Snow Crusher The object of the game is simple…create as large of a monster snowball as you can and then send it down over the side of the mountain to destroy the cars at the snow lodge. You can choose from three different sizes of monster snowballs to create. We chose the “Snowflake Size” for our reign of destruction. Once you have chosen a monster snowball size, all that is left to do is select the control method that works best for you. As soon as you select the control method, your monster snowball creation will automatically begin. Keep in mind that the faster your snowball goes the harder it can become to steer if you make sudden movements… At the top you can watch your progress towards the drop-off point and the green boxes highlighted at the bottom indicate how large of an item (such as trees or boulders) your snowball can roll over and add to the total mass. Snowball speed is shown in the lower right corner. Time to roll! As soon as the first green box is lit up you can start adding small trees to your snowball’s mass. You will want to avoid larger items as you go because they will penalize your score, slow you down, and reduce the size of your snowball! Halfway to the drop-off point and our snowball is now able to grab up larger trees. If you have not hit any large items along the way, your snowball will definitely be moving along at a good rate by now. When you reach the end of the mass building area, your snowball will pop out into the open and get ready to drop off over the side of the mountain. Go snowball go! Yes! Thirteen cars crushed and ready for the scrap yard… If the “Snowflake Size” snowball can do this, just think what the “Avalanche Size” can do with three minutes of time to build up mass! Have fun with those monster snowballs! Play Snow Crusher Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 How to Disable Caps Lock Key in Windows 7 or Vista How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Classic Super Mario Brothers Theme for Chrome and Iron Experimental Firefox Builds Put Tabs on the Title Bar (Available for Download) Android Trojan Found in the Wild Chaos, Panic, and Disorder Wallpaper Enjoy Christmas Beyond the Holiday with Christmas Eve Crisis Parrotfish Extends the Number of Services Accessible in Twitter Previews

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• New Themes New Benefits (WinForms)

  We believe that working hard on something can be great fun at the end when everything is done and the seeds have resulted in the sweetest fruits. This is the case with the new Theming Mechanism and the new Visual Style Builder which we introduced as of Q1 2010.   I am not going to dive into any details on the new concepts behind all this stuff, but will simply focus on the numbers: both in terms of loading speed and memory usage. As you may already know, the new approach we use to style our controls uses the so called Style Repository which stores style settings that can be reused throughout the whole theme. As a result, we have estimated that the size of our themes has been significantly reduced. For instance, the size of all XML files of the Desert theme sums up to 1.83 MB. The case with the new version of the Desert theme is drastically different. Despite the fact that the new theme consists of more XML files compared to the old, its size is only 707 KB!   Furthermore, we have performed a simple performance test since the common sense tells us that such a great improvement in terms of memory footprint should be followed by a great improvement in terms of speed. We have estimated that loading and applying the new Desert theme to a form containing all RadControls for WinForms takes roughly 30% less time compared to the same operation with the old version of the Desert theme. The following screenshots briefly demonstrate the scenario which we used to estimate the loading time difference between the old and the new Desert theme:     Here, the old Desert theme is applied to all controls on the Form which takes almost 1,3 seconds.     Applying the new Desert theme (based on the new Theming Mechanism) takes about 0,78 seconds.   On top of all these great improvements, we can add the fact that the new Visual Style Builder significantly reduces the time needed to style a control by entirely changing the approach compared to the old version of this tool. You can be sure that we have already prepared some great new stuff for Q1 2010 SP1 that will simplify things further so that designing themes with the new VSB will become more fun than ever!Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• LightFish, Adam Bien's lightweight telemetry application

  - by alexismp

  Adam Bien (Java Champion, JavaEE expert, book author, etc...), has been a GlassFish enthusiast for a while and he proves it again with his new open source project - LightFish, a lightweight monitoring and visualization application for GlassFish. Adam has a short intro and screencast about this standalone WAR application. The tool uses the new JavaEE 6 self-described JDBC connection and the GlassFish-bundled Derby database to provide drag-and-drop install. At runtime, once monitoring is enabled, calls to the RESTful admin API for GlassFish are emitted from a JavaFX dashboard plotting in real-time telemetry data on charts and graphs, including data for "Paranormal Activity". Check it out!

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• Poof and it’s gone - Internship @ Oracle Netherlands

  - by Tim Koekkoek

  We still remember the first day we walked in the office in September. The moment we walked into the big entrance hall and saw all those unfamiliar faces, we had no idea that we all had such diverse personalities, and still we all had a great time together. At the end of our internship we could all say we felt comfortable working at the office, playing “some” table tennis. Besides, it has been a great learning experience and we look back on a good time.  We made our own video and it shows you what some of us have been working on during our internship @ Oracle in the Netherlands.  If you are also interested in Oracle and what we have to offer, you can join our Live Google+ Hangout every Friday at 3 p.m. or visit http://campus.oracle.com.

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• Typing commands into a terminal always returns "-bash: /usr/bin/python: is a directory"

  - by Artur Sapek

  I think I messed something up on my Ubuntu server while trying to upgrade to Python 2.7.2. Every time I type in a command that doesn't have a response, the default from bash is this: -bash: /usr/bin/python: is a directory Just like it would say if I typed the name of a directory. But this happens every time I enter a command that doesn't do anything. artur@SERVER:~$ dslkfjdsklfdshjk -bash: /usr/bin/python: is a directory I remember messing with the update-alternatives to point at python at some point, perhaps that could be it? Any inklings as to why this is happening? Related to this problem is also the fact that when I try using easy_install it tells me -bash: /usr/bin/easy_install: /usr/bin/python: bad interpeter: Permission denied /etc/fstab/ is set to exec. I've read that could fix the second problem but it hasn't.

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• Advanced donut caching: using dynamically loaded controls

  - by DigiMortal

  Yesterday I solved one caching problem with local community portal. I enabled output cache on SharePoint Server 2007 to make site faster. Although caching works fine I needed to do some additional work because there are some controls that show different content to different users. In this example I will show you how to use “donut caching” with user controls – powerful way to drive some content around cache. About donut caching Donut caching means that although you are caching your content you have some holes in it so you can still affect the output that goes to user. By example you can cache front page on your site and still show welcome message that contains correct user name. To get better idea about donut caching I suggest you to read ScottGu posting Tip/Trick: Implement "Donut Caching" with the ASP.NET 2.0 Output Cache Substitution Feature. Basically donut caching uses ASP.NET substitution control. In output this control is replaced by string you return from static method bound to substitution control. Again, take a look at ScottGu blog posting I referred above. Problem If you look at Scott’s example it is pretty plain and easy by its output. All it does is it writes out current user name as string. Here are examples of my login area for anonymous and authenticated users:    It is clear that outputting mark-up for these views as string is pretty lame to implement in code at string level. Every little change in design will end up with new version of controls library because some parts of design “live” there. Solution: using user controls I worked out easy solution to my problem. I used cache substitution and user controls together. I have three user controls: LogInControl – this is the proxy control that checks which “real” control to load. AnonymousLogInControl – template and logic for anonymous users login area. AuthenticatedLogInControl – template and logic for authenticated users login area. This is the control we render for each user separately because it contains user name and user profile fill percent. Anonymous control is not very interesting because it is only about keeping mark-up in separate file. Interesting parts are LogInControl and AuthenticatedLogInControl. Creating proxy control The first thing was to create control that has substitution area where “real” control is loaded. This proxy control should also be available to decide which control to load. The definition of control is very primitive. <%@ Control EnableViewState="false" Inherits="MyPortal.Profiles.LogInControl" %> <asp:Substitution runat="server" MethodName="ShowLogInBox" /> But code is a little bit tricky. Based on current user instance we decide which login control to load. Then we create page instance and load our control through it. When control is loaded we will call DataBind() method. In this method we evaluate all fields in loaded control (it was best choice as Load and other events will not be fired). Take a look at the code. public static string ShowLogInBox(HttpContext context) {     var user = SPContext.Current.Web.CurrentUser;     string controlName;       if (user != null)         controlName = "AuthenticatedLogInControl.ascx";     else         controlName = "AnonymousLogInControl.ascx";       var path = "~/_controltemplates/" + controlName;     var output = new StringBuilder(10000);       using(var page = new Page())     using(var ctl = page.LoadControl(path))     using(var writer = new StringWriter(output))     using(var htmlWriter = new HtmlTextWriter(writer))     {         ctl.DataBind();         ctl.RenderControl(htmlWriter);     }     return output.ToString(); } When control is bound to data we ask to render it its contents to StringBuilder. Now we have the output of control as string and we can return it from our method. Of course, notice how correct I am with resources disposing. :) The method that returns contents for substitution control is static method that has no connection with control instance because hen page is read from cache there are no instances of controls available. Conclusion As you saw it was not very hard to use donut caching with user controls. Instead of writing mark-up of controls to static method that is bound to substitution control we can still use our user controls.

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• TSAM 11gR1

  - by todd.little

  The Tuxedo System and Application Monitor (TSAM) 11gR1 release provides powerful new application monitoring capabilities, as well as significant improvements in ease of use. The first thing users will notice is the completely redesigned user interface in the TSAM console. Based on Oracle ADF, the console is much easier to navigate, provides a Web 2.0 style interface with dynamically updating panels, and a look and feel familiar to those that have used Oracle Enterprise Manager. Monitoring data can be viewed in both tabular and graphical form and exported to Excel for further analysis. A number of new metrics are collected and displayed in this release. Call path monitoring now displays CPU time, message size, total transport time, and client address giving even more end-to-end information about a specific Tuxedo request. As well the call path display has been completely revamped to make it much easier to see the branches of the call path. The call pattern display now provides statistics on successful vs failed calls, system and application failures, and end-to-end average elapsed time. Service monitoring now displays minimum and maximum message size, CPU usage, and client address. System server monitoring now includes monitoring the SALT gateway servers to provide detailed performance metrics about those servers. Perhaps the most significant new feature is the consolidation of alert definitions and policy management. In previous versions of TSAM, some alerts were defined and checked on the monitored systems while others were defined and checked in the console. Policy management could be performed on both the monitored node via environment variable or command, as well as from the console. Now all alert definitions and policy definitions are only made using the console. For alerts this means that regardless of where the alert is evaluated it is defined in one and only one place. Thus the plug-in alert mechanism of previous releases can now be managed using the TSAM console, making SLA alert definition much easier and cleaner. Finally there is support in TSAM for monitoring rehosted mainframe applications. The newly announced Oracle Tuxedo Application Runtime for CICS and Batch can be monitored in the TSAM console using traditional mainframe views of the application such as regions. Look for a future blog entry with more details on this as well as some entries providing a glimpse of the console. TSAM gives users a single point for monitoring the performance of all of their Tuxedo applications.

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• GDC 2012: DXT is NOT ENOUGH! Advanced texture compression for games

  GDC 2012: DXT is NOT ENOUGH! Advanced texture compression for games (Pre-recorded GDC content) Tired of fighting to fit your textures on disk? Too many bad reviews on long download times? Fix it! Don't settle for putting your raw DXT files in a ZIP, instead, compress your DXT textures by an extra 50%-70%! This talk will cover various ways to increase the compression of your game textures to allow for smaller distributables without introducing error, and allowing for fast on-demand decompression at run time. We'll cover how to losslessly squeeze your data with Huffman, block expansion, vector quantization, and we'll even take a look at what MegaTexture is doing too. If you've ever fought to fit textures into memory, this is the talk for you. Speaker: Colt McAnlis From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 1132 21 ratings Time: 33:05 More in Science & Technology

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• Why might login failures cause SQL 2005 to dump and ditch?

  - by Byron Sommardahl

  Our SQL 2005 server began timing out and finally stopped responding on Oct 26th. The application logs showed a ton of 17883 events leading up to a reboot. After the reboot everything was fine but we were still scratching our heads. Fast forward 6 days... it happened again. Then again 2 days later. The last night. Today it has happened three times to far. The timeline is fairly predictable when it happens: Trans log backups. Login failure for "user2". Minidump Another minidump for the scheduler Repeated 17883 events. Server fails little by little until it won't accept any requests. Reboot is all that gets us going again (a band-aid) Interesting, though, is that the server box itself doesn't seem to have any problems. CPU usage is normal. Network connectivity is fine. We can remote in and look at logs. Management studio does eventually bog down, though. Today, for the first time, we tried stopping services instead of a reboot. All services stopped on their own except for the SQL Server service. We finally did an "end task" on that one and were able to bring everything back up. It worked fine for about 30 minutes until we started seeing timeouts and 17883's again. This time, probably because we didn't reboot all the way, we saw a bunch of 844 events mixed in with the 17883's. Our entire tech team here is scratching heads... some ideas we're kicking around: MS Cumulative Update hit around the same time as when we first had a problem. Since then, we've rolled it back. Maybe it didn't rollback all the way. The situation looks and feels like an unhandled "stack overflow" (no relation) in that it starts small and compounds over time. Problem with this is that there isn't significant CPU usage. At any rate, we're not ruling SQL 2005 bug out at all. Maybe we added one too many import processes and have reached our limit on this box. (hard to believe). Looking at SQLDUMP0151.log at the time of one of the crashes. There are some "login failures" and then there are two stack dumps. 1st a normal stack dump, 2nd for a scheduler dump. Here's a snippet: (sorry for the lack of line breaks) 2009-11-10 11:59:14.95 spid63 Using 'xpsqlbot.dll' version '2005.90.3042' to execute extended stored procedure 'xp_qv'. This is an informational message only; no user action is required. 2009-11-10 11:59:15.09 spid63 Using 'xplog70.dll' version '2005.90.3042' to execute extended stored procedure 'xp_msver'. This is an informational message only; no user action is required. 2009-11-10 12:02:33.24 Logon Error: 18456, Severity: 14, State: 16. 2009-11-10 12:02:33.24 Logon Login failed for user 'standard_user2'. [CLIENT: 50.36.172.101] 2009-11-10 12:08:21.12 Logon Error: 18456, Severity: 14, State: 16. 2009-11-10 12:08:21.12 Logon Login failed for user 'standard_user2'. [CLIENT: 50.36.172.101] 2009-11-10 12:13:49.38 Logon Error: 18456, Severity: 14, State: 16. 2009-11-10 12:13:49.38 Logon Login failed for user 'standard_user2'. [CLIENT: 50.36.172.101] 2009-11-10 12:15:16.88 Logon Error: 18456, Severity: 14, State: 16. 2009-11-10 12:15:16.88 Logon Login failed for user 'standard_user2'. [CLIENT: 50.36.172.101] 2009-11-10 12:18:24.41 Logon Error: 18456, Severity: 14, State: 16. 2009-11-10 12:18:24.41 Logon Login failed for user 'standard_user2'. [CLIENT: 50.36.172.101] 2009-11-10 12:18:38.88 spid111 Using 'dbghelp.dll' version '4.0.5' 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 *Stack Dump being sent to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\LOG\SQLDump0149.txt 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 SqlDumpExceptionHandler: Process 111 generated fatal exception c0000005 EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION. SQL Server is terminating this process. 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * ***************************************************************************** 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * BEGIN STACK DUMP: 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * 11/10/09 12:18:39 spid 111 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * Exception Address = 0159D56F Module(sqlservr+0059D56F) 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * Exception Code = c0000005 EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * Access Violation occurred writing address 00000000 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * Input Buffer 138 bytes - 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * " N R S C _ P T A 22 00 4e 00 52 00 53 00 43 00 5f 00 50 00 54 00 41 00 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * C _ Q A . d b o . 43 00 5f 00 51 00 41 00 2e 00 64 00 62 00 6f 00 2e 00 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * U s p S e l N e x 55 00 73 00 70 00 53 00 65 00 6c 00 4e 00 65 00 78 00 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * t A c c o u n t 74 00 41 00 63 00 63 00 6f 00 75 00 6e 00 74 00 00 00 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * @ i n t F o r m I 0a 40 00 69 00 6e 00 74 00 46 00 6f 00 72 00 6d 00 49 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * D & 8 @ t x 00 44 00 00 26 04 04 38 00 00 00 09 40 00 74 00 78 00 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * t A l i a s § 74 00 41 00 6c 00 69 00 61 00 73 00 00 a7 0f 00 09 04 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * Ð GQE9732 d0 00 00 07 00 47 51 45 39 37 33 32 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * MODULE BASE END SIZE 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * sqlservr 01000000 02C09FFF 01c0a000 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * ntdll 7C800000 7C8C1FFF 000c2000 2009-11-10 12:18:39.02 spid111 * kernel32 77E40000 77F41FFF 00102000

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• Implementing custom "Remember Me" with Stripe

  - by Matt

  Implementing remember me with Stripe, while not using their Checkout (not supported on PhoneGap), seems to be fine using the path: First time: Request token on the client side using card info. Create customer on server side using token. Upon confirm, charge customer. Second time: Check if current user is Stripe customer by requesting the info from our server. If is Stripe customer, show "use credit card on file" instead of regular CC form. Upon confirm, charge customer. However, there is one important convenience items missing--last four digits of card number. Most sites inform you of the card you're using before making the payment, pretty important in case you have to switch out cards. I have seen that you can retrieve charges which would allow me to get the last four digits. Is it bad practice to pull that and display it? Are there alternative solutions anyone has in mind?

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• Advice on learning programming languages and math.

  - by Joris Ooms

  I feel like I'm getting stuck lately when it comes to learning about programming-related things; I thought I'd ask a question here and write it all down in the hope to get some pointers/advice from people. Perhaps writing it down helps me put things in perspective for myself aswell. I study Interactive Multimedia Design. This course is based on two things: graphic design on one hand, and web development on the other hand. I have quite a decent knowledge of web-related languages (the usual HTML/JS/PHP) and I'll be getting a course on ASP.NET next year. In my free time, I have learnt how to work with CodeIgniter, aswell as some diving into Ruby (and Rails) and basic iOS programming. In my first year of college I also did a class on Java (19/20 on the end result). This grade doesn't really mean anything though; I have the basics of OOP down but Java-wise, we learnt next to nothing. Considering the time I have been programming in, for example, PHP.. I can't say I'm bad at it. I'm definitely not good or great at it, but I'm decent. My teachers tell me I have the programming thing down. They just tell me I should keep on learning. So that's what I do, and I try to take in as much as possible; however, sometimes I'm unsure where to start and I have this tendency to always doubt myself. Now, for the 'question'. I want to get into iOS programming. I know iOS programming boils down to programming in Cocoa Touch and Objective-C. I also know Obj-C is a superset of C. I have done a class on C a couple of years ago, but I failed miserably. I got stuck at pointers and never really understood them.. Until like a month ago. I suddenly 'got' it. I have been working through a book on Objective-C for a week or so now, and I understand the basics (I'm at like.. chapter 6 or so). However, I keep running into similar problems as the ones I had when I did the C class: I suck at math. No, really. I come from a Latin-Modern Languages background in high school and I had nearly no math classes back then. I wanted to study Computer Science, but I failed there because of the miserable state of my mathematics knowledge. I can't explain why I'm suddenly talking about math here though, because it isn't directly related to programming.. yet it is. For example, the examples in the book I'm reading now are about programming a fraction-calculator. All good, I can do the programming when I get the formulas down.. but it takes me a full day or more to actually get to that point. I also find it hard to come up with ideas for myself. I made one small iOS app the other day and it's just a button / label kind of thing. When I press the button, it generates a random number. That's really all I could come up with. Can you 'learn' that? It probably comes down to creativity, but evidently, I'm not too great at being creative. Are there any sites or resources out there that provide something like a basic list of things you can program when you're just starting out? Maybe I'm focusing on too many things at once. I want to keep my HTML/CSS at a decent level, while learning PHP and CodeIgniter, while diving into Ruby on Rails and learning Objective-C and the iOS SDK at the same time. I just want to be good at something, I guess. The problem is that I can't seem to be happy with my PHP stuff. I want more, something 'harder'; that's why I decided to pick up the iOS thing. Like I said, I have the basics down of a lot of different languages. I can program something simple in Java, in C, in Objective-C as of this week.. but it ends there. Mostly because I can't come up with ideas for more complex applications, and also because I just doubt myself: 'Oh, that's too complex, I can never do that'. And then it ends there. To conclude my rant, let me basically rephrase my questions into a 'tl;dr' part. A. I want to get into iOS programming and I have basic knowledge of C/Objective-C. However, I struggle to come up with ideas of my own and implement them and I also suck at math which is something that isn't directly related to, yet often needed while programming. What can I do? B. I have an interest in a lot of different programming languages and I can't stop reading/learning. However, I don't feel like I'm good in anything. Should I perhaps focus on just one language for a year or longer, or keep taking it all in at the same time and hope I'll finally get them all down? C. Are there any resources out there that provide basic ideas of things I can program? I'm thinking about 'simple' command-line applications here to help me while studying C/Obj-C away from the whole iPhone SDK. Like I said, the examples in my book are mainly math-based (fraction calculator) and it's kinda hard. :( Thanks a lot for reading my post. I didn't plan it to be this long but oh well. Thanks in advance for any answers.

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• Game Engine which can provide 360 degree projection for PC

  - by Never Quit

  I'm searching Game engine which can provide 360 degree real-time projection. I've already achieved this by using VBS2 Game Engine. (Ref.: http://products.bisimulations.com/products/vbs2/vbs2-multi-channel). But I'm not satisfied with its graphics. So I'm looking for some other Game Engine which can do the same and provide me more better graphics and user experience. Like Frostbite2 or Unreal Engine 3. Like this image I want full 360 degree view. Is there any Game Engine which can provide 360 degree projection for PC? Thanks in advance...

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• Today's Links (6/20/2011)

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Why your security sucks | Eric Knorr A conversation with InfoWorld security expert Roger Grimes reveals why the latest burst of attacks is just business as usual. JDev 11g R2 - ADF BC Dependency Diagram Feature | Andrejus Baranovskis Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovkis continues his exploration of JDeveloper 11g R2. Mobile Apps Put the Web in Their Rear-view Mirror | Charles Newark-French "Our analysis shows that, for the first time ever, daily time spent in mobile apps surpasses desktop and mobile web consumption," says Newark-French. "This stat is even more remarkable if you consider that it took less than three years for native mobile apps to achieve this level of usage, driven primarily by the popularity of iOS and Android platforms." Vivek Kundra, a public servant who gets stuff done | Craig Newmark Craigslist founder Craig Newmark bids farewell to the nation's first CIO. Weblogic, QBrowser and topics | Eric Elzinga Elzinga says: "Besides using the Weblogic Console to add subscribers to our topics we can also use QBrowser to browse queues and topics on your Weblogic Server." Java EE talks at JAX Conf | Arun Gupta Arun Gupta shares links to several Java EE presentations taking place at this week's Jax Conference in San Jose, CA. Development gotchas and silver bullets | Andy Mulholland Mulholland explains why "Software development has to change to fit with new business practices!" Oracle is Proud Sponsor of Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit 2011 | Troy Kitch Oracle will have a very strong presence at this year’s Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit 2011 in Washington D.C., June 20-23. Database Web Service using Toplink DB Provider | Vishal Jain "With JDeveloper 11gR2 you can now create database based web services using JAX-WS Provider," says Jain. Sample Chapter: A Fusion Applications Technical Overview An excerpt from "Managing Oracle Fusion Applications" by Richard Bingham, published by Oracle Press, May 2011. White Paper: Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure This paper provides recommendations and best practices for optimizing virtualization infrastructures when deploying the Oracle Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure. White paper: Oracle Optimized Solution for Lifecycle Content Management Authors Donna Harland and Nick Klosk illustrate how Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite and Oracle’s Sun Storage Archive Manager work Oracle’s Sun hardware. Bay Area Coherence Special Interest Group Date: Thursday, July 21, 2011 Time: 4:30pm - 8:15pm ET - Note that Parking at 475 Sansome Closes at 8:30pm Location: Oracle Office,475 Sansome Street, San Francisco, CA Google Map Speakers: Chris Akker, Solutions Engineer, F5 Paul Cleary, Application Architect, Oracle Alexey Ragozin, Independent Consultant Brian Oliver, Oracle

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• Ubuntu 12.10 is reading mouse battery as a laptop battery

  - by Ross Fleming

  I have a bluetooth mouse connected to my laptop. Much to my delight (I posted the suggestion!) the mouses battery is now displayed along side the laptop's battery. Unfortunately is is named simply "battery" in the drop down and "Laptop battery" once the power statistics windows is opened. The details of this battery correctly say that the model is a Lenovo Bluetooth Mouse, but it is still displayed as a "battery" and "laptop battery". Is there anyway to change this? Edit: Plus the "Show time in menu bar" shows the mouse's remaining battery percentage as opposed to the laptop battery's remaining time.

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• Analysing and measuring the performance of a .NET application (survey results)

  - by Laila

  Back in December last year, I asked myself: could it be that .NET developers think that you need three days and a PhD to do performance profiling on their code? What if developers are shunning profilers because they perceive them as too complex to use? If so, then what method do they use to measure and analyse the performance of their .NET applications? Do they even care about performance? So, a few weeks ago, I decided to get a 1-minute survey up and running in the hopes that some good, hard data would clear the matter up once and for all. I posted the survey on Simple Talk and got help from a few people to promote it. The survey consisted of 3 simple questions: Amazingly, 533 developers took the time to respond - which means I had enough data to get representative results! So before I go any further, I would like to thank all of you who contributed, because I now have some pretty good answers to the troubling questions I was asking myself. To thank you properly, I thought I would share some of the results with you. First of all, application performance is indeed important to most of you. In fact, performance is an intrinsic part of the development cycle for a good 40% of you, which is much higher than I had anticipated, I have to admit. (I know, "Have a little faith Laila!") When asked what tool you use to measure and analyse application performance, I found that nearly half of the respondents use logging statements, a third use performance counters, and 70% of respondents use a profiler of some sort (a 3rd party performance profilers, the CLR profiler or the Visual Studio profiler). The importance attributed to logging statements did surprise me a little. I am still not sure why somebody would go to the trouble of manually instrumenting code in order to measure its performance, instead of just using a profiler. I personally find the process of annotating code, calculating times from log files, and relating it all back to your source terrifyingly laborious. Not to mention that you then need to remember to turn it all off later! Even when you have logging in place throughout all your code anyway, you still have a fair amount of potentially error-prone calculation to sift through the results; in addition, you'll only get method-level rather than line-level timings, and you won't get timings from any framework or library methods you don't have source for. To top it all, we all know that bottlenecks are rarely where you would expect them to be, so you could be wasting time looking for a performance problem in the wrong place. On the other hand, profilers do all the work for you: they automatically collect the CPU and wall-clock timings, and present the results from method timing all the way down to individual lines of code. Maybe I'm missing a trick. I would love to know about the types of scenarios where you actively prefer to use logging statements. Finally, while a third of the respondents didn't have a strong opinion about code performance profilers, those who had an opinion thought that they were mainly complex to use and time consuming. Three respondents in particular summarised this perfectly: "sometimes, they are rather complex to use, adding an additional time-sink to the process of trying to resolve the existing problem". "they are simple to use, but the results are hard to understand" "Complex to find the more advanced things, easy to find some low hanging fruit". These results confirmed my suspicions: Profilers are seen to be designed for more advanced users who can use them effectively and make sense of the results. I found yet more interesting information when I started comparing samples of "developers for whom performance is an important part of the dev cycle", with those "to whom performance is only looked at in times of crisis", and "developers to whom performance is not important, as long as the app works". See the three graphs below. Sample of developers to whom performance is an important part of the dev cycle: Sample of developers to whom performance is important only in times of crisis: Sample of developers to whom performance is not important, as long as the app works: As you can see, there is a strong correlation between the usage of a profiler and the importance attributed to performance: indeed, the more important performance is to a development team, the more likely they are to use a profiler. In addition, developers to whom performance is an important part of the dev cycle have a higher tendency to use a much wider range of methods for performance measurement and analysis. And, unsurprisingly, the less important performance is, the less varied the methods of measurement are. So all in all, to come back to my random questions: .NET developers do care about performance. Those who care the most use a wider range of performance measurement methods than those who care less. But overall, logging statements, performance counters and third party performance profilers are the performance measurement methods of choice for most developers. Finally, although most of you find code profilers complex to use, those of you who care the most about performance tend to use profilers more than those of you to whom performance is not so important.

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• Correlating /var/log/* timestamps

  - by intuited

  /var/log/messages, /var/log/syslog, and some other log files use a timestamp which contains an absolute time, like Jan 13 14:13:10. /var/log/Xorg.0.log and /var/log/dmesg, as well as the output of $ dmesg, use a format that looks like [50595.991610] malkovich: malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich I'm guessing/gathering that the numbers represent seconds and microseconds since startup. However, my attempt to correlate these two sets of timestamps (using the output from uptime) gave a discrepancy of about 5000 seconds. This is roughly the amount of time my computer was suspended for. Is there a convenient way to map the numeric timestamps used by dmesg and Xorg into absolute timestamps?

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• Brightness keys adjust brightness too many times

  - by erjiang

  Every time I hit a brightness key on my laptop's keyboard, it adjusts the brightness by three steps instead of one. How can I fix it so that it only adjusts one step at a time? I am using an Acer Aspire D250 with the newest firmware. It was working better when I was using Ubuntu 10.10 with older firmware (although the scale was off). Any tips on debugging this would be appreciated. Edit: My graphics: 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) /sys/class/backlight$ ls acpi_video0 intel_backlight

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• Confirm disk is broken when it passes all diagnostics

  - by Halfgaar

  I have a system with a potentially broken disk, but the disk passes all manner of diagnostics. I have been unable to confirm that the disk is broken. What are my options? I could just replace the disk, but because this situation is very similar to another more severe situation I have (long story), I'd like to actually make a proper diagnosis as opposed to randomly binning hardware. The issue and history is this: I had a Debian Linux PC (500 MHz P3) acting as router, nagios and munin. It crashed every couple of weeks. No logs or dmesg could be obtained (because it's an old Compaq that only boots when you configure it as keyboardless, making connecting a keyboard later, once it's booted, impossible). At the time, I just replaced the computer with another Compaq (P4 2.4 GHz) because I thought the hardware was faulty. However, it still crashed every couple of weeks. the difference is that on this computer, I can still SSH into it. It gives all kinds of errors on hda. I'd like to confirm that the disk is broken, but nothing I do confirms this: SMART error logs shows no errors. Normally when a disk starts acting up, SMART my pass, but it still records a read-error in the error log. SMART self-test (smartctl -t long /dev/sda) completes without errors. re-allocated sector count (a tell-tale parameter) has been 31 all its life, even when the disk was still in use in my desktop PC years ago, and it still is. The figure never changed. dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=4096 passes with flying colors. What else can I do to assess the health of the drive? Again, this is not about making this router fully functional again, this is a disk forensic question, because it just so happens that I have another server that potentially has the same problem, and knowing the answer to this will possibly help me greatly. For the record, below are logs and such. This is the smartctl -a output: smartctl 5.40 2010-07-12 r3124 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Model Family: Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 and 7200.7 Plus family Device Model: ST3120026A Serial Number: 5JT1CLQM Firmware Version: 3.06 User Capacity: 120,034,123,776 bytes Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show] ATA Version is: 6 ATA Standard is: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 2 Local Time is: Mon Jul 1 21:18:33 2013 CEST SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability. SMART support is: Enabled === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED General SMART Values: Offline data collection status: (0x82) Offline data collection activity was completed without error. Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled. Self-test execution status: ( 24) The self-test routine was aborted by the host. Total time to complete Offline data collection: ( 430) seconds. Offline data collection capabilities: (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate. Auto Offline data collection on/off support. Suspend Offline collection upon new command. Offline surface scan supported. Self-test supported. No Conveyance Self-test supported. Selective Self-test supported. SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering power-saving mode. Supports SMART auto save timer. Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported. No General Purpose Logging support. Short self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 1) minutes. Extended self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 85) minutes. SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 050 046 006 Pre-fail Always - 47766662 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0003 097 096 000 Pre-fail Always - 0 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 10 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 036 Pre-fail Always - 31 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f 084 060 030 Pre-fail Always - 820305 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 048 048 000 Old_age Always - 46373 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 097 Pre-fail Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 020 Old_age Always - 605 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 036 065 000 Old_age Always - 36 195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered 0x001a 050 046 000 Old_age Always - 47766662 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0010 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x003e 200 196 000 Old_age Always - 6 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0000 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0 202 Data_Address_Mark_Errs 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 SMART Error Log Version: 1 No Errors Logged SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1 Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error # 1 Extended offline Aborted by host 80% 46361 - # 2 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 46358 - # 3 Short offline Completed without error 00% 12046 - # 4 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 10472 - # 5 Short offline Completed without error 00% 10471 - # 6 Short offline Completed without error 00% 10471 - # 7 Short offline Completed without error 00% 6770 - # 8 Extended offline Aborted by host 90% 5958 - # 9 Extended offline Aborted by host 90% 5951 - #10 Short offline Completed without error 00% 5024 - #11 Extended offline Aborted by host 80% 5024 - #12 Short offline Completed without error 00% 3697 - #13 Short offline Completed without error 00% 237 - #14 Short offline Completed without error 00% 145 - #15 Short offline Completed without error 00% 69 - #16 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 68 - #17 Short offline Completed without error 00% 66 - #18 Short offline Completed without error 00% 49 - #19 Short offline Completed without error 00% 29 - #20 Short offline Completed without error 00% 29 - SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1 SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS 1 0 0 Not_testing 2 0 0 Not_testing 3 0 0 Not_testing 4 0 0 Not_testing 5 0 0 Not_testing Selective self-test flags (0x0): After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk. If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay. And this is the dmesg error when it has crashed (which repeats for a bunch of different sectors): [1755091.211136] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled error code [1755091.211144] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK [1755091.211151] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 08 fe ad 38 00 00 08 00 [1755091.211166] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 150908216

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• How I Work: A Cloud Developer's Workstation

  - by BuckWoody

  I've written here a little about how I work during the day, including things like using a stand-up desk (still doing that, by the way). Inspired by a Twitter conversation yesterday, I thought I might explain how I set up my computing environment. First, a couple of important points. I work in Cloud Computing, specifically (but not limited to) Windows Azure. Windows Azure has features to run a Virtual Machine (IaaS), run code without having to control a Virtual Machine (PaaS) and use databases, video streaming, Hadoop and more (a kind of SaaS for tech pros). As such, my designs run the gamut of on-premises, VM's in the Cloud, and software that I write for a platform. I focus on data primarily, meaning that I design a lot of systems that use an RDBMS (like SQL Server or Windows Azure Databases) or a NoSQL approach (MongoDB on Azure or large-scale Key-Value Pairs in Table storage) and even Hadoop and R, and also Cloud Numerics in F#. All that being said, those things inform my choices below. Hardware I have a Lenovo X220 tablet/laptop which I really like a great deal - it's a light, tough, extremely fast system. When I travel, that's the system I take. It has 8GB of RAM, and an SSD drive. I sometimes use that to develop or work at a client's site, on the road, or in the living room when I'm not in my home office. My main system is a GateWay DX430017 - I've maxed it out on RAM, and I have two 1TB drives in it. It's not only my workstation for work; I leave it on all the time and it streams our videos, music and books. I have about 3400 e-books, and I've just started using Calibre to stream the library. I run Windows 8 on it so I can set up Hyper-V images, since Windows Azure allows me to move regular Hyper-V disks back and forth to the Cloud. That's where all my "servers" are, when I have to use an IaaS approach. The reason I use a desktop-style system rather than a laptop only approach is that a good part of my job is setting up architectures to solve really big, complex problems. That means I have to simulate entire networks on-premises, along with the Hybrid Cloud approach I use a lot. I need a lot of disk space and memory for that, and I use two huge monitors on my stand-up desk. I could probably use 10 monitors if I had the room for them. Also, since it's our home system as well, I leave it on all the time and it doesn't travel.   Software For the software for my systems, it's important to keep in mind that I not only write code, but I design databases, teach, present, and create Linux and other environments. Windows 8 - While the jury is out for me on the new interface, the context-sensitive search, integrated everything, and speed is just hands-down the right choice. I've evaluated a server OS, Linux, even an Apple, but I just am not as efficient on those as I am with Windows 8. Visual Studio Ultimate - I develop primarily in .NET (C# and F# mostly) and I use the Team Foundation Server in the cloud, and I'm asked to do everything from UI to Services, so I need everything. Windows Azure SDK, Windows Azure Training Kit - I need the first to set up my Azure PaaS coding, and the second has all the info I need for PaaS, IaaS and SaaS. This is primarily how I get paid. :) SQL Server Developer Edition - While I might install Oracle, MySQL and Postgres on my VM's, the "outside" environment is SQL Server for an RDBMS. I install the Developer Edition because it has the same features as Enterprise Edition, and comes with all the client tools and documentation. Microsoft Office -  Even if I didn't work here, this is what I would use. I've just grown too accustomed to doing business this way to change, so my advice is always "use what works", and this does. The parts I use are: OneNote (and a Math Add-in) - I do almost everything - and I mean everything in OneNote. I can code, do high-end math, present, design, collaborate and more. All my notebooks are on my Skydrive. I can use them from any system, anywhere. If you take the time to learn this program, you'll be hooked. Excel with PowerPivot - Don't make that face. Excel is the world's database, and every Data Scientist I know - even the ones where I teach at the University of Washington - know it, use it, and love it.  Outlook - Primary communications, CRM and contact tool. I have all of my social media hooked up to it, so when I get an e-mail from you, I see everything, see all the history we've had on e-mail, find you on a map and more. Lync - I was fine with LiveMeeting, although it has it's moments. For me, the Lync client is tres-awesome. I use this throughout my day, present on it, stay in contact with colleagues and the folks on the dev team (who wish I didn't have it) and more.  PowerPoint - Once again, don't make that face. Whenever I see someone complaining about PowerPoint, I have 100% of the time found they don't know how to use it. If you suck at presenting or creating content, don't blame PowerPoint. Works great on my machine. :) Zoomit - Magnifier - On Windows 7 (and 8 as well) there's a built-in magnifier, but I install Zoomit out of habit. It enlarges the screen. If you don't use one of these tools (or their equivalent on some other OS) then you're presenting/teaching wrong, and you should stop presenting/teaching until you get them and learn how to show people what you can see on your tiny, tiny monitor. :) Cygwin - Unix for Windows. OK, that's not true, but it's mostly that. I grew up on mainframes and Unix (IBM and HP, thank you) and I can't imagine life without  sed, awk, grep, vim, and bash. I also tend to take a lot of the "Science" and "Development" and "Database" packages in it as well. PuTTY - Speaking of Unix, when I need to connect to my Linux VM's in Windows Azure, I want to do it securely. This is the tool for that. Notepad++ - Somewhere between torturing myself in vim and luxuriating in OneNote is Notepad++. Everyone has a favorite text editor; this one is mine. Too many features to name, and it's free. Browsers - I install Chrome, Firefox and of course IE. I know it's in vogue to rant on IE, but I tend to think for myself a great deal, and I've had few (none) problems with it. The others I have for the haterz that make sites that won't run in IE. Visio - I've used a lot of design packages, but none have the extreme meta-data edit capabilities of Visio. I don't use this all the time - it can be rather heavy, but what it does it does really well. I also present this way when I'm not using PowerPoint. Yup, I just bring up Visio and diagram away as I'm chatting with clients. Depending on what we're covering, this can be the right tool for that. Tweetdeck - The AIR one, not that new disaster they came out with. I live on social media, since you, dear readers, are my cube-mates. When I get tired of you all, I close Tweetdeck. When I need help or someone needs help from me, or if I want to see a picture of a cat while I'm coding, I bring it up. It's up most all day and night. Windows Media Player - I listen to Trance or Classical when I code, and I find music managers overbearing and extra. I just use what comes in the box, and it works great for me. R - F# and Cloud Numerics now allows me to load in R libraries (yay!) and I use this for statistical work on big data loads. Microsoft Math - One of the most amazing, free, rich, amazing, awesome, amazing calculators out there. I get the 64-bit version for quick math conversions, plots and formula-checks. Python - I know, right? Who knew that the scientific community loved Python so much. But they do. I use 2.7; not as much runs with 3+. I also use IronPython in Visual Studio, or I edit in Notepad++ Camstudio recorder - Windows PSR - In much of my training, and all of my teaching at the UW, I need to show a process on a screen. Camstudio records screen and voice, and it's free. If I need to make static training, I use the Windows PSR tool that's built right in. It's ostensibly for problem duplication, but I use it to record for training.   OK - your turn. Post a link to your blog entry below, and tell me how you set your system up.  

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• Spolskism or Twitterism: A Doctor writes...

  - by Phil Factor

  "I never realized I had a problem. I just 'twittered' because it was a social thing to do. All my mates were doing it. It made me feel good to have 'followers'; it bolstered my self-esteem. Of course, you don't think of the long-term effects on your work and on the way you think. There's no denying that it impairs your judgment…" Yes, this story is typical. Hundreds of people are waking up to the long term effects of twittering, and seeking help. Dave, who wishes to remain anonymous, told our reporter… "I started using Twitter at work. Just a few minutes now and then, throughout the day. A lot of my colleagues were doing it and I thought 'Well, that's cool; it must be part of what I should be doing at work'. Soon, I was avidly reading every twitter that came my way, and counting the minutes between my own twitters. I tried to kid myself that it was all about professional development and getting other people to help you with work-related problems, but in truth I had become addicted to the buzz of the social network. The worse thing was that it made me seem busy even when I was really just frittering my time away. Inevitably, I started to get behind with my real work." Experts have identified the syndrome and given it a name: 'Twitterism', sometimes referred to as 'Spolskism', after the person who first drew attention to the pernicious damage to well-being that the practice caused, and who had the courage to take the pledge of rejecting it. According to one expert… "The occasional Twitter does little harm to the participant, and can be an adaptive way of dealing with stress. Unfortunately, it rarely stops there. The addictive qualities of the practice have put a strain on the caring professions who are faced with a flood of people making that first bold step to seeking help". Dave is one of those now seeking help for his addiction… "I had lost touch with reality. Even though I twittered my work colleagues constantly, I found I actually spoke to them less and less. Even when out socializing, I would frequently disengage from the conversation, in order to twitter. I stopped blogging. I stopped responding to emails; the only way to reach me was through the world of Twitter. Unfortunately, my denial about the harm that twittering was doing to me, my friends, and my work-colleagues was so strong that I truly couldn't see that I had a problem." Like other addictions, the help and support of others who are 'taking the cure' is important. There is a common bond between those who have 'been through hell and back' and are once more able to experience the joys of actually conversing and socializing, rather than the false comfort of solitary 'twittering'. Complete abstinence is essential to the cure. Most of those who risk even an occasional twitter face a headlong slide back into 'binge' twittering. Tom, another twitterer who has managed to kick the habit explains… "My twittering addiction now seems more like a bad dream. You get to work, and switch on the PC. You say to yourself, just open up the browser, just for a minute, just to see what people are saying on Twitter. The next thing you know, half the day has gone by. The worst thing is that when you're addicted, you get good at covering up the habit; I spent so much time looking at the screen and typing on the keyboard, people just assumed I was working hard.I know that I must never forget what it was like then, and what it's like now that I've kicked the habit. I now have more time for productive work and a real social life." Like many addictions, Spolskism has its most detrimental effects on family, friends and workmates, rather than the addict. So often nowadays, we hear the sad stories of Twitter-Widows; tales of long lonely evenings spent whilst their partners are engrossed in their twittering into their 'mobiles' or indulging in their solitary spolskistic habits in privacy, under cover of 'having to do work at home'. Workmates suffer too, when the addicts even take their laptops or mobiles into meetings in order to 'twitter' with their fellow obsessives, even stooping to complain to their followers how boring the meeting is. No; The best advice is to leave twittering to the birds. You know it makes sense.

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• Book review: Microsoft System Center Enterprise Suite Unleashed

  - by BuckWoody

  I know, I know – what’s a database guy doing reading a book on System Center? Well, I need it from time to time. System Center is actually a collection of about 7 different products that you can use to manage and monitor your software and hardware, from drive space through Microsoft Office, UNIX systems, and yes, SQL Server. It’s that last part I care about the most, and so I’ve dealt with Data Protection Manager and System Center Operations Manager (I call it SCOM) in SQL Server. But I wasn’t familiar with the rest of the suite nor was I as familiar as I needed to be with the “Essentials” release – a separate product that groups together the main features of System Center into a single offering for smaller organizations. These companies usually run with a smaller IT shop, so they sometimes opt for this product to help them monitor everything, including SQL Server. So I picked up “Microsoft System Center Enterprise Suite Unleashed” by Chris Amaris and a cast of others. I don’t normally like to get a technical book by multiple authors – I just find that most of the time it’s quite jarring to switch from author to author, but I think this group did pretty well here.  The first chapter on introducing System Center has helped me talk with others about what the product does, and which pieces fit well together with SQL Server. The writing is well done, and I didn’t find a jump from author to author as I went along. The information is sequential, meaning that they lead you from install to configuration and then use. It’s very much a concepts-and-how-to book, and a big one at that – over 950 pages of learning! It was a pretty quick read, though, since I skipped the installation parts and there are lots of screenshots. While I’m not sure you’d be an expert on the product when you finish reading this book, but I would say you’re more than halfway there. I would say it suits someone that learns through examples the best, since they have a lot of step-by-step examples I do recommend that you take a look if you have to interact with this product, or even if you are a smaller shop and you’re the primary IT resource. The last few chapters deal with System Center Essentials, and honestly it was the best part of the book for me. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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