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  • SQL Profiler Through StreamInsight Sample Solution

    In this postI show how you can use StreamInsight to take events coming from SQL Server Profiler in real-time and do some analytics whilst the data is in flight.  Here is the solution for that post.  The download contains Project that reads events from a previously recorded trace file Project that starts a trace and captures events in real-time from a custom trace definition file (Included) It is a very simple solution and could be extended.  Whilst this example traces against SQL Server it would be trivial to change this so it profiles events in Analysis Services.       Enjoy.

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  • The ETL from Hell - Diagnosing Batch System Performance Issues

    Too often, the batch systems that underlie a lot of database processing just grow without conscious design. When runs start to extend beyond their allotted time, and tuning no longer solves the problem, it is often discovered that batches are run in series, with draconian error handling. It is time to impose some rational design, and Nigel is a seasoned healer of batch processes. The seven tools in the SQL DBA Bundle support your core SQL Server database administration tasks.Make backups a breeze! Enjoy trouble-free troubleshooting! Make the most of monitoring! Download a free trial now.

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  • Suggestions on Calculating Advertising Rates [closed]

    - by Jonathan Wood
    Possible Duplicate: How do I set a price for advertising on my website? I recently launched a new developer website, Black Belt Coder. The site is only seeing about 150 visitors per day but, given that it's only been live two months, I feel I'm off to a good start. I'd like to start monetizing the site as soon as possible but consider AdSense and other programs largely a waste of time. I'd like to deal directly with the advertisers but have no idea what to charge. Are there any guidelines for determining advertising rates based on visitors or page views? I don't expect to do PPC. I want to charge a the time period for banner ads, knowing that advertisers will be keeping an eye on the number of clicks.

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  • Oracle Virtualization Friday Spotlight - November 8, 2013

    - by Monica Kumar
    Hands-on Private Cloud Simulator In One Hour Submitted by: Doan Nguyen, Senior Principal Product Marketing Director My aeronautics instructor used to say, "you can’t appreciate flying until you take flight." To clarify, this is not about gearing up in a flying squirrel suit and hopping off a cliff (topic for another blog!) but rather about flying an airplane. The idea is to get hands-on with the controls at the cockpit and experience flight before you actually fly a real plane. After the initial 40 hours of flight time, the concept sank in and it really made sense.This concept is what inspired our technical experts to put together the hands-on lab for a private cloud deployment and management self-service model. Yes, we are comparing the lab to a flight simulator! Let’s look at the parallels: To get trained to fly, starting in the simulator gets you off the ground quicker. There is no need to have a real plane to begin with. In a hands-on lab, there is no need for a real server, with networking and real storage installed. All you need is your laptop The simulator is pre-configured, pre-flight check done. Similarly, in a hands-on lab, Oracle VM and Oracle Enterprise Manager are pre-configured and assembled using Oracle VM VirtualBox as the container. Software installations are not needed. After time spent training at the controls, you can really appreciate the practical experience of flying. Along the same lines, the hands-on lab is a guided learning path, without the encumbrances of hardware, software installation, so you can learn about cloud deployment and management.  However, unlike the simulator training, your time investment with the lab is only about an hour and not 40 hours! This hands-on lab takes you through private cloud deployment and management using Oracle VM and  Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c in an Infrastructure as a service IaaS model. You will first configure the IaaS cloud as the cloud administrator and then deploy guest virtual machines (VMs) as a self-service user. Then you are ready to take flight into the cloud! Why not step into the cockpit now!

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  • About to graduate from good school without any progamming skills

    - by newprint
    Not sure if it is good place to ask this question, but found this section to be suitable. I am about to graduate from a good school (in the US) with Computer Science degree, having good grades and high GPA. I have no freaking clue how to write a good program, how to properly test it... nada, zero. We were never been taught how to write software. Ye, sure the Comp. Architecture class is important, and I can tell you a lot about how MIPS processor works, and I can tell you about Binary Trees and Red-Black Trees and running time of operations in Big Oh, but it has nothing to do with programming in "real" life. For god sake, none of my classmates know how to use STLs or write templated code! To be honest, I found that many of my classes to be waste of time. What should I do ? How to step into real life and learn how to program ?

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  • LibGDX onTouch() method Array and flip method

    - by johnny-b
    How can I add this on my application. i want to use the onTouch() method from the implementation of the InputProcessor to kill the enemies on screen. how do i do that? do i have to do anything to the enemy class? also i am trying to add a Array of enemies and it keeps throwing exceptions or the bullet now is facing LEFT <--- again after I used the flip method in the bullet class. All the code is below so please anyone feel free to have a look thanks. please help Thank you M // This is the bullet class. public class Bullet extends Sprite { public static final float BULLET_HOMING = 6000; public static final float BULLET_SPEED = 300; private Vector2 velocity; private float lifetime; private Rectangle bul; public Bullet(float x, float y) { velocity = new Vector2(0, 0); setPosition(x, y); AssetLoader.bullet1.flip(true, false); AssetLoader.bullet2.flip(true, false); setSize(AssetLoader.bullet1.getWidth(), AssetLoader.bullet1.getHeight()); bul = new Rectangle(); } public void update(float delta) { float targetX = GameWorld.getBall().getX(); float targetY = GameWorld.getBall().getY(); float dx = targetX - getX(); float dy = targetY - getY(); float distToTarget = (float) Math.sqrt(dx * dx + dy * dy); dx /= distToTarget; dy /= distToTarget; dx *= BULLET_HOMING; dy *= BULLET_HOMING; velocity.x += dx * delta; velocity.y += dy * delta; float vMag = (float) Math.sqrt(velocity.x * velocity.x + velocity.y * velocity.y); velocity.x /= vMag; velocity.y /= vMag; velocity.x *= BULLET_SPEED; velocity.y *= BULLET_SPEED; bul.set(getX(), getY(), getOriginX(), getOriginY()); Vector2 v = velocity.cpy().scl(delta); setPosition(getX() + v.x, getY() + v.y); setOriginCenter(); setRotation(velocity.angle()); } public Rectangle getBounds() { return bul; } public Rectangle getBounds1() { return this.getBoundingRectangle(); } } // This is the class where i load all the images from public class AssetLoader { public static Texture texture; public static TextureRegion bg, ball1, ball2; public static Animation bulletAnimation, ballAnimation; public static Sprite bullet1, bullet2; public static void load() { texture = new Texture(Gdx.files.internal("SpriteN1.png")); texture.setFilter(TextureFilter.Nearest, TextureFilter.Nearest); bg = new TextureRegion(texture, 80, 421, 395, 30); bg.flip(false, true); ball1 = new TextureRegion(texture, 0, 321, 32, 32); ball1.flip(false, true); ball2 = new TextureRegion(texture, 32, 321, 32, 32); ball2.flip(false, true); bullet1 = new Sprite(texture, 380, 350, 45, 20); bullet1.flip(false, true); bullet2 = new Sprite(texture, 425, 350, 45, 20); bullet2.flip(false, true); TextureRegion[] balls = { ball1, ball2 }; ballAnimation = new Animation(0.16f, balls); ballAnimation.setPlayMode(Animation.PlayMode.LOOP); } Sprite[] bullets = { bullet1, bullet2 }; bulletAnimation = new Animation(0.06f, aims); bulletAnimation.setPlayMode(Animation.PlayMode.LOOP); } public static void dispose() { texture.dispose(); } // This is for the rendering or drawing onto the screen/canvas. public class GameRenderer { private Bullet bullet; private Ball ball; public GameRenderer(GameWorld world) { myWorld = world; cam = new OrthographicCamera(); cam.setToOrtho(true, 480, 320); batcher = new SpriteBatch(); // Attach batcher to camera batcher.setProjectionMatrix(cam.combined); shapeRenderer = new ShapeRenderer(); shapeRenderer.setProjectionMatrix(cam.combined); // Call helper methods to initialize instance variables initGameObjects(); initAssets(); } private void initGameObjects() { ball = GameWorld.getBall(); bullet = myWorld.getBullet(); scroller = myWorld.getScroller(); } private void initAssets() { ballAnimation = AssetLoader.ballAnimation; bulletAnimation = AssetLoader.bulletAnimation; } public void render(float runTime) { Gdx.gl.glClearColor(0, 0, 0, 1); Gdx.gl.glClear(GL30.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); batcher.begin(); batcher.disableBlending(); batcher.enableBlending(); batcher.draw(AssetLoader.ballAnimation.getKeyFrame(runTime), ball.getX(), ball.getY(), ball.getWidth(), ball.getHeight()); batcher.draw(AssetLoader.bulletAnimation.getKeyFrame(runTime), bullet.getX(), bullet.getY(), bullet.getOriginX(), bullet.getOriginY(), bullet.getWidth(), bullet.getHeight(), 1.0f, 1.0f, bullet.getRotation()); // End SpriteBatch batcher.end(); } } // this is to load the image etc on the screen i guess public class GameWorld { public static Ball ball; private Bullet bullet; private ScrollHandler scroller; public GameWorld() { ball = new Ball(480, 273, 32, 32); bullet = new Bullet(10, 10); scroller = new ScrollHandler(0); } public void update(float delta) { ball.update(delta); bullet.update(delta); scroller.update(delta); } public static Ball getBall() { return ball; } public ScrollHandler getScroller() { return scroller; } public Bullet getBullet() { return bullet; } } //This is the input handler class public class InputHandler implements InputProcessor { private Ball myBall; private Bullet bullet; private GameRenderer aims; // Ask for a reference to the Soldier when InputHandler is created. public InputHandler(Ball ball) { myBall = ball; } @Override public boolean touchDown(int screenX, int screenY, int pointer, int button) { return false; } @Override public boolean keyDown(int keycode) { return false; } @Override public boolean keyUp(int keycode) { return false; } @Override public boolean keyTyped(char character) { return false; } @Override public boolean touchUp(int screenX, int screenY, int pointer, int button) { return false; } @Override public boolean touchDragged(int screenX, int screenY, int pointer) { return false; } @Override public boolean mouseMoved(int screenX, int screenY) { return false; } @Override public boolean scrolled(int amount) { return false; } } i am rendering all graphics in a GameRender class and a gameworld class if you need more info please let me know I am trying to make the array work but keep finding that when an array is initialized then the bullet fips back to the original and ends up being backwards???? and if I create an array I keep getting Exceptions throw??? Thank you for any help given.

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  • Google Dart vs CoffeeScript? Which one should one learn?

    - by garbage collection
    I was thinking about learning CoffeeScript some time in the future. In the mean time, Google came out with Dart that seems to do what CoffeeScript does. Google says: Dart code can be executed in two different ways: either on a native virtual machine or on top of a JavaScript engine by using a compiler that translates Dart code to JavaScript. This means you can write a web application in Dart and have it compiled and run on any modern browser. Does anyone know advantages and disadvantages of learning Dart or CoffeeScript?

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  • Why do I always think I know much less than others? [closed]

    - by John Kenedy
    I have been in programming since primary 6. Since the time DOS comes, I have been doing programming in quickbasic 4.5, then to VB 6, then to C#. In between I also do programming in C++. But every time I open Stack Overflow and trying to help others answering their problems, it seems that I know nothing. I feel that I am so stupid even I have been in programming for so long. I would shock reading all the questions and unable to find any clue. Is technology moving too fast that left out me? I feel that technology changes too fast and I can't keep up, when I know ASP.NET web form, MVC is out, when I know MVC, android/iphone/HTML5 app is popular. It seems that I am chasing something and never reach 'it'. I don't know whether this is correct place for me to talk about this. I just wish to listen to opinion like you, how do you think technology should grow instead of recreating language, adding bug here and there to let programmer figure it out, while big company share the solution among themselves. This is exactly how I feel. The simple example is how do you think why doesn't Dictionary<> in .NET provide iterating the object using index? Why must we use Key or GetEnumerator(). Developer has to google and read wasted hour of hour of time to find pieces of hack code to use reflection to achieve reading from index. Where developer will keep it as collection and valuable code. HOwever when times come, everything changes again, developer has to find answer for new silly problems again! Yes, I really hate it! I hate how many big companies are playing with the developer by cutting a big picture into small puzzle and messing it up and asking developer to place it together themselves. As if they are creating problems for us to solve it, so we are unable to grow upfront, we are being manipulated by those silly problems they have created. Another sample would how difficult to collect Cookies from CookieContainer without passing the URL, yes without the URL and I WANT to get all cookie in the cookiecontainer without knowing the URL, I want to iterate all. Why does micros0ft have to limit me from doing that?

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  • Abandoment to blame for the last JavaScript file not always being loaded?

    - by Larsenal
    I have a code snippet for an app that users are loading as a 3rd party script on their site. The general sequence is as follows: Site loads http://www.example.com/foo.js foo.js does stuff 1 to 2 seconds later, foo.js loads bar.js Now in a perfect world, I'd want to see matching counts for the calls to foo.js and bar.js. However, bar.js loads only about 94% of the time. I'm wondering how much of this discrepancy might be attributable to site abandonment given the fact that bar.js is delayed by 1 or 2 seconds. I posted here instead of StackOverflow since I think it's more a question about what would be typical time on page when users abandon the page.

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  • "Best fit" to avoid reuse of object instances in a collection

    - by Simon
    Imagine I have a collection of object instances which represent activities for a user to undertake. Dependent on user attributes, I have to randomly select instances to present activities to the user. For some users, I need to present more activities to them than there are available activities in which case, I want to use the following algorithm. If all available activities have already been presented to the user, then re-select a "used" activity, selecting the earliest presented activity ordered by frequency of use. In other words, try to reduce repetition and where repetition is unavoidable, use the instances which have been repeated less often and were presented furthest back in time. Before I go on to code that algorithm, I wondered if there is some existing pattern I can re-use? [EDIT] "Furthest back in time" is not relevant as I will pass the algorithm an ordered collection of used instances where the first entry is the first presented.

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  • Battery Power when running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS in dual boot

    - by Amro A.
    This is only a general question in order for me to get a better idea of my dual boot (windows 8 & Ubuntu) systems. I noticed that every time I run Ubuntu (which is becoming more often) the battery power gets consumed really fast. I am not performing any special tasks at the moment, just getting to know the system, for example, sound settings, watching videos, surfing the net and so on. When I do the same thing in Windows 8 the battery lives a considerable amount of time longer. Is this something to do with Ubuntu or is it because of the dual boot that I have going on? In other words, if I start running Ubuntu all by itself on my laptop, will it be more power consuming than Windows 8?

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  • Kernel panic when booting from USB

    - by maaartinus
    I downloaded ubuntu-11.04-desktop-amd64.iso and used Universal-USB-Installer-1.8.6.3.exe to format my USB stick und put the ISO on it. When I tried to install from it, I've got a kernel panic just like here, except for the version number (mine was 2.6.38-8-generic #42-ubuntu). My ISO image seems to work, as I installed it into a VMWare player without problems. Booting Linux from USB works surely too, as I did it some time ago with an older Ubuntu version. I can imagine things to try out, e.g., write the image again, try another version, pray, look for patches, etc. However, I'm looking for a time-efficient solution, something what most probably works. An advice of the sort "wait two weeks until it's surely fixed, then download again" is acceptable, I'm determined to switch to Linux, but it can wait a bit.

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  • Gnome 3 freezes when switching workspaces

    - by Bill Cheatham
    I have found an odd problem with Gnome 3 on Ubuntu recently. Under certain circumstances, when switching between two workspaces the whole desktop and user interface will 'freeze' for anything up to 2 minutes; during this time I cannot click anything or interact using the keyboard. Often, the screen will show a 'half-completed' animation of the workspace swapper. This is on Ubuntu 12.04.1 running on a 2-year old Macbook Pro, and it only seems to occur when using an external monitor. This does not seem to be a processor or memory issue, and does not occur every time I switch workspaces. Is this a known problem? What can I do in the short or long term to fix it?

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  • How can I have my VPN connect automatically when the wireless connects?

    - by ams
    I have a working VPN connection using NetworkManager, OpenConnect, and the network-manager-openconnect-gnome package, but I have to start it manually every time I connect to a network, and I have to enter my password manually each time. How can I get it to connect automatically, and remember my password (securely)? I have checked the 'Connect Automatically' box on the Configure VPN page, but this seems to have no effect. I've also got the 'Start connecting automatically' box checked in the pop-up box, and that does avoid the need to press the connect button in that window, but seems to have no part in kicking off the whole process in the first place. There is no option to remember the password in the window, but maybe there's one somewhere else?

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  • WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Alberta Agriculture and Rural Developmen

    - by me
    Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummaryAlberta Agriculture and Rural Development is a government ministry that works with producers and consumers to create a strong, competitive, and sustainable agriculture and food industry in the province of Alberta, Canada The primary business challenge faced by the Alberta Ministry of Agriculture was that of managing the rapid growth of their information.  They needed to incorporate a system that would work across 22 different divisions within the ministry and deliver an improved and more efficient experience for Desktop, Web and Mobile users, while addressing their regulatory compliance needs as part of the Canadian government. The customer implemented a centralized Enterprise Content Management solution based on Oracle WebCenter Content and developed a strong and repeatable information life cycle management methodology across all their 22 divisions and agencies. With the implemented solution, Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development  centrally manages over 20 million documents for 22 divisions and agencies and they have improved time required to find records,  reliability of information, improved speed and accuracy of reporting and data security. Company OverviewAlberta Agriculture and Rural Development is a government ministry that works with producers and consumers to create a strong, competitive, and sustainable agriculture and food industry in the province of Alberta, Canada.  Business ChallengesThe business users were overwhelmed by growth in documents (over 20 million files across 22 divisions and agencies) and it was difficult to find and manage documents and versions. There was a strong need for a personalized easy-to-use, secure and dependable method of managing and consuming content via desktop, Web, and mobile, while improving efficiency and maintaining regulatory compliance by removing the risk of non-uniform approaches to retention and disposition. Solution DeployedAs a first step Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development developed a business case with clear defined business drivers: Reduce time required to find records Locate “lost” records Capture knowledge lost through attrition Increase the ease of retrieval Reduce personal copies Increase reliability of information Improve speed and accuracy of reporting Improve data security The customer implemented a centralized Enterprise Content Management solution based on Oracle WebCenter Content. They used an incremental implementation approach aligned with their divisional and agency structure which allowed continuous process improvement. This led to a very strong and repeatable information life cycle management methodology across all their 22 divisions and agencies. Business ResultsAlberta Agriculture and Rural Development achieved impressive business results: Centrally managing over 20 million files for 22 divisions and agencies Federated model to manage documents in SharePoint and other applications Doing records management for both paper and electronic records Reduced time required to find records Increased the ease of retrieval Increased reliability of information Improved speed and accuracy of reporting Improved data security Additional Information Oracle Open World 2012 Presentation Oracle WebCenter Content

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  • Career advice: stay with PHP or start a new career in something else ( .Net?)

    - by Christian P
    I'm planning on moving to NY in 6-12 months tops, so I'm forced to find a new job. When I'm planing to start my life in another city it's also probably a good time to think about career changes. I've found a lot of different opinions about PHP vs .Net vs Java and this is not topic here. I don't want to start a new fight about which language is better. Knowing programming language is not the most important thing for being a software developer. To be a really good developer you need to know OOP, design patterns, testing... and language is just a tool to make things happen. So back to my question. I have mixed experience in IT - 1 year as an IT support guy (Windows administration and support), around 2 years of experience in embedded programming (VB.Net 2005) and for the last 2 years I'm working with PHP/MySQL. I have worked with Magento web shop, assisted in some projects in Symfony, modified few Drupal sites. My main concerns are following: Do I continue to improve my skills in PHP e.g. to start learning some major PHP framework like Zend, Symfony maybe get some PHP certification. Or do I start learning .NET or Java. I'm more familiar to .NET so I'll probably choose it if choice falls between .NET and Java ( or you could convince me to choose Java :). Career-wise, I don't know what is the best choice. Learning new framework and language is more time consuming then improving my existing skills in PHP. But with .NET you have a lot of possibilities (Windows 7 Phone development, Silverlight, WPF) and possibly bigger chances to find better jobs. PHP jobs are less payed then .NET, at least, according to my researches (correct me if I'm wrong). But if I start now with .NET I'm just a beginner and my salary will be low. I need at least 2+ years of experience in some language to even try to find some job that is paying higher than $50-60k in NY. My main goal in next 2-3 years is to try to find a job in a $60-80k category. Don't get me wrong, I'm not just chasing money, but money is an important factor when you're trying to start a family. I'm 27 years old and I feel that there isn't a lot of room for wrong decisions regarding my career, so any advice will be very welcome. Update Thank you all for spending time to help me with my problem. All of the answers and comments have been very helpful. I have decided to stick with PHP but also to learn C# and Silverlight 4. We'll see where the life will take me.

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  • Google Maps API Office Hours

    Google Maps API Office Hours Interested in knowing more about the Google Maps API announcements that were made at I/O? During this week's Google Maps API Office Hours, +Josh Livni and +Paul Saxman will give an overview of the Google Maps API features that were announced at I/O, and will talk about the I/O session content that is now available online. The next Office Hours will be this Tuesday at 11am, Pacific Time. Bring your questions, and join us there! From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 167 9 ratings Time: 21:25 More in Science & Technology

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  • Google I/O 2012 - Fireside Chat with the Hangouts Team

    Google I/O 2012 - Fireside Chat with the Hangouts Team Come join a conversation with the Google+ Hangouts team. Hear the thinking behind Google's real time strategy and learn how businesses, broadcasters, developers, and families are all using the product. Ever wondered how a hangout on air works? Come to this session to get all your questions answered and learn what's in store for hangouts in the future. For all I/O 2012 sessions, go to developers.google.com From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 58 0 ratings Time: 01:00:01 More in Science & Technology

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  • Catching typos or other errors in web-based scripting languages

    - by foreyez
    Hi, My background is mainly strongly typed languages (java, c++, c#). Having recently gotten back to a bit of javascript, I found it a bit annoying that if I misspell something by accident (for example I'll type 'myvar' instead of 'myVar') my entire script crashes. The browser itself most of the time doesn't even tell me I have an error, my program will just be blank, etc. Then I have to hunt down my code line by line and find the error which is very time consuming. In the languages I am used to the compiler lets me know if I made a typo. My question to you is, how do you overcome this issue in scripting (javascript)? Can you give me some tips? (this question is mainly aimed at people that have also come from a strongly typed language). Note: I mainly use the terminal/VIM ... this is mainly b/c I like terminal and I SSH alot too

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  • How to examine the speed of your code results?

    - by Goma
    Hi. Whatever was your choice PHP, ASP.NET, Ruby On Rails or even JSP. You know that you can develop a website to give a specific result or to do some tasks in many ways. I mean you can change your code to make it shorter (or for any other reason) but to give the same result. In this case how do you test which code was faster to excute so you choose it to make your website faster? I mean do you have any tools or ideas in how to test the time of execution for your code and compare it with time of execution after you do some edit?

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  • Images Loading Very Slowly

    - by Vecta
    I'm currently working on optimizing my site to try to decrease load time by using Pingdom tools. I seem to be having some difficulty with long load times on images. For example, the body background for my site is a 29kb file but takes almost 500 ms to load, the majority of which is spent connecting to the server. This one seems to take the longest times but other images seem to take a lot of time as well—the majority of which seems to be spent connecting to the server. This also seems to fluctuate as I've seen the same image load in 500ms one minute and ten minutes later load in 1.5 seconds. My site is using the Modx CMS but I'm not sure if that would affect this at all. Is it more likely that this is a server issue? Is there anything that I should check or do to help alleviate these inflated 'connect' times?

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  • Creating basic ACPI event makes the system unusably slow

    - by skerit
    I want to change a few settings on my laptop when I switch to battery power. I created a new event in /etc/acpi/events/cust-battery and it looks like this: event=battery action=/home/skerit/power.sh I put a simple command in the power.sh file: echo This is a test >> /home/skerit/powertest Now, when I tail this file it shows "This is a test" 4-5 times upon switching to battery power. However, the system becomes totally unstable. It slows down significantly. I can't change anything in the terminal. The terminal and certain parts of the screen (like the gnome system monitor applet) go blank from time to time. What can be the cause of that? It's a simple echo that gets executed a few times!

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  • Cloud Computing Forces Better Design Practices

    - by Herve Roggero
    Is cloud computing simply different than on premise development, or is cloud computing actually forcing you to create better applications than you normally would? In other words, is cloud computing merely imposing different design principles, or forcing better design principles?  A little while back I got into a discussion with a developer in which I was arguing that cloud computing, and specifically Windows Azure in his case, was forcing developers to adopt better design principles. His opinion was that cloud computing was not yielding better systems; just different systems. In this blog, I will argue that cloud computing does force developers to use better design practices, and hence better applications. So the first thing to define, of course, is the word “better”, in the context of application development. Looking at a few definitions online, better means “superior quality”. As it relates to this discussion then, I stipulate that cloud computing can yield higher quality applications in terms of scalability, everything else being equal. Before going further I need to also outline the difference between performance and scalability. Performance and scalability are two related concepts, but they don’t mean the same thing. Scalability is the measure of system performance given various loads. So when developers design for performance, they usually give higher priority to a given load and tend to optimize for the given load. When developers design for scalability, the actual performance at a given load is not as important; the ability to ensure reasonable performance regardless of the load becomes the objective. This can lead to very different design choices. For example, if your objective is to obtains the fastest response time possible for a service you are building, you may choose the implement a TCP connection that never closes until the client chooses to close the connection (in other words, a tightly coupled service from a connectivity standpoint), and on which a connection session is established for faster processing on the next request (like SQL Server or other database systems for example). If you objective is to scale, you may implement a service that answers to requests without keeping session state, so that server resources are released as quickly as possible, like a REST service for example. This alternate design would likely have a slower response time than the TCP service for any given load, but would continue to function at very large loads because of its inherently loosely coupled design. An example of a REST service is the NO-SQL implementation in the Microsoft cloud called Azure Tables. Now, back to cloud computing… Cloud computing is designed to help you scale your applications, specifically when you use Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings. However it’s not automatic. You can design a tightly-coupled TCP service as discussed above, and as you can imagine, it probably won’t scale even if you place the service in the cloud because it isn’t using a connection pattern that will allow it to scale [note: I am not implying that all TCP systems do not scale; I am just illustrating the scalability concepts with an imaginary TCP service that isn’t designed to scale for the purpose of this discussion]. The other service, using REST, will have a better chance to scale because, by design, it minimizes resource consumption for individual requests and doesn’t tie a client connection to a specific endpoint (which means you can easily deploy this service to hundreds of machines without much trouble, as long as your pockets are deep enough). The TCP and REST services discussed above are both valid designs; the TCP service is faster and the REST service scales better. So is it fair to say that one service is fundamentally better than the other? No; not unless you need to scale. And if you don’t need to scale, then you don’t need the cloud in the first place. However, it is interesting to note that if you do need to scale, then a loosely coupled system becomes a better design because it can almost always scale better than a tightly-coupled system. And because most applications grow overtime, with an increasing user base, new functional requirements, increased data and so forth, most applications eventually do need to scale. So in my humble opinion, I conclude that a loosely coupled system is not just different than a tightly coupled system; it is a better design, because it will stand the test of time. And in my book, if a system stands the test of time better than another, it is of superior quality. Because cloud computing demands loosely coupled systems so that its underlying service architecture can be leveraged, developers ultimately have no choice but to design loosely coupled systems for the cloud. And because loosely coupled systems are better… … the cloud forces better design practices. My 2 cents.

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